Haslanger took a hefty chug of water and then another, sighing after the second gulp went down. He did miss Krill, and found it strange admitting that. But Krill’s passing meant another link to his past severed. Potentially the last one, potentially—
Haslanger felt his head start to slump and shocked himself alert. Like a man driving a lonely road in the dark night hours. It happened sometimes.
But then it happened again.
Haslanger tore open a desk drawer and rummaged desperately for the stimulants he always kept close for times like this. This was an especially bad one, worst he could remember. He felt it looming over him like an ocean wave he was too far from shore to avoid: exhaustion, irrepressible and relentless, turning every part of him heavy and slow. He popped a pair of pills in his mouth and reached for his water to down them.
His hand stopped halfway to the glass. His eyes fell on the water cooler and he knew, knew everything. Recognized the effects.
GL-12 . . .
The phone on his desk rang. Haslanger snatched for it dimly, blessing the voice on the other end for being about to save his life.
“Help me!” he blared, steadying the receiver to his ear, trying to dry-swallow the stimulants. “Help me!”
“Pleasant dreams, Doctor,” said Blaine McCracken.
The phone slipped from Haslanger’s hand. He lurched away from his desk and staggered for the door. Halfway there he crumpled. The black wave engulfed him and he couldn’t swim out from beneath it to the surface that beckoned above. Then the surface was gone.
Erich Haslanger had fallen asleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All thanks must start with Toni Mendez, my agent, who’s been there through all the beginnings of which this first hardcover is the most exciting. Of course, it never would have happened without the editorial brilliance of Ann Maurer and Tor’s Natalia Aponte, who pushed for more with this one and got it. Tom, Linda, John, Yolanda and everyone else at the top of the Tor/Forge family never put product before people—the rest of our industry could learn something from them.
The challenge to make The Fires of Midnight technologically precise was one of the greatest I have ever faced and could never have been achieved without the genius and foresight of Dr. Alvan Fisher, Emery Pineo (who makes the impossible only a toll call away), and especially John Signore who explains blood work even more clearly than Hemo the Magnificent! Thanks also to John Rizzieri for the Brookhaven research, Michael Sherman for Cambridge locales, Dr. David Bindleglass for Harvard, Walt Mattison for weapons assistance along with being my tutor in the field of Special Ops, Dr. Mort Korn for his typically clear critical eye, and Caroline Oyama of the New York Public Library.
I can promise you that the recipes that appear on pages 79-80, 105, 208, and 315-16 didn’t come from my kitchen. For those tempted by them, these and thousands of others can be found in The New York Times Cook Book1.
My final acknowledgment goes to Gordon Kinder, the actual author of the poem, “The Fires of Midnight.” He penned it for me in exchange for two Pearl Jam tickets; I expect we’ll be seeing his name in print again someday at a much fairer price!
The Alpha Deception
The Council of Ten
Day of the Delphi
The Doomsday Spiral
The Eighth Trumpet
The Gamma Option
Kingdom of the Seven
Labyrinth
The Legacy of the Tau
The Lucifer Directive
The Ninth Dominion
The Omega Command
The Omicron Legion
The Valhalla Testament
Vortex
1 Craig Claiborne, Harper and Row, New York, 1990
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE FIRES OF MIDNIGHT
Copyright © 1995 by Jon Land
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
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New York, N.Y. 10010
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Design by Lynn Newmark
eISBN 9781429956949
First eBook Edition : July 2011
Land, Jon.
The fires of midnight / Jon Land.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-85971-6
1. Biological weapons—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Women physicians—Massachusetts—Fiction. 3. Mass murder—Massachusetts—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A469F57 1995
813’.54—dc20
95-35361
CIP
First Edition: December 1995