Niceville

interior, blurry and distorted, with a row of green lights flashing above a large hooded white shape.
    He reached out, pushed the door open, and stepped into a small but well-equipped hospital room, where a contorted figure lay on its right side, a young boy, twisted into a fetal position, cheek flattened against a terry-cloth pillow.
    The boy was covered by a pale blue blanket, his eyes half-open, mouth drooling, and he was surrounded by beeping machinery and IV drips and tubes snaking into and out from under the blankets.
    The room was cool and silent, other than the machinery sound, and smelled faintly of urine. There was a white line painted on the floor, with the words PLEASE DO NOT CROSS stenciled along it.
    Merle stepped to the edge of the white line and stood looking down at the figure in the bed. The boy’s age was hard to tell—maybe twelve or thirteen. He was blue-skinned, emaciated, breathing on his own, but barely, and, other than the rapid rising and falling of his rib cage under the blanket, as motionless as death.
    Merle’s heart, not a particularly loving one, went out to the kid, but he had business to conduct.
    “Rainey,” he said, softly but clearly. “Can you hear me?”
    No change.
    “Rainey, Glynis needs you to wake up now.”
    On the cardiac screen, the numbers began to climb. The kid’s eyelids trembled but did not open.
    Merle watched the cardiac monitor as the numbers ticked upwards, worried that any significant change might trigger a visit from whoever was monitoring the machinery, possibly a computer somewhere else entirely, but perhaps a human close enough to get here in a hurry.
    He was pretty certain that he had the kid’s attention, although how a kid in a coma could have a quality called “attention” was a mystery to Merle.
    “You’ve been asleep, Rainey. Asleep long enough. You need to do something for Glynis, Rainey. Will you do a favor for Glynis Ruelle?”
    The eyelids fluttered and the boy’s lips began to work, and the small bony hand on the coverlet flexed convulsively. On the monitor, the cardiac rate had climbed to 136 and a red bar was flashing underneath the numbers.
    “When you wake up, you have to ask the doctors and nurses for a man named Abel Teague. Can you remember that name? The name is
Abel Teague
. He lives in Sallytown. Glynis Ruelle needs to talk to him, Rainey. Will you tell the doctors that it’s very important that Glynis Ruelle hears from Abel Teague very soon. Will you do that?”
    The boy’s eyes opened, and he stared into the darkness beside his bed, seeing nothing, hearing only a low soothing voice from the shadows, repeating the names
Glynis Ruelle
and
Abel Teague
.
    The cardiac monitor over the bed was now showing a solid red band under the heart rate indicator and the machine was beeping loudly.
    Merle watched the boy blinking into darkness, his cheeks twitching now, his twisted fingers jerking, and decided that he had delivered Glynis Ruelle’s lunatic message, which, against all his solid expectations, seemed to have been heard.
    He turned and stepped softly into the hallway, and walked quickly back towards the nursing station. Clara Mercer, the girl with the cool hazel eyes, was not there.
    The station was empty. It seemed that the whole floor was deserted. The silence pressed in on him and he felt a strong desire to get backout into the light before he found out what sort of people were in all those darkened rooms along the hall. He slipped off the lab coat, hung it up, and turned to his right to go back up the main hall, past the amber sconces, moving quickly and silently past the shadowed beeping rooms, his skin crawling and his breathing short and sharp.
    He got to the elevator bank, pressed the DOWN button, and the doors slipped open at once. There was a man inside the elevator, a tall dark-skinned man with long shiny black hair, in pleated gray slacks and a white shirt.
    He had pale sea green eyes, a hard-nosed aggressive air that notched up as soon as he saw Merle in the light from the elevator.
    “Who are you?” he asked, in a tight, wary tone.
    “Who am I? Who the hell are you?” Merle barked back, his nerves on edge, his temper short.
    The man stared at him for a long moment, as if trying to memorize his face, and then he slipped past Merle, turned, and stood in the hall watching as Merle got into the elevator, holding the door open with his left hand, his right hand shoved into his pocket.
    “My name is Lemon