Somewhere in the process of receiving and examining Jean Hilliard, a small sound emerged from the frozen body on the table.

“I thought she was dead,” Sather said, “but then we picked up an extremely faint whimper.

We knew there was a person existing then.”

A whimper.

From a body with a skin surface too hard to inject, a temperature too low to register, and eyes that did not respond to light.

A whimper meant there was a brain.

There was consciousness, however vestigially present, somewhere inside that frozen shell.

The decision was made to try to warm her.