a nervous fidget; no purpose to it beyond finding something to keep his mind occupied, keep his fingers busy. Glancing at what’s cradled in those sweat-streaked arms, he hopes the soldiers don’t have the same problem. What’s making the systems-diagnostic more redundant is that he won’t even be permitted to use half of this stuff, and of what remains, much of it might be unable to tell him anything anyway. On a trolley next to the table, for instance, there is a Swan-Ganz catheter for measuring pulmonary arterial pressure and an arterial line for invasive blood pressure monitoring, while next to those is an oesophageal Doppler for monitoring cardiac output. What he doesn’t have - for they have thus far allowed him insufficient opportunity to determine - is any guarantee that there will be a heart, lungs, oesophagus or arterial system present to be monitored.
Steinmeyer checks his watch, and to Merrick’s relief (but, he’d have to admit, slight disappointment) moves from the vicinity of the table and thus outwith the range of sedition and sabotage. He turns his gaze instead towards the door; not the main door, opposite Merrick’s console, upon either side of which stand the two soldiers his mikes picked up, but the other one, the one at the south corner. The circular steel one. The blast-proof one. The mag-locked one, upon either side of which is posted a phalanx of six more soldiers.
All eight of them, as well as all six of the science and medical personnel, stiffen to varying degrees in response to the main door lock-warning alarm as it reverberates off the white walls. A blue glow emanates from the digital read-out topside of the double-width sliding main door, the LED panel’s border flashing red in time to the first five pulses of the alarm. After that there’s only the countdown: twenty seconds until the chamber is sealed.
At ten seconds, the two halves of the door slide together, but this happens any time someone comes in or goes out, so nobody’s fazed by that. It’s ten seconds later, when the tumblers drop into place on the other side, that always draws an anxious glance. Nobody likes to know they’re locked into anywhere, but knowing what they’re all about to be locked in with takes it to a whole other level.
One of the soldiers guarding the entrance slides a card through the swipe-reader inset in the wall to the right of the now deadlocked door, then lifts the telephone handset next to it. He’s confirming the lockdown and submitting the auth code for the second stage. Merrick can’t stop himself looking towards Steinmeyer. He’s got one hand on his chin, his thoughts unreadable. He’s still staring at the circular door, and as soon as the second warning alarm sounds, so is everybody else. It’s another twenty-second countdown, but this time to opening.
‘Okay, places everybody,’ Merrick hears a voice say. ‘Game time.’
It’s the second phrase before he’s fully aware that the voice is his own. He’s functioning, putting himself into operational mode like any other piece of military-owned equipment he has deployed here, and even as he does he can feel his deeper self disengage, retreat into merely spectating from above like in some out-of-body experience.
He already knows that later he will review the myriad video files, and will see himself in the images, but he won’t feel any of this, and there will be no footage saved of the view from inside his head.
The countdown hits five. The phalanx step into an altered formation, forming a V widening away from the door. Their weapons are no longer merely cradled, but levelled at shoulder-height, six little blue LED ammunition readouts describing the V shape, like a constellation, or the floor-level emergency lights on a commercial airliner. And at the apex, one big blue LED reaches zero.
There’s a second of silence, or as close to silence as the sound of the machine can permit in this place. One last very pregnant pause. Then there comes the percussive chimes of the mag-locks disengaging, followed by a belly-shuddering thunk as eight impermeable steel cylinders retract into their housing within the giant disc. The final herald’s trumpet blast is an indignant hiss from the pressure seals, before the big circular door swings smoothly and slowly open on its hydraulic servo-assisted hinges.
Merrick knows this door cost more than his house; maybe more than half his street. Given what’s kept behind it, he also knows it’s money well spent.