I had to be right. Had to. If not, I’d be spending the rest of eternity lying on rock-hard hospital beds, peeing into metal bowls and yelling for the nurse to pump up the volume on
I watched the thread pull the pieces of my broken skin together, one tiny stitch at a time, and thought it strange to be able to see yourself mended.
“Do you get torn up like this a lot?” asked Dr. Darryl.
“Yeah.”
“Well, as long as you’re in Texas, I guess I don’t have to worry about job security.”
“Jaz?” I looked up, so immersed in the memory of our hospital jaunt that I was surprised to find myself sitting under the RV’s awning with Cassandra while kids yelled in the background and the smells of pulled-pork barbecue made my mouth water. She stood. “I think I’ll take a walk. Maybe it will clear my mind.”
“Okay.” I watched her go. When I looked back out at the bay, nothing had changed. The
He sat on the floor, his back supported by Mary-Kate. He’d returned all his gadgets and gizmos to their respective boxes. At present he clutched a small plastic cup in his hand the same way you might expect King Arthur to grasp the Holy Grail.
“I got it!” he gushed.
“Got what?”
“Our weapon! Here, let me show you.” He took a red capsule the size of an Advil out of the cup and handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“A time-release neural jolt that will make Lung’s brain tell his body it’s had severe ultraviolet exposure. It’s hard to explain—”
“Even if you wanted to—”
“Which I don’t. The cool thing is, it’s mostly fueled by his biochemistry!”
“So . . . the energy his body generates is what will set it off?”
“Not just set it off, magnify it several hundred times. He should be dead within two hours of ingesting it.”
“So now we just need to make sure he gets a colossal headache?”
Bergman shrugged. “Or the munchies. However you can get him to swallow the pill.”
I shook my head, viewing Bergman with renewed respect. “Can I ask you something, Miles?”
I could tell by the set of his shoulders he wanted to say no. But he surprised me.
“Okay.”
“Why do you do this?” My gesture took in the monitor, showing the empty decks and hallways of the
He adjusted his glasses, tried to meet my eyes and failed. “Because I have to,” he mumbled. Was he embarrassed? At the moment, I didn’t care.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
“Yes, I do,” he insisted.
“What if you didn’t?”
He thought about that a second as he drummed his fingers on his leg and studied the TV over my shoulder. Now he met my eyes. “I’d probably be dead.”
“Really? How do you figure?”
“Boredom. You know, I’m not much good with people.”
“You could be.”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried. The wrong things keep coming out of my mouth. And honestly, most people annoy the hell out of me. I’d rather be alone than put up with their idiocy. I mean, all I have to do is watch two minutes of any reality-TV show and I’m reminded why I never go out. Anyway, I’ve come to accept that I’ll be spending the majority of my life with machines. And that’s okay, because I love them. I love everything about them. All the tiny parts that have to work together in perfect order so the whole will operate exactly as planned. I love the entire process, from concept to actuality. I even love the setbacks.”
“In other words, you’re hooked.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you happy?”
He gave a kind of sideways nod. “Most of the time.”
