“Right.” Cain yelped. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of that. We need to get outside and surrounded by witnesses. Wait for me, okay? I gotta upload the films.”
“Net’s still down.”
“Shit. Fuck. I’ll pull the hard drives from the bedroom com-desk.” Cain’s worried voice retreated. “Be right back.”
“I doubt that.” She could barely make out Kurt’s mutter. “Hopefully soon another bastard will roast in hell.” Kurt drew a deep breath and raised his voice slightly. “Albert…Allen—whatever the hell your name is—come in. Door’s unlocked.”
“Jesus Christ,” said an unfamiliar male voice a moment later. The man emitted a low whistle. “Look at them lined up and ready as promised. You okay?”
“No,” Kurt snapped. “I’m not okay and I’m not gonna call you Jesus.”
“Allen. I’m WS. Reese is my partner.”
“Reese?”
“World Security, who saved Dexter and the LC employee in that chopper. You know, the man you stuffed in one of those body bags over there. On topic, the perv’s in the bedroom, meaning we have a minute or two before Cain goes crispy or runs?”
“Yeah,” Kurt said.
“Better haul ass then.”
“What about Cain’s security, his cams?”
“I’ll take care of them if he doesn’t activate the TandB virus, which will do the job for me. Give me a hand with this and start loading.”
“That’s a layered stretcher?” Kurt asked. “It’ll hold all six?”
“You got it. Easier to deal with the crowd if we wheel everyone out at once. Maybe put her, the lightest one, on top.”
A moment of quiet then one of the men gave a deep sigh close to her head. “You’re not looking too steady. Need a hand?” asked Allen. “That’s Dexter?”
“No. Got him and yes.” Kurt groaned. “I keep expecting to get a whiff of charred Cain. The prick should have come out of that bedroom screaming by now.”
“Maybe the Net isn’t just selectively down as we figured, and the virus remains loaded and locked. Finish up. I’ll go check on your greedy host.”
A few minutes of nothing then Allen’s voice grew closer. “No longer our problem.”
“Cain’s dead?”
“As if the chair, Old Sparky, was pulled out of storage. Monitor’s frozen on zero. Countdown window reads—in effect, but minus the bullshit disclaimer—‘Virus infection. Get away or die’. By the burnt wire smell, the vid feeds are collateral damage. As unsalvageable as Cain is. Don’t look so guilty. It’s for the best. Hate to see Dexter’s ass all over the Net. Cain could have heeded the warning. Taken his chances with us.”
“The best? That stupid dick trusted me.” Kurt’s low voice was strained. “I…never killed before.”
Right. Had to go serial on my wedding day.
“You didn’t do Cain,” Allen snapped. “Bet the pervert thought it was a bluff. And huh? Rumor says it was you that snapped a guard’s neck on the shuttle.”
A sound rang out like Kurt snacked himself in the forehead. “Oh God. I can’t believe I forgot. It happened so fast. What type of man does that? Kills someone and forgets?”
Ahh, what about Sam, Lav, Tim, the WS guy I never knew was named Reese and Lander, who saved your butt on the chopper?
“A survivor who lost the love of his life.” Allen grunted. “Postpone the meltdown. I was the one who set up the virus. Bastard’s on me. And unless you want to join Cain, don’t even borrow someone’s wrist phone, let alone pop open a com-desk. Put your game face on. They—authorities at WS—know that virus hit here. We gotta roll.”
A moment later a bombardment of voices came at her. Based on the muffled commotion, multiple people screaming out, she guessed she’d been wheeled out of the building and they were outside, surrounded by paparazzi.
”
Is Dexter alive?”
“Who’s in those bags?”
“Amateur radio operators say no word. Radio silence means the worse? Is it true…?”
A solitary voice—Allen’s—rose out of the din. “I think this stretcher compresses to fit through the hover door.”
“You don’t know?” Kurt sounded quite close, an edge of panic in his tone. “Well crap. I forgot to read my ‘how to stack corpses’ manual before I went on my honeymoon. There’s a handle. Pull it already.”
“What about the lady on top?”
“She’s small. She’ll clear…I hope.”
Chapter Sixteen
The bastard
hopes
the lady on top of this stretcher will clear the doorway
?
Sam was furious he couldn’t even unclench his jaw and respond to that.
Idiots. I need to kick some serious ass.
Laying on his backside in a coma, he’d never felt so impotent in his life.
Goddamn Kurt. Goddamn paralysis. Goddamn asinine escape plan that resulted in a bunch of fake dead bodies and one actual one. Ironically, they’d left Sam out of the loop, sleeping like a trusting babe, while they’d plotted and called in another WS guy who must have brought toys, such as a poison-laced weapon, with him.
Sam needed his chest to rise, to suck in a large gulp of air and the muscles in his throat to thaw. Not too much to ask, was it? To be able to scream at the assholes that fake killed him to make sure Jenna was okay. Once he could stop fretting about her, he’d concentrate on the rest of him snapping out of this drug-induced state of suspended animation.
He desperately wanted free of this suffocating body bag, then to wrap his arms around Jenna before he ripped Kurt a new one. How dense could the guy be? Kurt had chatted merrily away with Cain. Dumb fucker hadn’t a clue that the pseudo-paralysis toxins he’d shot into them didn’t affect hearing.
The whomp-whomp sound of an aircraft’s blades remained steady, while the cries of desperate fans eager for his wellbeing muted. Sam would heave a sigh of relief if his lungs worked. Kurt hadn’t muttered, “Oops, my bad
.”
Sam had to assume the stretcher had fit inside the medic-hover without smashing Jenna.
“Where’s the app to close the bloody doors?” a male voice bellowed. Maybe the driver. Sam had never ridden in a medic-hover before. Too bad he couldn’t feel a bloody thing. A relatively inexpensive cousin of the helicopter, the hovers maintained a low attitude, barely clearing the ‘scrapers, as they zipped across the sky, bringing victims to medical centers.
“I don’t know.” Kurt spoke close to Sam’s head. “Forget the doors. Get us in the sky before
In the Loop
nutters break the barricades.”
“This junk hover won’t lift with the doors… Ah…here we go.”
To Sam’s mounting frustration, he didn’t notice a sense of motion, a lurch upward telling them they were airborne and fleeing the LC. Again. If only he could lift his arms, claw out of this bag like he had the pod on the shuttle. First thing he’d do was strangle Kurt. Or, if he’d been turned into a zombie, he’d choke then eat the brains of his best man—assuming the guy had any.
Shortly after he’d shot Sam, Kurt had whispered in his ear,
“Dang, too bad you lose all senses when puffered. Poor bastard. Can’t hear how sorry I am about this crazy stunt.”
Obviously when they’d come up with this idiotic means to get Sam and Jenna out of the public and government sights, Kurt had gotten his facts wrong. Despite complete muscle paralysis, Sam could hear, see whatever his eyes were aimed at and he could damn well spin his wheels.
Just like he assumed Jenna could. The innocent sweetheart he’d allowed to board that shuttle was certain to be freaking out. Didn’t seem possible she could be in the loop on what puffered meant.
Years ago, after he’d typed tetrodtoxin and frog in the same sentence for a potential blog post, his wrist phone had chimed. An older, sinister-looking man with a chest weighted down by silver stars had given Sam the riot act concerning informing the masses about potential biological weapons. After thinking it out, he’d had little choice but to agree with Big Brother. He’d stopped researching and found a less problematic topic to chat about.
Pufferfished had to be the military’s slang term for a state of false death. What he’d learned before backing off was that toxins from a fish he’d thought had gone extinct could be combined with tree frog and toad venom. Add in some sap, an infusion of the Datura plant, and the white lab rat was shown—ninety-some percent certain—to collapse and begin decomposing with no chance of rising. No zombie mouse shuffle after the dosage wore off. Pretty much certain there’d be a grave to lay flowers on for Algeron.
From what he’d understood, the Puffered Project had been closed down. He should have known better. Man’s ego to prove he could do something, no matter how senseless, never ceased to astonish. And here Sam lay, living proof all those dead mice had eventually paid off so scientists could give authorities, mainly World Security, yet another weapon to keep from the common criminal.
Sam guessed his current pulse and respiration was so low only a medical device could show he wasn’t a corpse. That’d be the reason Kurt had made sure the PFP, the tool to show positive death, had stayed out of Cain’s hands.
The idea of a means, in bullet form, to let your enemies think you were brain-dead seemed incredibly stupid to Sam. Competent killers wouldn’t trust an accomplice to be the one holding the medical probe. Or they’d grab a serrated blade and remove all chance of being deceived by slit throat and decapitation. So far it seemed unlikely science had figured out how to pull a Frankenstein.
All these minutes—going on an hour, for Christ’s sake, of being a vegetable—able to do nothing but brood, was beginning to seriously piss him off. Speaking of Christ, would Sam have to wait four miserable days like Lazarus had?
Come on, Kurt. Jesus me back to life already.
Any mad scientist worth their salt might have come up with something better than a time interval to shake off a fake-death toxin. One pill makes you the living dead. Another jump-starts you back into the land of being able to punch a man in the nose.
Finally, he heard someone clear his throat. “Hey, Allen,” Kurt called out. “I didn’t get all the details. Too busy plotting with Cain. How long until they can see and hear?”
“What?” Allen barked.
“Sight and hearing returns before movement, right?”
Allen snorted. He sounded like he stood beside Kurt and the stretcher now. “Wrong. Only three senses are affected. Breathing’s way too shallow for smell. Taste requires throat muscles, and of course touch is screwed. Muscles and nerve endings are paralyzed. But vision and hearing are fine.”
Kurt gasped. “You’re telling me that Sam…all of them can see inside those bags?”
“And hear.”
“Why wasn’t I told that?” Kurt snapped.
“Look, I just did what my partner said. No time to coddle, especially you, the guy pretending to be in cahoots with the LC and that greedy pervert Cain. Who do you think sent the virus? Yeah, I initiated it but it was a stone cold hitter at the LC who had the juice to do the nasty. The LC has been royally screwed not once, but now twice by Dexter and his best man.”
“I get it,” Kurt mumbled. “But…bloody hell. We’re standing next to six conscious people listening to every word. How long until they regain control? Shouldn’t we unzip those bags? Where are we taking them?”
Allen groaned. “Civilians. I should have let Reese take a dummy bullet. Then he’d have to answer… You hear me, man? Reese—you dumb fuck, hang in there. I’ll stick you in two secs. Baxter, what’s our ETA to the drop?”
“Twenty,” bellowed the man Sam assumed was piloting.
“Any tail?” Allen yelled back.
“Not yet. Looks like the decoy hovers are taking the heat.”
Come on, Kurt. What’s the deal to wake us?
“Stick your partner?” Kurt asked. “With what?”
“Concentrated dose of epinephrine. He’ll either die for certain or jump up with fists flying. Back at Cain’s place, Reese expected his bullet to be a dud. But if you’re going to put on a show for authorities, it should be done right. Not like he…like
you
, Reese, can act worth a damn.”
“Just get them moving so we can unload faster,” the driver yelled. “Less conspicuous, too. Their transport is skittish as it is.”
“I concur.” Allen lowered his voice. “Here—syringes. In case Reese doesn’t die and is whaling on me, bring the others around. In the chest, over the heart. I’d leave the injured LC employee for now. Not sure how stable he is.”
To Sam’s relief, it seemed there was an end in sight to this darkness. As expected, Kurt chose him to stab first. He heard the zipper coming down and his unblinking eyes saw—a steel grid. The top of the section of stretcher was only a few inches from his nose—and tilting away.
Kurt’s face loomed over him. The guy held him in his arms, lowering him to the floor. “Listen, buddy,” Kurt said, “keep it together and don’t frickin’ die on me, okay?”
Wouldn’t dream of it.
The low ceiling of the cramped medic-hover was made of two inch by two inch gray tiles. Kurt’s worried gaze shifted aside, and if Sam could have held his breath he would have.
He didn’t feel Kurt’s hands on his chest or the needle going in. Hearing took the lead of the sensations bursting within him. There was an abrupt explosion of rushing-pounding in his ears as air slammed into his lungs. Grayness, the color of the walls, blurred his sight. Black dots swam in front of his eyes. His throbbing chest heaved. His heartbeat jackhammered so hard as he sat up. The pain of the tachycardia swallowed the scream galloping up his throat, replaced the bashing hurt against his ribs with rage.