Thomas points at the front entrance of King’s Borough Hospital.
“I picked this place because they’re noted for having an especially serene and secure psych ward,” Thomas says.
I pull up in front of the Emergency Room doors. Thomas and I get out and open up the back of the van.
Mikey can’t keep his feet under him, so we sling each of his arms around the backs of our necks and drag him toward the doors.
“Sure you don’t want to just leave him here with a note pinned to his shirt?” asks Thomas as the doors slide open for us.
“Thomas, come on. We owe it to him to at least take him inside.”
The waiting room is standing room only. People are moaning and calling out, kids are crying, phones are ringing but going unanswered.
“Let’s just find a nice quiet corner and put him down and then get the heck out of here,” Thomas says.
We lower Mikey into an empty wheelchair parked next to a wall of pamphlets about infectious diseases, and just as we turn to leave, we hear a voice behind us. A not-to-be-trifled-with kind of voice. The only people who have voices like that are nurses and guards in maximum-security prisons—and I should know.
“Nuh-uh-uh,” the woman says, checking Mikey’s pupils with the kind of mini flashlight that nurses used to poke into my eyes on a daily basis. “The only place you can drop and go is the morgue.” She shoves a clipboard at me and adds, “Fill this out. I’ll let you know what’s wrong with your friend when I can. You can wait in the cafeteria if you want.”
Thomas opens his mouth to protest, but I hook my arm around his, coupling us together like two train cars. As soon as the nurse turns away, I ditch the clipboard on an empty chair and pull Thomas toward the signs for the cafeteria, dodging the flow of patients and nurses and doctors, all of whom seem to be having the worst night of their lives.
“Let’s just take a few minutes to rest and process everything before we decide where to go from here,” I say.
“Fine,” grumbles Thomas. “Guess we can get a closer look at Larry’s little fan site while we catch our breath.”
“But we don’t have the laptop—”
Thomas produces a smartphone from his tuxedo pocket.
“Where did you get that?”
“From someone at the amusement park who wasn’t paying close enough attention to his back pocket.”
“Seriously? Mikey was about to leap to his death and you took the time to pickpocket somebody?”
“You have your skill set, I have mine.”
We follow the signs to the cafeteria one floor up. They seem to have closed down except for one small display case of granola bars, candy, and a bowl of bruised fruit. Most school lunchrooms have more panache than this place.
Thomas puts the phone in my hand. “Sit down and have a look at that Larry and Polonius site while I get us some coffee and something to eat.”
I look down at the screen and read. Within two minutes, I’m blinking fiercely, fighting to focus. Reading lines from Shakespeare plays is not exactly the best way to stay alert in the middle of the night.
Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular: what have you,
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?
I can hear Larry’s voice reciting these words to me. When did this happen? Am I just imagining it?
Each memory modification procedure was the same. I would talk to Larry, the hours would pass and the drill would bore deeper into my brain, and then it would be over and I’d be returned to my room to spend a couple days under mild sedation, strapped to my bed so I wouldn’t accidentally pull out any of the tubes or wires. I hated that feeling of being paralyzed, lost in a twilight of confusion while people would come and go. Nurses would take my vitals and then leave the room without saying a word. It was almost like being dead.
The moments, the days all blended together, nothing distinct. Weeks would pass and then it would be time for another session. And now I’ve got to put myself back there again and relive it.
Larry’s voice is suddenly vibrant in my mind as I read the words on the screen.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.
I can hear the sound of the drill in the background. I can smell the Betadine antiseptic and feel the straps around my chest. Larry’s voice has weight to it, each word penetrating my mind like the needles sinking deep into my brain tissue.
—to thine own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Act 40, scene 46.08, line 73.59
A none-too-gentle tap on my shoulder startles me.
I straighten up fast, gripping the sides of the table. Standing in front of me is a very concerned-looking Thomas with a tray in his hand.
“You had me worried. I said your name a couple times and you didn’t respond.”
“I was just thinking. Or sleeping. Or something in between. I feel like there’s something teasing me about these quotes, but I can’t figure it out.”
“Ah, Larry. Man of a thousand mysteries.” He sets a tray down in front of me. “I brought you coffee and some sort of . . . old-people food. It’s pudding. I think. Or it used to be.”
I recognize the substance in the little glass dish. “It’s rice pudding! I ate a lot of it at the hospital.”
More concern bleeds into his expression. “Maybe this was a bad choice then. I didn’t mean to bring those ugly memories back—more than we have to, anyway.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s not a bad memory at all.” I take a spoonful and eat it. “I think rice pudding might be the least threatening substance on earth.”
He exhales with relief. “Only the best for my lovely lady on our first dinner out together.”
I smile and push the tray toward him. “You should eat too. We both need to keep up our strength if we intend to unravel the mysteries of Larry.”
He’s about to take a bite and then puts his spoon down. “Angel, if I told you that you’d be better off getting up from this table, right now, and walking out and disappearing, would you do it?”
“Of course not. I don’t run out on people I care about.”
“Right now you should.”
“I believe I once told you to do the same thing, and you wouldn’t leave. I hope you’re not suggesting you’re nobler than I am.”
“Then you should understand why I’m saying this. Look, you’re the person I care about most in the world and I want to protect you, and maybe the way to do it is to let you go.”
“I don’t want you to protect me,” I say. “I want you to have faith in my ability to protect myself. I’d also like to have some say in any ‘letting go’ you might be doing, especially if it’s supposedly for my own good.”
I reach across the table and take his hand, but his mood is all wrong. The Thomas I know would crack wise while plummeting to earth with a parachute that won’t open. This Thomas—it’s like he’s already given up.
“When you showed up at the church tonight, ready to save me from my kidnappers, do you know what I thought? I thought, ‘Oh, no. I failed her.’ All I want is to keep you out of danger, and I failed.”
Thomas gets up from the table and comes around to my side. He slides into the booth next to me and takes my hand in his.
He kisses me so lightly, I almost don’t even feel it.
“If they threaten you,” he says, “if they tell me that they’ll hurt you if I don’t give them what they want—I will give it to them. Whatever it is. I will give it to them.”
“But you don’t have anything to give them!”
“I’ll make something up. And they will eventually figure out that I made something up, and that will anger them, and that will end badly for everybody. So we’ll all be better off if you go somewhere safe, where they can’t reach you, where they can’t use you as leverage against me.”
“Counterproposal: I help you find the actual data on Velocius, and then you trade it for the antidote and—”
He kisses me again.
“Kissing me doesn’t make an interruption any less rude, you know?”
But he won’t let anything get in the way of what he’s trying to tell me. His brown eyes are swallowing me up.
“Think of it this way. Someone’s already tried to kill you twice in the past twenty-four hours. We don’t know who or why. All we know is that the people who should be protecting you can’t be trusted. Whatever’s going on with me, whatever these Radical Pacifists are up to, it’s nothing compared to whatever you’re up against. Angel, I’m scared for you. What if what’s coming for you is bigger and badder than anything before? You should walk out right now and never look back. Just disappear. Virgil could help you.”
“Virgil can’t help me unless Mrs. Fitzgerald helps him,” I say. “He’s totally dependent on her. And we know now that she can’t be trusted. Besides, what would happen to you if I just left? You know how much you need me.”
I smile at him, but he doesn’t smile back.
“Please go, Angel.”
“I won’t. And do not ever ask me this again. Do you know something? You’re doing just what they tried to do to me at the hospital. Trying to protect me by not letting me know the truth, by not letting me make my own choices. You’re doing just what your mother—” I stop myself, but it’s too late.
He flinches, like I’ve actually stabbed him with my stupid, impulsive words.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t . . . I know you’re not anything like her.”
He looks at me in resignation. “I’m—sorry if I’ve made you feel like that. It’s just a hard instinct to overcome. The desire to protect someone you love. You never know how you’ll react until you’re in the same position.”
“What I’d like a lot more than your ‘protection’ is your trust. Your belief that we’re going to get through this together.”
He reaches for my hand and looks down at our fingers intertwining. “I wish I could believe that. But I can’t say I’m liking our odds right now.”
“Bravery isn’t for times when you know everything is going to turn out all right,” I say.
“Who said that?”
“I did, just now.”
He shakes his head. “That’s a great quote, but brave people still die, Angel. All the time. I don’t want you to be one of them.”
I slap my hand to my forehead and try to stand up, banging my hip against the table as I do. “The quote!”
“Huh?”
“On Larry’s blog. The citations for those Hamlet quotes! They’re all correct except this one.” I fumble with the phone as I rush to show him the quote on the screen. “The last two sentences Polonius speaks after his famous line, ‘to thine own self be true.’ Look. This one makes no sense. There’s no act 40 in Hamlet. There’s no act 40 in any play. So what do you think those numbers could be?”
Thomas’s eyes go round. He grabs the phone and plugs the numbers into the search bar. “Let’s see what we get.”
A few seconds later we have our answer.
GPS coordinates.