Mercy 6

She walked to the telescope, sensed the red dot on the back of her shoulder. The helicopter orbited, swung outward, its sound faint and hollow, trailing. She was startled to see the red line of Mullich’s laser flash in the copter’s exhaust cloud. She half expected an explosion.

“How far away are they?” she asked when he drew up beside her.

“Three kilometers.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’ve found something on the outside.”

“In the bodies?”

He shrugged and let the range finder hang against his chest. He brushed some entries into his tablet. Watery colors from the screen washed over his face, deepened the angles. He cut her one look.

“How can you fear me?” she asked.

“You present me with the unknown. The un-accounted-for.”

“You seem to account for everything pretty quickly. Especially with me.”

He held the tablet to her. On it was a cross-section blueprint of the hospital. The red diagonal showing the vertical path of demise slashing a straight line, following the pattern she and Silva had marked out for him.

“You already explained that. How we projected our knowledge of the bodies. How we took what we knew well and used it to describe what was new to us. I was impressed. I was decimated.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“You’re not.” She waved her hand over the screen. “That’s impossible. The fact that it reflects the same angle of the occlusions—

all the occlusions — proves our mistake.”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because there are no straight lines in ballistics, certainly not with these distances. And there is no evidence of a projectile — outside the bodies. Outside the skin.”

“Why, then, do you keep resisting?”

“I just see what I see.”

“Out here,” he opened his arms to the nightscape, “away from the doctors, I hoped you could think. More. About what you see.”

She hooked his wrist with two fingers and brought in his outstretched arm, brought the screen to her face. With a crook of his thumb, he toggled between the blueprint of Mercy and a scan of the occlusion. The occlusion was struck through with the same red diagonal. He did this three times.

“Whose are you using?” she asked.

He toggled three more times. Hospital, occlusion. Hospital, occlusion. He blinked slowly at her between each crook of his thumb. Hospital, occlusion.

She felt used. He had her vision in control. She tore it away, looked to the stars. She answered her own question, an unexpected tremble in her words.

“All six. You’re using all six.” Still looking at the sky, she felt sad for them. “Dozier,” she said. She found the Dipper, faint but there.

Named them as those stars. “Dozier, Fleming, Verdasco, Peterson, Meeks, Cabral.”

“Explain them,” he said. “Not as viral. As ballistic trauma only.

Not virus induced.”

“They’ll say that’s a leap.”

“Put my work in there. What you’ve learned from this building.

Consider all cases you know, any possibility, but only linked to ballistic.”

That made her look away from the constellation — to him. He was staring hard at her.

“You’d need momentum. A huge amount.”

“Kinetic energy,” he said. “One-half the mass times velocity squared.”

“We would be talking very, very small mass,” she replied. “Almost nothing. Lots of velocity. Almost all velocity. There is no such thing.” She thought. “Except in some studies. Aftermath studies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lines from point zero — lines through the ashes of bodies and buildings — are straight lines. It was one of the first things they showed us. In lecture, in ballistic trauma. I remember. On the overhead, how they looked, white lines through gray. Thousands of them shooting outward. Etchings. Pretty. Before we realized what they were. Before they panned out and we saw.”

She looked at him and laughed. “You suggest some sort of particle. A god particle zooming its way right through everything.”

“No.” He pocketed his tablet and rested a hand on the telescope relic. “The God Particle is elegant, subatomic, constructive. This would not be that. This would be crude and molecular. Destructive.”

“Like me.” She laughed again. “Crude and molecular. ER.”

“No. But yes — molecular. One element. Near — light speed.”

“Iron,” she said. “Nickel. Flip a coin.”

“Something less transitional.”

She was in the periodic table. She was scribbling it out, scratching herself with it.

“Silicon,” she said. “Then, silicon.”

“Yes. More like that. A metalloid. The tiniest shard of glass shot through.”

“You’ve thought this out.” She almost reached — to shove him.

Hard, into the relic, over the wall.

“It was the fluorescents,” he said, “that got me thinking this way. Those plus my fear of you. My eyes followed yours to those shattered lights.”

She twisted her lips, skeptical. He continued.

“The odds are good. There are enough fluorescents along each ceiling to make it very probable that at least two would be struck along the same line. The one above Dozier, the one above Meeks.”

“That doesn’t fit,” she said. “Your particle is becoming God again, shattering glass but nothing else. Not bone, not plaster, only what suits you.”