Out Through the Attic (19 page)

“Laugh all you want, Doctor
Cynic
.”

He started chuckling as the door opened upon a sterile-looking hallway lined with doors and palm readers spaced every twenty feet or so along the outside. “Yours is 317, around the corner to the left.”

“You aren’t coming?” she asked. “I was hoping we could … um …
catch up
.” She emphasized the last two words, trying to hint that she wanted more explanation of what might be going on.

His tone was very friendly as he spoke, but his face was worried as he shook his head almost imperceptibly, “Oh, no. We’ll have plenty of time for that … perhaps at dinner. Go get settled in and come up to the fourth floor in about two hours.” He mouthed the words
NOT NOW
and stepped back into the elevator. “I’ll see you shortly.” The door closed, and she was alone. She turned, made her way to 317, placed her hand on the reader and heard the door click. Pushing it open, she discovered a spartan, hotel-like room with a queen bed, desk, sofa, chair, TV and small refrigerator, but no artwork or knick-knacks. There was a kitchenette of sorts and, immediately inside the door, a bathroom with a fairly spacious bathtub. Her suitcase already lay on the bed. She closed the door behind her and contemplated what sort of predicament she might be in. The nausea she’d felt in the limo came back with a vengeance.

O O O

The steel airlock cycled open, and she stepped out into a glass-lined control room full of life monitors, computers, paper readouts stacked in piles and the figures of Hayes, Drake and a man she didn’t recognize leaning over one of the screens. What lay beyond the glass made Chrys gasp. The lighting was dim in the large, windowless, almost warehouse-like room beyond, and overhead spotlights dotted evenly across the ceiling pierced the gloom with shafts of light glaring down on row upon row of babies in clear plastic bins. Each infant had an IV bag suspended above it, and several people wearing biohazard suits moved from baby to baby, drifting from light to darkness to light again like ghosts in a forest. She clutched her iPad to her chest and simply stared at the children beyond. Her heart went out to them all, and a rush of both compassion and sadness filled her. She prayed she would be able to help, for their sake.

The three men turned. “Ah, Dr. Sarantos, come take a look at this,” Dr. Hayes said as he held out his hand. Chrys approached and stared down at the screen they were looking at. It was the bio-readout of one of the subjects. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

Chrys set her iPad down and began reviewing the data of patient 0002, and the data appeared to be a live feed from the subject. She heard the strange man lean in and whisper something in Drake’s ear. She ignored it as she sorted through EKG, brainwave, blood counts and other data, including potassium, serotonin and oxygen levels. “I’d say that’s the readout of a fairly normal, healthy baby.”

“Agreed,” Hayes said. He touched some buttons on the screen and pulled up a different readout. “And what about this one?” The data was for the same patient, but the readouts were very different. The brainwave patterns were sporadic, with spikes of chaotic activity and then periods of calm indicative of a comatose infant. The blood and other key indicators depicted a child surviving on IV nutrition alone. It was dated three days before.

“And this is the same child?” she asked. Hayes nodded solemnly while Drake and the other man eyed her carefully. “Remarkable improvement. So, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Hayes said slowly. “And their bodies have prevented the IV fluids from flowing into their bodies for almost three days now. They’ve also stopped defecating and urinating.”

“That’s impossible.” Chrys stared down at the data, searching for some factor, some reason that would explain such results. There was nothing. “They should be dying or dead, not stable.”

“You’ll find that subject 0001 is an anomaly in brainwave activity, and we’re researching that pretty heavily,” the stranger said quietly, “but we still don’t have any answers. “They’re essentially independent from us, Dr. Sarantos, and we’re very concerned.”

“I’m sorry,” Chrys said in her best saccharine-sweet voice, holding out her hand. “We haven’t been introduced,”

Drake interjected, “Dr. Sarantos, this is Benjamin Graeble. He handles the …
administrative
aspects of our acquisition of the children.”

“That’s right,” Graeble said with what Chrys realized were emotionless eyes, reminding her of a shark’s glassy orbs. “It’s very delicate business and has to be handled perfectly every time, or there’d be unwanted, perhaps even dangerous attention placed on this project.”

“Acquisition? How do you
acquire
children?” Chrys suddenly felt very uneasy about the man and his methods.

“I’m afraid that’s classified.” His voice was silky-smooth, and the phrase rolled out of his mouth with the ease of casually repetitive use. “Suffice it to say that newborns who show signs of the sickness—when they come to our attention—are treated with the greatest of care and brought here.”

“What of the families?” Chrys asked, concern growing in her voice. “The mothers and fathers …. Are they brought here as well? This lab seems fairly isolated.”

“As I said, that’s classified, but it’s all done with the best interests of National Security and the families in mind.”

Chrys took a deep breath to tell Graeble what she thought of “National Security,” but she felt Hayes’ hand on her arm, and he squeezed as he spoke. “Perhaps you and I should go over the data, Dr. Sarantos. I can get you familiar with all the particulars regarding our subjects’ conditions before and after the recent event, and you can begin forming your own hypotheses.” She looked at him, wanting to say more, but his eyes implored her to acquiesce.

“Of course, Dr. Hayes,” she finally said. “If at all possible, I’d like to see the whole body of data on the first and the most recent infants to succumb, geographical data on where all cases have occurred thus far and the bio-readouts for every child for the past two weeks. I’ll need to get my iPad connected to your network so that I can access the data.”

“Err … about your iPad,” Drake said slowly. “Unfortunately, we don’t permit Wi-Fi enabled devices in our projects. I’m sure you understand.”

“
Unfortunately
, that’s not negotiable, Mr. Graebel. This iPad is how I do my work, and in my hands it’s a very effective tool. So, either you’ll have to make amendments to your policy, or you can escort me out of the building right now.”

“Excuse me?” Graebel said, his face drifting from a pale hue to one more akin to blood. Hayes’ eyes got wide in shocked surprise, and Drake raised an almost impressed eyebrow.

“You know perfectly well that my security clearance is far from a thing in question, and if I’ve deduced accurately the nature of your work here … and your personality … then I’m certain that a man like you could have this device on your radar in a matter of hours … if that long. Rest assured, I do not transmit or walk away with restricted information, and you are welcome to place me in shackles the moment I do. Call Marsha Carson. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. She’s the Secretary of Homeland Security. We roomed together at Harvard.” Her tone was steely but still, technically, within the realm of cordial. It was also indicative of an adamantine resolve. “That should satisfy your
National Security
, should it not, Mr. Graebel?”

There was a chasm of silence, and Graebel was about to speak, but Drake started laughing. “Bravo, Dr. Sarantos. Well put.” He turned to Graebel. “Ben, I think we can afford to make some accommodations here.” Drake’s eyes narrowed slightly as he sized Chrys up, calculating, and ended at a satisfactory conclusion. “Dr. Sarantos is imminently qualified to help us here, and the risk, as she so eloquently put, is minimal.”

“But …” Graebel started.

“I said make it happen. No need to call Secretary Carson. Wouldn’t you agree?” Drake placed his hand on Graebel’s shoulder and turned him towards the door. He gently escorted Graebel to the lock, and it cycled open. Turning back to Hayes and Sarantos, he said, “We’ll make sure the technical aspects of your request are taken care of. A technician will be up here shortly to attend to your device. Now, we’ll leave you to your work.” He ushered Graebel through the airlock, and it closed behind them.

“You’re out of your mind,” Dr. Hayes said in disbelief. “You need to be more careful with that man, Chrys.” He lowered his voice. “If the disappearances are what I think they are, then he’s more dangerous than you think.”

“You should have known I wouldn’t kowtow to a man like that. And you better be straight with me about how that son-of-a-bitch is
acquiring
babies.”

“So you’re staying?” he asked, raising a knowing eyebrow, confident he’d hooked her.

“You couldn’t drag me away at this point. Neither could Graebel.”

It was Hayes’ turn to guide Chrys by the shoulder. But, rather than going through the door, they went to the table in the middle of the room and sat down. Hayes rubbed the back of his neck, looking very uncomfortable and not a little embarrassed about the topic of acquisition. He started at the beginning.

O O O

Chrys sat in bed, her iPad in her lap, and mulled over everything she’d seen and heard that day. It was difficult to fathom. Her finger scrolled through the bio-readouts of all three-hundred remaining infants, but she wasn’t really paying attention as she considered the ethical implications of what they—now
we
—were doing. When Graebel said they had acquired the babies, he wasn’t kidding, but Hayes made a good case for the legality if not the morality of it. The pandemic, and it
was
a pandemic, had started roughly eighteen months earlier.

The CDC had received reports from across the country of babies being born and immediately showing signs of severe distress: screaming to the point of oxygen deprivation, flailing their limbs as if in seizure and hemorrhaging from their eyes and ears. The symptoms remained unabated regardless of treatment. Shortly thereafter, the infants would simply die. Some months later a number of them slipped into comas, showing severely erratic brain activity, with spikes and lulls that no one had ever seen before. Most of the infants had been kept on life-support for months but eventually allowed to die. There were even incidences of the affliction appearing to be communicable, but neither the attending physicians nor the CDC were able to discern any biological pathogen or anomaly: no virus, no chemical disorder, nothing. That’s when the CDC stepped in and began
acquiring
the babies. They feared an increase in the communicability of the affliction and, after acquiring the infants, isolated them and brought them to Applegate, notifying the parents that the babies had expired.

Chrys pulled up the latest brain scan data for subject 0002 on her iPad. It was a stable, rhythmic cycle of brain activity that showed no signs of distress. She accessed the data for subjects 0003, 0004 and 0005. All of them appeared stable, consistent with a healthy infant. As she added additional subject data, laid out in a grid on the screen, something caught her eye. They were all perfectly consistent and, remarkably, appeared to be in perfect synchronization. Such a result was impossible, but the time-stamps were spot-on.

She needed to view the current scans, so she tapped into the lab’s monitors and began assembling a grid of the live data for the same infants. Every pattern was identical and cycled in perfect unison, down to the second. She stifled a gasp and began adding more and more infants to the mix. It was as if she was looking at multiple views of the same brain pattern. She added subject 0001 and immediately saw the anomaly Hayes had mentioned. The pattern for 0001 was out of sync, and there appeared to be a significantly higher level of brain activity.

She tapped the screen and began reading through the history of 0001. The subject was the oldest of the infants, nearly thirteen months old and the first of Applegate’s babies to survive. The baby was first discovered in San Francisco, Chinatown to be precise, and was the daughter of an immigrant Chinese family recently moved to the United States. There was no name for the baby or the parents. She began cross-referencing a variety of data between all 300 infants: geographical, hereditary, dietary, environmental. There was nothing out of the ordinary and no pattern she could discern. The babies had come predominantly from across the U.S., but there were many from all over the world; nationality covered the spectrum.

“Why are you different?” she asked the screen as she brought up the brain scans of all 300 babies. Only 0001 showed the anomalous signature. The only thing that set 0001 apart was that she was the oldest and had been at Applegate the longest. She spent another two hours searching through the current data to see if there were any other notable differences or similarities between the infants, finally shutting down her iPad when her eyes started closing of their own volition. The only thing she could come up with was that all of the babies came from metropolitan areas, which didn’t seem to be that significant. Rural areas weren’t as in-tune with CDC alerts, and there were still plenty of midwives and country doctors who simply signed infant death certificates without the rest of the world knowing. She decided to sleep on it and see if she had any revelations in the morning.

In her dream she first heard the distant sound of the ocean. It was not the sound of surf, but an almost silent drone of currents rushing over ancient silt, the clicks of life and the faint peal of whale song. She opened her eyes to an amphitheater surrounded by ancient-looking ivory columns and a mosaic ceiling depicting Titans battling Greek gods. The illumination came from widely spaced lights set into the walls that glowed with what looked like bioluminescence. From the center of the amphitheater, she turned her gaze around the room in a full circle, and as she completed the circuit, the clear tubs of the babies from the nursery began appearing randomly, scattered about the rows of stone benches that ringed her.

Her mind was once again filled with the voice from the darkness.