Chapter 19: The Donors

Dale Rusk did not move.

He stood against the glass wall with his hands at his sides and his eyes on the ceiling.

"Dale," Hester said again, and her voice cracked across the whole atrium.

Two men in dark jackets looked at him, and then at each other.

They were the two from the porch in Sellwood. One of them still wore Owen's backpack strap around his wrist.

They started toward the stage anyway.

Maren backed up until the microphone stand was behind her.

Then a hand closed around the stand, and Jonah stepped up beside her.

He did not look at her. He looked out at the room.

"Stop there," he said into the microphone, in a flat, level voice.

The two men stopped.

"My name is Jonah Pell. For two years I was the senior technician on the sub-basement of this building."

He paused.

"Most of you paid my salary."

A chair scraped.

"I strapped women to a steel table. I ran the sessions. I counted for them while Dr. Quillan cut."

"Jonah," said Hester, very quietly.

"Ten of them are dead."

Nobody in the front row moved.

"The last was nineteen. She was in room six.

She was awake, and she felt it, and I counted to her until I couldn't."

He turned his scarred left hand over in the light.

"Then I put something in her arm so it would stop."

His voice did not shake.

"That's the one thing I'm not sorry for, and I'll answer for it."

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