FOUR YEARS AGO
EON—LABORATORY WING
STELL entered the observation room just in time to see a man in a white lab coat crack open Cardale’s chest. The patient was strapped to a steel table, and the surgeon was using some kind of saw, and a collection of clamps and metal pins, and Eli was not only still alive—he was awake.
A mask ran across the EO’s nose and mouth, with a hose connected to a machine behind his head, but whatever it was feeding Eli, it didn’t seem to be helping. The pain showed in every muscle, his whole body tensed against the restraints, the skin around his wrists and ankles white from pressure. A strap held Eli’s head back against the steel table, denying him a view of his own dissection, though Stell doubted he needed to look to know what was happening. Beads of sweat ran down Eli’s face and into his hair as the surgeon widened the cut in his chest.
Stell didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but he hadn’t expected this.
As the surgeon finished sawing through his patient’s sternum and pinned the flesh back, Cardale groaned, the sound low and muffled by the mask. Blood poured out of his open chest, slicking the metal table, the lip of which was too shallow to contain the ceaseless flow. Ribbons of red spilled over the sides, dripping to the floor.
Stell felt sick.
“Remarkable, isn’t he?”
He turned to find an average-looking man tugging off a pair of blood-slicked gloves. Behind round glasses, the doctor’s deep-set eyes were bright, pupils dilated with the pleasure of discovery.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Stell.
“Learning,” said the doctor.
“You’re torturing him.”
“We’re studying him.”
“While he’s conscious.”
“Necessarily,” said the doctor with a patient smile. “Mr. Cardale’s regenerative abilities render any anesthesia useless.”
“Then what’s with the mask?”
“Ah,” said the doctor, “one of my more genius moments, that. You see, we cannot anesthetize him, but that doesn’t mean we can’t dampen his functions a little. The mask is part of an oxygen deprivation system. It reduces the breathable air to twenty-five percent. It’s taking all of his regenerative ability to stave off the damage done by starving the cells, which buys us a bit more time on the rest of the body before it heals.”
Stell stared at Eli’s chest as it struggled to rise and fall. From this angle, Stell could almost see his heart.
“We’ve never come across an EO like Mr. Cardale,” continued the doctor. “His ability—if we find a way to harness it—could revolutionize medicine.”
“EO abilities can’t be harnessed,” said Stell. “They aren’t transferable.”
“Yet,” said the doctor. “But if we could understand—”
“Enough,” said Stell, transfixed by the sight of Eli’s ruined body. “Tell them to stop.”
The doctor frowned. “If they take out the clamps, he’ll heal, and we’ll have to start all over again. I really must insist—”
“What’s your name?”
“Haverty.”
“Well, Dr. Haverty. I’m Director Stell. And I’m officially discontinuing this experiment. Make them stop, or lose your job.”
The sick smile slid from Haverty’s face. He pulled a microphone from the viewing room wall and clicked it on.
“Terminate the session,” he ordered the surgeons still in the room.
The men and women hesitated.
“I said—terminate it,” repeated Haverty curtly.
The surgeons began to methodically remove the various pins and clamps from Eli’s open chest cavity. The moment they were gone, the tension in the EO’s body began to recede. His back sank to the metal table, and his hands unclenched, the color returning to his limbs as his body put itself back together. Ribs cracked into place. Skin settled and fused. The lines of his face smoothed. And his breathing, while still labored (they left the mask on), began to even.
The only sign that something horrific had happened was the sheer quantity of blood left pooling on the table and floor.
“Are you happy now?” grumbled Dr. Haverty.
“I’m a long way from happy,” said Stell, storming out of the observation room. “And you, Dr. Haverty—you’re fired.”
* * *
“PUT your forehead against the wall and your hands through the gap.”
Eli did as he was told, feeling for the break in the fiberglass. He couldn’t see anything—his world had been a mottled black wall since the soldiers had thrown the hood over his head and dragged him from the concrete cell that morning. He knew, before they came, that something was wrong—no, not wrong, but certainly different. Haverty was a man of habit, and even though Eli didn’t have a perfect sense of time, he had a tenuous enough hold to know their last session had ended too abruptly.
He found the gap in the fiberglass, a kind of narrow shelf, and rested his wrists on the lip. A hand jerked his hands farther into the gap, but a few moments later the cuffs came free.
“Take three steps back.”
Eli retreated, expecting to meet another wall, but finding only space.
“Reach up and remove the hood.”
Eli did, assaulted by the sudden brightness of the space. But unlike the sterile overheads of the operating theater, the light here was crisp, and clean, without being glaring. He was facing a floor-to-ceiling fiberglass wall, perforated by holes and interrupted only by the narrow cubby through which he’d placed his hands. On the other side stood three soldiers in head-to-toe riot gear, their faces hidden behind helmets. Two gripped batons—cattle prods, judging by the faint hum, the slight current of blue light. The third was coiling the discarded cuffs.
“What am I doing here?” asked Eli, but the soldiers didn’t answer. They simply turned and left, steps echoing as they retreated. Somewhere a door opened, closed, pressurized, and as it did, the world beyond the fiberglass disappeared, the wall, transparent seconds before, becoming opaque.
Eli turned, taking in his new surroundings.
The cell was little more than a large cube, but after the months he’d spent strapped to various surfaces, sealed in a cell no bigger than a tomb, Eli was still grateful for the chance to move. He traced the perimeter of the cell, counted off the steps, took note of the features and their absences.
He noted four cameras set flush into the ceiling. There were no windows, no obvious door (he’d heard the fiberglass barrier retract into the floor, rise again behind him), only a cot, a table with one chair, one corner fitted with a toilet, sink, and shower. A wardrobe consisting solely of gray cotton lay folded on a floating shelf.
Victor’s ghost ran a hand over the folded clothes.
“And so the angel trades Hell for Purgatory,” mused the phantom.
Eli didn’t know what this place was—only knew that he wasn’t being strapped down, wasn’t being cut open, and that was an improvement. He peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower, luxuriated in the freedom of turning the water on and off, washed away the scents of rubbing alcohol and blood and disinfectant, expecting to see the water at his feet run thick with the grime of a year’s torture. But Haverty had always been meticulous. They’d hosed Eli down every morning, and every night, so the only traces left behind were the scars that didn’t show.
Eli lowered himself onto the cot, pressed his back into the wall, and waited.