'Actually, we heard something was happening,' Vera said. 'We've come to learn everything possible. If you can spare a few minutes.'
'Of course I can. Let me finish one thing. I was about to run through some of the early stuff.'
'Put me to work,' Vera insisted.
Grateful, Mary Kay handed Vera a folded EEG readout. 'These are the charts for day one of our hadal prep, almost a year ago. I've synched the video to 2:34 P.M., when they first quartered the body. If you don't mind, track the graph while they make the cuts. There should be some activity when the saw goes through. I'll tell you when.'
She tapped a button on her keyboard. The frozen image started playing. 'Okay,' said
Mary Kay. 'Ready? They're about to sever the legs. Now.'
It looked like a butcher's bandsaw on screen. Workers manipulated the long rectangle of blue gel sideways. Two of them lifted away a section after it passed through the saw.
'Nothing,' Vera said. 'No response on the chart. Flat.'
'Here goes the head section. Anything?'
'No response. Not a bump,' said Vera.
'Just what is it we're supposed to be looking for?' Parsifal asked.
'Activity. A pain response. Anything.'
'Mary Kay,' said Vera, 'why are you looking for life signs in a dead hadal?'
The physician looked helplessly at Vera. 'We're considering certain possibilities,' she said, and it was clear the possibilities were unorthodox.
She ushered them down the wing, talking as they went. 'Over the past fifty-two weeks, our computer-anatomy division has been sectioning a hadal specimen for general study. The project leader was Dr. Yamamoto, a noted pathologist. She was working alone in the lab on Sunday morning when this happened.'
They entered a large room that reeked of chemicals and dead tissue. Rau's first impression was that a bomb had exploded. Big machines lay tipped on their sides. Wires had been pulled from ceiling panels. Long strips of industrial carpet lay ripped from the floor. Crime scene people and scientists alike wanted answers from what was left.
'A security guard found Dr. Yamamoto crouching in the far corner. He called for help. That was his last radio dispatch. We located him hanging from the pipes above the ceiling. His esophagus was torn out. By hand. Yammie was lying in the corner. Naked. Bleeding. Unresponsive.'
'What happened?'
'At first we thought someone had broken in to either burgle or sabotage the premises, and that Lindsey had been assaulted. But as you can see, there are no windows, and only the one door. The door wasn't tampered with, which raised concerns that some hadals might have climbed through the vent system with the aim of destroying our database. We were studying hadal anatomy, after all. The project was underwritten with DoD grants. Arms makers have been clamoring for our tissue information to refine their weapons and ammunition.'
'Where's Branch when we need him?' Rau said. 'I've never heard of hadals doing such a thing. An attack like this, it implies such sophistication.'
'Anyway, that's what we thought at first,' Mary Kay continued. 'You can imagine the uproar. The police came. We started to transport Yammie on a gurney. Then she regained consciousness and escaped.'
'Escaped?' said Parsifal. 'She was still frightened of the intruder?'
'It was terrible. She was wrecking machines. She slashed two guards with a scalpel. They finally shot her with a dart gun. Like a wild animal. That's when she lost the child.'
'Child?' Vera asked.
'Yammie was seven months pregnant. The sedative or stress or activity... she miscarried.'
'How dreadful.'
They reached an eight-foot-long autopsy table. Vera had seen the human body insulted in a hundred different ways, shattered by trauma, wasted with disease and famine. But she was unprepared for the slight young woman with Japanese features who lay stretched out, covered with blankets, her head a Medusa-like riot of electrode patches and wires. It looked like a torture in progress. Her hands and feet had been tied down with a makeshift arrangement of towels, rubber tubing, and duct tape. The autopsy table's usual occupants did not require such restraints.
'Finally, one of the detectives sorted out the fingerprints and identified our culprit,'
said Mary Kay. 'Yammie did it.'
'Did what?' murmured Vera.
'You mean it was her?' said Rau. 'Dr. Yamamoto killed the guard?'
'Yes. His throat tissue was under her nails.'
'This woman?' Parsifal snorted. 'But those machines must weigh a ton each.' To one side, Thomas's face was shadowed with dark thoughts.
'Why would she do such a thing?' asked Rau.
'We're baffled. It may be related to a grand mal, though her husband said she has no history of epilepsy. It could be a psychotic rage no one ever suspected. The one video monitor she didn't manage to demolish shows her falling into unconsciousness, men getting up and destroying the machines used for cutting tissue. The target of her anger was very specific, these machines, as if she was avenging herself for a great wrong.'
'And killing the guard?'
'We don't know. The killing took place off camera. According to the security guard's radio report, he found her in a fetal position. She was clutching that.' Mary Kay pointed to a desktop.
'Good lord,' said Vera.
Parsifal walked over to the desk. Here was the source of the stench. What remained of a hadal head had been positioned between a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup and the Denver Yellow Pages. The blue gel that had once encased it was mostly thawed. The liquid seeped down into the desk's drawers.
The lower half of the face and skull had been lopped away by the machine's blades so cleanly that the creature seemed to be materializing from the flat desktop. Its black hair was smeared flat upon the misshapen skull. A dozen small burr holes sprouted electrode wires. After so many months preserved from air, it was now in a state of rapid decomposition.
More disconcerting than the decay and missing jaws were the eyes. The lids were wide open. The eyes bulged, pupils fixed in a seemingly furious stare. 'He looks pissed,' said Parsifal.
'She,' commented the physician. 'The protruding eyes are a symptom of hyperthyroidism. Not enough iodine in the diet. She probably came from a region
deficient in basic minerals like salt. A lot of hadals look like that.'
'What would prompt anyone to embrace such a thing?' asked Vera.
'That's what we asked ourselves. Had Yammie started to identify subconsciously with her specimen? Did something trigger a personality reaction? Identification, sublimation, conversion. We went through all the possibilities. But Yammie was always so even. And never happier than now. Pregnant, fulfilled, loved.' Mary Kay tucked the blanket around Yamamoto's neck, brushed the hair back from her forehead. A long bruise was surfacing above her eyes. In her frenzy, the woman must have flung herself against the machines and walls.
'Then the seizures returned. We hooked her up to an EEG. You've never seen anything like it. A neurological storm, more like a tempest. We induced a coma.'
'Good,' said Vera.
'Except it didn't work. We keep getting activity. Something seems to be eating its way through the brain, short-circuiting tissue as it goes. It's like watching a lightning bolt in slow motion. The big difference here is that the electrical activity isn't general. You'd think an electrical overload would be brain-wide. But this is all being generated from the hippocampus, almost selectively.'
'The hippocampus, what is that, please?' Rau asked.
