by Mark Alpert
Jenna shook her head, confused. Pay up front? Public hospital in Cassville? She had no idea what Frazier was talking about. But his anger was growing, his face reddening. He was losing touch with reality, and she needed to get through to him before he became unreachable.
“Just calm down and listen, okay? We have to work together and stop the Palindrome tests. Then maybe we can get the research labs to develop a treatment that’ll reverse the changes to your DNA and—”
“Bitch! Don’t you realize what you did?” He shouted into her face, so close and loud it made her cringe. “We had to drive forty miles to that damn hospital! And guess what happened to Andy along the way?”
He pulled his head back and waited for her to answer. But she was dizzy and scared and totally bewildered. “Andy? Who’s Andy?”
“He was my brother, my little brother, only nine fucking years old. And you killed him!”
The sound of Frazier’s voice suddenly changed. It became high-pitched and shrill, frantic and devastated. It was the voice of a frightened, furious boy. It had somehow emerged from the man’s past, a traumatic memory revived by his genetically enhanced brain. And the change wasn’t just in his voice—his face quivered like a boy’s face and turned tantrum-red. The horrible memories had pushed aside his adult consciousness. They’d taken over his body.
“Andy had an asthma attack in the backseat of our car! And we didn’t have any inhalers or anything else, because you wouldn’t treat him!”
Now Jenna was terrified. She’d assumed that CRISPR hadn’t damaged Frazier as badly as it had hurt Derek, but she was wrong. The damage was in his brain. He was hallucinating like a schizophrenic. He saw Jenna as a villain from his past, some emergency-room nurse who’d played a role in the trauma he was reliving. He’d completely abandoned the real world and entered a nightmarish place that only he could see. And Jenna was at his mercy.
She needed to bring him back to the real world somehow, but he was so far gone. All she could do was try to shock him. Just scream at him as loud as she could.
“LISTEN TO ME! I’M NOT THE NURSE YOU’RE THINKING OF! AND THIS ISN’T AN EMERGENCY ROOM! THE YEAR IS 2023 AND WE’RE IN—”
Frazier let go of her nightshirt and grabbed her neck. He clamped his right hand around her throat, just below her jaw, and squeezed.
“Enough talking. I’m gonna kill you now.”
She couldn’t breathe. He’d closed her airway.
“How does it feel?” He looked into her eyes, studying them carefully. “Getting desperate yet? No? Well, wait a few seconds.”
She felt the pressure building inside her. At first it was only mildly uncomfortable, a hot tension in her chest. But it got worse very quickly, and she started to twist and kick and flail. She clawed at Frazier’s hand, trying to release his grip on her, but his fingers dug deeper into her throat. And all the while, he kept looking into her eyes, watching her struggle. His face was serious, full of grim satisfaction.
“Good, that’s good. Your lips are turning blue. Now you’re feeling it.”
She was in full panic. She opened her mouth, gagging, straining for breath. Her head swam and her vision darkened. It felt like her eyes were bursting out of their sockets.
“Now you know how Andy felt. That’s your punishment.”
Jenna’s world was going black. She couldn’t see Frazier’s face anymore. It was just a patch of darkness against the darker wall behind him. And she was dissolving into the darkness too, sinking into a vast black sea.
But then the darkness swelled. An immense wave rose from the sea, climbing hundreds of feet above the black surface. An instant later, it came crashing down, knocking her and Frazier to the floor. Jenna landed on her side, thumping her hip bone and ribs. Frazier let go of her neck and hit the floor several feet away.
The pressure was gone. Her airway opened.
I can breathe!
Jenna retched and sucked a mouthful of air into her lungs. The pain in her throat was excruciating, but she took in another breath, then another. She curled into the fetal position, gasping, helpless as a baby.
The pain slowly subsided and the darkness began to lift. After a couple of seconds, she could see the world again: the marble wall, the silk flowers, the glittering shards of glass. And she saw Derek and Officer Frazier wrestling on the floor, fighting for possession of Frazier’s assault rifle.
Derek was on top. He was larger and heavier than Frazier, and although the jagged glass shard was still sunk deep into Derek’s waist, he fought as if he wasn’t injured at all. With one hand on the rifle’s stock and the other on the barrel, he pushed the weapon down toward Frazier’s neck. He was the immense black wave Jenna had seen in her delirium, an unnatural force strengthened by genetic enhancements, so biologically superior that even a grisly gut wound couldn’t stop him. Derek had caught Frazier by surprise and overpowered the maniac. He’d saved her life once again.
But she wasn’t out of danger yet. Frazier gripped the rifle with both hands, keeping the barrel a few inches above his throat. At the same time, he bucked and writhed under Derek, doing everything he could to throw him off. Blood pulsed from the wound in Derek’s side and coated the edges of the glass shard and streamed to the floor. He was weakening. Frazier was getting a better grip on the rifle, getting ready to tear it out of Derek’s hands.
Jenna’s head was still swimming, but she managed to sit up and stagger to her feet. She had to do something to help Derek. Maybe kick Frazier in the ribs. Or stomp on his skull. But as she stepped toward the two men, the mausoleum seemed to whirl around her. She doubled over and retched again. She was still shaky from her near-asphyxiation. Her legs trembled so hard, she could barely stand.
After a few seconds, she straightened up and took another step toward them. But Derek turned his head to the side and glared at her. “Goddamn it! I told you to go!”
With Derek distracted, Frazier took the opportunity to knee him in the groin. Derek winced but stayed on top of Frazier. He leaned all his weight on the rifle, trying mightily to bring it down.
Jenna felt so woozy. She could barely look at the men, much less join their fight. And yet she couldn’t leave either. She stood there, wobbling, the floor tilting underneath her. “Derek … I…”
“I’ll find you! Just go! The other officers are coming!”
Those last five words broke her trance. Alarmed, she raised her head and peered through the mausoleum’s broken windows. She didn’t see any FSU men running across the cemetery grounds, but Derek was right: they would be coming, very soon. And Jenna couldn’t let the FSU arrest her again. She had to find Abbu and Raza. That was the most important thing.
Swaying, she turned away from him and lurched toward the stairway.
FOURTEEN
Lieutenant Frazier snarled at the man above him. It was his stepfather. It was his shithead uncle, the one who used to poke him with a lit cigarette. It was his third-grade gym teacher, the pervert who’d told all the boys in his class to pull down their shorts for a “health inspection.”
The bastard pushed down on the rifle. Frazier pushed back, bracing his shoulders and elbows against the floor, but the rifle’s barrel inched downward, edging toward his throat. The bastard’s face was directly above him, less than a foot away, and it changed shape every second, its features shifting and transforming. It was like a fucking slide show, like the presentation the FSU gave to its officers to familiarize them with the most-wanted criminals and terrorists. But the faces he saw above him now didn’t come from a mug-shot book or a government database. They came from Frazier’s memories, from the darkest corners of his brain.
Then the bastard drew his head back and whipped it forward, slamming his forehead into the bridge of Frazier’s nose. Pain shot through him like a lightning bolt, flashing inside his skull. But when Frazier opened his eyes and looked up again, he noticed something different. The bastard trying to kill him was black. So he couldn’t be Frazier’s stepfather or gym teache
r or anyone else from Cassville, which was the white-trash capital of southern Missouri. Frazier rejected all the fucked-up pictures from his memory, flinging them aside so he could see the real face beneath.
It was Derek Powell. His old commander.
Frazier snarled again, louder and angrier. He hated Powell more than any of the others. Just a year ago, Frazier had practically worshipped the guy, mostly because Powell was the only officer in the army who wasn’t a complete fucking asshole. Instead of acting like everyone else and treating Frazier like a moron, Powell told him he was smart enough to join the Rangers. When Frazier made it into the Ranger regiment, Powell got him assigned to the best platoon in the Third Battalion, and they served together in all the Afghan hot spots: Kandahar, Ghazni, Lashkar Gah, Jalalabad. And when the army offered a $10,000 bonus to anyone who signed up for Palindrome, they both volunteered.
But a few months later, it all went to hell. Powell started spreading rumors, talking shit about the battalion commanders. He said they’d made a secret deal with some Washington dickhead, who’d turned the Rangers into a bunch of fucking guinea pigs because he wanted elite soldiers for a new police agency. And then Powell went nuts and got himself blown up, but Frazier had always suspected it was a trick, and now he knew for sure. Powell had gone over to the other side. He’d joined forces with America’s enemies—the illegals and ragheads and wetbacks and terrorists—and that was the worst fucking crime of all.
Now Frazier had a focus for his rage. Powell and the Khan bitch were traitors. They wanted to take everything away from him—his pride in his country, all the beliefs he grew up with. But Frazier wasn’t going to let them get away with it. He was smarter than they thought. The Khan bitch had already left the mausoleum, but he could stop Powell. He knew exactly what to do.
And a moment later, he did it. He took his right hand off the rifle’s stock, letting it drop to the floor, and thrust his left arm upward to raise the gun’s barrel. These simultaneous actions tilted the rifle to a forty-five-degree angle. And because Powell was holding the gun so tightly, he rolled onto his left side, where the glass shard was lodged. The shard’s outer edge jammed against the tiled floor, and its sharp inner point plunged deeper into Powell.
The traitor screamed. Frazier pressed his advantage and rolled on top of Powell, using his body weight to ram the glass shard farther into the bastard’s abdomen. Then he wrenched the rifle out of Powell’s hands and scrambled to his feet.
Frazier backed up a couple of yards and pointed the gun at the traitor. Powell lay on his back and convulsed, his arms and legs thwacking the floor. Blood erupted from his side in a fountain, spraying the names and dates carved into the marble wall.
Frazier grinned. He stood there for a little while, watching Powell writhe, enjoying every second of it. But this time he didn’t close his eyes to savor the moment. He was anxious to kill the bastard. He wouldn’t relax until the traitor was dead.
He aimed the rifle at Powell’s black skull.
“Frazier! Lower that fucking gun!”
It was Colonel Grant. And he didn’t look happy.
FIFTEEN
Vance raced across the West Wing. POTUS was howling again.
Luckily, the Oval Office was right down the hall. The Secret Service agents saw Vance coming and opened the office’s door. After he stepped inside, the agents swiftly closed the door behind him.
The President of the United States wasn’t behind his desk. He lay on his side on the big beige sofa in the middle of the room. He’d taken off his jacket but not his tie, which hung over the edge of the sofa cushion. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open, and for a horrified second Vance wondered if he was still breathing. But then POTUS rolled his head on the cushion and opened his mouth wider and let out another ugly howl.
Vance winced. He bent over the couch. “Mr. President! Wake up!”
He kept rolling his head but didn’t open his eyes. He’d ruined all the hard work that his hairdresser had done that morning. His yellow coiffure mashed against the arm of the sofa. Loose strands of hair lay matted to the upholstery.
Vance bent lower and shook the president’s shoulder. “Stop howling! Everyone in the building can hear you.”
That got his attention. He opened his eyes and looked around the office, suddenly frantic. “What time is it?”
Vance looked at his watch. “It’s seven o’clock.”
“In the morning?”
“No, in the evening.” He pointed at the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. “You said you were going to watch the news for a while.”
The president covered his face with both hands. At first it looked like he was rubbing his eyes, but then he let out a soft, muffled sob. POTUS was crying. “Oh God … oh God.”
Vance felt a twinge of dread in his stomach. He knew what was coming. “Look, let’s not—”
“I dreamed about her again … I saw my little girl.”
He was talking about Princess. His daughter. Vance’s wife.
“First she was young … so young, just a baby … and then she was grown up. She was in her wedding dress, Vance.”
This happened after every one of his howling fits. The president wanted to talk about his dreams of his daughter. But Vance didn’t want to talk about it, so he said nothing.
“She was so beautiful … but I knew it wasn’t real … and that’s why I screamed … it hurt so much, I couldn’t help it.”
Vance braced himself for more. Sometimes there was a third part to the dream. Sometimes POTUS relived the moment right after the explosion, when he shoved all the Secret Service agents out of his way and knelt beside her body.
But this time, thank God, the president stopped talking. He ran out of words and just sobbed. His torso shook so much that the sofa creaked underneath him.
The dreams and the howling fits had started a few weeks ago. They were the latest symptoms of his illness, which the White House doctors had diagnosed last year. The fits usually happened late at night, after he’d fallen asleep in front of the television. The worst part of it, at least from Vance’s point of view, was that the president wouldn’t let any of his aides or assistants help him when he got like this. He distrusted the entire White House staff, right down to the secretaries and janitors. His wife had abandoned him, and his sons were useless, so the whole burden of taking care of him had fallen to Vance, who was completely unsuited for it. He’d become a babysitter for his father-in-law, and that definitely wasn’t what he’d signed up for.
He waited half a minute or so, hoping the president’s crying jag would pass. But if anything, the sobs became louder and more insistent. Vance decided to act as if it wasn’t happening. That helped sometimes. “You have to be more careful about when you fall asleep. There are still plenty of officials in the White House at this hour, and you don’t want them to hear—”
“You mean reporters?” He took his hands off his face and sat up. Tears were still dripping down his cheeks, but now his eyes were frightened and darting. “Did any of those fucking reporters in the briefing room hear me?”
Vance shook his head. “No, we banned reporters from the West Wing two years ago. Remember?”
“Right, right. That was a smart move.” The president nodded vigorously, agreeing with himself, but he was only pretending to remember the West Wing ban. Long-term memory loss was another symptom of his illness, and it was getting worse. “Those reporters are a bunch of fucking liars. We should throw the worst ones in jail to teach them a lesson. And we should put them in the same jail cells as the illegals they love so much. Then they’d see what those thugs are really like, right?”
“Yes, that’s a good idea. But the press corps isn’t our main concern right now.” Vance tilted his head to the left, in the direction of the offices on the westernmost edge of the West Wing. “The vice president is still in his office tonight. He’s spending more hours on the job lately. Which is a little suspicious, in my opinion.”
The pres
ident scowled, scrunching his face and bringing his yellow eyebrows together. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a moron. He’s probably kneeling behind his desk again. Praying to God for a pair of balls.”
Vance frowned. His father-in-law’s political instincts had deteriorated along with everything else. The vice president was the biggest danger to the administration, by far. Bigger than the press and the Democrats and all the federal judges put together. “There’s a reason why the veep is spending more time in the White House these days. He’s watching you. He disguises his ambition well, but he wants your job.”
The president’s face got angrier and uglier. He narrowed his eyes to slits and pursed his lips. “That idiot? That fucking Sunday-school teacher? He’ll never be president. I mean, look at all the polls. His numbers are pathetic.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “That’s why we have to change the Constitution, Vance. If I don’t get a third term, the country’s gonna go right back to the Democrats next year. And then they’ll start a whole new round of investigations, and I don’t have to tell you how bad that’ll be.”
Vance shook his head, exasperated. It was so difficult to explain things to POTUS, even the most basic issues. “The veep knows he’s unpopular, so he’s looking at the alternatives. If he can prove you’re unfit for office, he’ll become president right away. Then he’d be the incumbent in next year’s election, and that’s always a huge advantage.”
“Jesus fucking Christ! I’m not letting that dope take over!”
“You may not have a choice. The vice president has the authority to seize your position if he can convince the cabinet and Congress that you’re crazy. That’s in the Constitution too, the 25th Amendment. And if the veep hears one of your screaming fits and is clever enough to make a recording of it, that would give him a very convincing piece of evidence.”