The Sleepless Stars (13 page)

They reached the next group of rooms he’d cleared of booby traps and secured. He led Ozzie to the room he’d stocked, unlocked the vault-like metal door, and swung it silently on its well-oiled hinges, gesturing for Ozzie to enter before sealing it shut again behind them. Only then did he turn on the lights, blinking against the brightness after the dim red-lit tunnels they’d just traveled through.

After getting Ozzie some water, Devon set up Tommaso’s laptop and began to transfer its files to his thumb drive. While he waited, he accessed the memory card from the video camera. At first there was only black, and he wondered if the card had been erased. But then a woman’s scream shrieked through the air, making Devon jump. Ozzie came to attention, nose in the air, scenting the potential threat. He let loose a sharp bark of dismay when the scream was abruptly cut short.

“No, I don’t need that,” Tommaso said.

“Why not? It’s all part of the scientific discovery,” came a voice that Devon recognized. One he’d hoped to never hear again. Leo’s.

“Yours, maybe.” Tommaso’s tone was one of derision. He obviously didn’t take the pleasure Leo had in torture. “Get it over with so I can film the dissection.”

The footage stopped, a second of static filling the frame. When it resumed, Devon was staring at the naked, mutilated corpse of a young woman. Tommaso moved into the frame, his face barely visible behind the helmet of the biohazard suit he wore. He raised a scalpel, its blade reflecting the harsh overhead light. Devon didn’t recognize the room. It was a mirror image of the one he sat in now, except that Tommaso’s had been readied to handle dangerous pathogens with the same equipment Devon had seen in the biolabs in the Almanac building last night.

The camera was jittery; Leo must have been holding it, a fact confirmed when it moved in to document Tommaso reflecting the girl’s scalp from back to front so that it hung over her face. The bare skull was now exposed, pink and glistening from the blood and tissue left behind, small globules of fat sliding free, a few threads of blood adding more color.

Devon watched in horror and fascination as Tommaso removed the top of the skull before separating the brain from its underpinnings. Then he reached in with both gloved hands to pluck it free. Tommaso examined the brain carefully, directing Leo to zoom in as he described his findings in a clinical tone. The medical jargon was beyond Devon’s grasp, but there was no mistaking the physician’s excitement when he sliced the brain apart, revealing the gaping holes riddling its interior.

“It works,” Tommaso told Leo, holding half of the brain aloft to the camera as if it was a trophy. “Patient Zero is the key to creating a transmissible form of the Scourge.”

Easy enough to translate “scourge” into fatal insomnia or prion disease.

Angela had told him that Patient Zero was medical shorthand for the first person who showed symptoms of a disease epidemic. Devon squinted at the time stamp on the video. March. Months before Angela or any of the children began having symptoms.

Who was this Patient Zero? If they were the key to starting the fatal insomnia epidemic, could they also be the key to stopping it?

RYDER GAVE TYRONE
his best eat-shit-and-die glare. “Too bad I have nothing to say.”

What else was he supposed to say when threatened by some creep who’d obviously fallen in love with one too many James Bond villains? The whole thing felt so surreal—spooky abandoned mine where no one can hear you scream, Tyrone planning to kill Lord knew how many people with a disease straight out of a horror film, and Ryder didn’t even know why. Not to mention that he obviously couldn’t trust Grey’s judgment. Not if the FBI agent had gone rogue, so obsessed with capturing Tyrone that he’d been willing to risk their lives.

If it wasn’t for Rossi and the sick kids she was helping, he might have laughed in Tyrone’s face. But he’d learned from experience to never, ever laugh around the truly psychotic ones. The not-so-crazy ones, like the druggies with half their brains fried, they still understood humor when things went bat shit. In fact, Ryder had used humor to defuse more than one tense situation that had escalated out of control.

But not when delusions and paranoia were thrown into the mix. Like now with Tyrone, who was clearly not only psychotic, but also smart and charismatic enough to convince his men to do anything he wanted. Including capturing and possibly torturing two law enforcement officers.

So Ryder simply stayed calm and held his ground. Tyrone frowned when he didn’t react, slapping the roll of papers against his open palm while assessing Ryder, trying to find his vulnerabilities.

Ryder gritted his teeth and remained impassive. He remembered another rule, one that his training officer had taught him when he’d first gone on patrol: Never look a rabid dog in the eyes. Too late for that.

The impasse was broken when one of Tyrone’s men rushed up to whisper something in his ear, his body language screaming,
urgent
. Ryder watched closely, trying to decide if whatever had developed was something he could use. But Tyrone had a good poker face. He simply nodded, handed the man the set of blueprints, and stepped back to consider both Ryder and Grey.

“Put them somewhere safe—the elevator. I’ll deal with them later.”

Ryder exchanged a glance with Grey, wondering about the source of their reprieve, but Grey merely shrugged. Their guards dragged them to the darkened area at the far end of the cavern, one of them grabbing a lantern to light their path.

The original mine shafts stood here. Thick timbers framed out suggestions of openings, but only one remained intact behind a modern steel gate with a padlock dangling from it. Behind the gate, chains and wires came down from a narrow overhead shaft where Ryder could make out rusted gears and pulleys anchored into the rock. He wished the light was brighter so he could see if the shaft went all the way up to the surface. Might be a way out, easier than fighting through to the front entrance.

Tyrone’s men didn’t give him time for more appraisal. One of them hauled the gate open, while another cranked a wheel. The sound of metal protesting against age and disuse echoed through the shaft, never quite vanishing, instead simply dying as a low moan. It was a long, long way down.

A small metal cage suspended from the cables and chains appeared. A few more cranks and it was level with the cavern floor. Ryder looked at the cage in dismay. It swung in the shaft. The floor was made of metal grating, as were the walls. They came up to chest level, leaving a narrow gap between the top of the wall and the roof. The cage’s roof was a sheet of corrugated metal with rusty rivets connecting it to the steel bars that gave the cage its structure.

He knew the elevator—about eight feet square—was designed to carry a dozen or more miners, but it appeared so ancient and flimsy that he began to mentally calculate his and Grey’s combined weight.

“You heard the man. Inside.” Tyrone’s goons didn’t give them much choice, pushing them into the metal box. It shuddered with their weight, scraping against the rock at the rear of the shaft. The men secured the gate, then, with jagged motions as they cranked the wheel, they lowered the elevator car.

As it moved down into darkness, the light from the lantern above dimmed, blocked out by the cage’s roof. Ryder peered through the floor’s metal grating, ignoring the unsettling feeling of being suspended over a bottomless pit, trying to orient himself before the light totally vanished.

The shaft itself was wide enough to hold several elevator cages. He spotted one parked below them on one side, its roof canted at an unsettling angle. The other side of their cage opened up onto darkness, so best guess was that that elevator car was either somewhere below them out of sight or had been destroyed. In front of them, once they passed below the floor of the main cavern, was featureless rock face. The rear wall was also solid rock.

Only way out was up.

The cage shuddered to a stop, swinging hard enough to scrape the roof of the second cage suspended beside them. The thinnest sliver of light remained between the sheet metal at the roof of the cage and the rock wall. Tyrone’s men must have lowered them just far enough so the roof sat level with the main cavern’s floor.

Then the light disappeared, leaving them in darkness so total and absolute that Ryder suddenly felt as if he was falling.

“Any ideas?” Grey’s voice came from Ryder’s right. The rear of the cage, he oriented himself. He also noted that the Fed offered no apology for getting them into this mess—probably for the best; Ryder wasn’t exactly in the forgiving mood.

“You mean like waiting for your men to arrive?” Ryder said scornfully. “Just how far off the reservation are you?”

“It’s not that bad.”

Ryder rattled his handcuffs in answer.

“We do have a team investigating Tyrone. And others like him. My boss calls us the crackpot squad.”

“I’m guessing you have to screw up pretty bad to get that assignment.”

“Nah, it’s easy. Just piss off the wrong supervisor. But here’s the thing—they aren’t all crackpots. Look at Tyrone. I was right about him, wasn’t I? And you obviously know more than you told me. What the hell were you talking about, this Leo Kingston? And fatal insomnia? What’s Lazaretto and Rossi got to do with any of it? I didn’t see anywhere that Tyrone could be keeping them prisoner, except that hospital building at the front, did you?”

Ryder was more focused on escape than conversation. “Think a cell phone would work in here?” he asked as he sidled across the uneven grate that made up the floor until he ran into the rear metal mesh wall. “I couldn’t get a signal earlier.”

“I doubt it. Not with all the iron ore. Why? Do you have one?”

“No. I was wondering about that message the guy gave Tyrone. They must have a sat phone or radio, maybe Voice over Internet Protocol tech, some method of communication.” Devon Price had faced the same problem with his underground bunker and had installed his own private Wi-Fi communications network using VoIP. It was actually more secure and less traceable than standard cellular networks.

“Which means they also have more men on the outside.”

Ryder had counted seven so far, including Tyrone. He felt along the steel mesh wall with his hands at his back, edging toward Grey’s voice. “Any idea what they’re planning?”

“Caught a glimpse of those plans before Tyrone snatched them away. Something Samaritan. Maybe a church?”

“Good Samaritan Medical Center. Why would they target a hospital?”

“No idea. But trust me, Tyrone is a big thinker. The hospital might be his real target or a diversion or part of a bigger plan.” Grey’s voice dropped. “I know you think I’m an idiot, coming here alone. I admit, I got in over my head. But Tyrone fooled everyone. We have to find a way to stop him.”

Ryder brushed Grey’s arm with his. He knew he’d only covered a few feet, but in the dark, with every movement quaking their suspended cage, it’d felt like a mile. “Plus, warn the hospital, evacuate it.”

“Gonna be hard to do from here.”

“Sit down, put your back to mine. I have a plan.”

<<<>>>

I WAS HARD-PRESSED
to find words to describe how I felt as I lay there waiting for Louise. My entire body felt disconnected from my brain—and my brain felt just as distant from my mind. I could feel a dozen emotions roiling through me, a spectrum of confusion and panic spiced by frustration, but I wasn’t really feeling them at all. No hammering of my pulse, no knot in my stomach, no nervous sweat or anxious tremors.

As if I wasn’t even here—or worse, I wasn’t even me. But I was. I had to be.

I closed my eyes against another wave of disorientation. I’d watched videos of fatal insomnia patients in their final stages—wished I hadn’t after, but who can deny the morbid fascination of watching and knowing exactly how you’ll die one day soon?

They’d lay in their beds—just like I was now. They’d stare into space—just like I would be if I let myself. Their hands would occasionally twitch as they pantomimed acts of normal life, like combing their hair or feeding themselves. But they weren’t actually combing their hair or eating. It was all a charade—their body acting out a poor performance of the life they lived solely within the confines of their prion-addled brains.

Could that be what was happening now? Because a “stroke” made no sense—not anatomically speaking. And if I was really here, if this was really my room after a medical catastrophe like that, then where was the medical paraphernalia? A lift trapeze over the bed? Monitors and weights and range-of-motion machines? Nothing. Not even a row of medicine bottles nearby. Only the wheelchair that looked brand new and never used.

I forced my eyes open to confirm my suspicions. The light from the window had faded as if the sun was already setting—hadn’t it been bright morning just a few minutes ago?

Rolling my gaze up, I saw a trapeze bar hanging above me. How had I missed that? But...my neuro deficits still made no anatomic sense. Then I glanced to my right. Just as I had imagined them, a row of pill bottles appeared, neatly arranged on the bedside table.

Before I could think more about the sudden changes in my environment—a product of my imagination or a result of my brain not attending to visual cues when I’d first awakened?—Louise entered, followed by Flynn close on her heels.

Louise appeared flustered, rushing to my side and raising my wrist to take my pulse. Usually, the worse a situation was, the calmer she got—although more talkative. Louise liked to talk things through. Today she was dressed in black except for her white lab coat. Which was strange on two counts: Louise never, ever wore black, and why would she be wearing a lab coat outside of the hospital?

“Tell me about the cure,” I said, yanking my wrist away. Or trying to and failing. Funny, because a minute ago that arm had felt stronger.

She released my hand. It flopped against my chest.

Ryder’s pendant. It was gone.