Mercy 6

These were trauma lines, vague and distant parentheses around the primary line left by the ballistic path.

It was pretty. It seemed to dance to the long draw of the violin bow sounding above the lab. The gel block was backlit with amber light to accentuate the trauma lines.

“Come see,” said Mendenhall, softly, in case they were listening.

Silva came; Claiborne remained with Verdasco. Mendenhall ran the last video again, the highest velocity.

“It’s hydrostatic shock,” Mendenhall told Silva. She felt the lab tech near her shoulder. “It shows how high-velocity projectiles, even when very small, cause peripheral damage. Extreme damage.”

Mendenhall repeated the demo.

“The body returns to form.” Silva’s voice was plaintive.

“I know that study.” Claiborne spoke without leaving his position, the direction of his voice downward. Mendenhall imagined him behind them, talking to Verdasco. “You’re fighting, Dr. Mendenhall.”

“I’m not.” She ran the video again, pausing at impact, the birth of the spiral. “I’m doing what I should do at this point. My expertise.

What I know that causes peripheral hemorrhaging. Why people die from what should be nonfatal invasion. Why bodies die from impacts to nonvital tissue. Why I have patients die from getting shot in the shoulder, the thigh, the foot. Why I had one die from a piece of glass through her bicep.”

“Those are extreme velocities,” said Claiborne.

“We live in a world of extreme velocities.”

“We have no ballistic,” replied Claiborne. His voice was even lower, crouching closer to Verdasco. “We have no entry or exit.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m just showing peripheral trauma. Peripheral hemorrhaging as indicator for extreme trauma. Hemorrhaging distant from the point of initiation. Bleeding in the most liquid organs.” Mendenhall pointed to the amber swirls in the corners of the gel block, drawing Silva closer. “Far perimeter clouds in the brain and liver.”

Mendenhall winced at her own words. Metaphor indicated lack of precision, a skip in the equation.

“Far perimeter clouds?” Claiborne knew what she was thinking.

“Okay. Perimeter bruising.” Mendenhall turned away from the screen and looked at Claiborne, waited for him to quit Verdasco.

After a moment he straightened and looked at her.

“That’s what you have,” she told him. “Something — a viral impact, if you want — that causes perimeter hemorrhaging in uninvolved organs. That’s a valid assumption until you find something in those peripheral tissues. Those far tissues. I think you should focus on those samples first. While Thorpe’s people go after the primary hemorrhages.”

“I am Thorpe’s people.” Claiborne looked at Silva. “We are Thorpe’s people.”

“You know what I mean.”

Claiborne joined her and Silva by the laptop. They stood together beneath Mullich’s charts.

“Run it again,” he said, nodding toward the laptop screen. “It’s pretty. My eyes need a break.”

Silva was the one who tapped it into motion. They watched the pellet pass straight through the gel block, the spiral of amber distorting the whole into a sideways tornado.

“I’m helping,” said Mendenhall. “Increasing efficiency.”

“Providing entertainment.” Claiborne took control of the video, his hand dark and slender, freshly peeled from its glove. He made the demonstration run backward and forward, repeating. He darkened the screen, deepening the amber backlight. The impact seemed to bring the gel block to life, morphed it into a cell, quickening, seeking another.

18

When Mullich returned to the lab they had to explain

themselves. Claiborne had already moved back to Verdasco’s body, drawing Silva with a nod. He must have sensed the architect’s approach, the breach in his underworld. Mendenhall sat alone by the laptop, the video still looping, caught.

Mullich let the door ease shut behind him. He sterilized his hands with lotion, pulled on fresh gloves, all while scanning the others in the room, the screen displays. Everything was there for him. Mendenhall started to explain, then caught herself. This was Mullich. She returned his gaze and drew back from the desk, letting him see. Claiborne and Silva continued their work, innocent.

Mullich stood above Mendenhall and watched the loop.

Intermittently he glanced back to the bodies. Then he moved to Claiborne’s desk, studied the scans showing the primary trauma patterns.

When Mendenhall joined him, she said nothing.

“In these two,” Mullich pointed to the scans of Dozier and Verdasco, “the cone is reversed.”

“It’s not the cone we’re — I’m — focused on.” Mendenhall found a laser pen on Claiborne’s desk. She drew the bead of light across both diagonals, slashing the brainstems. Then she aimed it at the scans of the frontal lobes, Verdasco’s lung, Dozier’s liver, the vague clouds in each.

“These show incipient hemorrhaging in peripheral organs.

Major organs.” She let Mullich see, just see.

“You think that,” Mullich pointed toward the video, “happened to them?” He held his hand toward the bodies.