“But … how?”
Alice Feldman cleared her throat. “DNA. We’ve mapped the human genome, but we’re a long way from indexing and annotating it. We don’t know what most of the genes in human DNA code for. There are so many blanks to be filled in.”
“And,” said Swann, “there’s all that junk.”
“Junk?” asked Fayne, surprised.
“Junk DNA. Genes that are part of us that we simply don’t know what they do. Maybe, like the DNA for Neanderthals and who knows what else, maybe somewhere in there is the answer to what’s happening to you.”
Fayne closed his eyes for a long time.
The room was utterly silent.
Without opening his eyes, Fayne said, “Please.”
“What?” asked Swann. “What do you want?”
“Do what you have to do. Take blood, take tissue, do whatever tests you have to do. Find out what the fuck is happening to me.”
“We will,” promised Feldman. “I’ve already ordered a full workup and —”
“You’d better hurry,” warned Fayne.
“Hey,” soothed Swann, “it’s okay. You’re safe here. No one’s going to hurt you and you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone else. You’re safe here.”
“No,” said Fayne in a whisper. “It’s not safe.”
He opened his eyes, and the irises were the color of blood.
“Hurry.”
— 22 —
October 12, 8:41 p.m.
Bellevue Hospital
Zero Days until the V-Event
“Don’t screw around with me, Yuki,” said Murray Gold, senior editor for Regional Satellite News. “You made a lot of big promises and so far I’ve got bupkiss.”
“Bullshit, Murray,” Yuki fired back, “I got footage inside the murder scene.”
“That was this morning. Now it’s evening. What have you done for me lately?”
“Sometimes you’re a real asshole.”
“Yeah, and I know how to spell asshole, too. It begins with E and ends with R and rhymes with ‘editor.’ ”
“Hilarious. Every bit as funny as the first hundred times I heard that joke.”
“I’m not joking here, Yuki, tell me you got something or tell me why I’m not transferring you to writing obits.”
“Murray, stop trying to be clever long enough to listen to me,” she said. “I have a story that you won’t believe.”
“Don’t try to jazz me with another ‘story of the century.’ I get ten of those a week.”
“Not like this. And when I say that you won’t believe it, I mean exactly that. You won’t believe it. But … you will.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Murray.
Yuki laughed. Short and nervous and full of excitement.
“You know Jerry Schmidt, right?”
“Sure. One of the Goody-Goody Twins.”
“And Dr. Alice Feldman over at Bellevue?”
“Yes. Is that where they took the guy who chopped up that girl? Feldman’s a stone, she’ll never talk to you. She hates reporters.”
“I don’t need her to talk to me, Murray. I have her and Schmidt on video. With the suspect and with some guy named Luther Swann who’s an anthropology professor at New York University.”
“Already bored. So what?”
Yuki told him.
Murray Gold did not interrupt her or say a word until she was finished. There was a silence that was so tense and protracted that Yuki winced, expecting a tirade.
Instead Murray said, “And you got this on video?”
“Yes.”
“Everything? Everyone’s faces? Enough so that we can go with indisputable identity on all the players?”
“Yes.”
“And … the suspect. Fayne. You got his eyes? You got all that stuff?”
“I got everything, Murray. I can send it to you from my cell.”
“Vampires?” murmured Murray.
“Vampires,” agreed Yuki. She could almost feel Murray’s heartbeat echoing from the speaker.
“Okay,” he said, and he sounded as winded as if he’d run up forty flights of stairs, “here’s what I need you to do.”
— 23 —
October 12, 10:19 p.m.
Bellevue Hospital
Zero Days until the V-Event
Luther Swann leaned against the wall outside of Fayne’s room. He blew out his cheeks and rubbed his eyes. Schmidt stood beside him, arms folded, muscles bunching and flexing at the corners of his jaws. The hall was busy, but not with anyone associated with this case. Dr. Feldman was having her nose looked at, which she agreed to do only after dictating a list of medical tests to a nurse that included only five or six things that Swann recognized. The rest had been arcane, rattled off in medical code in a voice that quavered with fear.
None of the people in the hall so much as looked at the two haggard men. Orderlies pushed gurneys, nurses went from room to room with charts, doctors in white lab coats read reports and talked on cell phones and consulted with each other in low voices. None of it was related to what had happened in the small room behind where Swann and Schmidt stood.
“This is insane,” said Schmidt quietly, cutting a look at Swann. “How are you doing, Luther? You look a little freaked.”
Swann gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, I’m way more than a little freaked.”
Schmidt nodded. “Tell me something … that stuff you said in there about this being something from nature, something scientific? Were you just blowing smoke?”
“No,” said Swann. “I mean … it has to be that, right?”
Instead of answering, Schmidt said, “I’m going to call my captain and bring him up to speed. He’s a good guy and he’s very political. He’ll understand what needs to be done to keep this way off the radar. And he’s good at handling the press. He’ll spin some bullshit story to keep them off our backs while the doc does her tests.”
Swann ticked his head toward the room they’d just left. “I think we need more than just orderlies here, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah. I’m going to hand-pick some officers I trust and get the captain to detail to me for security.” He paused. “What are you going to do?”
Swann shook his head. “I need to get to my office and get my laptop. I have a ton of bulk research data there, and the contact info for other experts I can call if we need to.”
They discussed the details as they walked away.
Behind them, one of the doctors who had been poring over a sheaf of medical records on a clipboard straightened and turned to watch them go. She was slim, pretty, and smiling.
When the two men turned the far corner, Yuki Nitobe casually stepped to the door to Fayne’s room, knocked, and was admitted by one of the orderlies.
— 24 —
October 12, 10:22 p.m.
Bellevue Hospital
Zero Days until the V-Event
“I can’t leave you alone with him, doctor,” said the orderly as he stood holding the door to Michael Fayne’s room. He was a big man with black hair and a nametag that identified him as “S. Riddle.”
“I know,” said Yuki, who stood in the hall. She stood very close to Riddle. Close enough for him to smell her perfume and very likely to look down the V of her blouse. “Dr. Feldman said that we have to maintain the strictest security. I’ll just be a few minutes, anyway. A few background questions.”
Riddle stepped close and lowered his voice. “Be careful with this patient, doctor. He’s still a bit twitchy. They had some real trouble with him.”
Yuki contrived to look up at him with the biggest brown eyes in town. She placed a hand lightly on Riddle’s chest. “Thank you. I’ll be very careful … and you’ll be there if I need you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All the time?” She put the slightest bit of a smile on her lips.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but this time he put different inflection in it.
“Thank you,” she said again.
Riddle smiled and stepped back to let her enter.
Yuki went straight over to Fayne’s bed. He lay with his face turned away. Even from that angle, Yuki could see the corners of his eyes. There was no trace of white.
“Mr. Fayne?” she asked, her voice low and soft.
Fayne said, “You’re not a doctor.”
He pitched his voice so that only she could hear him.
“What?” she asked.
“You don’t smell like a doctor,” he said, still looking away.
“I —”
“Who are you? Did I kill someone you know?”
“No,” said Yuki, surprised. Partly by the question, but more so by the degree of hurt in this man’s voice. She flicked a look at Riddle, smiling to reinforce it. He smiled back. Yuki spoke even more quietly to Fayne. “I’m here to get the truth.”
“What truth?”
“About you.”
He made derisive noise. “You mean about what I am.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think I am?”
She pretended to make notes on her clipboard. “Mr. Fayne, I have a camera in this room. I saw and heard everything.”
Fayne turned toward her, but he closed his eyes before he did so. “You’re … what? Another cop trying to get my confession?”
“Hardly.”
Fayne appeared to think about it. He pursed his lips. “Oh,” he said at length. “I get it. You’re a reporter.”
Yuki flicked another quick look at Riddle, but clearly the orderly could not hear the content of this conversation.
“Yes.”
“You taped everything?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to put it on TV?”
Yuki hesitated, then plunged in. “Yes.”