J.A. Konrath / Jack Kilborn Trilogy - Three Scary Thriller Novels (Origin, The List, Haunted House) (20 page)

“Booooooy or giiiiiiirl?”

“There’s too much security.”

“Booooooy or giiiiiiirl?”

Harker could picture Shirley’s face.

“A girl. A little girl.”

“I can maaaaake a beautiful giiiiiirl.”

“I can’t. There’s the door here, plus the two coded gates in the Red Arm. There’s also a camera right over my shoulder.”

“Give meeee the cooooooodes.”

Harker thought it over. That couldn’t be traced back to her. And if Bub got out, so what? The demon had a right to be free. He didn’t deserve to be locked up here any more than Harker did. In fact, if Bub escaped, Harker might even be allowed to leave. No more Bub, no more Project Samhain.

But even more important than that was the thought of having a child. If just for a few stolen hours. It had been so long. The feedings, the diapers, those little fingers and toes…

“I give you the door code, you make me a child,” Harker confirmed.

Bub nodded.

“The child first,” Harker said.

“I neeeeeeeed proof.”

“How?”

“You’ll think of soooooomething.”

Harker
would
think of something. Suddenly nothing else mattered to her. During her trial she’d been evaluated by a court-appointed shrink who did a thoroughly incompetent job, but who had managed to say something interesting. Harker had shown no remorse. And why should she have? She loved Shirley more than her birth parents ever could have. But because Harker never felt bad for her actions, the judge decided she could never be rehabilitated.

And never was a very long time.

“Everything you told the priest,” Harker said, “that was all bullshit, wasn’t it?”

“Whyyyyyyyyyy?”

“I need to know if I can trust you. Maybe if I let you escape you’ll try to murder us all.”

Bub laughed, a giant frog croaking.

“Truuuuuust meeeeee.”

Harker decided that she didn’t care what Bub’s plans were. She was going to help him no matter what.

“Okay. I’ll need some time to think of something. We’ll also need some way to turn off the video camera. I don’t want to get caught.”

“I’ll take caaaaare of that. Tell Sun I want two sheeeeeeeeep.”

“Fine.”

Harker checked her watch. She had about an hour. How could she somehow prove to Bub that she was giving him the real code, other than taking him out of his habitat and showing him?

Showing him.

“I’ll see you at lunch time,” Harker said. She left Red 14, hoping she’d be able to make her plan work.

• • •

Dr. Frank Belgium was oblivious to the exchange. He was busy multi-tasking on the Cray. Switching focus from nuclear to mitochondrial DNA, Belgium used restriction enzymes to cut some specific sequences, then used a PCR—polymerase chain reaction—machine to amplify the sample for an STR test. The DNA molecules actually went through channels in a microchip and then passed through a laser beam, getting ‘fingerprinted’ in the process. This would give him a tagged sequence that could be checked against samples from other life forms in the database.

At the same time, he was using some proteomic tools to identify the amino acids in the serum sample he took from the re-animated sheep’s leg. Genes were sort of like factories that could build themselves. DNA coded for protein. Some of the protein was used to make things like cells and antibodies, but some of it was used to make enzymes and hormones. These were chemicals that caused biochemical reactions within the body.

For instance, insulin was a hormone that lowered blood sugar, and a lack of it resulted in diabetes. HGH was responsible for human growth, and lack of it caused dwarfism, or too much of it caused NBA players. Enzymes speeded biochemical reactions—saliva contained enzymes that helped break down starches, aiding in digestion, and the restriction enzymes used so often in molecular science were chemicals that functioned like tiny pairs of scissors, cutting DNA molecules at specific sequences. These were essential to genetic research, because a single strand of DNA could have billions of base pairs, making it unwieldy indeed.

Belgium was convinced that Bub’s power of resurrection was either hormonal or enzymic, and in order to prove it he had to identify the proteins. Since proteins were made of amino acids, that was what he searched for. Some of the tools he used were AACompIdent, PeptIdent, SWISS-PROT, and TrEMBLE; all extremely sophisticated amino acid identifiers.

“Let meeee oooooout,”
Bub said, startling Belgium to the point that he almost fell out of his chair.

“What?”

“I want the inteeeernet.”

Belgium had already made the decision that he wouldn’t let Bub out again. He knew Bub had lied during the interrogation. Bub had claimed to have never read the bible, but Frank had checked the cookies in the Temp file, and several of the websites Bub had been extensively surfing were biblical. That made everything the demon had said suspect.

Belgium wasn’t sure why Bub would lie—he’d cured Race’s wife and been friendly to everyone—but he decided he wasn’t going to give Bub access to any more information.

The last 24 hours had been gut-wrenching for Belgium. He destroyed the video recordings of Bub leaving his habitat, but he was still worried the infraction would be discovered. He was even more worried once he realized Bub was lying. If Bub had done anything harmful, Belgium would consider himself to blame. After his screw-up at BioloGen, Frank didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting hurt ever again. He would sequence Bub’s genome without the demon’s help, no matter how long it took.

“I’m sorry, Bub. The server is down. It happens all the time.”

Bub didn’t answer right away.

“Are you lyyyyyyyying?”
he finally asked. The tone in his voice seemed to bore into Frank’s bones.

“Hmm? No no no, of course not, Bub. Our server is under construction. Maybe they’re doing an upgrade.”

“Use another server.”

“We don’t have a contract with another server. Besides, we couldn’t access another server without using our current server.”

“I wish to see.”

“There’s nothing to see, simple as that.”

Belgium buried his face in his notes, pretending to be in deep concentration.

“I’ll telllllllll them,”
Bub said,

“Tell them what, Bub?”

“Telllllllllll them that you let me oooooooout.”

Belgium turned away from the monitor and faced Bub. He couldn’t believe how scared he felt.

Don’t show fear,
he said to himself.

“I made a mistake letting you out. Twice. I won’t do it again. If you want Internet time, you’ll have to talk with Race. I’m sure he’ll give you the world, after what you did with Helen.”

Bub laughed. This confused Belgium, who wasn’t aware he’d said anything funny.

He decided to finish up in Green 4. There was a computer there, and he could access the Cray without having to deal with Bub.

“Enjoy the time you haaaaaaaaaave,”
Bub said as Frank left.

Belgium didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it. Not one bit.

“T
hat was the last one,” Sun said. “For a scientist, his organizational skills suck.”

She and Andy had been in Red 4, fast forwarding through the surveillance DVDs of Bub since he’d been put into the habitat.

They’d just zipped through Bub’s first feeding, which was gory even at 32X speed. After the horrifying meal, Bub appeared to say something. Andy shuttled back and let it play at normal.

“Messy eater,” Race said on the monitor.

“Ba’ax u k’aat u ya’al le t’aano?” Bub replied.

Andy translated the Mayan dialect in his head. “Bub was asking Race
What does that expression mean?”

“So he didn’t know English yet?”

“Apparently not.”

They fast-forwarded through the two times Race went into the dwelling, changed discs, and sped through more eating and sleeping.

The discs were not labeled and they weren’t in sequential order. This was annoying, because Sun and Andy had to go through each disc to find the current one, and it turned out that one was missing.

An hour wasted. Andy picked up the phone and dialed Red 14.

“No answer,” he said.

He tried Dr. Belgium’s room, Blue 10. The doctor wasn’t there, either.

“Maybe he’s the one that took the disc,” Sun said. “He’s in charge of them.”

“Could be. But it could have been anyone. At least now we can be fairly certain that the disc is intentionally missing. Someone is trying to cover something up.”

“So what does it prove?”

“More proof that Bub was lying, I guess. I don’t know, I’m an interpreter, not a detective.”

“Why would someone be helping Bub lie?”

Andy leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Isn’t it obvious? People make deals with the devil all the time.”

Sun could see his point. She’d only been here a week, but she’d seen enough to accurately describe the Samhain staff as
dysfunctional.
She stood up and stretched.

“I’m going to Red 3, put some time in. I recall reading something in there that didn’t make sense. I can’t remember what the hell it was.”

Andy said, “I’ll be in Red 6 with the capsule. I want to check the Maya glyphs against the Egyptian ones, see if they say the same thing.”

“I’ve got to feed Bub soon. Wanna meet me in Orange 12 in say, forty minutes?”

“Sure. I’m hungry myself. We can grab a bite.”

Andy held open the door for Sun, something that Steven used to do for her all the time. She smiled. The memory no longer hurt.

“Hi, Dr. Harker,” Andy said. The physician was standing in the hall, outside the door.

Eavesdropping?
Sun wondered.

“Did you examine Helen yet?” Andy asked.

Dr. Harker looked briefly at Andy, surprise on her face. Then she looked at the floor.

“Not yet,” Harker said.

“What’s with the video camera?” Sun pointed at Harker’s hand.

Harker was holding a palm-sized camcorder, one of the ultra-small models with the flip out screen. She was trying unsuccessfully to put it into her lab coat pocket.

“I borrowed it from the AV room. I was going to take some footage of Bub and analyze it.”

“Analyze it,” Sun intoned. She made no attempt to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

Harker nodded.

“That blinking green light.” Andy pointed to the camera. “That means it’s taping.”

Harker brought the camera up to eye level and stared at it as if it were an alien. Andy pressed the red button on the grip and the green light stopped blinking.

“Thanks,” Harker mumbled. “When does Bub eat?”

“We’re going to feed him at noon,” Sun answered.

“Bub said… he told me… that he was very hungry and he wanted two sheep for lunch.”

Harker wasn’t speaking to Sun. She was speaking to a point over her right shoulder. How could anyone become a doctor with people skills that were this bad?

“Okay,” Sun said. “We’ll bring him two.”

Andy briefly touched Sun’s arm, and then walked across the hall and disappeared into Red 6. Harker avoided looking at Sun and made her way to the gate, fumbling with the code.

Sun watched her go. She disliked Harker, but now dislike had turned to outright suspicion. Harker did the barest minimum to get by at Samhain. She’d also taken a less than active interest in Bub, when everyone else had been buzzing like bees since the demon awoke. Why, all of the sudden, did she want to videotape him? Could this have something to do with the missing surveillance disc?

After almost a minute of fumbling, Harker made it through the gate.
Perhaps I should tell Race about Dr. Harker’s new video fetish
, Sun thought. Whether Race would care or not was anyone’s guess, but it was his show and he should be kept informed on what everyone was doing.

Unless Race was the one helping the demon out. After all, Bub just cured his wife. Or at least, he seemed to.

Sun tried to clear her mind and concentrate on the latest problem at hand; Red 3. Somewhere, in all of that paperwork, she’d seen something that was important. It tugged at her subconscious—perhaps one of the tests run on Bub. There was something that she’d missed and she was determined to find it.

Sun passed Dr. Harker again, heading into the Octopus, and subconsciously noted that once again the green light was flashing on Harker’s camcorder.