“It’s okay, sweetheart, I don’t want you to get hurt. I think I need to rest for a few minutes,” Marcus said, the pain and drowsiness getting the better of him. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”
*
Marcus woke with a jolt to the sound of his stretcher ratcheting higher. He opened his unbandaged eye. A gray, alien face with large black eyes was staring down at him.
In a distorted voice, it said, “Get onto your beds and stay there.”
“Don’t take Uncle Marcus!” Victoria shouted.
The distorted voice shouted, “I said, go to your beds!”
The stretcher began to move. It stopped at a door and the gray alien stepped around, took a white plastic card hanging from his neck, and waved it at a wall panel. The door opened and Marcus was wheeled through.
He looked up at ceilings and doorway headers and side to side at laboratories filled with instruments. He came to a stop in a room that looked like an office. There was a desk, shelves with black notebooks, a stainless-steel cabinet with narrow drawers, and a TV on the wall with a five-window view, four of the white room with the girls on their beds, and one of the bathroom.
Then he saw the gray head again. Gray fingers partially unzipped the front of the white suit and two gray hands pulled at its hairless scalp. The mask came off and Marcus was staring into a sweaty, familiar face.
The man removed his gray latex gloves, then his headset, which he unplugged from the distortion box on his belt under the white suit, then the card around his neck.
“Do you know who you are?” the man asked.
“Marcus Handler.”
“Do you know who I am?”
It took him several seconds to place him. His thoughts were moving like molasses. It came in stages—Madrid. The hospital. The institute.
“Dr. Gaytan. Ferrol Gaytan,” Marcus said.
“Okay, good. Do you know where you are?”
He tried to remember but couldn’t. “Are we in Spain?”
“Do you know what happened to you?”
He thought hard, but nothing came.
“No.”
“You’re a mess, Mr. Handler. You were shot. My man was about to shoot you squarely in the back of your head, but he flinched when I yelled at him to stop. The bullet entered behind your right ear and took a shallow course along the side of your head, exiting at the corner of your right eye. I think your eye is intact, but I’m not certain. I am not an ophthalmologist or a neurosurgeon. I don’t have any x-ray or scanning equipment here. I have no way of knowing whether you’ve had bleeding in your brain, but it’s a distinct possibility. It’s the second time you’ve had head trauma. Like I said, you’re a mess. I tended to you the best I could and put you in with the girls so I could keep an eye on you while I saw to the problems you’ve caused.”
“My head hurts.”
“I’m sure it does.”
“What goes on here?”
“It’s called science, Mr. Handler. It’s called improving the human condition.”
“I’ve got another word for it—”
Ferrol cut him off. “I don’t care what you say and I don’t care what you think. You’re insignificant. The only thing I want from you is to tell me if anyone else knows about me. Were you working on your own or were you communicating with anyone?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Are you lying to me?”
He was telling the truth. “I don’t know. It’s not a lie if I can’t remember.”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
“Can I have water?”
Ferrol got a bottle of water and put it to his lips.
“The last thing you remember,” Ferrol repeated.
He dug in and tried to unearth something from the black depths. Then, it came to him. The smell of gasoline, the bits of metal and glass. Abril. “The bomb,” he said. “I remember the bomb.”
“The police say you were the bomber. They’re looking for you.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“What if I don’t believe this was your last memory?” Ferrol said.
“I don’t remember anything after that.”
“You’re saying this, but I need to know if it’s the truth. I need to know if you told anyone about me. I need to know if I’m safe. If you’re lying, I’ll hurt the girls very badly. I need them alive, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be put through pain.”
His rising anger made his head hurt even more. “Are you a monster?”
“You would be the monster for lying when you know what I might to do to them. I only need the truth from you. Then you can rest.”
“Rest? You mean kill me?”
“Rest means rest.”
“I swear. I don’t remember if I told anyone about you. I hope I did.”
Ferrol went to his steel cabinet and slid open one of the drawers. “It’s possible you’re telling the truth. You might have retrograde amnesia from the trauma. I’m going to give you Decadron, a steroid to reduce swelling in your brain. We’ll try again in a few hours.”
Ferrol unbuckled the straps on Marcus’s left arm, poked a vein with a butterfly needle, and injected a dose of Decadron. When he turned away to discard the syringe, Marcus used his untethered hand to reach for the plastic card Ferrol had left on the side of the mattress with his headset, mask, and gloves, and shoved it under his thigh. Ferrol buckled his wrist again.
“I’m taking you back now,” Ferrol said, reaching for his headset.
Marcus wanted to distract him enough to forget the keycard.
“Celeste,” he said.
Ferrol forced the latex mask over his head and said, “What about her?”
“I was there when she died.”
“She was useful. She got you onto the mountain. Everyone was supposed to die, including her. She was a loose end, like Ferruccio Gressani. She meant nothing to me,” Ferrol said. He zipped up his suit, pulled on the gloves, and began to wheel Marcus back to the white room.
There was a knock on the office door and Gunar came in.
“Sorry. You
