The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(34)

“That is the purpose of our Office. That is the reason we exist. That is the mission, and I am the Operative Nine. I am the mission, and the mission will be accomplished.”

He shouted over my shoulder, “You may come in now!”

The door opened and a guy built like a tree trunk came into the room. He had a wide square head and a body to match. His eyes were narrow and his lips thin; you really had to look hard to see them. He gave a short, militarylike bow in Abby’s general direction.

“Alfred,” Nueve said. “May I introduce Dr. Mingus. He’ll be examining you today.”

03:17:15:23

After my examination by Dr. Mingus, a couple of guys from the security detail took me back to my cabin. They had to take me back, because I wasn’t able to move under my own power. I noticed other dark suits outside the main house and along the trails, even a couple slipping in and out of the trees. All of them wore black and all wore the same dark Ray-Bans. The OIPEP Mafia.

It was around five o’clock and nearly dark. They dumped me on the bed and the lock went snick. I listened to the absolute silence—if you can listen to absolute silence.

Dr. Mingus had a funny accent, thick and slushy. Tiny beads of spit hung on his sliver-thin lower lip as he talked.

This will go easily enough, if you cooperate. We’ll take some measurements, run a few nonintrusive tests, sample a bit of your blood . . .

Beneath the château, behind a sealed metal door, at the bottom of a flight of stairs was a medical complex. Operating rooms. Examination rooms. A room with a gleaming white CT scan machine. And other rooms I didn’t get to look in, though I may have been inside them, because Dr. Mingus gave me a shot that put me under, I’m not sure for how long, but it seemed like a very long time. I don’t know what he did to me while I was out. I just know when I came to he was just beaming, like a little kid who had found a special surprise under the Christmas tree, and I was feeling like a scooped-out pumpkin from a different, darker holiday.

In cabin thirteen, I buried my face in the pillow.

I am a genetic engineer, Alfred. Do you know what a genetic engineer does?

Needles extending from syringes the size of my wrist. Vials of dark, arterial blood—my blood—rows of them, each with a different colored label: Spec Ops . . . GDT . . . Sofa . . . That last one confused me, but it was about the tenth he drained out of me and my vision was pretty blurry by that point. Sofa? What the heck was Sofa?

This is very exciting. The most significant development in the field in my lifetime. In anyone’s lifetime, Alfred! You are at the center of the most astounding breakthrough since Watson and Crick cracked the code!

Dr. Mingus injected me with something that made me feel very good, sleepy, and floaty. His wide face swam in and out of focus as he leaned over me. I was tied to a gurney and they were wheeling me toward the room with the big scanner.

This will not hurt, Alfred, but you must remain very still while we image your brain. Have you ever had a CT scan before? It’s not painful.

As I lay inside the scanner I think I heard Nueve’s voice and the name “Sofia,” but I told myself I was dreaming or hallucinating, but it reminded me of Samuel. He was my guardian and he had sworn to protect me. Where was he? And who was going to protect me now?

After the scan, I looked up into Dr. Mingus’s face and whispered, Am I done?

For today. Tomorrow we have a few more tests. I’m going to need some tissue samples. Tell me, Alfred, have you ever had an operation?

They were going to put me under, open me up, and take samples of all my major organs. Dr. Mingus was particularly interested in my heart . . . He was going to slice out a piece of my heart.

You are blessed, Alfred Kropp. Do you believe that?

As he slid a needle into my groin.

A gift to all mankind . . .

As he shined a blinding light into my eyes.

The power of life, yes?

Like some horrible Halloween mask, his face. Wide and flat and blank. He barely had any eyebrows and his eyes were black, death-dark eyes, like a shark’s. The only expression I saw in them the whole time reminded me of a kid I knew in Ohio who enjoyed burning ants with a magnifying glass. The truly scary thing is there’s a lot of Dr. Minguses running around in the world, but I had the Dr. Mingus-iest of them all. He didn’t just like his work and he more than loved it. Like Nueve, he was his work.

The power of God himself . . .

The pillow on my bed smelled of lavender. Spit ran out my open mouth and I breathed that in, the smell of spit, the smell of lavender.

They brought me into the last room, the worst room, where a dentist’s chair was anchored to the floor. The two goons dragged me across the tile floor and my toe scraped across the metal drain cover in the middle of the room. They threw me into the chair and tightened straps across my arms and over my ankles. Dr. Mingus swung the chair around and brought his face very close to mine. His breath smelled very sweet, as sweet as cotton candy, and my stomach rolled.

One last test for the day, Alfred, more for my own benefit than science’s, for I am curious and I will confess a little skeptical. Like a Missourian, I wish to see it with my own eyes.

He stepped away and I saw Ashley standing between the two stone-faced goons. They were holding her arms out from her sides. I was still pretty dopey from the shot, and at first I thought I was hallucinating. What I was seeing couldn’t be what I was seeing.