The Key to Fear - Kristin Cast Page 0,30
of Holly’s perfectly styled hair brushed her chin as she spoke. “This malfunction has occurred in”—another rapid blink—“approximately four percent of Westfall’s citizens. Would you like me to submit a work order to the IT department on your brother’s behalf?”
Blair’s free hand slid limply into her lap, leaving the sweaty ghost of a handprint on the desk. She’d gotten herself worked up for no reason at all. Denny was at his job, safe and secure. He couldn’t be reached because technology, no matter how awe-inspiring, always possessed a flaw.
Blair leaned back in her chair and narrowed her gaze on Holly. “Leave me,” she said with a flick of her wrist.
Before she’d finished the gesture, Holly was gone.
“Show off,” she muttered as she turned her attention back to more important things. A gray box formed to one side of her vision before her messaging inbox appeared.
Maxine—
She thought, and the characters appeared instantaneously.
My office, immediately. We’re going to make my brother a Key Corp soldier.
Blair paused and glanced down at her jagged nails before sending the message.
Oh, and get me everything you can on Preston Darby.
The holoscreen activated, the floating rectangle blinking from sleeping gray to paper white as Dr. Normandy unlocked Patient Ninety-Two’s chart. He stepped back a moment to take it all in.
What to look at first?
His weathered hands fell to the printed photos he’d lined up along the edge of the steel exam table under the translucent screen. His fingers blindly traced the edge of one of the photos. He liked the thinness of the printed pages, almost not there at all. It reminded him of his job—his world. Searching cells and sequences for the thinnest chance. A chance so small that anyone else would miss it. But not Normandy. Given enough time, he could find a single hair floating in a river the size of the Columbia. And he had been given all the time in the world.
Normandy opened Ninety-Two’s most recent lab report before extending his arm to the holoscreen, pinching the digital paperwork that noted the previous day’s test results, and plopping them into the empty space next to it. It had only been three weeks, and already a universe of changes bloomed to life inside of Ninety-Two. Although, he shouldn’t be surprised. Didn’t Christians believe their god created the cosmos in merely six days? Normandy was no god, at least not by those standards, but he was in the process of creating salvation. A completely germ-free, worry-free existence for all.
Squinting, he pressed his round glasses farther up the bridge of his thin nose.
Lieutenant Commander Sparkman let out a hiss of frustration as the door to Ninety-Two’s room closed behind her and as she waited for the Violet Shield to complete its pass. “I thought you said the patient was stable.”
“She is.” Normandy flicked his bony fingers over the holoscreen and brought up the feed from Ninety-Two’s room. “See for yourself.”
The girl’s slim, unconscious frame lay like a toothpick in the middle of the gurney. Or perhaps now Ninety-Two was no longer a girl. He would further dissect the tests Sparkman had conducted, but Normandy knew better than anyone that gender was more complex than genitalia.
Ninety-Two twitched, the sweat-soaked sheets rumpled like waves beneath her. The rise and fall of her chest had finally steadied along with the rhythmic beep of the pulse monitor. It had taken six hours and seventeen different combinations of tranquilizers, but Normandy had eventually figured it out. He eventually figured everything out.
“Then what the hell was all of that?” Sparkman’s lab coat billowed around her waist as she stomped to Normandy’s side. “We were supposed to be able to stick her up in the Long-Term Care Unit for the next three years at least! You said nothing would manifest until puberty.” She gripped the edge of the table, her squared jaw flexing up to her gold-flecked temples. “That process doesn’t start in eight-year-olds! And did you see her eyes? Purple, Doctor. They were purple !” The clean white lights overhead seemed to flicker in fear with each of Sparkman’s shouts.
Fear.
It was one of the reasons Normandy had chosen the young Key Corp Lieutenant Commander. Sparkman could accomplish anything regardless of whether or not she possessed proper paperwork. And since Normandy had spent the last two decades on a task that those in charge preferred to leave untraceable, there often were no forms at all. That’s when Sparkman’s … talents came into play. She was a soldier, an enforcer, and no matter how