The Games Read Free Page B

sake. If things go wrong, it won’t be on your head.”
    “You really believe that?”
    “No, I guess I don’t.”
    “Then you’re wise beyond your years.”
    “Still, one way or the other, Evan Chandler is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
    “I don’t think he’s that worried,” Silas said softly. “I don’t see him here, do you?”
    T HE SCIENTISTS stood crowded against the glass, transfixed by the scene unfolding beneath them. Inside the white stricture of lights, a scalpel blinked stainless steel. The cow lay motionless on its left side asit was opened from sternum to pelvis in one slow, smooth cut. Gloved hands insinuated themselves into its abdomen, gently separating layers of tissue, reaching deep. Silas felt his heart thumping in his chest. The hands disappeared entirely, then the arms up to the elbows. Assistants used huge curved tongs to stretch the incision wide.
    The surgeon shifted his weight. His shoulder strained. Silas imagined the man’s teeth gritting with effort beneath the micropore mask as he rummaged around in the bovine’s innards. What did he feel? A final pull and it was over. The white-smocked physician slowly pulled a dark, dripping mass away as a nurse moved in to cut the umbilical cord. Faintly, a sporadic beeping in the background changed to a steady tone as the cow flatlined. The medical team ignored it, moving to focus their energies on the newborn.
    The first surgeon put the bloody shape on the table under the lamps and began wiping it down with a sponge and warm water, while another doctor peeled away the dense layers of fibrous glop that still clung to it.
    The surgeon’s voice sounded over the speakers in the view room from a microphone in his mask. “The fetus is dark … still covered by the embryonic sack … thick, fibrous texture; I’m tearing it away.”
    Silas’s face was nearly pushed against the glass, trying to get a better look over the doctor’s shoulder. For a moment he caught a glimpse of the newborn, but then the medical team shifted around their patient and he could see nothing. The sound of the doctor’s breathing filled the view room.
    “This … interesting … I’m not sure …” The doctor’s voice trailed off in the speakers.
    Suddenly, a shrill cry split Silas’s ears, silencing the excited background chatter. The cry was strange, like nothing he’d ever heard before.
    The doctors stepped back from the wailing newborn one by one, opening a gap, allowing Silas his first real glimpse.
    His mouth dropped open.

    L ATER THAT morning, the storm that had been threatening for hours finally moved in with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast. Thunder boomed across the expansive field of California mod-sod. Dr. Silas Williams watched from behind the window of his second-story office, hands folded behind his back, drinking in the scene. The familiar ache in his bad ear had finally begun to ebb, becoming tolerable again. It always seemed to act up at the most inopportune times, and he hadn’t let himself take anything stronger than aspirin because of what he knew was coming. He’d need his edge today.
    Outside his window, the few well-manicured windbreaks of oak, hickory, and alder that stood scattered across the vast green promenade seemed to sway and shake with anticipation. Their branches bowed in the gusts that swept in from the west. In the distance, he could see the road and the cars—their headlight beams turned on against the darkening mid-morning sky.
    He’d always felt there was magic in these moments just before the rain, when the sky brooded and rumbled its promises. The last few moments before a hard rain seemed to exist outside of time. It was the eternal drama, old as nature. Old as life. A dull curtain of precipitation spread west to east across the landscape, instantly soaking the grass. For a moment, he clutched at the wispy borders of ancient half-memories of other storms on other continents, of tall savanna grass