Piranha by Jim DeFelice, Dale Brown

prominently displayed in the hallway.
                 Sure
they discharge him. He was a dentist.
                 “ Awgrh ,” said Zen.
                 “Maybe
I’ll break for coffee,” teased Gideon.
                 “ Awgrh-agrh .” Zen tried to make the mumble sound threatening,
but there was only so much you could do with a sucked clawing at your gum.
Gideon picked up another tool and shot cold air into the hole he had just
created.
                 The
pain nearly knocked Zen unconscious.
                 “You
know, Jeff, I really have to compliment you. You’ve become a much better
patient over the past year. Must be your wife’s influence.”
                 “ Awrgr-kerl-wushump .”
                 “Yeah,
Breanna is a perfect patient. Never a word of pain. I don’t think she needs
Novocain at all. Wonderful woman. You’re lucky to have her. You guys should
think about kids.”
                 “ Awrgr-kerl-wushump .”
                 Gideon
took Zen’s garbled protest as an invitation to expound on the joys of
fatherhood. He had three children, all between the ages of five and ten. They
all loved to play dentist—more proof that evil hereditary.
                 “Due
for their checkups soon,” added Gideon. “We started ’ em young.”
                 “I
thought child abuse was illegal in this state,” said Zen. With the Novocain and
dental equipment, the sentence came out sounding like “ thickel giggle hissss .”
                 “Yeah,
they’re cute, all right. You ought to think about having some. Seriously.”
                 Gideon
prolonged Zen’s agony by polishing down the filling and then using what looked
and tasted like old carbon paper to perfect the bite. By the time he was done,
Zen suspected the dentist could see himself in the surface.
                 “Very
good,” said Gideon, standing back as if to take a bow. “Want to grab coffee?
I’m free for the rest of the day.”
                 “You
just want to see me with coffee dribbling down my face,” said Zen.
                 The
actual sound was more like: “ Yuwwa see muf fee dippling dowt mek fack .”
                 “What
language are you speaking, Jeff?”
                 “Novocain.”
                 “See
you in six months.”
                 “Not
if I can help it.”
                 The Nevada Desert

        1600
                 Mark
Stoner shifted his eyes from the highway to the bluffs in the distance and then
back, scanning every possible place an ambush might be launched from. It was
the sort of thing he couldn’t turn off; ten years as a covert CIA officer on
top of six years as a SEAL rewired your brain.
                 Not
that he or Jed Barclay, the man driving the car, were in any danger of being
ambushed. Coming from Washington in a scheduled flight offered expediency, but
led Stoner to insist on a number of precautions, most of which caused Barclay
to roll his eyes: dummy reservations, Agency-supplied false documents, even an
elaborate cover story designed to be overheard—all routine precautions for
Stoner. The fact they were traveling to a top-secret, ultrasecure facility changed nothing.
                 Stoner
had never dealt with Whiplash before, and knew only vaguely about Dreamland. He
tended to be agnostic about organizations and people until he saw them under
fire; so he had formed no opinion on Whiplash, or even on Jed, though his youth
and overabundance of nervous energy tended to grate.
                 Stoner
noticed a small pile of rocks ahead, off on the right, seemingly haphazardly
piled there.
                 “Security
cam,” he said.
                 “Yeah.
They’re all along the road,” said Jed. “We’re