Dead Mans Hand

3:00 P.M.

Jay could hear the voices through the door, shouting. "Maybe we ought to come back later," Hiram said weakly. "I don't think this is a good time."

"There's no good time for shit like this," Jay told him. He knocked loudly. Silence fell inside. A moment later the door to the suite was flung open. Dr. Tachyon gave them both a look like they were the last two people in the world he wanted to see right now. The little alien was ragged and weary. lie had scratch marks on his face and a puffy split lip. Wordless, he looked at them for a long moment, then stepped back to let them enter.

Hiram moved heavily across the room, brushed aside the drapes, stared blindly out into the Atlanta heat. A teenage boy with painfully bright red hair was looking at Jay curiously. Ackroyd sat on the couch, the garment bag across his lap. No one seemed to want to speak, so Jay had to do it. "Lose the kid," he told Tachyon.

The boy protested. "Heyl"

"Blaise, go," said Tachyon, in a tone that brooked no arguments.

"I thought I'd forfeited the right."

"Go, damn youl"

"Shit, just when things were gettin' interesting." Blaise held up his hands, palms out. "Hey, no problem. I'm gone." When the door banged shut, the quiet fell again. Tachyon made an exasperated gesture. "Hiram, what the devil is this?"

Jay answered. "You gotta run a blood test, doc. Right now"

Tachyon looked about. "What? Here?"

"Don't be dense, and don't be cute," Jay told him. "I'm too fucking tired and I hurt too much to deal with it." He unzipped the garment bag, dragged out the rag that so much blood had been shed on, for, and over. "This is Senator Hartmann's jacket from Syria."

Tachyon looked at the bloodstain as if it might leap off the jacket and devour him. "How did you come to possess this?" he asked, in a voice thickened by fear.

Jay sighed. "That's a long story, and none of us have the time. Let's just say I got it from Chrysalis. It was, well… sort of a legacy."

Nervously clearing his throat, Tach asked, "And just what do you think I am going to find?"

"The presence of Xenovirus Talds-A," Jay said.

The alien stumbled across the room like a zombie and made himself a drink. Jay could have used one, too, but none were being offered. "I see a jacket," Tachyon said when he was well fortified. "Anyone could buy a jacket, doctor it with virus-positive blood-"

Hiram finally spoke up. "That's what I thought. But he's been through too much. The link from Syria to this hotel room is clear. It's the sen-it's Hartmann's jacket."

Tachyon turned to look at Hiram. "Do you want me to do this thing?"

"Do we have any choice?"

"No," said Tachyon, with vast weariness. "I don 7t suppose we have."