"Chill out, chill out. There's a reasonable explanation for this." The newly assigned guys tended to flip out over every little thing, but he'd seen what had happened the last time the Oracle had shrugged her meds. "I'll feed her another tranquilizer, keep her as down as I can until morning report. Dr. Jacobson will take it from there."

The meds for the Oracle were fed to her hourly, through a tube that first dissolved the sedative in warm blood, then injected the whole solution through intravenous lines. It was so simple. And Don hated it.

It wasn't as if he wanted glory, like the big guys got Or danger, like the assassins. He just wanted a job that a trained ape couldn't pull off.

Hell, at least he could watch TV between doses. And the faster he got things under control, the faster he could get back to Will and Grace reruns.

Slipping the key to the tank room from his pocket, he slid it through the card reader. The door popped open with a hiss, and he stepped inside. It was ten degrees colder than the rest of the facility—the monitoring equipment and various pumps and containment machinery would overheat if it wasn't—and the rest of the facility was damn cold. Don rubbed his hands together and blew into them. It smelled like blood in this room, but it always did.

"Honey, I'm home," he called to the slumped figure of the lab assistant asleep at his workstation. Couldn't handle the day shift.

The blinding white of the room was interrupted on one side by the huge, dark wall of glass. Inside, floating suspended in gallons and gallons of blood, was the Oracle. Sleeping, if the tranquillizer had worked. He popped two tablets out of the meds cabinet and strolled to the access tube, whistling while he did so, hoping to annoy the lab tech enough that he'd wake up. "I hope they check the security tape in the morning. Because you will be so busted."

The meds pump was attached to the wall just below where the glass ended. He knelt down and pulled the drawer open. The tablets would be inserted into a clear, glass chamber inside and dissolved. The whole process was a pain in the ass, but she'd built up a resistance to nearly all the sedatives that came in liquid form. Don didn't know why it worked, but he was glad it did. The bitch could get downright nasty when she woke up.

He blinked in disbelief at what he saw in the drawer. The glass chamber, which should have been empty to receive the next dose, was still filled with blood. Hands trembling, he followed the intravenous line to where it disappeared into the wall. A chunk of a pill that hadn't dissolved was stuck in the thin plastic tube, forcing the flow of the blood to a trickle.

The Oracle had never gotten her sedative.