The Pain Colony

by Shanon Hunt

  By the time the door opened, her legs were numb. She relished the pins and needles.

  Brother James belted her hands underneath the bench.

  “Layla, I know you’ve been preparing for today, and I know you’ll have a successful cleanse. Remember to focus on your breathing, in and out to the count of four. Don’t cry out in distress. The Father loves you very much and wants you to be cleansed of the poison that consumed you during your life as an impure. He needs you strong in body, mind, and spirit. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Exultation fluttered in her stomach.

  “Then let’s begin,” he whispered.

  The first crack of the whip landed hard across her back. Her body jerked and she gasped, eyes wide. With pain comes peace. She must release the pain.

  Crack!

  The second lash whipped across her lower back and buttocks. She bit her lip to avoid screaming, then remembered to breathe slowly to the count of four. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused hard on one spot in the middle of her forehead. Her face contorted as she tried to push the images from her unconscious mind into that spot. She needed to see her impure life. The poison.

  She listened for a signal, expecting some sort of pop in her head, followed by a stream of images scrolling right across her eyelids. The spot remained maddeningly black and empty.

  Crack!

  An inhuman, guttural growl escaped her as the whip came down again, less due to physical pain than frustration. Why couldn’t she see it? She breathed in slowly and breathed out, releasing her anger, unwittingly taking control, guiding a picture that just needed a little coercion. She drew a small bedroom in that spot between her eyes. She made the walls cement gray, much like the room she lay in now. On top of a small dresser in the corner stood a pair of roller skates. On the wall was a poster of—

  Crack!

  —a poster of, well, she couldn’t make out the image on the poster just yet. She shifted her gaze to the door and saw a man materialize there. He was tall, his head nearly touching the frame. He had dark blond hair. Thin. No, even thinner. The image wavered like a mirage, and she concentrated hard to keep it from fading. He smiled at her, and she focused on his mouth, stared at it, until she saw a gap between his teeth.

  Crack!

  This time, the lash of the whip completely overwhelmed her, snapping the image right from her mind. Her eyes flew wide in shock as the physical world engulfed her. Her senses had intensified a hundredfold. Pain surged through her entire body in waves and she convulsed once, then completely stiffened. She lost focus and her mind seemed to liquefy, spreading to her aching thighs, the unbearable pins and needles making her legs quiver, then to her wrists, raw beneath the savage leather wraps. A whimper escaped her lips. Her calves cramped, curling her feet and toes into grotesque, spasmodic shapes she couldn’t relieve. And her back felt as if she’d been branded with a cattle iron. Her head exploded into fireworks and she tasted bile as her vision narrowed until—

  Crack!

  The stars faded, and Layla was no longer spread across a stone bench.

  ***

  I’m standing with a group of people in a park. The sweetness of freshly cut grass combines with the scent of roses. Lots of roses. I’m hot and sticky, and the sun is beating down on me. I hear bees nearby. I hate bees. I look down at my black patent leather sandals with a strap. My big girl shoes. They’re covered in blades of wet grass, and I want to clean them off so they’ll be shiny again.

  “Can we go?” I whisper and look up at the woman holding my hand.

  Mom looks down at me with sad eyes. “Soon.”

  My gaze falls to the Bible in her other hand, which she grips so tightly her fingers are white. In the corner of the Bible, the letters RLC are printed in gold letters. It was a gift. From him.

  I face forward again and look at the fancy rose-covered casket raised above the hole in the earth. I know who’s inside. I saw him in there just an hour ago, when I snuck up to the open casket in the big red room. He looked different, like a plastic doll, and I was too afraid to kiss him goodbye. But now I wish I had. He’ll go into the ground thinking I don’t love him.

  ***

  Crack!

  Layla struggled to hold onto the scene, but the vision was gone. Her body slackened against the bench, depleted. She no longer cared about the whip walloping her. She no longer noticed the pain rippling through her body.

  Because something had happened. A perfect truth from her unconscious mind had just stormed into her memory, as real as the very blood that coursed through her veins. Her impure life. It was real.

  Her hair matted around her face and filled her mouth as tears dripped from her eyes and nose.

  “Daddy,” she whispered. “Daddy. He was real.”

  “Yes! I knew you could do it. Yes.” Brother James tenderly untied her bindings and knelt beside her with a small cloth. He wiped her face gently and pulled her hair back. “You did it, Layla. You did it, my girl.”

  “Thank you.” Her sobs shook her entire body.

  “Oh, beautiful girl, don’t thank me. I’m just a servant for the Father.” Brother James’s voice was so calm, so soothing.

  “Thank you, Father. Thank you so much.”

  Brother James stayed by her side for—how long? thirty minutes? an hour?—as she released the pain and cleansed her mind and spirit for the Father who loved her.

  ***

  Layla awakened in her room. Her comforter was pulled over her head. The welts on her back stung, and she felt the bandage under her tunic. She shifted to try to relieve the pain. Her head felt hazy, and she was so sleepy. She carefully rolled to the other side and closed her eyes to drift back to sleep.

  Daddy.

  She bolted upright in bed. Her cleanse. The vision. Her real dad and her real mom. The funeral—her dad’s funeral when she was a young girl.

  How had he died? She concentrated, but she couldn’t pull up the facts. What had happened after the funeral? Again, she couldn’t picture anything. Her unconscious mind would only allow her this one elusive scene, this one memory. But it was so vivid. She knew now that she’d loved her father more than anyone. She’d felt it, standing there on the grass watching him leave her forever. She was sure this image had stuck with her through her poisoned life—well, until the accident and being saved by the Colony.

  She closed her eyes and tried to envision her mother looking down at her. Her mother had short dark brown hair. Did she look like her mother? For the first time, she wished she had a mirror. Mirrors are a tool of vanity not to be abused by inductees, Dr. Jeannette had explained when Layla had asked.

  She gingerly repositioned herself under the covers and tried to sleep, but all she saw on the backs of her eyelids was the funeral, replaying in an endless loop in her conscious mind. Even though it was only a few minutes from her entire poisoned life, she felt whole for the first time since she’d arrived at the Colony. She had been a real person. She was one right now.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Dr. Jeannette.

  Chapter 10

  Malloy stared intently at the YouTube video on his computer screen. KTVX, the local NBC news station out of Provo, Utah, was reporting the death of victim number eight. Barely four days since the Vespe kid was found. At this rate, his case would fill the morgue by the end of the month.

  The all-too-cheery reporter tried her best to sound somber as she read the teleprompter. “Today, the entire BASE jumping community is mourning the loss of world-class BASE jumper Jake Graventoll. BASE jumping, the extreme sport involving parachuting off large structures, is illegal in most towns and parks but has grown in popularity nonetheless. After successfully completing over seven hundred jumps, Jake lost his life yesterday on a particularly difficult cliff in Springdale, Utah, within the boundaries of Zion National Park.”

  The scene turned to a live reporter interviewing a young man outside Eddie McStiff’s bar in Moab. The young man’s eyes were downcast. “Jake was our idol. He’d bee
n in this sport longer than any of us. Everyone called him Dad, not because he was older but because he was always ragging on us about every little safety measure. He was completely anal retentive. Triple-check your (bleep) chutes, no booze twelve hours before a jump, that kinda (bleep).” The young man shook his head in disbelief. “The whole world out there thinks BASE jumping is just a suicide mission, but Jake was always trying to prove that it’s safe if you’re well trained and smart. He was so (bleep) conservative. And he hated flyers, hated ’em. Jesus. He was never supposed to die. (Bleep).”

  He stalked away.

  The reporter faced the camera. “We’ve learned from many of his friends and family here in Moab that Jake was not only an outspoken advocate for the sport and a strong proponent for extended safety measures, but he actively campaigned against the more extreme and deadlier version of jumping called wingsuit BASE jumping, which has been growing in popularity across Utah. That’s what makes Jake’s death particularly surprising. He was wearing a wingsuit when he died, and he did not deploy his parachute. Kirsten, back to you.”

  Malloy stopped the video as Kirsten cheerfully transitioned to “In other news …”

  “Well, at least the autopsy report hasn’t leaked.” Malloy opened the file and skimmed for confirmation. “He was really wearing a wingsuit? A guy who’s been so vocal against them?”

  Garcia’s lanky body flopped into the chair in front of the desk. “Not only that, he launched off Angel’s Landing, which is about a fifteen-hundred-foot cliff. It’s a pretty normal height for a BASE jumper, but that height for a flyer in those narrow canyons? Suicide.”

  “Flyer?” Malloy picked up a tennis ball and rolled it between his palms.

  “Yeah, a wingsuiter. Just the slightest change in wind conditions can really throw off your flight plan. If you don’t have enough space to adjust, you’ll crash. That’s what happened to Jake, presumably. Report says he slammed into the Streaked Wall on the west side of the main canyon. Caught a gust of wind going the wrong direction, and bam.” Garcia clapped once.

  “How do you know so much about this?”

  Garcia raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t always an agent.”

  He was about to ask what that meant but was interrupted by the phone. He hit the speaker button. “Malloy.”

  “Uh, yeah. Uh, is this Peter Malloy?” The caller sounded like a twenty-something. His twenty-something, in fact.

  “Robbie?”

  “Uh, no. This is, uh, Jordan Jennings. I’m looking for Special Agent Peter Malloy. Is that you? I wanted to talk about your drug.”

  Damn Dispatch was paid to screen these idiot calls. Malloy’s tone sharpened. “Hang on, let me transfer you to Dispatch.”

  “Wait, no. Are you Peter Malloy? Sorry. My name’s Jordan. I have some information about your drug, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “What drug is that?” His patience was waning.

  Garcia sauntered to the door.

  “Uh, hang on.”

  There was heavy breathing on the phone and a rustling of papers, and then something hit the floor with a muffled thud. This kid had about three more seconds of his attention before he hung up.

  “Uh, LXR102016. Are you the agent in charge of this one?”

  He jerked to attention. Garcia stopped midstep and whipped around, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  Garcia flicked open his notebook.

  “Jordan Jennings.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you know about this case?”

  “Uh, yeah. I was hired by your Biologics team to analyze the substance?” His voice rose as if asking for confirmation.

  Malloy looked quizzically at Garcia. Garcia shrugged.

  “I was wondering if you could send me some samples from your patients so I can validate my theory.”

  “Mr. Jennings, is it? You need to back up—”

  “It’s Dr. Jennings, actually. But really, I prefer just Jordan.”

  “—a moment. We sent our drug sample to our internal DEA Biological Analytics team, and we’re awaiting a report from them. Can you tell me again exactly who you are and how you think you are connected to this case?” He stood up and leaned over his desk resting on his knuckles. What the hell was going on?

  “Yeah. They couldn’t identify the substance, so they sent it to me. Thought it might be genetic rather than a small molecule or protein that they could pick up in chromatography.”

  “Excuse me?” He looked at Garcia for clarification.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not very good on the phone. Let me start over. My name is Dr. Jordan Jennings. I run a genetics lab at the Broad Institute in Cambridge. I was hired by your Bio team to analyze LXR102016, and what I’ve found is extremely interesting—so interesting, in fact, that I reanalyzed it. I sent a report back to your Bio team, but to be honest, I don’t think they’ll understand it.”

  Malloy no longer cared about the backstory. “What did you find?”

  “Well, it’s a bit difficult to explain, and I really need the tissue samples before—”

  “This is an extremely urgent case. Tell me what you found.”

  “Well okay, but the details are pretty technical. I’m not a hundred percent on our conclusions just yet. I need to confirm my analysis of the contents of the vial against your actual patient tissue samples.”

  “Victim samples.” He looked to Garcia again for help and got only a shrug in response. “Our victims are dead.”

  “Yeah, right. Sorry. Victims. Anyway, if we see that the substance we isolated from the vial has actually produced corresponding genetic changes in the genomes of your victims, then we’ll have confirmation that we know what we’re looking at.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “I need a biopsy sample. Brain or spinal tissue. If my theory is correct, your drug is a gene editing technology that has modified the patient’s—I mean victim’s—DNA.”

  Garcia moved toward the phone speaker with purpose. “Listen, kid, what the fuck are you talking about? This drug is killing people. It’s already killed eight people. If you know something that can stop people from dying, tell us—but for fuck’s sake, speak in English.”

  Malloy would have to speak with Garcia about his diplomacy skills, but he did have a way of getting the job done.

  Jordan replied in a low voice. “Okay, it appears from our genetic databases that this drug is capable of silencing a gene associated with the brain’s ability to perceive pain. The thing is, whoever made this drug is … Well, I don’t know who did it, because no lab’s ever produced anything like what I’m looking at here.”

  “It could have come from another country,” Malloy said.

  “You’re not getting me. What I’m trying to say is, this gene is … It doesn’t have any naturally occurring polymorph. I mean, it’s not … it’s not really human.”

  Chapter 11

  Allison typed “Asics women trail runners” into the search bar of Amazon.com and scrolled through the styles. She glanced up just to be sure no one was looking in through her window, judging her personal use of company time. This was the third day she’d been enslaved in her own office while the SEC auditors carried out their orders, deeply navel-gazing on the financial state of Quandary Therapeutics. She couldn’t wait for this damn audit to be over, and she was growing more and more irritated at Austin for selfishly creating this problem in the first place. He’d been allowed to stay home and play the loving husband and father while she sat in the office each day and cleaned up his mess.

  A rap came on her open door.

  “Quick question.” Craig Rooney, the lead auditor, was what Allison thought of as the front man.

  “Sure.” She waved him over.

  “We found this invoice for some research.” He slid it across her desk. “It appears the payment was made from Quandary’s accounts payable system, but the transaction isn’t recorded in your spreadsheet. Do you have any do
cumentation on the scope of work? The invoice is pretty vague, and we can’t find the final report for the work either.”

  She picked up the paper: Spiragene Inc. Never heard of them. “Doesn’t look familiar. Must’ve been before my time.”

  “But that’s your signature on the bottom, isn’t it?”

  She looked again. Damn if he wasn’t right—her flowing Allison C. Stevens signed on the line with her name typed beneath it. Another name and signature accompanied hers, a Bradley Elliott. She’d never heard of him.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember this one, but let me look through my files. I sign a lot of invoices, it’s just hard to keep track of all of them in my head.” She regretted her words immediately. They sounded like an excuse for incompetence.

  “Okay. Let me know what you find.” He regarded her with a hint of concern. “It’s important, though. It’s an awfully large payment.”

  She stared at the invoice after he left: $180,000. She was sure she’d have remembered such a large payment. Most of her invoices were in the $30,000 to $50,000 range. How could she have forgotten this?

  She walked into Ryan’s office without knocking.

  “I have to go, Cruella needs me.” He hung up the phone.

  She scowled. One of his barely legal girlfriends, no doubt.

  He gestured toward her. “Door. Noun. A swinging barrier often used to provide privacy from others.”

  “Ry, have you heard of a company called Spiragene? Looks like they’re in Jersey City?” His blank stare irritated her. She handed him the invoice. “We paid one eighty for some research with these guys, and the invoice has practically no information on it.”

  He scrutinized the paper for a long time, squinting as if trying to remember through a hangover, which she was sure he probably had. “Nope.” He handed it back.

  “Nothing? What about this name, Bradley Elliott? Do you know him?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “And the Spiragene research lead who signed? Chung-Hee Hwong?”