Dr. Dorian Irons was a chimera: he was at least three kinds of nightmare, and Jake was terrified of all of them. His eyes were inhumanly cold and blue, like an arctic ocean. Irons’ face was long and thin and freakishly clean-shaven: Jake had seen five-year-old boys with more evidence of facial hair. His fingers were long with knobby joints and brought to mind the spinnerets of a poisonous spider.
Jake was given a quick but thorough physical examination and placed in a featureless interrogation room where the Doctor waited. There was a table and two chairs and nothing else. The cameraman still shuddered thinking of those ugly hands touching him.
“You appear to be unharmed, Mr. Grey,” Dr. Irons said in a disapproving tone that suggested Jake should be ashamed of himself for his inconvenient lack of injury. Jake cleared his throat nervously.
“Yeah, I guess when your van rolls over into a ditch it seems worse that it really is.” He let out a humorless, forced laugh.
“I was more surprised that you haven’t been bitten by your colleague,” Irons replied drily.
“Oh, that,” Jake said, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. Judging by what he’d heard and seen he was pretty surprised himself. But Dr. Irons’ bedside manner didn’t exactly make him forthcoming with information. In fact, it made Jake want to hide in a closet with a flashlight and a baseball bat. He didn’t think this doctor had good things in mind for Max and himself.
“Yes, that. Subject B seems to have retained a smidge of humanity. I want to know why.” It was a cold statement of fact, and implied that he fully expected the universe to provide him with what he desired.
“I don’t know why,” Jake said, too quickly and too loudly; the words echoed in the sterile room mockingly. The doctor’s eyes became sharper, more interested.
“No, you don’t,” Dr. Irons said. “But I suspect you can provide me with the answer nonetheless.”
Jake did not like the sound of that. His mind whirled with images of lobotomies, cranial extractions, Frankenstein scars zigzagging across his forehead…
“Mr. Grey, tell me about Subject B right after she was bitten.”
“You mean Max?” Jake said defiantly.
“Subject B.”
Jake turned away. “She got bitten. I drove her away from the madness.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“We were broadcasting live outside the San Diego Convention Center.”
A few more blinks than normal were the only indication that Dr. Irons was reacting to the news. “You were at Comic-Con?”
“Well, we had press passes but we hadn’t gone in yet.”
“I see. Interesting.” He scribbled a few notes which he made no effort to hide. He had written, “Subject B in initial wave.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut and summoned a tiny fraction of courage. “Where is Max? Is she okay?”
“Subject B is fine. We’ve put her with her own.”
“With her own what?”
Dr. Irons’ fixed him with an unfeeling gaze. “Her own kind.”
Jake’s heart dropped into his feet. “You have more of those things around here? And you left Max with them?”
“Subject B is one of those things,” Dr. Irons replied. “She has nothing to fear from them. They don’t kill their own kind. And there’s only one other, Subject A.”
Jake shook his head. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire they’d gone. They were in a heavily guarded military installation in he knew not where. So far he’d been treated cordially enough but their freedom was the one thing no one had made any mention of providing and he could see the possibility of it dwindling, drowning quickly in the cold ocean of Dr. Irons’ penetrating gaze. His room was comfortable, more like a hotel room than a bunker in a military base but it suddenly seemed like the worst place in the world.
Dr. Irons smiled and stood. “You can go back to your room, Mr. Grey. We’ll speak again soon. In the meantime, do please make yourself at home here.”
Despite the courtesies, it was far from an invitation: it was an order.