by Talis Jones
Jez goes very still. “Like a bomb?”
I nod. “I thought it was just a figure of speech, but now… The the door opened too quickly for me to hide and Xi called me inside. He offered me a spot to work with him on his secret project, one he admitted included subjects like Sofia, and when I refused he threatened me.” A resurgence of immediacy yanks forth my tongue. “But that doesn’t matter! I went to the lobby to go out for some fresh air and ran into Convici and she told me to leave the building by five.”
“So,” Jez surmises reluctantly, “you think she plans on blowing this place up at five? Just to get back at Dr. Xi?”
I shrug not really knowing what I think or what to believe. Just weeks ago, I was in ignorant bliss, secure and happy in my life and my job. Now I’m drowning in conspiracies that seem too dramatic even for television.
“Mor…” Jez takes a steadying breath and I tense at what I suspect is coming. “I think you might just be stressed and overworked. You always do too much and now…maybe it’s caught up to you?” A single tear leaks from the corner of my eye and he rushes to continue. “Don’t you think it’s a bit much for Dr. Convici to blow up ZoiTech just to get back at him for snubbing her out of a contract?”
It is far-fetched. I knew it before and I know it now and yet… Something dark is lurking with each tick of the clock. I can feel it. I have been working too hard in an effort to impress Dr. Xi, but surely I’m not crazy. I…I know something is going on.
“She threatened an explosion, she mentioned ZoiTech being rubble at her feet, and she warned me to leave the building by 5pm because she wants to see me again. You weren’t there, you didn’t hear them or see her face when she talked to me in the lobby. I know it sounds crazy, but…”
I turn to Fitz, expecting him to look at me like I’m exactly as crazy as Jez is too kind to say. Instead his eyes are clamped shut, his face almost contorted in a shadow of pain.
“I thought you were her best friend,” he whispers.
“What? I am,” Jez retorts angrily.
Fitz’s eyes open slowly and I see horror in them. “Then believe her.”
Jez looks to me then back up to Fitz. “What are you talking about? I’m not saying she’s lying, just maybe jumping to conclusions a bit too fast.”
“Believe her,” Fitz repeats. Crashing into a chair he holds his head in his hands and I reach out to gently grasp his arm.
“Your father knows what Dr. Xi’s been working on,” I say staring hard at Fitz. “He’s a part of it.”
Without looking at me, he nods.
“I don’t know everything,” I prod. When he remains silent, I add, almost too low to hear, “Super soldiers?”
Jez snorts and Fitz lets out a heavy sigh, like he could expel a burden with a single breath.
“I don’t know everything either,” he admits, turning to meet my desperate gaze. “Bits. Pieces. Most I thought were just him being a zealot. Then last night… Last night I overheard a conference call he took. My place is far too big for one person, we set up in different ends so we wouldn’t have to interact beyond the front door or the kitchen. I never go over to his rooms, but I’d gotten a little drunk and wanted to talk to him. Yell at him probably.” He shakes himself sharply. “Doesn’t matter. I overheard him speaking with Dr. Convici. He made a deal with her.”
Every minute sound seems to strike like a gong in our ears, we hold so still waiting for Fitz to speak.
“Quit dragging it out,” Jez snaps. “This isn’t the time to be dramatic.”
“I’m processing,” Fitz bites back at Jez.
“You’ve had all night and all day to process!”
“Shut up, Jez. Just shut the hell up!”
“No, you’re freaking me out, man. What the hell happens at five??”
“Jez,” I say, trying to shift his attention and calm him down. When Fitz gets angry, he shuts down and we need him to keep talking.
“No, I want to know what fancyboots over here knows. If he knows about what sort of tacky supervillain plot his dad is hatching and won’t tell us because he’s worried about losing his pathetic allowance…” Jez’s anger is tinged in panic that matches my own and it’s making Fitz look closer and closer to exploding. “What? Afraid he’ll take away your golden toilet and you’ll have to piss in porcelain like the rest of us?”
“HE’S GOING TO KILL EVERYONE,” Fitz erupts. “My father…my father is going to kill millions.”
Jez and I sit there in utter shock, our mouths dropped wide open.
“What?” I whisper, my voice a quiver.
Fitz restores his composure far quicker than I. “From what I’ve gathered, he’s been working with Dr. Xi on a top-secret project for super soldiers, but it’s been progressing too slowly. He’s managed to develop something that seems to work on subjects under the age of fourteen with a now 62% success rate, but it isn’t enough.”
“Fitz…what about the others?” Jez dares ask the question I’d refused to even wonder.
Fitz grinds the heels of his palms against his eyes as if it can block out what he knows. “Under the age of twenty-five, most show no change. That percentage decreases with age.” He takes a shaky breath. “All age groups, increasing with age, contain a percentage of failure.”
I can guess, but I need to know. “What does that mean, Fitz? I need to know.”
With a decisive nod he lifts his face and focuses on me. “They die.”
“What the hell,” Jez gasps.
“Some progress slowly, others quickly, but they all eventually become feral creatures that die,” Fitz elaborates.
“Like freaking zombies???” Jez panics, clearly leaving behind any hopes or protests against ludicrous theories.
“No,” Fitz huffs. “Their aggression is simply heightened to the point of mania and the drug eventually overwhelms their system and they die.”
“What about the others? Not the asymptomatic, but the affected who don’t die?” I ask, slowly restoring myself to my comfortable zone of calm detachment when working on a puzzle.
“They…evolve.” Fitz shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s really the right word. I don’t know the details, just what I heard and then found in his papers when I picked the lock and searched through them while he was sleeping. I had to know.”
“Evolve?” Jez frowns. “What the hell does that mean?”
Fitz shrugs. “I don’t know. I saw some notes that mentioned things like increased strength, speed, thinking, the types of things you might want in a super solider though I don’t know if those were goals or reports. I had to look quickly, I’m sorry.”
“Did…” It’s a stupid, pointless question and yet I decide to ask it all the same. “Did you see anything about my niece? Sofia?”
“No, there weren’t any subject names,” he apologizes.
I expected the answer. I prepare to move on from it but then, “Wait. You have a photographic memory, don’t you? 112020R. Did you see that subject number? 112020R.”
To my surprise he gives a sharp dip of his chin. “I was just scanning through pages, I didn’t pay much attention to individual subjects, but I remember flipping through them. The top of each sheet had a number and status.”
“And?” I nearly want to hit him for not getting to the point. I know she wasn’t terminated because I saw her just this morning, but what did it say?
“Borderline,” he answers.
“Borderline?” My brow pinches as I puzzle over what that could mean.
Jez taps me sharply on the thigh. “Guys, the time.”
Ten
My neck snaps almost painfully as I twist to read the clock. If Dr. Convici hadn’t lied, then we have thirty-two minutes to evacuate. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Not for everyone.
“Why?” I demand, still at a loss with that essential question. “Why would Dr. Convici do this? Why would your father do this?”
Fitz shakes his head as confused as I am until suddenly his eyes widen and
horror mars his face. “You said Dr. Convici was originally a part of all this, she worked with Dr. Xi. She probably knows as much as he does. I told you my father is a zealot. He’s obsessed with restoring the borders, reuniting the nation into one country. I remember he said something about ‘from the ground up’ like a clean slate or something. Dr. Convici was developing a solution and my father would create the problem. He’s been working with both of them this whole time, willing to see which rat would win the race. Dammit!”
“Fitz?” I worry.
“Unity comes best from victory over devastation. Nothing gains pride like winning and nothing solidifies a bond like survival,” he grinds out. “Even better, he’ll have a massive pool to recruit soldiers from. Why wait for something precise and controlled? Nope, not my father. He’s always been more of the ‘Go big or go home’ type.” Fitz’s face contorts with disgust as he curses his father’s foolishness.
All of the blood has drained from my face. “We have to stop them,” I murmur.
“We have to begin an evacuation,” Jez agrees quickly. “Not just at ZoiTech, but the city. Maybe the county, I don’t know. How far could this spread if we can’t stop it in time?”
“It’s a gas,” Fitz shrugs hopelessly. “Gases expand. I’m sure if the concentration diminishes as it expands the effects will diminish with it…or so I’d assume, but I have no idea the concentration to begin with or how it will react in open atmosphere compared to a sanitized environment.”
“We can’t do anything about that,” I reason. “What we can do is begin an evacuation.”
“How?” Fitz demands. “Who will listen? How do we even reach them?”
I stare him down, my body cold but calm at last. “You’re going to use your connections, that’s how. You’re the son of the U.S. Secretary of State. Use it.”
“And if we’re wrong?” he asks. “We’ll be ruined.”
“Do you think we’re wrong?” I ask him honestly.
Discomfort ripples across his face, but he shoves it aside. “I’ll handle the evacuation,” he promises. “You try to find and disengage the bomb.” Trusting us and with no time to waste he runs out of the break room muttering words to himself like “news station” and “emergency bulletin.” Not a minute later we hear the fire alarm go off. He must have pulled it.
Jez and I scramble to our own feet rushing out before chaos can choke off our path.
“Any clue where to look for this thing?” he asks and I can hear the slight shake in his voice despite the deafening sirens.
I won’t crumple at the noise, the chaos, not this time. Not. This. Time. Grabbing his hand tightly I steer him towards Javi’s office. “We have to tell Javi to get Sofia and leave the city. Even if we stop this, I don’t know what Dr. Xi will do and I’m not risking her.”
Offering no protest we tear down the halls, shoving past employees dutifully following the motions they’ve learned so well from drills. Throwing open Javi’s office door I nearly sink to the floor with relief that he’s there and not lost in the throng of evacuating people.
“Javi, you have to get Sofia and Marissa and go!”
“Morgan? Jezriel? What’s going on?” His worried gaze looks between us, flinching slightly with each blast from the sirens.
“There’s no time!” I scream. “There’s a bomb and if it goes off, Xi’s experiment will taint everyone within its radius! They’ll turn crazy, you could die, you have to get out. Not just here, but town. Hell, get out of the state. Cross the border into the Coalition. JUST RUN, JAVI!”
“What about you?” he cries now thrumming with adrenaline.
I shake my head firmly. “Jez and I are going to try and defuse the bomb. We’re the only ones who know. Fitz went to try and evacuate as many people as he can. You have to go, Javi! Even if we’re successful, who knows what Xi will do to you or to Sofia? This is a direct sabotage against him, he’ll be furious, you have to run!”
Pulling me into a tight, rib-crushing hug he turns close to my ear so I can hear him over the noise. “We love you, sister.”
I nod and shove him towards the door begging him to run. Grabbing Jez’s hand again so we won’t be separated, and for the comfort it brings, I race down the hall taking a gamble that the bomb is somehow in Xi’s private lab.
Diving into the sea of people obediently churning down the stairs, I fight against the tide trying to make my way up instead of down and refuse to give the growing exhaustion in my limbs any attention. We aren’t going to make it. There just isn’t enough time and the stairs are too thick with people. Cursing the emergency protocol that sends the elevators to the ground floor before shutting down when the fire alarm is engaged, I double my efforts.
Finally reaching the top floor, grateful the building isn’t a skyscraper, I suck in a loud gasp of air as I stumble through the door onto the top floor.
“Dr. Xi’s lab?” Jez questions and I nod. “How the hell are we going to get inside?”
Just then one of his team members, identifiable by his green ZoiTech band on the arm of his lab coat, comes into view, joining the thinning stream of people headed for the stairs. Shoving my way towards him I cock back my arm and deliver a solid punch. People shout in alarm, but I snatch his badge and run hoping Jez will follow while a few others kneel down to help the poor fellow.
“Well, that’s one way, I suppose,” Jez laughs.
Reaching the lab’s door, I swipe the card and almost cry in relief when the light turns green and the door slides open for us. We pause for a moment, taken aback by the sight that holds dominion in the center of the large room. A table that looks more like a sacrificial altar with cuffs to restrain a body to it shines under the bright lights and above it are panels as if when lowered would seal the table in a box. A tall pipe curled over the table, almost like a showerhead, sends shivers down my spine because I know at once that’s how the gas is administered. The thought of Sofia being in here nearly makes me vomit, but I force myself to remain centered and turn in search for anything that might be a bomb.
“She, or whoever she has spying for her, probably strapped it to the chemical container,” I reason.
Jez nods and sends his gaze searching frantically with mine around the room. “I don’t see anything,” he growls frustrated.
My head tilts and I narrow my eyes, wondering. Slowly I approach the nightmarish table, something we both instinctually had avoided doing, and kneel. The altar-like table had struck me as odd and I regard the panels connecting the top to the floor with suspicion and a bit of hope. Scooting around the base I find a panel with a small hatch and I yank it open revealing a canister.
“That looks too small,” Jez observes from over my shoulder.
“Look,” I point, gesturing not towards the pipe that goes up towards that showerhead, but to the pipe connecting the canister to a hidden depth below. “It keeps going. Probably to the real supply. This is just to contain a measured dose, a safety precaution to avoid overdosing the…the subject.”
“Dammit,” Jez hisses. “Where the hell does that lead to?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I croak, all moisture suddenly gone from my throat.
“What?” Jez begins to protest then cuts himself off as he sees what I can’t stop staring at.
Tucked further into the hollow space beneath the bed is a tiny blinking light.
Jez scrambles up before returning a moment later with one of the emergency flashlights hung on the wall. Shining its beam inside, we’re met with the full face of the bomb.
“I think this is going to be a red or blue wire situation,” Jez murmurs in a failed attempt at levity.
“Maybe only Xi has access to wherever the main supply is?” I guess. “Whoever planted the bomb could only get this close but I bet it’s close enough to blast the real supply. It doesn’t even really matter what the blast radius of the bomb itself is. How much of this concentrated drug is mixed and available to hit the air? The water? The earth?”
We cro
uch in silence, our eyes transfixed by the steady counting clock. Sweat dampens my scalp, my palms, the backs of my knees, my back…everywhere is evidence of my terror as I stare down what may well be my ending.
“Help me find some scissors,” Jez says suddenly.
Not knowing what to say or what else to do I nod and clutch at the table to help my shaking legs stand.
“Our lab usually keeps basic things like that in the cabinets by the door so maybe it’s the same in all of the labs,” Jez suggests and I follow him over there both desperate and reluctant to start tearing them open in search.
As I reach out to the first cabinet I hear a beep and my feet are yanked out from under me. I let out a yelp, scrambling to regain my balance, my brain futilely trying to grasp what’s happening, when I’m suddenly thrown and land hard on my butt.
Looking up for my attacker I realize I’ve been tossed out of the lab and the door is sliding shut. “NO!” I scream, hurrying back to my feet but I slam into the door just as it seals shut. Jez stares at me through the glass window.
“Run, Morgan,” he commands before repeating himself with something almost like anger in his shout.
“No! Jez, open the door!” I plead.
“There’s no point in both of us being blasted to bits if I cut the wrong wire.”
“JEZRIEL.”
“I love you,” he says then turns back to face the bomb.
Stumbling back, my vision blurs as thick tears pour from my eyes. I can’t leave him here. If he fails…I can’t leave him here to die alone. We’re best friends. We do everything together. We never ever leave the other behind. And yet he refuses to look at me and logically I know it’s a stubborn waste for me to sit down and die when I could run and help my family escape. And so I run.
Each pound of my feet fills me with hatred at myself. Somehow this is all my fault. I know it is and now I’m abandoning my best friend to take the fall. I should be the one in there taking the risk, cutting the wire, either saving the day or dying in payment. But no matter how much I believe this my feet continue to carry me down the hall, they send me flying down the now empty stairwell and eventually racing through the parking lot, and I hate myself a little bit more with each step I take.