The Deepest Cut

by Conor Corderoy

  “What the fuck? I smashed your windpipe! What the hell did they do? Give you a new head?”

  He closed his eyes, shook his head and doubled up with laughter. “Man! You are soooo primitive…” His voice had changed again.

  I knew the voice. It wasn’t Rinpoche. I struggled, but he was talking again.

  “Be hip, man. Be cool. Things are not what they seem, cat. Free your mind. Get on the magic bus.”

  I said, “The VW camper… That was you. I thought I recognized you.”

  He was still wheezing a slow laugh, pointing at Maria, looking at me. “And she was in the van, man, all the time! I told you, get on the magic bus and find your love, but you ain’t listening, baby.” He stopped, doing a weird mix of nodding and shaking his head. “You are stone stupid.”

  I screwed up my eyes. “How do you do that? Who are you?”

  His face went cold and hard. His eyes were like pale-blue slits of ice. “What to do? I just like fucking with your head.” He leaned against the wall, watching me.

  I thought my eyes were losing focus from the blood pressure caused by being upside down. But I realized he was changing, turning a pale shade of gray. His hair was kind of withdrawing into his head and his face was becoming featureless.

  He said in that same neutral voice, “I’m a chameleon, Murdoch, just like Dr. Loss.” He glanced to his left. There was a door there. He said, “I think they’re coming now.”

  The door opened and Dr. Loss came in with del Roble and a big, powerful man in heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat.

  I said, “Dr. Loss? It was you, all along?” My head was spinning and things were beginning to make sense. Steve, Cavra, Loss…

  She glanced at me but didn’t say anything. They were talking in muted voices and ignored me, like it was normal to have a man hanging upside down in their office. They gathered around Maria and started prodding her face and her skin like she was a roll of beef. A crazy rage was beginning to well inside me.

  Del Roble glanced at me briefly then looked at the guy in the glasses. “Professor Banks, will you please tell us what will be your first procedure.”

  Banks nodded and Loss smiled at del Roble like she was thinking he was a bastard and that was funny.

  Banks was flexing his hands. He stripped back the sheet and exposed Maria’s body, naked and motionless. I could feel my heart pounding hard.

  Banks spoke. He said, “First we will go in through the vagina and take scrapings from the uterus and the womb. Then we’ll take biopsies of the ovaries. We assume she is fertile, but if she is not, we can do it artificially.” He had a mild South African accent.

  He started moving around her, feeling her thighs and her calves.

  Del Roble spoke to Banks, but he was smiling at me. “Who were you thinking of using to inseminate her?”

  Banks stopped and looked at him like he thought he was stupid because they had already talked about this. He gestured at the chameleon and said, “Stephan, as you suggested.” He moved up to her head, bent then peered into her ear. “We’ll drill through the top of the skull and insert the implants directly into the hippocampus. They will take root there very successfully.”

  I could feel the sweat dripping down my face and running into my eyes. My pulse was racing. I needed to get out of the chains and I had to do it in seconds.

  Banks glanced at me then turned his attention back to Maria. “And what will we do with the male?”

  Del Roble was enjoying himself. He was smiling openly now, observing me. He could see the state I was getting into. It clearly fascinated him and also obviously gave him a peculiar pleasure. He said, “Oh, I want him seminal to the beta program. But we are going to remove bits of him and study the emotional impact, Professor Banks. He has a very strong personality. He is very resilient. I want to know at what point he will break down emotionally.”

  Banks was studying him with interest. He said, “There are many studies on that subject, most of them from Mengeler.”

  Del Roble had stepped over to me and was smiling down into my face. He said, “I know. Nevertheless, I am interested in this subject. I think today we’ll remove the left hand. No need for anesthesia.”

  Banks turned back to Maria. “As you wish.”

  Del Roble said, “I think we’ll do it first. Now. Let’s observe the conflict. His struggle over which hurts him more, the emotional pain of seeing what happens to the woman or his own physical agony and loss.”

  Banks shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting. Yes.”

  Loss giggled. It was a weird thing to watch.

  She said, “This is the downside of feeling so intensely, I suppose. Isn’t it, Murdoch?”

  I held her gaze. I said, “You may be wrong.”

  Del Roble gestured to the chameleon Stephan and said, “Golika! Come, help.”

  The chameleon seemed to acquire color and shape as Rinpoche and walked over to stand at my left shoulder, while del Roble stood on my right. Loss came and stood in front of me. There was a strange, moist sound and I realized she was licking her lips.

  She smiled into my face and said, “You don’t mind if we taste some of your blood?”

  I held her stare. Something bad was happening inside me. I was aware I was being pushed past a limit I didn’t want to cross. But I also knew we were past the point of no return. She blinked and I noticed with disgust that she had vertical eyelids in her eyes under her normal ones. I felt del Roble grab my wrist and start undoing the cuffs.

  Golika-Rinpoche, the chameleon, grabbed my other wrist and Banks selected a scalpel and said to Loss, “Get a bowl to collect the blood. We’ll all have a drink.”

  She moved off to get the bowl and del Roble held my right arm tight. I let it go limp. Golika wrestled my left arm around to the front, with my hand turned palm up. I was making a show of struggling, but I could feel panic as well as hatred welling up inside me.

  Banks said, “I must get a tourniquet.”

  Del Roble smiled and said, “No, we want pain, Professor. Use the blowtorch. We want to see how far we can take him.”

  Banks nodded and raised a finger, like he was thinking. “Ah, yes, splendid idea.”

  There was a kind of banal normalcy to what they were doing that was making me crazy.

  He raised his voice slightly and said to Loss, “Oh, Doctor, could you bring the blowtorch?”

  Then he stepped over and looked down at my wrist, palpating the joint with his left hand, finding the right place for the incision. I could hear my own breathing. It was loud and shaking. Loss came back with a steel bowl and a propane blowtorch. She put the bowl on the trolley.

  Del Roble said, “Light it.”

  Banks said to Golika, “Hold firm.”

  I did the only thing I could do. I opened the floodgates and let the panic take over. I screamed at the top of my voice like a thing gone crazy. I whiplashed my body and wrenched my left arm forward, twisting and grabbing Banks’ wrist as I did so. Golika staggered. I used Banks as purchase and all my wild panic to give me strength. I twisted my right arm and grabbed del Roble’s face. I was still screaming but I could hear del Roble’s cry of pain louder than mine as I pushed with all my strength against his face and Bank’s wrist then thrashed and whiplashed my body again, up toward the ceiling.

  It was a forlorn hope, but it was the only one I had, and it paid off. I managed to raise myself the two inches I needed and kicked my chains off the hook, then all my two hundred and twenty pounds came crashing down toward the floor. Del Roble pulled his bleeding face away from my hand. Banks felt his arm torque, dropped the scalpel, staggered and fell forward with me, and Golika-Rinpoche collided head first with him as he came down, too.

  I had no idea what was behind me. I didn’t really care. I figured that whatever it was, it had to be better than what I had in front of me. It turned out to be five trolleys, two lab coats and a wide assortment of lethal instruments. As we fell, I could see Rinpoche’s face, his eyes bulgin
g, his teeth gritted and his neck swollen to twice its size. He was scrabbling for the scalpel where it had dropped between two overturned stands. Banks had fallen on him. He was heavy and strong. There was a shout and a grunt. My hand found the scalpel. Rinpoche clawed my face. Banks tried to scramble to his feet, pushing on Rinpoche. Rinpoche sprawled. The trolley went flying and I slipped between them, but I had the scalpel. I didn’t aim. I just rammed it in Golika-Rinpoche’s face. Hard.

  The scream was horrific. His skin turned ash-gray. All his features disappeared and his skin seemed to ripple in scale-like folds. He was like a huge gecko on its hind legs, lurching back, clutching at the scalpel that was stuck, wedged in his cheekbone.

  Banks was holding his head, swearing and spitting at me, “I am going to kill you!”

  Del Roble was clutching his bleeding face and cursing, “Me cago en su putisima madre!” and Loss was staring from one to another of these three heroes. I leaned forward and loosened the clasp around my ankles. Then I was on my feet and people were going to die.

  I didn’t think. I grabbed a trolley and smashed it across Golika’s head. He dropped and stopped screaming. Loss was next on my list, but as I turned, I saw her hitting Banks over the head with the propane canister. He went down when del Roble looked up. His eyes bulged as he stared at Loss. She swung and bashed him on the temple.

  We stood staring at each other. She threw the propane bottle down and her skin crawled and shifted like Golika-Rinpoche’s and she was Joanna. My head was spinning. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to kill.

  She snarled, “Stop fucking staring at me and help!”

  Before I could move, she had turned and pulled the sheet up over Maria’s face. I said, “What the—”

  She snapped, “Put a lab coat on. Fast!”

  I bent and seized a scalpel from the floor. I took two steps toward her, throwing twisted trolleys out of the way. I was going to gut her right there and then, but she held my eye as I approached. She didn’t flinch.

  I hesitated and she said, “You love her. Whatever that is, I get it’s a big deal for you. If you want her to live, get with the program. Drop the fucking knife.”

  I snagged a lab coat and put it on. I said, “My things—”

  She pointed. “The chair. Move!”

  I grabbed my Sig, my cell, my Camels and my Zippo. I left the tracker where it was on the chair. I turned to her. “I need photographs. And videos…”

  She stared at me like I was crazy. “What?”

  I barked at her through gritted teeth. “Listen, sugar. Maybe you don’t give a shit, and I’m no saint, but in my book, massacring and enslaving nearly eight billion people is something you shouldn’t do. And all it takes for you motherfuckers to get away with it is for me to do nothing!”

  Her face flushed. She rasped at me, “We need to get out of here.”

  I kicked a trolley out of the way, leaned across Maria’s motionless body and captured a fistful of Joanna’s throat. “To where? Where are you going to go? Where are you going to hide? And for how long before it’s all over?”

  She held my eye and croaked, “Let go of me.”

  I gripped harder and yanked her close so our heads were touching. I could see her inner eyelids and the weird formations of her pupils. I growled, “I need proof!”

  “Okay! I can give you proof. Now for God’s sake, let’s get out of here.”

  I shoved her and she staggered back, crashing against the wall. I said, “Go to hell.”

  I pulled the Sig and cocked it. She held up both hands in front of her. She looked genuinely scared.

  She said, “No! Wait! Okay, we’ll get photographs and films. Just calm down.” He skin was turning a weird gray, like Golika’s had. She said, “There’s an underground loading bay. The road takes us out into the desert near the main highway. We’ll go down there and steal a truck. On the way, I’ll take you through the labs…”

  My mind was racing. I said, “What proof can you provide?”

  She shrugged, clearly feeling on safer ground. “Anything you need.”

  “You a senior officer?”

  She frowned. “Pretty senior…”

  I jerked my head toward the door. “Let’s go. Get something to put on Maria. I’m not taking her out of here naked.”

  We pushed out into a long, empty corridor in absolute silence. Joanna grabbed some work garb from a nearby storage closet. We hurriedly dressed Maria, then we moved along at a quick pace.

  Joanna glanced at me and said, “Will you stop looking at everything? You’re like a damned tourist. Keep your eyes on the trolley and do as I say.”

  We came to an elevator and waited a minute. The doors slid open and we rushed in. There was a guy who appeared to be in his sixties. He smiled at Joanna and looked down at the trolley. Apparently, I didn’t exist.

  He asked, “DH?”

  Joanna shook her head. “BC implant.”

  He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, nodding. “Export?”

  She said, “NWDS.”

  He smiled. “Exciting.”

  The elevator doors hissed open and we hurried out into a corridor that might have been the one we’d just left. I followed her a moment and she reached back with her right hand, not looking at me.

  “Give me the clipboard from the end of the trolley. We are going into a lab. If there is a supervisor, do nothing. Understood? If there is no supervisor, you can film and take photos.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was six-fifty-eight. We would soon be running out of time. She nudged the trolley and we pushed through a set of fire-doors into a long room with maybe a hundred people, men and women of varying ages, sitting at desks in front of screens with earphones plugged into their monitors. The screens were playing all kinds of images, and the viewers were staring at them intently. There appeared to be no supervisor. I glanced at Joanna and she pointed to a bank of larger screens at the end of the room.

  “Film me.” She waited while I got out my cell. When I was recording, she pointed to the bank of screens on the far wall. “Those screens monitor the electrical and chemical activity of each of their brains…”

  I walked over and filmed several of the screens. They showed 3D representations of the subjects’ brains rotating east to west and south to north. In the margins and below, there were annotations about neurotransmitter levels and synaptic activity, as well as other notes I could not understand.

  Joanna was by my side. “Film a couple of the subjects.”

  I glanced at her and began to walk down the aisles, filming the people at the monitors. “Their subjective functions—visual, auditory and kinesthetic—are all being dictated by the input data. As they visualize, create auditory hallucinations and trigger chemical, emotional anchors, they generate neural networks which govern their behavior.”

  I closed in on one of the screens. It looked like a newsreel. I said, “You are mapping their brains?”

  “Generating maps in their brains.” She smiled then snorted. “The beta version went live in 2000. We have been developing it as cells, tablets and TVs.”

  I felt sick. I said to her, “So, how do you control the chemicals in the brain? What is it? Water supply? Food?”

  She shrugged. “Industrialization has made that kind of thing much easier, but we actually do a lot less of that than you’d think. The brain is a chemical factory. By controlling the images, narratives and dialogues you have in your head, we can make you produce the chemicals we want you to produce.” She smiled. “Lots of dopamine and lots of serotonin to keep you volatile and dependent.”

  I stared at her, trying to assimilate the magnitude of what she was saying. Finally, I said, “So, the giant cannabis trees?”

  She shook her head. “Come on. Let’s go before we’re seen.”

  I followed her out and along the passage again. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she could be leading me anywhere, but I kept telling myself she had her own agenda, and for now it seemed to be compatib
le with mine.

  We came to another elevator. This time we rode it alone, and as we were descending she said, “Those weren’t hybrids that you saw. Those were people, normal people. We pick them up at random. Some we take for a night. Some we take for a week or a month. Some we take for a lifetime. Most of them we take repeatedly, on a regular basis. They are experimental subjects.”

  The elevator stopped and when we stepped out we were in a vast, cool, underground chamber. It was dark, but through the gloom I could see a dense forest of cannabis trees, maybe thirty-feet high. There was a sighing, rustling sound from the giant leaves, and somewhere you could hear the trickle and splash of a stream. I looked up but the roof of the cavern was lost in shadows. I said, “What the hell is this place?”

  She seemed not to hear. She continued talking as though I hadn’t spoken, and I followed her, pushing Maria’s body down a winding track through the trees.

  “Most of them never know they have been taken. In many, we implant memories that are actually close to the truth. They believe they have been taken by a superior, alien race, and they must encourage humanity to accept the aliens, to save the environment.”

  I said, “Abduction syndrome.”

  She gave a weird scream of laughter. “Those very aliens who are feeding your greedy governments and industry all the technology they need to destroy that environment.” We were approaching large steel doors set in the wall of the cavern. “Aliens! You are the fucking aliens!”

  The doors slid open and we were in a vast lab. There were a hundred people, maybe more, in white coats—men and women, working quietly at benches, moving to and from electronic equipment and bench-mounted test tubes and what looked like microscopes.

  Beyond them, the lab opened out, as though it had no back wall, into a second vast cavern. Here, instead of giant cannabis trees, there was a forest of tall, glass cylinders, maybe ten feet high and five feet across, like the one that had held Maria. Each one was filled with green liquid and each had a body suspended in it.

  “Take your films and your photographs!” she spat the words at me.

  I stared at her a moment then began to film.