By the time he reached the tank, Firefighter Joe was no longer in one piece. With a dozen fat plopping sounds, his body hit the liquid.
When he was done, Remo folded the hose back up into the cranny on the side of the truck. He turned from the engine, looking out at the bloated bodies lying on the garage floor.
He had hoped that by getting the bad guys, some of his lost faith would be restored. It wasn't. He still felt every bit as crummy as he had that morning.
He wasn't really surprised. At this point he didn't hold out much hope for anything anymore. The world was lousy, he felt crummy and that was that. Case closed.
Still, it would have been nice to feel something. "Crap," muttered Remo Williams, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets.
Leaving the dead firemen on the floor of Engine House Number 6, he strolled glumly from the station.
Chapter 3
Edwige Soisson didn't even try to hide his anxiety as he watched the men scurrying around the concrete base near the massive metal fins of the Every4 rocket. Why should he? After all, Edwige was acutely aware of everything that could go wrong in a space launch. He knew better than anyone that little things could cause major problems.
Back in the early nineties, as a high-ranking official at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in Paris, he had been liaison between the CNES and the space center at Kourou, French Guiana. Since Guiana was so close to the equator, it was an ideal location for launching rockets into space. Therefore the Kourou facility, northwest of the port capital of Cayenne, had always been of vital importance to the CNES.
As a rising star at the Space center with a bright future ahead of him, Edwige had been present all those years ago to oversee the ill-fated launch of the Every 44D.
At first it had been a breathtaking sight.
The launch itself was flawless. The rocket had lifted like a timid bird from its platform, rumbling its way into the heavens.
Everything was perfect to the last detail. That was, until the rocket exploded in midair.
When the CNES was finished sifting through the debris, it was discovered that the explosion had been caused by a carelessly discarded rag left in a water circuit.
A rag.
Millions of francs in damage caused by a dirty rag.
Because of this monstrously stupid mistake, the space program of Everyspace had been subjected to endless delays. Since Everyspace was the driving force behind the entire European Space Agency, research programs across the Continent had been disrupted. All because of a single filthy rag.
Of course, a scapegoat was needed. Unfortunately, that scapegoat had been none other than Edwige Soisson. Before the accident he shuttled back and forth between CNES headquarters in Paris and the main test and research center in Toulouse. After the accident he had been put on permanent assignment at the Guianan Space Center.
He had gone to South America for a few days, only to be stranded there for the better part of a decade.
But Edwige was determined to get back to his beloved France for more than just a few vacation weeks a year. To this end his life had become a testament to perfection. Immediately upon being stationed permanently in Guiana, he had begun to inspect personally each and every rocket before launch.
As he checked feed hoses and unclipped side panels to inspect ganglionic circuitry, the technicians regularly snickered at the skinny bureaucrat in his sweaty dress shirt. Despite the jeers, Edwige would not be dissuaded. After all, it was their fault that he was down here in the first place. They were the ones who had left the rag in the 44D, not him. He was determined not to be a victim of their incompetence again.
And as the decade bled into a new century, his tenacity seemed to be paying off. There had been no major accidents since his appointment to French Guiana. His superiors at the Centre National seemed pleased with the way things had gone in the years following the accident.
In fact, Edwige had noted a certain softening toward him of late. Nothing major, but if he continued to perform his duties well, he might finally be freed from exile to return to the City of Lights, the Paris he loved so dearly.
But that would happen only if every launch continued to go flawlessly.
Edwige watched nervously as the last men took the elevator down from the bare scaffolding of the launch tower. Standing more than fifty feet tall, the tower was only slightly higher than the slender rocket itself.
The umbilical lines to the second- and first-stage dimethyl, hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide tanks were detached. The third-stage liquid-oxygen-and liquid-hydrogen tanks had already been separated from above.
All was ready.
In the control bunker, the dark-faced launch supervisor approached Edwige.
"The platform is clear, Monsieur Soisson," he informed the CNES representative. "We have begun the countdown."
Edwige's ratlike face puckered unhappily. "Did they recheck for rags?" he asked. Sweat beaded on his pale forehead.
The supervisor didn't flinch at the question. He had been asked the exact same thing during every prelaunch sequence since coming to work at the Guianan Space Center five years before.
"Oui," the man replied politely.
Edwige nodded. "Proceed," he snapped.
He spun anxiously from the supervisor. Worried eyes looked out the angled, tinted window to the launch area.
At the bank of computer stations behind him, scientists in shirt-sleeves began the last tedious steps that would put the Every rocket into orbit.
They were launching a weather satellite today, a very expensive piece of hardware developed by the Japanese to study typhoon formation in the Pacific. Millions of yen, francs and dollars were tied into this project.
Edwige bit his ragged index fingernail nervously. There was barely anything left to it. He had chewed most of it away earlier that day. As he watched tiny puffs of propellant seep from the open hoses on the launch tower, he switched over to his thumbnail. Nearly everything here was handled by computer. Once the prelaunch sequence was begun, the machines took over. It gave Edwige some small comfort to know that he would not be relying on fallible human beings like the one who had left the rag in the Every 44D rocket years before.
"... trois... deux... un... "
He bit down harder on his nail when the rumbling ignition of the distant rocket sounded. So lost in thought was he that the countdown had hardly registered.
His eyes found focus once more, his fearful gaze directed out the blast-proof window.
As Edwige watched, the slender rocket shuddered on the launchpad, lit on its blunt end by a white-hot burst of flame. The collapsible scaffolding dropped away as the missile wobbled into the air as if pulled by some uncertain, invisible string.
The rocket cleared the launch area in seconds, screaming on its plume of belching flame into the clear sky.
Edwige watched it soar heavenward. With each passing second he allowed another short burst of suspended breath to slip from between his tensely pursed lips.
The missile passed the range where the Every 44D had exploded. As usual, Edwige had counted off the time in his head.
He was about to exhale completely to take in a celebratory gulp of air when the unthinkable happened.
Without any warning from the scientists behind him, Edwige saw a flash of fire somewhere in the second stage. As it soared skyward, the flames enveloped the pointed nose cone, cracking the metal shell of the rocket like a cheap German sausage.
It happened in a flash. In a single, shocking, terrible instant, the entire steel body was a roiling mass of smoke and flame.
Men began shouting behind him.
Alone at the window, Edwige's heart stopped as he watched the rocket-along with its expensive cargo, his career and his hopes of returning to Paris-spread in shattered pieces across the blue South American sky.
Fragments from the rocket began their long, smoking descent to the well-tended grounds of the space center far below.
Somewhere distant an emerge
ncy siren began a plaintive wail. To the little man from France, all noise had become hissing static. Edwige Soisson failed to hear anything over the sound of his own pitiful sobbing.
Chapter 4
In his Spartan administrator's office at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, Dr. Harold W. Smith read the news digests concerning the explosion of the French Every rocket with bland disinterest.
Behind his immaculate rimless glasses, flint-gray eyes flicked across lines of scrolling text. Sitting in his cracked leather chair, his unflinching gaze directed at his computer monitor, Harold Smith affected a pose that was as fundamental to his being as the air he breathed.
Smith was nothing if not a creature of habit. Indeed, everything about him was testament to a man for whom custom was firmly rooted. For Harold W. Smith, change was an enemy that, while impossible to vanquish, was at the very least and as much as possible a thing to be kept at arm's length.
His clothing was always the same. A three-piece gray suit with a complementing striped school tie. When vests went out of fashion years ago, Smith continued to wear his. When fashion once more caught up with him, there was Harold W. Smith to greet it, sartorially unchanged.
He drove the same rusted station wagon to work seven days a week, although in deference to the Protestant ideals of his strict New England upbringing, he tried to keep his Sunday hours shorter than his regular work days.
The office in which he toiled had remained virtually unchanged for the past forty years. The only new addition was the gleaming black desk at which Smith worked. Buried in the depths of the somber onyx slab was a computer monitor on which Smith viewed the events of the world in which he lived, but rarely ventured out into.
But although there were few things about himself or his work habits that he had changed over the years, there were some alterations he had made here and there, some out of necessity and some for the sake of convenience.
Four mainframes hidden behind a secret panel in the basement of the sanitarium had been searching the electronic ether long before the term "Internet" had taken its place in common parlance. Since assuming the reins of CURE as its one and only director, Smith had relied on the tireless efforts of the Folcroft Four to alert him to any criminal activity that might require his agency's attention. However, even though the mainframes were sophisticated, they weren't infallible. There were some connections that only a human mind could make. To make up for their deficiencies, during his tenure with CURE Smith had continued reading several newspapers per day. That had changed slightly in recent years.
Thanks to the increased popularity of the World Wide Web, Smith was now able to read hourly concise digests of breaking news stories that might not otherwise be of interest to the CURE mainframes. The explosion of the Every rocket was one such article.
There was nothing really new in the story. A number of similar malfunctions had occurred in recent years. An exploding Chinese rocket had destroyed an expensive Intel satellite, while another had landed in a residential area, killing many civilians. Other smaller technological firms had witnessed their share of similar setbacks.
Smith wasn't surprised. Although frugal in the extreme, he would never be so foolish as to entrust a piece of billion-dollar equipment to any nation with a spotty success record. It was a lesson his mother had taught young Harold from an early age: you get what you pay for.
Smith finished the report on the rocket's explosion, as well as the digests of the other top stories of the hour. There was some piffle about the dessert preferences of the wife of the recently inaugurated president, as well as a story about some benefit for the homeless in California featuring a large number of comedians. Smith saw nothing in any of these stories that warranted CURE's attention.
Smith was switching from the news digest to the constant data stream collected by the mainframes when his desktop intercom buzzed to life. He stabbed the button with an arthritic finger without looking up from his monitor.
"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka."
Smith's secretary was apologetic. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Dr. Smith, but there's a problem with a patient."
His eyes flicked up to the digital time displayed in the corner of his screen. It was only 8:57 a.m. "Dr. Paulakus is on duty," he said with a frown.
"He's the one who phoned," Eileen Mikulka replied. "He said it was one of your patients in the special wing. He thinks he might be waking up." Head snapping up, Smith felt his heart trip.
At the moment there were only three CURE patients in the security corridor. Smith was careful to keep them separate from the rest of Folcroft's population. One was a young woman, the other was a comatose patient whom he had been told would never awaken again. He prayed that he had been given a misdiagnosis for that individual, for he dared not think what might happen if the other man ever regained consciousness.
He struggled to keep the apprehension from his lemony voice. "Which patient is it?"
"It's the one you've been giving the extra medication to. He didn't say his name. I could check," she offered.
The color drained from Smith's face. His skin went from sickly gray to ashen.
"That isn't necessary. Tell him I will be right down." He nearly choked on the words.
Rising swiftly, Smith didn't even bother to shut off his computer. His ears rang. For the first time in his forty-year stewardship of CURE, he left his office door ajar.
When he hustled out into his secretary's office, Mrs. Mikulka glanced up, a worried look on her matronly face. A phone was pressed to her ear as she waited for someone to pick up at the desk in the security wing.
"Is everything all right, Dr. Smith?" she asked. He didn't even answer. Offering a stiff nod that could not but fuel her concern, he rushed to the door. Smith was so hurried, he nearly plowed into the man who was coming into the office from the hallway. The new arrival jumped in surprise.
"Oh, excuse me," the young man apologized. He was tall and thin, with a broad face and light brown hair. His cheeks were flushed, his greenish eyes anxious.
Smith didn't even acknowledge the man's presence. As the stranger spun a confused pirouette around the sanitarium director, Smith hurried past him and out into the hall.
Heart thudding, the CURE director rushed down two flights of stairs. The fire door led up to a pair of closed doors. A numeric touch pad was fixed to the wall. Smith only realized his hands were shaking when he tried to punch in the six-digit code.
Breathing deeply to steady his resolve, he carefully entered the number. A blinking light went from red to green, and an unseen bolt clicked back. Smith pushed the doors open and hustled into the hall.
An empty nurses' station was to the left. Ten evenly spaced doors lined the right wall. Only two of the occupied rooms were closed. Light spilled from the third.
Bracing himself for the worst, Smith steered a certain course to the lighted open door.
When he stepped into the room, he found a Folcroft doctor leaning over an emaciated patient. Drawing open one lid, Dr. Paulakus was shining a penlight into a brilliant blue eye.
Smith cautiously noted that the room appeared to be in order. An unused television was bolted to a corner of the ceiling. Beside the bed was a bare nightstand. Nothing seemed changed in the least.
Smith allowed himself a thin slip of relief. "How has the patient's condition changed?" he asked crisply as he crossed carefully to the bed.
The doctor turned sharply to the voice. "Oh, Dr. Smith. I didn't hear you come in." He stood up from the patient, slipping his penlight in the pocket of his white smock. "I hope I didn't worry you. It's not an emergency, but I think we need to discuss the patient's treatment."
"I have outlined his needs to you," Smith said slowly, his gaze straying to the man in the bed.
A mane of flowing, corn-silk hair spilled across the starched pillowcase. The pale, delicate face was almost feminine.
"I know," Dr. Paulakus said, shaking his head. "But the situation has changed. It's amazing given the level of potent
sedatives he's been administered, but I think he's coming around. It's almost as if he's trying to will himself awake."
Smith's worried gaze returned to the doctor. "How so?"
"Well, his pupils aren't responsive yet, but he's giving other signs. I'd noticed over the past few weeks when I'd come in to deliver his morning injections that his hands were flexing a lot. It was a sort of repetitive clenching. At first I figured it was just a reflex motor action, but then I noticed this."
He pulled up one side of the hanging sheet. When Smith saw the patient's forearm, his jaw dropped. For years now, the arm had been a thin, fragile thing. As delicate as the bones of a bird.
It was muscled now. Not overly so, but toned and fit. He noted with sinking dread that the wrist had grown to an unusual thickness.
As Smith watched, the hand clasped and opened, clasped and opened. The narrow chest rose and fell in rhythms that were at once hypnotic and terrifying.
"The last few days I've been asking him to squeeze my hand," Dr. Paulakus was saying, oblivious to the look of quiet dread that had settled on his employer's face. "I'm certain that my voice is reaching him on some level, because he's responded every single time."
Smith's face and voice grew stem. "That kind of contact is not advisable," he warned.
The doctor seemed surprised by the rebuke. "I don't think there's any need for concern," he said, allowing a hint of condescension to brush his tone.
Smith's expression told another story. Even his body language telegraphed his apprehension.
Of course, Dr. Paulakus couldn't know the whole story. The fact was, Jeremiah Purcell, prior to the dozen years he had spent under permanent care at Folcroft, had represented a threat like none other CURE or its field operatives had ever faced. Remo and his teacher would not allow Smith to eliminate him. For a danger like Purcell, there was only one other real treatment option. It had worked. Until now.
"Increase the dosage," Smith ordered. "Under no circumstances is that man to regain consciousness."
The doctor hesitated. "Dr. Smith, I know you want to keep the patient's meds high," he argued, "but the circumstances are changing. He's showing signs of recovery."
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