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Her phone was buzzing in vibrate mode on the bedside table. She picked it up and found a text message from the university's alert system.
CLASSES RETURN TO NORMAL SCHEDULE EFFECTIVE 7 A.M. TODAY.
School seemed like a million miles away, another world that didn't mean anything to her anymore, but it would get her on campus, and there were things she needed there. Claire scrolled down her phone list and found Dr. Robert Mills, but there was no immediate answer on his cell. She checked the clock, winced at the early hour, but slid out of bed and began grabbing things out of drawers. That didn't take a lot of time. She was down to the last of everything. Laundry was starting to be a genuine priority.
She dialed his phone again after she'd dressed. "Hello?" Dr. Mills sounded as if she'd dragged him out of a deep, probably happy sleep. He probably hadn't been dreaming about being squeezed dry by Mr. Bishop.
"It's Claire," she said. "I'm sorry to call so early--"
"Is it early? Oh. Been up all night, just fell asleep." He yawned. "Glad you're all right, Claire."
"Are you at the hospital?"
"No. The hospital's going to need a lot of work before it's even halfway ready for the kind of work I need to do." Another jawcracking yawn. "Sorry. I'm on campus, in the Life Sciences Building. Lab Seventeen. We have some roll away beds here."
"We?"
"My wife and kids are with me. I didn't want to leave them on their own out there."
Claire didn't blame him. "I've got something for you to do, and I need some of the drug," she said. "It could be really important. I'll be at school in about twenty minutes, okay?"
"Okay. Don't come here. My kids are asleep right now. Let's meet somewhere else."
"The oncampus coffee bar," she said. "It's in the University Center."
"Trust me, I know where it is. Twenty minutes."
She was already heading for the door.
With no sounds coming from any of the other rooms, Claire figured her housemates were all crashed out, exhausted. She didn't know why she wasn't, except for a suppressed, vibrating fear inside her that if she slept any more, something bad was going to happen.
Showered, dressed in her last notverygood clothes, she grabbed up her backpack and repacked it. Her dart gun was out of darts anyway, so she left it behind. The samples Myrnin had prepared of Bishop's blood went into a sturdy padded box, and on impulse, she added a couple of stakes and the silver knife Amelie had given her.
And books.
It was the first time Claire had been on foot in Morganville since the rioting had started, and it was eerie. The town was quiet again, but stores had broken windows, some boarded over; there were some buildings reduced to burned out hulks, with blind, open doorways. Broken bottles were on the sidewalks and spots of what looked like blood on the concrete--and, in places, dark splashes.
Claire hurried past it all, even past Common Grounds, where the steel shutters were down inside the windows. There was no sign of anyone within. She imagined Theo Goldman standing there watching her from cover, and waved a little, just a waggle of fingers.
She didn't really expect a response.
The gates of the university were open, and the guards were gone. Claire jogged along the sidewalk, going up the hill and around the curve, and began to see students up and moving, even so early in the morning. As she got closer to the central cluster of buildings, the foot traffic intensified, and here and there she saw alert campus police walking in pairs, watching for trouble.
The students didn't seem to notice anything at all. Not for the first time, Claire wondered if Amelie's semipsychic network that cut Morganville off from the world also kept people on campus clueless.
She didn't like to think they were just naturally that stupid. Then again, she'd been to some of the parties.
The University Center had opened its doors only a few minutes before, and the coffee barista was just taking the chairs down from the tables. Usually it would have been Eve on duty, but instead, it was one of the university staffers, on loan from the food service most likely. He didn't exactly look happy to be there. Claire tried to be nice, and finally got a smile from him as he handed her a mocha and took her cash.
"I wouldn't be here," he confessed, "except that they're paying us triple to be here the rest of the week."
"Really? Wow. I'll tell Eve. She could use the money."
"Yeah, get her in here. I'm not good at this coffee stuff. Give me the plain stuff. Water, beans--can't really screw that up. This espresso is hard."
Claire decided, after tasting the mocha, that he was right. He really wasn't cut out for it. She sipped it anyway, and took a seat where she could watch the majority of the UC entrances for Dr. Mills.
She almost didn't recognize him. He'd shed his white doctor's coat, of course, but somehow she'd never expected to see someone like him wearing a zipup hoodie, sweatpants, and sneakers. He was more the suitandtie type. He ordered plain coffee--good choice--and came to join her at the table.
Dr. Mills was medium everything, and he blended in at the university just as easily as he had at the hospital. He'd have made a good spy, Claire thought. He had one of those faces--young from one angle, older from another, with nothing you could really remember later about it.
But he had a nice, comforting smile. She supposed that would be a real asset in a doctor.
"Morning," he said, and gulped coffee. His eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed. "I'm going back to the hospital later today. Damage assessments, and we've already reopened the trauma units and CCU. I'm going to catch some sleep as soon as we're done, in case any crash cases come in. Nothing worse than an exhausted trauma surgeon."
She felt even more guilty about waking him up. "I'll make this quick," she promised. Claire opened her backpack, took out the padded box, and slid it across the table to him. "Blood samples, from Myrnin."
Mills frowned. "I've already got a hundred blood samples from Myrnin. Why--"
"These are different," Claire said. "Trust me. There's one labeled B that's important."
"Important, how?"
"I don't want to say. I'd rather you took a look first." In science, Claire knew, it was better to come to an analysis cold, without too many expectations. Dr. Mills knew that, too, and he nodded as he took possession of the samples. "Um--if you want to sleep, maybe you shouldn't drink that stuff." Dr. Mills smiled and threw back the rest of his coffee. "You get to be a doctor by developing immunity to all kinds of things, including caffeine," he said. "Trust me. The second my head touches the pillow, I'm asleep, even if I've got a coffee IV drip."
