Vox(77)

“That’s just terrific. Just great. You idiot. I should put you in one of these cages, except you don’t have enough of a brain for me to work with. Do you know how much these animals cost?”

“Apparently more than I do, Morgan,” I say.

“Christ.” He turns to Lorenzo. “What’s the damage?”

Lorenzo has unworked the chimp’s fingers from my hair and lays me on the tiled floor as he inspects the gash on my face. A trickle of hot blood runs into my mouth. “Does that hurt?” he says, prodding at a spot near my temple.

Hurt? No. It feels like I’ve been dragged across coarse sandpaper. It burns. “Yeah,” I say, moving my hand up to the injury.

“No, you don’t. I need to clean this. Morgan, get me a first aid kit.”

“How am I supposed to know where they keep the first aid crap? I’m a project manager.”

“You’re a shit project manager, Morgan,” Lorenzo says. “You’re a lousy scientist and a poor researcher and if I ever get you alone, I’m going to tear you apart one bone at a time. For now, start looking. Try the cabinet in the corner marked with a red cross.” Under his breath, he says, “Asshole.”

“Am I okay?” I say, wanting to touch my face, make sure everything is still where it’s supposed to be.

“Better than okay,” Lorenzo says. “And, Morgan, when you find that kit, call a doctor.”

Morgan’s shoes cross back until they’re so close I can almost see my reflection in them. “No can do. This is a secure facility, in case you missed that.”

Lorenzo ignores him as he bathes the right side of my face with peroxide and fixes a clean bandage over the wound that runs from my hairline to the corner of my mouth. “Surface scratches, mostly. Can you stand?”

“I think so.” The lab, with its remaining chimps, comes into focus. “What’s going on, Morgan?” I say.

He’s all business now, my near brush as the victim of a rogue primate forgotten. “We need you back to work.”

“Doing what? You said we were done. That hired thug called Poe said we were done. You scrubbed our files.”

I wait while Morgan studies his shoelaces.

“Follow me,” he says.

We leave the animal containment room and go through another set of doors. Inside, a replica of the basement lab hums with activity. No one, apparently, heard my screams. Or the shot.

Or maybe they did, and don’t care.

It takes a few seconds before I see the gold emblems on their lab coats and the small gold squares on the key cards that hang around all the men’s necks. Here, as in the cubicle-cramped room outside, everyone keeps his head down and soldiers patrol the aisles.

“Welcome to the Gold team,” Morgan says, sounding more like a game show host than a scientist. No surprise—the man can’t find a first aid kit when it’s staring him in the face. He leads us to four square feet of unoccupied lab top and pauses, waiting for us to sit.

“Okay, Morgan. I’ll bite,” I say. “What the hell is this?”

“This is your new team.” He stretches an arm out. And you can win all these prizes, I hear him say.

“I don’t get it.”

“You will.” Morgan nods to somewhere behind me.

A man with bifocals as thick as glass brick appears and sets two thick binders on the counter in front of us, each one labeled TOP SECRET in gold lettering. Inside them are most of the data I had on my laptop. Before the bifocal man leaves, I catch another glint of gold on his left fourth finger. Morgan turns to the soldier who shot the chimp—with no time to spare, I think—and issues instructions I can’t make out.

“Gianna,” Lorenzo says, nudging my elbow. He doesn’t look at me; his eyes are roaming the lab. Then he taps the ring finger on his left hand.

The stool I’m sitting on is one of those adjustable numbers with a lever below the seat. I reach down and raise it until I can see most of the lab. Men are scratching their heads, twirling mechanical pencils, rubbing tired eyes. Every left hand I can see has a gold wedding band on its fourth finger.

And every pair of eyes holds fear.

“They’re not volunteers, Enzo, are they?”

He shakes his head.

“Oh Christ.” Every single man inside this complex is married, maybe has children. “Some incentive,” I say.

Morgan, now finished lecturing the poor soldier, who looks like he’s seen his last paycheck, comes back to us. “I need a formula, people. By tonight. By tomorrow morning, I need a working serum.”

“We just gave you the working serum,” I say. “And you have the vials. All five of them.” I steel myself for the Jean, Jean, Jean routine that he does, and grip the edge of the counter with both hands. Better to keep them gripping anything, since what they want to do right now is close around Morgan’s neck. Tight.

He smiles. “You gave me a working serum, Jean. I want another one.”

I feign complete ignorance.

Morgan claps his hands together. “All right. Let me explain this in simple terms. We have an anti-Wernicke process. It works. We all saw Mrs. What’s Her Face make the leap from babbling idiot to bunny-rabbit enthusiast.”

“Mrs. Ray,” I say. “She has a name.”