Thy Brother's Keeper

by F. Paul Wilson

  “I just spoke to the hospital. Dr. Cannon is in surgery. I can leave a message for her as soon as she gets out.”

  Surgery? Could it be…?

  “Which hospital?”

  “Nassau Community. Do you want me to—?”

  He cut her off and turned to Lowery. “Nassau Community Hospital. You know where it is?”

  “Not a clue. Give me the address and the GPU will—”

  “Right.”

  Luca punched 4-1-1 again. He’d call the switchboard and ask for the address.

  “Why didn’t I see it?” he shouted. “The sim’s in labor! That’s why Cannon’s house was empty. Everyone’s at the hospital. She’s having her baby.”

  Lowery grinned. “And we didn’t bring any cigars.”

  “Yes, we did,” Luca said, patting his HK. “The exploding kind.”

  24

  Romy, capped, masked, and garbed in surgical green, stood between Betsy and Joanna at the stainless steel sink and learned how to scrub. Betsy’s other scrub nurse had begged off, refusing to leave her five-year-old son to open his Christmas presents without her. That left Romy to fill in.

  “Work the lather into the skin,” Betsy was saying, her voice slightly muffled by her surgical mask, “especially between the fingers and around the nails.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Romy said. She was shaking inside. “It’s not the blood or the cutting, it’s just that I’ve never even seen—”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Joanna to her right. “I’ll handle the technical stuff. The most you’ll have to do is hang on to a retractor while—”

  “She’s crashing!” cried an accented voice from the operating room. “Something’s happened!”

  “Oh, God, her uterus!” Betsy said. “It’s ruptured!” She grabbed three packets of sterile gloves and handed them out. “Just put them on! Forget about gowns and sterile procedure. We’ll worry about sepsis later. Right now we’ve got to move or we’ll lose her!”

  The next ten minutes were a crimson-tinged blur through which Romy watched Betsy and Joanna work like a single four-armed organism. Their communication seemed almost telepathic as Joanna would slap an instrument into Betsy’s palm as soon as she thrust out her hand. Romy repressed a cry of anguish as Betsy cut quickly through Meerm’s abdominal wall, releasing a torrent of blood that gushed down her flanks and soaked the table. Joanna said something about a uterine artery and Betsy was calling for suction but Romy’s eyes were locked on the glistening bloody dome of Meerm’s uterus floating in that sea of red. And the surreal aspect of being able to glance up at the TV monitor suspended in a corner and view the scene from a different angle. And then Betsy was cutting into that muscular sack, reaching through the slit and pulling out a limp, bloody, silent baby. She held it up by its feet, slapped it once, then again, and with that the little arms jerked outward and the baby emitted a piercing cry. And then Betsy was clamping and cutting the cord as she called for Zero or Patrick, she didn’t care who, to get down here and take charge of this baby because she needed everyone here to help her stop Meerm’s hemorrhaging before she died.

  Seconds later, Patrick, looking even more frightened than he had after they’d been run off the Saw Mill, stumbled through the doors into the OR.

  “What do I do ?” Patrick said as Joanna deposited the squirming, squalling, scrawny, blood-slippery bundle of baby into his arms. It terrified him. God, what if he dropped it? “I don’t know a thing about babies! I’ve never—”

  “No Butterfly McQueens allowed,” the nurse told him. “Madhuri will talk you through it.” Then she turned back to the furious activity on the operating table.

  Patrick turned to the anesthetist. “Madhuri?”

  “Take it to the table over there,” she replied in a voice that was at once lilting and rapid fire. “There’s a basin of warm water. Rinse it off, wipe it down, and then wrap it tightly in one of the blankets.”

  “But—”

  “Hurry! Get it wrapped up! You don’t want hypothermia! I’d help you but I can’t leave—” She glanced at a monitor and called out, “Heart rate up to one-sixty!”

  Gingerly cradling the slippery baby in his arms, Patrick stepped to the cleaning table and placed it on a towel. And now, as it screamed and thrust out its skinny limbs, he could see that it was a girl. He dipped a towel in the basin of warm water and began wiping away the blood and clinging membranes. This caused an escalation in the wails. She was so small, so fragile looking. He hoped he didn’t rub too hard and break something, but he kept it up, working as quickly as he could. As soon as she was reasonably clean, he found a soft blanket at the rear of the table and wrapped it around her.

  He looked over to Madhuri to ask, Now what? but she was busy hanging a new IV bag, a small, red one, on an IV pole so loaded with infusion bags it looked like a Christmas tree. The baby was still crying so he lifted her into his arms—he felt a little more confident now that she was dry and blanket wrapped—and held her tight against him.

  Amazingly, her wails tapered off. And now that he had a chance to look at her, he marveled at how human she looked. He’d never seen a real live newborn. He’d seen photos, of course; whenever the associates at his old firm had entered fatherhood, they always brought in pictures taken right after birth showing these homely, scrunched-up elfin faces that everyone pronounced beautiful. But this baby was beautiful. Maybe because she hadn’t been extruded through a birth canal. A nice symmetrical face, a tiny nose, little bow lips, a light down of hair on her head but none on her body. Damn, she looked human. More so than some of those associates’ kids.

  He turned to look at the operating table and met Romy’s dark eyes, the only part of her face visible between the cap and the mask.

  “How’s Meerm doing?” he asked.

  Betsy stood next to Romy, and answered without looking up. “I clamped the big bleeder but she’s not out of the woods yet. She damn near bled out. We’ve got packed red cells and volume expanders running full blast, and that should bring her pressure back.”

  “Patrick,” said Zero’s voice over the loudspeaker, “hold up the baby so we can get a good view.”

  Patrick turned, loosened the blanket, and lifted her toward the camera lens pointed his way from the balcony. Zero had got the video system working in time; now he seemed to have mastered it. Patrick glanced at the monitor and saw himself, viewed from above, holding the baby.

  “Boy or girl?” Romy asked as Patrick turned back their way.

  “Girl. A beauty.”

  Betsy’s head snapped up. “A beautiful girl?”

  “A real doll.”

  Patrick saw the confusion in Betsy’s eyes and was framing a question about it when Madhuri began shouting.

  “V-fib! She’s in V-fib!”

  Oh, no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the operating table on the computer screen. You can’t lose her. She just became a mother.

  He watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm’s chest, then applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he’d accessed from the hospital’s security cameras—an easy task once he’d got the hang of the program. Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos—

  Zero stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance. No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they’d been moving fast.

  Most likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement. He couldn’t see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted “FBI” on the back of one of them. He didn’t believe that for an instant. This was SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.

  He glanced at the OR feed—Betsy was still laboring over Meerm’s inert, supine form—then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of
the birth. Almost complete. But now he had to slow the invaders, mislead them, divert them.

  As Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea…

  25

  Luca’s mind raced as he led his men from the emergency area to the lobby. First thing, he had to seal the building and cut off any escape. But for that he needed to know where the exits were, and the place to find out was Information.

  As they stormed into the dimly lit, high-ceilinged lobby he found the reception desk empty; the entire population was two gray-haired ladies and an aging security guard clustered before a TV monitor fixed on a wall. He hurried over to grab the guard but stopped dead when he saw what they were watching.

  Four humans operating on a pregnant sim.

  The guard turned, saw them, and stumbled backward, reaching for his two-way.

  Luca reached out and grabbed his arm. “FBI!” He shouted and pointed to the monitor. “Take us to that operating room!”

  “W-wait,” the guard said. “You can’t just come in here and—”

  Luca squeezed his arm. Hard. “Now!” He shoved him toward a hallway. “Move!”

  As the cowed guard led them toward a bank of elevators, Luca turned to Stritch and pointed toward the old ladies. “You stay here. Keep them away from the phones.”

  Behind his visor Luca repressed a sigh of relief. No need to worry about covering the exits. The baby hadn’t been born yet. No one would be going anywhere until that happened.

  26

  “She is gone,” Madhuri said, her voice an octave lower than usual.

  “No!” Betsy cried. To Romy’s horror, she’d had to watch while Betsy cracked open Meerm’s chest and manually compressed her heart. She was still at it, working like a mad woman. “We’ve still got a chance!”

  “Betsy, she is dead.”

  Romy looked at the anesthetist’s black eyes and noticed they were rimmed with tears. Joanna’s too. Romy knew they mirrored her own. They all knew that Meerm wasn’t coming back.

  She reached across and gently gripped Betsy’s forearms. “She’s right, Betsy. Meerm’s gone. You did your best but—”

  “I should have brought her in sooner!” Betsy wailed. She leaned forward over Meerm’s inert heart, and sobbed. “But I was worried about the baby! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

  “You did all you could,” Romy said, touching the back of her sweat-soaked scrubs. “But she—”

  Zero burst through the OR doors. “We have to go! SIRG just stormed into the lobby, armed to the teeth!”

  “Who’s SIRG?” Joanna said, gaping at Zero’s mask. “And who the hell are you?”

  “A friend,” Betsy said, ripping off her bloody gloves. She’d regained some of her composure but seemed exhausted.

  “And SIRG,” Romy added, feeling her gut clench, “is a group that wants to kill that baby.”

  “Like hell they will!” Joanna cried.

  “Let’s go!” Betsy said. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two at the most before they’re here!”

  “But what about Meerm?” Romy said.

  “We’ll have to leave her.”

  “No—”

  “Romy,” Zero said softly, “I grieve for her as much as you—more than you—but they won’t be interested in Meerm now; they’ll want her baby, and we can’t let them have her.”

  “We’ll take her,” Joanna said. “Madhuri, Betsy, and me. We’ll put her in an isolette and hide her in a motel or something.”

  “What’s an isolette?” Patrick asked. He was still holding the baby and seemed very protective.

  “It’s an incubator of sorts,” Madhuri said. “A special enclosed container we use for preemies. Keeps them safe and warm.”

  “Good idea,” Betsy said. “Since they probably know my car, we’ll leave it here and take one of yours.”

  Joanna said, “We’ll rustle up a portable isolette and meet you at the doctor’s entrance.”

  She and Madhuri bustled off while Betsy and Romy pulled a green sheet over Meerm’s body. As the rest of them hurried out into the hall with the baby, Romy hung back. She rested a hand on the lifeless form beneath the sheet.

  “You never had a chance, did you,” she whispered. “But things are going to change. And whenever people talk about the change, they’ll mention your name.”

  Small goddamn consolation, she thought as she hurried away to catch up to the others.

  27

  Five men in full gear, plus the guard, made for a claustrophobic ride as the elevator crept to the fourth floor. When the doors opened, Luca and his team piled out and followed the guard to the operating suite.

  The old man pointed to a pair of double doors. “The amphitheater’s through there.”

  “That’s where they’re transmitting from?”

  The guard nodded. “But the cameras are upstairs—through that door.”

  “Any other way out?”

  He shook his head.

  Luca ripped the guard’s two-way off his belt and flung it against the tiles of the nearest wall. “Stand over there and don’t get in the way.” He signaled to Lowery. “You and Majesky take the stairs. The rest of you—with me.”

  He depressed the bolt catch release lever on his HK to chamber the first round and stepped toward the doors. He didn’t expect resistance, but it never hurt to be prepared. And besides, he knew of no better attention getter than a three-round burst into the ceiling.

  He kicked open the doors and stepped through. “All right—!”

  Empty. The place looked like a cyclone had ripped through it, but not a soul in sight.

  “What the—?”

  He turned, ready to go out and bang that guard’s head against the wall for sending them to the wrong room when he noticed the shape under the bloody sheet on the table. Three quick steps took him to it. He hesitated, then reached out and pulled it off.

  A dead sim, bloody, carved open from chest to groin. Looked like Jack the Ripper had been at her. He saw the gaping belly, the empty uterus.

  The pregnant sim…this had to be her…but where—?

  Oh, no…oh, no…

  His knees felt gelatinous, his arms weak, the HK a hundred-pound weight in his hands as he turned and saw the TV monitor—where the operation was still in progress…at this table…on this sim…right in this room.

  They’d fooled him…played him for a grade-A-prime sucker…

  He looked up toward the spinning ceiling, saw a camera pointed his way from the balcony.

  “Lowery?” he whispered into his comm mike. “Lowery, what’s going on?”

  A helmeted head popped into view next to the camera. “They’re running a movie of the operation.”

  “Stop it, Lowery,” he said, softly at first but with his voice rising. “Stop it right now!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “Yes, you do, goddamn you!” He was screaming now. “Yes, you fucking well do! Now do it! ”

  “Okay, okay!”

  Luca heard the clinking release of the bolt on Lowery’s submachine gun, followed by one three-round burst, then another. The monitor went blank…

  …but its final image had been Patrick Sullivan holding up a very human-looking baby girl…and Luca remembered how the Sinclairs had feared the birth of a girl…and he also remembered all that crap he’d read about inter- and intragenomic competition…

  I took him a moment to piece it all together, but then suddenly he knew what had terrified them.

  You slimy bastards! After what you did, you had the nerve to look down your noses at me?

  Now more than ever he wanted that baby.

  28

  Racing along the hallway, Romy hung on Patrick’s arm and stared at the baby. She couldn’t take her eyes off that pink, perfect little face.

  “You weren’t exaggerating, Patrick,” Romy told him. “She is truly beautiful.”

  Behind her, she heard Betsy say, “Skip the elevators and take that stairway at the far end of the hall.” Then
in a lower voice to Zero: “I need to talk to you about that baby.”

  The two of them fell behind as Romy and Patrick entered the stairwell and started down. On the ground floor they exited and found themselves at the doctor’s entrance. Joanna and Madhuri were already there with what looked like an oversized clear-topped bread box on wheels.

  “We took the elevator,” Joanna said, eyes wide, “and we saw a SWAT guy in the lobby. He had ‘FBI’ on his back,” Joanna said. “Are we in trouble?”

  “They’re not FBI,” Romy told them, trying to keep the dread out of her voice. They must not get this baby. “They’re dressed-up thugs.”

  Patrick passed the baby to Madhuri who kept her wrapped in her arms as they made the frigid pre-dawn dash across the near empty parking lot to Joanna’s minivan. Patrick loaded the isolette into the rear while Romy helped Madhuri and the baby into the front seat.

  As Joanna started the engine, Romy spotted Betsy hurrying their way. Behind her she saw Zero leaning against the brick wall outside the doctor’s entrance. Her heart twisted. His posture was strange, as if he was sick.

  “Is something wrong with Zero?” she asked Betsy as she arrived.

  “He’s a little upset. I don’t have time to explain now. He can tell you. If you need us we’ll be at—”

  Romy raised a hand. “Don’t say it. Better if we don’t know. That way they can’t make us tell.”

  Betsy’s face blanched. She nodded, then hugged Romy. “Get the hell out of here before they find you.”

  The three women and the baby roared off.

  Romy watched for a few heartbeats, praying for the baby’s survival, then Patrick was tugging on the sleeve of her scrubs.

  “Romy. Let’s move.”

  Zero reached the van a few seconds before they did. He pulled off his ski mask as he climbed into the rear seat, moving like an arthritic old man.

  “Will you drive, Patrick?” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.