Monk shielded his eyes with his forearm. It took him another two breaths to realize he was merely facing a rising sun. He stumbled outside with the children.
The landscape had not been blasted to slag, as he had feared.
If anything, the opposite was true.
The hatch opened out onto a ledge of a heavily wooded slope, thick with birches and alders. Many of the trees had gone fiery with the change of seasons. To one side, a creek tumbled over mossy green rocks. Low mountains stretched off into the distance, dotted by tiny alpine lakes that shone like droplets of silver.
They had climbed out of hell into paradise.
But hell wasn't done with them yet.
From the tunnel behind them, a strange yowling cry echoed out to them. Monk remembered hearing the same howl coming from the walled complex that neighbored the hospital.
The Menagerie.
A second and third cry answered the first.
He didn't need Konstantin's urging to keep moving.
Monk recognized what he was hearing not from memory, but from that buried part of his brain where instinct of predator and prey were still written.
Another howl echoed.
Louder and closer.
They were being hunted.
7
September 6, 4:55 A. M.
Washington, D. C.
She remained a mystery in a very small package.
Painter studied the girl through the window. She had finally fallen asleep. Kat
Bryant kept vigil at her bedside, a copy of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham open in her lap. She had read to the girl until the sedatives had relaxed the child enough to sleep.
The child hadn't said a word since they'd arrived at midnight. Her eyes would track things, plainly registering what was going on around her. But there was little other response. She spent most of her time rocking back and forth, stiffening when touched. They had managed to get her to drink from a juice box and eat two chocolate-chip cookies. They'd also run some initial tests: blood chemistries, a full physical, even an MRI of her entire body. She still ran a low-grade fever, but it wasn't as elevated as earlier.
During the physical exam, they'd also found the microtransmitter embedded deep in the girl's upper arm. The chip would require surgery to remove, so they decided to leave it in place. Besides, the signal was insulated here, blocked.
There would be no tracking it.
Kat stirred and stood up. The woman was dressed casually, her auburn hair accented against a white cotton broadcloth shirt that was worn loose over tan slacks. She had been called to central command from home to oversee field operations, but with Gray's team still in the air, she found herself more useful here. Having a young daughter herself, Kat had brought in the copy of Dr. Seuss.
Though the child remained unresponsive, she warmed up to Kat. Her rocking slowed.
Painter was happy to see Kat Bryant back at work. After the loss of her husband,
Monk, she'd been adrift for many weeks. Yet now she seemed to be recovering, moving forward again.
Stepping out of the room, Kat closed the door softly and joined Painter in the neighboring observation room. High-backed chairs surrounded a conference table.
She's asleep. Kat sank into one of the chairs with a sigh.
Maybe you should, too. It will be a few more hours until Gray's plane lands in
India.
She nodded. I'll check with the sitter who's watching Penelope, then crash for a couple of hours.
The door to the outer hall opened. They both turned to see Lisa Cummings and the center's pathologist, Malcolm Jennings, enter the room. The two, dressed in matching white laboratory smocks and blue scrubs, were in an animated but whispered conversation. Lisa had her hands shoved in the pockets of her smock, pulling the coat tight to her shoulders, a sign of deep concentration. She had put her long blond hair up into a French braid. The pair had spent the last hour in the MRI suite, going over results.
From their heated, excited chatter full of medical jargon beyond Painter's comprehension they had come to some conclusions, though not necessarily a consensus.
Neuromodulation of that scale without glial cell support? Lisa said with a shake of her head. The stimulation of the nucleus basalis, of course, makes sense.
Does it? Painter asked, drawing their attention.
Lisa seemed to finally see Painter and Kat. Her shoulders relaxed, and her hands left her pockets. A whispery smile feathered her features as her gaze met his.
One of her hands trailed across Painter's shoulders as she passed and took one of the seats.
Malcolm took the last remaining seat. How's the child doing?
Asleep for the moment, Kat said.
So what have we learned? Painter asked.
That we're moving through a landscape both new and old, Malcolm answered cryptically. He slipped on a pair of glasses, tinged slightly blue for reading computer screens with less eyestrain. He settled them in place and opened a laptop he'd carried under one arm. We've compiled the MRI scans of the child and my analysis of the skull. Both devices are the same, though the child's is more sophisticated.
What are they? Kat asked.
For the most part, they're TMS generators, Malcolm answered.
Transcranial magnetic stimulators, Lisa elaborated, though that didn't help much.
Painter shared a confused expression with Kat. Why don't you start at the beginning? he asked. And use small words.
Malcolm tapped the side of his head with a pen. Then we'll start here. The human brain. Composed of thirty billion neurons. Each neuron communicates to its neighbors via multiple synapses. Creating roughly one million billion synaptic connections. These connections, in turn, create a very large number of neural circuits. And by large, I mean in the order of ten followed by a million zeros.
A million zeros? Painter said.
Malcolm looked over the edge of his glasses at Painter. To give you some scale.
The total number of atoms in the entire universe is only ten followed by eighty
zeros.
At Painter's shocked reaction, Malcolm nodded. So there's a vast amount of computing power locked in our skulls that we're only beginning to comprehend.
We've just been scratching the surface. He pointed toward the window. Someone out there has been delving much deeper.
What do you mean? Kat asked, her expression showing worry for the girl.
With our current technology, we've been making tentative strides into this new frontier. Like sending probes into space, we've been slipping electrodes into brains. All input into the brain is via electrical impulses. We don't see with our eyes. We see with our brains. It's why cochlear implants work to return hearing to the deaf. The implant turns sounds into electrical impulses, which are passed to the brain via a microelectrode inserted into the auditory nerve.
Over time, the cortex learns to reinterpret this new signal, and like learning a new language, the deaf begin to hear.
Malcolm waved to his laptop. The human brain being electrical, being malleable to new signals has an innate ability to connect to machines. In some regards, that makes us perfect natural-born cyborgs.
Painter frowned. Where are you going with all this?
Lisa placed a hand atop his. We're already there. The division between man and machine is already blurred.
