by JA Huss
“Just put them on,” says Johnny, who has already accepted a pair of similar gloves and is tugging them over his hands.
I look up at Logan and find him doing the same thing. Then he’s up, maneuvering back towards us, reaching for a thick rope coiled at Johnny’s feet. He throws it over the side of the helicopter.
“Oh… oh, fuck no. Fuck no. I’m not jumping out of this—”
But before I can get the words out Johnny is tugging the gloves on my hands. They are very thick. Something you’d see a welder wear. Or a fireman, maybe. Heat resistant. Because, duh, Megan. There’s friction when you slide down a rope.
This isn’t happening.
But then everyone is on their feet, Logan is looking down at the ground, and before I can even process that this really is happening, he steps out onto the helicopter’s landing skid, grabs the rope and… disappears.
I panic. Like my heart is beating super-fast, and I’m sweating like a motherfucker, and there’s no way I’m jumping out of this helicopter. No. Fucking. Way.
“You’re up,” Johnny says, yanking me to my feet and shoving me towards the open door.
I grab on to the seat, resisting, as two more guys disappear into thin air.
“Don’t fuck this up, Megan. I’m warning you,” Johnny says through his mic. And I’m just about to say something back—something along the lines of “go fuck yourself”—when he takes off his headset, snatches the headset off my head, and steps onto the landing skid, still gripping my arm tight, urging me to follow, so I only have two choices.
Resist and possibly fall out without holding on to the rope during the struggle, or do as he says.
I step onto the skid just as Johnny puts pressure on the top of my shoulder, urging me to bend down, then grip the rope when he hands it to me and scream up at him, “I don’t know how to do this!”
He leans into my ear and says, “It’s just like sliding down a pole.” And then he says, “Go!” as he gives me a little push.
I fall out.
I literally fall out. But I do still have the rope in my hands and somehow I keep a hold of it as I slide down towards the ground.
Waiting hands jerk me aside once my feet touch down and then Johnny drops right into the spot I was standing in one second earlier.
“You’re fine,” he says, unclipping the helmet from my waist and putting it on my head. “Just do what I say and you’ll be fine.” He buckles the helmet under my chin. And then… we’re running. He’s got a hold of my upper arm and we’re running through the thick, tropical jungle.
I don’t know where I am or what we’re doing. The only reason I gave Johnny the coordinates to this place was because they told me too. They knew he was down here looking for an island.
That’s why they left me in that prison. They knew he’d show up there. And luckily for me, he did. But I’m now one-hundred percent certain that my Way handler would’ve let me die down there if he didn’t.
But this… assault? This was not part of my plan. My plan was to lead him here and then people would be waiting for him. After that… I dunno. There was a meeting planned or something. I was not supposed to be dragged into the jungle with a team of mercenaries and I don’t quite understand how I went from a luxurious superyacht passenger to a jungle aerial assault soldier in the span of thirty minutes.
The building comes into view too soon.
I’m relieved there is a building, to be honest. Because I was making that whole story up yesterday when I described this place.
I glance at Johnny, trying to gauge what he’s thinking right now. So far everything I told him seems to be checking out. But that’s just pure luck. And you know what they say about luck? Always runs out eventually.
He doesn’t even look in my direction.
I’m not ready for this. I’m suddenly very, very nervous. My heart is beating so fast, I think I’m getting dizzy. And I’m so damn hot in this tactical gear, I feel like I’m swimming in sweat.
Fake Johnny and Fake Megan are already at the door. They’ve spray-painted the security cameras and now the guy is pulling large, square chunks of what looks like clay out of the duffel bag I saw the woman heaving onto Johnny’s yacht a few hours ago.
They shove them up against the lock on the door, hastily fucking with wires.
“Do it,” Johnny says.
And that’s when I realize what she’s carrying.
Explosives.
Johnny tugs me backwards, almost pulling me off my feet, and then—
Boom!
The door is open and everyone around me rushes forward.
Someone grabs my arm. I turn, expecting it to be Johnny, but when the cloud of smoke dissipates enough to see, I realize it’s not him. It’s one of Logan’s men.
He grips my arm tight. Like… way too tight. Even under the heavy fabric of the shirt I can feel the bruise forming on my skin.
“Hey!” I say, trying to jerk away.
But he just grips me harder and pulls me inside the building.
This is when I realize—he’s on to me.
Johnny Boston is on to me. He knows I lied. He knows I lied about everything.
Still, there’s no time to think about that. Too much going on. Too many people. Shooting, and yelling, and I realize I’m yelling too.
“What are you doing?” I scream. “We’re just looking for maps!”
But nobody cares about me. Or it’s possible they can’t hear me because there’s so much noise in the small confined space of the first hallway.
I’m tugged along. Johnny is yelling up ahead. Loud, angry threats spill out of his mouth when I’m pulled into the lab.
Johnny is holding a woman captive in his firm grip. A syringe pointed up at her neck. “You want this? Huh?” He’s asking her. She’s shaking her head vehemently. “Me either. But that didn’t stop you from trying to stick it in my neck, did it?”
“Please,” she squeaks. “You’re not supposed to be here! It was just a sedative! You’re not—”
Johnny pushes her aside, looks at the syringe for a moment, then spies a cap on the floor at his feet. He caps the needle, shoves it into a side pocket of his pants, and yells, “Take off those fucking masks and those fucking veils! Right the fuck now,” he commands. “I want to see all your sick faces!”
Everyone in the room takes off their white masks. The two women also remove their veils. They’re in shock. Breathing hard and looking around like they were just dropped into a nightmare.
Welcome to my world.
But Johnny’s already moved on and is talking to an older man of Asian heritage. One of Logan’s men shoves him against the bank of computers as Johnny yells, “Open the fuckin’ files!” He’s holding a gun to the side of the man’s head.
“What’s going on?” I yell. “Why are you doing this? I thought you just wanted maps!”
Johnny looks at me with such hate—such venom in his eyes—that I shrink back and bump into the hard, armored chest of the guy I am now starting to think of as my keeper.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Johnny says. Then looks back at the Asian man again and says, “Do it. Now.”
One of the women says, “What’s going on? Why are you—”
She doesn’t get any farther than that. Fake Megan, still in her red bikini, though she’s now wearing an armored vest over her chest, elbows the scientist in the kidneys, then shoves her so hard she goes careening into a chair and ungracefully, and almost in slow motion, crumples to the floor in a heap.
“What the—” I start to yell. But Fake Megan has turned her attention to me and I shut up.
“I’m running out of patience,” Johnny says to the scientist, still pressing the gun up against his temple.
The man hastily slides into a chair and taps on the keyboard. He groans, breathing heavy. Frantically backspacing because he’s so scared, he can’t hit the right keys.
Johnny leans over his shoulder and whispers, “What’s your name?”
“Do not fuck with me, Peter. Understand? Because I’m not messing around.”
Peter swallows hard and starts nodding his head. Then slowly and carefully pecks out the passcode that will open the files.
The genetics database springs to life and Johnny pushes Peter out of the chair. Peter doesn’t even try to stop his fall. Just decides to go with it and ends up on the floor, partway under the desk.
Johnny sits in Peter’s chair and starts typing. Then takes one moment to glare at me. And I’m talking glare at me. And I swear to God, I almost pee myself when I meet his gaze. Because this man here in this lab? The one wearing tactical gear, and holding a gun, and pointing it at people, and making it very clear he will do whatever it takes to get what he wants?
I don’t know him. He’s not the guy I spent last night with. Not the one who bought me presents and tied the gold ribbon around my wrist.
The only thing I know right now is that Johnny Boston has opinions about me. New opinions. Very well-thought-out opinions and I’m not sure I want to know what they are.
Johnny looks back at the man on the floor and says, “Get up, Peter. And show me where Megan’s data is.”
My stomach drops and I have to swallow hard in order to keep the fear vomit down. Because like it or not I’m about to hear those new opinions he’s got of me.
“Who?” Peter cries out. “Who’s Megan?”
Johnny looks at me again. Narrows his already narrowed eyes. “You’re Megan, right?”
I swallow and nod, then whisper, “I swear to God, I am.”
Johnny turns to Peter, who has been lifted to his feet by Logan. “Do you know her?” Meaning me.
Peter opens his mouth to speak but I quickly say, “Listen to me for a minute. Just—”
But the barrel of the gun in Johnny’s hand is no longer pointing at Peter’s head, it’s inside his mouth. Shoved so far inside he’s gagging on it. “Megan,” Johnny says in the most calm, nonchalant voice ever, “you say anything else but ‘Yes. I understand’ and I blow this guy’s face off. You get me?”
I nod and whisper, “Yes. I understand.”
“Good,” Johnny says, then withdraws the gun from Peter’s mouth. “Do you know her? Does she work here?”
Peter is frantically shaking his head. “No. No, I’ve never seen her before.”
Oh, the hate. The hot fire inside Johnny’s blue eyes when he looks at me.
“I can explain,” I say.
But before I can even finish, Johnny shoots the man in the head.
No one screams. No one runs. No one says a goddamned word. I back up, hand over my mouth. But no sound comes out and I don’t get far, because I bump in to a hard, armored chest and take a step forward.
I’d like to think that all the people on my team are stunned silent at this crazy turn of events the way I am. In shock and unable to speak.
But they’re not. Logan just points his gun at a young man in a white lab coat. My keeper holds tight to my arm. Fake Johnny is pushing a bigger guy—probably security—face first up against a wall with a gun pressed to the back of his skull. Two of the other guys are pointing assault rifles at a group of cowering men and women of various ages.
Everyone I came here with is totally fine with what just went down.
And every one of them is ready to do the exact same thing if Johnny gives the word.
Johnny swivels the chair to look at me. “Do you work here, Megan?”
I don’t know what to say.
“If you make me ask again, I’ll shoot someone else.”
“I really do work in a lab!”
“Megan,” he says. Forced patience oozing out with that one word. “Do you. Work here?”
“No,” I sigh. “I don’t work here. OK? I was just—“
“Oh, fuck that,” he says, pointing the gun at me. “No. You don’t get to explain yourself now. The time for that is long gone. Understand me?”
I swallow hard and nod my head.
He smiles and stands. “Good. We’re all on the same page now.” He points his gun at the woman Fake Megan elbowed in the kidney. “You,” he says. “Get up, sit in this chair, pull up all the data, and then copy it onto this drive.” He tosses a drive onto the desktop.
Fake Megan pulls the woman up and shoves her in the direction of the chair. She practically falls into it and starts typing.
Doesn’t say one word as she works.
A few seconds later she grabs the drive, shoves it into the tower, and a progress bar appears on screen as all the data in the lab is copied onto the drive.
When it hits one hundred percent Johnny grabs the drive and says, “Thank you for your cooperation.” Then he looks at Logan and nods his head in my direction as he says, “Take her out with your team. I’ll follow you out in a minute.”
Logan nods. “Got it.” Then he says, “You heard the boss. Everyone out.”
I am shoved towards the door as people begin getting to their feet.
But then Johnny says, “Oh… no. Not you guys.”
I turn my head and yell, “What are you doing?” as I’m pushed, and shoved, and pulled down the hallway.
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t need to.
I know what happens next.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - JOHNNY
Logan hangs behind as his men—and one woman—shuffle towards the door with Megan in tow.
Together we watch them leave, then, once the sound of their boots has faded, he turns to me. “OK. Now what?”
I turn back to the crowd of scientists. They’re not begging for anything. There’s no pleading, no crying, no deal-making.
Which means they know me. They know why I’m here, they know what they’ve done, they know what comes next.
I sigh and point to the older woman who was pushed to the floor earlier. “What’s your name?”
“Jane,” she squeaks.
“OK, Jane. Just to confirm,” I say—aware that my voice is cold and comes out tired and resigned like this is just another day at the office. Totally confirming their suspicions that I’m a sociopath—“you did or did not recognize that woman in the tactical gear who just left?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head in short, quick snaps. “Never seen her before.”
“So she does not work here? She didn’t run longevity experiments on rats in this lab?”
The woman looks confused for a moment. “Not… here. No. I’ve never seen her before. And we don’t do those experiments here. We’re just—”
But I hold up a hand—the one with the gun—and she shuts up. “I’m not interested in what you do here and I don’t want to hear your justification for why you do it. What I am interested in, and what I do want to know, is this—where are you keeping the women?” She opens her mouth to speak but I point the gun right at her face. “Think hard before you lie to me, Jane. I’m not in a real good mood right now.”
Jane nods her understanding, then swallows as she points to a wall. “Through there.”
I study it closely. See the almost invisible seams that indicate that there’s a secret door. Where it leads and what’s going on back there is anyone’s guess.
Speaking of guessing. That’s all my question to Jane was. Just a guess. And even though it was the correct one, I’m not very excited about being right. “OK,” I sigh. Because shit just got a lot more complicated. There’s people behind that door and I’m not sure I’m ready to meet them.
I turn to Logan. “You want to come? Or you want to stay out of it?”
He raises his eyebrows at me and lets out a long breath. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
I nod, then wave the gun at the wall. “Everyone, please get up. Jane here is going to open the secret panel in the wall and then we’re going on a little field trip.”
The sounds of whispering and feet shuffling as everyone gets up.
“I have to warn you,” an older man says.
“You can’t—”
“Shut up, Darrel!” a younger man yells. “For fuck’s sake! Don’t just roll over and tell him—”
I shoot that guy in the head and he splatters all over a computer monitor. Then I turn to Darrel. “You were saying, Darrel?”
And I have to give this dude credit. All of them, really. They do not scream, no one faints, there’s not even a collective horrified gasp. They are true, hardcore Way employees till the end.
“I… I… was going to warn you about the infectious nature of the inner… rooms.” He says ‘rooms’ like he doesn’t usually call them rooms. “I understand you might be looking for someone specific, but even if you find them, you must not open the doors. They’re contagious. This is a level four biosafety facility.”
“Is the air contagious?”
“Not in the hallways. But again, if you force us to open the doors to any of the… rooms, you will die here, Mr. Boston.”
Mr. Boston. So he does know who I am. Interesting. Or sad. Depends on your perspective, I guess.
“These… patients are in the final stages of their… course.”
I do not even want to know what that means so I don’t ask. I just say. “Understood.”
Darrel nods. His fleshy jowls bobbing with his head. “OK,” he whispers. “I’ll go with you. But only us two.”
I smile at him. “Darrel. Come on now, man. You know that’s not how this works.” I point the gun at the whole crew and say, “Go on. Get in line. We’re all taking this trip together. How many personnel are back there?”
“Just one lab tech. She has nothing to do with this—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Logan says. “She has nothing to do with this? Are you fucking kidding me right now? She’s the one behind the wall doing whatever it is you people are doing back there.”
“She’s just a kid,” a woman says. “She’s just a tech, that’s all. She’s brand new. She just got here last night for a sample audit and—”
I stop listening because I’m thinking about Megan now.
I was just a kid. I just… processed them.
Accounting. Not keeping of money, but people. So this girl we’re about to scare the shit out of is probably just another Megan.