"Grant, is that you?"

Ally squinted in the semi-dark of the room, finally making out the silhouette. He was sitting in a chair beside her bed, and his face was troubled, reminding her of when he'd had a bad day in high school.

Am I dreaming again? she puzzled. The clock on the wall told her that this was a late hour for whatever he was up to now.

"It's me," he said, his voice low, just above a whisper. The door behind him, she noticed, was shut. "Welcome back to the world. They moved you upstairs just for tonight. This is the first chance I've had to get near you."

She was still wondering where she was, what day it was. The walls were an icy blue, illuminated only by the silver- and-green glow of the bank of CRT screens that now monitored her heart and her respiration. She lifted her head off the pillow and for a moment, looked past Grant, examining the screen of the heart monitor. It was a phonocardiogram.

She knew what to look for. Over the years she'd learned to interpret every irregular pulse, every errant amplitude, but now the sonic abnormalities that typically characterized her stenosis, the struggle of her heart's scarred valve to maintain adequate coronary output, were significantly damped.

There'd always been murmurs, abnormal heart sounds, as long as she could remember, so what did this mean? Had the damaged valve already begun restoring and strengthening itself? While she slept?

Or was this just more of some dream?

Why was she in this hospital anyway, hooked up to monitors? She still couldn't remember exactly.

"What ...?" She tried to rise up out of the bed. Again she wondered, was Grant real or some chimera?

Then she realized she was strapped in, though the straps were held only with black Velcro.

As she started to pull them open, she noticed she had an IV needle in her arm, with a plastic tube that led to a bag of liquid suspended from a hook above her head. More annoying, however, was the checkerboard of taped-on sensors on her upper body, for the ongoing phonocardiogram.

She looked at all the tubes and connected wires and felt like a laboratory animal in the middle of an experiment.

"Ally, you're at the Dorian Inst.i.tute, remember? Dr. Van de Vliet's stem cell clinical trials. Nina's here too."

"Oh." That rang a bell, sort of. "What ... what day is it?"

He told her. "You've been under sedation since late yesterday, Ally.

But Dr. Vee says your test data show you're responding--"

"Mom's here, right?" Now things were starting to come back. "How's she doing? Is she--"

"He's talking about discharging her by the end of next week, even before the NIH clinical trials are officially over." Grant tried a smile. "By then, he thinks the procedure will have replaced enough tissue in her brain that she might not even need a caregiver. She's doing crosswords again. Need I say more."

"My G.o.d." Now she remembered how on-again, off-again Nina's mind had been when she brought her out to the inst.i.tute. Had she really been given a second chance? And so quickly? If so, it was truly astonishing.

But now she found herself staring at Grant, mesmerized. Something about him seemed oddly off.

"Grant, what... what's going on with you?"

"I've ..." He was hesitating. "I've been thinking about everything.

Now I really wish I hadn't done what I did."

"What are you talking about?" This kind of revisionist remorse didn't sound like the Grant she knew.

"Have you seen Kristen? They said you know about her, were asking about her." Then he stepped back. "Do you know about her?"

Kristen. She tried to remember. Is that the woman everybody ... Her mother had come to the inst.i.tute with a pistol trying to find her? Then she was kidnapped... .

"It's the Syndrome," Grant went on. "She wanted the Beta procedure, and Dr. Vee finally agreed. But n.o.body expected anything to happen like what eventually did. That's why W.B. went ahead and had it too."

Beta. Now she remembered that Kristen had mumbled something about that word.

"Ally, I got you into ... When I told W. B. that I thought you and he had the same rare blood type, AB, he wanted to bring you into the program."

"You mean for my heart?"

He looked away and his eyes grew pained. "Well, that's part of it.

There's another part they haven't told you about."

"What's that?"

"Antibodies. They think there's a chance you could be made to develop them and then they could use them to help W.B. He doesn't have the Syndrome yet, but it's probably just a matter of time."

What, she puzzled, is he talking about? What "antibodies "? What "syndrome "? She was weak and she wasn't sure her mind was fully functional. But after what appeared to be

the miracle of her heart, she was willing to forsake a certain amount of momentary rationality.

Then more memory started returning. "Kristen. What about her? I saw--"

"Ally, the Syndrome started with her over four months ago. At first they didn't fully realize how serious ... but now it's getting worse every day." He paused and turned away. "Look, I've been thinking. I'm really sorry that I brought you into this. What if something goes wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you could see Kristen now, you'd understand."

"Where is she? Is she still wherever they're hiding her?"

"No." He turned back. "Kristen ... After what happened yesterday, she had to be brought back out here. There's a ward downstairs, on the floor below the offices and lab, that's kind of like an intensive-care unit. That's where you were until tonight. But you can't go back down there on your own. Not even the nurses can go without a special authorization, which is never given."

"But if Kristen is--"

"Ally, you 're the one I'm worried about. I thought what they were going to do to you was safe. But last night I... I heard them all talking and I think you could be in serious danger. They don't actually know what the consequences of what they're doing will be. You need to get out of here and at least get the real story. I don't want this on my hands. Truthfully, there could be some deep legal s.h.i.t coming out of all this. I can think of at least three felonies. I don't want any part of that liability, and I want you to testify that I got you out of here if it ever comes to that."

Finally the straight story, she thought. He's afraid he's about to be an accomplice in a criminal conspiracy. He's getting cold feet.

"Grant, do something for me. Get me unplugged. All these sensors. I want to go see her for myself."

"Ally, forget it. To begin with, I can't unplug you. Only a

nurse can do that. And I don't want to. You've got catheters in places I--"

"Then I'll get a nurse to come and do it. I'll say I need to go to the bathroom. That should get me unhooked."

Annoyed she looked around. Where's the buzzer? There has to be one somewhere. Then she spotted a set of controls attached to the bed and sure enough, there was a red b.u.t.ton. What else could it be?

She pushed it and a light came on above her door. Moments later, a short blue-haired woman with the name MARION sewn into her white uniform opened the door and came striding in, flicking on the fluorescent overheads.