Charlie and Gabriella went to Milan with the two Tibetan women, the only others on their team who spoke fluent Italian. Julio traveled with them, mostly because Charlie wanted to reward the kid with a day out. When they boarded the express train, Charlie guided Gabriella into a seat separated from the other three. With the train’s rumble masking his words, he sketched out an idea that had come to him while working with the techies that morning. He needed the entire train ride to explain what he had in mind to keep them safe, mostly because his plans were less than half formed. Gabriella listened with quiet intensity, her gaze holding the electric quality of a million unspoken thoughts. He finished just as they entered Milan’s grimy perimeter.
Gabriella stared at him a long moment, then said simply, “Thank you, Charlie.”
“It’s a long way from complete.”
“You have given me hope. For today, that is complete enough.”
They all crammed into one SUV taxi because Charlie did not want to split them up. As they drove along rain-swept city streets, Gabriella explained how Milan had two universities. Her father had taught philosophy at the Statale, or state university. One of her proudest memories was of her mother walking Gabriella around her late father’s department, using Gabriella’s new title for the first time. Her daughter, the professor. Gabriella related how beautifully painful it had been, seeing the affection her father’s colleagues still held for him eleven years after he had died.
Charlie and the others were so caught up in this tale they did not notice what awaited them until Julio jerked in the taxi’s front seat and said, “Dude, who set off the riot?”
The Statale’s main building was fronted by that rarest of prizes in downtown Milan, a lawn. The structure itself resembled a palace turned the color of oiled bronze by the rain. A forest of umbrellas and slickers pressed across the lawn and ascended the front steps and crammed the building’s doorways. It was impossible to guess the number because of the umbrellas and the poor light. But there had to be hundreds.
Dor Jen asked, “Who are they?”
“Your techies said we’d be meeting some of your former subjects and maybe a few interested new people,” Charlie said.
Gabriella said, “There must be some mistake.”
As Charlie opened his umbrella and sheltered Gabriella rising from the car, an Italian version of the universal geek came rushing up. He wore baggy camouflage pants, rectangular glasses, and a tattered raincoat. His sandals slapped the puddles as he ran. Two Brazilian wish bracelets jiggled on his bony wrists. He offered Gabriella a goofy grin and gibbered like he was meeting a movie star. He handed her a mini microphone and a fanny pack.
Charlie had once accompanied a mega rock star on a tour of China. The Chinese security had been so menacing, the teenage hordes had remained very subdued. But the underlying tension had remained, quietly seething and waiting for an excuse to explode.
Their entrance into the building was exactly like that, only wetter.
Julio asked softly, “Bro, how you aim on protecting anybody in this?”
The answer was, Charlie couldn’t. But as he scanned the crowd, the last thing he sensed was danger. Then again, he could be reading the whole thing wrong.
The building’s foyer was a single mass of compressed flesh. Even so, the crowd squeezed back far enough to grant them passage. The lobby was maybe two hundred feet wide and half as long, and so quiet Charlie could hear his wet shoes squeaking over the marble tiles. When hands reached toward Gabriella, Charlie said mildly, “Don’t stop. Not for anything.”
The conference hall was a downward slope from the rear entrance to the podium. The passage was cramped by people crouched upon tiny foldout seats that cut the stairs’ width in half. The applause and the whistles started as they appeared in the doorway and continued as they made their way to the front.
Midway down, Charlie noticed a movement behind them and said to Julio, “Go back and keep any more people from entering. We can’t let them seal off the exit.”
“Dude, in case you didn’t notice, I don’t speak the lingo.”
“Do your best.”
By the time they reached the front, Gabriella was flushed and could not stop smiling. She tried to tuck her hair back into place and told Charlie, “I never expected anything like this.”
Her mike was still on, and the result was a burst of laughter from those who understood English.
Charlie reached over and covered the lapel mike with his palm. “Short and sweet. We don’t know if we’re safe, or if so, for how long.”
That sobered her. “Should I tell them what has happened?”
“This is your crowd and your call. But I’d say, absolutely.”
“Dor Jen, will you translate for Charlie? I want him to understand what is going on.” Gabriella stepped to the center of the stage.
Charlie stood by the podium’s side stairs and gave the auditorium a constant visual sweep. Dor Jen slipped up beside him and quietly interpreted as Gabriella first apologized for being out of touch, then explained about the unexpected danger they had faced, the need to flee Florida, and the uncertainty regarding precisely when they would resume testing. She spoke with the calm ease of a professional speaker, though her face remained flushed and her hands trembled slightly. She then said she needed to pose a few questions to her former test subjects, and asked for those in the audience who had successfully taken part in her experiments to raise their hands. She asked everyone else to please remain silent, and when she was done she would answer a few questions.
All the while, Charlie kept trying to get his head around what he was witnessing.
He had protected his share of stars in music and film and politics. He knew the fractious hunger that fame could produce. But this was something else entirely.
The students were young and intelligent and mostly beautiful in a scraggly student manner. They did more than listen. They breathed with her. There was something Charlie could only describe as brightness.
He stared out over the auditorium, back to where Julio stood by the entrance, keeping the faces crammed in the doorway from moving inside. Beyond that, Gabriella’s voice resonated through unseen speakers to hundreds more. And he realized, this was it.
The reason why the enemy could not leave them alone.
Right here.
Watching this mass of students drinking in every word Gabriella spoke, Charlie knew he was staring into the face of change.
When Gabriella asked for questions, every hand in the audience shot up. A thousand voices clamored for attention. Again, there was no sense of threat. Only hunger. Raw, yearning, desperate.
But the threat was there, Charlie was certain of it. Maybe the gun wasn’t aimed. Perhaps it was not even in this room. But the menace was real enough for Charlie to walk over and say, “We need to be leaving.”
Obviously a good percentage of the audience understood English, because their clamor only became stronger. Gabriella stared at him. Charlie showed as much concern as he could via his eyes only, backed away, and mouthed, Five minutes.
When Gabriella addressed the crowd again, Dor Jen translated, “She is saying that they will begin new trials as soon as it becomes safe to bring subjects into the lab, and when they have established where the lab will be. Because time is so limited, Gabriella says only those who have been test subjects should ask questions.”
A unified sigh of resignation rushed through the hall. Almost all the hands dropped. The students’ regret was a palpable force.
Gabriella called on a woman. She came to her feet in a series of jerky motions. As soon as she started talking, Gabriella stiffened in alarm. She looked over at him. Then back to the woman.
Charlie said to Dor Jen, “What is she saying?”
“This woman, she has done a bad thing. Before, she studied finance here at the university. Now she works for a brokerage. When she ascended, she looked forward at what was going to happen inside the markets.”
Charlie said, “Hang on a second. She was ascending without anybody’s help?”
Gabriella must have been thinking the same thing, for she shot Charlie a startled look. The woman asked something, which Dor Jen translated as, “She cannot ascend anymore. She asks Gabriella how to break free.”
Gabriella responded with a soothing sorrow. She started to gesture toward Charlie, then caught herself and turned the motion into an open-handed shrug.
The woman who had asked the question was crying openly now. Her fingers clutched at whatever was in reach. Her sweater. The strap of her purse. The seat back in front of her. The air before her chest.
Dor Jen translated, “How was she supposed to know she could not use it for her own gain? This was, after all, her profession. This seemed a logical step.”
Gabriella looked at Charlie and said in English, “We cannot help you.”
The woman responded in Italian. The crowd remained silent, totally absorbed. Dor Jen translated, “She has given all the money she made from looking ahead to charity. She will not do it again. She asks for the key. She feels that her life is a prison now.”
Gabriella waited until the woman had finished, then said very softly, “Coraggio.”
The woman seated herself and wept into her hands.
Gabriella answered a few more questions. Charlie was about to walk over and shut things down when a young man rose and began speaking. Whatever he said now caused Dor Jen to stiffen in alarm.
The student was tall for an Italian. Charlie put his height at well over six feet. He spoke with a tenor’s bell-like quality. At center stage, Gabriella appeared to stop breathing.
Dor Jen translated, “They are elevating without guidance. They ascend and they are meeting.”
Charlie realized how shaken Gabriella had become by what the guy was saying. He walked across the stage and whispered, “Everything okay here?”
Gabriella did not bother to cup the mike. “We did not plan for this. We did not imagine. They have moved beyond our protocol and are writing their own experiment. And we cannot find a safe place to monitor what is happening!”
The audience seemed to gather its breath, watching the professor talk to a man she had not introduced, a stranger whose density compacted the room’s illumination. Charlie looked out at the student and thought, Those kids will be lucky to survive the night.
He said, “Ask them how many they are.”
The young man called back in English, “So far, we are seven.”
“May I?” Charlie unclipped the mike from Gabriella’s lapel. The cord remained attached to the battery pack in her pocket, which kept him close enough to hear her choked swallow. He asked, “Are the others here?”
In response, five others rose to their feet around the auditorium, while one hand waved wildly over Julio’s head.
“Let her in,” Charlie said, and waited until the young woman squeezed past the others jamming the doorway. “Do you all speak English?”
When several called back a negative, he handed the mike over to Gabriella. “Tell them they are in extreme danger.”
“What?”
“This is real, Gabriella. Tell them they have to leave with us now. Tell the others not to meet together like this until we have managed to contain the threat. Ask the seven if any are married or have children.” He managed a slightly easier breath when the response was a universal negative. “Thank everyone for coming. We are all leaving now.”