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“You think I’m lying to you. ”
“Obviously. You have to be. ”
He shook his head slowly, and leaned back in the hard-backed aluminum chair. “Joe,” he said, “show her the video. ”
There was a flat-panel TV set flush into the wall, and well out of Bryn’s reach; Fideli pulled a remote control out of his pocket and punched some buttons. Cue music and intro titles, and a logo that resolved into the words Pharmadene Pharmaceuticals. It all looked very polished and corporate. High production values.
But what followed was cold and clinical. There was a corpse lying on a morgue table, clearly and obviously dead; the skin was chilly blue, and still smoking a little from being removed from the refrigerator. The eyes were closed. It was a man, nothing special about him except that he was dead, probably from the two black-edged bullet holes in his chest.
Enter a medical team, hooking him up to monitors that read exactly nothing. No heartbeat, no respiration, nothing.
And then the injection.
It took long minutes, but then Bryn saw a convulsive shudder rip through the body, saw the ice blue eyelids quiver, saw the mouth gape open, and heard …
Heard the scream.
She knew that scream. She’d felt it rip out of her own mouth, an uncontrollable torrent of sound and agony and horror and fear. It was the lost wail of a newborn, only in an adult’s voice.
The corpse’s filmed eyes opened, blinked, and the film began to slowly fade. The skin slowly shifted colors from that unmistakable ashy tone to something less … dead.
And the bullet holes began to knit closed—but not before bright red blood trickled out and began running down the heaving, breathing chest.
The monitors kick-started into beeps. Heart rate. Oxygen saturation. Blood pressure.
Life.
He stopped screaming and looked at the doctors. His voice, when it came, sounded hoarse and dry. “Did it work?”
Nobody answered him. They were all busily noting details, murmuring instructions, taking samples.
It was like the living man, where the corpse had been, didn’t exist at all except as a clinical miracle.
Bryn felt a horrible chill inside, but she put on a brave face. “Nice special effects. Really nice—”
She would have gone on, but another video started, brutally fast.
That was her. Ash gray, lying dead in a hospital bed. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot and blank, pupils completely blown. She’d bitten her lip, and blood had dried on her face. Her head lolled limp on the pillow. They cut away her clothing, reducing her to just another shell, another dead thing, pitiful and cold and naked, and Bryn couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything, not even demand for them to stop the video.
Fideli wasn’t watching it. He and McCallister were watching her. She was peripherally aware of that, but she couldn’t tear her horrified gaze away.
“Right, give her the full dose,” said the crisp voice of a doctor in the video. “Start the clock … now. ”
It took long, torturous minutes, and then … then … Bryn’s body stirred. Gasped. Spasmed.
But there was nothing else.
“Vital reactions,” the doctor said. “Note the time in the log, please. ”
A nurse spread a sheet over her naked body. They seemed to be waiting for something, and Bryn realized that the video-Bryn hadn’t opened her eyes, or taken another breath after that first, convulsive one.
The doctor glanced up at a clock on the wall. “She’s not responding. I’m going to have to call it. ”
“Wait. ” In the video, Joe Fideli moved out of the shadows and put his hand on her face. “Come back,” he said. “C’mon, Bryn, don’t do this. Come on back. Come back. ”
He slapped her, a stinging blow, and Bryn saw her blank eyes finally blink, slowly.
And then she screamed.
