Deep Storm

Korolis's eyes darted quickly to the intern and Dr. Bishop before returning to Crane. "It is made quite clear to everyone on sign-up: the strategic assets on this Facility will be protected at all costs. And you should be more careful what you say, Doctor. The consequences for breaching the agreements you signed are most severe."

"So sue me."

Korolis paused a moment, as if considering this. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, almost silky. "When can I expect that report?"

"When I finish it. Now why don't you get out and let us get on with our work?"

Korolis paused again. Then a small smile-little more than a baring of teeth-formed on his lips. He glanced down at the corpse. And then, with a barely perceptible nod to Bishop, he turned and silently left the operating bay.

For a moment, the three stood motionless, listening to the departing footsteps. Then Bishop sighed. "I think you just made an enemy."

"I don't care," Crane replied. And in fact he did not care. He felt almost physically sick with frustration-frustration over the climate of secrecy and military intolerance that hung over the entire Deep Storm project; frustration over his own inability to put an end to the affliction that had just, indirectly, caused the death of Vasselhoff. He pulled off his gloves, tossed them into the metal basin, and snapped off the recorder. Then he turned to the intern. "Would you mind closing up, please?"

The intern nodded. "Very well, Dr. Crane. Hagedorn needle?"

"That will be sufficient, yes."

He stepped out of the operating bay and into the central corridor of the medical suite, where he slumped wearily against the wall. Bishop came up beside him.

"Are you going to finish the report?" she asked.

Crane shook his head. "No. If I think about it any more right now, I'll just get too angry."

"Maybe you should get some sleep."

Crane gave a mirthless laugh. "Wouldn't happen. Not after a day like today. Besides, I've got Asher to deal with. He'll be coming out in about three hours."

Bishop looked at him. "Out of what?"

"You didn't know? He's in the hyperbaric chamber."

Bishop's look turned to one of puzzlement. "Asher? Why?"

"His vascular insufficiency condition. It seems to have gotten worse over the last couple of days. He's now presenting with ulcerations at the extremities."

"Is there a blockage? He shouldn't be in the chamber-he should be here, undergoing a bypass procedure."

"I know. I told him that. But he was insistent. He's…" Here Crane paused, remembering the code of silence to which he was bound. "He's apparently very close to a breakthrough, point-blank refused to stop working. Even took Marris into the chamber to continue the work."

Bishop didn't respond. She looked away, gazing thoughtfully down the corridor.

Crane yawned. "Anyway, I couldn't sleep if I tried. I'll catch up on some paperwork." He paused a moment. "Oh, yes-any of those EEGs come through yet?"

"One so far. Mary Philips, the woman who complained of numbness in the hands and face. I left it in your office. I'll go check the status of the others-I had the technician put a schedule together, and at least half a dozen should be done by now. I'll have her bring the printouts to you."

"Thanks." Crane watched her move briskly down the corridor. That was one blessing, at least: their relations had improved significantly.

He turned and walked slowly back to his cramped office. As promised, Bishop had left an EEG readout on his desk: a bulky packet of perhaps two dozen sheets of brain wave data, with a report clipped to the top sheet. He hated reading EEGs: the art of detecting electrical abnormalities in someone's brain from the endless squiggly lines was a maddening one. Still, he'd been the one to request the tests; he couldn't afford to leave any avenue unexplored. And if there was anything to his premise that the problems at Deep Storm were neurological, the EEGs could confirm or deny it.

Crane took a seat, passed a weary hand over his eyes, then spread the readout across his desk. A welter of horizontal lines greeted him: the i

He turned his attention to the alpha rhythm. It displayed maximum amplitude in the posterior quadrants; this was normal for waking adults. He ran his eye along it for several sheets without seeing any abnormality beyond the kind of transients consistent with anxiety, perhaps hyperventilation. In fact, the woman's alpha PDR was quite well organized: very rhythmic, with no sign of admixed slower frequencies.

Next, he turned to the beta activity. It was present frontocentrally, in perhaps greater amounts than usual, but still within normal range. Neither set of waves displayed any particular amount of asymmetry or irregularity.

As he ran his eye across the sheets, following the thin black lines as they rose, then fell, a depressingly familiar sensation gathered within him: disappointment. This was proving, yet again, to be a dead end.

There was a knock on the door, and a lab technician appeared. She had a large stack of papers in her hand. "Dr. Crane?"

"Yes?"

"Here are the rest of the EEGs you requested." She stepped forward and put them on his desk.

Crane eyed the foot-high pile of printouts. "How many are there?"

"Fourteen." She smiled, nodded, and quickly left the office.

Fourteen. Great.Wearily, he turned back to Mary Philips's brain scan.

He moved down to the theta and delta waves, sca

Then he noticed it: a series of prefrontal spikes, small but definitely noticeable, among the theta waveforms.

He frowned. Theta activity, beyond a few random low-voltage waves, was extremely rare in adults.

He glanced through the rest of the readout. The spikes in the theta line did not go away: if anything, they increased. At first glance they were reminiscent of encephalopathy or perhaps Pick's disease, a form of cerebral atrophy that ultimately led to "flat affect" and dementia. The type of weakness Mary Philips had complained about was, in fact, an early symptom.

But Crane wasn't convinced. There was something about these spikes that troubled him.

Flipping back to the begi

Suddenly, he froze in place. "What the hell?" he said.

He dropped the printout on his desk and opened a nearby drawer, fishing for a ruler. Locating one, he quickly placed it against the paper, peering closely. As he did so, he felt a strange tingle start at the base of his neck and work its way down his spine.

Slowly, he sat back in his chair. "That's it," he murmured.

It seemed impossible-but the evidence lay right in front of him. The spikes in Mary Philips's theta waves were not the intermittent rise and fall of normal brain activity. They were not even random discharges of some physical pathology. The spikes were regular-precisely, inexplicably regular…

He pushed the Philips EEG aside and reached for the top readout from the stack the technician had brought him. It belonged to the man who had suffered the TIA, the ministroke. A quick examination confirmed it: the same theta spikes were present in his brain, as well.