Motol hospital, Prague, Czech Republic
November 30
Crew was on his way in to the hospital when a pair of nurses, masks clutched to their faces, ran out past him, screaming. He watched them go, curious, then shrugged and continued inside.
To his left, the large heavy doors to the treatment area were being locked shut, an old man in a blue hospital uniform wrapping yellow tape across the handles and to the frame. The echoes of hundreds of screams seeped through the cracks. Crew motioned to the tape, cleared his throat.
“What’s up with the panic?” he called, and the old man turned with a start, his mask too tight on his face.
“Outbreak,” he gasped. “Something terrible. The whole floor has it, and two of the nurses. We’re quarantining everyone. City is bringing in the army.”
Crew crossed his arms, made a face.
“Who started it?”
The old man tried to run past, but Crew caught him by the sleeve, swung him around.
“Please!” cried the man. “Please, I have a family… I can’t stay here, it’s not safe!”
“I’ll tell you what’s not safe,” said Crew calmly. “Pissing me off, that’s what. Who started the outbreak?”
“Nobody knows. They’re all delirious… they’re having waking nightmares, terrible nightmares, and they scream day and night. We were sedating them at first, but there wasn’t enough to last. We don’t know what else to—”
“Yeah yeah, not my problem,” Crew cut in. “There’s been a Healer around here, right? Could it have been him? Did he come into contact with any of the patients?”
The old man tried to run again, but Crew re-gripped him, slammed him into the wall.
“I said,” said Crew, “did the Healer see any patients?”
“No… no, Dr Bastien kept him out of the hospital. He never got in. He… he couldn’t have been involved.”
Crew gritted his teeth, checked over his shoulder, grim.
“Who treated the first patient?” he asked. “Which doctor?”
“Dr Anouma,” the man stuttered. “But she’s been missing since last night. Nobody can find her, and she won’t answer her pages.”
“Any idea where she lives?”
“Here at the hospital, but she’s not here, I swear. She had an emergency with her brother, and she was just… gone…”
Crew reared on the man, leaning in close.
“Her brother?” he breathed.
* * *
The room was so dark that Crew got antsy, pulled his gun. He nudged his way forward, checking every angle with quick sweeps, until he arrived at the back of the room, dim light shining through thick plastic covers over the window.
A single bed was propped on the side, and there, sheets askew, was a frail black man who seemed to be on the verge of complete disintegration. He was watching as Crew approached, eyes bloodshot and fearful.
“You’re Dr Anouma’s brother?” Crew asked, rough from the start.
Adjobi nodded, weak but anxious.
“She saw you last night? Late last night?”
“Yes…” whispered Adjobi.
“Did she say where she was going?”
Adjobi sat higher in the bed, pupils opening wide.
“She’s not downstairs?”
Crew shook his head.
“She took off after seeing you. Any idea why?”
“I… I don’t—”
“What do you know about the outbreak down there? Did she mention it?”
Adjobi sat up, thin arms bracing on the rails beside him, gasping for breath.
“Outbreak? What outbreak?”
“Something about screaming, I don’t know. She treated the first patient, so I need to find her. So really: anything you’ve got rolling around in that head of yours would be very useful right now.”
Adjobi blinked, seemed lost in thought, shook his head.
“I don’t know. She didn’t mention anything, didn’t say she was going anywhere. But I…” he strained, unlatched the rail at his right side and swung his legs over the edge. “I’ve got to go help. They’re understaffed enough as it is…”
Crew did a double-take, put a hand on Adjobi’s shoulder, holding him back.
“Hold a second there. I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
“I’m a doctor, I know what I’m—”
“I don’t think you do!” Crew interrupted, motioning to the dozen wires that strung from machines around the room, taped and deep-set into Adjobi’s arms. “Are you going to bring all this crap with you when you go? No! So sit down and let somebody else deal with it!”
Adjobi eyed him sadly.
“I just… I just want to help.”
“You can help by telling me where your sister might be. She might be the only person that has a chance of finding out who did this.”
Adjobi sighed, sitting at the side of the bed, thinking.
“I don’t know. We have cots here in the hospital, and I… wait, there’s something. There’s a place we used to go when we first arrived… it’s a sports field, out on Bruslařská. She used to go there to think. She might be there, I suppose, if anything.”
Crew nodded, tapped Adjobi on the shoulder as he backed away.
“Thanks, that’s great. Now get back in bed. I’ve got to go catch a monster.”
“You think he’s behind this?” Adjobi asked, and Crew paused suddenly, by the door.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Do you think the Healer started the outbreak?” Adjobi said, perched at the side of his bed.
Crew turned around, stormed back into the room, and shoved the frail man back onto the mattress, pinning him down with a hand to the forehead.
“Who said anything about a Healer?” he sneered.
Adjobi’s eyes were wide with pain and fear. He couldn’t move, with all the IVs and probes in his arms, and they strained viciously, making him whimper in agony.
“I… I just assumed because…”
“Ha! You lie like my mother,” he cackled. “What do you know about the Healer?”
Adjobi shook his head frantically as Crew leaned in.
“Nothing! I swear, I don’t know anything at all!”
Crew grunted, reached out and grabbed the mass of wires that strung into Adjobi’s arm and twisted them, and the poor man screamed hoarsely at the metal under his skin pulling, tearing. Crew held the wires in a swirl and did not let go, leaned in a bit so he was close to Adjobi’s pained face.
“We’ve got an outbreak down there, and you’re playing games with me?”
Adjobi sputtered, tears in his eyes, begging or mouthing a prayer or something to make the pain stop.
“He was here,” he gasped. “he’s hunting a virus.”
“The one downstairs?” Crew demanded.
“No! No, not that. It’s me. He was hunting me.”
Crew eased up a bit, sized up the confession.
“So why’s he out there and not here?” he asked, uncertain. “They don’t leave the victims alive.”
“He’s looking for the one who infected me. We… we made a bargain…”
“What kind of bargain?”
“I… I told him what I knew, and he let me live.”
Crew leaned in close, breathed foul breath through his mask into Adjobi’s face.
“Don’t lie to me. I’m having a bad day.”
“It’s not a lie! He let me live! All I had to do was give him a name, and he let me go!”
“Then that makes you an accessory to murder. As many murders as he commits.”
Adjobi cried, but couldn’t reach his hands to his face for the wires.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he wept.
Crew grunted, stood back up, letting go of the wires, pressed a hand into his forehead. He looked around the room, back at the door, back at Adjobi.
“Will he be back?”
“I hope not,” Adjobi said weakly, and Crew nodded.
“Where is he?” he asked, avoiding eye contact.
Adjobi looked away, almost ashamed, winced. He said nothing. Crew turned to him, fists on his hips, tilted his head unhappily.
“I said where is he?”
Adjobi sighed a long sigh.
“I… I promised I wouldn’t…”
Crew grabbed the wires again, twisted them, and pulled back. Two of the IVs pulled free from Adjobi’s arm, pouring antibiotics and blood out onto the bed and floor. He shrieked in pain, but his head was held tight by his interrogator, and he just twitched helplessly on the bed. He gasped for air, the pain blinding him, and tears poured down his cheeks.
“Where is he?” seethed Crew, each word accented with a light pull at the tangled cords.
Adjobi swallowed, almost crying, and spoke softly: “I don’t know.”
Crew shook his head with grim disappointment, reared back to pull the wires clean out of the frail man’s body, but felt Adjobi’s other hand hold his wrist, pleading. After a pained pause, he spoke:
“But I know where he’s going."
