The Rising(92)

PUSH OF A BUTTON

SAM TRIED TO PAUSE the ticking clock in her head. She’d never expected to find a file folder with the answers she was seeking, anyway, and just had to take her thinking backward to her original intentions in the form of Dr. Payne’s laptop.

These days actual CT scan films weren’t viewed against a blinding back-lit board. The results and technician’s report were e-mailed to the treating physician to become part of the patient’s electronic medical records. Armed with Alex’s patient ID number, she switched on Payne’s computer and waited for the laptop to boot up, counting down the seconds in her head as the fire alarm continued to wail.

The screen came to life and Sam quickly found an icon that looked like a filing cabinet and clicked on it. Sure enough, it opened into the medical records portal through which any physician with the proper patient ID could access a patient’s assembled history. The box that appeared on the screen, though, wasn’t asking her for that; it was asking her for a physician’s user name and password. Even if she guessed Dr. Payne’s identification correctly, she’d be no closer to guessing his password. Then in the clutter on the desk she spotted his clip-on ID badge she recalled from noting his altogether wrong name for a doctor.

And beneath that name was his hospital identification number.

Sam entered JOHNPAYNE in the user name box, then typed in the combination of letters and numbers forming his ID number into the password box, certain it would work. But the machine lit up with bright letters warning that she’d entered the wrong password and did she need help finding it. Sam clicked on “yes” and waited for the next prompt.

Until the medical records doorway closed and the home screen returned, Sam finding herself unable to manipulate the cursor anymore.

What the hell?

She’d done exactly what any thief or hacker would have done, she imagined, thereby activating the system’s security override. That was it. She was done here, finished.

Except …

Sam yanked the power cord from the laptop and folded its top back down. Wasting no further time, she tucked it under her arm and headed back into the hall, turning toward the gurney she’d abandoned and tucking the still faintly humming machine under the top sheet.

Then she started pushing the gurney along the freshly polished floor, moving with apparent purpose. Reaching the elevator just as the fire alarm stopped wailing.





93

DIVIDED LOYALTIES

ALEX CONTINUED TO STARE at the ash man, more through him than at him, really.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? Can you really be so sure? Do you really think I’d squander the best leverage I had over you?”

“I watched them die.”

“You saw what I wanted you to see, Alex,” the ash man told him, through a mouth that looked like a gaping black hole. “Just as you’re seeing me now.”

“More crap,” Alex persisted, not so sure anymore. “And you’re just a projection who’s full of it.”

“I’m not just a projection. I’m standing here right now. Go ahead, reach out and touch me.”

“I’d rather cut you in half again.”

“I’d welcome you trying. Stronger signal this time so I can take you with me. Not your physical form, just the part that matters, the part that knows the secret of why you were brought here, the knowledge you’ve been entrusted with. You didn’t ask for this, boy. It’s not your doing. You don’t belong here; you never did. Come back with me so I can reveal the truth of your identity, introduce you to who you really are and your true fate.”

“And my parents?”

“The Chins? They will be waiting for you, just as promised. Part of the deal.”

Alex felt himself weaken, seeing the easy way before him, the route to end this nightmare from which there otherwise seemed no end.

“What’s my name?” he heard himself ask.

Something changed in the ash man’s hazy visage, the dark holes that rode his face for eyes seeming to narrow, suddenly evasive.

“What’s my real name?” Alex challenged again.

“Alex—”

“Stop! You don’t know, do you? You can’t tell me because you don’t know.”

The ash man’s broadcasted face flattened. “But I know where to find the girl, Alex. We didn’t kill her, we only left her alive because of you. Cooperate with us or she dies. Join me now or she dies. Go ahead, take my hand.…”

Alex saw a semi-translucent hand stretching out for him, the arm seeming to lengthen as it came forward, slow enough for Alex to stretch a hand into his pocket and come out with the thing that looked like an old-fashioned slap bracelet that had restrained his father. He snapped it forward in line with the gray-toned wrist coming his way, felt it lodge over air and energy. Watched the ash man’s liquidy eyes bulge.

“Take that, you son of a bitch!”

“Noooooooooooooo!” the ash man screamed, frozen in place as Alex burst past him like the spectral shape was a linebacker keeping him from the end zone.





94

THE EMBARCADERO

SAM SAT AMONG ALL manner of tourists and locals enjoying their evening meals at outdoor tables in the Embarcadero’s Justin Herman Plaza, conspicuous in her mind because she was alone in clear view of the bustling Ferry Building marketplace. A concert had just wrapped up in the area that would be dominated by an ice skating rink during the winter months. She sat a bit isolated in the shadow of Vaillancourt Fountain, a modernistic water-spraying sculpture that many local purists hated but she actually loved for its symmetrical form, everything seeming to belong just where it was placed.