Spiral

This will banish the worst, set the whole world aglow.

“Jake?”

“I don’t understand. The colors.”

“Green fluorescent protein. It’s a gene extracted from a jellyfish. The red is…” She stopped, too choked up to speak. She turned to Jake, then looked back down at the three symbols. Her tears were flowing now, buds of rain sliding down her cheeks.

She looked again at the piece of wood. “Why?” she said, her voice cracking. She started to quiver, as if the pent-up grief was about to burst through her skin. “This is all you left us, Pop-pop? You shove a few genes in a fungus, make it glow? Why?”

“I’m sorry, Maggie.”

She looked out at the woods as though Liam was there, waiting. “This is your goodbye? This is it? This is all you have to say?”

15

TISH PAIGE WAS PASSED-OUT TIRED. THE ER HAD BEEN RELATIVELY quiet, but she’d been on duty for twelve hours straight. And before that, a marathon clubbing stretch followed by maybe the best sex she’d ever had. A speed-freak boyfriend was proving to be hard on her. If he wasn’t so damned cute, she’d toss him out. She’d get off shift, he’d be at her flat, one day naked, the next day dressed to the nines, but always with an agenda that would sweep her away from all the blood and broken needles. Didn’t matter the time-she typically dragged in around two a.m.-because as far as she could tell, he never slept. She was beginning to think that was what he saw in her-the odd hours of an ER resident. Someone to be up with him while the rest of the world slept.

“Dr. Paige? We got an odd one.”

She pulled herself to her feet, entered the staging area. The patient on the gurney was an Asian male, strapped down at the waist. An intern named Kaster was working him over.

“What is going on with him?”

“We don’t know exactly yet. A woman dumped him off in Times Square. Had him in the trunk. He was screaming in the ambulance, so they sedated him. Said it took their entire stock.”

Paige looked him over. Japanese, she thought. His right hand was bandaged, bloody.

“What’s the deal there?”

“Missing his middle finger. Recent. Last forty-eight hours. Someone cut it off, then crudely cauterized it.”

She scrunched her nose. A strong odor, like urine, was in the air. “You smell that?”

“Yeah. He stinks. It’s coming off him. Like it’s in his sweat.”

“Vitals?”

“Reasonable, except his temperature. It’s low-96.5. Don’t know why. We’ve started standard toxicology tests, but nothing definite yet. I’m betting it’s one of the new designer drugs gone bad. Whatever it was, it packed a punch. Look at this.”

Intern Kaster pulled open the gown, revealing the strange symbols on the man’s chest, some kind of Chinese lettering. What looked like a lowercase t, followed by three horizontal dashes, then a single dash.

Kaster pointed. “See the crusts of blood around the wound? Dried. It’s been there for a while. You think he carved it himself?”

“No,” said Paige. “The cuts are remarkably clean. Someone took some care here. He looks way too messed up to do that. You know what it means?”

“We got Yasuki, the X-ray tech, up here. He said the first part is a number-731. The second line is Mandarin for Devil.”

Paige frowned. “You said a woman dropped him off. Maybe some kind of S-and-M thing?”

“If so, count me out.”

She started a physical investigation of the man. Young, fit. No needle tracks. None of the loose skin or bruises she normally found on a drug addict, even functioning ones. Paige nervously tapped a fingernail against her front tooth.

She wasn’t sure what, but something about all this struck a chord. Especially the number. She looked at Kaster. “Google 731.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

She checked his pulse. It was slow, steady. Then the pupils. They were saucers, and completely unresponsive to light. But she couldn’t be certain if it was because of what he’d taken or the sedatives the paramedics had loaded him up on. She glanced at Kaster. She was bent over the computer, clicking on the keys. Kaster said, “Oh, wow.”

“What?”

“There was something called Unit 731. During World War Two.” She went quiet, scanning the screen.

“And?”

“It was some kind of bioweapons research facility. Japanese.” She kept reading, her face going slack. “Jesus. Listen to this. They used Chinese civilians as test subjects. Some American and Russian POWs, too. The guy who ran it, Shiro Ishii? They say he was the Japanese equivalent of Josef Mengele.”

Paige froze. “They used people as guinea pigs? For biological weapons testing?”

She nodded. “It gets worse. There’s a big warning on this page-saying that the pictures on this site are extremely graphic. Don’t go any further if you are easily upset.” Her fingers clicked on the keyboard. “Oh, Jesus.”

Paige looked over her shoulder. On the screen was a black-and-white photo of a Japanese doctor next to a metal autopsy table. The man on the table was sliced wide open. “Look at the caption,” Kaster said. “The guy was alive when they did this.”