From Black Rooms (31 page)

She could not even respond to Pancrit's crass greeting, for she was overwhelmed by the same nauseating

dizziness she experienced in a graveyard. The risk here was the same: inhabitation by more than one soul could incite a fatal epileptic fit.

Teetering drunkenly, Natalie braced herself against the nearest wal . "Yea, though I walk through the val ey of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," she prayed
aloud, for both herself and her child.

The corporal at the front desk rose from her chair, alarmed. "Sir...should I cal for med support?" Carl Pancrit dismissed her concern. "No, they'l be al right in a minute. We're going to the auxiliary wing. See that we're not disturbed." He turned to the Corps Security agents and gestured to Natalie and Cal ie.

"Bring them along."

With the Twenty-third Psalm circling in her mind, Natalie recovered enough to check on her daughter, who had fal en silent. She soon discovered, with more than a little pride, that Cal ie seemed to be in complete control. Hunched in a fetal posture, she'd withdrawn into herself to concentrate on her protective mantra, like a turtle retreating into its shel . When Tackle tried to take hold of her arm, however, Cal ie got to her feet and reproached him with an imperious scowl. "Don't touch me. I can handle myself."

He muttered something with the word brat in it, but let her walk ahead of him as Carl Pancrit conducted them al down the corridor to the left of the reception desk. Evan fol owed them like an unpaid debt.

The auxiliary wing ran paral el to the test subjects'

ward and could easily have been mistaken for the

offices of a common medical clinic. Only the security door at the end of the hal way, marked with the thorny, interlocking crescents of the biohazard warning

emblem, hinted that health care was not the facility's primary concern.

Pancrit took them only halfway down the corridor, leading them into an examination room furnished with what appeared to be three modified dentist's chairs, each outfitted with heavy leather belts and padded cuffs. Natalie noted that two of the chairs had al their surfaces wrapped in latex.

"As you can see, ladies, I prepared for your arrival." Pancrit patted the rubber sheet on one of the seat backs.

"I've added a fresh layer of insulation to prevent any unwanted...disturbances, shal we say?"

The implication made Natalie redouble the recitation of her mantra. These chairs...they were touchstones for Pancrit's past patients--the mad souls murdered in the ward.

"We're not going to sit there," she declared.

"Actual y, you are. Your only decision is whether to do so voluntarily." Pancrit cupped a hand around his mouth and said in a mock whisper, "Between you and me, I wouldn't make a fuss. After what you put the boys through at the old folks' home, they're itching to give you and your girl a taste of the same." He indicated Block and Tackle, who'd both drawn stun guns from their belts. "Now, if I could have the younger Ms. Lindstrom take a seat here--"

"Leave her alone. Use me instead."

When she stepped toward the chair, Cal ie blocked her.

"No, Mom. I can do it--whatever it is."

"Honey, whatever it is, you don't want to do it." Natalie ached with helplessness. Several times that day, she'd thought of throwing herself in their captors' line of fire to give Cal ie a chance to escape. But with her and her daughter's arms stil bound and with Evan, Tackle, and Block al armed and guarding them, Natalie knew it would be a futile gesture that would only get them both kil ed. She'd chosen to stal instead, hoping that somehow her father would be able to lead Calvin to them, but she watched that possibility become ever more remote, like a castaway who sees a potential rescue ship sail from view.

Having passed through the denial and anger phases, Natalie tried bargaining with Pancrit. "If you let Cal ie go, I'l do whatever you say," she offered. "Just tel me what you want."

"What do I want?" he replied. "For you to stop wasting
my time."

Pancrit gave a nod, and Natalie shuddered with

involuntary tremors as the darts from Block's stun gun lashed her with its voltage. Her body, rigid with contracting muscles, took a step forward without her consent and toppled over like a malfunctioning robot. The pain, as searing as the bolt from a SoulScan Panic Button, was not the worst part, however. Worse by far was hearing her daughter drop to the floor beside her, both of them wriggling like eels yet unable to draw enough breath to do more than gasp.

Natalie did not black out when they cut off the juice from the stun gun, although it might have been better if she had. With the nightmarish passivity of the

incapacitated, she felt her slack body hefted into one of the chairs like a med-school cadaver laid out for dissection, and saw Tackle and Block fasten the belt around her waist and the cuffs around her ankles and wrists. They then rotated the chair so she would have a prime view as they strapped Cal ie to the seat next to her. Meanwhile, Pancrit maneuvered a pushcart with a SoulScan unit and his attache case into place beside Cal ie's chair.

"The wonderful thing about science," he said, "is that even a failed experiment has something to teach us." He brushed his fingers through Cal ie's shoulder-length brown curls and flicked the switch to start the electric hair clipper in his right hand. The resonance of the room's acoustics amplified the buzz until it sounded like a nest of hornets.

Held fast to the examination chair, Cal ie remained semiconscious from the stun-gun shot, merciful y

unaware of Pancrit's intentions. Al too alert now, Natalie could only dread what Pancrit would do. Block and Tackle stood guard at either side of her in case she caused trouble, although she would've had to be

Houdini to move an inch.

Pancrit peered at her across her captive child. "Mr. Markham tel s me you visited the Gardner Museum.

Did you by any chance chat with our mutual friend Bartholomew Wax while you were there?"

"Yes." Stil deadened from the electric current, Natalie's teeth and tongue were slow to from words.

"But...Wax didn't tel us anything. He s-said...the project was a bust and there was no hope for Calvin."

"I see. Wel , at least the last statement is accurate." Lowering the clippers to Cal ie's hairline, Pancrit sheared the locks from her scalp in ugly swaths.

Natalie let out a yelp. Though she knew the haircut wouldn't hurt--she'd had ones like it many times in her life--Natalie couldn't bear to have Cal ie look like a Corps Violet. It was like seeing her seared with a slave brand.

Pancrit continued to lecture while he worked. "I suppose Barty--Dr. Wax, that is--described some of the fascinating side effects we observed in our less successful trials. Mr. Criswel 's case is, of course, one example."

"You knew the gene therapy didn't work when you gave it to him," Natalie said.

Pancrit smiled like a humble family practitioner. "In medicine, the threat of treatment can often prove motivational for the patient to become proactive in achieving the physician's goals. Which brings me to your daughter."

He snapped off the shears and set them aside, then dusted Cal ie's shorn scalp of the loose clippings, which drifted to the floor like down feathers. "One of the most interesting results we encountered in our research derived from Treatment #17. The recipient was an

unfortunate girl named Marisa Alvarez, who...wel , by any chance did Dr. Wax tel you about the phenomenon of the 'empty vessel'?"

Natalie's face went cold as the blood drained from it.

"Yes."

"Good. Then I can spare you a rehash. In every previous instance of the empty-vessel effect, the test subject's body, although vacant, could not retain a single soul for any great length of time before another soul supplanted it. My theory is that the underdeveloped node points of our pseudo-Violets could not hold on to a given soul indefinitely. But, I wondered, what if I could remove the soul of a real Violet?" He laid his palm on Cal ie's forehead. "Then, perhaps, I could
transplant the soul of one dead individual into an empty
vessel capable of supporting it. A dead individual, say, like Dr. Wax himself."

He picked a plastic sandwich bag off the pushcart. Sealed inside it was a careful y preserved bread-bag twist-tie.

"N
o!" Natalie's examination chair rocked as she
squirmed in its restraints. "It won't do any good to bring him back. I told Wax that al the paintings are safe. You can't threaten them anymore, because he'l think you're only destroying forgeries."

For a second, Pancrit's patina of gentility disappeared.

"You real y shouldn't have done that. Fortunately, I'l have other means of persuading Dr. Wax to

cooperate--once I have him in the body of a nine-yearold girl." Cal ie moaned and opened her eyes, and Pancrit restored his genial smile. "Ah! Our Sleeping Beauty awakes!"

"C
allie!"

Stil groggy from the stun-gun shock, she turned her bare head in the direction of her mother's cry,

struggling to make sense of the situation. "Mom?

What's going on? I hurt al over."

"Just...stay calm, honey," Natalie said, although she was on the verge of tears herself. Please, Dad, she thought. Help us--and hurry.

Cal ie attempted to sit up, but the bonds held her fast. Pancrit patted her shoulder, as if he were her

pediatrician instead of her inquisitor. "We're going to find out where your node points are, pretty lady. You want to be an official Violet, don't you? I only wish we didn't have to crop your lovely curls to do it."

"It doesn't bother my mom; it won't bother me." The revelation that she had no hair seemed to terrify Cal ie even more than being immobilized in front of a

madman, but she glowered at Pancrit defiantly. "You're the bad man, aren't you? The one named Evan."

"No, that would be me." Leaning against the nearby wal , Evan frowned at Natalie, obviously assuming she'd defamed him in front of the child.

Pancrit chuckled. "I'm not the bad man, child. I'm a doctor. I'm here to help." He took the twist-tie from the plastic bag and placed it in her right hand. "Hold this touchstone for me for a few minutes. A soul wil start knocking, but you don't have to let him in. Yet."

"C
allie, don't!" Natalie yelled. "Throw it away!"
Pancrit switched on the SoulScan and uncoiled its electrode wires. "Now, now, there's no need to frighten the girl. This wil go far more easily if she behaves." Cal ie scrunched her eyes shut the way she did at the dentist and began to wail.

Watching the SoulScan, Pancrit took one of the

electrodes and glided it over the surface of the child's scalp. When he saw the monitor's green inhabitation lines spike, he fixed the electrode in place with surgical tape and took up the next one.

Desperate to stop or at least stal him, Natalie babbled about the gene for the filtering mechanism and

everything else that Dr. Wax had told her, not caring what Pancrit did with the information as long as it saved her daughter. Pancrit did not even slow down, however, but continued to pinpoint Cal ie's node points until he had attached al twenty electrodes. The hydra of

insulated white cables emanating from the girl's head looked like tubes ready to extract her essence.

Cal ie abruptly quieted, her eyes like melting amethysts.

"It's okay, kiddo," she murmured to herself. "Don't be sad."

Natalie's heart quickened with apprehension. That wasn't Wax inhabiting her daughter--it was Wade

Lindstrom. Natalie had not had a chance to tel Cal ie that her grandfather was dead, and this was not the way she wanted to break the news. While she was glad that Dad had come back to be with his grandchild, Natalie knew he could do little to prevent Treatment #17 from separating Cal ie's soul from her body.

Absorbed in preparations for his experiment, Carl Pancrit did not catch the significance of what Cal ie had said. "That's a good girl," he murmured, and opened his attache case. "Just relax. This may sting a bit." He brought out his vaccination gun and fed it a vial of green liquid. Natalie shrieked as he lowered the tip to Cal ie's arm.

At that instant, the corporal from the reception desk opened the door and leaned inside. "Sir?"

"My life is nothing but a series of interruptions." Pancrit heaved a sigh, the vaccine gun stil poised to inject. "I thought I told you I didn't want to be disturbed."

"Yes, sir--sorry, sir. But...I thought you might want to talk to these people."

"And why on earth would I want to talk to whomever you've got out there?"

"To make a deal," Calvin's voice replied. The corporal opened the door wide, and Calvin limped into the examination room behind Serena. Trapped in her chair, Natalie almost gave herself whiplash as she swung her head around to see him. He wore a pair of borrowed sneakers two sizes too big for him, fiveo'clock shadow roughed both his jaw and his bare scalp, and the hol ows of his eyes were bruised with fatigue, but he had never looked more beautiful to her. Evan bristled like a tomcat claiming his territory.

"Mr. Criswel ," Pancrit muttered, "why on earth would I make a deal with you?"

"Because, Mr. Pancrit, I'm not Calvin Criswel . I'm Bartholomew Wax."

Al the air seemed to leave the room, and no one was able to speak.

Then Evan stalked forward to stare Calvin down. "He's bluffing. Boo said it herself--Wax knows the paintings were frauds. He'd never bargain with you."

The corporal, who stood at attention by the door, cleared her throat. "Sir...he knew the intercom code for the front entrance. It's why I let them in--why I thought you'd want to see them." Whether she mentioned this for Calvin's benefit or to defend her own actions was unclear.

Whoever looked out through Calvin's eyes remained unruffled. "What do you think, Carl? Are you curious to hear my offer?"

Pancrit scrutinized the man's expression. "Yes, Barty," he said at last. "Very curious."

"You can start by putting that injection away." Wax indicated Cal ie, who softly wept. "If anything happens to that child or her mother, you can forget about the project."