Vox(83)

“You’re all I’ve got.” In the blank space where the requisition form says Technician, he writes Dr. Jean McClellan.

“We have to, don’t we?” I say.

“Either that or end up with a dead Morgan.” Lorenzo’s mouth turns up at one corner. “Unless that’s what you want.”

Of course it’s what I want. But there’s no sense in being greedy. A mute Morgan will work just as well.

“All right,” I say. “I’m heading upstairs. Send someone to get me if I’m not back down here by ten. Okay?”

“Deal.”

I don’t stop by Petroski’s desk for an escort. Instead, I head toward the soldier closest to him and speak loudly enough for my voice to carry. “I need some shut-eye. Can you take me up to the dorms?”

While my escort calls out to the now half-filled lab asking if anyone else wants the cafeteria or a bed, Petroski motions me to him with a slight nod of his head.

“I made your call,” he says.

“Great. Thanks.” I don’t want to ask him for help—better if the request comes from him.

It does.

“Anything I can do?”

“As a matter of fact, Sergeant, yes. There is.”

His face, smooth and whiskerless and innocent as a child’s, lights up as I explain, in detail, exactly what I need him to do.





SEVENTY




While Lorenzo is eight floors down sedating chimpanzee Number 4-unlucky-13 and setting up the equipment we’ll need, I’m sitting up in a narrow bed, fully clothed, digesting a stale sandwich from the cafeteria and chapter seven of the primate neuroanatomy text, also known as detailed brain maps of our closest relative, the chimp. My squeamishness has fallen aside for now, mostly thanks to this afternoon’s near mauling by 413’s compatriot.

I swipe a new window onto the iPad, check the database of medical journals for articles on craniotomy and trepanation procedures, and take a long, last look at the uneaten half of my sandwich. It’s not the optimal companion for my bedtime reading, so I put the cheese on wheat aside while I review the components of my new friend, the Cushing perforator drill.

When I think there’s no way I can bore a hole into an ape’s skull, let alone a human’s, I remember Jackie and Lin and Isabel.

Steel up, Jean.

And I keep reading until my eyelids succumb to gravity and the iPad slips from my hands.

The knock on my door seems to come at the exact moment I fall asleep.

“Dr. McClellan?” The voice is muffled, cloudy.

“Yeah.”

“Time to go. Dr. Rossi says he needs you in the lab.”

Everyone needs something. I need about a week’s worth of uninterrupted nap time. “Okay. Coming.” I peel myself off the bed, smooth down my clothes—by the looks of them, I’ve slept hard, if not for very long—and open the door. It’s Petroski, and he seems to have aged a decade since I left him down in the sub-basement.

“Have a good rest, ma’am?”

My mouth makes the sounds of “yes”; my pounding head argues. One foot follows the other down the hall, automatic marching orders telling them to take it up a notch, and I get into the elevator with Petroski.

“All set,” he says. “Everything’s exactly like you asked.”

“Good. Now, listen, Sergeant. Your job’s done. The last thing you know is that Dr. LeBron accessed the lab at— What time is it now?”

“Ten oh five, ma’am,” he says, holding out his left wrist for me to see.

“Okay. LeBron entered the sub-basement lab at nine fifty. He told you he had a headache. That’s all you know.”

In unsurprising military fashion, Petroski responds with a terse “Yes, ma’am,” and holds the Open Doors button as I exit the elevator. At the entrance to the lab, he pauses.

Please don’t get cold feet now. I can’t be sure whether I’m talking to Petroski or to myself.

He slides his key card into the socket and waits for the green light, and I’m in. We pass the remaining chimpanzees, still hooting in their cages, and I note that chimp Number 413’s holding pen is empty.

As is the main lab.

Petroski’s first job was to evacuate the sub-basement, which, judging by the unoccupied stools and the chaos of paperwork left on every flat surface, he did well. All it took was Lorenzo, a Bunsen burner, some foil, and a mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate. The biochem lab must have looked like a bomb went off.

Well. That was the idea.

I leave the sergeant at his security desk and walk back through the detritus of notebooks and calculators and reading glasses to where Lorenzo is waiting, half standing, half sitting on the counter where I left him two hours ago. He’s the picture of cool, and I wish he didn’t make it so easy to be in love with him.

“Worked like a charm, Gianna. Silent, smoky, and nondeadly. First thing I ever made when I got a chemistry kit was a smoke bomb. Ruined my mother’s best pasta pot.” A devilish and boyish mischief flashes in his eyes.

Boys, I think. They love to blow shit up. Or at least make it look like they’ve blown shit up.

He swings a leg off the counter. “You ready?”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I say, feeling the cheese on wheat work its way in a direction it shouldn’t be going. “Where are they?”