فصل اول

Part One

Chapter One

Chopsticks and Spiders

“Have you found the last two?” The voice on the phone was angry and coarse, like the sound of car tires over broken glass.

“Not yet,” the well-dressed man on the other end of the phone replied. “Not yet.”

“But we believe we’re close—and they still don’t know that we’re hunting them.” “You believe you’re close?”

“They’re two children among a billion—finding them is like finding a lost chopstick in China.” “Is that what you want me to tell the board?”

“Remind the Board that I’ve already found fifteen of the seventeen children. I’ve put out a million-dollar bounty on the last two, we’ve got spiders crawling the Web, and we have a whole team of investigators scanning global records for their whereabouts. It’s just a matter of time before we find them—or they step into one of our traps.” “Time isn’t on our side,” the voice returned sharply. “Those kids are already too old. You know how difficult they are to turn at this age.” “I know better than anyone,” the man said, tapping his ruby-capped pen on his desk. “But I have my ways. And if they don’t turn, there’s always Cell Twenty-Five.” There was a long pause, then the voice on the phone replied darkly, “Yes. There’s always Cell Twenty-Five.”