Authors: Jon Land
And froze.
Because this, too, was unrecognizable, having been renovated and reconstructed since his fateful visit seven years before. Shinzo held a hand over his heart, as if to hold it inside his chest. The walk down the long, dully lit hallway passed with thoughts and memories clashing in his head, on the verge of surrendering to what felt like a panic attack when he finally reached the main laboratory and control room.
Because of the inherent danger involved in its experiments into dark matter, the Nagasaki Center’s main lab had been forged out of heavy rock, shale, and a triple-thick layer of concrete for good measure covering the five immediate stories above. Once inside, Shinzo realized it bore no resemblance to what he recalled either, the lab having been utterly rebuilt from scratch.
Something had happened, something had changed, and Shinzo saw a quartet of his Aum Shinrikyo commandos hovering over four scientists in lab coats. They were Yoshihiro Shibata, Kana Hosokawa, Hisanori Ito, and a younger man he didn’t recognize. Shibata had been the man in charge of the dark matter experiments on Shinzo’s last visit and, by the look of things, that much anyway hadn’t changed. But he had no recollection of the two-feet-thick glass walls that now ran the length of a much-expanded accelerator tunnel that stretched as far as the eye could see on the other side of the glass.
Shibata saw him approaching and his eyes filled first with shock, then fear, and finally resignation. Asahara thought he may have even smiled ever so tightly.
“I thought you’d be dead by now, Shinzo-san.”
“As the Americans say, those reports have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Let me see your hands.”
Shinzo Asahara tugged off his mitten and showed both of them to him.
Shibata’s smile widened almost smugly, his gaze focusing on what had once been Shinzo’s left hand. “I would imagine there’s no feeling, no sensation at all, even when you touch something.”
“None.”
“You have use of your fingers?”
“Somewhat,” Shinzo said, clenching his second right hand as best he could, “although I can’t tell when I’m gripping something or not. It feels like someone else’s hand.”
“Because it is, Shinzo-san, it is indeed. Not another man’s, but not yours either.”
“Looks like you’ve enjoyed a very thorough upgrade in the time since. More funding from the Japanese and Chinese governments?”
Shibata remained silent, spine tightening just enough to tell Asahara he’d struck a nerve.
“From who then?”
Shibata found the strength to meet Shinzo’s gaze. “You’re too late.”
“For what?”
“The experts you seek, the men who have worked virtually nonstop since our last visit, aren’t here. They were called away.”
“To where?”
“The airport to board a private plane. That’s all I know. I’ve had no contact with them since they were summoned weeks ago.”
“Summoned?”
“This a private facility now,” Shibata explained. “We are just glorified employees with walls full of diplomas and awards.”
Asahara looked unconvinced.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Shibata insisted. “I have no reason to lie.”
“You have every reason to lie when the man who should have killed you seven years ago is prepared to rectify that mistake.”
“Then consider the price you paid for that visit.”
Shinzo stepped back, spine straightening as he gazed about again before refocusing his attention on Shibata. His numb, tingly hand held before him. “What would exposure to dark matter do to an entire human body?”
“I prefer not to think about that.”
“Then perhaps we should experiment with you inside the particle accelerator.”
“Go ahead.”
“So calm in the face of death, Shibata?”
“I’ve had plenty of practice. I’m dying, Shinzo-san. Inoperable brain cancer. Kill me now and all you accomplish is stealing six painful months from me.”
Asahara looked to the younger men flanking Shibata, the one he didn’t know looking somehow vaguely familiar. “Then perhaps you’d like to join me in witnessing your younger associate here exposed to your accelerator.”
Shibata’s face tightened in fear, and in that moment Asahara realized the source of the familiarity between the two men. He moved behind that younger man and clamped his good hand on his right shoulder.
“Your son looks much like you, Shibata.”
“Please, there’s nothing I can say that can help you!”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Asahara said, signaling his commandos to take the younger Shibata in tow.
“What do you want?” his father pleaded.
“Who called your scientists away? Who is this man you take your orders from now?”
Shibata remained silent, looking down at the floor. Asahara nodded to his two commandos who instantly began dragging the man’s son toward the heavy steel doors that accessed the Nagasaki Center’s totally remodeled and expanded particle accelerator.
“No,
stop
!” Shibata cried out.
“Not until you tell me who you are beholden to now, Shibata.”
“I-I-I am not to speak his name.”
Asahara flashed his numb, second right hand before the man. “What do you think will happen when your son is exposed to the accelerator?”
His commandos were almost to the heavy steel doors with the younger Shibata in their grasp.
“Sebastian Roy!” his father screamed, and Shinzo Asahara looked back at him. “We all work for Sebastian Roy! The Nagasaki Center is his now!”
“The energy tycoon?”
Shibata nodded. “He took it over when the economy destroyed our other sources of funding!”
“And he was the one who ordered your scientists away?”
“Not my scientists anymore, Shinzo-san.
His
scientists.”
“Tell me where they were sent!”
“I don’t know, I swear it! I only fielded the call, relayed the instructions from Roy himself. The men were taken to a private airstrip. But I have no idea where their plane was headed. That’s all I know!”
But Asahara wasn’t listening to him anymore. Someone else, the energy tycoon Sebastian Roy, must be after the dark matter as well. And, in point of fact, had located a potential source of it strong enough to call for an army of scientists to be dispatched
somewhere
.
“You must believe me!” Shibata was pleading.
“Oh, I do, Shibata, I do.”
Shibata seemed to breathe easier. “Then my son, you will release him. . . .”
Asahara glanced at his commandos holding the younger Shibata, flaccid and weak-kneed, between them before the steel door. “No, Shibata, I don’t think I will. I want to see what the accelerator will do to an entire body.”
He nodded to his men, then turned back to Shibata, starting to tug his mitten off.
“You see, I already know what it can do to a single limb.”
Katie lunged to her feet and twisted to flee, managing to scamper only a few strides before McCracken tackled her to the gravel-laden rooftop. She looked down at the cell phone that felt warm in her hand.
“Looks a lot like this one,” McCracken told her, lifting the matching one she’d wired as a detonator from his pocket, still holding fast to her with his good arm. “And you’ve already done enough running for one lifetime, young lady.”
She struggled futilely in his grasp. “You don’t know anything about my life!”
“I know you’re a murderer and a terrorist. What I don’t know is why. Because some monsters are born and some are made.” McCracken released his hold on her. “You were made.”
Katie back-crawled, putting more distance between them. “You’re letting me go?”
“Depends how much you tell me about why you’re doing this. It’s not for you and has nothing to do with the environment. That much I know, which means there’s something lots more important I don’t.”
“Take a guess, Superman.”
“How about revenge? That usually works.”
Katie didn’t bother denying it. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
McCracken shrugged. “It’s written in your eyes.”
“So what now, you arrest me, something like that?”
“Something,” was all McCracken said.
Katie tried to look away from him, but failed. Enough of the light shed from the complex’s exterior lighting reached them to frame McCracken’s face with the same intensity Katie recalled from the car when he’d rescued her and then in New Orleans in the battle against the robots before she’d escaped. He never seemed to lose that intensity, that focus, his switch perpetually in the on position. His thick hair looked too long for his age, yet the way the light touched his face made him seem younger.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Revenge, remember? That made your next target pretty obvious under the circumstances.”
“And what circumstances might those be?”
“One: you had every reason to believe Ocean Bore was behind the men who were after you and the kill team that wiped out your friends in Greenland.”
McCracken watched Katie stiffen, a pallor falling over her expression. “You finally checked out Greenland.”
“You were right—a massacre in all respects. We’re talking professional all the way, meaning men who’d done this kind of thing before. Lots of times. And you think Ocean Bore sent them, young lady.”
“I
know
Ocean Bore sent them. And don’t call me that.”
“Then tell me your real name.”
“I’d rather you just stick with ‘Katie’; I like to be on a first-name basis with all the superheroes I get to know.”
McCracken bristled slightly. “All the heroes I know are dead.”
“That’s because they weren’t as super as you and that Indian friend of yours.” Katie looked around. “Speaking of whom, where is he?”
“Out and about, making sure you came alone.”
“All my friends are dead too, remember?”
McCracken responded by rising and starting to walk off, gesturing for her to follow. “Come on.”
“Where we going?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’m still waiting for you to explain the connection to me.”
“What connection?”
“Between all the targets you’ve hit. What makes this personal for you.”
Katie fought to remain calm. For a moment, just that moment, she felt as if she was back in the psychiatrist’s office being confronted with truths she didn’t want to see.
“There’s no need to tell you something you’ve already figured out on your own,” she said finally.
“Point taken,” McCracken conceded. “Roy Industries owns all the companies you’ve hit.”
“Very good.”
“Not really. That’s only part of the story. I haven’t figured out the why yet, where the personal part comes in.”
Katie shifted enough for another sliver of light to catch her eyes starting to tear up. “Sebastian Roy is my father.”
Sebastian Roy would never forget the first blast. He was standing on the podium inside the final unfinished section of his fossil fuel plant in Stuttgart. The cavernous space had been sectioned off by curtains and risers, the walls plastered with final renderings of what the facility would look like once all seven phases were complete. It would be up and running with only two online and capable of powering an entire city with four up.
His wife was alongside him, his son and daughter just behind them but spaced so any pictures or broadcast would include them in the shot as well. He was especially gratified to have Alexandra here since they’d been estranged, off and on but mostly on, ever since she’d gone off to college. From the e-mails Roy had read, she’d even tried to convince his son, Christian, to join her in that estrangement, robbing him of his heir, the young man destined to lead Roy Industries someday.
Before beginning his remarks, with the applause thundering before him, he’d turned to look at the boy—always a boy to him—but found Alexandra’s glare instead, as hateful and intense as ever. He owed neither her nor anyone else any explanation for his actions; that was a gift of power. Sebastian Roy understood that making others beholden and dependent was the swiftest route to domination and control. There was no middle ground between success and failure, no compromise. Strength was everything.
His father had not hugged him a single time Roy could remember; he could not recall any touch other than a handshake, and even that proved cold and fleeting. His father had such dry skin that it felt like shaking hands with a lizard. He promised himself he would treat his own son differently, promised that the boy would be his to mold and fashion. He would not be cold and aloof as his father had been. He would be . . .
Stop it!
The memories, long banished from thought, came flooding back, even though Roy had fought long and hard to vanquish them from his psyche.
I’m being punished. . . .
He fought the thought down, dismissed for its utter absurdity. Roy knew that men who wielded power must not be held to the same standards as others, that they must be judged through a different prism entirely since the spectrum of light they radiated bore no resemblance to that of ordinary men. Men of great power understood the value of their most base nature, that strength came from first succumbing to temptation and then becoming the master of it.
He was not being punished, because he had done nothing for which to be punished. The license to act was his, every move undertaken shrewdly as a means to a greater end, all aimed at using his power to gain control of a world he could never walk within again. His life extended to the walls of this chamber and no farther, and in that life he found even greater purpose in seizing that control he so desperately sought.
Fuel was the world’s life force. Without fuel, man would be reduced to the primitive, so dependent was he on flipping a switch for light, heat, coolness, transportation, communications, entertainment, food. Without fuel, there would be nothing. No dreams, no progress. It made something out of nothing. Control energy and you controlled everything. And in dark matter Sebastian Roy saw the means to accomplish just that.
Just a few more days and it would be his, Roy thought as he waited for the call from Greece.