“Oh man,” I say, picturing myself with a drill in one hand and an iPad open to a set of step-by-step instructions in the other. This is so not what I signed up for. “I’m not really the hands-on type, Enzo.”

“You’re all I’ve got.” In the blank space where the requisition form says Technician, he writes Dr. Jean McClellan.

“We have to, don’t we?” I say.

“Either that or end up with a dead Morgan.” Lorenzo’s mouth turns up at one corner. “Unless that’s what you want.”

Of course it’s what I want. But there’s no sense in being greedy. A mute Morgan will work just as well.

“All right,” I say. “I’m heading upstairs. Send someone to get me if I’m not back down here by ten. Okay?”

“Deal.”

I don’t stop by Petroski’s desk for an escort. Instead, I head toward the soldier closest to him and speak loudly enough for my voice to carry. “I need some shut-eye. Can you take me up to the dorms?”

While my escort calls out to the now half-filled lab asking if anyone else wants the cafeteria or a bed, Petroski motions me to him with a slight nod of his head.

“I made your call,” he says.

“Great. Thanks.” I don’t want to ask him for help—better if the request comes from him.

It does.

“Anything I can do?”

“As a matter of fact, Sergeant, yes. There is.”

His face, smooth and whiskerless and innocent as a child’s, lights up as I explain, in detail, exactly what I need him to do.

Chapter Seventy

SEVENTY

While Lorenzo is eight floors down sedating chimpanzee Number 4-unlucky-13 and setting up the equipment we’ll need, I’m sitting up in a narrow bed, fully clothed, digesting a stale sandwich from the cafeteria and chapter seven of the primate neuroanatomy text, also known as detailed brain maps of our closest relative, the chimp. My squeamishness has fallen aside for now, mostly thanks to this afternoon’s near mauling by 413’s compatriot.

I swipe a new window onto the iPad, check the database of medical journals for articles on craniotomy and trepanation procedures, and take a long, last look at the uneaten half of my sandwich. It’s not the optimal companion for my bedtime reading, so I put the cheese on wheat aside while I review the components of my new friend, the Cushing perforator drill.

When I think there’s no way I can bore a hole into an ape’s skull, let alone a human’s, I remember Jackie and Lin and Isabel.

Steel up, Jean.

And I keep reading until my eyelids succumb to gravity and the iPad slips from my hands.

The knock on my door seems to come at the exact moment I fall asleep.

“Dr. McClellan?” The voice is muffled, cloudy.

“Yeah.”