"To get them to Houston?"

"Yes," he said sharply. "To get them to... Houston."

"The same day, if there's a flight going out."

"Tomorrow?"

Childs nodded.

"Then why don't we do that."

"What about the others?" Mitch asked.

"Well, since we can't move them all-"

"How about a little sleight of hand," Childs said. "We could leave them right where they are. No one's likely to stumble across them in the basement, anyway. But if we fix up the first floor... maybe move some equipment down, bring in some monkeys and rats, pay a few indigents to let us draw blood, that kind of thing... maybe that's all we would need to put her off for another week or so."

"Might work," D.C. said. He pulled a single cigarette out of a pocket and as he sat there thinking, he fingered the cigarette across the back of his hand and back. Between the Knight woman and the kids waking up-not to mention the pressure from Webster-he had already decided that things had gotten too far out of hand. The question was: what should he do about it?

Somewhere down the road-not far down the road, either-they were going to have to shut this thing down. All of it. The operations in Houston and St. Charles and Reston. The operation here. It was his guess that the only person in this room who didn't understand that was Childs.

"It would probably take two, maybe three days at the most to get it set up," Childs said. "And it would buy us enough time to work out a more permanent solution."

"All right, then why don't we give it a try?"

[125].

Outside the grounds of the Devol Research Institute, Walt pulled the Sunbird off the road and into the shadows. He looked across the seat at Teri and raised his eyebrows questioningly. "You sure you want to do this tonight?"

"I want my son."

"I know you do. But that's not what I asked you."

"Yes, tonight. I want him tonight. No more waiting. They've had him long enough. I'm not letting them have him another moment."

"Another day or two and we'd have a much better idea-"

"Tonight," she said firmly.

"All right." He leaned back and brought the blueprints out from behind the passenger seat. He slid the rubber bands off each end, unrolled the plans, and used his flashlight as a weight to pin the top against the dashboard. "Let's take a look at these. How about a little light?"

Teri took the flashlight out of her backpack, turned it on and held it over the plans.

The building was three stories plus a basement. There was an open receptionist's area when you first went through the front door and two elevators off to the left. Only one of the elevators went down to the basement level. Upstairs appeared to be mostly office space, including a myriad of small cubicles, a couple of conference rooms, and a huge open area that was labeled "The Lab." The intended use of the basement appeared less certain. Labeled as "Storage," it appeared to be well wired, with an unusual array of electrical outlets. At the back of the building, sat a loading dock, and next to that, a set of glass double doors. The only other way in or out besides an upstairs window would be what looked to be an emergency exit, next to the only staircase in the building.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"My best guess would be-if they have him, they have him in the basement."

"How do we get down there?"

Walt pointed to the back of the building, at the emergency exit. "See the stairwell? That's the only way down unless you want to walk through the front door and try the elevator."

"And what if he isn't in the basement?"

"Then I guess we'll take a walk upstairs."

[126].

Childs had found his way back to the lab, glad to be out of the presence of his quote-associates-unquote. It wasn't that he didn't like them; he had never actually liked them. And he had never actually doubted that their feeling for him was mutual. But sometimes when people were forced together in a common goal-or what might appear to be a common goal-it was necessary for the personalities involved to overlook some of the petty quirks of the other group members. And yes, it sounded like a group therapy session, but that was the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. You learned to tolerate your differences.

He pulled out the most recent sample of liver cells taken from the two boys. The first sample belonged to Gabriel Knight. He placed it into the specimen chamber of the electron microscope, positioned it, and turned to the control panel. When he finally brought up the visual, he compared it to a visual display of the cells taken when the Knight boy had still been comatose. There was a marked difference. The mitochondria, which had been round and smooth and resembled the basic form of a grape while the boy was comatose, now looked something more like a raisin. It was shriveled and misshapen. And instead of dividing every five to six days, it teased you, threatening to divide but never quite getting around to it.

There was no denying the evidence. Somehow, through an interaction that Childs still did not fully comprehend, the AA103 had served to keep the Knight boy both comatose and ageless for a good number of years. But suddenly, without an obvious trigger, that causatum had mysteriously shut down. More than that, it appeared the process had actually reversed itself. The body was making up for lost time, so to speak. It was aging at such an alarming rate that before long the boy's physical maturation might very well overtake his chronological maturation. And after that...

Death, Childs thought glumly.

He pulled out the liver cell sample of the Breswick boy, and exchanged it in the specimen chamber. It was mostly a matter of confirming what he already knew at this point. He had given some thought to the possibility that the DOD might be interested in this new wrinkle, this premature aging. But in his heart, he knew that was more dream than reality. It didn't take a genius to realize that things were rapidly drawing to a close around here.

D.C. wasn't the kind of man who would tell him that, of course. He wasn't the kind of man who would even hint at it. But the writing on the wall was an easy read. Too many things were beginning to go wrong. It was easier-and probably smarter in the long run-to shut things down before they got too far out of hand.

Childs positioned the specimen, and turned his attention to the control panel. It was frightening how quickly everything had seemed to spin out of control. A lifetime of work was on the line and they were ready to scrap it. Just like that. No second thoughts. No regrets.

What an ungodly waste, he thought.

[127].

They had made their way around the perimeter of the Institute property, staying close to the fence where the shadows were darkest. There was a sliver of moon out tonight, just enough to cast a grayish tint over the landscape. It was that grayish tint that served as their eyes.

At the back of the building, they kept low and moved along the line of shrubbery until the last twenty or thirty feet, where they were forced to scamper across an opening. Walt held Teri's hand all the way. They reached the emergency exit door, Teri breathing hard on one side, Walt scanning their surroundings on the other.

"So far so good," she said.

"That was the easy part." He grinned at her, thoroughly enjoying himself.

"Great. Now you tell me."

It was a matter of picking the lock next, and it took him less than thirty seconds to do it. She watched him, amazed at how simple he made it look. The lock popped. He turned the knob slowly, then opened the door a crack and waited.

"What-"

"Shhh." He waited for another five count, then motioned her on through, and entered right behind her. Inside, a short hallway faced them. At the far end, the darkness was spotted by a couple of overnight lights in the receptionist's area. Off to the right, just as the blueprints had shown, was the stairway that was supposed to take them down to the basement. What the blueprints hadn't shown was the locked door that blocked access to the stairway.

"Christ!" Walt ran the palm of his hand over the surface and Teri could see that the door was made of metal. It was painted an ugly navy gray that contrasted sharply with the large black lettering. The lettering said, simply enough: STAIRWAY.

"Can't you pick it?"

"Yeah, but it's a mortise lock. It'll take a little longer to play around with the cylinder."

"I'll cancel our dinner reservations."

"You do that."

It didn't take as long as Walt had led her to believe. Maybe a minute-and-a-half. Two minutes at the most. He worked with it intensely, then suddenly whispered, "Got it!" and fought a moment longer before Teri heard the dead bolt slide back from the strike plate. The door swung out.

"I'll see if I can get our reservations back."

Walt pulled the flashlight out of his backpack, and they started down the stairway.

[128].

"That guy really is an asshole," Mitch said.

"I know. Even worse, he's a skittish asshole." D.C. swirled the ice around the bottom of his cup of Diet Coke, then finished the drink. The cubicle where they were talking sat in the middle of a maze of cubicles on the third floor. The only light on in the room was the Luxo fluorescent lamp above the desk. "He's going to panic and do something stupid one of these days."

"How'd you ever hook up with him anyway?"

"It was a long time ago. I like to think I've grown a little wiser since then."

Mitch let out a huff. He stood at the corner of the cubicle, leaning against a divider, his arms crossed, all business. You never had to guess with Mitch, and you rarely had to keep an eye on him, the way you had to watch Childs all the time. Some men you could trust, some you couldn't.

"Things are getting tight," he said, just before biting down on an ice cube.

"I know."

"We're going to have to do something about this mess before it gets so far out of hand we can't bring it back under control."

"You have something in mind?"

"I don't know. I guess if I thought I could get away with it, I'd be tempted to try taking our asshole doctor out of the picture entirely and see what we're left with."

"Scrap the project?"

"The project's already dead. The guy's been working on this thing for twenty years and he still doesn't have a fucking clue about what's going on." D.C., who had finished the last of the ice, tossed the cup aside and sat up. He felt tired, a little from stress and a little from the fact that he still hadn't had dinner. "And with this Knight woman and her friend poking around-Christ, this thing's a bomb waiting to go off. And we're sitting right on top of the damn thing."

"So?" Mitch prompted.

"So, I wish I knew what the hell to do about it."

"I'll take him for a ride, if you'd like."

"Thanks, but we'd still have a room full of sleepers to worry about." He paused, anticipating that Mitch might make an offer to take care of the kids as well. That would be the kind of tell that would worry him, D.C. thought. Because it was one thing to be all business, and quite another thing to be a fucking loon. If Mitch had mumbled a single syllable about handling the kids, he might very well have stood up and shot him right on the spot. Bang, you're dead. One less psycho in the world to worry about.

The man, however, made no such offer.

"Are your hands dirty?" Mitch asked.

"No, of course not."

"And the agency?"

"Everything's clean. Why?"

"I don't know; it just seems like maybe the easiest thing to do would be to get up and walk away. Leave the whole thing sitting in the doc's lap."

"He'd squeal."

"Anything to back him up?"

"No. I'm not aware of anything."

"Well, then." Mitch shrugged, enjoying the scenario. "Mrs. Knight stumbles onto the scene, she finds the doc here with her kid and a whole room of other kids just like him, and who's she gonna point her finger at? Hell, the only way they found this place is by tailing Childs."

"And everything's in the name of the Institute. He's registered as the President of the Board of Directors on all the paperwork. It just might work." D.C. rocked back in the chair, running it through his mind in case there was something he might be missing. You had to be careful with something like this. Overlook one small detail and you could find the whole thing blowing up in your face. "It does have a sweet sense of irony about it, doesn't it?"

[129].

The room was completely dark except for the gray cast of the four video monitors mounted across the back of the console. Just at the periphery of the man's vision, the nearest monitor reflected the slow, sweeping movement of the camera over the receptionist's area on the main floor. The screen flickered and the picture changed. This camera was mounted near the ceiling above the basement landing, just outside the elevator. It did a slow, deliberate sweep across the open space.

Jake, who was working alone tonight, briefly glanced up from his checkbook then returned to the task of trying to find the one-hundred and forty-seven dollars and thirty-six cents that was missing from his account according to his current bank statement. He'd had this problem with the bank before, though it had always been a couple of dollars here, a couple of dollars there. That kind of difference wasn't worth the time or effort to track down. But a hundred-and-something dollars, that was real money. You could make a down payment on a fine stereo system with that kind of money. He wasn't going to let it slide. The bank had some explaining to do.

The nearest monitor flickered and changed pictures to the room with the two boys. The youngest boy was asleep. The other kid, the Knight kid, had settled back and was trying to read a Christopher Pike book with his cast across the top of the page to keep it from turning.

The far monitor flickered and the camera swept across the lab where Dr. Childs was hunched over a console, his glasses sitting on top of his head. He sat back, ran his hands down his face, then sat forward again, apparently refreshed enough to continue.

The right middle monitor flickered and the picture from the loading dock changed to the room in the basement where the sleepers were housed. Jake glanced up again, and started back to his checkbook when he thought he caught a movement at the corner of the screen. He sat forward, pressed a button, and froze the monitor at that location.

"What's this?"

At the lower right-hand corner, two adults emerged from out of camera range. They moved only a step or two into the room and stopped, side-by-side, their backs turned away from him. He wasn't sure who they were, but he thought one of them might be Elizabeth Tilley, who tended to make her rounds at odd hours, whenever it seemed to convenience her.

"Come on, turn around now. Let's see your faces."

The woman, who was standing on the left, suddenly sank into the man's arms. That was something Jake had never seen between the doctor and his assistant. Not that he would know if anything were going on. He only came in for a couple of hours a night. It wasn't as if he were privy to anything.

Finally, the man turned toward the camera, where his face could clearly be seen. He was not Dr. Childs. And he was not one of the other two who were always hanging around, either. This guy... he was a man Jake had never seen before.

"Oh, Christ," he said, reaching for the phone. "Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty, we've got one."

[130].

"My God," Teri whispered. She could barely believe her eyes. They were standing just inside the door of a room that was maybe thirty by sixty, looking out across two rows of hospital beds. Half of those beds were occupied, and all of the occupants were children. "What has he done?"

She sank into Walt's arms, overwhelmed. "How could he-"

"Shhh," Walt said, giving her a hug. "I know it's horrible, but we've got to keep moving, Teri. We don't have time."

"I know. I'm sorry." She did her best to buck herself up. It was just that- "You take that row, I'll take this one."