by Hadena James
“Why would Patterson kill Malachi’s stepfather?” Gabriel asked.
“Because Abigail was having trouble getting him to agree to a divorce. He wanted all the money back plus some. Said her son had ruined their marriage and had required him to have plastic surgery done, so he wanted to be compensated for that, but Abigail was a single mom of a psychopath. That’s trying enough without having an asshole fighting you in a divorce. I think my father talked to Patterson, and viola, no need for a divorce for Abigail. She’d become family to my parents just like Malachi had become family. As far back as I can remember, my parents collected strays. Eric’s friends, Isabelle’s friends, mine, the passing of my father didn’t change that, it just meant that my mom collected strays without Donnelly by her side. She adopted all of you guys with lightning speed. It’s just their thing, always was. They used to tell me family was about more than just blood, and anyone could be a relative if you got to know them well enough.”
Chapter Six
I WAS ON MY FOURTH bag of potato chips before Apex called. Gabriel was on his tenth or eleventh cigarette. I felt like my eating was grossing him out. However, I was ravenous. My stomach felt as if it had been empty for weeks. Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed to still be having trouble with what Raphael had done.
Cannibalism wasn’t anything new with us, but cannibalizing a living person, especially people as close as Raphael and I were to Gabriel, was. If I had been awake for any part of it other than the burning smell, it might have grossed me out. However, on the list of things I didn’t want done to me without my permission, a mild case of cannibalism wasn’t near the top. Killing and eating my mom was probably in the number one spot, or at least eating her was. At this point, I had survived being locked in a brazen bull that had a fire under it, I had survived an exploding carnival, I had survived my cousin August turning out to have vorarephilia, I had survived Malachi, who turned out to be a distant, distant cousin like twice removed asking me to marry him, I’d survived a date with Caleb, and I had survived being locked in the Fortress with the inmates running loose as well as the attack on the FGN. What was a little cannibalism compared to all that?
The caller ID showed the number two, that was it. There was no country code, no area code, no seven-digit phone number, just a two. Apex made calls through some kind of service so that they couldn’t be tracked. He had started to explain it to me once and I had made him stop. I was positive it was illegal, and I didn’t need to know.
“Kidnapped? Are you two and Nadine competing for the Damsel in Distress award?” Apex said as Gabriel answered it on speaker phone.
“What’s wrong with Nadine?” I asked.
“She was kidnapped, just like you. You can talk to her about it when you get out of your predicament.”
“What about Alex’s sister?” I asked.
“She’ll be safe, Vasilli and I had a chat while trying to decide who should rescue Nadine, him or me. We were enjoying a lovely meal of mushroom pelmeni when she saved herself from the mob and ended up at the restaurant her cousin owns, which happened to be were Vasilli and I were eating.”
“I get the impression you know Vasilli well,” I told Apex.
“Yes,” he answered.
“What are pelmini?” Gabriel asked.
“It’s a dumpling filled with meat, or cheese, or vegetables,” Apex answered. “In this case, it was a creamy mushroom filling and we had an assortment of them so that we could try them with lamb, fish, beef, cabbage.”
“Gabriel’s having food issues,” I interrupted him. “I don’t think now is the time to tell him about pelmini of any kind.
“Raphael poison him?”
“Not exactly,” I answered.
“I can speak for myself,” Gabriel snipped although some of the color had drained from his face making his smattering of freckles look like they were floating.
“We can discuss that another time. Malachi said this place had booby traps set up around it. Also, how do we get out of the bottom level of the bunker and into the main living quarters?” I asked.
“Also, what’s up with the blood-soaked room?” Gabriel asked.
“One at a time, children,” Apex chided us. “The lock is on a timer. If you know when Raphael came down, you know when you can get back up. It unlocks itself for ten minutes every hour.” Apex told us. “As for the room, well, if you are feeling queasy you don’t want to know.”
“It’s just been a rough day,” Gabriel told him.
“When I finally tracked down that bunker, I found the owner’s body in that room. There was a girl locked in there as well. She was bleeding and injured, but I’m not sure how she got injured. She’d been locked in there for a long time with him. Those rooms have double locks and can be locked from either the inside or the outside. If locked from the outside, you need to know where the control panel in the room is, and it requires you to give a phrase to unlock it. Since the door was locked from the outside and there were giant hand prints on the walls, John Huntington, who was with me, surmised that he had a partner that had locked the door. Also, despite having blown his own head off with a shotgun, there wasn’t a gun in the room. The woman was a mess, mentally. His body had really started to decompose. They’d both been in there a while. She had broken her hands and she wasn’t talking except gibberish. We tried to get her help, but she killed herself after we got her to the hospital. However, having seen the size of those hand prints, John and I guessed they belonged to someone that was exceptionally tall, probably a super psychopath, and he had stayed in the room long enough to put his handprints on the walls. Which is a problem, John is a super, but he doesn’t have fingerprints and neither do those hand prints. In theory adermotoglyphia is rare, but since neither Eric or Patterson have them and neither does John, it might be one of the more common mutations that accompany super psychopathology. I’m sure after seeing them, you thought they belonged to Raphael, and unfortunately, they don’t. He has fingerprints. I know they don’t belong to John or Eric or Patterson, which means there is yet another super out there that is missing his fingerprints who is working for the other team. Have you determined if Raphael is working for the Director?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Aislinn told me about the theory when she woke up, he drugged her with morphine.”
“And tried to eat part of my leg, which is why Gabriel is having a rough day. I woke up to my flayed skin being burned in a frying pan. I guess Gabriel was awake and here when Raphael started the cooking process.”
“I thought it might be beef tongue or something at first.”
“Raphael is a cannibal,” Apex reminded him.
“I’m good without the reminders.” Gabriel told him. “So, if we figure out what time Raphael came down we can figure out when to get out.”
“Essentially. Any ideas on how to see when he came down?” Apex asked.
“Nope, but if it does unlock for 10 minutes, we should be able to figure it out.”
“What’s on the upper level?” I asked.
“Living space. A game room. A children’s playroom. A TV room. A better bathroom. A large dining area.” Apex told us. “However, remember, it’s been a few years since I was there. This means that there could be more traps, even within the bunker.”
“Oh, I am aware,” I told Apex.
“I think Nadine is coming back to the US to help find the two of you. She has better equipment for this kind of mission. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. I have to finish some business here. The mob really wanted you here because they have a serial killer problem. Vasilli and I offered to take care of the serial killer in exchange for Tatiana’s freedom.”
“Why?” Gabriel asked.
“Because the good guys have to stick together, no matter what that calls for and Daniels’ Security is one of the good guys that we can utilize, even if they aren’t part of the Ahead movement yet.”
“Is there still a movement?”
“Do you mean do we still ha
ve a club house and secret handshake and decoder rings?” Apex was smiling, I could tell even over the phone.
“I want a decoder ring if you have an extra,” I told him.
“I actually do,” Apex said. “Yes, there’s still a group of us that get together every so often. We considered inviting the SCTU to join, but since not everything we do is legal and some of us are fugitives...”
“Like you and Patterson,” I commented.
“Yes.” Apex answered. “Sit back, relax, if you have food, eat something, that’s an order Gabriel, you are going to need your strength to get out of there. I’m not talking just about the bunker either. I mean out of your situation. Everything else is being taken care of. You two just need to take care of yourselves. If Raphael tried to eat you, does that mean you are injured?”
“A little, I’ll be fine.” I told him.
“Is it okay to walk on it, because it is a serious hike out of there and please tell me you have clothes and shoes,’ Apex said.
“I have on some weird cult like hospital scrubs and he left my combat boots. I think he wanted to disarm me, so he undressed and redressed me, but to be sure he had gotten all the weapons, he took my clothes.”
“Same with me,” Gabriel said. “I woke up in this place naked. I eventually woke up to find my shoes had been returned and that one of the drawers had been opened and in it were the same type of scrubs that Aislinn is wearing.”
“He gave me a bottle of Percocet,” I told Apex. “Between that and my own body’s tolerance of pain, I can hike the hell out of wherever here is.”
“Good, stay sharp. You could also just wait it out until the cavalry comes.”
“Maybe,” I answered.
“You didn’t kill Raphael, did you?” Apex sounded like he disapproved.
“No,” I told him. “Raphael knows things, things we might need to know.”
“Is he locked in a room?”
“Yes, and you said it required a pass phrase to be spoken, so he shouldn’t be able to get out. I mean, it isn’t like he can speak,” I told Apex.
“Hopefully that’s the case, but you never know, these guys are smart and cunning.”
“I can’t help but notice the bunker is very prison like,” I said.
“The design was based off a design for the Fortress,” Apex said.
“That explains so much.” I said as Apex hung up.
“What did he mean by mutations?” Gabriel asked me.
“Xavier, Apex, and I have been working on a theory that psychopathology impacts how other genes express themselves. We think the significance is more when a person gets two psychopath genes. Which would explain why Donnelly wasn’t a super, but Eric and Patterson both are.”
“That would require your mom to be a carrier.” Gabriel said.
“I think she is. Mom had some of my dad’s skin DNA frozen and stored so that, eventually, someone with genetic training could study it. Why was he so different from Eric and Patterson but still a psychopath? Xavier has been using it, mine, Eric’s and Patterson’s DNA along with Nyleena’s and Malachi’s now that we now all of us have common family members. There are a couple of ways genes work,” I told Gabriel. “Do you really want this lecture now?”
“I figure we have some time to kill, might as well. Genes can be recessive or dominant, but they can also require friends to be expressed, meaning traits might only be expressed if you have the primary dominant along with helping genes. Xavier and I think the primary gene has to be dominant, but it also has to have other genes that carry the traits we are seeing in order for it to express itself. If we could find the individual dominant gene, we’d be a lot further along. So far, though, we haven’t. We have found lots of genes between Malachi, Patterson, Eric, Nyleena, Donnelly, and myself that overlap, though. Nyleena probably inherited one psychopath gene from our dad and one non-psychopath gene from our mother. I probably inherited two psychopath genes, just like Eric, but I may not have inherited the helping genes that make him a super psychopath and me not, although interestingly, we have found some overlap where we think the helping genes might be among Eric, Patterson, and myself that Donnelly doesn’t have. However, Malachi and I both share a very unique clotting factor that should technically be killing us. We clot so fast when we are cut or injured, we should be throwing blood clots when we aren’t. However, we don’t. Furthermore, Malachi does have Marfan’s Syndrome, but he doesn’t have any of the negative side effects of it. This means that psychopathology might change the way genetic disorders, like Marfan’s Syndrome work in the body. Malachi may not appear to have a heart, but it is enlarged. It should be showing signs of damage since he’s in his thirties, smokes, eats a ton of junk food, and things that would make other people obese, and damage his heart, but his heart is actually fine. Xavier’s theory is that I carry a sociopathic gene and a psychopathic gene and that both are dominant and that the strange clotting disease that should be killing Malachi and I by throwing millions of clots is an expression of how that psychopathology gene has caused other genes to work. In other words, there is some evidence that the reason I’m a hybrid is because I carry both genes, both genes are dominant, and I’m a super psychopath. He needs more participants that are willing and that we know have psychopathic familial traits, but it’s been hard to get family members of serial killers to consent to genetic testing for psychopathology. Caleb and Nathan agreed and he is now including them, but they were the only ones in Caleb’s family to agree. Also, Caleb got a double dose, just like Malachi, Eric, and Patterson. He really needs Caleb’s mom’s DNA, but she hasn’t been willing to submit it. She says Caleb isn’t a psychopath because he’s not a serial killer or mass murderer.”
“To make sure I understand, let me rephrase it,” Gabriel said. “If you get one, you are more likely to be a normal, functional psychopath. If you get two, you’re screwed, you will be a psychopath. However, getting two also means you are more likely to express genes differently, such as you and Malachi’s clotting factors and Malachi’s Marfan’s Syndrome without the negative parts.”
“Exactly.” I patted his hand before I spoke again. “You realize we need yours and Raphael’s DNA now, right? Being twins you should both carry the double psychopath gene. Yet, you are not a psychopath while your brother is obviously a carrier of the double.”
“I know,” Gabriel sighed. “You’ll never get it from my family though.”
“Twins are far more important than siblings when it comes to specific genes.” I told him. “Since you should both carry the double and you don’t seem to carry any of them, it could prove our theory or expose some flaw in it or bring it crashing down. Until about a month ago, we only had my family which includes Malachi. Then Caleb and Nathan joined in. That widened the gene pool, but not by much. That makes yours and Raphael’s DNA that much more important.”
“That’s why you weren’t upset we didn’t kill him, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.
“I can get DNA from a dead guy and throw it in the freezer here until I can give it to Xavier. I was okay with not killing him because he’s your brother, your twin brother. Siblings are important, I know that. I can’t imagine life without Eric. It hurt to lose Isabelle, I wouldn’t want to lose both of them and they aren’t my twin. Losing a twin is more devastating than losing a sister or a brother. It’s like losing part of yourself even if you don’t get along because your twin tries to eat you as children and then tries to eat your friend later in life.” I looked at him. “At least, I think we are friends, I don’t honestly know sometimes. It’s hard for me to understand friendships and how other people feel about me. I mean it is possible you stopped him just so if he did go to prison, he wouldn’t come into the cross hairs of my brother. It might not have had anything to do with me.” I frowned.
“We’re friends, Ace. I know you don’t always understand and I try to accommodate you on that, I’ve been reading up on sociopaths and what sort of input they need from people around them. I think I�
�m learning, but it’s a lot to take in when we spend so much time every week chasing serial killers. Malachi’s team isn’t just supposed to increase the number of killers we catch as a whole, they are supposed to give us more down time.” Gabriel sighed. “This job is very hard on all of us, it’d be nice to have a week off once in a while or a weekend without worrying about being called to the other side of the country.
Raphael’s phone started going off. It was a timer. The countdown had hit zero. Gabriel and I both got up from the table we had been sitting on and went to the hatch. There was a small hiss from above us, the seal breaking where the lock had been released. I put Raphael’s phone in my pocket and started up the ladder. Gabriel climbed over and around me, reaching the top first. For the split second, panic set into my belly as I worried he’d open the hatch and leave me down here. I squashed the worry. Gabriel had just told me we were friends. He wouldn’t do that to me. He reached the top and wrapping his legs around like I had earlier, he turned the gear wheel on the hatch. It pushed open. He stuck his head out of it and appeared to look around for a few moments, then he leaned down and held out both hands to me. I took hold and let him help me up the ladder. I wasn’t a big fan of human contact, but it actually felt pretty good to have Gabriel’s hands locked around my arms. Not in a “oh a boy is touching me way” but in a “he’s touching me, he’s pulling me up, he’s not going to leave me here to die” sorta way.
Chapter Seven
I HAD JUST BARELY STUCK my head through the hole when Gabriel repositioned himself to lay on his belly and help me up through the floor, he went from holding my arms to putting his hands at my waist. He lifted and moving my leg suddenly became easier. I just let the other dangle and then my whole body was outside the hole and in a large living area that had a couple pieces of ugly and outdated furniture from the 1990s in it. There was a TV mounted on the wall that was much newer than everything else. Gabriel closed the hatch, turned the wheel, sealing the door, and then I heard the lock engage. I was standing up by now and turned to look at Gabriel. He had engaged the master lock rather than the time lock on the door. Even if Raphael got out of the living quarters, he would be trapped downstairs.