Her seductive eyes, at once plaintive and demanding, would have lured anyone toward wherever she wanted to go. For a careless moment Ally found herself wanting to follow them. No, this is madness. Or, Ally thought with horror, is she seeing something in me that I can't see? "Kristen, listen to me. Please. I think it's very possible I've just had a stem cell procedure. For my heart. I don't know if it's like what you had, but I want to know what happened to you." "Don't do it," she mumbled, seeming to come back to a kind of reality. "Just get out of here now. After . . . it starts, he gives you shots and things, but nothing works." Ally felt her consciousness start to wobble. She reached out and seized the edge of the bed for support. "Kristen, talk to me." Her eyes went blank again, and Ally could just barely make out what she mumbled next. In fact, all she could catch were random words, words that only drifted through her consciousness and failed to stick or make any sense. It was as though Kristen were in a stance and sleepwalking among the words of some alien language. "Young," Kristen seemed to say. "You want to be . . . to stay. Old is so horrible. Time. You're young and then suddenly you're old and it turns out you can't . . ." Ally heard the words, but they didn't make any sense. "I'm sorry, Kristen. I'm feeling a little dizzy." "It's started," she said, abruptly coherent again and focusing in on Ally. "That's how it began with me. At first they said everything was okay and then it wasn't." "What are you talking about?" "It's happening throughout my body." She sobbed. "I've stopped having periods and I'm getting acne. Everything is . . . changing." The words drifted through space, and Ally felt like she was hallucinating, in a place where time was sliding sideways. The images were all retro, things from her past that floated through her vision in reverse chronological order. That was it. In her mind, time was going backwards. But was it just in her mind? She looked again at Kristen and gasped. Finally, finally she understood the horror of what was really happening. . . . Oh my God. "I got here as soon as I could after they called me," came a voice from the doorway. She turned and saw Karl Van de Vliet, together with the nurse Marion. "You really shouldn't be down here. I don't know who gave you a card. But we've brought a wheelchair. You really should be resting." Marion rolled the chair through the door and expertly plucked the card from the reader. "Now, please sit down," she said. "We all just want to be on the safe side, don't we? I'll need to give you a sedative." Ally looked at Van de Vliet, wanting to strangle him. "No, you're not giving me a damned sedative. I don't want to be on the 'safe side.' I want the truth. And I want it now." Chapter 30 _Thursday, April 9 11:16 P.M. _