Mercy 6

“The particle doesn’t shatter the glass. In fact, glass is a liquid.

Technically. The particle would pass through it easily, without disruption. It’s what’s inside the fluorescents. You know how they work?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You throw a switch and they go on. Sometimes not so much.”

“The tiny shock of energy excites the mercury vapor and oxygen.

They move around and release photons. Light. Too much energy and they move way too fast, and the tube bursts. See?”

“But the tube above Dozier was dead. He was replacing it.”

“Dead tubes are just low on vapor. There would’ve still been plenty in there for this.”

She raised a hand, but he spoke before she could.

“Now, you explain.”

“Explain what?”

“What happens inside the bodies.”

“The patients,” she said. “They’re more than bodies.”

“Okay,” he said.

“No.” She raised a finger between them. “It’s important. Because if they were just bodies, then nothing would happen. They would just be like all the other stuff. Like the walls and ceilings. The building.”

“Yes,” he said. “Then, yes. People.”

“Persons,” she said. “With memories. Memories. Memories in nerve patterns. That trigger heartbeats and brainwaves and capillary dilation.”

“Cabral,” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’s the anomaly. For me. But not for you. Not for Claiborne, either, I think. You made him fit. Fit enough for Claiborne, even.

That’s what struck the most fear in me. Fear of you.”

“It’s common,” she told him. “Neurogenic shock. Delayed. It’s why so many people die in the morning. The early morning. They wake and they die; it all starts to finally happen. From what they should have died from earlier. What their body believed, what their body was ready to do. Sometimes they make it to ER, to me. No one wants the night shift.”

“It works,” he said. “You see it works. No more than one per floor. Demise is not just vertical — it’s strictly vertical.”

She looked up at the Dipper again. He toyed with the telescope, adjusted the hollow tube, aimed it. She could name the stars. There were eight, not six. Mizar and Alcor were the twins that formed the angle of the handle. Alcor was the one often missed because it was so faint, so close to its brighter twin. It used to be prescribed as an eye test. By doctors, back when physicians used things like stars.

“It doesn’t work,” she told him. “Your God Particle. Because of the velocity. There is no detonation. Nothing that creates that kind of velocity. Nothing outside Hiroshima. And we would’ve all felt that. The whole world.”

“But there is.” He nodded to the sky, to the stars she had named.

“The fastest possible speed for a meteor is seventy-three kilometers per second. That would require a solar orbit plus retrograde into Earth.”

“You know this? You’ve thought this out?”

She shook her head. “Only from reading my medical texts. There is one documented case of a meteor striking a person. Alabama, 1954. It crashed through her roof and bruised and burned her thigh. NASA has other studies. One of their biggest fears for space exploration was high-velocity micrometeors, something that would pass right through any helmet, any skull. It’s still a valid fear but distant enough. We just take the risk.”

“There are other kinds,” he said. “There are faster ones. Extrasolar ones, yes? With near-infinite velocity.”

“Look, Mullich.” She took the range finder, pulled it to her eyes. It was still looped about his neck, and he had to lean in to her, shoulder to shoulder. She only used it as binoculars, to look at Mizar and Alcor. “I like this. Talking about this. Out here. It’s good for me. I get what you’re doing. But if you go too far, you’ll become a patient.”

He shifted, relaxing the strap by moving his shoulder behind her shoulder. He could just about whisper in her ear. “Those detonations. The ones you need for velocity. There are billions of them out there. Happening billions at a time over billions of years.

The odds are better than you might think.”

She kept the scope pressed to her eyes, gazed at empty space.

“That I need? Velocity that I need? Don’t make this about me.”

She returned the range finder to his chest, pushing him away with the motion.

“It’s a virus,” she said. “Hiding inside us. The way a virus must hide. If it is to survive and evolve. If it is to survive us.” She motioned to the sky. “It’s not out there.” She jabbed a finger into his ribs three times. “It’s. In. There.”

She meant none of it. The third jab felt desperate. Mullich raised his arm to give her a clear shot, but his expression was matter-of-fact. She dropped her aim and looked to the sky.

33

Mendenhall went directly from the roof to Pathology. The lab door wasn’t locked. She entered. Claiborne was slumped over a side desk, head resting on arms. His feet had dolled outward, nothing holding him up but the stool, which appeared ready to slide away and spill him to the floor. Cello music played, a soft, pulsing solo. Above him two screens displayed full-body scans.