F. Wilson - The Select

"Holy—!" Southworth said. He lunged forward and caught Dr. Emerson's body before it fell.

Quinn stood frozen, staring at the computer screen and the words that had been entered there.

To Whom It May Concern: If my calculations prove correct, this should establish beyond a doubt that 9574 does indeed have an LD.

"'LD'?" Southworth said after easing Dr. Emerson to the floor.

"Lethal dose."

Quinn's voice sounded as empty as she felt. All her emotions seemed burned out, used up. She felt like a hollow, desiccated husk.

"Can I go now?" she said.

She needed very badly to be with Tim.

EPILOGUE

"Any news?" Quinn said as Matt stepped through the door to Tim's hospital room.

Late morning sunlight glared off the white of the bedsheets and the polished floor. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding Tim's hand, not simply because she was so glad to have him back, but because it was one way of keeping him in bed.

Tim was a lousy patient. He had six broken ribs, a cerebral concussion, and a large third-degree burn on his left thigh, but he wanted out of the hospital. Now. Only Quinn's restraining presence and the weakness of his atrophied muscles kept him in place.

He'd spent much of the morning explaining to the State Police and the FBI all he knew and what had happened to him. Quinn had been at his side, listening in awe to his incredible tale of mind control at The Ingraham and human experimentation on a national scale.

At first the various law-enforcement agents had seemed uniformly skeptical. But when they returned for follow-up questions after investigating Verran's control room and dismantling a few of the headboards in the dorm, they were obviously believers.

Matt waved a copy of the Baltimore Sun as he dropped into a chair. "KMI and the Kleederman Foundation are stonewalling. They say the charges are preposterous, and even if they should prove to be true, Kleederman and the directors know nothing."

Anger tightened in Quinn's chest.

"You mean he's going to get away with it?"

Matt shrugged. "I called my father and talked it over with him. He says unless some pivotal conspirator spills his guts, it's going to be rough getting convictions on the higher ups. After all, they're pretty well insulated and it's your word against a billionaire businessman with an international reputation, a former U. S. Senator, and the other big shots on the board."

Tim said, "I don't see Verran as the type to make a deal, do you? They haven't caught that Elliot guy yet, and Alston and Emerson removed themselves. We don't know who else was in on it here and who wasn't. And without written records, where does that leave us?"

"Probably with a lot of lower-echelon indictments, according to my father," Matt said. "But once they start asking questions around the KMI medical centers, someone's bound to crack, and then the truth anout the experimentation will come out and the whole network will collapse."

"And maybe the investigations will work their way back to Kleederman himself," Tim said, setting his jaw. "Criminal charges, civil suits, whatever they can do to hound that son of a bitch into the ground."

Quinn squeezed his hand. "Easy now." And then a thought struck her. "What about the graduates?"

"Right," Tim said softly. "What about them? All the 'Where Are They Now' docs. Those poor bastards."

"Why do you say that?" Quinn said.

"They're the real victims. None of it's their fault, but their reputations will be ruined or, at the very least, highly suspect."

"Don't count on it," Matt said. "They won't believe they've been brainwashed, and frankly, I doubt there's any way to prove that someone's been brainwashed. They'll say they were never affected by any silly science-fiction machine, or they'll say none of those contraptions were in their headboards when they were students at The Ingraham. And unless somebody turns up some written records, who's to say those SLI units or whatever they're called weren't installed last summer?"

"So they'll go on as they are?" Quinn said.

"They're still well-trained physicians. They'll go on giving the inner-city populations excellent medical care—even better care now that the patients they're subconsciously compelled to refer to the medical centers will no longer be pharmaceutical guinea pigs."

"So it's over?" Quinn said, finally letting the relief seep through her. "Really over?"

"For all intents and purposes, yes," Matt said. "You two pushed over the first domino. Just a matter of time now before they all go down. It's over."

New Medical School Opens

(Budapest) A new international charitable organization, The Eastern Europe Medical Care Foundation, has announced the opening of a tuition-free medical school in Budapest and a string of medical centers located in Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to bring the benefits of modern medical care to the poor, the disadvantaged, and the disconnected of Eastern Europe.

Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung

also by F. Paul Wilson

Repairman Jack

The Tomb

Legacies

Conspiracies

All the Rage

Hosts

The Haunted Air

Gateways

Crisscross

Infernal

Harbingers

Bloodline

By the Sword

Ground Zero

Fatal Error

The Dark at the End

Young Adult

Jack: Secret Histories

Jack: Secret Circles

Jack: Secret Vengeance

The Adversary Cycle

The Keep

The Tomb

The Touch

Reborn

Reprisal

Nightworld

The LaNague Federation Series

Healer

Wheels Within Wheels

An Enemy of The State

Dydeetown World

The Tery

Other Novels

Black Wind

Sibs

The Select

Virgin

Implant

Deep As the Marrow

Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)

Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)

Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)

The Christmas Thingy

Sims

The Fifth Harmonic

Midnight Mass

Short Fiction

Soft & Others

The Barrens & Others

Aftershocks & Others

Quick Fixes - tales of Repairman Jack

Editor

Freak Show

Diagnosis:Terminal