Invasive Procedures (11 page)

Monica cocked her head. “Homeless?”

“Homeless,” repeated Dolores. “As in without a home. I live on the street. We all do, except Byron over there. He’s a big-shot lawyer, only Galen thought he was a drifter and picked him up same as the rest of us. He needed people who wouldn’t be missed, know what I mean? Who’s gonna miss a few homeless, right? Answer: nobody. Only Byron
isn’t
homeless. Or at least so he says, and I believe him even if Hal doesn’t. You see, Byron’s car broke down. I used to own me a Chevy Nova, but the man who ran the trailer park, he had it towed after my Earl burned himself.”

“All of you are homeless?” Monica said.

“You got wax in your ears? Galen picked us up
because
we’re homeless. Nick over there thinks Galen’s got something in store for us. Something bad. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just let us go?”

Monica’s head was spinning. What did Galen want with five homeless people, or at least five people he
thought
were homeless? Why was he holding them here? Why was he holding
her
here? None of it made sense.

She asked Dolores more questions and concluded that she had a good heart. So it couldn’t be Dolores that needed the transplant.

She politely dismissed Dolores without giving her a full examination, and Dolores went back to bed.

No one was waiting to take her place. In fact, neither Nick nor Hal moved from his bed or showed any desire to be examined at all.

“So who’s next?” Monica asked.

No answer.

“It doesn’t hurt one bit,” said Dolores. “I don’t know what y’all are afraid of.”

“Shut up,” said Hal. “Nobody asked you.”

“You shut up,” Dolores said, her smile replaced with a snarl. “You keep barking like you own the place. But you’re just mad because you don’t have a bottle of liquor to suck on.”

Hal hopped out of bed with clenched fists. “You’re going to have a fat lip if you don’t shut your mouth.”

Lichen rose to his feet, and the mere movement of his massive frame changed the mood of the room immediately. Hal lowered his fists, and Dolores lay on her bed, deliberately turning her back to Hal.

Monica stood. “It’s all right. I’ll check Jonathan. They can relax for now. I’ll examine them afterward.”

Lichen considered this a moment before finally sitting back down.

Monica relaxed and took her bag to Jonathan’s bedside. She rolled up his sleeve and saw over a dozen needle wounds. Most of them were swollen, and many of them had been scratched to the point of bleeding. Heroin.

She glanced at Nick, who was watching her closely now.

“Jonathan is a friend of yours?”

“What do you care?”

“I just ask because you seemed eager to help him before.”

Nick said nothing.

Monica checked Jonathan’s temperature and blood pressure. “He has a fever. Was he hot like this before he tried to run?”

Nick wouldn’t look at her.

“I need to know because he may be having a reaction to the tranquilizer.

No response.

She pulled back Jonathan’s eyelids and saw that his pupils were highly dilated. Lichen had given him quite a dose of ketamine, no question.

“He gets the shakes at night,” Nick said softly. “Sweats a lot, too. He’s been hot for two days now.”

Monica nodded and took out her pad and wrote a prescription. It surprised her that she still remembered the names of drugs she hadn’t even thought about since her stint in the ER during her residency.

“You’re going to give him some medicine?” Nick asked.

“Jonathan is going through withdrawal. He’s very sick. If you’re a friend of his, and I think you are, I’d appreciate your encouraging him to get some rest. He shouldn’t scratch these sores. I’ll try and get a cream he should rub on them. That will ease the itching.”

Nick looked at the floor. “What do you people want from us, huh?” he whispered. “Why you keeping us here? We didn’t do nothing to nobody. We weren’t hurting anything. But you got us as prisoners here. Why?” His eyes were welling with tears.

Monica wanted to cry also. She wanted to tell him that she was a prisoner as much as he was. She wanted to tell him about Wyatt, how they had taken him and frightened him and how she didn’t know if they were going to let her and Wyatt live once she had finished whatever it was they had brought her here to do.

But she said nothing because suddenly Lichen’s voice boomed from across the room.

“No more questions!”

After that, Monica examined Nick and Hal in silence, which was perfectly fine with Hal, who Monica could see was in no mood to talk anyway.

They were both malnourished. Nick, like Jonathan, had a few needle marks on his arms, but far fewer than Jonathan, and his looked healed—he hadn’t shot up for some time now, apparently. Hal checked out fine except that his hands shook slightly. If he was indeed an alcoholic, he was eager for a drink.

“You are finished?” Lichen asked her.

“Yes, and I would like to see my son now, please.”

“Of course. I will take you to him.”

“I remember the way.”

Instead of responding he went out the door and held it open for her. She understood. He was going to take her there whether she wanted an escort or not.

They walked the halls in silence. Finally Lichen said, “You are not happy here, I see.”

That caught her off guard. Of course she wasn’t happy. “You’re keeping my son and me prisoner. How can I be happy?”

“What you see around you you do not yet understand. What may appear
evil to you is good, the wisest of wisdoms. Once you understand what the prophet is giving to the world you will be happy. You will feel peace as our brothers and sisters find an end to their suffering.”

Monica could tell he was trying to calm her, but his words had the opposite effect. The more he spoke the more unsettled she became.

“My words frighten you, I think,” he said.

Her face was giving away her true feelings. She looked forward and said nothing.

“What I mean to say, Dr. Owens, is that you and your son are safe here. No one will harm you.”

“Then why threaten me? Why threaten those people back there? Why hold my son as a hostage, force me to do whatever you ask?”

Lichen nodded, appreciating the question. “All will become clear shortly. You will see how your mission here is a chosen one.”

“What does that mean?” she said. “Why have you brought me here? Galen said he needed a heart transplant. Am I supposed to give him one?”

“That is for the prophet to explain.”

She was frustrated now. He was either cryptic or evasive or both.

“What about the others? Byron, Dolores, and the others? What about them? What does Galen want with them?”

“They are the vessels.”

This was hopeless. “Vessels for what?”

He stopped walking. “We have arrived, Doctor.” He pointed to the door.

Without realizing it, she had walked all the way back to Wyatt’s room. She could hear the video game and laughter inside. She opened the door. An Asian man in a white lab coat was sitting on the floor beside Wyatt. Each of them held a game controller and was laughing at the monitor. Monica was furious. A stranger alone with her son.

The man smiled, set down the controller, and stood.

“Mom,” Wyatt said, running to her.

“Forgive me for startling you, Dr. Owens. I am Dr. Kouichi Yoshida. I figured that since we’ll be working together so closely, we should get to know each other. I knew you’d come back to see Wyatt, so I waited here.”

“Dr. Yoshida knows how to play Potato Commandos, Mom.”

Monica put a protective arm around Wyatt and studied Yoshida. The man looked perfectly content. If he was being held here, he didn’t seem
distressed about it. Plus, she had found him here alone, unescorted, which meant Galen didn’t feel the need to monitor him too closely. He wasn’t being held against his will.

“What are you a doctor of?” she asked.

“Neurophysiology,” he said, pointing to the side of his head. “I study brain function and neural interaction, how we make and record memories, how groups of neurons communicate with one another and respond to certain stimuli. That sort of thing.”

She didn’t blink.

Yoshida waited, then said, “From the look on your face, I can see that you have a lot of questions.”

“You could say that,” Monica said.

He gave a little laugh. “Well, I’m your man. If you have questions, I can answer them. No one understands the mind of George Galen better than I do.”

The elevator doors slid open, and Frank stepped out into a brightly lit chamber. Agents Riggs and Carter followed. A guard in a tight-fitting black uniform greeted them and pointed to spots on the floor where red footprints were painted. “Stand here, please.”

Frank aligned his feet with the footprints, then watched as the guard unstrapped a long baton from his hip and twisted the handle. The baton hummed to life and glowed white, looking to Frank like a handheld bug zapper.

“Contaminant rod,” said Carter, extending his arms and allowing the guard to scan him. “It looks for any biohazards you might have accidentally picked up in the field.”

The guard scanned Carter and Riggs fairly quickly before turning to Frank. “Arms out, please.”

Frank remained still as the guard slowly and methodically scanned him. The guard paid special attention to the creases and folds of Frank’s uniform, as if expecting to find some secret stash of hazardous material wedged there.

“You boys don’t take any chances, do you?” Frank said.

“We can’t afford to,” said Riggs. “You of all people should understand the importance of containment.”

The guard turned off the baton and told them they were clear to proceed inside.

Frank followed the agents down the chamber to a dead end. Carter swiped a card through a reader, and a small window on the wall slid open, revealing a keypad and monitor. He entered a code and then stood motionless as a red light emitted and scanned his face. There was a beep as identification was verified, and then the wall split, revealing an expansive room on the opposite side where hundreds of people moved about; bustling to workstations; speaking into headsets; monitoring large, high-definition video screens. The scene reminded Frank of a big-city newsroom—loud, urgent, and a blur of motion.

BHA headquarters.

They descended a short flight of stairs as the door sealed shut behind them. Carter pointed to a wall where a computer-generated map of Los Angeles County appeared. “The blinking lights represent the places where Healers have attempted gene therapy, those addresses in the book.”

Frank counted eight lights.

“We’re looking for any patterns in the distribution of the addresses,” said Riggs. “We’re hoping they can give us some idea as to where Healers may go next.”

They reached the main floor and weaved through the commotion until they arrived at a row of offices at the rear of the room. Riggs stopped at a door labeled
EUGENE IRVING, DIRECTOR
. “Director Irving asked to meet you and welcome you to the agency.”

What was that in his tone? Frank wondered. Sarcasm?

Inside, the secretary greeted them with a whisper and told them to go through a second door to Irving’s office, where he would be waiting.

Riggs tapped the door twice before entering.

Director Eugene Irving, a thin man with slick black hair and a suit to match, was hunched over his desk, examining some documents with a much younger agent. Frank recognized Irving from the photos he’d seen of him in the press and thought he looked much older in person—in his late fifties, perhaps, with pale skin, a long neck, sharp jaw, hollow cheeks—like a man who had just recently gone on a crash diet and was in need of some electrolytes.

Without looking up, Irving waved them to the empty chairs opposite his desk.

“And this is all from a single hospital?” Irving said to the young agent.

“Children’s Hospital on Sunset, sir.”

The young agent was portly with short auburn hair that stuck up the front—whether by design with the help of hair gel or simply because of a cowlick, Frank couldn’t tell. He wore a gray suit with a black necktie so narrow that it only barely covered the line of buttons down his white oxford shirt. A BHA ID tag was pinned to the breast pocket of his suit coat.

Irving looked at Frank and gestured to the young agent. “This is Agent Marcus Atkins,” he said. “One of our analysts. Recently he’s been spending his time studying hospital databases. Atkins, this is Dr. Frank Hartman from Fort Detrick, the virologist.”

Agent Atkins nodded. “Pleasure.”

“Why hospital databases?” Frank said.

Atkins brightened at the question. “Well, since we learned that it was the Healers making the virus and that they were using it to attempt to cure genetic diseases, we’ve wondered, How do Healers identify potential patients? How do they find someone with a genetic—” He stopped midsentence. “You know who the Healers are, right?”

“He’s been briefed, Marcus,” said Riggs.

Atkins blushed. “Of course. Excuse me, Doctor.”

“No problem,” said Frank. “Please, continue.”

Atkins cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve been wondering how Healers find people who suffer from genetic diseases. How do they know, for example, who, if anyone, on your block has Parkinson’s disease or sickle-cell anemia or cystic fibrosis? They’ve been operating in secrecy, after all. It’s not like they’re knocking on random doors asking if there’s a genetically diseased person inside.”

“Get to the point,” Irving said, rubbing his eyes.

Atkins turned a deeper shade of red. “Right. Anyway, Healers have obviously found a way to identify who needs gene therapy. So we examined a few hospital databases and discovered that one of them, at least, had been hacked.”

Director Irving cut in. “Someone’s been cracking the system and downloading patient information.”

“Stealing medical records?” Frank said.

“Not just any medical records,” said Atkins. “All the records downloaded belonged to patients with a diagnosed genetic disease, precisely the type of people Healers would want to contact.”