The Games (Private #11)(16)

For once, Castro didn’t argue. He said, “See you next time. I’m at the university tomorrow.”

“Get some sleep,” the nurse repeated and shooed him away.

The doctor changed out of his scrubs and left the hospital, mindful of the line of patients that seemed to get longer every day. Castro hailed a cab and almost gave the driver his home address but then changed his mind and gave him another.

Dr. Castro fell asleep and did not wake until the taxi stopped in a light-industrial area on the western outskirts of Rio. The doctor walked beneath sodium lights toward a long, low steel-walled and -roofed building that had a door with multiple locks. Beside the door, a small cheap plaque read:

AV3 PESQUISA—RESEARCH



Castro got out his keys, looked around, and then unlocked the door. He went inside quickly, shut the door behind him, and flipped on a light, revealing an empty room. He locked the outer door and went to a second locked door opposite it. Beyond that was an airy warehouse space dominated by a large white rectangular tent made of laminated cloth. A myriad of ducts and hoses ran into and out of the tent roof.

Without stopping to admire his ingenious design, Dr. Castro went through a flap into an anteroom of sorts. There he donned a full hazmat suit, duct-taped all the seams, and entered a pressurized decontamination shower. Only then did he pass through an air lock into his clean room.

Despite having worked for thirty-six hours, Castro felt renewed energy being back in his secret lab. He loved some parts of his other life—helping patients, teaching students—but it was only here that he felt buzzing and alive.

The doctor crossed the clean room to five glass tanks arranged in a row. Above each was an alphanumeric code and a small camera attached to a plugged-in Samsung digital tablet.

Castro paused at each tank, studying the white rats within. In the first four tanks, the rats were moving around, but there were sores visible on all of them, and several were stumbling as if they had lost their motor skills.

In the fifth tank, the rat was dead. Its sores were more grotesque, and there was dried blood around the eyes, nose, and mouth.

That’s interesting, Dr. Castro thought. When did that happen?

The doctor went to the tablet and called up a video that featured a running time display at the bottom. Castro sped the video in reverse until he found the moment the rat convulsed and died. According to the time stamp, death had occurred one hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds after the doctor had left the lab.

One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds.

The doctor stared at the frozen time stamp for several long moments, thinking that if he weren’t so tired he might be doing a victory dance right now.

One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds!

It was the breakthrough. It was what he had been working two long years for, and he was too zonked to celebrate.

Wait. He had to replicate his experiment. He had to know for sure before he did any rejoicing.

Castro noted the code above the dead rat and went to a stainless-steel tank, where he donned insulated gloves to twist open the top. Fog curled out of the liquid nitrogen. He lifted a tray of steel vials and found one with the code that corresponded to the one above the dead rat’s tank.

He took the vial and waited fifteen minutes before running water over it, gradually increasing the internal temperature. Done, he retrieved a syringe and removed a tiny amount of blood from the vial. He injected the remaining rats with it and went to a refrigerator.

Before putting the vial inside, he shook it. He watched the blood film and settle, film and settle, thinking that this might just be the mutation of Hydra he’d been imagining in his daydreams, the one that struck quickly, the one that caused total devastation, the one that produced cells with nine heads.

One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds.

Castro glanced at the clock, did the math, and felt enough of a thrill to shiver.





Chapter 15

Friday, July 29, 2016

One Week Before the Olympic Games Open



IN THE HOURS before dawn, I slept fitfully, my mind spinning nightmares about the twins and the men who’d died trying to protect them. I jerked awake, breathing hard and in a cold sweat, around three in the morning.

“Shhh,” Tavia said, stroking my cheek in the darkness. “It was just another bad dream.”

“I need some good ones once in a while,” I said, calming down.

“Then dream of me,” Tavia said, and she laid her head on my chest.

Within minutes, her breathing slowed into a deep and gentle rhythm that calmed me even more. I smelled her hair, still damp from the shower, and drifted off into dreams of the moment I’d realized I could fall in love with her.



“Come on, Jack,” Tavia had said to me. “You can’t really appreciate Rio without seeing her from the sea.”

We were at the Botafogo marina, and Tavia was coaxing me into a motor launch she’d chartered after a long day of work after a long flight in from Los Angeles. We’d met formally only that morning.

I’d come to Rio to interview Tavia about opening and heading a Private office in the Marvelous City during the World Cup and Olympic Games. She’d been a dynamo from the get-go, and I knew within an hour of meeting her that I’d give her the job.

But Tavia had put together a crash course of all that was Rio so I’d understand the security challenges of the city before making my decision. We’d been to several possible venue sites prior to boarding the boat, and I was starting to get dizzy from jet lag.