"Mr. Drake. Can you hear me?"
"Spikes in the temporal lobe."
Drake opened his eyes carefully, looking around.
He was lying on his back in a haze of soft light that gradually came into focus, resolving itself into a small, tentlike room with a plastic ceiling and plastic curtains for walls. Three figures in HAZMAT suits were looking down at him, talking back and forth over their internal radios, but it was hard to tell what they were saying. One of them leaned closer and he could see his reflection on his visor.
"One-fifty over ninety-seven."
Drake hardly recognized himself. Shaved bald, his face sunburned and peeling, he had a nasogastric tube hanging out of his left nostril and a dozen sensor pads attached to his scalp and temples. His arms were bandaged, his wrists and legs strapped down, a bag of saline solution and a bottle of blue liquid dangling from an IV tree next to his cot. Green waveforms danced across an EEG monitor on the other side of the room. A ventilation machine hummed in the background, the plastic walls bulging in around him.
"Ten cycles and falling."
An isolation tent. He was lying in a negative-pressure isolation chamber built with laminated drapes hanging from an aluminum frame. Shadows passed by outside, people talking, machines beeping, a woman babbling and thrashing around in another chamber. Her voice sounded familiar. He could hear the chop of a helicopter winding down somewhere—shouts and radio static—the patter of sand blowing against a metal wall. Then the scene blurred—growing darker—fading like a dream inside a dream.
"Delta waves. Lost him again."
"Increase the drip rate, please."