Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

Rayssa reached to the small of her back beneath her sweater, retrieved a blunt-nosed .38. She slid her shoes off and crept up the stairs.

She returned to the long-abandoned office where she’d been sleeping but didn’t turn on the light. Rayssa went to the window, looked out between the slats, and peered down. Except for a weak cone of light cast by a spot on the warehouse next door, there was only gloom, and the chimes, and the wind, and the far-off blare of a train horn.

Rayssa stayed there, waiting, scanning the shadows for many minutes, before her suspicions were confirmed. She spotted a buff guy moving along the rear of that cone of light. Then he stepped into it. She saw his tattoos and, when the chimes rang again and he looked up, his face.

Rayssa gripped the revolver tighter and fought the urge to panic.

What the hell was the Bear doing here?

Saturday, July 30, 2016

3:00 a.m.

Luna Santos awoke slowly, groggily, aware that she was under sheets and naked. Well, that was good, right? Must have been a heck of a—

Luna heard movement, blinked her eyes, saw only fuzziness. Her head started to clang. A stark white room came into focus, spinning slowly. She was lying in a hospital bed. There was an IV bag on a stand next to her, with a line running below the sheets.

Confused, Luna tried to raise her arm to look at the IV, but her wrists were lashed to the bed rails. She tried to move her legs and found her ankles tied to the rails too. And there was something between her legs.

Like a thin hose or something!

Luna rolled her head, the pain splitting, said, “Help me. Where am I?”

But her tongue was so thick and her mouth so dry, the words came out weak and garbled. Despite the pounding in her skull, she forced herself to lift her head, looked around, and saw someone standing there in one of those hazmat suits like they had for Ebola, white smock, hood, visor, gauntlet gloves, and all.

The figure came to Luna’s side, looked down at her, spoke through a small speaker clipped to the smock, his voice as strange as an astronaut’s coming from outer space.

“There you are,” Dr. Castro said.

“Where am I, Doctor?” she said.

“In my lab.”

“What happened to me?” she asked, bewildered. “Am I sick?”

“Just side effects. They’ll clear up soon.”

Side effects? Luna thought. Of what?

But before she could ask, Castro said, “Just relax. You were chosen, you know. For so many good reasons, I chose you. And now here you are, Luna, where I always dreamed you’d be.”

“What?” she said, vaguely aware that he’d used her real name and not Orchid. “I don’t... chosen for what?”

The doctor held up a gloved index finger as if to hush her and walked off.

Luna rolled her pounding head, watched him cross the lab to four glass cages beneath digital readouts. She saw a white rat moving around in one of the containers and no movement in the others.

Doctor reached into two of the tanks and lifted out two dead rats.

He turned to show them to her. “This is the way virology works. You have to experiment on several or sometimes ten or two hundred or even thousands before you get the key.”

Luna blinked at the dead rats. “What virus killed them?”

Doctor seemed pleased at her interest, said, “I call her Hydra-9.”

The fogginess cleared, and she understood somehow that she was in danger, grave danger. Luna wanted to move, to get up, but the lashes held her tight.

A virus. Chosen.

She fought against a growing panic. “Why am I tied up like this? And what’s the hose thing between my legs?”

Putting the dead rats into a lift-top freezer, Castro said, “The restraints are so you don’t hurt yourself. The hose is a catheter.”

Catheter? She felt humiliated, said, “Untie me.”

The doctor tilted his head, said, “I can’t do that.”

“Untie me!” she shouted. “I know when I can and can’t fulfill my needs.”

“This isn’t about your needs. I chose you , remember, Luna?”

A dread came around her like mist and caustic fog. She struggled against the lashes and screamed, “Help! Help!”

“No one can hear you,” Castro said, twirling his gloved index finger, “the outer building has been soundproofed.”

He crossed to a refrigerator, opened it, and retrieved an eight-inch stainless-steel canister fitted with a hose and nozzle. Attached perpendicularly to the base of the nozzle was a four-inch-long green canister and a pressure gauge.

“What is that?” she asked, trying to squirm away as he came toward her with it.

“A modified airbrush system,” he said, and he gestured at the larger canister. “This contains a propellant.”

He pointed to the smaller one, said, “And this one contains rat blood infected with Hydra-9. I modified the airbrush so the propellant drives the blood through a series of screens inside the nozzle. Exiting under pressure, the blood will become an aerosol. Think of it like a virus cloud or fog.”

Luna stared at him, horrified, screamed, “You can’t do this!”

“I have to do this,” he said, fiddling with the control.

“Please, this isn’t right!”

“Lots of things aren’t right, Luna. Ask Antonio.”

“You know my husband?” she choked out.

“We’ve never met, but I’m acquainted with his work.”

The doctor grabbed Luna by her hair. She screamed, tried to fight, but he got the nozzle in front of her face and mashed some kind of trigger.

There was a whooshing sound. A short, sharp burst of fine pink haze blew out of the nozzle, coated her nose, lips, and eyes like sea spray.

“No!” Luna screeched and writhed. “No!”

One hour and thirty-seven minutes postinfection, Luna was deteriorating rapidly. Sweating. Feverish. Borderline delirious. Dr. Castro had taken blood samples every fifteen minutes since the start of the experiment. Hydra-9 was definitely in her system, and wreaking havoc.

With each blood sample, Castro could see evidence of the virus spreading like a flame through Luna’s major organs, leaving in its wake those nine-headed husks; the Hydra-9 infection was like a horde of insects breeding and feeding. The virus invaded cells and spun cocoons inside them that cracked to yield multiple offspring of the virus that in turn invaded more cells. And so on.

It was an exponential assault that caused a cascading effect within the host’s system as one after another of the major organs burned out and shut down. The kidneys always seemed to be the first to go.

Luna’s temperature had hovered around one hundred and two but now began to climb. One hundred and three point one. One hundred and three point six. One hundred and four point zero.

Luna’s eyes were glazed. She looked over at the rat still moving in the tank and laughed madly. “You’re going to save me. That’s why you chose me, right?”

“That would be counterproductive, Luna,” Castro replied. “I really don’t know yet what Hydra-9 does to a human in the full course of an unchecked infection.”

“You’re insane,” she hissed weakly.

“Actually, I’m the sanest man I know.”

Her fever began to spike higher. One hundred and four point five. One hundred and four point seven. Luna trembled and twitched, closed her eyes.

“Why’re you doing this?” she said, gasping.

“Science.”

“You said ask Antonio.”

Castro paused, nodded. “Your husband played a significant part in the motivation behind the science. He and others stole precious things from me.”

“Stole? Antonio? Never.”