The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,104

I’m here, you see,” he said. “The favor. We think Amy may be dying.”

Wolgast wasn’t allowed to ask any questions. He wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone, or look around, or step from Sykes’s line of vision. A detail of two soldiers led him across the compound, through the damp morning light. The air felt and smelled like spring. After almost five weeks in his room, Wolgast found himself taking deep, hungry breaths. The sun was painful to his eyes.

Once they were in the Chalet, Sykes took him down an elevator, four floors. They exited onto an empty hallway, Spartan and white, like a hospital. Wolgast guessed they were fifty feet belowground, maybe more. Whatever Sykes’s people kept down here, they wanted at least that much dirt separating it from the world above. They came to a door marked MAIN LAB, but Sykes passed it without slowing his stride. More doors, and then they came to the one Sykes wanted. He slid a card through the reader and opened it.

Wolgast found himself in some kind of observation room. On the other side of the broad window, in dim, blue light, Amy’s small form lay on a hospital bed, alone. She was connected to an IV, but that was all. Beside her bed was a plastic chair, empty. From tracks on the ceiling hung a group of color-coded hoses, coiled like the pneumatic hoses at a garage. Otherwise the room was bare.

“This is him?”

Wolgast turned to see a man he hadn’t noticed before. He was wearing a lab coat and green scrubs, like Wolgast’s.

“Agent Wolgast, this is Dr. Fortes.”

They nodded without shaking hands. Fortes was young, not even thirty. Wolgast wondered if he was an MD or something else. Like Sykes, Fortes appeared exhausted, physically spent. His skin was oily, and he needed a haircut and a shave. His glasses looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a month.

“She has an embedded chip. It transmits vitals to the panel here.” Fortes showed him: heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, temperature. Amy’s was 102.6.

“Where?”

“Where what?” The doctor’s eyes floated with incomprehension.

“Where’s the chip?”

“Oh.” Fortes looked at Sykes, who nodded. Fortes pointed at the back of his own neck. “Subcutaneous, between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. The power source is pretty nifty, actually, a tiny nuclear cell. Like the kind on satellites, only much smaller.”

Nifty. Wolgast shuddered. A nifty nuclear power source in Amy’s neck. He turned to Sykes, who was watching with a look of caution.

“Is this what happened to the others? Carter and the rest.”

“They were … preliminary,” Sykes said.

“Preliminary to what?”

He paused. “To Amy.”

Fortes explained the situation: Amy was in a coma. No one had expected this, and her fever was too high and had gone on too long. Her kidney and liver values were depressed.

“We were hoping you could talk to her,” Sykes said. “This sometimes helps with patients in a prolonged state of unconsciousness. Doyle tells us that she’s pretty … bonded with you.”

A two-stage air lock connected them to Amy’s room. Sykes and Fortes led him into the first chamber. An orange biosuit was hanging on the wall, the empty helmet tipped forward, like a man with a broken neck. Sykes explained how it worked.

“You’ll need to put this on, then wrap all seams with duct tape. The valves at the base of the helmet connect to the hoses in the ceiling. They’re color-coded, so that should be obvious. When you come back through, you need to shower in the suit, then shower again without it. There are instructions on the wall.”

Wolgast sat on the bench to remove his slippers. Then he stopped.

“No,” he said.

Sykes looked at him and frowned. “No what?”

“No, I’m not wearing it.” He turned and faced Sykes squarely. “It’s not going to help if she wakes up and sees me in a space suit. You want me to go in there, I go as I am.”

“That’s not a good idea, Agent,” Sykes warned.

His mind was made up. “No suit or no deal.”

Sykes glanced at Fortes, who shrugged. “It could be … interesting. In theory, the virus should be inert by now. On the other hand, it might not be.”

“The virus?”

“I guess you’ll find out,” Sykes said. “Let him in on my authority. And, Agent, once you’re in, you’re in. I can’t guarantee anything beyond that. Is that clear?”

Wolgast said it was; Sykes and Fortes stepped from the air lock. Wolgast realized he hadn’t expected them to say yes. At the last instant Wolgast