The Immortality Code

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Thank you,” said Reed.

  “You’re right on time,” said Serrano, who appeared to be the merc in charge. “Follow us.”

  Reed and Allie crossed the threshold and were joined by four additional men, all six heavily armed. Serrano led the way, escorting them to the spacious study on the ground floor. Reed guessed this was where the captain would introduce the rest of his mercenary team to them, and brief them on the current status of the newly operating security system.

  The door was already open when they arrived, and Serrano stopped and gestured for them to enter.

  Reed’s eyes widened in surprise as he did. Eleven military rucksacks were spread out along the edges of the room. In the center, a small banquet table had been set up with an assortment of drinks and hot hors d’oeuvres. Three chairs were arranged around the table, and a man was standing next to it with a look of anticipation on his face, as if he had been eagerly awaiting their arrival. A man in his forties, with a receding hairline. He was also carrying an extra twenty pounds around his middle, making it unlikely he was a mercenary soldier.

  “Welcome,” said the unexpected resident with a broad smile. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” He gestured toward Allie. “It’s an honor, Dr. Keane. I assume Commander Reed has filled you in, but I’m sure you’ll have all kinds of questions of your own.”

  Reed blinked in confusion. He found the man’s appearance vaguely familiar, but his identity didn’t immediately register. But this wasn’t true for Allie, whose mouth hung open, and who seemed temporarily paralyzed.

  “Dr. Aronson?” she finally croaked out in horror. “How are you here?”

  Reed gasped, drawing his gun and pointing it at Aronson’s head before Allie had finished her sentence. He was about to shout freeze, when this same word was shouted behind him.

  He felt two guns pressed into his back, and when he twisted around, he noted that two other mercs were pointing guns at his head from just a few feet away.

  “Drop it!” shouted Serrano. “Now!”

  Reed kept his finger through the trigger guard and let the gun spin upside down before placing the weapon gingerly on the floor. How could this be?

  He stared at Bryce Aronson in disbelief.

  Apparently, the contents of Hoyer’s safe houses weren’t so identical, after all.

  PART 7

  40

  Zachary Reed stood in a large study in a residence in Texas facing a man he had vowed to stop, and tried to ignore the many guns pointed at his back and head. He needed to focus.

  But his mind continued to spin wildly. This had gone from the absurd to the surreal. How could Aronson be present inside a new safe house that Hoyer was certain was secure fifteen minutes earlier? How had Aronson turned Hoyer’s mercs against them? No one was that persuasive.

  Or were Aronson and Hoyer working together somehow?

  And here was a man who wanted them dead in the worst way, but who looked like he was preparing a wine and cheese gala for honored guests.

  Should he have shot Aronson, even while multiple guns were pressed into his back? Should he have gone down in a blaze of glory?

  Reed only had an instant to decide, and his gut had told him to surrender his weapon.

  The logic of his intuitive choice only came to him afterwards. If Aronson had wanted them dead immediately, they’d be dead. He could have blown a few landmines while they were on their way in. Or the mercs could have taken them out at the door.

  But for some reason he wanted to talk to them first. Perhaps an interrogation. To learn what they knew about Hoyer.

  But this didn’t seem right, either. Reed had been interrogated before. He had been tortured. But never had anyone tried to extract intel by preparing a spread of seafood-stuffed mushrooms and bacon-wrapped asparagus. And to be fair, Reed had drawn first.

  All of this flashed into his mind in mere seconds as two of the mercs pulled his arms behind him and ratcheted a zip-tie around his wrists.

  The commander stared deeply into the eyes of his antagonist, a psychopath who was without mercy, expecting to find his features twisted into a mask of cruelty and malevolence. But he found only a look of confusion instead. Aronson appeared to be just as shocked by events as he was.

  “How did you get these men to work for you?” Reed demanded of his captor.

  Aronson looked even more confused. “These men have worked for me for some time,” he replied, blinking rapidly. “And bringing them here was your idea.”

  41

  Reed’s jaw dropped open. How many times could his expectations, and his life, be turned upside down?

  He strained for all he was worth to remember seeing Aronson’s face in person, to remember hearing his voice. But as frantic and determined as he was, as forcefully as he racked his brain, he found nothing but endless darkness. He couldn’t manage to dredge up the faintest trace of a memory, even though his life and Allie’s might depend on it.

  Aronson studied Reed as if he were a puzzle. “Why did you pull a gun on me?” he said. “If you had planned a trap, you’d have sprung it before you arrived. And you had to know my men would protect me. So what did you think you were doing?”

  As Reed considered what to say next, the unmistakable staccato clamor of machine-gun fire erupted from one of the basement rooms. Reed’s heart leaped to his throat, and all eyes darted to a large monitor behind Aronson’s head, which now displayed a small-scale massacre. Two men had appeared, wielding automatic rifles and wearing military grade gas masks over their faces, making them look like human flies. They were spraying bullets wildly at the five mercs stationed in the basement, chopping them down like weeds, as return fire bounced off them, including head shots.

  Reed inhaled sharply. These two intruders were wearing invisible nanite bodysuits. There was no other explanation.

  In seconds, the blood-soaked bodies of all five mercs littered the floor, and the two men responsible turned their weapons on the surveillance cameras, seeming to know exactly where they’d be located.

  The feed vanished, but just before it did Reed identified one of the two masked assailants from his body type and movements alone.

  Tom Hoyer.

  How could that be? How could any of this be?

  Apparently, Hoyer wasn’t as present in Henderson, Nevada, as they’d been led to believe.

  “Masks on now!” shouted Serrano, and he and his five comrades rushed to where they had left their rucksacks, searching through them frantically for protection against a gas attack that was sure to come. While this was being done, Serrano barked orders for three of his men to guard the stairs leading from the basement to the main floor, and two others to stay behind with him to protect Aronson.

  “I don’t understand,” Serrano said to Aronson as his fingers flew through his stuffed rucksack. “We cleared the house. Checked for tunnels and hidden rooms. It isn’t possible.”

  Serrano found the gas mask he was looking for and rushed it over to Aronson. “Put this on!” he said as he began ransacking the ruck of one of his fallen comrades to get a mask for himself. At the same time, dozens of high-speed drones shot into the room and released a thick cloud of poison gas.

  Reed anticipated the release of the gas and held his breath. But Aronson and Serrano were preoccupied and failed to do so. Both were just seconds away from fitting a mask over their faces, but they were too late, collapsing into heaps on the floor.

  Allie Keane collapsed beside Reed a moment later. Noooo! he shouted inside his mind, barely managing not to scream out loud and inhale the gas himself. He dropped to his knees and looked for the rise and fall of her chest, unable to check for a pulse with his hands still bound behind him.

  He shot a quick glance at the monitor and noted that the three mercs sent to prevent an incursion from below were all down. Given the nanite body armor worn by the two assailants, they didn’t have a chance.

  Reed knew he didn’t, either. His hands were bound, his lungs were already bur
ning, and he was all out of options. Additional drones surged into the room and began firing darts at all inhabitants, standing or on the ground. Reed felt the sharp sting of a dart in his neck and knew that his time had come.

  As he fell to the floor, he felt an overwhelming sense of regret. It was a particularly cruel twist of fate to die now, just when he had found an extraordinary woman who had given him everything to live for.

  42

  Allie Keane awoke with a start.

  She was still alive!

  She found herself seated in a heavy steel chair with her arms bound loosely in front of her.

  She had been so certain she’d taken her last breath that she felt a moment of ecstatic relief, despite her current situation. How had being knocked unconscious become so commonplace?

  She opened her eyes a crack and took in her surroundings. She was in the safe-house study, the same room she had been in before. She spotted a gas mask and gas canister sitting on a lone chair in the corner of the room. But the study was barren otherwise. No bodies, or blood, or rucksacks in sight. And no table filled with treats.

  Cleanup on aisle twelve, courtesy of alien nanites, no doubt.

  Bryce Aronson was beside her on her right, trussed up in a steel chair identical to her own, but with his hands bound to the arms of the chair. He was conscious, with an anti-telepathy helmet strapped to his head, and duct tape sealing his lips.

  Zachary Reed was seated on a steel chair also, to her left. A surge of relief washed over her at finding him alive. His hands were also bound to the chair, and while he was still unconscious, his chest was slowly rising and falling, and he didn’t have a single mark on him.

  Tom Hoyer was in front of her, filling a small syringe with an unknown liquid. He walked the few steps to the commander and injected the liquid into his arm.

  Reed surged awake, just as she had, and his eyes shot open.

  “Finally,” said Hoyer, stepping back to inspect Allie and the commander. “I was beginning to think you two would never recover enough to be roused. Bricey here has been up for hours,” he added, emphasizing Aronson’s first name in contempt.

  “What’s going on, Tom!” demanded Allie. “How is it that Dr. Aronson is here? How did you get here? Why are we tied up? Why—”

  “Shut the hell up!” shouted Hoyer. “Jesus, how many questions can you rattle off at once? I get it. You’re confused. No shit. Don’t worry, I’m going to un-confuse you.”

  Allie shrank back. Hoyer’s demeanor had changed from what she had known in an instant. It was now dark, cruel, and arrogant. Sneering and superior. As if Hoyer’s previous persona had been nothing but an act.

  “Why were we out so much longer than Dr. Aronson?” asked Reed.

  “Why do you think?”

  Reed considered. “Because when the attack began,” he said slowly, thinking aloud, “Aronson must have directed his nanites to form a protective suit around him. So only the gas got through. The knockout darts bounced off. And the gas must be short acting.”

  “Very good,” said Hoyer in a demeaning tone, as if speaking to a child. “And even partially correct.”

  “Partially?” said Reed.

  “Bryce here has nanites streaming through his bloodstream. Turns out they have a maintenance and repair function also. Like having trillions of tiny MDs in your veins. I didn’t tell you about it because there wasn’t a need. Another higher-level capability that mine are encrypted from using. That he’s keeping from the world. Cut him and the wound heals before your eyes, as the nanites replicate his skin and other tissue and knit it back at a furious pace. Same with a broken bone. It’s quite a handy function. Even lifesaving. But not perfect. Shoot him in the heart or brain, burn him alive, throw him in a vat of acid, and he dies before they can complete repairs.”

  “So the nanites must also be able to detoxify poison,” said Allie in awe. “Metabolize gas and clear it from the lungs.”

  “Right,” said Hoyer. “So once I used the gas, I knew I had to hustle to get him tied up and a helmet on. The gas should have knocked him out for hours. But he was awake in just a few minutes.”

  “Is there an invisible nanite suit still around him?” asked Reed.

  Hoyer shook his head. “When I blocked his telepathy, they slid off and reverted to their standard cubic configuration. I don’t like wearing the glasses because they blur everything else, but the cube is a few feet behind him.”

  He paused. “But these aren’t the subjects I want to address right now, so let’s move on.”

  “Where’s the guy you were with?” asked Reed. “Your partner.”

  “He went to fetch three mercs I have waiting nearby. Five others are already here. I plan to replace the ones I just killed with men who are loyal to me. I don’t really need human security. On the other hand, I can’t wield the nanites when I’m sleeping, so I use mercs to man the night shift. I also like having men to order around. For what I pay them, they’ll do whatever I ask, including moving bags of heavy potting soil around. Menial stuff.”

  Hoyer smiled. “It’s nice that you’re concerned about my partner, as you called him. But don’t worry. He’ll be back any time.”

  “Why is Aronson’s mouth taped shut?” said Reed.

  “I don’t really need Bryce chiming in at the moment. Trust me, he likes to pontificate. And I can’t have him shouting out spoilers and ruining the show. Still, I want him to listen. This is the fun part for me. Detailing my superiority to brilliant peers. Not that I have any real peers, but this audience is as close as it gets. I’m like a master magician who has stumped all others in the field, finally ready to reveal my secrets. Or a chess master, if you prefer, demonstrating my prowess.”

  Hoyer looked almost amused. “In case you haven’t guessed it,” he continued, “Bryce Aronson isn’t a psychopath. I am.”

  He paused to let this sink in. “And not just a psychopath, but a certifiable genius, in an ultra-high IQ, perfect SAT score sort of way. But guys like me . . . well, we tend to bore easily. The more brilliant, the more we need to set up challenges for ourselves. Keep engaged. Think Jim Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes. If we don’t pit ourselves against the best, things get dull pretty fast. Special forces filled this need for a number of years, but even that got dull after a while. So I managed to blackmail a key power broker operating in the shadowy underbelly of our military and government to get assigned to ET Ops.”

  He turned to Allie. “You and I have both studied psychopathy,” he said, pronouncing it as psy-cop-a-thee. “Me, to follow the old adage, know thyself. And you to make sure you were never fooled again.” He issued a sneering smile. “How’s that working out for you?”

  Allie’s face turned ashen, and a single tear came to her eye. He was right. How could she have missed it?

  Hoyer was charming, but in an understated way. As though he sensed that if he was too smooth, too charming, she might have suspected the truth. He was good with words. Persuasive. And obviously a brilliant liar who was brutally manipulative.

  Those without a conscience, without a soul, had a huge advantage over those burdened by ethics, self-doubt, and decency, as they were capable of epic displays of betrayal and duplicity, without fear, guilt, or remorse ever entering the picture.

  In retrospect, Hoyer had been too perfect. Too helpful and reasonable. Too unflappable.

  The same might be said of Zachary Reed, but there was a difference. Reed was clearly burdened by self-doubt, in a way that couldn’t be faked. He was perfect in his own way, but human somehow. Real.

  Allie flashed on a passage she had read from The Bad Seed, by William March, which summed it up best. “These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters. They presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself. Just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original
from which it had been modeled.”

  “Poor Allie,” said Hoyer in a patronizing voice. “I can tell that you’re distraught. But don’t beat yourself up. That’s my job,” he added with a smile. “If you’ve studied psychopathy, you know that a good psychopath can fool even the specialists who study them for a living. Even Robert Hare, whose life’s work was the study of psychopaths, reported being taken in by them. He wrote that on one occasion, a prison inmate had him so convinced of his innocence that Hare went to the warden to plead the inmate’s case, only to be shown gruesome pictures of the man bludgeoning his victims. Proving that the inmate’s every word had been a lie.”

  “Why do you sound so proud of that fact?” said Reed in disgust.

  “Because I am, Commander. If you studied psychopathy, you’d know that we couldn’t be prouder of who we are. Because we’re superior. Wolves among sheep. We aren’t held back by emotion or remorse. We can make the hard choices. If you had to choose to save your mother or three strangers, you’d save your mother. I, on the other hand, would do the right thing and save the three strangers.”

  “You’re a true hero,” said Reed in contempt.

  Hoyer smiled. “Most people don’t know this,” he continued, “but psychopathy is a physiological condition. Our brains are built differently. Wired differently. In a way that shows up on MRI scans.”

  “Different, how?” said Reed.

  “Psychopaths have significantly less gray matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles of their brains than do non-psychopaths,” said Hoyer. “There, does that help?” he added condescendingly.

  “What that means,” said Allie, “is that they’re deficient in areas of the brain responsible for empathy, fear, and distress. So they don’t care about others at all. They’re a hundred percent selfish, a hundred percent predatory, and never feel guilt, embarrassment, or fear.”