Covenant

55

Lucy Morgan awoke, struggling to overcome her drug-induced lethargy and reach the shore of consciousness just ahead.

She tried to move her body but her wrists and ankles were still firmly bound and a thick leather strap encircled her waist. Cold metal touched her skin. She turned her head and saw the room about her, enshrouded in darkness, and with a bolt of panic she realized where she lay.

“Good morning.”

The voice, somehow familiar, hovered somewhere beyond the periphery of her vision. A face appeared and gazed down at her, hollow-looking eyes, a flare of white hair illuminated like a halo by the bright light, and wearing what looked like a surgeon’s gown. She realized that semi-opaque adhesive patches had been attached to her face to protect her eyes, obscuring her vision.

Lucy Morgan swallowed thickly, trying not to tremble.

“Murderer,” she whispered. “You killed Ahmed.”

Again, that excruciatingly compassionate smile.

“No,” the surgeon replied. “A discoverer, a journeyman, a seeker of the truth.”

Lucy’s addled brain struggled to comprehend what the man was referring to as he moved around the gurney upon which she lay. As he spoke, she realized that her body and forehead were covered with electrodes attached with adhesive patches. Small wires ran from the pads to the monitors alongside the gurney.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she muttered with forced contempt. “You’re dabbling in things that you can’t possibly comprehend.”

The surgeon looked at her in surprise, and nodded happily.

“You’re the first patient to say that, Lucy. I’m impressed, truly I am.”

Lucy saw him adjust dials on one of the monitors before turning to look down at her again. She was naked but for a small pair of white briefs and a bra, not her own, she realized. He must have dressed her, tended to her as she lay comatose beneath the anesthetics that he had forced into her unwilling body. The knowledge sent a bolt of nausea through her.

“Don’t worry,” he said quietly, as if sensing her discomfort. “You have been cared for without violation of any kind.”

Lucy looked at him, radiating hatred. “You don’t call this a violation?”

The surgeon chuckled. “It is for the greater good, Lucy. Not just yours, not just mine.”

Lucy remembered what she had seen here previously, the image of Ahmed Khan’s bucking, writhing, salivating madness filling her with horror.

“Maybe nobody can survive whatever you’re doing.”

He shook his head again.

“It was their brains. The arteries could not withstand the rise in blood pressure nor the oxygen bubbles reaching the brain during transfusion. The drug addicts developed cerebral aneurisms. I should have tilted their bodies to raise the head, preventing oxygen bubbles in the blood from reaching the brain. But that matters not; now I have you.”

Lucy felt a mounting sense of horror.

“That might not be enough!”

“There is always a way, Lucy. You of all people should know that, as a scientist. The gathering of data, over time, leads to evidence, hypothesis, and eventually to theory, and that theory, based on fact, must be accepted by the observer regardless of their own prejudices. I have examined every single patient, every single procedure, and thus have seen the error in my thinking. They might have survived had I been more adept.”

Lucy shook her head.

“Your errors cost them their lives. Murder is murder no matter how it comes about, when it is done against the will of your so-called patients.” Lucy covered her fear with a thin smile. “What goes around, comes around.”

The blurred figure shrugged.

“My fate is irrelevant, Lucy. Only the results matter, and when they are published, the cost will be far outweighed by the value of the discovery, of the evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

The surgeon moved toward her, and she realized he was carrying a syringe. He reached up for the saline tube that ran into her left arm.

“Time for you to go to sleep, my dear,” he said softly.

“You don’t have to do this,” Lucy said, her voice quivering now.

“But, Lucy, of course I do.”

“No.”

Lucy’s voice was a weak whisper, but a deeper voice growled from the darkness.

“Wait.”

A figure lumbered out of the gloom to stand over her body. Thick stubble and bulky features, squinting piglike eyes, wearing combat fatigues and boots.

“Time for you to see the light of day,” the soldier said to the surgeon.

The surgeon looked at the soldier, frustration building in his body until he trembled and with one hand thumped the metal desktop beside him.

“Damn! Now? Can it not wait another hour?”

“No, it can’t. You’ll be back here by midday.”

The surgeon gathered himself together and put down his syringe, looking at Lucy.

“A pity,” he said. “I was looking forward to this.”

“You’ll be able to continue within a couple of hours,” the soldier assured him. “Right now, we’ve got to move.”

“I take it that Patterson’s little game is starting to unravel at the seams?” the surgeon asked.

Lucy saw the soldier glare cruelly at the surgeon.

“You mention a name one more time and I’ll put that syringe somewhere that will silence you for good.”

The surgeon, slipping out of his lab coat, chose to ignore the threat and instead walked to a locker. Lucy saw him open it and lift out an old, battered and torn gray jacket. The surgeon looked at her, as if remembering that she was there at all. He strolled over as he slipped into the jacket, and twisted the little dial on her drip.

Lucy felt the darkness slowly enveloping her again.