Inside the center room, the lights went off, leaving just a faint blue glow over the jet engine and its smoothly curved cowling. The computer voice was counting backward from ten.
"Testing begins amp;now."
There was a snap! so loud it sounded like a gunshot, and a bolt of lightning snaked out from the wall and struck the engine. It was immediately followed by more bolts from the other walls, striking the engine from all sides. The lightning crackled over the cowling in jagged white-hot fingers, then abruptly shot down to the floor, where Sarah saw a dome-shaped piece of metal about a foot in diameter.
She noticed a few of the lightning bolts seemed to shoot directly to this dome, missing the engine entirely.
As the test continued, the lightning bolts grew thicker, brighter. They made a long crack! as they shot through the air, and etched black streaks over the metal cowl. The fan blades were struck by one bolt, causing the fan to spin silently.
As Sarah watched, it seemed as if more and more of the bolts did not strike the engine, but instead struck the small dome on the floor until finally there was a white spiderweb of lightning strikes, coming from all sides, going directly to the dome.
And then, abruptly, the test ended. The whining sound stopped, and the room lights came on. Faint, hazy smoke rose from the engine cowling. Sarah looked over at the console, and saw Brewster and Bolden standing behind the seated technician. All three men walked into the central room, where they crouched beneath the engine and inspected the metal dome.
"What is it?" Sarah whispered.
Kenner put a finger to his lips, and shook his head. He looked unhappy.
Inside the room, the men upended the dome, and Sarah had a glimpse of its complexitygreen circuit boards and shiny metal attachments. But the men were clustered around it, talking excitedly, and it was hard for her to see. Then they put the dome back down on the floor again, and walked out of the room.
They were laughing and slapping each other on the back, apparently very pleased with the test. She heard one of them say something about buying a round of beer, and there was more laughter, and they walked out through the front door. The test area was silent.
They heard the outer door slam shut.
She and Kenner waited.
She looked at Kenner. He waited, motionless for a full minute, just listening. Then, when they still heard nothing, he said, "Let's have a look at that thing."
They climbed down from the catwalk.
On the ground level, they saw and heard nothing. The facility was apparently deserted. Kenner pointed to the inner chamber. They opened the door, and went inside.
The interior of the chamber was bright. There was a sharp smell in the air.
"Ozone," Kenner said. "From the strikes."
He walked directly to the dome on the floor.
"What do you think it is?" Sarah said.
"I don't know, but it must be a portable charge generator." He crouched, turned the dome over. "You see, if you can generate a strong enough negative charge"
He broke off. The dome was empty. Its electronic innards had been removed.
With a clang, the door behind them slammed shut.
Sarah whirled. Bolden was on the other side of the door, calmly locking it with a padlock.
"Oh shit," she said. Over at the console she saw Brewster, turning knobs, flipping switches. He flicked an intercom.
"There's no trespassing in this facility, folks. It's clearly marked. Guess you didn't read the signs amp;"
Brewster stepped away from the console. The room lights went dark blue. Sarah heard the start of the whine, beginning to build. The screen flashed clear area now. And she heard a computer voice say, "Please clear the test area. Testing begins in amp;thirty seconds."
Brewster and Bolden walked out, without looking back.
Sarah heard Bolden say, "I hate the smell of burning flesh."
And they were gone, slamming the door.
The computer voice said, "Testing begins in amp;fifteen seconds."
Sarah turned to Kenner. "What do we do?"
Outside the facility, Bolden and Brewster got into their car. Bolden started the engine. Brewster put a hand on the other man's shoulder.
"Let's just wait a minute."
They watched the door. A red light began to flash, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
"Test has started," Brewster said.
"Damn shame," Bolden said. "How long you figure they can survive?"
"One bolt, maybe two. But by the third one, they're definitely dead. And probably on fire."
"Damn shame," Bolden said again. He put the car in gear, and drove toward the waiting airplane.
Chapter 46
IV. FLASH
CITY OF COMMERCE
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9
12:13 P.M.
Inside the test chamber, the air took on a sizzly, electric quality, like the atmosphere before a storm. Sarah saw the hairs on her arm standing up. Her clothing was sticking to her body, flattened by the electric charge.
"Got a belt?" Kenner said.
"No amp;"
"Hairclip?"
"No."
"Anything metal?"
"No! Damn it, no!"
Kenner flung himself against the glass wall, but just bounced off. He kicked it with his heel; nothing happened. He slammed his weight against the door, but the lock was strong.
"Ten seconds to test," the computer voice said.
"What are we going to do?" Sarah said, panicked.
"Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"Now. Do it." He was stripping off his shirt, ripping it off, buttons flying. "Come on, Sarah. Especially the sweater."
She had a fluffy angora sweater, and bizarrely, she recalled it had been a present from her boyfriend, one of the first things he ever bought her. She tore it off, and the T-shirt beneath.
"Skirt," Kenner said. He was down to his shorts, pulling off his shoes.
"What is this"
"It's got a zipper!"
She fumbled, getting the skirt off. She was down to her sports bra and panties. She shivered. The computer voice was counting backward. "Ten amp;nine amp;eight amp;"
Kenner was draping the clothes over the engine. He took her skirt, draped it over, too. He arranged the angora sweater to lie on the top.
"What are you doing?"
"Lie down," he said. "Lie flat on the floormake yourself as flat as you canand don't move."
She pressed her body against the cold concrete. Her heart was pounding. The air was bristling. She felt a shiver down the back of her neck.
"Three amp;two amp;one amp;"
Kenner threw himself on the ground next to her and the first lightning bolt crashed through the room. She was shocked by the violence of it, the blast of air rushing over her body. Her hair was rising into the air, she could feel the weight of it lift off her neck. There were more boltsthe crashing sound was terrifyingblasting blue light, so bright she saw it even though she squeezed her eyes shut. She pressed herself against the ground, willing herself to be even flatter, exhaling, thinking Now is a time for prayer.
But suddenly there was another kind of light in the room, yellower, flickering, and a sharp acrid smell.
Fire.
A piece of her flaming sweater fell on her bare shoulder. She felt searing pain.
"It's a fire"
"Don't move!" Kenner snarled.
The bolts were still blasting, coming faster and faster, crackling over the room, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that the clothes heaped on the engine were aflame, the room was filling with smoke.
She thought, My hair is burning. And she could feel it suddenly hot at the base of her neck, along her scalp amp; And suddenly the room was filled with blasting water, and the lightning had stopped, and the sprinkler nozzles hissed overhead. She felt cold; the fires went out; the concrete was wet.
"Can I get up now?"
"Yes," Kenner said. "You can get up now."
He spent several more minutes trying to break the glass without success. Finally he stopped and stared, his hair matted by the sizzling water. "I don't get it," he said. "You can't have a room like this without a safety mechanism to enable someone to get out."
"They locked the door, you saw it yourself."
"Right. Locking it from the outside with a padlock. That padlock must be there to make sure nobody can enter the room from the outside while the facility is closed. But there still has to be some way to get out from the inside."
"If there is, I don't see it." She was shivering. Her shoulder hurt where she was burned. Her underwear was soaked through. She wasn't modest, but she was cold, and he was nattering on amp; "There just has to be a way," he said, turning slowly, looking.
"You can't break the glass amp;"
"No," he said. "You can't." But that seemed to suggest something to him. He bent and carefully examined the glass frame, looking at the seam where the glass met the wall. Running his finger along it.
She shivered while she watched him. The sprinklers were still on, still spraying. She was standing in three inches of water. She could not understand how he could be so focused, so intent on "I'll be damned," he said. His fingers had closed on a small latch, flush with the mounting. He found another on the opposite side of the window, flicked it open. And then he pushed the window, which was hinged in the center, and rotated it open.
He stepped through into the outer room.
"Nothing to it," he said. He extended his hand. "Can I offer you some dry clothes?"
"Thank you," she said, and took his hand.
The LTSI washrooms weren't anything to write home about, but Sarah and Kenner dried off with paper towels and found some warm coveralls, and Sarah began to feel better. Staring in the mirror, she saw that she'd lost two inches of hair around her left side. The ends were ragged, black, twisted.
"Could have been worse," she said, thinking Ponytails for a while.
Kenner tended to her shoulder, which he said was just a first-degree burn with a few blisters. He put ice on it, telling her that burns were not a thermal injury but were actually a nerve response within the body, and that ice in the first ten minutes reduced the severity of the burn by numbing the nerve, and preventing the response. So, if you were going to blister, ice prevented it from happening.
She tuned out his voice. She couldn't actually see the burned area, so she had to take his word for it. It was starting to hurt. He found a first-aid kit, brought back aspirin.
"Aspirin?" Sarah said.
"Better than nothing." He dropped two tablets in her hand. "Actually, most people don't know it, but aspirin's a true wonder drug, it has more pain-killing power than morphine, and it is anti-inflammatory, anti-fever"
"Not right now," she said. "Please." She just couldn't take another of his lectures.
He said nothing. He just put on the bandage. He seemed to be good at that, too.
"Is there anything you're not good at?" she said.
"Oh sure."
"Like what? Dancing?"
"No, I can dance. But I'm terrible at languages."
"That's a relief." She herself was good at languages. She'd spent her junior year in Italy, and was reasonably fluent in Italian and French. And she'd studied Chinese.
"And what about you?" he said. "What are you bad at?"
"Relationships," she said. Staring in the mirror and pulling at the blackened strands of her hair.
Chapter 47
BEVERLY HILLS
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9
1:13 P.M.
As Evans climbed the steps to his apartment, he could hear the television blaring. It seemed louder than before. He heard cheers and laughter. Some sort of show with a live studio audience.
He opened the door, and went into the living room. The private investigator from the courtyard was sitting on the couch, his back to Evans while he watched television. His jacket was off and flung over a nearby chair. He had his arm draped across the back of the sofa. His fingers drummed impatiently.
"I see you've made yourself at home," Evans said. "Pretty loud, don't you think? Would you mind turning it down?"
The man didn't answer, he just continued to stare at the TV.
"Did you hear me?" Evans said. "Turn it down, would you?"
The man did not move. Just his fingers, moving restlessly on the back of the couch.
Evans walked around to face the man. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name but"
He broke off. The investigator hadn't turned to look at him but continued to stare fixedly at the TV. In fact, no part of his body moved. He was immobile, rigid. His eyes didn't move. They didn't even blink. The only part of his body that moved was his fingers, on the top of the couch. They almost seemed to be twitching. In spasm.
Evans stepped directly in front of the man. "Are you all right?"
The man's face was expressionless. His eyes stared forward, seeming to look straight through Evans.
"Sir?"
The investigator was breathing shallowly, his chest hardly moving. His skin was tinged with gray.
"Can you move at all? What happened to you?"
Nothing. The man was rigid.
Just like the way they described Margo, Evans thought. The same rigidity, the same blankness. Evans picked up the phone and dialed 911, called for an ambulance to his address.
"Okay, help is coming," he said to the man. The private detective gave no visible response, but even so, Evans had the impression that the man could hear, that he was fully aware inside his frozen body. But there was no way to be sure.
Evans looked around the room, hoping to find clues as to what had happened to this man. But the apartment seemed undisturbed. One chair in the corner seemed to have been moved. The guy's smelly cigar was on the floor in the corner, as if it had rolled there. It had burned the edge of the rug slightly.
Evans picked up the cigar.
He brought it back to the kitchen, ran it under the faucet, and tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he had an idea. He went back to the man. "You were going to bring me something amp;"
There was no movement. Just the fingers on the couch.