October 3, 2013, -- Angakok, Alaska

Benny Sams watched one of four white-suited figures adjust a video camera mounted on a tripod, training it on the thawed corpse. The dead man's skin, tinged an ashen shade of blue, glistened as though made of wax.

The stark white walls of the reanimation room were a constant reminder of the Arctic cold outside. They shone like ice and eerily reflected colored lights from med-revivatory units positioned within the room. The ceiling overheads had been dimmed to reduce risk of damage to the cryonic's optic nerves once he was revived. Benny knew how delicate regenerated nerves could be. Once resurrected, every cell in this man's body would be more fragile than a newborn's.

Benny stared down at his cloth-covered feet. He absently reached up to scratch the stubble on his scalp, but encountered the slick plastic of his hood instead. While scanning the sterile room, he glanced toward the observation room window and noticed the group of stoic psychologists with digital note pads in hand, their laser styluses poised to scribble whatever came to mind. LaNaya Seville wasn't among them. Benny had expected to see her eager young face, her body rigid with anticipation for the miracle about to unfold. He could think of no one else more anxious than LaNaya to witness what they both considered an abomination. So where the hell was she?

The Project's founder, Dr. Terrance Labriola, hovered over the dead patient, concentration rucking his pale forehead below a widow's peak of iron gray. The doctor's son Kenneth, also a physician, made animated gestures while speaking to his father in muted tones. Med techs Steve Ivan and Nancy Ti busily entered formulas and coding information into the med-revivatory computers. The click and whir of medical machinery echoed against the walls with staccato precision.

"Benny!" barked a familiar voice.

Benny gave a start and turned to peer inside the masked hood beside him. Kenneth's thin, arrogant face stared back, hazel eyes hard with contempt. "Position yourself by the Osmotic Minipump and the oscillator controls." The young doctor pointed a plastic-gloved finger at the body rocking rhythmically from head to toe.

Annoyed by the order, Benny reluctantly did as he was told. No one had to tell him how to do his job. He approached the round metal frame that kept the lifeless patient rotating in a constant 180 arc, then adjusted the oscillator to reduce the cryonic's level of tilt.

He studied the digital dial on the pump, intending to increase its output if signaled, but for now all he could do was wait. He'd been waiting two years for this moment, a historical moment, a moment he might regret for the rest of his life.

Reanimating the dead was an unnatural act of defiance against nature, yet Benny had eagerly competed for placement on the Project's medical team. He even received the highest score on the program's entrance exam for registered nurses. But what choice did he have? Project Resurrection promised him a full medical school scholarship once his contract was up; he lacked the funds to pay for that education himself. He'd end up paying for it with compromise, becoming a hypocrite to his own beliefs. Once he became a doctor, Benny vowed to prevent such heresies as the very project responsible for helping him reach his goal.

"Snap out of it, Benny." Kenneth elbowed him smartly in the ribs. "Stay alert! You don't see anyone else standing around with their thumbs up their butts." He nudged Benny toward the oscillator. "Be a good nurse and keep your eye on the readouts. These machines have been running nonstop for the past three months. We can't have them quitting on us now."

Benny edged closer to the oscillator, averting his eyes from the figure at its center. The top of the Osmotic Minipump, its height and width the size of a two drawer file cabinet, blinked at him with tiny green and white lights as it forced cell-reviving chemicals and biopathic stimulators through the patient's veins. He pulled out a sliding keyboard from within the unit's center and set the regulation mode to auto. Through the course of the procedure, he would monitor the machine and regulate its output manually if necessary.

"Body temperature?" Kenneth asked Benny.

"Eighty-seven point six and rising."

"Blood pressure?"

Benny scowled and the young doctor smiled ruefully at him. "That was a joke. Lighten up."

A flush of anger prickled the back of Benny's neck. Kenneth acted as though Project Resurrection was conceived by him and not Terrance Labriola, his genius father. The arrogant bastard. Benny's jaw tensed. All hail to Dr. Kenneth Labriola as he shakes a fist at God while attempting to wake the dead.

Benny dared a peek at the corpse and stepped back in surprise. The skin no longer looked blue. It had turned pale pink, making the dead man appear almost healthy -- as though he might only be asleep. Benny knew to expect this transformation, but actually seeing it was unnerving. He glanced at the others; no one behaved as though they'd even noticed.

"Hey, Benny," Kenneth said, stepping so close their masks almost touched. "You look like you've just seen a ghost." He chuckled and turned away. Benny clenched his fists.

"Kenneth," Terrance said, his voice stern. "We're about to begin. Take your position at the patient's head. Mr. Sams, turn off the oscillator."

The room became unnaturally still with the oscillator's motor stopped. The units and pumps droned on, their hum even and unbroken. Benny joined his team mates, who swarmed around the patient's naked body, adding diagnostic electrodes to areas not already covered with the wire-stemmed patches of silver tape. Clear plastic tubes pierced the skin at every critical point of anatomy: heart, liver, kidney, lungs, brain. The man's shaved head reminded Benny of Medusa, the hollow ribbons of plastic like writhing snakes around his scalp. Warmed blood pulsed through most of the tubes, regeneration fluids through the others.

Terrance grabbed the octagonal paddles from a photon-defibrillator cart, then greased them with conductor jelly. "This is it, everyone. This man's body has been renewing itself for weeks, his idle heart unable to pump blood through a brain now healthy with regenerated tissue. That heart is about to start. And so is this man's life!" He rubbed the paddles together. "Clear!"

The team appeared frozen with anticipation. Terrance sucked in an audible breath and brought the paddles down flat against the patient's chest and left rib cage. "Clear!" he yelled again, and the room crackled with the violent sound of photon-kinetic shock.

The body twitched.

Three rows of straight green lines on the med-revivatory monitors broke for an instant. The team stood statue-still, waiting for the machine to recharge. The paddles zapped their target once more. Two blips erupted onto the screens, each about a half-second apart. The patient lay still, lifeless.

The mask of Terrance's hood turned gray from the steam of his breath. He hesitated and glared at the defibrillator, as if to mentally accelerate its recharge. "Clear!" Terrance returned the paddles to the man's chest.

This time the body nearly leapt from the table. The monitors went wild with bouncing green light.

"What the hell is that?" Nancy Ti stared down at the body, her brows furrowed behind the clear mask of her hood.

"I don't know." Steve Ivan pointed at the patient's midsection. "Where did that come from? It wasn't there when we started."

Benny saw it, too; a perfect round welt just above the navel, like someone had pelted the body with a handball. He glanced at the dead man's face and watched the once-frozen features of death contort into a grimace. The eyes opened wide. The lips curled back in a silent scream.

* * *

October 3, 2013, -- Toledo, Ohio

Tony trotted down the narrow driveway, his body hunched over the basketball that thumped between his palm and the frigid cement.

"Shoot!"

Unfazed by Jake's taunting, Tony spun around with his back to the hoop and dribbled the ball in place. Despite the cold autumn air, sweat trickled down his forehead, drops of it stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. Jake pressed close to him, his hot breath blasting against Tony's neck as they scuffled their way to the garage and the basket above it.

Jake leaned in closer. "You're stalling, man." Spittle flew with his words, wetting the side of Tony's face. Tony risked a sly peek at his friend, then winced at the cool, mischievous eyes staring back.

Jake slapped the ball away. He let it bounce against his knees, then his hand while dribbling it on to victory. "Ha!" He leapt up and slammed the ball through the hoop.

"Twenty-two to four." Jake grabbed the ball before it could roll into the scraggly branches of a dying juniper hedge. "Best two out of three?"

Tony breathed out puffs of white clouds while panting his refusal. "Nah. What's the point? You'll win anyway."

"Ah, come on. We're just warming up." Jake batted the ball at him, then quickly snatched it back. "The exercise is good for you."

Tony shook his head and trudged over to a smooth patch of dead lawn beside the porch steps of Jake's house. He plopped down and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth to warm himself against the chilly afternoon air.

He snuffled through air filter plugs in his nose and lifted watery eyes to the gray-green haze above. Tony squinted and wiped his face, then glanced at his hands to see if there was blood on them. He should have worn his goggles today. The smog became so bad at times, like now, that he thought his eyes might bleed. He spread his fingers and noticed streaks of brown running across his knuckles. Not blood, just grime from junk that drifted through the thick Toledo air like plankton in the sea.

He lay in the dry grass and watched Jake dodge back and forth beneath the hoop, the ball in constant motion. His friend's sinewy limbs stretched as he leaped, and Tony noticed the rippled muscles on his friend's back where his shirt hiked up. Slim and fit, Jake made an unconscious mockery of Tony's fat, flabby body.

Tony ran his hand through a forelock of hair, using his sweat to slick it back. He smelled his fingers and grimaced, the pungent odor a mixture of perspiration and something like burnt rubber.

"Finish your homework?" Jake asked before lunging toward the hoop for another lay-up.

"I'll do it in the morning during access period. I got plenty of time."

"You'll catch shit from Spence if it's late."

"Who cares." Tony plucked blades of dead grass between thumb and forefinger. "It's our last year and I'm cruisin'."

Jake stopped his merciless pounding on the ball and stood, hands on hips, staring down at Tony. "If you don't ace Philosophy, you can forget about getting Spence's referral to the Tech Academy. He's serious about this essay." He trotted back toward the hoop.

"What'd you write?" Tony called out.

Jake threw him a withering look before launching another perfect dunk. "Once a dead body, always a dead body."

"How do you know for sure? They could do it, Jake. Reanimate all those corpsicles stacked up in Labriola's deep freeze for the last thirty years."

"Ain't gonna happen," Jake said.

Tony considered the ethics of immortality, the question Dr. Spence had assigned his philosophy students to ponder. The idea for this assignment sprang from the latest news sweeping the country: the impending revival of thirty-year-old corpses who, before they died, had dreamed the dream of living forever. At some time today -- perhaps it had already happened -- the first cryonic zombie would be zapped to life in the twenty-first century. Project Resurrection. Tony had followed updates about the Project for months. He would give anything to be in Angakok, Alaska right now to witness the event.

"Do you believe in Heaven, Tony?"

"I don't know. I mean, I want to believe in it. If it exists, it's where I wanna go when I die." Only Tony didn't believe and never would. Too bad Jake couldn't share his agnostic views.

"If someone brought you back from Heaven years after you died, how do you think you'd feel?"

"There's no proof we go anywhere after we die." Tony sprawled his plump body across the dead lawn. "It's nice to imagine some great beyond where angels play harps and your spirit lazes around on clouds all day. But who's to say death isn't like drifting into a dreamless sleep that lasts forever?"

Jake peered at him through a lock of black hair that hung over one eye. His expression was sympathetic, as though he felt sorry for Tony and his bleak perception of the afterlife. This made Tony think about his dead parents, who'd been gone five years now -- completely gone, forever. If their bodies had been frozen instead of buried, he could look forward to meeting up with them again someday. Only it would be in this world, during his lifetime. Not in some fantasy afterlife.

"Hey, Jake. I gotta go."

"Already?" Jake dribbled the ball again, bouncing it down the driveway. He ventured as far from the hoop as he could get without going into the street. "Betcha five I can make it from here."

Tony stood and brushed grass from the back of his sweat pants. He felt sticky and just wanted to go home and take a shower. Thinking about his parents had depressed him. "A sucker bet. You never miss."

Jake laughed and slouched over the bouncing ball. The foul air was cold and still, carrying no sound but the pat-pat-pat of inflated rubber against pavement. He scowled with concentration as he stared down the driveway, eyes fixed on the loop of bent metal above the garage.

Bored now, Tony turned from him to focus on the awaiting basket. Seconds passed. Jake never took this long to send the ball flying, the hoop attracting it like a magnet.

"Any day now," Tony said, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to prickle. Something was wrong. "Come on and make the shot so I can --" He glanced over his shoulder and saw his friend clutching the ball to his chest. An expression of pain and surprise distorted Jake's face. "Hey, Jake! You okay?"

The ball slipped from Jake's hands. It bounced mildly in place a few times before rolling down the driveway and into the street. When Jake didn't move to go after it, Tony sprinted toward him, an odd sense of panic tightening his chest.

"I'm so hot," Jake said, sounding breathless, his knees still bent as if ready to launch his free-throw. He grabbed at the front of his sweatshirt with both hands. "I-I-I'm being sucked out of my body. I can feel it, Tony. Something's p-p-pulling me, pulling, pull..."

* * *

"He's alive!" Kenneth shouted.

Benny was too horrified to look away from the thing that had been dead only moments before. He blinked rapidly as if warding off a bad dream. But the terrified expression on the dead man's face didn't go away -- it got worse.

The eyes rolled back until only the cloudy whites showed, their surface a web of spidery red veins. The monitors blared with jagged green lines that pulsed in erratic rhythm.

"God in Heaven, forgive us," Steve Ivan murmured as he made the sign of the cross against his chest.

Kenneth sneered at him. "Shut up, Ivan."

"Wait." Nancy Ti held out her hands, palms down. "Feel that?"

"Feel what?" Benny curled his fingers around the rail surrounding the oscillator. It was shaking. The man laying on it was shaking. He yanked his hands away.

"Earthquake," someone whispered.

Terrance placed one hand flat against the wall. "No. Not an earthquake."

"It's him!" Steve cried in a cracked voice and gestured toward the figure on the oscillator.

"Nonsense." Terrance moved quickly back to his patient. "I'm sure there's a reasonable --"

The man on the table shook wildly now, forcing the various tubes and wires loose from his skin. An IV bag fell to the floor and burst, splattering its contents across the red-tiled floor.

"Nurse, hold him still," Terrance yelled to Benny over the din of clanging metal. "His renewed flesh can't take such abuse!"

The oscillator's frame quivered like a jack hammer.

Benny hesitated, staring with horror at the animated form that vibrated to a blur beneath the dim lights. He squeezed his eyes shut and flung himself across the patient's lower body.

Terrance glowered at each member of his team. "Where's the Quinidine? Procainamide? What's the matter with you people? Let's go, damn it!" Nancy slapped a syringe onto his open palm and he jabbed the needle into the patient's chest.

Benny thought his bones would rattle loose before he readjusted himself to cover the cryonic's upper torso. But he held on tight to the warm body beneath him, hearing the erratic beat of its heart.

The man was alive.

The cryonic stopped shaking. His body grew still, silent, but breathing with new life.

Benny pushed away slowly and peered over at one of the monitors. Dots and lines of fluorescent green fell in smooth, rhythmic pulses. The two med techs scurried around the patient to reattach wayward tubes and electrodes. As he worked, Steve Ivan carefully looked away from the now peaceful face of their patient.

Kenneth strode confidently to the head of the oscillator. He held the patient's head firmly with one hand while expertly peeling back an eyelid with the other. He examined the dilated pupils. Kenneth looked at his father and said flatly, "Coma."

* * *

"Jake!" Tony reached his friend as he collapsed to the ground. "What is it? What's pulling you?"

Jake's eyes rolled back and he uttered a guttural groan. He still clutched his sweatshirt, tugging it away from his chest.

"Is that where it hurts?" Tony's hand shook as he lifted Jake's sweaty shirt to peer underneath. "What the hell?" He stared at the ugly red welt swelling above Jake's belly-button, then glanced quickly around to see who had thrown a rock at his friend.

"Hey!" Tony yelled. "Hey! Somebody, help!"

No one answered but a dog barking somewhere in the distance.

"Take a deep breath, Jake. Come on. You just got the wind knocked out of you is all." Tony shook him but there was no response. He thought of running for help, but as he started to stand, he felt Jake's body tremble.

The tremble turned quickly to a shudder. Tony wrapped his arms tight around Jake's shoulders. Maybe Jake was cold from shock. But the shaking didn't stop. It became violent, seeming to vibrate the ground beneath them until even Tony's teeth chattered and he almost bit his tongue. He let Jake roll from his arms, then sprang to his feet.

Jake lay on the ground, his eyes white orbs rolled back in their sockets. Tony stood mesmerized while watching his friend's entire body blur, the vibrating so strong it shook the athletic tenni-loafers off his feet. An unearthly whine pierced the air. Tony clapped his hands over his ears and searched the dismal sky for the source. Nothing. The shriek grew louder. A nearby street light shattered, raining sparks in a shimmer of gold onto the street.

CHAPTER 2

Woe to the wicked! Disaster is upon them! They will be paid back for what their hands have done.

Isaiah 3:11

LaNaya Seville sat with her back resting stiffly against the wall. She could feel the thin mattress beneath her, and almost see the white-bricked basement through her closed eyelids. Deep in meditation, her sense of the physical world felt both close and far away.

A flash of panic sent sparks up her spine. The image of a tormented soul, a wisp of colorless fog, flew through her consciousness. The vision was too quick for her to clearly see. "It begins," she murmured through numb lips. She knew then that Project Resurrection had just reanimated its first cryonic patient.

Rivulets of sweat slid down her temples. She concentrated on her inner-self, her psyche now in touch with those rarefied energies beyond her five senses. Hold on, she pleaded with her mind, aware she could snap back to a conscious state at any second. She must stay focused.

"Jake! What is it? What's pulling you?" The boy's voice echoed between her ears, disembodied and urgent. LaNaya saw nothing but blotchy darkness behind her closed eyes, yet her empathic senses revealed more than physical sight ever could. Terror. Sorrow. Loneliness.

"No!" she screamed and lurched forward, her head ringing with the sound of her own voice. She panted, her throat throbbing.

Her meditation broken, LaNaya curled over her bent knees and hugged them to her chest. She massaged the back of her neck, her muscles aching from the effort it had taken to hold her trance. A vague image of a young man--a boy--drifted through her mind like a fading dream. She remembered the name Jake. But the name David rang true, too. Was it the spirit of a boy named Jake, or someone named David whom she had glimpsed rushing through the psychic paths inside her head?

Trembling, she reached out a slender, brown hand to grab the watch she had placed on a stool by her cot. As she strapped it to her wrist, she looked at the time: 12:45 p.m. The reanimation procedure was over--the impossible made possible by the wonders of science.

She dropped her feet to the floor and stood. A sudden rush of blood to her head threw her off balance and she clutched the stool to steady herself. A few gulps of stale, recycled air revived her a little and she ran both hands through the long waves of black hair hanging down her back. She twisted the tangled mop into a knot at the nape of her neck.

LaNaya's knees started to wobble so she lowered herself back to the mattress, every nerve aflame, her stomach clenched like a fist of burning fingers. She felt claustrophobic, the basement's white brick walls seeming more prison than sanctuary. A half-dozen red metal lockers lined the farthest wall, a single cot in front of each. It wouldn't surprise her if the beds and lockers slid towards her in an attempt to seal her in. To fend off the illusion, she shut her eyes and pressed both palms against her forehead.

A burning residue from her trance sent spikes of fury through her brain, the sensation unexpected and irrational. She wasn't angry, but whatever it was that had touched her mind seemed to roil with that and other emotions as well. The disturbing imprint was still fresh.

Taking a deep breath, LaNaya cleansed herself of the alien rage. Exhilaration took its place as she thought of what lay ahead, what she had committed herself to. When she first joined Project Resurrection, she'd made a personal vow to help the terrorized souls who might be reborn against their will. Exactly how she would help them was still a mystery, but the challenge itself invigorated her. She had a special gift, an acquired gift, one that allowed her to cross the barrier of flesh into the realm of spirit. And it was with this gift that she would arm herself for battle against a spectral threat she had yet to encounter. She could sense its
waiting presense.

Her position with the Angakok Longevity Institute had always been tentative; no one really knew if cryonic reanimation would work. Her role as the Project's physical therapist would be obsolete if there were no revived patients to treat. If that happened, she would continue working with A.L.I.'s recovering cancer patients, and the prospect brought about a curious pang of disappointment. Helping the living held far less challenge than salvaging spirits of the living-dead.

Her friend Benny also had an ulterior motive for joining the Project. They were alike in their mutual distaste for a scientific scheme that could upset the balance of nature. Benny's involvement would reward him with a medical career. LaNaya's compensation was still ambiguous, but she stood firm in her commitment to a calling not unlike what priests and nuns might feel when devoting themselves to God.

LaNaya rose carefully and waited for the dizzy spell to return. When it didn't, she took an experimental step forward, then quickened her pace toward the stairs. She must find Benny, learn the details of the reanimation and the extent of its success.

Her long, tan skirt wound around her legs as she ran up the stairs. She tripped every couple of steps and had to hike up the unruly fabric to thigh-level. In her mid twenties, six feet tall, slender and well-muscled, LaNaya's friends often asked her why she hid her athletic beauty under so much cloth. She simply preferred loose-fitting garments that didn't make her feel confined. Those same friends commented on her eyes, noting how the green one showed flecks of
the same tawny shades that colored her brown one. Though meant as a compliment, the observation irritated her; LaNaya's dual-colored eyes attracted the unwanted attention of those who thought her different.

Once at the top of the stairs, she sailed down the hallway toward the institute's central control station. Shiny red linoleum passed beneath her feet, reminding her of the warm blood that now flowed through the Project's first resurrected patient. Leave it to Kenneth to decide on such a color scheme when he and his father planned A.L.I.'s construction; red floors to depict renewed life, white walls to reflect the icy tombs that held lifeless cryonics destined for reanimation.

She focused on the gray metal counter a hundred feet ahead and muttered to herself, "Be there, Benny. Please be there." But when she reached her destination, Benny wasn't there. Her friend Vernie was, and she met LaNaya's questioning eyes with a crooked grin.

"Where is he, Vernie?"

"Who?" Vernie Michaels widened her dark-fringed eyes, the irises blue as peacock feathers. She tapped a glossy red fingernail on the metal counter top. "Oh, you mean Benny. He's not out yet. Where you been? I tried reaching you on your sonic-call."

LaNaya reached around the edge of the counter and brought out a shiny black box with a clip on the back. "I didn't have it with me." She shook her head and groaned. "I need Benny's account of what just happened."

"Which version would you like?" Benny emerged from one of five brightly lit corridors. "The real one? Or the obtuse explanation intended for the press."

LaNaya sighed. "I suppose I'll have to watch the VidDisk recording and draw my own conclusions. Dr. Labriola asked me to take notes during reanimation and immediately afterwards if--"

"If," Benny interrupted. "The procedure didn't work."

"Yes, it did," LaNaya said.

He stared at her. "How would you know?"

"Trust me. I know." LaNaya ignored Vernie's puzzled expression and asked, "Why did you say it didn't work?"

Benny sagged all over as he walked behind the counter and plopped wearily into a padded blue office chair. "The cryonic's not dead anymore, but he isn't completely alive, either. He's in a coma."

LaNaya frowned, confused by this news. "What went wrong?"

"No one knows--yet." Benny narrowed his eyes and rubbed at the shadow of beard on his chin. "I looked for your lovely face among the rest of the psyche team watching from the observation room window. Where were you?"

LaNaya picked at a jagged fingernail she had nearly bitten to the quick. "Resting."

Benny's jaw dropped. "Resting? During the biggest world event of all time? The greatest scientific achievement this country has ever known?"

"Cut it out, Benny. That's not how I see it and you don't either."

Benny nodded, raising both eyebrows and molding his forehead into three uneven ridges. He hadn't shaved his head for several days and tiny black whiskers stippled his dusky scalp. LaNaya often told him he reminded her of a black Sharpei puppy.

"I'm glad it didn't work." Vernie's words were clipped and cheerful, her rosebud lips twitching in an impish grin. She flicked a short wisp of bleached-blond hair from her forehead. In a casual Texan drawl, she added, "The idea of modern day zombies gives me the creeps."

Amused, LaNaya eyed her sardonic friend. "But it did work, Vernie. You heard Benny. The guy may be in a coma, but he is breathing. How much more alive can you get?" She returned her attention to Benny. "What's the patient's name? If he's alive, he should at least have a name."

"David Bodine," Benny said.

"David?" LaNaya's heart beat double-time. "Is his middle name Jake? Or Jacob?"

"I don't think he has a middle name. It's just David Bodine as far as I know. Why?"

"Just a feeling I have."

"What kind of feeling?" Benny and Vernie exchanged knowing looks. "You seeing things again, LaNaya?" Benny asked, while leaning back in the chair.

"I had a vision about a half-hour ago, while I was--meditating." She caught Vernie roll her eyes and quickly added, "I know you two think I'm weird, but this trance was unlike any I've had before. It revealed more to me than what I could have seen while watching the reanimation in person. Something strange has happened, even stranger than the revival of a dead body. What if--?"

Benny scowled and briskly shook his head. He jerked his chin in the direction of an adjoining corridor.

Kenneth Labriola strode toward them, his lab-coat flapping at his sides. His disheveled brown hair stuck out in uneven spikes above his ears. The fluorescent lights from the ceiling reflected prism-like off his glasses and LaNaya thought he looked like a giant insect, the many-faceted eyes trained on its prey.

"Afternoon, Dr. Labriola," Vernie said with mock sweetness.

"Vernie. Benny." Kenneth locked eyes with Benny for a second before focusing on LaNaya. "And my dear LaNaya. We missed you today."

"Hello, Kenneth." LaNaya edged closer to Benny as Kenneth sidled up next to her.

"Where were you?" Kenneth asked.

"Sorry I couldn't make it, but I was..." Benny gave her another one of his Sharpei impersonations. She ignored him. "I took advantage of the option Dr. Labriola gave me."

"Ah!" Kenneth twisted his mouth in a lop-sided grin. "Of course. He said that since your role as observer wasn't essential, you could review a recording of the procedure and report to him later." He winced when he added, "However, my father's a bit peeved you didn't bother to show up."

LaNaya caught the essence of a lie in Kenneth's voice. The senior doctor probably hadn't even noticed she was missing.

Kenneth placed a hand gently on her arm. "I understand. You have a busy schedule and work long hours with the cancer patients. You deserved a rest." His fingers tightened and she felt his thumb rub suggestively through the thin fabric of her blouse. She jerked away.

He threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender, his hazel eyes glittering with silent laughter.

Benny leapt to his feet and glared at Kenneth, the two men equal in height and both as tall as LaNaya. She grabbed Benny's arm and felt the taut muscles flinch at her touch. "Don't," she whispered.

"Got a problem, Benny?" Kenneth's grin widened across his acne-scarred face.

LaNaya squeezed until Benny sighed, "No, sir."

"Good." Kenneth jerked his wrist up and tapped his watch with the tip of a bony forefinger. "Ooh! Gotta run. Grand Rounds in five minutes." He turned and marched confidently toward a gathering crowd at the far end of another corridor. After a few steps, he spun around to face them again. "By the way, Benny, my father expects you there. You are, after all, an active member of the team." He spat out the last word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Once Kenneth was out of sight, Benny hung his head. "I hope they don't make me say anything."

"They won't," Vernie assured him. She slipped a red plastic bracelet from her wrist and held it in front of one eye, looking through it at Benny. "You're just a show dog jumpin' through one of their hoops. Bein' there makes 'em look good. You know, grantin' recognition to one of the 'little people.'"

"Thanks," Benny said, his tone sarcastic.

"You'll do fine." LaNaya flung an arm around his shoulders and gave him a jerky hug. "Good
luck."

* * * * *