The Select

Ward C today. A new burn victim had arrived since she'd last been up here.

Quinn continued down the hall toward the lab, wondering what catastrophe had befallen that poor soul.

MONITORING

'I wish the hell I knew what they talked about in there,' Louis Verran said as he watched Timothy Brown's father leave the dorm on the video monitor.

'Well,' Kurt said, stretching languidly after his flight back from Vegas, 'you're the one who wanted the bugs pulled from those two rooms.'

'And a damn good thing I did, too! You two guys have any idea how I felt when Brown's old man showed up with that industrial espionage consultant? I damn near blew lunch.'

'Why? The rooms were clean. Nothing to worry about.'

'Oh, really? You two guys haven't exactly been models of efficiency lately. You had to put Brown's SLI back together and replace the headboard, cut the power to his roommate's SLI, clean out all our bugs, and make like maids and neaten everything up. That's a lot of stuff. You could've missed something.'

'But we didn't. And don't forget whose idea it was to check out the girl's room.'

'Okay, okay. I admit it. That was a good thought.'

A damn good thought. Verran rubbed a hand across his queasy stomach. If Elliot hadn't checked Cleary's room, they wouldn't have found the notes. And then when Brown's father had shown up with that sweeper, Verran had quickly ordered the power cut to all the SLI units in the building.

Not that the sweep would have picked up the bugs anyway. The electrets were non-radiating. Plus, the dorm phone taps were all off-premises.

Altogether a bad weekend, though, spent worrying all night about who else the Brown kid might have told. But nobody new had made any noise about it yet, so it was pretty safe to assume that they'd managed to keep the lid on everything.

The only ongoing risk would be Deputy Ted Southworth. Verran knew the Ingraham's security measures rubbed the Sheriff's department the wrong way—they saw Verran's crew as some sort of vigilante force—but Southworth had had a special hard-on for The Ingraham since the Prosser thing two years ago. He'd asked an awful lot of pointed questions when Prosser had disappeared and he'd made it clear he wasn't satisfied with the answers.

He turned to Kurt. 'You ditch the rental good in Vegas?'

'Just like you said: Wiped clean as a whistle and sitting smack dab in the middle of the MGM Grand parking lot.'

Verran nodded. Hide in plain sight. That was the best way. The Vegas hotel lots were always loaded with rented cars. It would be a long time before that one was picked up. And when it was, no one would suspect a damn thing.

'All right then,' he said, leaning back. 'I think we've got everything under control again. They all think the kid has a gambling problem and is still alive and making the scene in Vegas. The father's off our backs, looking for him out in Nevada.'

Kurt yawned and said, 'All we've got left to worry about is the girl. What do we do about her?'

'We don't chase her around the anatomy lab again,' Verran said sharply. 'That's for sure.'

'Hey, Alston wanted me to bring her in.'

'Yeah, well, it's just as well you flubbed it.'

'I'd've had her if Emerson hadn't wandered by.'

The door to the control center opened then, and Doc Alston walked in. He looked pale as he dropped heavily into his usual seat.

'I've just been on the phone with Senator Whitney and two of the board members.'

'All at once?'

'A conference call.' His hand shook as he rubbed his high forehead. 'And they are not happy—with either of us. Not happy at all.'

Verran felt his heart begin to hammer. Two board members and the senator on the phone at once. Someone was majorly pissed. And that someone could only be Johann Kleederman himself.

As much as he disliked Alston, Verran could not help feeling a twinge of sympathy for him.

'Did you explain?'

Alston nodded. 'I explained my heart out. Believe me, it's not easy explaining away two near disasters in two years.'

'Will they be...calling me next?' His mouth went dry at the thought.

'I don't think so. I think I settled everything.'

If that was true, he owed Alston. But...

'They always want to blame someone,' Verran said, watching Alston closely. 'Who's getting the blame?'

'I managed to spread it around. I told them this has to be expected. If they want only the cream of the intellectual crop, it's inevitable that every so often one member of that crop is going to spot an inconsistency and follow it up.'

'And they bought it?'

'Of course. It's true, and the logic is inescapable. They were somewhat mollified when I told them that we intercepted Brown before he told his girlfriend much of anything. I hope that is still true, Louis.'

'Yeah. Truth is, I don't think we ever had a real worry there. Turns out Cleary doesn't know squat. And it also turns out a good thing Brown's father brought in his electronics man yesterday. Cleary stood right there in that room and heard him say there were no bugs. So even she's convinced her boyfriend's cuckoo.'

'Do we replace the bugs?' Elliot said.

'Not yet. She's alone in the room, so she doesn't do any talking anyway. And we've got the off-premises tap on her phone. So I say we leave things as they are for the moment.' He looked at Alston. 'You agree?'

Alston nodded. 'She wasn't responding to the SLI anyway. Might as well leave her room entirely cold until I can think of a way to get her out.'

'You got it,' Verran said.

'But I want her phone monitored 24 hours a day.'

'No problem. I'll have Elliot hook up a voice-activated recorder to her line and we'll check it all the time.'

'That will do, I suppose. But I want someone to know where she is every minute of the day,' Alston said. 'Got that?' He fixed Kurt and Elliot each with a hard stare, then looked at Verran. 'Every minute.'

'You're the boss,' Verran said.

TWENTY

Floating. In darkness. Falling through a limitless black void with no sense of movement or direction, without so much as the sensation of air passing over his skin.

I'm alive.

Tim didn't know the hour, the day, or even the month, where he was or how he got there, but he knew he was alive.

Or was he? In this formless darkness in which he could feel nothing, hear nothing, could he call this being alive?

Cogito, ergo sum.

Okay. According to Descartes, he was alive. But was he was awake or dreaming?

He seemed to be awake. He was becoming aware of faint noises around him, of movement, of an antiseptic odor. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn't budge. And then he realized that he didn't know if he was lying on his back or his belly. He couldn't feel anything.