James Patterson - Toys

“How nice to see you alive,” I said.

“Yes, I much prefer it that way too. You are very handsome, Hezz.”

The crowd quieted and moved aside as she led me to the front of the compound, which had been set up like an operating-room theater. I suspected that I already knew why.

Lucy was waiting there, busily arranging surgical equipment on a table. She didn’t burst out with any thrilled “Oh, Hays, you did it”-just flashed me a quiet smile. She’d obviously never doubted that I would come, which was high praise coming from her.

“Set it over there. I mean-set her over there!”

She pointed at the operating table. Then Lucy started putting on a surgical gown.

“You’re going to do this operation yourself?” I said, astonished. I’d assumed that she was prepping for a physician who had yet to arrive.

“Of course I’m going to do the operation. Who else would do it?”

“Where’d you learn… to be a doctor?”

“From your parents-where do you think?” she said impatiently. “I didn’t spend all those years just fixing roofs and gutters on the cabin. I’ve worked with them in the lab since I was a little girl. They taught me everything they knew. I happen to be a great surgeon. Lucky for you, Lizbeth.”

Lizbeth was ready to kill, but, hoo boy, was this going to frost her.

I set the refrigeration unit down and opened the door so she could see exactly where she was, and maybe get an idea about what was going to happen next.

“Lizbeth Baker,” said Lucy with a modest bow. “Welcome to my operating table.”

Lizbeth came springing up like a viper ready to strike. But the first thing she saw was Tazh Khan-knife in hand, and with a look on his face that said he was eager for an Elite-skin belt.

Next, my darling wife’s gaze darted around to the assembled leaders, who were glaring at her like a jury at the trial of a mass murderess.

“Don’t even think about touching me,” she snarled at Lucy.

Lucy didn’t even bother to answer. She just rolled her eyes and picked up a scalpel.

“We are not here to appeal to your conscience, madame-you obviously have none,” Chantal declared.

I had never seen Lizbeth frightened before, or even nonplussed, but she definitely was now. She must have thought that she was dead and facing the final judgment-from humans.

But she caught on fast that whatever this was, it involved a fully equipped operating room. She tried to cover her lapse into fear with haughtiness.

“So you didn’t really blow yourself up?” she said to Lucy with acid sarcasm. “What a pity.”

“But she really did blow Jax Moore up, Lizbeth,” I said. “She killed Owen McGill too. Two for two. So far.”

That set Lizbeth back again-neither of those two were riding to her rescue. She took another look at the medical equipment-and Lucy’s surgical gown.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to play doctor now,” Lizbeth snapped.

“I just need to borrow something of yours,” Lucy said calmly. Meantime, she was unhooking an anesthesia mask from an overhead rack.

“Borrow? What are you talking about? What of mine could you possibly want? We’re hardly the same shoe size.”

“Your brain, sweetie. That’s what I need to examine. Relax, you won’t feel too much. Oh-maybe you will.”

Lizbeth exploded in a fury, scratching and biting like a wildcat. But several soldiers slammed her down and held her immobile.

“Don’t you dare touch me, bitch!” she panted. Lucy ignored the command and brought the anesthesia mask down over Lizbeth’s face.

“There, there-I’ll patch you back up when I’m done. If I have time.”

A few seconds later, Lizbeth went completely limp on the operating table. For once in her life, she actually looked, well, trusting.

Lucy hung the mask up and turned to her instrument tray-a gleaming selection of scalpels, clamps, and bone saws. I already knew that the operation required opening up Lizbeth’s brain and connecting it by probe to a hologram imager. The probe would then scan her memory bank for information about the Elite genocide plan.

Lizbeth had to know the plan, or at least some important details, and this was our only way to find out before it was too late. It would be better if we had that bastard Hughes Jacklin on the operating table, but Lizbeth would have to do.

I’d managed to keep myself relatively hard-hearted about all this, but now I had to leave-go back outside with the troops and not watch the actual brain surgery. The resistance soldiers were crouched on their haunches, looking like they could stay that way for days. I stood there alongside them-and waited.

I didn’t feel much pity for Lizbeth, no more than I had for McGill or Moore. But she had been my wife and mother to our children. One way or another, this was good-bye.

I had no idea what to expect next-none of us did. Not in the next few minutes or the next few days, if truth be told. Maybe the human race would end; maybe the entire planet would be finished. Hard to predict.

The minutes crept by, an eternity of waiting in a dense, thickly treed forest, which felt primeval, except for the ghostly army of soldiers who rustled around with their tense preparations for war.

Then I heard an unexpected sound coming from the command post. It started as a murmur of voices, but quickly rose to excited shouts.

There seemed to be both outrage and triumph, but there were so many languages, it was hard to tell what had just happened.

There was no mistaking Lucy’s voice though: “Hays, this is it! Come in! Hays! Please come and see the insides of your wife’s bloody brain.”

As I ran back inside, I was startled by Lizbeth’s violet hair. It was streaming away from her head like it would if she were in a windstorm.

Then I realized that the top of her skull was actually separated from the rest of her head. I knew I would take that image to my grave.

“She’s fine,” Lucy said. “I told you-I’m a very good surgeon. Look through- there. ”

My gaze swung to the hologram imager, where everyone else was staring. On the screen was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen in my life, and that included the film of 7–4 Day I’d watched at my parents’ house.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Jessica and Jacob dolls were wandering through a squalid human settlement. And the dolls were exploding- a staccato boom boom boom, like from an artillery barrage that wouldn’t end. Each doll was a walking, talking bomb.

Every violent flash released a fireball through the streets, along with billowing clouds of what had to be poison gas. The screaming humans, some of them small children, slapped desperately at the flames that crawled on their skin until they collapsed from the toxic vapor that seared their lungs.

It must have actually happened-an experiment maybe, a test run held in some isolated town. Obviously, Lizbeth had witnessed it personally since the images came from her memory.

In true Elite fashion, it was incredibly simple, brilliantly evil. And there were other terrifying images: simulators that appeared to give their users fatal strokes; phones that killed when they came in contact with human skulls; a vibrator, which I don’t even want to describe; video games that overstimulated players to the point of death.

The assembled human leaders pushed past me, rushing to communicate the frightening information back to their nations. They were still shouting in different languages, but this time, I knew what they were saying: Destroy the toys! Stop the Elites.

Meanwhile, the massive human army was finally on the move. I could actually see tens of thousands of soldiers readying their weapons and piling into armored transports, prepared to launch an attack against the better-equipped Elite forces in the city.