The Third Gate

49

In the rearmost of the three examination rooms of the Station’s small medical suite, Jennifer Rush moved restlessly on the bed where she’d been placed for observation. The room was dimly lit, and the lone nurse who had been monitoring her had sneaked out of the suite-Jennifer’s vitals had fallen into normal REM sleep, and the nurse was unwilling to miss a hairdressing reservation. All was still except for the low, infrequent blinking and bleating of the surrounding medical instruments.

Jennifer stirred again. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment, she fell still. And then-for the first time in more than thirty hours-her eyes fluttered open. She looked at the ceiling, her gaze vague, unfocused. Then-after another minute-she struggled to sit up.

“Ethan?” she called out, her voice hoarse.

In the low light, with the surrounding forest of tiny lights and digital readouts, the room seemed strange, almost exotic: a mosaic of red and yellow and green, as if the gods had laid a skein of jewels across a night sky, transforming normally white stars into brilliant colors. Jennifer blinked, then blinked again, uncomprehending. And then her gaze fell on something familiar: the ancient silver amulet, left hanging by Ethan Rush on its chain from a nearby monitor.

Jennifer’s brow furrowed.

The amulet showed a crude depiction of one of the most famous scenes of Egyptian mythology: Isis, having assembled the fragments of the dead and butchered Osiris, reanimating his body through a magical spell and transforming him into the god of the underworld.

The amulet gleamed fitfully in the lambent light of the instrumentation. As she stared, Jennifer’s body grew increasing rigid. Her breathing slowly became more shallow and ragged. Suddenly-with a faint expelling sigh, like air escaping from a bellows-her jaw sagged, her pupils rolled up into her head, and she collapsed back onto the bed.

Ten, or perhaps fifteen, minutes passed in which the examination room remained silent. And then Jennifer Rush sat up again. She took a shallow, exploratory breath, followed by a deeper one. She closed her eyes, opened them again. Then she licked her lips gently, almost experimentally.

And then-with a single, mechanical motion-she swung her legs over the side of the bed and let her feet slip to the cold, tiled floor.

She took a step forward, hesitated, stepped forward again. The pulse-oximeter clamp brushed against the nearest bank of instruments and fell away from her little finger. She reached up, felt the network of leads attached to her neck and forehead, and pulled them away like so many cobwebs. Then she looked around. Her eyes were cloudy but nevertheless focused.

The door lay ahead. She made for it, then stopped, her progress once again arrested. This time the culprit was the intravenous line, running from the saline bag to the catheter. Jennifer tried walking forward again, watched the saline rack tip forward; glanced along the IV line to her wrist; then grasped the catheter and pulled it roughly from her vein.

This time, when she moved toward the exit, there were no further difficulties.

Leaving the medical suite and stepping into the central hallway of Red, she glanced first left, then right. The corridor was empty: most off-duty personnel were either in their quarters or in the public rooms, eagerly awaiting word from chamber three.

Jennifer hesitated in the doorway for a moment, perhaps getting her bearings, perhaps simply regaining her equilibrium. Then she turned left and proceeded down the hall. At the first intersection, she turned right. Her eyes remained cloudy, and her gait was halting-like somebody who had been off her feet for a long, long time-but as she walked her gait improved, her breathing became more and more regular.

She stopped at a door marked HAZARDOUS MATERIALS STORAGE. EXPLOSIVE AND HIGHLY VOLATILE-ACCESS RESTRICTED. She turned the knob, found it locked. But the identity card around her neck-so crisp, so light, such a shiny shade of blue-slid easily through the reader beside the door; the lock sprang open; and she slipped into the room and out of sight.