Out Through the Attic

by Quincy J. Allen

  “Not much … just that you have a room full of comatose infants and that you need some outside expertise. I’m afraid that I don’t know much else.”

  “Good,” he said as he peered at Dr. Hayes. Chrys raised her eyebrow. “I mean, it’s good that you may be able to help the children. I must admit, we’re a bit stumped here. A fresh set of eyes will certainly do us some good.” Drake paused and focused his attention on Chrys to the point of making her feel almost uncomfortable. “I’m curious, did you glean any more information about Atlantis on your trip?”

  “I beg your pardon?” The question surprised her.

  “Atlantis.” There was the stiff grin again. “Did you learn anything new?” He asked the question as if it was perfectly natural that he knew where she had been and what she was doing there.

  Chrys got the message, and she understood why Hayes was suspicious of the man. She kept her response level. “Not really. Just some rumors of a ship that had found something but got lost at sea.”

  “Pity. What a remarkable find that would be, yes?”

  Chrys paused deliberately and then let a slim smile break on her face. “Yes, it would,” she offered quietly, and the conversation hit a dead spot.

  “Jim,” Hayes started, breaking the silence. “How about I show Doctor Sarantos to her apartment? She can get freshened up, and then we’ll show her the lab and her new patients.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll see you both at the lab in … say … two hours?”

  “We’ll see you there,” Hayes confirmed. He put his arm around Chrys’ shoulder and led her into the building with Drake close behind. They passed through a rotating glass door. Hayes and Chrys approached a security desk while Drake approached a glass airlock. Drake slid an ID card over a reader and pressed his palm to a glass plate. A light on the panel turned green, and the door before him slid open. He stepped in and then cycled through the airlock, disappearing down a hallway out of sight.

  “Gary, set Miss Sarantos up with a Level 5 ID for the Danaë project, please,” Hayes said to the guard behind the counter.

  “Of course. I’ll need your auth, sir,” Gary said, placing a portable reader on the counter. The guard nodded to Dr. Hayes and then turned to Chrys. “We’ve already got most of your data set up, but some things we just can’t fudge.” He smiled warmly at her. “Could I see your ID as well?”

  “Danaë?” she asked, looking at Hayes as Gary typed some information quickly into his terminal. “As in the woman who consorted with Zeus and bore Perseus?” Chrys pulled out her passport and a government ID she’d received when she started working for the U.N. The guard reviewed both, took a close look at Chrys and nodded.

  Hayes passed his own ID card over the reader and then pressed his palm upon it. “You don’t miss much, do you?” Hayes grinned and gave her a sidelong glance.

  “I’m Greek. That story is practically a nursery rhyme.”

  The guard nodded. “Miss Sarantos, would you please place your hand on the reader and hold still?” She did as instructed, and he nodded a few seconds later. There was the sound of something sliding out of a printer. He reached below the desk and retrieved her card, promptly handing it to her. “Please keep this with you at all times when you are in the facility, and report its loss or theft immediately. She took the card and looked a little wide-eyed at Dr. Hayes.

  “Security is pretty tight around here, but it has to be,” Hayes offered. “Come on. I’ll show you to your room.”

  They made their way to the airlock Drake had gone through, and Dr. Hayes indicated that she should use her card. She slid it, set her hand on the reader, and waited. The green light appeared, and the door opened. She cycled through and waited for Dr. Hayes on the far side. Without a word, they walked down a narrow hall to a bank of elevators where Hayes repeated the card and palm process. “Pretty much every door you’ll go through here will have one of these.”

  “Is all this security really necessary?” she asked as the door slid open.

  “The separate teams don’t know what each other is working on, and considering what we’re working with and how it’s evolved, I’d say it’s definitely necessary.”

  “So, when do I find out what’s going on?”

  “I’ll give you a full briefing when we get to the lab. But first, take some time and relax. These may be the last two hours you get to yourself for a while.”

  “You keep pretty busy here then?”

  “We get a new subject every day, sometimes two, and the data keeps mounting.”

  “Every day?” she asked, shocked and thinking about three-hundred infants in comas.

  “Yeah,” he said a bit sadly and hit the three on the elevator panel. “And those are just the ones we hear about that survive.” Hayes’ face brightened somewhat. “I meant to ask you, before Drake beat me to the punch back there, how is your Atlantis research going? Still spending all of your off-hours in pursuit of that fairy tale?” He nudged her in the arm with his elbow and chuckled. She’d developed her fascination for Atlantis as a child, and it had turned into a full-blown obsession in adulthood. At Harvard, there wasn’t a professor of hers, including Hayes, that she didn’t hen-peck about anything they knew or anyone they might know who had done any research on it.

  “I am, and it’s no fairy tale.” She slugged him gently in the arm as she laughed defensively. “I was serious when I told Drake about the ship. Only last year a deep dive crew claimed to have found something in the middle of the Med. I was in Greece researching their story when you called me. It turns out the whole crew was lost at sea during a storm.”

  “The mystery deepens …” Hayes said in a mock-sinister tone.

  “It certainly does, but I’m convinced more than ever that it did exist, and somewhere in the Mediterranean basin, not the Atlantic.”

  Hayes smiled like an understanding father. “Of course, Chrys. I’m sure you’ll find it someday.” His eyes full of laughter, he couldn’t have been more playfully condescending, and she didn’t miss it.

  “Laugh all you want, Doctor Cynic.”

  He started chuckling as the door opened upon a sterile-looking hallway lined with doors and palm readers spaced every twenty feet or so along the outside. “Yours is 317, around the corner to the left.”

  “You aren’t coming?” she asked. “I was hoping we could … um … catch up.” She emphasized the last two words, trying to hint that she wanted more explanation of what might be going on.

  His tone was very friendly as he spoke, but his face was worried as he shook his head almost imperceptibly, “Oh, no. We’ll have plenty of time for that … perhaps at dinner. Go get settled in and come up to the fourth floor in about two hours.” He mouthed the words NOT NOW and stepped back into the elevator. “I’ll see you shortly.” The door closed, and she was alone. She turned, made her way to 317, placed her hand on the reader and heard the door click. Pushing it open, she discovered a spartan, hotel-like room with a queen bed, desk, sofa, chair, TV, and small refrigerator, but no artwork or knick-knacks. There was a kitchenette of sorts and, immediately inside the door, a bathroom with a fairly spacious bathtub. Her suitcase already lay on the bed. She closed the door behind her and contemplated what sort of predicament she might be in. The nausea she’d felt in the limo came back with a vengeance.

  

  The steel airlock cycled open, and she stepped out into a glass-lined control room full of life monitors, computers, paper readouts stacked in piles and the figures of Hayes, Drake and a man she didn’t recognize leaning over one of the screens. What lay beyond the glass made Chrys gasp. The lighting was dim in the large, windowless, almost warehouse-like room beyond, and overhead spotlights dotted evenly across the ceiling pierced the gloom with shafts of light glaring down on row upon row of babies in clear plastic bins. Each infant had an IV bag suspended above it, and several people wearing biohazard suits moved from baby to baby, drifting from light to darkness to light again like ghosts in a forest. S
he clutched her iPad to her chest and simply stared at the children beyond. Her heart went out to them all, and a rush of both compassion and sadness filled her. She prayed she would be able to help, for their sake.

  The three men turned. “Ah, Dr. Sarantos, come take a look at this,” Dr. Hayes said as he held out his hand. Chrys approached and stared down at the screen they were looking at. It was the bio-readout of one of the subjects. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

  Chrys set her iPad down and began reviewing the data of patient 0002, and the data appeared to be a live feed from the subject. She heard the strange man lean in and whisper something in Drake’s ear. She ignored it as she sorted through EKG, brainwave, blood counts and other data, including potassium, serotonin, and oxygen levels. “I’d say that’s the readout of a fairly normal, healthy baby.”

  “Agreed,” Hayes said. He touched some buttons on the screen and pulled up a different readout. “And what about this one?” The data was for the same patient, but the readouts were very different. The brainwave patterns were sporadic, with spikes of chaotic activity and then periods of calm indicative of a comatose infant. The blood and other key indicators depicted a child surviving on IV nutrition alone. It was dated three days before.

  “And this is the same child?” she asked. Hayes nodded solemnly while Drake and the other man eyed her carefully. “Remarkable improvement. So, what did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Hayes said slowly. “And their bodies have prevented the IV fluids from flowing into their bodies for almost three days now. They’ve also stopped defecating and urinating.”

  “That’s impossible.” Chrys stared down at the data, searching for some factor, some reason that would explain such results. There was nothing. “They should be dying or dead, not stable.”

  “You’ll find that subject 0001 is an anomaly in brainwave activity, and we’re researching that pretty heavily,” the stranger said quietly, “but we still don’t have any answers. “They’re essentially independent from us, Dr. Sarantos, and we’re very concerned.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chrys said in her best saccharine-sweet voice, holding out her hand. “We haven’t been introduced,”

  Drake interjected, “Dr. Sarantos, this is Benjamin Graebel. He handles the … administrative aspects of our acquisition of the children.”

  “That’s right,” Graebel said with what Chrys realized were emotionless eyes, reminding her of a shark’s glassy orbs. “It’s very delicate business and has to be handled perfectly every time, or there’d be unwanted, perhaps even dangerous attention placed on this project.”

  “Acquisition? How do you acquire children?” Chrys suddenly felt very uneasy about the man and his methods.

  “I’m afraid that’s classified.” His voice was silky-smooth, and the phrase rolled out of his mouth with the ease of casually repetitive use. “Suffice it to say that newborns who show signs of the sickness—when they come to our attention—are treated with the greatest of care and brought here.”

  “What of the families?” Chrys asked, concern growing in her voice. “The mothers and fathers …. Are they brought here as well? This lab seems fairly isolated.”

  “As I said, that’s classified, but it’s all done with the best interests of National Security and the families in mind.”

  Chrys took a deep breath to tell Graebel what she thought of “National Security,” but she felt Hayes’ hand on her arm, and he squeezed as he spoke. “Perhaps you and I should go over the data, Dr. Sarantos. I can get you familiar with all the particulars regarding our subjects’ conditions before and after the recent event, and you can begin forming your own hypotheses.” She looked at him, wanting to say more, but his eyes implored her to acquiesce.

  “Of course, Dr. Hayes,” she finally said. “If at all possible, I’d like to see the whole body of data on the first and the most recent infants to succumb, geographical data on where all cases have occurred thus far and the bio-readouts for every child for the past two weeks. I’ll need to get my iPad connected to your network so that I can access the data.”

  “Err … about your iPad,” Drake said slowly. “Unfortunately, we don’t permit Wi-Fi enabled devices in our projects. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not negotiable, Mr. Graebel. This iPad is how I do my work, and in my hands, it’s a very effective tool. So, either you’ll have to make amendments to your policy, or you can escort me out of the building right now.”

  “Excuse me?” Graebel said, his face drifting from a pale hue to one more akin to blood. Hayes’ eyes got wide in shocked surprise, and Drake raised an almost impressed eyebrow.

  “You know perfectly well that my security clearance is far from a thing in question, and if I’ve deduced accurately the nature of your work here … and your personality … then I’m certain that a man like you could have this device on your radar in a matter of hours … if that long. Rest assured, I do not transmit or walk away with restricted information, and you are welcome to place me in shackles the moment I do. Call Marsha Carson. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. She’s the Secretary of Homeland Security. We roomed together at Harvard.” Her tone was steely but still, technically, within the realm of cordial. It was also indicative of an adamantine resolve. “That should satisfy your National Security, should it not, Mr. Graebel?”

  There was a chasm of silence, and Graebel was about to speak, but Drake started laughing. “Bravo, Dr. Sarantos. Well put.” He turned to Graebel. “Ben, I think we can afford to make some accommodations here.” Drake’s eyes narrowed slightly as he sized Chrys up, calculating, and ended at a satisfactory conclusion. “Dr. Sarantos is imminently qualified to help us here, and the risk, as she so eloquently put it, is minimal.”

  “But …” Graebel started.

  “I said make it happen. No need to call Secretary Carson. Wouldn’t you agree?” Drake placed his hand on Graebel’s shoulder and turned him towards the door. He gently escorted Graebel to the lock, and it cycled open. Turning back to Hayes and Sarantos, he said, “We’ll make sure the technical aspects of your request are taken care of. A technician will be up here shortly to attend to your device. Now, we’ll leave you to your work.” He ushered Graebel through the airlock, and it closed behind them.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Dr. Hayes said in disbelief. “You need to be more careful with that man, Chrys.” He lowered his voice. “If the disappearances are what I think they are, then he’s more dangerous than you think.”

  “You should have known I wouldn’t kowtow to a man like that. And you better be straight with me about how that son-of-a-bitch is acquiring babies.”

  “So, you’re staying?” he asked, raising a knowing eyebrow, confident he’d hooked her.

  “You couldn’t drag me away at this point. Neither could Graebel.”

  It was Hayes’ turn to guide Chrys by the shoulder. But, rather than going through the door, they went to the table in the middle of the room and sat down. Hayes rubbed the back of his neck, looking very uncomfortable and not a little embarrassed about the topic of acquisition. He started at the beginning.

  

  Chrys sat in bed, her iPad in her lap, and mulled over everything she’d seen and heard that day. It was difficult to fathom. Her finger scrolled through the bio-readouts of all three-hundred remaining infants, but she wasn’t really paying attention as she considered the ethical implications of what they—now we—were doing. When Graebel said they had acquired the babies, he wasn’t kidding, but Hayes made a good case for the legality if not the morality of it. The pandemic, and it was a pandemic, had started roughly eighteen months earlier.

  The CDC had received reports from across the country of babies being born and immediately showing signs of severe distress: screaming to the point of oxygen deprivation, flailing their limbs as if in seizure and hemorrhaging from their eyes and ears. The symptoms remained unabated regardless of treatment. Shortly thereafter, the infants would simply
die. Some months later a number of them slipped into comas, showing severely erratic brain activity, with spikes and lulls that no one had ever seen before. Most of the infants had been kept on life-support for months but eventually allowed to die. There were even incidences of the affliction appearing to be communicable, but neither the attending physicians nor the CDC were able to discern any biological pathogen or anomaly: no virus, no chemical disorder, nothing. That’s when the CDC stepped in and began acquiring the babies. They feared an increase in the communicability of the affliction and, after acquiring the infants, isolated them, and brought them to Applegate, notifying the parents that the babies had expired.

  Chrys pulled up the latest brain scan data for subject 0002 on her iPad. It was a stable, rhythmic cycle of brain activity that showed no signs of distress. She accessed the data for subjects 0003, 0004 and 0005. All of them appeared stable, consistent with a healthy infant. As she added additional subject data, laid out in a grid on the screen, something caught her eye. They were all perfectly consistent and, remarkably, appeared to be in perfect synchronization. Such a result was impossible, but the time-stamps were spot-on.

  She needed to view the current scans, so she tapped into the lab’s monitors and began assembling a grid of the live data for the same infants. Every pattern was identical and cycled in perfect unison, down to the second. She stifled a gasp and began adding more and more infants to the mix. It was as if she was looking at multiple views of the same brain pattern. She added subject 0001 and immediately saw the anomaly Hayes had mentioned. The pattern for 0001 was out of sync, and there appeared to be a significantly higher level of brain activity.