From Black Rooms (32 page)

Pancrit grimaced, but set the vaccination gun back in his attache case. "And?"

"When the treatment has been perfected, you wil use it to complete Calvin Criswel 's course of therapy. Then you wil let him and Ms. Lindstrom and her daughter go unharmed."

"And if I refuse?"

"That's where I come in," Serena said, unfolding her arms to reveal the .45 automatic in her right hand. She directed it at Pancrit's head.

Tackle, Block, and the corporal al reached for their weapons, but Pancrit raised his hands. "Easy, everyone." He kept his gray eyes trained on Calvin.

"So, Barty...no more tricks?"

"No more tricks, Carl?" Wax parroted to chal enge him. Pancrit frowned and began peeling the electrodes off Cal ie's head. "Then let's get to work." Natalie exhaled, tears final y escaping the corners of her eyes. Tears of grief for the father she'd lost, and tears of gratitude for the family she stil had. As soon as Tackle set them both free, she rushed to embrace Cal ie, to cry with her.

"G
randpa." The word itself was an accusation.

"I know, honey," Natalie said. "I'm sorry." Cal ie pul ed back from the hug, glared at her. "Why didn't you tel me?"

"I didn't know how, baby girl. But Grandpa's stil with us. He helped save us."

Her daughter's gaze froze to ice. "Who did that to him?"

Natalie didn't know how to tel her child that, either, but her eyes spoke for her as they glanced over to see the fearsome bitterness graven into Evan Markham's face.

Carl Pancrit guided the group through an open archway near the end of the corridor and into a smal lounge, which contained a table and chairs, a couch, soda and snack machines, and a rack of outdated copies of Time and Newsweek. White head-to-toe sterilization suits hung from a series of metal hooks on the wal , each complete with a plastic faceplate and breath filter that resembled a gas mask.

"The rest of you can wait here," Pancrit told the group as he and Bartholomew Wax each grabbed one of the uniforms. "This shouldn't take long."

They both put the suits on over their street clothes, although Wax found that his old outfit did not fit on Calvin's elongated frame and had to trade it for a larger one. When the two of them were final y ready, they passed through the security door at the end of the hal that bore the biohazard symbol and disappeared from view.

Carl Pancrit's idea of a short wait differed from that of a normal person. He possessed an Edison-like

monomania that apparently enabled him to work

without food or sleep. The rest of them idled in the lounge with al the vivacity of lobotomy patients, sustaining themselves on dry sandwiches and potato chips from the snack machine. Hours passed, and

Natalie's watch told her that the sun must have set by now, although the facility's constant fluorescent lighting made it impossible to say when. At least here they could languish in relative peace, sheltered a bit from the ghosts of the ward.

Impatient for Calvin to become himself again, she paced to and from the laboratory to monitor the

scientists' progress through the door's square, thickglassed window. Natalie found it odd to see the formidable Carl Pancrit become the sorcerer's

apprentice. He took orders and scribbled notes on a clipboard, acting as a glorified lab assistant, while Bartholomew Wax moved about the lab in Calvin's

body, programming instructions into the computers and automated genetic sequencing and engineering

equipment. The machines did most of the actual work. Contrary to what Natalie had imagined, gene splicing did not involve microscopic forceps and scalpels, for the cutting and pasting of DNA sequences was al

performed chemical y with careful y selected enzymes. Wax merely told the computers what to do and moved the resulting genetic soup from one machine to another. The process of injecting the recombinant DNA into the adenovirus that would carry it through the body to the tissue targeted for genetic alteration appeared to be equal y mechanical and equal y tedious.

At last, the portal to the lab shushed open with a release of sterilized air and the two men emerged, lifting the masks from their sweat-moistened faces.

"How did it go?" Natalie asked, walking beside them as they returned to the staff lounge.

"Hel if I know," Calvin said. "I flunked bio in high school."

She grinned in delight and nearly threw her arms

around him. However, as soon as he plunked down in a chair and began massaging his temples with the heels of his palms, mumbling, she remembered what happened the last time she'd touched his bare skin. Now that Wax no longer inhabited him, Calvin was exposed to the facility's former patients. He said his mantra louder and louder as if increasing the volume could amplify its defense. "I believe in Natalie...I believe in Natalie...I
believe in Natalie...

Calvin blushed, aware that she could hear him. "It works better than anything else," he explained.

"I'm glad." She smiled. "I believe in Calvin." But she secretly fretted about him. Despite al her Violet training, she would not have been able to

withstand for long the constant barrage of knocking souls Calvin now endured. No one could. The dead

don't sleep: they could hound you to exhaustion, then grind your sanity to dust, the way Vincent Thresher had destroyed Natalie's mother. If Calvin didn't acquire the filtering mechanism soon, he might end up like Nora Lindstrom...or worse.

Natalie did not know whether to be heartened or

worried by Carl Pancrit's enthusiasm as he stripped off his sterilization suit. "The new treatment seems promising--very promising," he announced. "Now al we need is our test subject."

Natalie glanced at Calvin, who slumped semiconscious in his chair. "But I thought--"

Pancrit anticipated her objection. "Oh, by al means, we'l treat Mr. Criswel , too. But because he

participated in a previous, unsuccessful trial, he's rather tainted as a control case. Not to worry, though--I have the perfect candidate."

He hung up his uniform and hurried from the auxiliary wing, leaving Natalie to trade quizzical looks with Calvin and Serena. Tackle, Block, and Evan did not display the slightest trace of surprise, however. Pancrit returned a few minutes later, accompanied by a petite teenage girl in a black camisole and skirt. Shaved clean, her head bore what appeared to be tattooed node points, but her eyes were brown, not violet. She hugged a battered paperback to her chest as if drawing biblical courage from it.

Smiling with fatherly pride, Pancrit put a hand on her shoulder. "Al ow me to introduce Amanda--"

"Amalfia," she corrected him. She beamed when she saw Natalie and held out the book, which turned out to be Sid Preston's noxious tel -al about the Violet Kil er case. "It's such an honor to meet you, Ms. Lindstrom. You've always been my inspiration. Would you sign this for me?"

27

The Initiation of Amalfia

ROCK-STAR ADULATION, and the fact that she got

it here, in a secret government compound, with the lives of her family at stake, struck her as so surreal that it left it her speechless.

"I have a pen," the girl added when Natalie didn't respond. She proffered a blue bal point topped by a grinning rubber skeleton with teeth marks chewed into his skul .

Sure, I'll autograph your book, Natalie was tempted to
say. And you'l also want that blond guy leaning up
against the wall there to sign it. He's the Violet Killer!

Instead, she pleaded with Pancrit. "You can't do this to her."

He scoffed at her concern. "Oh, and I suppose if I were testing some new antidepressant or ADHD pil , that would be okay. Possible side effects: brain aneurysm and suicide. At least she stands to gain something from this treatment. Something she wants. Isn't that right, Amanda--or should I say Amalfia?"

The girl trembled with a virgin's nervousness. "Yes. I want it more than anything."

She spoke as fervently as a religious-cult convert. It unnerved Natalie to see how this naive adolescent craved the ability of which Natalie had so often wished to rid herself. "Amalfia...I don't think you understand what it means to be a conduit. You have to guard

against dead souls, day and night. Some of them are angry, violent. Your life is never your own--"

"I know al that." She embraced the true crime book again, holding it over her heart like a shield. "I am a Violet. I should have been born one."

"There's stil time to change your mind," Natalie insisted. "Don't let them bul y you--the choice is yours."

"That's right. It is." With frosty resolve, the teen sealed herself off from further discussion.

Natalie gave up on trying to dissuade her and resorted to legal technicalities. "What about her parents?" she asked Pancrit. "She's not old enough to give consent."

"She'l be eighteen in...how soon?"

"Seven months," Amalfia said.

Pancrit grinned. "Close enough."

Natalie shook her head. "I can't al ow this." Block and Tackle hemmed Natalie in on either side to prevent any interference.

"The question is not whether Ms. Pyne wil receive the treatment," Pancrit said. "The question is, wil Mr. Criswel ?"

She glanced back at Calvin, who stil muttered in misery on the couch. He needed the gene therapy if he wanted any hope of peace in the future.

"At least...at least let us help her through the transition," she suggested. "In case she needs any coaching."

Pancrit bowed his head. "Your experience wil be most welcome. Shal we proceed?"

Natalie had assumed that the gene therapy would

require multiple doses over several weeks as it had with Calvin's original treatment, and she didn't know

whether to be thankful or apprehensive when Pancrit told them that the adenovirus he was going to use would take effect within a couple of days--"About the length of time it takes to catch the common cold," he said.

"I deliberately gave Mr. Criswel a more gradual, slowacting retrovirus in delivering his previous therapy," the physician explained as he prepped his vaccination gun for the injections. "If I'd administered this adenovirus to him before, he wouldn't be with us now."

They had returned to the auxiliary wing's examination room, where Calvin and Amalfia (as she preferred to be cal ed) currently occupied the latex-covered chairs, although in their case Pancrit had deemed the restraints unnecessary. The rest of the group watched from chairs at the room's periphery, except for Natalie, who stayed at Calvin's side.

"You think I'm ready for this?" he asked her as Pancrit fitted his gun with a fresh needle.

"It's not so bad." Natalie squeezed his shoulder. "As long as you're not alone."

Carl Pancrit nudged her aside. "Not to intrude, but... He stapled the gun's tip into Calvin's bicep, then went back to his attache case to change the needle and vial for Amalfia. It happened so fast that Natalie could hardly believe that that single, fleeting second had irrevocably altered Calvin's life.

Another second, another prick of a needle, and Pancrit forever changed Amalfia's life. "Wel , that's it for now," he declared as he packed the vaccine gun back in its case. "Pick a room in the ward and make yourselves comfortable. I'l have Corporal Johnston bring you some food and fresh bedsheets--"

Natalie glowered at him. "You're kidding, right? We can't even go near the ward."

The physician chuckled at his own thoughtlessness.

"You're right, of course. How sil y of me. But we'l find a place for you. It's only a couple of days, after al ."

He hustled from the room with the attache case in hand, leaving them in the charming company of the Violet Kil er and the Corps Security goons.

Natalie gazed into Calvin's strange and wondrous

green-and-violet eyes and felt a jarring sense of unreality. The injection seemed so anticlimactic, such a nonevent--as brusque and routine as a flu

inoculation--that she found it hard to believe it could precipitate the transformation it promised.

Only a couple of days...

At least they wouldn't have long to wait.

28

Sleepover Party

SINCE AMALFIA HAD RECEIVED the injection, but

she was already ogling her eyes in the mirror of a compact from her handbag.

"I think I see some violet!" She pul ed the eyelids away from her corneas to examine each iris. "There's, like, little tiny specks of it."

"Yay." Cal ie made no effort to disguise the sarcasm in her cheer. Here they were, prisoners of a bunch of kil er bad guys, and Amalfia acted like it was a girls'

sleepover party. Al she wanted to do was talk, and since Cal ie happened to be closest to her in age, she had to put up with most of the teen's blather.

At the moment, they were alone in the staff lounge, which Cal ie's mom had decided was the safest room in the facility for them to stay. Before the treatment, Amalfia had lodged in one of the cel s formerly

occupied by Dr. Wax's test subjects. She would have returned to the ward to wait for the shot to take effect, but Cal ie's mom thought that would be a very bad idea. If the gene therapy was a success, Amalfia would not want to be sleeping in a tomb when she began her life as a Violet.

The girls lay on the floor on Army bedrol s that

Corporal Johnston, the uniformed woman from the front desk, had brought for them. The adults had gone off into the hal way to talk amongst themselves, leaving Cal ie and Amalfia to get ready for "bedtime," although both of them were too keyed up by the day's events to sleep. It didn't help that the fluorescent lights in the facility stayed on twenty-four hours a day. Amalfia had changed out of her camisole and skirt into an oversized black T-shirt with a skul decal on it and a pair of black biker pants. Cal ie stil wore a pink flannel nightgown with little cartoon penguins on it--the only clothes she had to wear, since they'd lost al their luggage in the burning hotel back in Boston. She plumped up the

throw pil ow under her head, but couldn't get used to the feeling of cloth against the skin of her scalp, where her hair used to be.