She is as gifted as any messiah—but she is human. She can heal the wing of a broken bird and bring sight to its blinded eye. She can banish cancer from a disease-riddled man. But she is not an angel with a cloak of invulnerability. She is flesh and bone. Her precious power resides in the delicate tissues of her singular brain. If the magazine of a pistol is emptied into the back of her head, she will die like any other child; dead, she cannot heal herself. Although her soul will proceed into other realms, she will be lost to this troubled place that needs her. The world will not be changed, peace will not replace turmoil, and there will be no end to loneliness and despair.
Rose quickly becomes convinced that the project’s directors will opt for termination. The moment that they understand what this little girl is, they will kill her.
Before nightfall, they will kill her.
Certainly before midnight, they will kill her.
They will not be willing to risk consigning her to a containment vessel. The boy possesses only the power of destruction, but 21-21 possesses the power of enlightenment, which is immeasurably the more dangerous of the two.
They will shoot her down, soak her corpse with gasoline, set her remains afire, and later scatter her charred bones.
Rose must act—and quickly. The girl must be spirited out of the orphanage and hidden before they can destroy her.
“Joe?”
Against a field of stars, as though at this moment erupting from the crust of the earth, the black mountains shouldered darkly across the horizon.
“Joe, I’m sorry.” Her voice was frail. “I’m so sorry.”
They were speeding north on State Highway 30, east of the city of San Bernardino, fifty miles from Big Bear.
“Joe, are you okay?”
He could not answer.
Traffic was light. The road ascended into forests. Cottonwoods and pines shook, shook, shook in the wind.
He could not answer. He could only drive.
“When you insisted on believing the little girl with me was your own Nina, I let you go on believing it.”
For whatever purpose, she was still deceiving him. He could not understand why she continued to hide the truth.
She said, “After they found us at the restaurant, I needed your help. Especially after I was shot, I needed you. But you hadn’t opened your heart and mind to the photograph when I gave it to you. You were so… fragile. I was afraid if you knew it really wasn’t your Nina, you’d just… stop. Fall apart. God forgive me, Joe, but I needed you. And now the girl needs you.”
Nina needed him. Not some girl born in a lab, with the power to transmit her curious fantasies to others and cloud the minds of the gullible. Nina needed him. Nina.
If he could not trust Rose Tucker, was there anyone he could trust?
He managed to shake two words from himself: “Go on.”
Rose again. In 21-21’s room. Feverishly considering the problem of how to spirit the girl through a security system equal to that of any prison.
The answer, when it comes, is obvious and elegant.
There are three exits from the ground floor of the orphanage. Rose and the girl walk hand-in-hand to the door that connects the main building to the adjoining two-story parking structure.
An armed guard views their approach with more puzzlement than suspicion. The orphans are not permitted into the garage even under supervision.
When 21-21 holds out her tiny hand and says Shake, the guard smiles and obliges—and receives the gift. Filled with cyclonic wonder, he sits shaking uncontrollably, weeping with joy but also with hard remorse, just as Rose had trembled and wept in the girl’s room.
It is a simple matter to push the button on the guard’s console to throw the electronic lock on the door and pass through.
Another guard waits on the garage side of the connecting door. He is startled by the sight of this child. She reaches for him, and his surprise at seeing her is nothing compared to the surprise that follows.
A third guard is stationed at the gated exit from the garage. Alarmed by the sight of 21-21 in Rose’s car, he leans in the open window to demand an explanation—and the girl touches his face.