Why were they here? Just a cool, breezy place to hang out? Or were they in place to guard me?

The breeze was causing the candle's flame to cast flick­ering shadows across the hall, so I quickly re-closed the door.

Now what? I was trembling as I returned the candle bowl to the table and sat down on the bed. Soldiers with guns were outside my room at five in the morning. In the farthest end of Guatemala. What was I going to do?

I gazed around at the "stone" walls and tried to think. My mind still felt clouded from whatever drug he'd given me, but it was beginning to . . .

Wait. I saw Alex Goddard come into this very room with embryos from the lab, which is connected by the steel door to his office. . . .

Where there was a phone.

Time to call the embassy, get some help to get the hell out of here.

I sat there thinking. All right. I'd need to wait an hour or so—now I'd get some low-level flunkie stuck with the grave­yard shift—but there was something I was damned well go­ing to do immediately. With the lab right next door, I could try to find out why Goddard had just performed medical rape on me. There had to be some connection. According to him, the lab was for "plant research." But if that was all he was doing, why was the Army here? Right outside my door? I felt a pump of adrenaline that made me forget all about my pain. Before I got the hell out of Baalum, I was going to know what he was really up to here.

God, I feel miserable. I really hurt. All the more reason . . .

I took the candle, stood up, and moved to the opposite wall to begin looking for an opening in the fiberglass "stone." It appeared to have been made from impressions from the room atop the pyramid, rows and rows of those little cartoon-face glyphs, mixed in with bas-reliefs, but there had to be a door somewhere. I'd seen him walk right through it. As I ran my hand along the surface, I was struck by how their hardness felt like stone. But it couldn't be.