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I felt myself getting red in the face. I was getting tired of the runaround and the cryptic hints. “I thoughtIwas your protection,” I said. “For Christ’s sake, you’ve turned me into Captain America! You’ve made me a mental marvel! Isn’t thatenough??”
Kira pulled away. “No, Doctor,” she said, “you’renotenough. Neither am I. Not with what we’re up against. We’re not ready yet. We need to pick Doc Savage’s brain a little more. And this is where we do it.”
She walked off and started rummaging through the shelves, sorting through parts and devices, pulling things aside and piling them on the lab table. I had no intention of helping. Not today.
“Pick away,” I said. “Be my guest.” I was feeling surly, and this room was starting to give me the creeps.
I wandered off into the corner and found myself staring at the Doc Savage arsenal. I ran my finger over the blade of a long cutlass. It still felt sharp enough to slice a man in half. I reached into a corner and picked up a rifle with a huge barrel. It was as heavy as a ten-pound weight. I realized that I’d never held a gun before in my life. I lifted the rifle up to my shoulder and pointed it at the brick wall across the room, aiming at a small stripe of mortar. Kira looked over.
“That’s an elephant gun,” she said. “Five-seventy-seven. Too heavy to carry. Forget it.”
“I wasn’t planning to put it in my pocket,” I said.
I squinted down the barrel and tried to picture an actual human being in the sights. If it came right down to it, I wondered, would I actually be able to pull the trigger? Even if my life depended on it—or Kira’s? I put the gun back in its place.
“Try a pistol,” said Kira, nodding at the handguns. “Much more practical.” There were about twenty of them, all shapes and sizes, hanging from wooden pegs. Some looked like they came straight from the O.K. Corral. Others looked like World War I vintage. I wondered if any of them still worked. I didn’t really care. Just looking at them made me queasy.
“No thanks,” I said.
Kira was dumping items out of containers and sorting them out on a small table. I could see her flipping through journals and reference books, trying to put the pieces together. I wondered how many days she’d spent in this room by herself. How many nights. How manyyears.
As I moved through the rows of firearms and ammunition, I picked up a sharp odor. I stopped and looked down. I realized that I was actually smelling the gunpowder from inside the cartridge casings. Was that even possible? My head started throbbing. I was sweating all over. The ceiling lights flared. I squeezed my eyes shut. That only made it worse. I suddenly felt weak and sick. I fell backward against a metal shelf.
The next second, an image flashed into my head. I was standing next to my great-grandfather in a jungle. It felt as if I could reach out and touch him. I could feel the heat radiating off his body. He had a gun in each hand and a wild look in his eyes, like he was facing down some kind of danger. Suddenly, he went into a crouch and started firing away through the thick foliage. I couldn’t tell what he was shooting at. Animals? Humans? Ghosts? Flames shot out of the gun barrels. Shredded leaves and branches flew into the air like confetti.
Each shot was like a hammer hitting my skull. The smell of gunpowder was overpowering. Smoke was everywhere. My knees buckled. Everything went dark. I felt my body hitting the ground.
Was I shot? Was I dead? Was it over?
CHAPTER 66
“HEY! HELLO? YOU in there, Doctor?”
I felt my eyes being pulled open. It was Kira. She was pressing my lids up and staring deep into my pupils. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the kitchen wall. It felt like my brain was coming out of a fog. I pushed her away.
“What the hell wasthat?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Not sure,” said Kira. “Migraine maybe?”
“I’ve had migraines,” I said. “That was no migraine. It was that goddamnroom!”
“You might be right,” said Kira. “There’s some strange energy in there.”
“No shit,” I said.
I wondered about a Doc Savage curse. It sounded like something out of the old stories. Too crazy to be true. But what I felt was definitely real.
“Don’t move,” said Kira. “I’ll be right back.”
She stood up and walked into the kitchen. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them wide to bring my vision back into focus. I heard the blender whirring, which was the last thing my throbbing head needed. When Kira came back, she was carrying a thick green smoothie.
“Let’s get your blood sugar up,” she said. “You didn’t eat enough today.”
She had a point. I was hungry. Starving, actually. But Kira’s high-fiber slurry was not the answer. The sight of it turned my stomach.
“Pass,” I said.
“You need protein,” she said.
