XIII

Lieutenant Commander Sparkman raced down the fifteenth-
floor corridor. Her knuckles drained of color as she gripped the gurney’s metal sides and braced herself. Her decades of military training hadn’t prepared her for this, couldn’t have prepared her for this. They had nearly arrived at the lab. Its gleaming metal doors were only two turns ahead. Two hundred paces to the first turn, seventy to the second, and a final one hundred and fifty to the lab. Four hundred and twenty paces until they reached the place where all of this had begun. It was the only place Sparkman could hope to fix what they had done—what the Doctor had done.

The gurney jerked to the right and then left. Sparkman’s strawberry blond braid slapped her cheek and her fingers cramped as she took the first turn and the gurney careened into the wall.

Aubrey Masters was waking up. Again.

Sparkman grunted as she regained control and guided the gurney away from the wall and the small dent and gray streak that would, no doubt, be fixed by the end of the day. Instinctively, Sparkman glanced over her shoulder. No one would come running. The Doctor would make sure of that.

Sparkman’s nostrils flared as she blew out a breath. Only three hundred paces.

She stared down at the little girl she’d been tasked to kidnap from the Long Term Care Unit. He had told her that it wasn’t kidnapping. It was taking back what was rightfully his.

Aubrey’s delicate features twisted and she let out a pained whine as she pulled against the plastic binding her wrists and ankles. Sparkman’s heart surged up her throat. She had seen a lot in her years as a Key Corp military officer. Humans, the depth and breadth of their capacity for cruelty, no longer amazed her. But Patient Ninety-Two was different. Aubrey was innocent. An eight-year-old girl. A child. How could the Doctor do this?

Aubrey’s whine grew piercing, a clarion call that rattled Sparkman’s bones. The Lieutenant Commander squeezed the metal bars until her hands ached and took inventory of the container of prefilled syringes she’d brought down with her. She’d started with five. There was only one left.

Aubrey’s high-pitched squeal ended as suddenly as it had begun. Then, nothing. No jerking movements so powerful they sent the gurney careening and Sparkman struggling to keep up. Instead, Aubrey Masters went silent, motionless. Her expression placid and serene.

Sparkman’s braid slid down her shoulder as she, too, relaxed. She flipped it back behind her and maneuvered the gurney around the second corner. The lab was at the end of the hall. The last door on the right. One hundred and fifty paces ahead.

Aubrey’s chest lifted and her stomach puffed with air. Her small feet twitched and her tiny hands gripped the bedding as she sucked in ragged breath after ragged breath.

Adrenaline ripped through Sparkman’s veins and she took off. The one hundred and fifty paces flew beneath her and the gurney in a blur of white tile. She halted just before the entrance to the lab and squeezed her boxy frame between the gurney and the door. As she slid her cuff under the scanner and waited for the door to slide open, the hairs on the back of her neck bristled. Sheets rustled behind Sparkman, and Aubrey’s breathing changed. It now slipped out of her as smooth and easy as the ocean swept against the shore.

Sparkman pressed her fists together, cracking each of her knuckles, as she turned. Aubrey’s plastic handcuffs hung limply from the bed as she sat at the head of the gurney, knees pulled to her chest and secured by thin arms. The neck of her hospital gown sagged down around her bare shoulders and she shivered as she buried her chin against her legs.

Sparkman’s jaw slacked and her stomach clenched as Aubrey blinked up at her. A band of violet ringed the girl’s pupils.

“Tell the Doctor,” Patient Ninety-Two lifted her chin so as not to muffle her words. “Tell the Doctor they’re coming.”

The door hissed open behind Sparkman as Aubrey Masters collapsed against the gurney.