“They’ll probably want this at the gate,” he says, removing one of the forms and handing the rest to Bruce, along with Chuck’s ASTA nametag.
“Good thinking,” Bruce says grudgingly, and then we’re off.
Sofia wipes her face on the sleeve of her suit, Quinn reads the form intently, perhaps memorizing some important information, and I wriggle back into my jumpsuit and sneakers.
So far, so good. The whole hijacking couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, and it’s only a minute after 9.30 am when we pull up the gravel drive and are admitted through the gates of Stapla Inc. Medical Research Facility.
Chapter 21
From here on out
As Sofia, Quinn and I crunch across the gravel parking lot toward the entrance of the Stapla building, Bruce backs the SUV into a space facing the gate, poised for a quick escape, if necessary. He’s staying in the car, along with the sidearm he lifted from Chuck and the submachine gun now hidden under the driver’s seat. My own weapons — the Ruger 9mm and my sniper’s rifle — are stowed in a long duffel bag along with my clothing and personal essentials, in case we need to bug out, and hidden under a black blanket on the floor of the SUV.
Last time I entered Stapla, I was dragged in, blindfolded, by an ASTA goon. This time I can see the four steps leading up to the main entrance are narrow and run the length of the building, which is a five-story cube of reflective glass and steel. We take turns entering through the decon unit, donning disposable goggles and standing still for our spray of decon mist and the UV light bath.
We pass through a metal detector into a lobby with a marble-tiled floor and a trio of multicolored holograms — two of the human body, and one of a 3D Stapla logo — rotating above projecting pedestals located in the center of the space. A receptionist sits at the front desk, holding up a tablet and scanning the area around her with it.
Nothing about this scene hints at what may even now be happening on the third floor. Memories of my last visit here flash through my mind — the room with the drain in the center of its sloped concrete floor, the chair with arm restraints, Roth’s slap, Sarge’s smile. The pain.
I clench my fists, digging my nails into my palms until it hurts enough to claw myself back to the present.
Quinn reports to the front desk to announce the arrival of intel cadets Dasha, Natalie and Alejandro, being careful to speak without a trace of his usual Irish accent. They’ll realize who we are afterwards, of course, when they scrutinize the security camera footage, but just so long as we don’t raise any suspicions while we’re here, we should get out in one piece.
“Hang on just a sec,” the receptionist says, half standing and angling the tablet around Quinn. “Got it! It came in with you,” she says, smiling widely.
I spin around, alert for trouble, but there’s nothing there.
“What did?” Quinn asks.
“The repbot. Only two hundred points, but it all adds up, you know?”
Our bewilderment must show on our faces, because she says, “It’s the Go! version of The Game. You know — location-based augmented reality? This is only the beta version they gave staff to test, but it’s a-freaking-mazing! I can’t stop playing it. I nearly fell down the stairs yesterday chasing an Alien Axis captain — that would have been two thousand points.”
She giggles, and Quinn and I exchange glances. Maybe she thinks we’re judging her, because her smile fades.
“Just you wait and see. It’s coming out to the public on Halloween — they’ve got a massive launch planned. Once you start playing, you won’t be able to stop either,” she says with a sniff. “It’s totally addictive.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Quinn says.
“Well, you’re on my list, which means they’re expecting you upstairs.” She buzzes someone to announce our arrival and instructs us to take the elevator to the first floor. “Dr. Khan will meet you there.” She pops a piece of antiviral gum in her mouth — no doubt a brand also made by Tasty Plate — picks up the tablet, and resumes her game.
In the elevator, we exchange nervous glances but say nothing. I noticed the fisheye camera up in the corner as soon as I stepped in, and I’m sure Sofia and Quinn would have, too. Besides, we have no last-minute details to clarify or remind each other of, because from here on out, we’re winging it.
If we can break away to check out different areas, snoop through any documents we may find, and try to figure out what they’re up to, then we will. We’ve each got a tiny bug hidden on us, and the plan is to plant the recording devices in different key areas.
The elevator doors open onto a waiting area with a couple of plastic chairs, a water cooler and a coffee machine on a waist-high counter. I quickly scan the walls, ceiling and corners in the immediate vicinity but see no sign of cameras.
A woman in a white medical coat is waiting for us. This must be Dr. Khan. She’s tiny, five foot one at the most, with a thin, severe-looking face and short gray hair.
“Why are there only three of you?” she asks, not bothering with a greeting. “Who’s missing?”
“Tyrone Davis. Apparently he spent the night vomiting and was too sick to be tested,” Quinn says, handing over the forms he took from Chuck. Again, there is no Irish lilt when “Alejandro” speaks. It sounds strange to hear Quinn talk that way.
“I should have been informed. And why are none of you wearing your ID bands?” Khan snaps, glaring down at our bare wrists.
I field this question. “We were told that you couldn’t wear metal in the MRI scanner.”
“Yes, but we remove them here. I don’t like this at all. How do I even know you are who you say you are?” she asks, tilting her head and pinning me with the sharp gaze of her black eyes. She’s like a crow, searching for the softest place to peck.
“Uh …” I can’t think what to say, but Quinn smiles charmingly and says, “Who else would we be?”
“Hmm. I’ll check later.”
Uh-oh.
“Right now I need to get you to your first tests.”
“Natalie? That’s you, is it? You’re up first for the FMRI. Down that hallway, on the right-hand side, you’ll find a changing booth. Everything off please, and into the garments provided. You two, come with me.”
“Bye, Natalie, have an amazing time,” Quinn says.
Amazing. That’s our code word for when we’ve planted a bug.
“I’ll try my best,” I reply.
Dr. Khan marches off in the opposite direction, with Sofia and Quinn in her wake. Behind his back, Quinn crosses his fingers, wishing me a silent good luck.
I spin on my heel and head off down the hallway Dr. Khan indicated. The floors are lined with pale-gray linoleum, and the white walls are studded with framed photographs of beautiful scenes — the seashore at sunset, a fat yellow moon poised behind the Eiffel tower, wild horses galloping along a beach. I think the prints are supposed to make the visitors here feel relaxed, but they only serve to remind me of the freedoms we’ve lost. Again, I don’t see any sign of cameras.
In the changing stall, I remove all my clothing except my facemask and slip into the disposable panties and the cotton gown provided. There are no buttons or zips on the gown — it fastens at the side with cotton ties. There is absolutely nowhere that I could squirrel away the bug I’m supposed to plant, unless I hide it in my mouth, but then it would surely show up on the scan of my head. Besides, it might not work if it got wet. I leave it with my clothes for now. Maybe I’ll get an opportunity later.
A medical technician with zebra-patterned hair comes to fetch me. As we pass down the hallway, I peer into the rooms on either side. Some look like offices with desks, computers and filing cabinets I wish I could search, while others are fitted with examining tables and medical equipment. We stop outside a pair of sliding doors labeled Neuroimaging. Big notices warn that the room beyond is a high magnetic field zone.
“Wait here,” the technician tells me. He sticks his head into the room b
ehind him and says, “Andy, your first customer is ready,” before strolling back up the hall.
“I’ll be right there,” a male voice calls from inside the room.
Chapter 22
Out of bounds
I creep forward to look inside. It’s a long, narrow booth with a glass front overlooking a room dominated by a huge machine, which I assume must be the scanner. A plump man with a comb-over of thin blond hair keys something into a computer in a bank of medical equipment with switches, digital controls and blinking lights. This must be the cubicle where the MRI operators sit, and it would be an excellent place to hide my bug.
With a final keystroke, the man stands up, and I take a quick step back out of sight.
“Oh, hello, there,” he says when he emerges from the room. “You must be Natalie? I’m Dr. Holmgren, your radiologist for today. We’ll be doing an FMRI — a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan —of your brain in just a few minutes.”
He looks me up and down while explaining what to expect and what I’m supposed to do. Then he hands me a face-cleaning wipe, saying, “You’ll need to take off all that pretty makeup. Some brands can heat up unpleasantly in the scanner. Before I take you inside, we need to go through this checklist. Firstly, any metal in that facemask? No? Okay then, are you wearing a pacemaker, or any implants, metal screws, plates, pins, joints, cochlear implants, false teeth?”
“No.”
“Or” — he gives me a sly smile — “an IUD?”
“No.”
“Are you sexually active?”
What the actual? “Excuse me?”
“I need to know if you might be pregnant.”
“I’m not,” I say firmly.
“No watch or ID band, good,” he says, scanning my wrists. “But you can’t go in with that.” He strokes the single silver loop in my right ear, the matching twin of Quinn’s. I jerk my head back from his fingers — this man is giving me the creeps. When I hand him the earring, he drops it into a pocket of his white lab coat, saying, “Remind me to give it back to you before you go — there’s an intercom connecting us, so we can communicate easily. Right, where were we? Any permanent tattoos on your head?”
“No.”
“Any piercings in secret spots I can’t see?” He gives me a knowing look and licks his lips.
“No.”
I feel like I need a shower.
“And, last question, are you claustrophobic?”
I shake my head.
“Then we’re ready to see how your brain is wired and how your blood-flow and oxygenation functions in response to different stimuli,” he says brightly, sliding open the heavy door to the imaging room and leading me inside. “At the end of this, we’ll have a comprehensive brain-print of your neural structure and functioning. And because we also want to monitor your skin conductivity and heart rate to measure your levels of arousal, this needs to go on your finger.” He leers at me as he clamps a monitor on my right forefinger, then picks up a band like the one I had to wear during the polygraph test. “And this goes around your chest.”
“I’ll do it,” I say quickly and fasten the band in place.
“Right, hop onto the bed, and on your back please.” I swear he loads the words with a double meaning.
I climb onto the narrow table protruding from the huge ring of the scanner and lie down on the cool, padded cover, tucking my cotton robe tightly around me so that Dr. Creepy won’t get to see any more of me than he has to. He lifts my left arm and gives the inside crook of my elbow a little tickle and a pat before wiping it with something cold and wet.
Then he holds up a filled syringe and says, “Time for penetration!”
Ugh! It takes everything I have not to run away. I swear, if he touches me anyplace he shouldn’t, I’m going to take him down.
“What is that?” I ask, jerking my chin at the syringe.
“Contrast fluid, for the scan.”
While he injects the contents of the syringe into me, and I feel the burn hitting my veins and traveling up my arm, I distract myself by reviewing the incapacitating moves Charlie taught me back at ASTA. It would give me great pleasure to inflict some grievous bodily harm on this pervert.
“Now the most important thing is for you to lie absolutely still once we begin. No crossing your arms or legs, and no moving, no matter where it itches!” He gives an irritating titter of a laugh. “Oh, and I always insist on protection — it can get quite noisy when the scan begins.” I stuff the foam plugs he hands me into my ears. Unfortunately, they don’t entirely muffle the sound of his voice when he says, “Have fun now. I’ll be watching you every moment, don’t worry.”
He leaves the room, sliding the heavy door closed behind him, and a minute later, the table I’m lying on moves backward, sliding my head deep into the white tube of the scanning ring.
I spend the next half hour lying on my back while the scanner bangs loudly around me. I hold my breath when the doctor instructs me to, and don’t move any part of me except my fingers, which twitch involuntarily from time to time. My contact lenses grow increasingly uncomfortable, and I have to fight the urge to pluck them off my eyeballs and flick them away.
For part of the scan, I’m shown a succession of pictures on the screen above me — first images of day-to-day things like chairs, puppies, trees and refrigerators; then more upsetting pictures of rabid plague victims, mutant rats, a pregnant woman in obviously painful labor, a man wearing a checkered headdress and brandishing a machine gun.
I don’t like watching these, but I can’t turn away, and Holmgren tells me not to close my eyes so, in order to keep myself calm, I fall back on the deep breathing methods I always use to steady my nerves before a sniping shot. I wonder what’s happening in my brain as I view these disturbing images.
Next I’m presented with a series of math problems and incomplete number and picture patterns. Holmgren instructs me to try to calculate the answers in my mind. After that, I watch several scenes taken from The Game — some of coded messages, or a bunch of images where I need to find the common element or predict what will happen next, and then others of scenes where repbots scurry around and Alien Axis soldiers hide behind abandoned trains and cars.
I recognize some of these scenes from ones I’ve played as a sniper. Without intending to, I fall automatically into the old reconnaissance patterns of scrutinizing the environment, searching for targets, and picturing the perfect shot setup. I’m a little shocked at how much I enjoy this part of the scan. I even feel a longing to play The Game again.
The sudden thought that what I’ve just watched might be laced with subliminal ads shocks me out of the pleasantly relaxed state I’d slipped into.
Finally, I’m shown a series of photographs of famous people, including President Hawke. They’re obviously checking how my brain reacts when I see him versus other people I recognize. Are those subliminal pitches for him still working on me?
At last it’s over. The bed emerges from the scanner, and I scramble off and hurry out of the room and back down the hallway before Holmgren can come near me again. Back in the changing booth, I slip into my clothes, and when I inspect my appearance in the mirror and notice what’s missing, I get an idea. I pry the tiny bug out from behind the silver intel badge, switch it on, and carefully peel off the cover to its sticky backing. Then, holding it carefully between my fore and middle fingers, I march back down the hallway to the MRI unit and straight into the operator’s booth.
Dr. Creepy looks up in surprise. “You can’t be in here,” he says, half rising.
“Sorry.” I smile innocently at him. “I forgot to get my earring back.”
He mumbles something indistinct, but fishes it out of his pocket and holds it out to me. As I step forward, reaching out to claim the silver hoop with my left hand, I pretend to trip. I stumble against the control console, steadying myself with my right hand on the edge of the counter, curving my fingers underneath and pressing hard for just a moment. Then I�
�m upright again, murmuring apologies and scampering out of the room.
Mission accomplished.
Quinn and Sofia are already waiting, sipping on cups of coffee, when I get back to the waiting area. Their tests must have been shorter than mine.
“How’d the MRI go?” Quinn asks. His hair looks sticky and is standing up in all sorts of crazy angles.
I’m about to reply when Dr. Khan walks up, checking off something on a clipboard, and I have to rethink what I was about to say.
“Okay, I guess. The scanner was loud and uncomfortable, but the control booth looked amazing,” I say. “Maybe I’ll study radiology one day.”
Khan gives a dismissive snort as if she highly doubts the likelihood of that ever happening. Maybe she’s already seen my results and knows I haven’t got the smarts for a career in medicine.
“How were your tests?” I ask the other two, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
“I didn’t much enjoy the EEG,” Quinn says. “Can’t say I found it amazing at all. They stay with you and videotape you the whole time, and I got a little camera-shy.”
So he didn’t find a way to plant his bug? Sounds like he’s also warning me that I’ll be under constant observation during that test. I take a sip of coffee. It tastes bitter and burnt.
“The computer-based testing wasn’t much fun, either — just working by myself in a boring little room. Not very interesting,” Sofia says, giving her head a miniscule shake.
So she didn’t want to waste her bug on a room where only testing happens?
“Ah, here’s the tech to take you to the CBT room, Natalie. Alejandro, you’ll be doing the FMRI. Wait here — the tech will come back to take you there. Dasha, you come with me to the EEG room.”
“Which way is the bathroom? I need to go,” Quinn says.
“The tech will take you,” Khan replies.
“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve been going alone since I was a little boy.”
I giggle, but Khan is not amused.
“Wait for the tech,” she enunciates. “You are not to go wandering around on your own.”
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 59
