Ashby looked at his assistant, and she smiled reassuringly at him as she stroked the chimp’s back.
The procedure wasn’t terribly risky, but there was a lot at stake. If it didn’t work, if the bots didn’t respond, or did too much damage on their way out, he’d be back to square one.
“Here we go,” he said, taking a deep breath and pressing the button that would engage the box.
He watched the chimp with special infrared goggles, equipped with magnification to the nth degree that helped him see the cool bots moving around once they were outside the chimp. They looked like little specs of dark blue, but they were there. Obediently, they moved right into the box, and Ashby sealed it off once they were inside. Ashby flipped a second switch, deactivating them instead of destroying them like an EMP would.
A huge burst of air escaped him, and he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath.
His assistant looked at him expectantly. She couldn’t see the bots with the naked eye. She had no idea if it had worked or not.
Ashby watched the chimp. She seemed unaffected. The bots had taken the shortest route to the surface, which happened to be out of her left ear. The chimp hadn’t even seemed to notice. She breathed without struggle as she happily shared a banana with Hope.
He breathed a sigh of relief. His program had worked. The bots were secure, and the chimp was alive and well.
“I think we’ve done it.”
Ashby had been stuck in his lab during lunch for the last three days, so he didn’t think Mendi would miss him that day. For some reason, he wanted to share his success with Judy first. She wasn’t competing with him. She was just as invested in his success as he was. And although Mendi was always excited and supportive, it seemed like lately, for every piece of good news Ashby had, Mendi had a better one.
So, he decided to take a long lunch and drive home to surprise Judy. He wouldn’t have more than an hour or so to actually eat, and he warned his assistant he’d be gone for at least two hours.
“Lord knows you’ve got enough comp time after being here all night long for three days straight. Take all the time you need,” she said with a knowing smile. “And congratulations.
“Don’t worry, I won’t lie down. I won’t come back if I do.” He winked at her and left the lab, whistling a happy tune.
Walking past the cafeteria, he searched for Mendi, but he didn’t see him. He wasn’t sure what he’d say if he did spot him, but he couldn’t help himself searching for his old friend. He shrugged when he didn’t find him.
“Maybe he got sick of eating alone, and he’s in his lab,” Ashby said aloud to himself as he made his way to the car.
He couldn’t help but tap out the beat to the song on the radio as he made his way away from the city toward his small home. This was the day his and Judy’s lives would turn around. He’d done it. He could cure cancer every bit as well as Mendi. All he needed was another group of patients.
True, they weren’t knocking down his door as they were for Mendi, but he’d get one eventually. And then, he would win. He’d show them.
“Who are them?” he questioned as he pulled into the driveway. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Judy and the look on her face. But as he approached the house, another car was there. Mendi’s car.
What was he doing there?
Admittedly, seeing his friend’s car at his home sucked some of the wind from his sails. Despite himself, he stood up a little straighter. He could tell them both at once this way. The two people he cared for most in the world. Except for Ashley, of course. But she was at school.
He took the stairs to the front door two at a time and shouted when he came in. “Judy! Where are you? We’ve done it! We’ve had a breakthrough.”
She wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. He thought he could hear some movement in the bedroom, so he headed there, assuming she was putting laundry away or something, totally high on cloud nine.
“Judy, is Mendi here? Listen, the chimp survived. I put two bots inside it, pulled them out without destroying them, and the damned thing survived. Not only that, but she’s thriving. This is it. We’re going to do this,” he said as he came around the corner into their bedroom.
But what he saw there, he couldn’t process. Mendi was shirtless, buttoning his pants. Their bed was a mess, when he knew Judy painstakingly made it every day, including the six or seven throw pillows that had to be perfectly arranged on it. Then his eyes found Judy. She was standing with her back to him. Her hair was clearly mussed, her dress unbuttoned, and her bra cast haphazardly on the floor in the corner of the room.
“What…?” Ashby wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. How had he been so blind? “How long?” he demanded, turning to his so-called friend.
Mendi at least had the decency to hang his head. “It never stopped.”
As that thought sank in, Ashby backed up until he hit the doorframe. “Judy…” His voice was pleading. This couldn’t be true. She loved Ashby. She’d made her choice. They’d made a happy life together. Was it all really a sham?
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Mendi said as he approached. “We never meant—”
Ashby cut him off, his hurt turning to white-hot rage in a flash. “You never meant what? To hurt me? For me to find out? I mean, why would I? You guys have kept me in the dark this long. An idiot like me could go on forever being blissfully unaware, wouldn’t you think?”
Judy turned to face him, tears shining in her eyes, her lips red and swollen, lipstick smeared from their recent bout of passion. It only served to fuel Ashby’s anger. “Please, Ben,” she begged.
“Please what? What exactly do you think I’m going to do? What exactly can I do to either of you at this point that would hurt more than what you’ve done to me?”
6
Approximate year, 2346
Mattli was just about over waiting for that young man to come back into the dead room. Honestly, how long did it take to retrieve a box so they could wrap things up and go to bed? He was probably daydreaming up there, looking up at the sky or something ridiculous like that.
Eventually, the old man’s impatience got the better of him. He was tired, and he yearned for his own bed, his warm match curled around him. She might even have a hot cup of tea ready for him. He didn’t want to be down in the cold, dark, dead room any longer than he had to be.
He stomped up the ladder and threw the door open with more force than was necessary.
“For Ashby’s sake, Elder Hawkins, what is taking you so long?” he demanded before he was even all the way out of the dead room.
But he didn’t see Hawkins. At least, not right away. He saw a tall person, a woman if the profile could be trusted. She was wiping something on her…robe. An elder.
“Branneth? Is that you?”
She turned toward him, seemingly startled.
He thought he could see the smile on her face give way to mild irritation. “Elder Mattli. Aren’t you up past your bedtime?”
“Indeed I am. I was just waiting for Elder Hawkins to return so we could wrap up some unfinished business.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what he said. I wouldn’t have guessed he was telling the truth.” She continued to wipe the knife on her robe as she spoke to him, rarely making eye contact. Instead, she kept her gaze on the knife, a slight smile on her face.
Mattli moved closer to her, warily, eyeing the knife as he tried to puzzle out what was going on. Until he heard something. A moan, maybe?
“Mattli, stay back,” a voice gurgled.
“Mason? Is that you?” Mattli said, so startled by how inhuman the voice sounded that he forgot his formalities.
He started to rush to the man’s side, but Branneth flashed the knife at him.
“Ah-ah, Elder Mattli. I think that’s close enough.”
His patience was gone. “Elder Branneth, what exactly do you hope to accomplish from this?”
“I’ve already accomplished everyt
hing I hoped for. I don’t really care what happens next.” She shrugged.
Mattli knew he was in a tough spot. She had nothing left to lose, and everything to gain. She had the advantage. But he had a gun. He felt the weight of it at his side. He knew he couldn’t get to it easily or silently, but if he could keep her distracted, he might be able to—
“I’m going to advise you to just go on down the trail and back home, old man. Forget what you’ve seen here. In all honesty, I’ve done the island a favor. If I hadn’t killed him, the islanders likely would have, out of fear of having a convicted murderer walking among them, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think, Elder Branneth. That’s why I made him my second in command. I trust him.” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “For the last time, he didn’t murder Wesley. Ashley killed him in self-defense.”
She pointed the knife at him.
“Mattli,” Mason gurgled.
It broke Mattli’s heart. He didn’t want the man to bleed to death right there by the preparation stone. It wasn’t right. He’d done nothing wrong but have a perpetual habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I’m going to take that as a word of caution. And your friend is right. I will end this if you force my hand, Elder Mattli. But I don’t really want to. I’ve always liked you some. Even if you did side with that bitch Ashley more times than I care to count.”
She looked up at him, tearing her eyes from the blade just for a moment. “Maybe I should kill you, just for that.”
Mattli froze, wondering if he’d get a chance to go for his gun.
Leaving him off balance, she went back to silently cleaning her knife. He looked to the stone, trying to see Mason, but he must’ve been slumped behind it. He couldn’t see anything but some dark, shiny slime on top of it. Then, a hand shot up and grabbed the stone. It too was shiny in the moonlight.
“Mattli,” he gurgled, more insistent this time.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Branneth said as she turned toward Mason, brandishing the knife.
With her back to him, Mattli pulled out his gun. Three shots echoed through the silent night, sending the birds to the sky.
7
June, 2024
Ashby didn’t know what to do with himself after he stormed out of his home. He thought of Ashley and how much he would miss her, but she was off to college in a few months anyway. He supposed Judy’s timing was just right for the big reveal.
Gripping the steering wheel even harder, he rounded the last corner back to the college with a screech. How could they do this to him? To be honest, he wasn’t sure who he was more hurt by, Judy or Mendi.
They’d both acted as if they loved him all this time. But really, they only loved each other. And Mendi had won. Everything. After all these years, he thought he’d gotten the girl, but really, he’d just been the butt of their cruel joke.
The sound his car door made when he slammed it echoed throughout the parking garage.
He stormed back to his lab, rolling all the wrongs of his life around in his head. Was Ashley even his? Something that never seemed to matter to him before suddenly did. A lot. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and almost dialed home, but something stayed his hand.
What good would it do except to hurt Ashley? No. She would always be his, as long as she would have him. If he ever did something right in his life, it was her.
She was a good kid, got good grades, and had good goals. She wanted to be a big-time chef and would start culinary school in the fall, a school that wasn’t cheap.
Walking mindlessly over to his microscopes, he peered down at one of his little eating machines.
“I ought to set you lose in Mendi’s lab. See how he’d like that.” It was a ridiculous idea. He would know who was responsible for the destruction. It shocked Ashby how much he didn’t care about that. All he cared about was hurting Mendi as much as he’d hurt him.
The idea grew in his mind until it consumed him. He’d all but forgotten about his victory earlier in the day when his assistant interrupted his furious note taking in the journal Mendi gave him.
I must destroy him. But how? he wrote.
“Excuse me, sir?” his assistant asked.
“Yes?” he asked absently while he kept writing the word destroy over and over again.
“We have some things to go over, paperwork to file, things like that after today’s discoveries.”
He straightened. “Right. The chimp.” Looking longingly at the journal, he warred with himself. One way to destroy him would be to win at this fight. Another way would be to remove him from the race…
Chewing the inside of his bottom lip, he followed his assistant across the lab where they documented the chimp’s post-procedure condition, filled out the appropriate paperwork regarding the research, and did additional scans on the chimp to include in their files. By the time all that was finished, it was after five o’clock.
“See you in the morning, sir,” Hope said, offering a weak smile. But before she made it to the door, she turned. “Sir, if there’s anything you want to talk about—”
Ashby cut her off with a wave of his hand. “You’re a sweet girl, Hope. Never lose that. I’m fine. Or at least, I will be.”
“Today was a good day.”
He nodded, trying to remember that. But deep down, he knew his two best friends made it the worst day of his life.
Ashby didn’t go home. After a short call to Ashley’s cell, telling her he’d be staying at the lab tonight, but that her mom would be home, he settled in. He slept on a cot in the back of the lab. Or rather, he tried to sleep. Halfway through the night, he got up and found himself wandering down the hall. Mendi’s lab was a few floors down from his, and the area was dark and a little creepy as he made his way toward his former best friend’s workspace.
Part of him expected Mendi to be there. The other part expected him to be at his own house. But he hoped they wouldn’t do that in front of Ashley. Honestly though, he felt like he didn’t know the two most important people in his life at all. He never imagined they would betray him this deeply.
As he peered through the glass window on Mendi’s lab, he wasn’t sure why he’d thought that. All the signs were there. The way they got along so well, even after she’d chosen Ashby over Mendi. Of course they did. They never broke up.
“You’re a fool,” Ashby said aloud, looking into the space, searching for any sign of Mendi. Was he sleeping on a cot too?
But the dark lab revealed nothing. A few lights on along the back walls were just enough to show him no one was inside.
Years ago, when the duo first started working together, they’d exchanged keys to their labs. Just in case either should need something in an emergency. Ashby wasn’t sure what type of scientific emergency would demand that sort of access, but he was glad they’d done it as he slid the never-before-used key into the slot.
Closing the door quietly behind him, he gazed around the lab, using every ounce of self-restraint to not trash everything inside. Security cameras would reveal him, and then he’d never get the chance to best the man who’d ruined his life. If he didn’t leave a trace behind, there’d be no reason to check the footage in the first place. At least, he hoped not. His plan counted heavily on that little loophole.
He walked around the lab, set up similarly to his own. Although all his chimp habitats were empty, he had an island in the center for procedures, and his computer near the front of the room. His computer.
Ashby went to the machine, hopeful. If he could find something to debunk his research, the path would be clear for his robots. A speedy divorce would mean he and Ashley kept everything they got from his discovery, if he played his cards right. And Judy could have Mendi, in all his failing glory.
Hungry for revenge, he sat down at the machine, the glow of the screen giving his crazed expression an even creepier appearance. If his assistant saw him like that, she’d say he’d lost it. That this had broken him. But all
Ashby saw was revenge.
Mendi’s computer was locked. But it didn’t take long for Ashby to crack his code, now that he knew his big secret. Judy16. That was how old they were when they met. Sixteen.
Once inside, Ashby didn’t really know where to look. He started with his records. Data. Something had to be wrong. But of course, it wasn’t. Mendi was the most straight-laced guy. Adultery notwithstanding.
Ashby was still poking around as the sun was rising. He knew he’d have to get out of the lab soon. Mendi would be coming to work in the next hour or so. But nothing was jumping out at him. Everything had been done by the book. His research was flawless, and more than that, it was working.
In fact, his latest group of Alzheimer’s patients was not only progressing, but was also healing. Healing. He had notes that one family reported the patient even knew who they were. Regularly. She was starting to do things for herself again, like comb her hair. Ashby was horrified and mystified all at the same time. Not only had he managed to cure Alzheimer’s, but he’d also reversed it? Ashby’s bots couldn’t do that. Nor would they ever do that. They were seek and destroyers, not miracle workers.
Then, just before he clicked on a file that had a padlock symbol next to it, a thought stayed his hands. If he did find something to incriminate his friend, he would be depriving the world of his cure. His miracle.
What mattered more to Ashby—revenge or saving the world? Frankly, saving humanity was always Mendi’s thing. All Ashby ever wanted was the money to live comfortably, and without cares like the one he had regularly about how on Earth he was going to pay for culinary school. He never wanted to save anyone but himself.
The image of Judy frantically trying to dress flashed in his mind as he double clicked on the file.
Of course it was locked. He tried a number of passcodes to get into it, but nothing worked. In the end, he snatched a flash drive from Mendi’s desk and copied the files over, hoping someone in the university could unlock it. At eight AM sharp, he walked out of Mendi’s office, locking the door behind him. He kept his head down as he took the long way around to his own lab, trying to avoid running into Mendi.
The Dead Room Trilogy Page 21