Blind Eye

Counting down to a Chernobyl-scale disaster, the clock starts now…

Tick…Scientist Marion Kagan is the sole survivor after gunmen attack the facility where her team was working on a top secret project. Wounded and trapped in a collapsed building, Marion must stop radioactive test samples from leaking out and killing millions.

…tick…In a Connecticut psychiatric hospital, Marion's twin sister, who has been in a comalike state for years, begins to thrash violently in her bed. When an experimental program is used on her to read the images of her brain, researchers are shocked at what they find.

…tick…An American soldier just back from Iraq is searching for direction in his life. While he watches the news about the research facility explosion, he is unaware that fate has just chosen a direction for him—straight into a deadly game of international corporate intrigue.

St. Vincent's Hospital Santa Fe, New Mexico

"You're awake."

Lying on his side, Fred Adrian became aware of the sensation of movement before knowing where he was. The starched white pillowcase was cool against his cheek. The smell of plastic registered in his brain.

The gentle roll of the bed along a smooth floor, the blink of the lights overhead, the words on the intercom that he couldn't exactly make sense of, they all made him want to go to sleep.

"You were a trouper during the procedure," the same woman's voice said cheerfully.

Then he began to remember. The hospital. He was in for the procedure. He was lying on a hospital gurney. Fred's mind was slow to catch up, but things were starting to make sense. He was in to have a routine colonoscopy.

"I'm nervous about it."

"No reason to be nervous. It's over."

"When do you start?" he asked.

She chuckled. "It's all over. You're done."

He wasn't hearing her right. He wanted to go to sleep. "What time is it?"

"It's ten past eleven," the same voice, pushing the gurney along the corridor, told him.

Eleven. Last time he'd looked at the clock it was a few minutes past eight. He couldn't remember anything after that. He lifted his wrist to check his watch. He wasn't wearing it. Fred held his hand up against the passing lights on the ceiling. They were so bright.

"Easy now. You're still hooked up."

He squinted at the IV hanging from a shiny chrome hook near his head. The tube snaking down from it disappeared and then reappeared before terminating under some tape on the back of his hand. His first time under anesthesia. He'd put off having the colonoscopy for a very long time.

"I made it. It's over," he said to the voice, as if that should be news to her.

"You made it through with flying colors," the woman said in an entertained tone.

She slowed down to negotiate a turn.

"I'll be fifty-nine next week," Fred said to her.

"Happy birthday."

The bed bumped its way through a door. Fred didn't mind. The residual mellowness from the anesthesia was taking the edge off of every sensation. His hand flopped onto the pillow and he slipped it under his head. He looked up at the ceiling. He couldn't quite focus yet.

"I'm the first one of us to reach the age of fifty-nine," he told her.

"The first one?" she asked.

They made it through the door, and the nurse parked him. He wanted to talk, to tell her how special this was. His mind was slow to keep up, though. He didn't know if she'd asked the question now or at eight o'clock this morning. He decided to say it, anyway. He had to share the news.

"I'm the first male in my family…" He chuckled, remembering how nervous he'd been before today. He was sure this would be it. Today, he'd die. "I'm the first one to reach the age of fifty-nine. My father… he was forty-two when he died. Brother…fifty. Now maybe I'll live to be sixty. My daughter is getting married next year… and I'll be sixty."

There were two other patients in the room. Fred looked over. Another bed was rolled in after him. Or maybe he was there before him. He was an old man, sound asleep. Fred was tired. Maybe he should sleep, too.

"You're just starting to wake up, but there's no hurry," she told him. "Do you have someone waiting for you in the reception area?"

For the first time he saw his nurse. She was moving the IV from a hook on the gurney to some stand next to it. She was young, not too pretty. She could be, he thought.

"I need a date for my daughter's wedding," he told her.

"Do you have someone in the waiting area, Mr. Adrian?" she asked again. She wasn't smiling now.

"Yeah… she should be out there."

"She?" The nurse picked up a chart and read something on it before putting it back down. "Why don't you rest, and I'll go and get Mrs. Adrian? But don't try to get up or move until I come back to take out the IV, okay?"

"Rest…" he whispered under his breath. His throat was dry. He wanted something to drink. He stared at the table with rolling wheels beside his bed. There was a cup sitting on top. He wondered if there was something in it to drink. The nurse had said not to move.

The guy next to him was snoring. Fred wondered if he'd been snoring while under anesthesia. He'd made it. Made it.

Five minutes later… or three hours. He didn't know. Fred opened his eyes and saw her coming into the room.

"I made it," he said, yawning and closing his eyes.

"You did," the woman said in a low voice. "Your nurse said as soon as you're awake, they'll bring you some coffee and a piece of toast."

"I'm thirsty. Hand me that cup of water." His hand hung in the air.

He heard a soft plastic-sounding snap near his head. She was standing too close to the bed. Fred could smell her perfume. He opened his eyes and saw her take something out of the tube going into his arm.

"What was that?" he asked.

Her hand moved to his forehead and she covered his eyes. "Why don't you get some rest until it's time to take you home?"

The other patient was still snoring. He didn't want to sleep. Fred felt his limbs getting heavy.

"Take me home… I can sleep there."

"Shh…soon."

His heartbeat started drumming in his ears. Suddenly, he didn't feel right. There was something different. The right side of his face felt numb, like he'd been slapped.

"Is he ready for coffee?" Fred heard the familiar voice of the nurse coming back into the room.

Coffee…yes. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to answer for himself. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth. His eyelids were too heavy to lift. He opened his mouth but he could push no sound out.

Something wasn't right. She'd put something in the tube in his arm.

Then, in a moment of clarity, he thought of Cynthia, and the box he'd shipped his daughter.

"I think he's fallen back to sleep. Should we give him some time?"

"That's fine. Come and get me when he's awake."

No. He wanted to wake up now. He wanted to live. He'd be fifty-nine next week. He needed to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Fred lifted his hand off the bed to tell the nurse to stop, but cold fingers took hold of his and pressed them down into the sheet.

The kick of his foot at the table was a feeble effort, at best. Like a last gasp for air before drowning.

"Is he okay?" he heard the nurse's voice from far away.

"Yes, he's fine. I'm the klutz. I just leaned against the table."

Vaguely, he heard the sound of footsteps moving into the distance. Hope slipped away like a lifeline through his fingers and was gone.

New Mexico Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

More than halfway home.

Even at forty-eight days into the project, Marion Kagan didn't mind working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. She didn't have time to think about sun and clouds and trees. Sometimes, lying in her bunk, she did have to shake from her mind how much she missed the sting of the wind on her face as she whipped along on her scooter back and forth from her apartment to the UC Davis campus. Down here, there was no sunrise, no sunset. But no commuter traffic, either.

Buried in the underground research facility with eight other scientists, Marion only considered the passage of day and night when she made her journal entry at the end of a shift. The group worked in shifts around the clock. Eating and sleeping happened between shifts, and everyone reported for duty when it was time.

She was fine with all of this. They were over the hump. Only forty-two days left. And anytime she got too restless, she simply reminded herself what a boost it was in her curriculum vitae to be the only graduate assistant chosen for this highly selective project. A project that was already producing groundbreaking results. In the scientific world, the eight academics in her group were already stars; this project would make them superstars. As for Marion, after this she didn't believe she'd have...