F Wilson: Sims

“Girl. A beauty.”

Betsy’s head snapped up. “Abeautiful girl?”

“A real doll.”

Patrick saw the confusion in Betsy’s eyes and was framing a question about it when Madhuri began shouting.

“V-fib! She’s in V-fib!”

Oh, no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the operating table on the computer screen. You can’t lose her. She just became a mother.

He watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm’s chest, then applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he’d accessed from the hospital’s security cameras—an easy task once he’d got the hang of the program. Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos—

Zero stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance. No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they’d been moving fast.

Most likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement. He couldn’t see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted “FBI” on the back of one of them. He didn’t believe that for an instant. This was SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.

He glanced at the OR feed—Betsy was still laboring over Meerm’s inert, supine form—then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of the birth. Almost complete. But now he had to slow the invaders, mislead them, divert them.

As Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea…

25

Luca’s mind raced as he led his men from the emergency area to the lobby. First thing, he had to seal the building and cut off any escape. But for that he needed to know where the exits were, and the place to find out was Information.

As they stormed into the dimly lit, high-ceilinged lobby he found the reception desk empty; the entire population was two gray-haired ladies and an aging security guard clustered before a TV monitor fixed on a wall. He hurried over to grab the guard but stopped dead when he saw what they were watching.

Four humans operating on a pregnant sim.

The guard turned, saw them, and stumbled backward, reaching for his two-way.

Luca reached out and grabbed his arm. “FBI!” He shouted and pointed to the monitor. “Take us to that operating room!”

“W-wait,” the guard said. “You can’t just come in here and—”

Luca squeezed his arm. Hard.“Now!” He shoved him toward a hallway.“Move!”

As the cowed guard led them toward a bank of elevators, Luca turned to Stritch and pointed toward the old ladies. “You stay here. Keep them away from the phones.”

Behind his visor Luca repressed a sigh of relief. No need to worry about covering the exits. The baby hadn’t been born yet. No one would be going anywhere until that happened.

26

“She is gone,” Madhuri said, her voice an octave lower than usual.

“No!” Betsy cried. To Romy’s horror, she’d had to watch while Betsy cracked open Meerm’s chest and manually compressed her heart. She was still at it, working like a mad woman. “We’ve still got a chance!”

“Betsy, she is dead.”

Romy looked at the anesthetist’s black eyes and noticed they were rimmed with tears. Joanna’s too. Romy knew they mirrored her own. They all knew that Meerm wasn’t coming back.

She reached across and gently gripped Betsy’s forearms. “She’s right, Betsy. Meerm’s gone. You did your best but—”

“I should have brought her in sooner!” Betsy wailed. She leaned forward over Meerm’s inert heart, and sobbed. “But I was worried about the baby! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“You did all you could,” Romy said, touching the back of her sweat-soaked scrubs. “But she—”

Zero burst through the OR doors. “We have to go! SIRG just stormed into the lobby, armed to the teeth!”

“Who’s SIRG?” Joanna said, gaping at Zero’s mask. “And who the hell are you?”

“A friend,” Betsy said, ripping off her bloody gloves. She’d regained some of her composure but seemed exhausted.

“And SIRG,” Romy added, feeling her gut clench, “is a group that wants to kill that baby.”

“Like hell they will!” Joanna cried.

“Let’s go!” Betsy said. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two at the most before they’re here!”

“But what about Meerm?” Romy said.

“We’ll have to leave her.”

“No—”

“Romy,” Zero said softly, “I grieve for her as much as you—more than you—but they won’t be interested in Meerm now; they’ll want her baby, and we can’t let them have her.”

“We’ll take her,” Joanna said. “Madhuri, Betsy, and me. We’ll put her in an isolette and hide her in a motel or something.”

“What’s an isolette?” Patrick asked. He was still holding the baby and seemed very protective.

“It’s an incubator of sorts,” Madhuri said. “A special enclosed container we use for preemies. Keeps them safe and warm.”

“Good idea,” Betsy said. “Since they probably know my car, we’ll leave it here and take one of yours.”

Joanna said, “We’ll rustle up a portable isolette and meet you at the doctor’s entrance.”

She and Madhuri bustled off while Betsy and Romy pulled a green sheet over Meerm’s body. As the rest of them hurried out into the hall with the baby, Romy hung back. She rested a hand on the lifeless form beneath the sheet.

“You never had a chance, did you,” she whispered. “But things are going to change. And whenever people talk about the change, they’ll mention your name.”

Small goddamn consolation, she thought as she hurried away to catch up to the others.

27

Five men in full gear, plus the guard, made for a claustrophobic ride as the elevator crept to the fourth floor. When the doors opened, Luca and his team piled out and followed the guard to the operating suite.

The old man pointed to a pair of double doors. “The amphitheater’s through there.”

“That’s where they’re transmitting from?”

The guard nodded. “But the cameras are upstairs—through that door.”

“Any other way out?”

He shook his head.

Luca ripped the guard’s two-way off his belt and flung it against the tiles of the nearest wall. “Stand over there and don’t get in the way.” He signaled to Lowery. “You and Majesky take the stairs. The rest of you—with me.”

He depressed the bolt catch release lever on his HK to chamber the first round and stepped toward the doors. He didn’t expect resistance, but it never hurt to be prepared. And besides, he knew of no better attention getter than a three-round burst into the ceiling.

He kicked open the doors and stepped through. “All right—!”

Empty. The place looked like a cyclone had ripped through it, but not a soul in sight.

“What the—?”

He turned, ready to go out and bang that guard’s head against the wall for sending them to the wrong room when he noticed the shape under the bloody sheet on the table. Three quick steps took him to it. He hesitated, then reached out and pulled it off.

A dead sim, bloody, carved open from chest to groin. Looked like Jack the Ripper had been at her. He saw the gaping belly, the empty uterus.

The pregnant sim…this had to be her…but where—?

Oh, no…oh, no…

His knees felt gelatinous, his arms weak, the HK a hundred-pound weight in his hands as he turned and saw the TV monitor—where the operation was still in progress…at this table…on this sim…right in this room.

They’d fooled him…played him for a grade-A-prime sucker…