Biowar

29

Dean felt the perspiration rise from his body as if it were steam, bubbling and running off into his clothes in rivulets. The bed seemed to have sunk in the middle, and his head buzzed; the inside of his stomach felt like scorched sandpaper, and the fire smoldered up his esophagus.

He pushed himself upright, breathing slowly to try to clear his head. Lia had taken him to a hotel several towns away from where he’d been dropped; she was sleeping in the next room. Security men — they were Air Force sergeants, borrowed from an Air Force base in Germany and dressed in plainclothes — were watching the floor, along with several people Lia had taken from the embassy earlier.

God, he was hot. He touched his skull beneath the back of his right ear where the com device had been implanted. A butterfly stitch bandage covered the incision.

Was his headache a result of the operation? It hadn’t lasted thirty seconds.

More likely the beers.

Dean went over to the window, and despite the fact that he’d been admonished not to even look out, he opened it now, trying to get a full breath of air. His lungs rebelled, and he started to cough.

Dean settled back on the bed. He’d had a wild dream, and it came back to him now — he and Keys in high school, cutting a class and hanging out by the baseball field drinking a god-awful mixture of wine and whiskey Kegan had lifted from his dad’s liquor cabinet.

Kegan leering at him, drunk. “We’re cows,” he said. “Cows.”

Dean shook his head.

That hadn’t happened. Kegan never cut class as a kid. Kegan was too serious about his grades, too committed — or too scared maybe.

Not scared. Serious. Very serious. Even in those days, he knew he was going to be a doctor. Dean figured he’d find a cure for cancer or something like that.

Kegan had predicted that, hadn’t he? During one of their drinking sessions — they did have drinking sessions, though his memory was foggy about them now.

Dr. Kegan, the man who would save the world from the scourge of cancer.

That’s how Dean thought of his friend.

Not as a murderer. Though the two things weren’t necessarily contradictory.

Dean’s stomach rumbled. He pushed himself up out of bed, stumbling toward the bathroom.