There were appreciative nods all around.
The King of Fear said, “Sebastian Gault, do you pledge your life to the Seven Kings of the New World Trust?”
“I do,” said Gault, and as he said it he felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes.
“Then,” said the Saudi, “welcome to our brotherhood. All hail the King of Plagues!”
In the small room the applause was thunderous.
Chapter Thirty-two
Fair Isle Research Endeavor
The Hot Room
December 18, 3:06 P.M. GMT
Mikey and I entered the codes and swiped the keys. If he thought there was anything odd about what he was doing or if he wondered why he was doing it, he said nothing. His eyes were almost completely glazed, though, and the bleeding was worse.
“I’m sleepy,” he said. He leaned against the wall inside the air lock, and as the big door swung shut behind us he slid down and sat on the floor. He looked at me for a moment and I searched for some flicker of awareness, some spark, but there was only the vacuity created by the disease that was consuming him. He lay down on his side, curled his arm like a pillow, and rested his head. His eyelids drifted shut, long lashes brushing round cheeks, and he went to sleep. Blood pooled on the floor around him.
There was nothing I could do. Not a goddamned thing.
I wanted to scream, to pound my fists on the walls. But all I could do was continue, to go on, go deeper into this madness.
God help the first person I caught up with who was part of this thing.
I pressed the controls on the other side of the air lock. A simpler oneman system. The locks clicked, the air pumps hissed, the disinfectant spray blasted me, and the light went from red to green. Funny. Green is supposed to mean that it’s safe to proceed. I cut a last look back at the boy. Safe.
Inside my head the Warrior screamed for blood.
The inner door opened and I stepped into a surreal world. The room was large, much bigger than I expected, and there was a massive steel vault in the center of the floor, surrounded by very thick curved glass of the kind used in commercial aquariums. Inside this “fish tank” standing in a loose line around the vault were twenty-eight people in hazmat suits. Each faceplate was covered with strips of white surgical tape except for a narrow eye slit. The suits were pressure inflated so that they all looked like that Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the suit material was opaque, so except for height it was impossible to tell the men from the women, and even that wasn’t certain. They were identical. All traces of race, age, and gender were smoothed to a homogenous and alien sameness.
No one held a gun.
“Step out of the air lock.” The voice came through the lab’s PA system. It was a man’s voice. American accent. However, if someone in the fish tank was doing the talking I couldn’t tell.
“I’m good right here,” I said.
“Step out of the air lock or I’ll shoot one of these people.”
“Not a chance.”
“You don’t believe me?” He sounded way too calm, given the situation. I guess I did, too.
“Sure I do, but I’m not going to give you a new target.”
“Having an attack of the jitters?”
“No, I’m having an attack of common sense.”
He actually laughed at that. But the laugh was sharp and twisted like he had barbed wire in his throat.
“Are you Dr. Grey?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“You haven’t asked about your son.”
Another pause. Longer this time. “Is he dead yet?”
“You knew he was sick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you infect him?”
Seconds ticked by.
“Yes,” he said, and now I could hear the strain in his voice. It was like bending close to a piece of steel and seeing the tiny stress fractures.
“Why?” I asked, my voice as calm as I could make it.
“I did it to save him.”
“Well, nice fucking job, Einstein. That poor kid just bled out in the air lock.”
The PA system was bad, full of distortion, but I could hear his ragged sobs.
“I did it to save him!” he cried.
“From what?”
No answer.
“Listen … Dr. Grey,” I said, “let’s stop dicking around here. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to do all this, and to get me here. If you have a list of demands, or you want to make some kind of statement, then I’ll listen. But you have to make a show of good faith.”
“Faith?”
“You have to let some of these people go. Give up a few hostages. Show me that you’re at least willing to be reasonable.”
“No,” he said in a voice that sounded as vague and distracted as his son’s had been. “No … I think we’re well past the point of being reasonable.”
“No, we’re not. There’s still time to—”
“There is no time. Time ends here, ends now.”
“Bullshit. If that was the case, then why send for someone from Homeland? Why go to such elaborate lengths? If you have some political or social statement to make, then this is not the way to be heard.”
The people in the room shifted nervously. I stayed crouched down behind the heavy door, trying to find my target. Still nothing. Or was there? At the far end of the fish tank, one of the figures had shifted position, but she did it very cautiously. It was a small figure, almost certainly a woman, and she slowly raised her arm so that her forearm lay across her midsection. Her hand was curled into a loose fist, but as I watched, she uncurled her index finger. It took a second for me to process it, but then I realized that she was pointing to a spot outside the tank. I deliberately turned away, sweeping my eyes and gun in a wide arc as if covering the room, but when I swept back toward her she was still pointing. She even twitched her hand a little to emphasize her meaning.
“This isn’t about politics,” said Grey. He muttered something else after that, but it was too low for me to hear. A remark to himself. I think he said, “At least I don’t think it is.”
I surreptitiously cut my eyes in the direction the woman indicated and saw a row of gray filing cabinets lining the far side of the Hot Room. There were several of them and from where I stood I couldn’t see what was beyond them, but if someone was on the other side, they’d be able to see the fish tank and my reflection in the glass. It couldn’t have been a large space, and there wasn’t enough cover for someone to stand behind it. But … was someone sitting on the floor? Yeah … there was enough cover for that.
“Then what’s it about, Doc? Give me something so I can help you.”
“I don’t need help!” His voice was thicker. More tears, or had he been exposed to the pathogen as well? The
