Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Reinhard drew his pistol. He didn't point it at anybody, but the message was clear. "Go on, now."

Hook and Reynolds headed for the door. Williamson held out a moment longer, but he must have known better than to anger his boss. Eventually he went, too.

Leaving Chapel alone with Reinhard.

Reinhard didn't even look at Chapel. He sat down next to the table and started playing with his walkie-talkie again. He looked nervous and jumpy, but not nearly scared enough to do something stupid. As far as Chapel was concerned that was both good and bad. It meant Reinhard wasn't going to go rushing out himself-leaving Chapel with a chance, no matter how slim, to escape. It also meant he wasn't likely to shoot Chapel just because he was scared.

Chapel supposed you had to take the good with the bad.

He tried to listen for any sound coming from outside the shed. He could hear nothing, though. The static coming from Reinhard's walkie-talkie was the only sound inside the shed.

Whatever was going on, it wouldn't take long to resolve. Hook, Reynolds, and Williamson would go figure out what that light meant. Then they would come back and explain how it was all a false alarm. Maybe one of them would go and check on Foster and Praczek, and find out that sunspots or an electrical storm in the mountains or something else had caused the radio problem. Everything would be explained, and then the situation would return to normalcy, and Chapel would be right back where he'd been: bleeding to death on the toolshed floor, with no hope of escape.

This was the closest he was going to get to a diversion, he knew, and he couldn't make any use of it.

Except-

On the table behind Reinhard, something was moving. It was Chapel's artificial arm, and it was moving on its own volition.

BOULDER, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+66:01

The arm wasn't supposed to be able to do that. It was supposed to power down automatically when it wasn't attached. If it didn't detect skin contact through its electrodes, it shut down to save battery power.

But its fingers were definitely moving.

It couldn't get the leverage to move very far. But it bent at the elbow, and the index finger whined softly as it extended to its full length. Chapel, who was used to that sound, heard it clearly, but Reinhard didn't react. Maybe he couldn't make out the sound above the static coming from his walkie-talkie.

Chapel tried not to stare. He knew who was controlling the arm-the only person in the world, as far as he knew, who could. He remembered when he'd first heard Angel's voice. She had wanted to convince him she could hack into any system, so she had briefly taken over his arm and made it wave at him. He had been massively disturbed by her ability to do that. He'd been horrified she had the ability.

But now, when what she was doing was infinitely creepier, he was glad for it.

Reinhard was too busy playing with his walkie-talkie to look at the arm. But after a moment, he turned the radio off in disgust and threw it down on the table. And then he must have heard the motors squealing behind him. The mechanical sound of the robotic fingers clenching and unclenching.

His reaction was immediate and violent. He jumped off his chair and squawked like a parrot, spinning around to stare at the arm. "What the hell?" he demanded.

The arm bent slowly at the elbow, looking for all the world like a living thing. Its fingers flexed rapidly, waggling back and forth as the motors made their high-pitched whine. It was impossible to ignore now. Reinhard made a nasty noise in his throat.

What was Angel trying to achieve? Did she want to make it choke Reinhard to death? But no, that was impossible. There was no way she could even see the arm or where it was-there were no cameras in the toolshed for her to hack into. She must just be triggering the various motors at random. But why?

Because, Chapel realized with a start, she thought the arm was still attached to his shoulder. She wasn't trying to get Reinhard's attention. She was trying to signal Chapel, to send him a message.

Too bad Reinhard was the one to receive it. He reached for a mallet that hung on the wall. With three vigorous swinging motions he smashed the arm into bits of flying metal.

No, Chapel thought. No! Do you have any idea how expensive that thing is? Do you have any idea what it's meant to me?

For Chapel, it was like watching someone shoot his pet dog.

Reinhard spun around and stared at Chapel with wide eyes. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he demanded. Clearly he thought Chapel had some way to make the arm move remotely. "Answer me, damn it!"

Chapel tried to shrug. Then he stared downward as best he could, toward the gag of duct tape over his mouth.

Reinhard's reaction was immediate and unthinking. He rushed across the room to grab the gag and tear it off Chapel's face. His own sweating red features were only a foot or so from Chapel's mouth.

So Chapel only had to whisper when he said, "That was dumb."

Reinhard's features didn't change. Maybe he didn't realize what he'd just done. Or maybe he just had no idea what Chapel was capable of.

Chapel swung his legs up fast and wrapped them around Reinhard's neck. He was weak from blood loss and lying at a bad angle. But he had strength enough left to put pressure on Reinhard's carotid arteries.

They'd taught him this move in Special Forces training. If you can cut off blood flow to a man's brain, even for a few seconds, he will see a flash of white light . . . and then he will fall unconscious and collapse in a heap.

Reinhard obliged nicely, falling across Chapel in a sudden rush of weight.

"Thank you, Top, for making me swim again and build up my leg muscles," Chapel breathed.

Using his knees, he rolled Reinhard off and onto the floor. The next part took a lot of work, and Chapel had to stop several times to catch his breath. But eventually he managed to move Reinhard around until he could reach into the man's jacket pocket. Just as he'd expected, there was a handcuff key in there.

He uncuffed himself and got to his feet. His head spun for a while and he saw red spots in his vision, but he managed. Fresh blood started flowing from his wound. He shoved a hand over the hole in his side, but the blood dripped through his fingers.

First things first. He found the roll of duct tape and wrapped a generous swathe of it around his midriff. It was hardly sanitary and would never work as well as real gauze, but it made a passable bandage and kept him from bleeding out there and then. Next he searched Reinhard's pockets until he found what he was hoping for-his pistol. The P228 that Hollingshead had given him. Reinhard must have picked it up when the judge surprised Chapel in the limo.

He looked down at the arm where it lay on the table. It was a total loss, sadly. Reinhard had smashed it to pieces. It moved spasmodically, its few remaining intact actuators whining and moving pointlessly.

The hand had been damaged almost beyond recognition. It felt weird, but all the same Chapel picked it up with his good, living hand and gave it one last squeeze. It could be tough, saying good-bye to an old friend.

But it was time to get out of there.

BOULDER, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+66:06

Chapel felt woozy and nauseated even before he opened the door of the toolshed. Cold night air swept in and nearly knocked him off his feet. It made the waxy sweat on his face and chest feel like ice. But he managed not to fall down.

He didn't know how long Reinhard would remain unconscious. He didn't know what he would find outside of the shed. He desperately wanted to sit down and rest for a while. But a lot of things had come together to give him this one chance. He could not afford to waste it-he definitely would not get another one.

He stumbled outside, trying to keep low. It was hard to bend from the waist without blacking out. The pain from his wound was excruciating, and his duct tape bandage constricted his chest and made it hard to breathe. So he squatted down and duckwalked around the side of the shed to try to get his bearings.

What he saw was more confusing than revelatory. The shed stood about twenty yards away from a big house, a pile of fake log cabin construction with lots of windows. Most of them were dark. Between the house and the shed was a wide patch of gravel where four cars sat, unattended. Surrounding the gravel and the buildings were tall dark trees, mostly pines. A single break in the forest led down to a road about two hundred yards away. That had to be east, since the rough shapes of mountains loomed over the trees on the other side, which must be west.

The entire scene was lit by a flickering red light, as if the forest were on fire. Chapel soon saw that wasn't accurate, however, as a new red light burst into life high over the trees to the south, a light that sank slowly toward the forest. A flare, fired from a flare gun. It was impossible to say where the flare had come from.

The moment the flare appeared, Chapel heard gunfire open up-automatic fire from at least three light machine guns, maybe Uzis or Mac-10s judging by the sound. The muzzle flashes came from over by the house, and he heard men shouting over there as well. That must be Reinhard's men, shooting indiscriminately into the trees. But who were they shooting at? They were acting like they were under invasion by a full-scale assault, but Chapel heard no return fire, saw no movement at all to the south. Just the flare, slowly settling to earth.

Whatever-it didn't matter. He had to get away.

Chapel ran east as fast as he could, ducking into the trees, headed straight for the road that lay beyond. He heard shouting behind him, but he didn't stop, didn't look back.

Just up ahead the trees gave way. The road appeared, a single lane of blacktop painted a dim red by the distant flare. Chapel broke through onto the road surface and smelled fireworks, the distinct sulfurous tang of spent gunpowder.

Then a soft shoulder rammed into his armpit, and he smelled Julia, felt her body press up against his. She was moving, running, and she supported him as he hobbled along. They headed down the road toward an SUV parked fifty yards away, showing no lights. As they got closer he saw Chief Petty Officer Andrews standing next to the open driver's-side door. She had a smoking flare gun in her hand.

The rear hatch of the SUV swung open, and Julia shoved him inside, into the rear compartment. Chapel realized he could barely keep his eyes open, that he was so weak he was likely to pass out at any second.

The hatch swung down to close him up inside the vehicle. He heard feminine voices talking in a low whisper. Heard the engine of the SUV turn over.

Enough. He let go of consciousness and sank into darkness.

BOULDER, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+68:14

Reinhard stared down at the puddle of blood on the floor of the toolshed. He rubbed his throat where the bastard had choked him. His hand came away stained with red, and he shook drops of semicoagulated blood from his fingers. "This is where I woke up. Just before you arrived. My men were still out in the woods, shooting at flares."

He shook his head. "They weren't trained to handle that kind of Special Forces shit. They were trained to work as bodyguards for celebrities and CEOs. Not to guard against an attack by Army Rangers."

He bent down and looked at the set of handcuffs lying on the floor, one cuff open with the key still in the lock.

"I'll admit it, I wasn't ready for this either. Maybe I should have known better. I saw what Chapel was like on the road, when he took down Quinn. But I also saw how much blood he lost. There was no way a man in that kind of condition could do what he did, not without help. You're telling me there was nobody here. Just a stewardess and a veterinarian out in the woods." He shook his head again. "No way. I'm telling you, there had to be a whole company of Rangers involved. Otherwise . . ."

He didn't want to turn around. He didn't want to look at the man who had come to debrief him. He didn't want to admit he'd failed. "We did our best. We followed the script, did exactly what we were told. I've worked for the judge a long time. I knew I had to give this my all, and I did. I honestly don't see how we could have done any better."

"Ha," his debriefer said. It was almost like a little laugh. Not that there was anything funny here.

"Are you going to tell me I'm fired?" Reinhard asked. "Shit. I know you are. You're here to tell me I screwed up and I'm off the payroll. Gonna lose my pension, too. I had fifteen years in that. Well, I don't know who could have done better."

"Heh. Hee ha hee," the man behind him said. "Nobody's saying otherwise."

Reinhard felt his heart skip a beat. Was it possible he was going to walk out of this with a job? He knew what a mess this was. He knew how many kinds of hell the blowback would be. Was it possible?

He started to turn around to look at the man. "So am I-"

"Fired? Ha ha ha," the man laughed. "No."

Which would have been good to hear, except the debriefer was holding a silenced pistol in his hand. And the barrel was pointed at Reinhard's side.

"One-ha-problem, though. The plan was, Chapel would-hee hee-die while protecting the judge. Ha hee. We were going to present his body to the coroner and-heh-say that Quinn killed him."

The gunshot was louder than Reinhard expected. Silencers always were. You expected a flat little cough, like when somebody fired a silenced pistol on TV. Real silencers just muffled the sound of the gunshot a little. He looked down and saw a stain of red spreading across his side. Exactly in the same place where Quinn shot Chapel.

"See-ha-we still need a body, to make it look right," the debriefer said. "Heh ha ho. Gotta stick to the-ha-script. That left arm's going to have to come off, too."

SUPERIOR, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+69:33

It was a lot easier opening his eyes, this time. Chapel felt warm and comfortable, like he was waking up after a good nap in a soft bed. He felt a dozen times stronger than before. Something was jabbing him in the arm, but it was easy to ignore. He looked up and saw a stucco ceiling above him, and a light fixture that was a little too bright for comfort. So he closed his eyes again and fell back asleep.

The pinpoint irritation in his arm woke him again, a little later. It was exactly in the crook of his right arm and it felt like a mosquito bite, maybe. He reached over with his left arm to swat it away.

His left hand passed right through his right arm, meeting no resistance. That made him open his eyes again. He looked over to his left and saw that his arm was gone.

Oh, yeah, he thought.

He did not find the fact particularly distressing. He had woken up so many times before, expecting to find himself whole and intact. The first few months it had been a horrible sensation to have to wake up and remember he was an amputee. Eventually he'd gotten used to it, or at least it had stopped waking him up with the cold sweats.

Leisurely, knowing there was no rush, he turned his head to the right.

Chief Petty Officer Andrews was lying in the bed next to him. She looked pale and slightly disheveled, but she was smiling.

Damn, Chapel thought. Julia's not going to like this. And I don't even remember getting into bed with the CPO. Or anything we might have done.

"You're awake," Andrews said.

Julia's face appeared over Andrews's shoulder.

Oh, wow, Chapel thought. What exactly did I miss?

But Julia wasn't in the bed. She was standing next to it, leaning over Andrews. Julia wasn't smiling. "Try not to move your arm," she said. "If that needle comes out, it's going to make a hell of a mess."

Keeping his shoulder immobile, Chapel tilted his head to look down at his arm. A needle was buried in the flesh there, a needle attached to a plastic tube full of blood. The tube ran to an IV bag, and another tube ran to a needle in Andrews's arm.

Andrews laid her head back on her pillow. "Type O negative," she said. "I'm a universal donor."

"You lost a lot of blood," Julia told him. "I had to give you a transfusion or you probably would have died." She checked the blood bag and the tubes. "The CPO is going to be tired for a while, but otherwise she should be fine. You, on the other hand-"

"Where are we?" Chapel asked. His voice sounded hoarse and reedy, but he felt good. He felt better. He wanted, suddenly, to get up and get back to work.

"A motel room outside of Boulder," Andrews told him. "It was the closest place that Angel felt was safe. Actually, she advised us to keep going, to get out of Colorado altogether, but Julia decided you needed to be treated immediately if you were going to make it. She started barking orders and Angel had no choice but to listen. Julia would make a great combat medic, you know."

"She's fantastic," Chapel agreed. "But Angel-"

He stopped. He'd been about to say they couldn't trust Angel. But he shouldn't be able to trust Andrews, for the same reason. They both worked for Hollingshead. The man who'd sent Chapel to Denver so he could die just to make the judge look good.

He didn't want to speak his suspicions out loud, however. Not when it was clear that Andrews had just saved his life.

"Angel was the brains behind this whole rescue," Julia said. "She tracked you by satellite to that house. She guided us there."

Angel had made his arm scare Reinhard as well, and that had certainly helped. What did it mean? Angel had to have been in on the setup. She had steered him toward Denver just as strongly as Hollingshead and Banks.

"What about the flares?" he asked, trying to piece things together.

"That was her idea, too," Andrews said. "I keep a sidearm on board the jet, in case I need to act as an impromptu sky marshal. But one pistol-packing CPO wouldn't have a chance against a small army of security guards. So she told me to take the flare gun from the emergency kit on the plane and told me how to use it-where exactly to shoot the flares so it would look like a bunch of Special Forces types were storming the compound."

"Most of the medical equipment I'm using came from that same emergency kit," Julia told him. "Angel told me to bring it along. There was a full suture kit in there, as well as some antibiotics and painkillers. You owe her, big time."

It made no sense.

Angel had led him right to the trap and told him to walk in. Banks and Hollingshead had come up with this scheme to make the judge look good by staging an assassination. Angel must have known something of the details.

So why, now, was she helping him? Part of the plan had been for him to die at Quinn's hands. Hayes had presumably announced to the world that Chapel was dead. If he showed up in public now, alive and with a story to tell, it would ruin the entire plan. Angel should have been helping to kill him, not helping to save him.

He looked over at Andrews. She was beholden to Hollingshead, certainly, but he doubted she'd known any details about the plan. The fewer people who know a secret, the easier it is to keep. That was the entire rationale behind need-to-know information. So it was highly unlikely she was his enemy.

He would just have to trust her. "Angel betrayed me," he said aloud. "She was told to get me to Denver no matter what it took. Because I was supposed to go there and get myself killed while fighting Quinn."

Neither Andrews nor Julia looked particularly shocked.

"It was a setup, do you understand? She was in on the scheme to kill me."

Chapel nearly jumped when Angel answered him directly.

Her voice came from the motel room's telephone, which must have been set to speaker so Julia and Andrews could consult with her. She must have been listening the whole time.

"That's partly true," Angel admitted. "Chapel, Hollingshead and Banks did collude in sending you to Denver. And, yes, I knew you were walking into danger and I didn't tell you everything I knew."

Chapel glared over at the phone. If she was admitting that much-

"I thought I was doing my duty. My job. I thought keeping secrets from you, and operating on a secret agenda, was important. It was a matter of national security, and even if I wanted to be honest with you, I couldn't be. I'm sure you understand that. But then things changed," Angel said.

"Changed how?" Chapel demanded.

Andrews and Julia both looked away. This was between Chapel and Angel, and they didn't want to be part of it.

"First, I need to tell you something."

Chapel grimaced. "What? You're going to apologize?"

"In a way. Chapel, I want to tell you something about myself. Something I'm not supposed to reveal to anyone. I was a hacker, once. Back when I was a teenager, I was pretty good with computers and I had nothing better to do than to try to hack into the Pentagon's servers. I thought it would be funny."

"Why are you telling-"

"Just listen. I was a high school kid. I didn't know any better. It was easy, almost too easy to get in. I never saw anything important, really. I didn't understand any of the data I found. I think it was all just payroll records. So I logged out and forgot about it. Until the next morning when a bunch of soldiers broke down my bedroom door and arrested me.

"Long story short, I was looking at a lot of jail time because I'd been bored and fooled around where I shouldn't. I got passed around to a lot of people, psychologists and intelligence analysts and military lawyers, all of them wanting to know how I did what I did. I tried to explain, but none of them understood. They were convinced I was a domestic terrorist, and they were talking about espionage charges. I could have gone to jail for life, Chapel. But then they took me to this one office, in the subbasement of the Pentagon. You know that office. It used to be a fallout shelter for the Joint Chiefs."

"You're talking about Hollingshead's office."

"Yeah," Angel said. "Director Hollingshead was there. He was nice to me. He was the first person who'd been nice to me since I was arrested. He said I shouldn't worry, that they knew I was just fooling around. I was so relieved! I asked if I could go, and he got really sad and told me, no, it wasn't that easy. What he could do for me was give me a job. They would find a job that would use my particular skills. He said it would give me a sense of purpose. It would give my life some meaning.

"And he was right. I love my job, Chapel. I love being able to make things happen and help agents in the field. I love the fact that I get to do good things.

"But there's one problem. Sometimes, I find out that the government isn't always . . . good. Sometimes I learn things I wish I never had to know. And that makes me wonder where my loyalties really should be."

She fell silent. Chapel took a deep breath.

"Okay," he said. "Well, we've seen plenty of evidence of that lately, haven't we? So what are you telling me, Angel?"

"I'm trying to say I'm on your side. That I'm all yours, Chapel, from now on. No more secret agendas. No more withholding information."

"I'm supposed to trust this sudden change of heart?" he asked.

"Yes," Angel told him. She sounded like she expected him to say that in that case all was forgiven and they could go back to being best friends forever.

"Really? And what, exactly, made you switch allegiances?"

Angel was silent for a long moment. "I spoke to Marcia Kennedy," she said.

SUPERIOR, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+70:03

"I wasn't supposed to talk to her, of course," Angel said. "Director Hollingshead was quite clear about that. You weren't supposed to continue your investigation. I wasn't supposed to help you dig up any more secrets. But I had already called her and left a message on her voice mail, asking her if she could help. Asking if she could shed any light on why her name was on the kill list. She called me back, shortly after you were picked up at Denver International Airport. I tried to tell her that I'd made a mistake and that I didn't have any questions for her, but she wanted to talk about it. She'd been wanting a sympathetic ear to listen to her story for more than twenty years. I couldn't stop her once she got going, and then, I couldn't bear to stop her. I had no right to stop her." Angel's voice was thick with emotion. "I recorded the call. I record all of my calls. Do you want to hear it?"

Chapel looked around the room. Julia and CPO Andrews were both staring at him, watching his face. He couldn't quite read their expressions. He couldn't tell if they were judging him or just waiting to hear his reply.

"I'm starting to think maybe I don't," he said, and Julia started to turn away. "Angel. Go ahead and play it anyway."

Angel said nothing more. She just let the recording play.

"This is about the-the experiment. I know it is. What? No. No, I want to tell you. I need to. It started in 1984."

Marcia Kennedy's voice was thin and whispery. It sounded like her mouth was dry when she spoke, like getting the words out took real effort. Even distorted by the speaker of the motel room phone, the urgency in the voice was plain.

"Please, just-please. Please let me talk, I have to get through this in one go or I'll start-

"1984, like I said. I was in a hospital then, a hospital in Oregon. I was in one of my depressive phases at the time. It was a bad one. I . . . I tried to hurt myself.

"They took me to this hospital. They pumped me full of lithium, which is the best drug they have to treat my disease. It works, I guess. It makes me feel normal again. It also makes me so thirsty I feel like I'm going to die, and it makes me gain all this weight, and . . . I don't like it. I don't like the way it makes me feel. I complained about it. They took me to see a doctor I'd never met before. I thought he was going to admonish me for complaining so much, but instead he was very kind. He said he understood that the side effects of lithium were bad, but that I had to take something. He said there was something else they could try. Some new kind of drug that the army had developed.

"I jumped at the chance. I mean, why wouldn't I? He said it was experimental, that they weren't sure what the side effects would be like, but I was so thirsty. I was so thirsty. I had to beg my father to sign the papers, the, the consent forms or whatever, but he did it. He looked so hopeful. He thought they were going to cure me. I just wanted to get out of that hospital so I could go home.

"They started me on the drug right away. They said it might make me gain weight, and I might have some problems with memory. They weren't kidding. The trial for the drug ran nine months. I don't remember more than a handful of days in that time. I remember sitting in a day room at the hospital, playing chess with somebody. She was schizophrenic and she cheated. She cheated at chess; she would just, just make up new rules, and say I had to play by them, but they didn't make sense. I got really frustrated and I could barely breathe. I remember looking down and there was my stomach. It was huge. I felt like I'd swallowed a bowling ball. I started to cry because I'd gotten so fat. Weight gain was one of the side effects of lithium, too. I guess I thought they must be related kinds of drugs.

"Except this one didn't make me thirsty. It made me nauseated. I don't remember much of those months. But I remember always wanting to throw up. I remember my hair thinning, and my sweat smelled funny. I have little glimpses, sometimes. Little recollections. I remember the pattern of light on a wall, or I see myself in a mirror, and my skin was so clear. It had never been that clear in my life.

"At the end of the nine months I woke up in this bed, there was blood on the sheets and I had no idea what I was doing there. The doctor, the kindly doctor was there and he held my hand. He held my hand for hours because I was crying, except I didn't know why I was crying. I felt like something had ended. Like something had been taken away from me but I didn't know what. He told me I wasn't thinking straight, that the drug had unexpected side effects. One of them was that it made me hallucinate some things, except I couldn't remember any hallucinations. He told me it had also interacted badly with my digestive system, which explained the nausea. He said that because of the drug my appendix had become inflamed and that they had to remove it. I had a scar on my stomach, this huge scar right at the bottom of my stomach, right at my bikini line. He said that was where they took out my appendix.

"They stopped giving me the new drug, which was fine, I didn't want it anymore. I figured lithium was better. Anything would be better. I got to go home. The weight came off pretty fast and I guess-I guess I just went on with my life. I didn't think about it too much. I didn't want to. It was like I went to sleep and had a nightmare, and when I woke up, it was nine months later.

"I had dreams sometimes but they were just . . . dreams. For years I had them and I told myself they meant nothing. When you're bipolar, you learn to make a lot of excuses. That's what my therapist tells me. You make excuses for your behavior. When you're manic and people tell you you're acting crazy, you just tell yourself they're jealous because you're having more fun than they are, or that they just can't keep up with you. When you're depressed, on the other end of the cycle, you make up excuses why you need to spend the day in bed, or why the rent is late . . .

"So every time I thought about that drug trial, every time I would remember something, I would just tell myself none of it was real. That the things I was thinking were just disordered thoughts, or misinterpreted memories, or whatever. Nothing really happened to me in that hospital except I went a little loopy, and wow, how fortunate was it that I couldn't remember what I did all that clearly. I didn't want to remember. I wanted to put it behind me.

"Sometimes people would ask me about my scar. You know . . . boyfriends, mostly. I've had a few, and they always ask where it came from. I tell them I had my appendix out a long time ago. In 1985. Usually nobody asks twice. But there was one guy, once. He asked and he said his mom had a scar like that. I said she'd probably had her appendix out, too, but he said no. He said she'd had a cesarean section when he was born. He was upside down in her womb and they had to cut him out.

"I don't . . . I don't want to say what I think. It sounds crazy. It just sounds crazy. But you know, don't you? You're a woman. You know what I think.

"You know what I think they took from me."

SUPERIOR, COLORADO: APRIL 15, T+70:31

CPO Andrews wiped a tear from her cheek. She had turned her face away from Chapel's, so he couldn't tell what she was thinking, though he could guess.

Julia got up without a word and left the room.