Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [16]
They walked along hallways with confusing turns. Modern hospitals had been expanding so rapidly there was often little logic to their layout. Winfield steered right, then right again, then left three times. Some of the hallways turned off at less than right angles. Within a few turns, she was hopelessly lost.
At last he said, “Here.” Winfield took her into ICU, where a young girl lay fighting for her life. She looked perhaps eight years old. The number of wires running from her body were distressing, as was the steady beep of the monitor. A nurse hovered beside the girl poised for immediate action. Daryl was anything but sentimental. As she gazed at the inert form of the helpless child, though, the objective software engineer threatened to give way to the woman who adored children and was devastated to see one in such condition. Pulling herself together, she asked, “What happened?”
“Her medication was mixed, like the others. Her heart stopped—for an undetermined period of time, since she wasn’t on a monitor. There was no need…” The man was near tears.
Not far away a young couple watched the girl through a large window. Seeing where Daryl looked, Winfield said, “Her parents. Very nice people.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“We’re waiting for her signs to improve before we take her off the ventilator.” He touched Daryl’s sleeve and gently led her away. “The doctor believes she suffered severe brain damage. She’s young and strong. He’s hoping she’ll recover, but it’s not looking good. I wanted you to see the human toll this has taken.”
Daryl nodded. “I see it. I’d like to look at your system, if I could, and talk with your IT people.” She forced herself to remain steady. She’d need a clear head to unravel this disaster.
“Of course.” As they walked back through hallways toward the computer room, Winfield asked, “Why would anyone do something like this?”
“I have no idea.”
8
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
DMITROSVSKY ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT
MONDAY, AUGUST 14
11:07 P.M.
A cold drizzle streaked the cracked window. It was already fall in Moscow. It seemed to Vladimir Koskov as if summer had been the briefest illusion. He reached out and pressed the aging tape back against the pane, but it rolled away almost immediately. He could feel the cold air leaching through the glass onto his hand.
Vladimir sighed, then picked up the butt of his unfiltered Turkish cigarette and used it to light another. He inhaled deeply, then coughed as he jabbed out the old cigarette and laid the fresh one on the edge of the ashtray.
The small apartment was typical of those built during Soviet days. Of shoddy construction, rushed to completion to meet an arbitrary deadline, it was small, less than five hundred square feet, one room with a cramped kitchenette in one corner, and a bathroom with a shower. The tiny kitchen table, with room for just two, the bed, and his computers all but filled the remaining space. A path was kept clear to his workstation, with three keyboards for three computers he’d built himself and which he never turned off. He could roll his wheelchair to the refrigerator, and to the doorway of the bathroom to empty his bladder sack if Ivana was at work or shopping.
This was twenty-nine-year-old Vladimir’s world. At one time the confinement, the limits of his physical existence, had nearly driven him insane. On the brink of life-ending despair he’d discovered a universe, one he could access without ever leaving this room. His portals were there on the desk and at his keyboards, on his screens, where he was the same as everyone else. It was liberating. Empowering. He had thought at one time to be an engineer, but his sudden awakening as a cripple had forced on him a fresh evaluation of life expectations. Instead, he’d taken his computer skills and morphed them into a kind of expertise that had saved him.
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