Syndrome Part 78

It's the kind of dream where she can hear things around her, but when she tries to speak, no sounds will come. Instead, she's talking inside her head.

I'm afraid. I'm just afraid.

"I can still try to get you out, but you have to help. I waited for you last night but you never came."

She wants to say, yes, get me out, but she can only speak in the dream.

Now the lighting changes and she feels like she is falling. No, she realizes, she's just on an elevator.

"Talk to me, Ally," whispers the voice one last time. "I can try to stop them, but I have to know what you want."

Then a door opens and she floats through it and out. Then comes the clanking of a door that reminds her of the steel air lock she'd gone through last night looking for Kristen. The smells. She's in the laboratory.

"We can take her from here," comes a voice, drifting through her reverie.

She fantasizes it's Karl Van de Vliet. Or maybe he really is there. In her dream state it's hard to know. But he isn't alone.

"You said you'd make one more attempt to create the antibodies. Is . .

It's Winston Bartlett. Or at least it sounds like him.

"I said I would do all I could, W.B. The first attempt ... you know what happened. I got almost no results, but I gave you an injection of all I managed to garner. Today I spent the day doing simulations. We're working closer to the edge than I thought. That's why I needed her down at the lab tonight. I want to run some more tests and then try to make a decision. Tonight. There's just a h.e.l.l of a lot more risk than I first thought."

The voice trails off and Ally finds herself trying to comprehend "risk."

She hears "beta" again and it floats through her mind, but now its meaning is unclear. It's something she'd heard but can no longer place.

"Ally," comes a ghostly voice. Surely this is a dream, and she recognizes it as her father, Arthur. Now she can see him. He's wearing a white cap and they're boating in Central Park. He shows up in her dreams a lot and she feels he's the messenger of her unconscious, telling her truths that she sometimes doesn't want to hear.

"Ally," he says, "he's going to perform the full Beta procedure on you.

He didn't tell you, but you know it's true. He thinks he's finally calculated everything right. Can't you see? Is that what you want?"

She isn't sure what she wants. And right now she isn't entirely clear where she fits on the scale of sleeping/waking. It is so bizarre. The two parts of her mind, the conscious and the unconscious, are talking to each other. Her unconscious is warning her about fears she didn't even know she had. Or at least she hadn't admitted to yet.

Then she hears Winston Bartlett's voice again.

"Karl, we can't save Kristen now. I've finally realized that. She's gone too far. It's just a tragedy we'll have to figure out how to live with."

"The body is a complex chemical laboratory that sometimes gets out of balance. There's always hope. I think--"

"Know what I f.u.c.king think?" Bartlett cuts him off. "I think I'm in line for the Syndrome if you don't get this right."

What Ally wants to do, more than anything else, is to make sense of what her options are. The most obvious one-- in fact, maybe the only one--is to flow along with that infinite river she feels around her, just to lie where she is, in this sedative-induced reverie, and let her body be taken over by Karl Van de Vliet. Perhaps he has marvelous things in store for her. Except she has no idea what's real and what is imaginary.

"The simulations are giving me some idea of what went wrong with the Beta before." The voice is Van de Vliet's. "I have one more test to run, but if I handled this the way the simulation now suggests, I think I could actually generate the telomerase antibodies we need and get the Beta to finally work, avoiding the Syndrome. But to prove it would require a full-scale experiment. I'm reluctant to do that without Alexa's permission."

"Christ, Karl, are you getting cold feet? This is a h.e.l.l of a time for that."

"Call it a pang of rationality."

"But everything is at stake."

"I don't know what's eventually going to happen with the Syndrome, but it's criminal to jeopardize any more lives." Van de Vliet sighs. "Look, you had the procedure of your own free will, and you knew the risks.

Alexa Hampton didn't volunteer for the Beta. She's not a lab rat. At the very least, we ought to get her to sign a release. The liability is... In any case, I'm not doing anything till I run this last test.

Then maybe I'll have some idea exactly how much risk is involved."

"And then, by G.o.d we're going to do it. Tonight. This is it."

She feels a cold metal object insinuate itself against her chest. Time rushes around her, sending her forward on a journey that seems increasingly inevitable. Where it's taking her, she has no idea, but she senses she no longer has an option of whether she wants to go or not.

Now her dreamscape has become crowded as Grant drifts in once more. He seems to be wearing a white lab coat like the others. He settles beside her and takes her hand

"Ally, it's going to be okay. I'm going to be here for you."

Grant, why are you here? Do you really give a d.a.m.n about me?

She wants to talk to him, but the words aren't working. Why is this happening?

Don't let them give you more medications, she tells herself. Get your mind back and get out of here.