CHAPTER 23

The test was conducted in the main room of the Vesper holding cell. Fiske, Alistair, Reagan, Natalie, and Phoenix each brandished a piece of plastic cutlery to determine which of them had the steadiest hand.

“It would appear,” Fiske decided, “that young Phoenix is our ‘winner.’”

The boy turned white as a sheet. “Me? I can’t cut Nellie! What if I do something wrong?”

“What if we do nothing at all?” Fiske countered.

“Let me do it!” Reagan exclaimed. “My hand is as steady as anybody’s.”

Alistair shook his head. “I admire your courage, child. But Phoenix has the touch that’s required.”

“Just so long as I don’t have to,” Natalie quavered, wrapping herself in her own arms. “The whole thing is so — medieval!”

Nellie’s weak voice came from the bedroom. “I’m shot; I’m not deaf.” She had been drifting in and out of consciousness as her fever rose and fell.

“All right, I’ll do the surgery,” Phoenix agreed. “But someone has to tell me every move.”

“You have my word,” Fiske promised. He did not bother to mention that removing the scalpel from the dumbwaiter had been the first time he’d ever touched one.

They tore apart a sheet to make bandannas that served as surgical masks. The bed was their operating table, simply because no one had the courage to move the patient. Phoenix entered the room, his hands as washed and sterilized as he could make them.

It was time.

Nellie did her best to smile at him. “You can do this, kiddo.” She watched his eyes fill with tears. “And no crying. You have to see what you’re doing.”

He picked the scalpel off the tray and Nellie bit hard on the gag in her mouth. It was all the comfort she was going to get. This operation would be without anesthesia.

Phoenix was amazed at how easily the scalpel cut through flesh. The gag muffled Nellie’s cry of pain. She tried to squirm away, but Reagan pressed her down to the mattress, keeping her firmly in place. Blood covered the incision, and Fiske mopped it away with a fistful of the sheet fabric.

“A second cut,” Alistair suggested, observing from a step back so his twitching arm wouldn’t jostle Phoenix. “Forming an X. It will open wider and allow you to get inside.”

And although he wasn’t sure he could even hold the scalpel, Phoenix did as he was told. More blood. He felt the top of his head rising toward the ceiling and fought it back down again.

Of course there’s blood! When you cut people, they bleed!

He had to keep it together. Everybody was counting on him.

“Tweezers,” Fiske instructed, none too steady himself.

Almost in slow motion, Phoenix set the bloody scalpel down and picked up the tweezers. He could hear Nellie’s moaned complaint as he probed into the flesh of her torn shoulder.

“I don’t feel it,” he said, hysteria rising.

“Move the instrument around,” Fiske coached. “Gently.”

Phoenix was sweating now. He could feel the moisture pouring down his face, stinging his eyes. On the other side of the bed, Ted had gotten up from his chair and was pacing the room, hugging the wall. Natalie was curled up in a corner, whimpering. Even Reagan had lost her Holt bravado and was looking on in awe and dread.

All at once, Phoenix became aware of something small and hard coming into contact with one tip of the tweezers. “There it is!”

“Excellent,” Fiske approved. “Now pull it out slowly.”

Phoenix worked his wrist and fingers. “I can’t get a grip on it.”

“Keep trying,” Alistair encouraged.

Desperately, Phoenix attempted to maneuver both tips of the instrument around the bullet. He knew that each move caused Nellie unimaginable pain, but he could not grasp the target. “It’s no use,” he sobbed. “And my hand is going numb.”

In a frenzy, Nellie shouted something into the gag, but no one could understand her.

“I beg your pardon, child?” queried Alistair.

Nellie spat out the rag and rasped, “Get the Kabra chick!”

“Natalie?” Fiske exclaimed. “She’s fallen completely to pieces.”

“Get her!” Nellie demanded. “Anybody with eyebrows plucked like that knows how to use a tweezers!”

Reagan bounded across the room and came back with a shivering, mewling Natalie.

“I can’t!” she wheezed.

Fiske poured alcohol over the girl’s beautifully manicured fingers. “You must.”

Still protesting, her eyes tightly shut, she took over the instrument from Phoenix. “I can’t do it! You can’t make me — oh!” she said in sudden surprise. “This?” And when she pulled the tweezers out of the wound, the tips were firmly grasping a flattened, blood-slimed bullet.

Nellie laughed — and promptly fainted.