Doctor Jerry's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Zahir was gone up the stairs when the tray on the bench jumped again. Jerry turned. Judas still stood in the doorway. The tray slid to the edge and dropped. Metal cracked on concrete. Judas flinched and the overhead light bulged, then a beaker on the shelf burst. Glass sprayed across the floor. "Sit down," Jerry said. He kept his voice flat. Judas sat where he was, in the doorway, and hugged his knees. The monitors above the bench pulled bright lines. A cabinet door banged open on its own. A rolling cart drifted two feet and stopped. Jerry checked the readout. Judas's pulse was climbing. His output was climbing faster. The steel door to the stairwell rattled in its frame. Jerry ran the math in his head. If that door blew, the sound went up the shaft into the hospital. If a pipe cracked, water hit the panel. The lab was one loud minute from being found. He grabbed a syringe from the tray with the orange serum and drew a sedative from the fridge. He crossed the floor and knelt. Judas was crying without sound. The boy's hands shook. A wrench on the far wall lifted and hovered. "Look at me," Jerry said. Judas looked. "You're not in trouble. Breathe." The wrench dropped. The door stopped rattling. Then a monitor screen split down the middle with a soft pop and the pressure climbed again. The sedative would knock him out. It would not stop the field. Jerry had seen the readouts. The field spiked hardest when the child was afraid. He thought of Stacie. Her first day. He had held her hands and told her she would be okay and her fear had stopped. That was the trigger. Not the serum. The voice. The face. The promise from the man she trusted. Jerry set the syringe down. He took Judas's wrists, the loose band and the tight one, and held them the way he had held hers. "You're okay," he said. "I've got you. You're staying here. You're mine." Judas's chest hitched. The cart stopped moving. The lights steadied. The boy leaned his forehead against Jerry's coat and shook. Jerry did not let go until the readout flattened. Then he stood, walked to the bench, and wrote one line in the notebook. Anchor bond. Handler required per subject. He understood what he had. The serum made them weapons. Only a trusted face kept the weapon from firing. Twenty samples a month meant twenty children who needed someone to hold their wrists. He could not be twenty people. He looked down at Judas, small against his leg, and knew he had solved the containment problem and bought himself a harder one. He needed handlers. He needed them soon. And every handler was another mouth that knew.