A sudden wave of terror flooded through her. “Pendergast!” she cried, struggling with her bonds. “Pendergast!”
Silence for a moment. Then, the amplified voice of the general, coming over a speaker high in the wall: “Bring in the parang. Then follow standard procedures.”
She was hyperventilating again, and this time she had a more difficult time overcoming it.
She could do this. She’d overcome worse. It was absurd to think that she could be forced to amputate her own leg. She thought back to the time when her kayak had capsized off Sitka Sound. Or five years ago, skiing off-piste on the glaciers of La Grave, when one of their party had fallen in a crevasse and dislocated a shoulder, and she had roped up and gone in to bring her out. It was all about keeping her cool; keeping control.
Everything depended on keeping control.
A steel door in one side of the lab opened, and an orderly wheeled in a gurney. An object lay upon it, covered with a hospital sheet. She watched as the orderly placed the gurney five feet from her, locked its wheels, whisked off the sheet, and walked back toward the door. A large knife lay on the gurney: a sort of machete but heavier and longer, with a blade that took an odd bend about a quarter of the way down its length. The edge was sharpened to a silvery gleam, but the body and spine of the blade were a mottled grayish-black. Its shape reminded her of a giant slug. The end was encased in a derringer-shaped handle of wood, well worn…
She looked away, toward the doctor and two orderlies.
The doctor nodded at one, who came over behind her and began undoing the leather straps that bound her. She suddenly had a thought: as soon as she was free, she could seize the blade and use it to escape. As the orderly unbuckled her ankles, legs, and elbows, she began to plot out each movement in her mind. But then the other orderly came over and pinned her arms even as she was being freed, holding her immobile. She struggled, but he held her fast in what felt like a long-practiced maneuver.
“You bastards, let me go!” she cried, struggling again.
“Soon,” the doctor said in a high, penetrating voice. “Very soon.”
They stood her up, and one orderly whisked the wheelchair away while the other continued to hold her in an iron grip. He leaned in toward her ear. “I’m going to release you. Stop struggling.”
She went quiet and felt his grip ease. Then, after a brief fumbling, the orderly quickly stepped back. She hesitated, then took a step toward the weapon.
“Not yet,” said the other orderly sharply. He held a gun, pointing it at her.
She froze as the doctor and the two orderlies backed up toward the metal door, one keeping the gun trained on her. The other grasped a cabinet on wheels and moved it away. As they reached the steel door, the doctor glanced back at her. His hazel eyes had lost none of their brightness, and they regarded her with a brief, intense curiosity. Then he turned and followed the others through the door, which closed quietly behind him.
She turned away again, and as she did her eyes once more fell on the blade—what the general had called a parang. Its full import—why it was there, what it was intended for—fell on her like an iron cloak. She limped back to the far wall, all the time staring at the gurney and its blade. It was still a potential weapon of defense, of rescue. She wanted to touch it, to take it up and use it against those who had done this to her, to get out of this hellish place. But the logical part of her mind said to her, Don’t touch it.
“No,” she said aloud. “No, no, no…!”
With great effort she rallied her thoughts, pushing away the fear and despair in an effort to logically assess her situation. Everything depends on keeping control.
The serum had been administered to her—what? Forty-five minutes ago? The doctor said it took an hour to take effect.
Dear God, it was hard to think rationally…
Everyone in the room had left. She glanced up at the long mirrored window. On the other side, they were watching. Waiting…
Don’t. She had to put all irrelevant thoughts aside, confront the situation head-on, if she hoped to have any chance of beating this—
No. That was wrong. She would beat this. The idea that she would cut herself with that cruel-looking thing was crazy.
She looked around. The lab was fully equipped with IV racks and monitors and just about any other kind of equipment necessary to run an ER. There were cabinets along the wall that might contain pharmaceuticals and syringes. If she could arm herself with a scalpel, or better yet several, maybe she could hide them in her clothing, and when they came back in…Except for that damned one-way mirror. There was no place in the lab out of its view. They were all watching, watching her every movement. Still…
She walked to the wall with the cabinets. Why was it so difficult to move?
Then she realized: it was the limp. It had first manifested when she’d left the wheelchair: now, five minutes later, it was far more pronounced. It must have been from the tight bonds that held her in the chair, or maybe she’d hurt herself during the chase or in one of the struggles that followed.
She stopped in midstride and glanced down at her right leg. She could see nothing wrong with it. She raised it, swung it back and forth at the knee, like a pendulum. No pain, no restriction of movement. She returned it to the floor, ready to continue forward, and it was only as the sole of her foot touched the cold tile that she realized something was wrong. It was strange, leaden, and from a tingling line above the ankle it didn’t look or feel right.
It was not her foot. They had done something to it. They had grafted—
For a moment, she froze in terror. And then she realized: this thought was completely insane. Of course it was her foot. She forced the perverse idea from her head and continued to the cabinets. They were unlocked, but she found nothing inside them but gauze, gowns, surgical cloths, hairnets, and masks.
She kept looking. It occurred to her that if she couldn’t find a weapon, she might find a drug—a tranquilizer, or a strong narcotic, or even anesthesia: something that would put her out of commission until whatever strange feeling was creeping over her had passed.
Nothing. The cart that orderly had wheeled out probably contained anything that might be of use to her. To hurt someone—or even medicate herself.
Her eye stole back over to the parang, gleaming on the table. Now, that was a fearsome weapon. It would disembowel any of those bastards with a single swipe…
Don’t touch it.
With a stab of fear and frustration, she turned away, heading across the room toward the mirror. The limp was even more pronounced now. And then it became clear that limp wasn’t really the right term. She simply could not stand the sensation of that thing touching the ground.
That thing. That “thing” was her foot. Her own foot. Everything depends on keeping control…
She stared up at the mirror. She knew the general was staring back at her, and perhaps the doctor as well. She wanted to curse them, but Christ, she felt strange. She slumped down and heard a clattering beside her. It was the parang. Its long cruel blade, exquisitely sharp, lay beside her, edge glistening in the lights.
How did it get there?
She must have picked it up on her way past the gurney.
She edged away from it. “Pendergast!” she yelled at the mirror. “Are you there? Pendergast!”
With great effort, she mastered herself again. This did not need to happen. She was not like those victims who had cut off their own feet. She knew what the drug did. That knowledge was power.