Authors: Jason Austin
Xavier
just stared at the floor, practically concussed with shame. A week’s
worth of running and this is what it had come to: tied up, helpless,
and no where left to turn. Benny and his family were the only ones he
could protect now. Damn it, he should have walked away when he had
the chance. What the hell made him think he could ever...He knew the
answer before he finished the question. Glenda. That woman could make
him believe in the Easter bunny with just a wink and a smile.
Sorry,
kiddo
, he thought.
I
tried
. He started to say something.
“
Who?”
Gabriel said, breaking the silence. He had two fingers pressed to an
ear. A call had come through on his comwatch and he looked beside
himself.
Jerome
Wallace acknowledged the apparent excitement and Gabriel waved him
over. Gabriel switched his comwatch to video and the two of them
stood huddled over the screen.
Wallace
took one look and said, “You’re shitting me.”
The
two uniformed guards frog-marched Richard Kelmer down to Wallace's
office per instruction. Wallace wanted him sufficiently humbled,
before the meeting. They hadn't even used one of the four-seated
powered transports designed to expediently traverse the facility's
vast hallways. They gave him no quarter, even going so far as to
“help” him into the single chair facing Wallace's desk.
Wallace himself was already in the office, standing off in front of a
full length mirror. He was rallying his game-face so as not to let on
that he was as much ready to strangle Kelmer as look at him. He had
barely gotten it together when the good doctor was delivered.
“
Thank
you, gentlemen,” Wallace said formally to the guards. “That
will be all.”
When
the guards left, Wallace aimed a tiny remote at the door. With the
press of his thumb, the door beeped twice followed by an ominous
click.
Kelmer’s
eyes broadsided. Wallace eased up behind him and gingerly placed his
hands on the timid doctor’s shoulders. Kelmer could feel
Wallace’s eyes burning through the back of his skull. Wallace
moved his hands closer to the doctor’s neck and gave him an
avuncular rub. He then stopped abruptly, took a seat behind his desk,
and unnaturally massaged the chair’s armrests.
“
Well,
I suppose it would be an understatement to say that I’m happy
as hell to see you,” Wallace said with a painted smile.
“
I...I
c...can’t say the same,” Kelmer said.
“
Don't
be nervous, Richard. I know I’m the boss and everything, but
we’ve spent so much time working together. You should be more
comfortable around me.”
Just
then Wallace's desk com trilled and he
gave
the open command.
“
Security
sweeps are coming up clear, so far,” Gabriel said. “It
looks like Kelmer came alone. We’ll run a couple more and
expand past the outer checkpoint. I don’t want to take any
chances.”
“
Good,”
Wallace said and commed out. “He’s wasting his time, I’m
sure,” he said to Kelmer. “You don’t want the
police here anymore than I do. Your legacy is on practically every
test tube in the place. I mean, we wouldn’t even need to keep
so much of this facility off the grid if it weren’t for you.”
He paused. “Oh, and the implant you gave to Glenda Jameson
looks like a real improvement over the prototype.” He smiled.
“I knew you could do it.”
Kelmer
averted his eyes. He was a terrible liar and had a strange way of
drawing attention to himself at the most inopportune moments. If he
wasn't careful, Wallace might begin to read him. He was damn lucky he
hadn't given himself away to Glenda Jameson back in Seattle. He could
more easily give himself a tongue stud than lie to
her
.
That's why he'd never said a word about following them to Cleveland
after her handsome companion had decided otherwise for all three of
them. Instead, Kelmer was forced to hop a flight some thirty minutes
behind with a connection in Chicago as opposed to theirs in Denver.
But the minute Kelmer and
his
companion touched down in Cleveland he was hot on the trail he'd been
following since they'd left. Kelmer had arrived too late to be of any
use at the salt mines, although he'd probably have just gotten killed
anyway. He wasn't at all certain what tactics were available to him,
but when he realized where the signal was headed, he'd decided, on
the spot, exactly what to do and how to do it.
“
You’re
an exceptional scientist, Richard,” Wallace said. “And a
formidable mind. That’s why I knew you’d believe in our
work.”
Kelmer’s
stomach knotted. Wallace disgusted him, looking so superior, hip deep
in his own sin.
Why had Kelmer
waited so long to leave?
That
Hawkins fellow was right: Kelmer was completely
blind when it
came to his work.
“
C...cut
the bullshit, you fucking pig,” Kelmer said defiantly. He
swallowed hard as his former employer's counterfeit smile flattened
out. It took a lot for Kelmer to say those words. Hell, it took
everything he had just to keep from vomiting before he’d gotten
to the front gate. But the line in the sand was drawn now, if it
wasn’t before, and there was no turning back. “I...I
believed
...
in
my
work...
my
plans. I believed in what you
stole from me. I believed in what people could become with the
aid
of science, not through its
abuse.”
Wallace
smirked. “
I’m
shocked, Richard. I had no idea you felt we were misusing anything.”
He leaned forward. “I wonder how long you’ve felt this
way; how long you’ve been holding back your displeasure. I must
say, I had no idea you were such a hypocrite.”
Kelmer
held his ground. “You’re right. I...I am a hypocrite. I’d
heard the s...stories about people like you, and about ArtiGen. I
heard about the clone they created for that oil baron.”
Wallace
looked surprised.
“
That
was the most popular of the stories and I...I still ignored it—a
twelve-year-old boy with advanced arthritis and a prostate the size
of a grapefruit, being allowed to suffer and die in an underground
lab, just so they could keep poking him to figure out what went
wrong. A...And how you paid a lot of money to get your hands on that
research. You’re right. I went along with every bit of it. So
you w...won’t get any argument from me on whose morality is
superior.” Kelmer paused, having to accept what he’d just
said. “But you won’t get a free pass on k...killing
anymore people for it either. You’ve got me. There’s
nothing left to gain by k...killing Glenda Jameson and her friend.”
Wallace
sat back and stroked one of his overgrown eyebrows. “Well now,
I’m afraid this all doesn’t just end with you,” he
informed Kelmer. “Some very vital information is yet to be had.
Wouldn’t you know it, those two are now the only ones left who
can give it to me. So you see, Richard, although your coming here was
a cavalier gesture, it was nonetheless, pointless...unless you
consider that it saves me the time of having you...'found'.”
****
Calvin Ross still kept predicting
a trap the entire way. Although the floor plan and security codes
he'd been given were genuine, an eight-figure paycheck and access to
a cloning factory he never knew existed was, for sure, too good to be
true.
Who would’ve
thought that sleaze could be trusted?
he thought. The guy
had even been kind enough to remind Ross that he was considered
public enemy number one in every biotech property in the country and
wouldn't be able to simply waltz through the front door of the
octahedron without being shot on sight. Ross rounded another corner
inside the vent and referred again to the 3D blueprint on his
watch-face. His route of entry through the duct-work had turned most
of the building's security into a virtual non-issue. And the
emergency exhaust shafts would take him the rest of the way with only
a minor chance of being spotted. He stopped to take a breather and
slipped off a strap to give his shoulder a quick massage. The DG9
compact explosive was a little heavier than he expected and he
certainly had no idea he'd be using all of it in one job. For a
building this size, though, he had no choice. He wouldn't have
thought cheating Trineer would allow him enough cash to get a start
on stockpiling the stuff, but he'd lucked up and found a seller
through one of his shadier contacts that did business down south
between the U.S.-Mexican border. He rolled his shoulder and slipped
the strap back on. At least he wouldn’t have to carry it the
entire distance, he thought. After making his little detour, all he
had to do was stuff it into a corner, well out of sight and directly
over the precise spot. DG9 had twice the blast potential of C4 of the
same weight. The chain reaction would rip through this anti-human
abomination, sending it up like a roman candle. The only problem that
cropped up was when he lost the remote down an auxiliary shaft. He'd
shouted an expletive that reverberated off the duct walls so loudly,
he almost thought himself caught. He obviously didn't have the time
or equipment to jury-rig a watch remote and he was determined to turn
this place into a burned-out hole in the ground. All had not been
lost however. He’d just have to synch up his comwatch and use
the default timer. Forty-five minutes should do it. He'd be long gone
by then, and even if the promise of the money was a sham—about
which, he could give a shit—the consolation prize would be well
worth the gamble.
Xavier’s
face, once again, hit the walls of the corridor with an audible thud.
Every few seconds Wallace would throw the bulky guard a visual cue
then
slam
! It
reminded Xavier of Barry Thomas, a second-year MP from New York, who
loved pushing around the detainees, especially the drunks and
stoners. Told himself he was teaching them a lesson.
“
Fuck
them. They’re not going to remember the shit in the morning
anyway,” he would say.
“
Well,
then what’s the point, asshole?” Xavier had replied. He
would've loved for Thomas to try that shit with him, so Xavier could
delve out a little “home-schooling” of his own.
Asshole
.
“
I
think you need glasses,” Xavier said to the grinning guard.
“Those steroids must be fucking up your eyesight.”
They
finally came to a stop outside an ominous-looking set of hermetic
doors fitted with a code panel and key-reader. Wallace inserted his
personal keystick and the doors parted. The guard then flung Xavier
inside and sent him tobogganing across the cold, hard floor. Xavier's
cuffed hands could do nothing to break his fall.
“
They
make your dick smaller, too, peewee,” Xavier razzed. “Not
that you have anything to lose.”
The
door then slid shut, leaving the big galoot outside at post.
“
Xavier,
oh my god,” Glenda said. She hastened to him, yielding slightly
to assault Jerome Wallace with a dirty look.
Bastard!
She knelt next to Xavier and
noticed, immediately, his fresh injuries. Her anger became palpable
and she hefted him upright.
“
Cute,”
Wallace said sarcastically. He then walked over to the other set of
hermetic doors at the back of the room. These could only be opened
via a series of adaptive biometric locks. Wallace had to input his
retina, voice and thumb scans within twelve seconds of each other
before the system activated additional protocols to gain access.
Wallace fed each of the scanners, starting with his thumbprint,
pausing briefly between each action. The seal disengaged and the
large set of doors hissed open, amplifying the odd smell that had
been plaguing Glenda since her arrival. As they entered the next
room, it increased exponentially, choking the air as a sticky
odorized vapor.
Wallace
gagged. “I forgot how much I hate this place; it’s
disgusting. I like to stay out of here unless it’s absolutely
necessary...or unusually poignant.”
The
cloning bay was a vast network of cylindrical incubators lined
two-by-two extending across half the room. There must have been at
least four dozen individual incubators with more than half of them
active. The incubators themselves were actually life sized tubes
filled with a synthetic amniotic fluid that provided the developing
clones with an artificial in-utero environment—what proved to
be the toughest of Richard Kelmer's advancements in the cloning
process.
“
Well,
this is...really, really sick,” Xavier mocked.
“
Don’t
be too overwhelmed by what you see,” Wallace said. “It’s
not nearly as simple as it looks.”
Glenda
kept a hand to her mouth. “What is it?” she asked.
“
My
guess is a depraved little maternity ward,” Xavier answered. He
aimed his chin at the rows of gelatin-filled tubes. “That’s
probably how they turn out those monsters like Jones.”
“
Actually,
Jones was one of our first genuinely successful prototypes,”
Wallace pointed out. “He wasn’t the first clone, of
course, but he was the best example of the programming at that time.
He walked and talked just like the original, but with fewer flaws
than any of the previous test subjects. I don't think the entire
program completely took though. He absorbed
some
of it but not enough.”