Under the Knife(21)

Although, given the nature of this particular job, Sebastian didn’t know how many of the device’s designers were still alive, or at the least knowledgeable as to the purpose to which the device was currently being put, despite their apparent lack of concern for international laws banning human medical experimentation.

Not paid to know. Don’t want to find out.

He did know, though, that there’d been a consensus among them that it was the smarter, more sophisticated targets—like this surgeon—who stood the best chance of keeping their sanity—if they came to understand and accept the nature of the device. That was critical.

So they’d developed a protocol, a method of doling out information in a way that didn’t overwhelm the subjects. You reasoned with the smarter ones, talked them off the ledge, explained to them how the device operated. Spoon-fed them small bites of material. You didn’t overload them because mental overload led to madness. Using the protocol, the smart ones generally did okay.

But not always.

So he watched the door, and he waited.

He waited to see if she would go insane.

And he wondered, not for the first time, how he himself would react if he awoke one morning to some unseen stranger whispering into his brain.

He glanced about and noted that the activity around him was increasing as the hospital staff prepared the operating rooms for the coming day. Men and women in dark blue scrubs hustled by, some pushing heavy equipment, others carrying bundles of surgical instruments wrapped in sterile packaging. All jostled for space in the corridors.

He was glad for the dark blue scrubs, which with the light blue scrub hats provided a dichromatic, shifting sea into which he could disappear. Perfect cover. A casual observer would never have looked twice at him, so perfectly did he blend in with all of the other blue-scrubbed, blue-capped figures all around him.

Everything about him was a careful study in normality. His trim, powerful frame disappeared into the folds of his baggy scrubs, which he’d deliberately selected to be one size too large. Its oversized sleeves concealed the knotted musculature of his upper arms. He was neither handsome nor ugly. His straight black hair, tucked underneath his surgical cap, was clipped medium length and parted into a forgettable style that looked nothing like the sculpted pompadour in the picture on his ID badge. His face, composed of softened intersections of overlapping smooth lines, was nondescript and of ambiguous ethnicity: for the rare individuals who got a good look at him, some thought he was Asian, others might swear Latino. The truth he kept to himself.

He checked his watch.

This was taking a lot longer than it was supposed to. It made him uneasy. He was beginning to feel exposed.

Stupid.

Leaving the surgeon naked like that.

Unprofessional.

A thing that could attract too much attention.

It was one thing to drug her up and dump her senseless on the operating table. That played effectively into their strategy. But stripping off her clothes was something else: a needless exercise that introduced a reckless, pseudosexual element into the job. A complex, ambitious operation like this one (almost too complex and ambitious for his liking) left absolutely no margin for error. Best keep things simple. Buck-ass nakedness was an extra variable that this equation definitely did not need.

He shifted to a different vantage point on the other side of the hall and pretended to text someone.

It had been Finney’s idea to abandon her naked. He’d been adamant about it. And Sebastian had worked for Finney long enough to know that it wasn’t some weird sexual thing. Finney didn’t get off on that kind of shit. Other sick fucks Sebastian had worked for over the years had. But Finney was different: For him, it was all about control. He’d wanted to humiliate her.

In this Finney had succeeded. She’d looked pretty freaked-out, walking from the operating room to the lockers earlier with the nurse. Still, they had to be careful, or she’d go over the edge and end up like the pretty teenager, curled up on the dank cement in a corner of her cell.

Or worse.

So he waited. Which was all he could do.

He didn’t like the way Finney had insisted, without explanation, on turning off Sebastian’s audio feed, how he was made to stand watch outside the locker-room door like a chump. This hadn’t been the plan. And if something didn’t happen soon, he was going to have to move to safer ground before someone took an interest in him.

This behavior was a fucking disturbing development. This was the first time Finney had blown Sebastian off. Finney usually listened to Sebastian’s advice in these matters because that’s what he’d hired him for. Now that their yearlong project was coming to fruition, Sebastian worried that Finney was starting to get carried away, letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment. He’d seen it before. Many times. This kind of job required total professionalism—a single-mindedness of purpose devoid of emotion and thoughtless impulse, or it could unravel and blow up in their faces.

Sebastian knew all about Finney, and Wu, and the history they shared. He never took a job without first doing his homework. This business with Finney’s wife … well, that could screw with anybody’s mind. Still, Sebastian had believed Finney would hold it together. But he also knew not every wound got better with time. Emotional wounds could fester, as Sebastian knew from personal experience.

His hand stole to his chest. Through the thin cotton of the scrub shirt, he touched the metal dog tag hanging around his neck.