"But
why would Ric leave a pillow in his bed? What do you think he was Op
to?" Mrs. Ross winked.
"That
I can't say. But I bet you it was something underhanded." Just
then, Stevenson interrupted them. The helicopters would be arriving
sooner than expected. Mrs. Ross headed for the pantry's trapdoor.
"Thank you for your help, honey. I'll bring you up a flashlight
in a little while."
Elisa
went back to her room to survey her luggage. Her brain bubbled over
with questions.
Why
did he want people to think he was still in bed? And where is he now?
She
was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the door open behind her.
"Elisa."
It
was Nadja. The expression on her face (she could read it easily) made
her forget all about Valente and steel herself for another dreadful
surprise.
"LOOK
at
this edge ... See? And now..."
Nadja's
hands were shaking on the keyboard. They'd been locked in Silberg's
lab for the past fifteen minutes. They'd gone into his lab because
Jacqueline Clissot was still examining Rosalyn Reiter's body in the
other one and they didn't want to disturb her (Elisa, for her part,
didn't want to help her, either). Nadja had enlarged the Jerusalem
Woman's face several times, zooming in until she found what she was
looking for. She refused to explain it to Elisa. She wanted her
friend to find whatever it was for herself.
"I've
been thinking about this nonstop since yesterday. I wanted to be sure
before I said anything to you, but after they told us we'd be leaving
and the images were staying behind, I couldn't wait any longer."
Carter
had made it perfectly clear, despite Silberg and Blanes's protests:
all of the images obtained there—the Perennial Snows, the Lake
of the Sun, and the Jerusalem Woman, everything except the Unbroken
Glass—were considered classified and could not leave the
island. Plus, Eagle Group had decided that for security reasons, no
one aside from the project's participants would see the images for
now. They didn't want to expose anyone to the possible risks of the
Impact, and they didn't have a clear picture of all the symptoms yet.
Elisa could understand their concern, but she still thought it was
terrible that images as unique as those would stay behind, especially
since there were no copies. "Hurry up already," she said.
"Give
me a second ...
Oh,
mierda!"
Nadja
swore in Spanish. "I lost it again ... What are you laughing
at?"
"Oh,
mierda?"
Elisa
replied.
"Don't
you say that in Spain?" Nadja asked, distracted. Then she
suddenly clenched her fists. "Got it! Look."
Elisa
bent over and looked down at the divided screen. On the left side, a
pretty clear close-up of the Jerusalem Woman's disgusting features,
eaten away to an unimaginable degree, all the way to her brain from
what Elisa could make out; her whole face was just a bloody crater.
On the right half of the screen, what looked like curved sticks or
broken branches that were only vaguely familiar because of the
sparkling jewels covering them. She had no idea what her friend was
expecting her to see.
"So?"
"Compare
the two images."
"Nadja,
we don't have time for..."
"Please."
Suddenly
Elisa saw it.
"The
dinosaurs' legs ... are ... mutilated?"
Nadja's
almost-albino head bobbed up and down affirmatively. They stared at
each other in the gloomy laboratory.
"There
are chunks missing, Elisa. Jacqueline thinks they're wounds caused by
predators or disease. But then I thought of another idea. I knew it
was absurd, but I decided to check ... You see these cuts, here and
here? There are no teeth marks. They're
remarkably
similar
to these here..." She pointed to the Jerusalem Woman's face.
"That's
just a coincidence, Nadja. A fluke. One of those images is from AD 33
and the other is a hundred and fifty
million
years
old!"
"I
know. I'm just telling you what I see. And what you yourself just
saw."
"All
I see is a totally ravaged face..."
"And
ravaged reptiles..."
"Nadja,
it makes no sense to try to establish a relationship there!"
"I
know, Elisa."
For
a minute they peered into each other's faces. Elisa smiled.
"I
think we're starting to lose our minds. I'm glad we're getting out of
here."
"Me,
too, but don't you think it's a pretty extraordinary coincidence?"
"Well,
it
is
odd..."
"Let
me tell you another coincidence." Nadja lowered her voice to a
whisper, but her wide-open eyes were the very definition of a scream.
"Did you know Rosalyn saw
the
man,
too?"
Elisa
didn't need to ask who she was talking about. She listened,
shuddering.
"One
afternoon a few days ago, I found her alone in her room, so I went in
to talk to her. I don't remember how it came up; I think we were
commenting on how poorly we'd been sleeping, and I told her about my
nightmare ... or what you
think
was
a nightmare. She looked at me and told me that she'd had a very
similar... dream. She was petrified. She had a dream about a man with
no face whose eyes..."
"Stop
it, please."
"What?"
Elisa
suddenly burst into nervous laughter.
"I
dreamed the same thing last night... My God..." Her laughter
cracked like an eggshell and she burst into tears. Nadja gave her a
hug.
They
both sat there gasping, the outlines of their bodies silhouetted in
the computer screen's murky glow. Elisa was terrified. Not the vague
fear she'd felt throughout the day, but a concrete fear, a
real
fear.
I
dreamed
about him, too. What does that mean?
She
looked around at the shadows that engulfed them.
"Don't
worry," Nadja said. "You're probably right, they're just
nightmares ... Our fear has rubbed off on each other."
Now
they could hear voices in the hallway: Blanes, Marini... The exodus
was clearly under way.
Just
then, the door connecting the two labs burst open, startling them.
Jacqueline Clissot appeared, took a few steps as if to cross the
room, and then abruptly stopped. Clissot looked as though she'd dived
headfirst into a swimming pool, fully clothed. But it was obvious
that the water glistening on her face, plastering her hair to the
sides of her head, and sticking her blouse to her breasts and armpits
was, in fact, sweat. The paleontologist was sweating like crazy.
"Have
you finished, Jacqueline?" Nadja asked, rising. "How did—?"
"Have
you seen Carter?" Clissot interrupted her disciple with a stern
voice. "I radioed him twice, and he doesn't pick up."
They
both shook their heads. Elisa wanted to hear Clissot's verdict on the
body, but she didn't have a chance to ask her. The hall door opened,
and Mendez spoke to them in his accented English.
"I'm
sorry. You must come to the screening room. The helicopters are
arriving."
"I
want to see Mr. Carter," Clissot said. She opened the trash can
and threw her surgeon's mask into it. "It's urgent."
But
it was too late. Mendez was gone, and Colin Craig stood in his place.
"Sorry.
Any of you seen Mrs. Ross?"
"Try
the pantry," Elisa suggested.
"Thank
you." Craig offered a polite smile and disappeared.
"I
need
to
see Carter before we go," Clissot insisted to the two women. "If
you see him, let him know. I'm going to try to find him at the
heliport." Then she followed Craig's footsteps and disappeared
down the hall.
"She
seems so edgy," Nadja murmured.
"We
all are."
"Yeah,
but she never was before..."
Elisa
knew what she meant. She never was
before
she examined Rosalyn.
"There
you go, getting carried away with your fantasies again," she
said. But she wondered what it was that Clissot could have found on
Rosalyn's body that was so urgent. "Come on, we should leave
everything how it was..."
While
she helped Nadja close down the computer and save all the files, she
thought about how badly she wanted to get out of there. Suddenly, the
island was unbearable, with everyone coming and going, people
storming in and out all the time, the soldiers making a racket. She
longed for the solitude of her house. Or any house, for that matter.
"I'll
be right there," Nadja said. "I still have a few things in
my room."
They
separated in the hallway, and Elisa headed for the exit. It seemed to
have stopped raining, although the sky was still gray. The barracks
were oppressive.
She
walked past the dining room and was almost to the exit when she heard
the screams.
THEY
were
coming from below her. She could almost feel them vibrate in the
soles of her shoes, like the start of an earthquake. For a second, it
made no sense. And then it hit her.
The
pantry.
She
ran to the dining room and found it empty.
Almost.
Silberg had been the first to arrive (or maybe he was already there
to begin with) and was headed toward the kitchen at top speed.
Her
stomach did flips as she followed the German professor to the
storeroom where the trapdoor leading down to the pantry was located.
Silberg rushed to it and began to climb down the ladder. A shadow
appeared beside Elisa.