Absolute Zero

by Anlyn Hansell

  “Turn on the lights,” he commanded in a loud voice. Brightness assaulted her vision almost immediately and her eyes squeezed shut from the onslaught.

  Another grunt sounded causing her to force her eyes open, blinking rapidly, trying to focus on something beyond Rand’s shoulder. A metal…cage? Maybe a dog kennel? The chain link gleamed under the bright light. Fingers curled around the delicate metal. Movement caused the screeching sound to assault her ears once more.

  Rand moved to the side revealing a sight that made her narrow her eyes in confusion before recognition set in. Blonde hair in complete disarray, wild eyes in an otherwise pretty face. Thinner than the pictures; older, but still somewhat attractive.

  Shelby Collins stared back at her.

  “Shh..Shelby?” Anne whispered as her heart stopped beating for a split second.

  “Agghhhh!” The woman in the cage banged her open palms on the metal causing the screeching to intensify and the sound to echo off the stone walls.

  “Shut up!” Rand threw over his shoulder. “Please,” he added in a softer tone before turning his dark eyes to Anne once more.

  “She’s…you…I don’t know what…” Anne murmured.

  “I know. Shocking, right? I’ll give you a second to absorb this. I need to change.” He stood up and walked toward the door, Anne watched as Shelby’s eyes followed him. A low growl rumbled from the other woman’s throat.

  “Give her something to shut her up,” he told the small woman as he walked past and headed up the stairs.

  The woman walked over to the cage and grabbed a syringe from a table, pulling back on the stopper after inserting the needle into a small glass jar.

  Shelby fixed her gaze to Anne, huffing and blowing out air, her face contorting into a grimace before relaxing again.

  “HA…” she breathed out, slapping at the chain link before her head was thrown back and her body followed suit. The other woman yanked a cord attached to a collar around Shelby’s neck. As soon as her body hit the other side of the cage, the needle was plunged into her neck causing her to reach her chained hands up and make a grab for it. Within seconds, her body slumped onto the cot and her head rolled to the side. Her eyes were still fixed on Anne, though. Anne shifted her gaze uncomfortably.

  “Who are you?” Anne asked the younger woman.

  She ignored her question. She was by no means an attractive woman, girl, really. She was probably in her early twenties but she was definitely a drug user judging by her skeletal frame and sallow skin. She watched the girls’ movements as she threw out the syringe and recapped the bottle. Her hair was brown. Anne’s eyes widened. It would make perfect sense. Irene said her daughter disappeared the same night that Shelby died.

  “Kelly?” she asked. The name made the girl stop and her attention fix on Anne.

  “Who the fuck is Kelly?” she asked with a twist to her pale lips.

  “You’re not Kelly,” Anne stated, her brows scrunching together in confusion.

  “Kelly’s dead.” Rand’s voice rang out causing her attention to shift toward the stairs.

  “That’s not true. She still texts Irene…” Anne mumbled.

  That seemed extremely humorous to Rand for some reason. His perfect teeth were visible between his smiling lips. He was quite possibly the most hideous creature she had ever encountered, except for Sam…

  “Yes. I know. Best part? Ian’s going to have some serious explaining to do about that one,” he said before a laugh erupted from his throat.

  *****

  Irene stacked the papers before dusting the huge desk, sweat collecting on her brow as she worked. A cell phone lay in the middle of the desk causing a look of confusion to sweep across her face before she set it off to the side. Ian was gone. He flew out in the morning. It seemed highly unlikely he would forget his phone, but there it was, lying on the desk. She quickly wandered over to her own purse and pulled her own phone from the confines.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked herself out loud as she sank into his office chair. If he didn’t have his phone, he certainly wouldn’t be able to get her message. She stared at the phone on the desk, the bright blue casing looked…familiar.

  She began scrolling through her contacts.

  Why not? She tried every other day…She chose the most commonly selected contact in her small list.

  She hit the call button and all but jumped from the chair when the phone on the desk began to ring. Her eyes darted to both sides before leaning over to see her own number displayed on the screen in front of her. Her slack hands dropped her phone onto the desk surface with a thud.

  She just dialed Kelly’s number.

  *****

  Her car was in the driveway.

  She wasn’t answering the door. He knocked and rang at least a dozen times. He pulled the key out and quickly unlocked the front door, steeling himself for the onslaught of rotten words that would surely explode between them. Their entire conversation came back to him as he stepped into the front foyer, almost expecting a frying pan over the head or something equally painful.

  Nothing. Complete silence. Ian walked through the house, finding no trace of her whatsoever.

  She was gone. Her car was in the driveway but Anne was gone.

  Maybe she walked up to his house. Highly unlikely, but there was a chance.

  *****

  “Irene?” He yelled out as he stepped through the front door and slammed it behind him. He noticed the small compact when the town car drove up.

  He walked past the huge staircase and practically jogged through the rest of the house until something caught his eye in his study. He immediately stopped and backtracked to the doorway. “Irene?” he asked almost breathless. She was standing in the middle of the room with the strangest expression on her face.

  “Have you seen Anne?” he asked, taking a step in the room.

  “Explain this,” she held up something in her hand. It was black with a bright blue case.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a phone. It’s Kelly’s phone, Ian. What the hell are you doing with Kelly’s phone?” she asked in an icy voice as she took a step toward him.

  *****

  “You’ve been texting her all this time?”

  “Well, I had to do something. If she never contacted her mother, I’m sure all hell would break loose. I thought it was rather ingenious, myself.” Rand bit off a piece of the candy bar and reached his arm out to offer her a bite.

  She shook her head and continued to stare at the sociopath seated before her.

  “Your loss. It’s really good,” he stated with a full mouth before continuing. “I planted it on Ian’s desk. Maybe she’ll find it, maybe not, but if she does… That at least casts some suspicion his way, huh? Maybe buys me another day or two…”

  He was far too casual, far too comfortable with this entire situation, at least in Anne’s mind. He sat before her chewing on a candy bar as if this was just a normal conversation. As if they weren’t sitting on a basement floor in the middle of nowhere. As if the woman in front of him wasn’t shackled and bound to a wall.

  “To be honest with you, I thought we’d have more time, but…this whole situation just sucks. Why the fuck he decides to start coming back on a regular basis is beyond me. Everything was going fine and then wham! Here he is again, screwing everything up. I liked it sooo much better when he blew this facility off,” Rand huffed out before taking another large bite and chewing.

  “What am I supposed to do? Why am I here?” Anne asked.

  “Oh! Yeah. You’re gonna fix that,” he gave a jerk of his head toward the figure still slumped on the cot in the cage.

  Anne looked at Shelby, her eyes appeared glassy even from a distance.

  “I can’t fix that,” she whispered.

  “No shit. But you can make her more…agreeable.”

  “Why?” Anne asked.

  “Because I love her. And she loves me. That’s why.” Rand answered
simply as if it made all the sense in the world.

  “She has a brain tumor, it’s inoperable. I can’t fix that,” she stated as she stared at the blonde beyond his shoulder.

  “She doesn’t have a brain tumor. Not anymore. Ron took care of that.”

  “Ron?” Anne asked absently. Her mind poured over the notes, the formulas; the confusion in her mind as she had tried to decipher the contents of his binder. “Ron did this?”

  “He was supposed to destroy the tumor. He ended up scrambling her brain. That’s Ok, though. I gave him a taste of his own medicine,” he laughed out. “No pun intended,” he added after a moment.

  “You…did that to him?”

  “I did.” He actually seemed proud of himself.

  “He was starting to get weird on me. Fit of conscience or something. We found you. Well no, David found you. I had Ron work on your formula, but I certainly couldn’t be drilling holes into people’s skulls. What the fuck are you, anyway? Are you crazy? That’s some fucked up shit. I can’t be injecting anything into her frontal cortex. I told him to find a point of admin that I could actually access. He came up with the Pons. And now you’re going to administer it to her.”

  “Wait.” Her brain was trying desperately to catch up. “Did you say David?”

  “We went to Stanford together. I was hoping you wouldn’t piece that together but apparently you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you might be.”

  “I had no reason to think that was strange. It’s a big school…” she muttered.

  “David pushed to get you hired. He suggested your project. Did you know that? You were so perfect for this. How often do you have a successful neurosurgeon switch to pharma? Ron did but he probably had more malpractice suits than he had patients. He was a total hack, by the way. He was crazy before he was crazy. Does that make sense? He was so easy to manipulate,” he stated as he stared at the bound hands on her lap.

  “After Ron and his massive screw up, I needed something. David owed me big. I still had to compensate him very well, greedy fucker that he is. He’s a freak, by the way. Raped a chick in college and I was his alibi. He told me you’re a tiger in the sack,” he added with raised eyebrows.

  She flinched as if he hit her.

  “Oh! Come on, don’t be like that. He also said you’re very smart and very good at what you do. I have the utmost faith in your abilities,” he smiled.

  “I can’t help you,” she breathed out. “I don’t even know if this works…”

  “Oh, it works,” he stated quickly.

  “How do you…?”

  “It works, trust me.”

  “What?” She gasped out.

  “I found a test specimen – outside the normal channels, I guess you could say. The solution worked like a charm. I had to get rid of him, though. He was as an ex-con junkie anyway, who cares?” he shrugged his wide shoulders.

  Her hands reached up as her face hid behind them, her shackled wrists jangling loudly in the confines of the room.

  “I can’t…this is all too…” her breath whooshed out.

  “I know. And it’s sad, Anne. I like you. I really do. I don’t want to do this to you but it’s your own damn fault, you know. You’re too fuckin’ smart.”

  Her hands fell to her lap as her eyes connected with his. A small laugh jolted her shoulders before a full on manic giggle escaped her throat. It was the most surreal thing, hearing Sam’s final words come out of Rand’s mouth.

  “Is that funny? What’s so funny?” he asked in total confusion.

  “Nothing,” she shook her head before eyeing him warily. Unfortunately everything he was telling her made perfect sense. She would have never gone to Dunmed if she wasn’t blacklisted. David was the one to suggest the project and even pushed to get her the equipment she needed. At the time, she assumed he was being thoughtful. He was using her. They were all just using her. Rand put an awful lot of effort into this but why?

  “Rand?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me. Tell me why?” she asked in her most soothing voice.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this? Why would you…destroy people…for this?” she asked softly.

  “I told you! She loves me,” he pushed off the floor and walked toward the back of the cage. His hand stroked Shelby’s hair through the mesh as he looked down on her. She made no move whatsoever. In fact, her eyes were still fastened on Anne.

  “Her Daddy was an asshole,” he grated out.

  “That picture. In your office. You were looking down at her, weren’t you?” Anne asked as her eyes fastened on Shelby.

  “Yeah. Shay thinks I’m looking at her in that picture, isn’t that funny?”

  “What about Shay? She loves you. The kids love you…”

  “That’s unfortunate. I don’t give a shit about Shay. I never wanted kids. That was her idea. I was just trying to be the good husband. It’s all a huge lie. I always loved Shelby,” he continued to stroke her hair as he talked.

  “She fucked me over big time. She let me screw her but she just wouldn’t stand up to her old man. He was a bigoted dick. She was sooo worried about her image. I was All-State! The best quarterback, best student, perfect grades and I just didn’t have the right skin color, right, bitch?” he gave a quick yank to her hair, causing her head to tilt back.

  “So, I get a scholarship, I go away thinking maybe by the time I get back she might get her head out of her ass and then? Daddy dies. So sad. I was practically dancing on that asshole’s grave and then? Fucking Ian McClellan shows up and she’s all over him. I thought for sure we’d be together and I thought it was her Daddy, but you know what? It was her. She just used it as an excuse. I killed for you, bitch,” he slammed his palm against the metal cage causing her to blink a few times before settling back into a drugged state.

  “I did. George – Irene’s husband? Drunk ass George? He caught us. I was screwing her in the science lab and he walks in on us while he’s cleaning at night. She’s freaking out about her Daddy, so I took care of that shit. I killed him, made it look like an accident. Everything was Ok. Everyone assumed he screwed up because he had alcohol in his system. It was so perfect!” he continued to stroke her hair.

  Anne’s mouth opened and shut, her mind whirling. “You killed George?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t much of a loss. He was a loser anyway,” he justified with a shrug. Anne’s eyes only widened. He was truly out of his mind and yet he seemed like the same person that sat across from her in his office. Jovial, friendly even as he talked about killing someone.

  “Shelby told me to go after Shay. She did. She said she wanted to be with Ian but she wanted me to be happy. I married Shay just to show her. You know what she did? She came back. She was jealous. She was married to Ian and I was still banging her every chance I got because she loved it. Her limp dick husband couldn’t knock her up, so I poked holes in my condoms. I got her pregnant. I figured she’d finally have to acknowledge our relationship when she had the baby. Guess it would have been pretty obvious, huh? I never thought in a million years that she would abort the baby. I had no idea she was so fucking evil.” He gave the cage a firm slap. “Bitch,” he added causing Shelby’s head to snap forward.

  “I like to think maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. Maybe that thing in her head was screwing with her. I couldn’t lose her. I waited forever for her and she was going to die? No way. Ron injected his poison in her brain and I figured it was worth a shot, right? She was going to die anyway. Here she is, though. Two years later, alive but crazy as a loon. I can’t get near her unless she’s drugged up and even then she tries to fight me. We need to get out of here. We need to get out before they come looking for us. I can’t travel with her like this.”

  “What about Shay?” Anne asked in a quiet voice.

  “What about her? I left her. I lost my job and I up and left her. Big deal - happens all the time, right? Maybe she’ll think I wasted myself. I don’t care. I have
enough money to live on for a while. I’ll go far enough away that she won’t find me. She can sell the house, maybe get a job. I was sick of supporting her ass anyway,” he sneered.

  “I just wish I would have had more time to plan this better. Getting fired kind of accelerated this. I just can’t figure out why he started digging into this. He could’ve cared a less about this place and now he’s all up in my shit. I might have to kill him. I wanted to before, but I needed him. If he was gone, who knew what would have happened to the company? Now it doesn’t matter.”

  He pierced Anne with a narrowed gaze suddenly.

  “You look a little pale. What’s the matter? You couldn’t stand him either.”

  She tried desperately to school her features into a something bland although his words couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  “Yeah. It would probably look suspicious though. He fires you, you vanish; he ends up dead, probably not the best idea…” she mumbled.

  “I know. I would really like to kill him, though.”

  Shelby let a low moan, causing him to slap the cage.

  “Shut up. What do you care? You didn’t love him. Maybe I’ll kill him in front of you.”

  Anne and Shelby’s eyes connected again and it was almost as if she looked pained even in a drugged state. Did she love him? Anne’s eyes darted elsewhere. The realization dawned that she had been sleeping with a married man. Of course, he didn’t know he was married.

  “You hungry?” The woman’s voice carried down the steps. Rand looked at Anne. “Hungry?” he asked casually.

  Her stomach was practically tied in knots. She would probably throw up anything she tried to swallow anyway.

  “No.”

  “Not yet!” he yelled in the direction of the steps.

  “Who is that?” Anne asked.

  “Just a junkie I know. She’ll do anything you ask if you keep her supplied, works out pretty well,” he nodded.

  “What happened to Kelly?”

  “Kelly…she was a winner,” he scoffed. “I shot her up with some good shit, stuck her in Shelby’s car, followed her and ran her off the road. I doused the whole interior of the car. She was so messed up she didn’t say shit. You should have seen the flames. It was crazy. Burned like a mother…” he stated, obviously proud of himself judging from the sick smile on his face.