The Bari Bones

by Urcelia Teixeira

  “They were poisoned, just like us. That’s what’s going on there. Except they weren’t as fortunate as us. Wang said his men got to us just in time.” She paused as reality set in. “We could have ended up like those people. He saved us.”

  Sam moved away from the window and sat on the edge of his bed next to her. “I don’t want to say it but I’m going to. I told you he wasn’t a killer. People like him who have made it their life’s work to save people don’t turn around and kill for their cause.”

  Alex turned to Sam, holding out her hand. “Take it out,” she said referring to the needle from the drip. “We need to get out of here, Sam. Wang could be in trouble and whoever poisoned and tried to kill us is responsible for killing all those civilians on the bus.”

  Sam didn’t argue and pulled the needle from her arm. He had sensed the same.

  When the couple had dressed they moved to the narrow window that ran down the middle of the door and spotted two security guards in the hallway on either side of the door.

  “We need a distraction. Hang on,” Sam said, hovering over one of the monitors next to her bed. After pushing a few buttons and disconnecting one of the cables, a loud alarm bleeped through the room. They had mere seconds to hide against the wall behind the door before a doctor and two nurses burst through the door and hurriedly moved to where they had propped the pillows in their beds. By the time they had caught on, Alex and Sam had already locked the door behind them and knocked both guards out before making their way to the elevator at the bottom of the sterile corridor. The elevator took too long so they set off in search of the stairs. Unlike the research floors above them, there were clear signs directing them to the emergency exit and it took hardly any effort to find it. As they burst through the door, the sound of approaching security guard’s shoes noisily thumped on the metal stairwell. Sam leaned over the landing and inspected the floors below as well as above them.

  “They’re everywhere. Whatever is happening outside has this place crawling with security,” he reported.

  Deciding they had a better chance if they found another way out, the pair headed back through the door and down the corridor, stopping to snatch two doctor’s coats in passing. Now in a perfect disguise they slowed their pace when several security officials rushed through the stairwell door behind them, mistaking them for medical personnel.

  “Let’s try the elevator again,” Alex suggested as they turned back towards it, burying their noses in a folder they had stolen from the unoccupied nurses station en route.

  When the elevator doors opened, two junior nurses squeezed inside just before the doors closed. Aware of the two ‘doctors’ in the elevator behind them, their behavior instantly transformed into a hushed exchange of words. Alex tapped one on the shoulder.

  “Do you by any chance know what’s going on outside?” she chanced, remembering the waiter telling them that most young people in China spoke English.

  The young girl’s body tensed up while she nervously clutched a folder to her chest and looked to her friend who proceeded to answer.

  “Someone’s been going all over China killing people with a toxic nerve gas that the police say was created here at Infinitech. Hundreds of people have already died. It’s the third incident in ten days. First it was the intercity train, then the airport and now the bus in Beijing.”

  “Do they suspect anyone yet?” Sam asked.

  “Not that we know of,” the second nurse answered, “but Dr. Wang’s been missing, so none of us knows what’s going on. Half of the Infinitech employees can’t access the building and we’re not allowed to leave.”

  “So how do they know the toxic gas was produced here? What proof do they have?” Alex asked.

  The girls shrugged their shoulders in unison. “It’s just what they’re saying on the news,” the first nurse said, after which the second girl promptly added, “I did hear a rumor that they found lab materials at one of the scenes. Apparently they had Infinitech logos on them. Also, why else would the reporters have been outside buzzing like bees around a hive for the last two days? My friend on the tenth floor said they can’t even find Xun Mao.”

  “Who’s Xun Mao?” Sam asked, to which the girls giggled in response.

  “You obviously haven’t been here that long, Doctor. It’s Dr. Wang’s sister. She heads up all the research.” The girl responded in a casually calm manner before the elevator doors opened to a large staff canteen that was bustling with Infinitech employees and the two nurses swiftly exited leaving Alex and Sam behind. Once alone and out of earshot, Sam turned to Alex.

  “I guess we can safely stick to our theory of it being a full-blown corporate war.”

  Alex shook her head. “I’m still not sure I agree with you, Sam. I might not be as well informed as you are about these things, but a lunatic killing innocent people all across China with a deadly nerve gas doesn’t sound like corporate war to me. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s a simple case of corporate sabotage. Either Infinitech is behind the killings for whatever their reasons or someone’s setting them up to look like they’re behind them,” Sam explained.

  “But something doesn’t add up. What’s the manna got to do with anything? And the dead priest? Wang said they needed it to create some breakthrough pharmaceutical. These are chemical bombs killing people, not curing cancer.” Alex repeatedly pushed the elevator button to Wang’s office when the doors opened at an empty floor.

  “Exactly. A rival company got wind of it, wants to sabotage their endeavor by framing them for setting off chemical bombs all over China. That way they create the breakthrough drug, save millions of lives and come off being the heroes.”

  Alex paced the small space in the elevator as her mind raced with unanswered questions.

  “Look, I admit, it certainly sounds plausible, but it still doesn’t add up. For all we know the two might have nothing to do with each other. It could just be a coincidence of events and reporters getting it wrong,” Alex reasoned.

  “Or the Fangs could be behind it all.” Sam ventured another theory while having a turn at the elevator button.

  “The Fangs might be powerful but I fail to come up with a good enough motive for them to go around killing innocent people all over China.” Alex paused and glanced up at the digital floor display above their heads.

  “Why can’t we get past the thirty-ninth floor? Are we stuck?”

  Sam’s fingers triggered the button to open the doors and cautiously popped his head out. The floor was entirely deserted.

  “It’s three floors. Let’s take the stairs.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They found the stairwell easily and since the floor was not in use at all, they had no trouble navigating their way there. The steel stairs led them to the forty-second floor where they arrived at a charcoal gray door with a biometric hand recognition panel that was hidden behind a glass pane.

  Sam cursed under his breath. “This place is like Fort Knox with all their biometrics. Even if I manage to break the glass I still need someone’s hand, and since this is Wang’s office, I doubt it will be just anyone’s.”

  Alex didn’t respond while she stared at the security mechanism. Then suddenly she turned back and ran down the stairs.

  “We’ll go in through the elevator shaft,” she yelled up the stairs bursting through the door when they reached the floor below Wang’s office. Similar to the previous floors, they had noticed when they hurriedly made their way through the white corridor maze in search of the elevator, that the forty-first floor was also unoccupied and had not been in use.

  A sudden sense of urgency propelled Alex to move faster along the corridors. Her mind flooded with the news channel’s images of the murdered victims that lay beside the bus and, still very much vivid in her mind, were the heartbroken stains in Stavros’ eyes. They couldn’t fail him and they couldn’t fail the three priests who still feared for their lives. Feeling suddenly like she couldn’t breathe, she yanked
the doctor’s coat off and tossed it to the floor as she continued to run in the direction of the elevator. Sam followed a short distance behind her.

  “This way,” he directed when Alex stopped for the first time, at a crossroads.

  Sam had chosen the correct hallway and they spotted the elevator doors around the next corner. As they drew closer, the body of one of Wang’s private security men came into view. They paused and Alex instinctively went for her gun behind her back, only to be reminded that it had been confiscated when they first arrived. They approached the guard’s body with caution, finding it bizarre that he lay face down on the floor in front of the elevator as if he had fallen forward out of it. His feet were jamming the doors and his hands were covered with odd-looking burn marks. Sam knelt down and placed his fingers below the guard’s ear to feel for a pulse, but there was none. He carefully flipped the guard’s body over, intrigued by the exposed flesh he spotted along his hairline, all the while hoping that his pulse might have been too weak to detect and that he might somehow still be alive. But there was no mistaking it when the guard’s badly disfigured face came into view. Alex turned and looked away, horrified by the patches of rotten skin that had fallen away from his face to leave the bone visible.

  “I don’t think he was exposed to the nerve gas. It looks like something ate away at his face,” Sam reported, immediately backing away from the corpse.

  “Judging from his position I’m guessing he was running away from whoever did this to him,” Alex added.

  “His body’s still warm. Whatever happened wasn’t that long ago,” Sam said.

  Alex spotted the guard’s firearm several feet away where she assumed it had dropped from his hand and slid down the corridor when he fell. Grabbing the weapon she helped Sam move his body before they got into the elevator. Alex checked the 9-millimeter revolver’s cylinder. There were bullets in all six of the chambers. With it being their only weapon and considering they had no idea what to expect, it didn’t leave much room for error. Hidden and flanked on either side of the doors they proceeded to the top floor, trying desperately to numb their pulsing heartbeats in their ears. When the elevator stopped and the doors opened they held back, pausing in anticipation of what they feared might come their way, but nothing happened. Alex gripped the gun’s wooden handle and glanced at Sam before popping her head out the door. Wang’s office was quiet. She adjusted her fingers, hovering her index finger over the trigger and slowly stepped out. A quick survey yielded the bodies of two more guards on the floor near Wang’s desk. With her spine against the elevator she peered around each corner to where they had received the private hologram tour from Wang. There was no one there either. Satisfied they were alone she beckoned to Sam that it was safe. As with the first guard, these two were also dead, displaying identical physical injuries.

  “Sam, there’s blood.” Alex pointed out the trail of fresh blood that ran from behind Wang’s desk all along the window to the only windowless wall in the expansive room. It was roughly nine feet wide, oddly curved and symmetrically positioned between the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side. The blood stopped directly in front of it.

  “That’s odd. It stops dead, right here,” Sam commented while he traced the droplets back to the chair behind the desk.

  Alex stared at the wall, as confused as Sam was. She reached her hand out and touched it, surprised at how much it felt like the rubbery sides of a thick balloon.

  “If this blood is Wang’s he couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air,” Sam said as he made his way back along the trail.

  “He didn’t. There’s a room or something behind here,” Alex commented as her hands glided up and down the convex wall above the blood drops.

  “Perhaps this is the door to the stairs,” she guessed.

  “Nope, that’s over on the other end.” Sam tapped his knuckles as he had now become accustomed to doing. “There’s nothing here, Alex.”

  Alex dashed back to the desk and stared down at the decorative dragon painted on the desk.

  “The eyes unlocked the hologram. Perhaps there’s another activation here somewhere.”

  She traced her fingers along the dragon’s swooping green tail, pausing slowly on each of the red scales, but nothing happened. She stood back, frustrated that she was wrong.

  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” she said.

  Sam had joined her at the table, now also gliding his fingers along the dragon’s claws while Alex kept staring at the dragon’s face. Sudden excitement washed over her when she spotted the dragon’s forked tongue. It wasn’t quite flush with the rest of the image displaying a shallow hollowed-out space. She allowed her fingers to rest in the cavity, tracing along the edges.

  “That’s it! Look, there’s a piece missing here.” She yanked the drawer open and searched the empty space for the missing puzzle piece but found nothing.

  “He might have had it on him,” Sam suggested from where he was searching the surface of the desk.

  Alex didn’t answer. She was on all fours under the desk, smoothing her hands along the bamboo flooring and all along the outside edges towards the front of the desk.

  “Got it!” she yelled when her hand felt the almost wafer-thin, tongue-shaped two-inch piece of wood that had wedged itself between a narrow slit under one leg of the table. Shaking with excitement her hand flipped the tongue-piece over and slipped it perfectly into the painted dragon’s face. As with the eyes, the mystical creature’s tongue glowed a bright red and they heard the secret door slide away behind them. Expecting a hidden room on the other side of the wall, they found instead another pod elevator, much like the one they’d been in downstairs in the main reception area. The blood trail continued into the small oblong shaped pod as they stepped inside. Gazing at the single panel with three bright green logograms inside the pod, they paused.

  “I have no idea what it says,” Sam said, slightly tongue-in-cheek, when Alex looked to him for guidance.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” Alex said as she pushed the one furthest to the right.

  The door responded by promptly closing before they felt the weightless motion of the elevator descending at a frightening pace. They steadied themselves but, surprisingly the speed gradually decreased before it eventually stopped. Expecting the pod to open up, it didn’t and instead they remained stationary.

  “They write from right to left, don’t they?” Sam asked without waiting for an answer as he pushed the middle button.

  The pod jerked to the left almost throwing them both off balance. This time they traveled sideways instead of vertically, as if they were in an underground train. When it finally stopped again, Alex reached out towards the last green button, taking a deep breath before she pushed it. Again the pod reacted contrary to what they expected by rotating ninety degrees before it promptly opened. Unprepared, their gaze met that of a tall slender Chinese woman dressed in a bright red, corporate suit and six-inch black heels. Her raven hair, was cut to precision in a blunt bob that extended and stopped just below her jaw, accentuating her sharp cheekbones. Beside her, Dr. Wang sat tied to a chair, forced into submission by a cylinder-shaped object resembling a futuristic looking coffee flask that was strapped to his chest. Inside, the bubble of a spirit level regulated the red liquid between two lines, visible only through a narrow transparent panel.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to get here” The woman’s voice cut like the sharp blade of a sword across the room which, unlike the rest of the facility, encompassed a gray spectrum of polished walls and floors with accents of bright red. The words had barely left her mouth when Alex and Sam were faced with two QBZs aimed directly at them after which two men immediately snatched the 9-millimeter from Alex’s hand. She instantly realized they were Fang members.

  “You’re like weeds. You just don’t die. I thought for sure my nerve agent would be enough to kill you. And as predicted, my dear brother’s good heart ruled his head and he jumped in to rescue you. I
t’s always been his vice.”

  Alex looked at Wang’s frightened face. His crisp, white silk shirt was stained with blood and the injuries to his face looked far too familiar. He had undergone the exact punishment the Fangs had inflicted on the parishioners and Khalil. The swollen bruises around his jaw suggested they’d had a fair go at breaking it with their signature beating; perhaps intentionally ceasing just in time. Disgust toward the woman pushed up from Alex’s stomach and wedged in her throat, preventing her from speaking right away.

  “So you’re Xun Mao,” she finally dared.

  “You’ve heard of me then. How flattering?”

  “Don’t be. I rather wish I hadn’t.” Alex spoke with revulsion evident in her tone.

  “Oh come on Alex. You and I are more alike than you think. Us humans are all genetically predisposed to violence. It’s second nature to us.”

  “I’m nothing like you. I would never betray my family the way you’ve betrayed your brother,” Alex spat back.

  “Science proves otherwise, Alex. Your doctor husband would confirm it if he was honest enough. You see, it’s pure biology, really. We all share a variant of the monoamine oxidase-A gene. Some call it the ‘warrior gene’ but if you strip the semantics, it’s nothing more than your inherent will to survive. To fight for what’s yours. Just like you did every time you were under attack on the boat.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Alex felt the life drain from her face when Xun Mao’s words confirmed she had indeed been the one behind all the attacks.

  “You look surprised,” Xun commented when she noticed Alex’s shocked face. “You didn’t really think this pathetic brother of mine had it in him, did you? I expected more from you, frankly. Of course it’s what I want the world to think, but if the great Alex Hunt believed my charade, then so will the rest of the world.”

  Alex stood between the guards, her legs locked in place by the heavy feeling of contempt towards this evil woman who appeared to know everything about them. Xun casually took another sip from a rose-painted porcelain cup as if she were at a garden tea party; the motif not matching her personality at all. Contrary to Wang’s softer features and ingenuous eyes, her eyes were cold and fierce, framed by thin eyebrows that arched upward at the outer corners. Her cheeks were hollowed—as if she was sucking on an invisible lollipop—coming together at her bright red pursed lips. She displayed no emotion at all.