[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
looks of our slickered captors.
Page 118
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
I don't remember anything after that.
Until I woke up.
In a cage.
88 OZYMANDIAS CAME UP CLOSE-so wonderfully close-and kissed Max on the mouth.
His taste was always so clean and sweet and good. Then he whispered, "Good-bye
for now, my darling girl."
"No! No!" Max started to scream. "Please come back, Oz! Don't leave me again.
Ozymandias!"
She burst out of the drugged sleep as if she were being pulled up from the
depths of the ocean. She resisted consciousness, thinking instead of Oz,
holding on to him. Pictures floated before her eyes; she heard his laughter.
She imagined flying with him, soaring above the clouds, caressing him.
But that is all such fake bullshit. Ozymandias is dead. This is no fairy tale
with happy endings.
This is the world-as humans see it, as they wish it to be. So sad, such a
waste of potential, such a shame.
[300] Max snapped open her eyes and took stock of her awful, hateful
surroundings.
She was in a stuffy, foul-smelling, darkened, windowless room at the Hospital.
Prison! Worse than prison. Hell! No this was worse than the fantasies man
called hell.
There was a stainless-steel sink and some cabinets across from her, and a big
white-faced clock. It read 4:36, but she honestly didn't know if it was
morning or afternoon, or even what day it was.
She was in a horrible, locked cage. She gauged the dimensions precisely: five
feet long, three feet high, two feet deep. Just about right if you were a
medium-sized dog.
There were other cages against the adjacent walls. She could make out two
dispirited chimps, three beagles, a shelf of caged rabbits and white rats.
She was a lab animal again.
Max's eyes continued to search the room until she located Peter and Wendy. My
God! Their small forms were enclosed in cages, too. How unbelievably sad. The
twins were unconscious, but they seemed to be breathing.
Were they?
And where was Matthew?
Ic?
Frannie and Kit?
Max noted the shredded-newspaper bedding on the floor of her cage. She'd also
been given two chocolate-peanut PowerBars and a bottle of water. Thanks for
nothing. She wasn't hungry or thirsty. She wanted to die. She couldn't stand
captivity-not after being free.
Page 119
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The paper gown crackled as she shifted, seeking a position that didn't hurt.
But that was impossible, wasn't it?
[301] She hurt everywhere.
The lab door opened, jolting her. Someone entered the semidarkness and closed
the door. It was fricking Kane, the man she despised. The leader of the
inhumans. She had been hearing about him since her days at the School-and now
here he was, the monster of monsters.
"Hello, Max," he said, walking up to her cage. "I've got your latest test
results back. Your intelligence is off the chart. That's fabulous. We can't
even measure your IQ. Why, aren't we just full of surprises?"
"Why, aren't we just full of shit?" she barked at him.
"Now, now. You really knock my socks off. You're even funny."
"Yeah, you're a scream, too. They ought to get you to host Saturday Night
Live. Are you letting us go? Of course you're not!"
"Well, no. I'm not. But I just wanted to tell you that you are one smart kid.
It's too bad your internal systems are so-how shall I put this?-unusual. But I
do have a surprise for you."
Max fricking hated surprises. They were always, always bad. She closed her
eyes. Looked away.
"C'mon, Max, give me a nice smile. You're going to like this."
She finally opened her eyes and turned them on her mortal enemy. "What is it?"
"Look," said Ethan Kane. He turned up the lights to reveal the rear of the
room. "Your friends are here. Frannie, Kit, everybody. Except Ozymandias, of
course." Kane smiled again. What a scream he was, what a joker.
If she possibly could, if she ever got the chance, she would break his neck.
[302] Break.
His.
Neck.
89 RESURRECTION WAS BEGINNING, and nothing would ever be the same again, and
that was mostly because the fools of the world just couldn't see it coming.
Science was about to change the ethics governing life and death. It would
change the way the human race perceived life in virtually every country around
the globe. The medical breakthroughs would hit like meteors crashing to earth,
and they would have the same explosive impact as a meteor storm.
Patricia Stevenson held her husband's hand tightly as their Learjet approached
the small, unimposing airport in the rolling hills of Maryland.
Patricia's clear gray eyes were full of compassion for her Roger, who kept
fading in and out of sleep. His cancer was so far advanced that no one could,
or would, perform any more surgeries; the cancer had metastasized, from his
colon into his lungs and spread to his liver.
Page 120
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
[304] Roger Stevenson, her hugely talented, wonderfully generous husband, had
only days to live. If that. He needed to be here... because the world couldn't
afford to lose him. Patricia genuinely believed that. And so, apparently, did
the people at the Hospital.
When the captain announced that they would be landing momentarily, the
eighty-year-old woman reached over and tightened her husband's seat belt. She
kissed him on the cheek, then adjusted the jade green leather seat so that he
would be in an upright position.
She smoothed his baby-blue cashmere lap throw. At this touch, his eyes opened,
and he seemed a little disoriented.
"Patty? Is that you?"
"Yes, darling. I'm right here. I'll always be right here. We made it, Roger.
We actually made it."
She and Roger were both wearing the best clothing money could buy: cashmere
and Harris tweed and three-thousand-dollar handmade shoes. The jet had cost
seven million and it was their own, as were the houses in Dallas, Palm Beach,
and Bermuda. It had repeatedly been said that money couldn't buy happiness,
but whoever said it was wrong. Money might not always bring happiness, but it
certainly could.
Patricia stroked the mottled skin on Roger's hands and gazed fondly at his
face. She knew every line and wrinkle, the part in his hair, the way his
fingers quivered now, all of his appetites and aversions, and stories oft
told. Patty had known Roger nearly her whole life. They had been lovers since
their early twenties and married for fifty-seven years. Patty Jo Clark
Stevenson, originally from Lake Forest, Illinois, candy heiress, Vassar
graduate, director of the Dallas Symphony Foundation, philanthropist, mother
of five, [305] grandmother of fourteen, felt the tug on her stomach as the
airplane began its descent.
She glanced briefly at the runway below before closing her eyes. She prayed to
God that this was the right thing to do-that this was his will. Of course it
was! Roger was so important, not just to her but to the whole world. A
brilliant engineer by training, he had gone on to found not one, but two,
Fortune 500 companies; he'd been the president for one term; then a close
adviser to two other presidents. Of course he had to live! He of all people.
The landing was soft, the Learjet kissing the tarmac and swiftly rolling to a
halt. The overly polite young captain came back to the passenger compartment
and made certain that the Stevensons were all right. Then he personally
escorted them off the plane.
As they walked very slowly down the steps, Patty saw the one man she trusted.
Dr. Ethan Kane was standing at the foot of the staircase. He had a wheelchair
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]