The electronic tings answered fingers punching keys on the pad by the door.
Step: Pull on right sock.
Step: Stuff bottle into sock.
The pop! of the lock snapping open.
Step: Left sock.
Doorknob turning.
Step: Jam hanger and rope into left sock.
The door flew open. A blast of freezing air rushed in.
I had jumped from the bed and was shaking my left leg to make the pants fall over the big bulge in my sock when the two goons from the day before—in my mind, I called them Thing 1 and Thing 2—filled the doorway.
“Up already?” Thing 1 rumbled.
“My first lobotomy,” I said. “I’m pretty excited.”
03:03:26:31
I stepped into a postcard-perfect landscape of snow-covered mountains and bright blue sky reflected in the glass-flat surface of the lake. The thin air cut into my lungs and halfway up the trail to the main cabin I was huffing like a marathon runner on the twenty-fifth mile.
Ten minutes later we were inside the château. There was the ubiquitous fire roaring.
There was all the eerie silence and pooling shadows of a haunted house. Past the kitchen, where I mentioned breakfast and where Thing 2 reminded me it wasn’t wise to eat before going under general anesthesia. Down a long, narrow hallway, where I stumbled once and Thing 1 caught me. Through the metal door and down the steps into the medical facility, where I looked down and saw the loop sticking out beside my boot. I was busted if they noticed. They didn’t notice. “Dead man walking!” Thing 2 called, and Thing 1 laughed.
They shoved me into an empty examination room and slammed the door. I heard the locking mechanism thump home.
A couple minutes later, the lock went beep-beep and Dr. Mingus came into the room. Thing 1 and Thing 2 took positions on either side of the door.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I blurted out. I was sitting on the examination table with my hands behind my back.
He glanced at the Things, then turned back to me.
“About my blood powers,” I went on. “Something even OIPEP doesn’t know. Nobody knew about it except the knights, and they’re all dead. You should know about it before you cut me open.”
“Yes? I’m waiting.”
“Not in front of them,” I said, jerking my head toward the door.
His small eyes got even smaller.
“It’s something you’re really gonna want to know,” I said.
He waved the Things outside. The door locked behind them. We were alone.
“There’s a risk of explosion,” I said.
“Explosion?”
“Exposing too much of my blood to the air can make it like—um, I don’t know the scientific term for it—expand rapidly maybe . . . ?”
“The scientific term is explode.”
I nodded. “Right. Like a bomb.”