Flawless

by Joshua Spanogle

  Then I heard Fang yell, saw orange licking from the floor, as ethanol from one of the cans sheeted fire across the concrete.

  114

  “SHIT!” FANG SHOUTED.

  Hands dropped from my shoulders, and as I sagged back down to the floor, I watched Fang sprint to a fire extinguisher on the wall. The blond thug trotted over to the flames, and began to kick the burning liquid away from a pallet of cardboard boxes.

  I continued singing. “Sunny days…”

  The baseball cap gripped my head tight. “Shut up!” From the corner of my eye, I could still make out the drama playing out across the room.

  The blond man’s foot was flaming now, covered in ethanol. “What the fuck did you do, man?” he screamed, stamping his foot on the floor.

  The flames slid under the pallet of boxes.

  Fang was back at the conflagration, the extinguisher in his hands. He pointed the nozzle at the blond man’s foot, then swiftly raised it and let loose a blast of powder into the thug’s face. The guy grunted, dug his palms into his eyes. With surprising speed, Fang dropped the extinguisher. He stepped to the man and jammed his hands under the jacket.

  My head had begun to clear; the buzzing died.

  The baseball cap loosened his grip on my head. Before he broke contact, I twisted and sank my teeth into the soft flesh of his palm.

  He screamed.

  Though pain lanced from my loose teeth, I did not let go. The baseball cap wrenched his hand back and forth, then dug his fingers into the broken left side of my face. Pain flared, and he ripped his hand from my mouth. Again, I could taste the metallic tang of blood, but this time it was not mine.

  He scrambled to his feet, cursing and waving his injured hand. I heard a shout. “Cut him loose!” Fang yelled.

  I could see the flames rising higher behind him. The pallet of boxes had begun to catch. In his hands Fang held a pistol. The blond man—covered in yellow powder—was still rubbing at his eyes. His foot was no longer on fire.

  Above me, the baseball cap cradled his left hand in his right; I saw blood trailing through his fingers. “You’re so dead, man,” he told me.

  “Cut him loose,” Fang repeated.

  The fire was licking at the cardboard boxes, which I could now see were filled with plastic pipette tips. If the fire grew—if the flames reached the other cans of ethanol, if they reached the oxygen tanks—I wouldn’t have to worry about what I was or wasn’t going to do for Uncle Tony. The whole place would erupt.

  Fang couldn’t hold the gun and use the fire extinguisher, and he couldn’t risk having the blond wrench it away from him and blast him with dry chemicals.

  “The tanks!” I shouted to Fang. “Shoot the nitrogen tanks!”

  Fang seemed confused for a moment. Then he swung the nose of the gun toward the metal tanks lining the wall closest to the flames. He fired four bullets in quick succession. In the seconds of quiet that followed, I could hear the hiss of the frigid liquid nitrogen as it sprayed from the tanks, the hiss as it hit the concrete floor and boiled away to gas.

  “Now cut him loose!” Fang screeched.

  With his good hand, the baseball cap reached into his jacket and produced a butterfly knife. He opened it with a flick of the wrist.

  The knife slid between my wrists; they popped apart. I brought my hands to my front. A single gash ran around the outside of each wrist, and blood had dried like a partial glove over my palms and fingers. Pain cascaded into my hands as circulation flowed.

  “His legs,” Fang commanded.

  As the nitrogen cascaded across the floor, it began to choke the fire from its oxygen. The flames grew no higher.

  The moron with the cap shook his head as he cut the ties and my legs bumped forward. That little movement—the tiny extension in my legs—was agony.

  The guy with the cap was backing across the room, away from me. “You are such a goner, dude,” he told Fang. “Your kid—”

  “Shut up,” Fang said, and cut a look at the fire, which had begun to sputter and die.

  The blond guy had moved away from Fang, toward the stacked boxes. I tried to stand, but stumbled. I continued to flex my joints, trying to will some life back into the muscles.

  “Your little daughter’s going to bleed,” the baseball cap warned, circling wide. The two goons were on opposite sides of the room. Not good.

  “Shut up. Stand still.” Fang looked at me. “Help me tie them.”

  I pushed myself up from the chair and nearly toppled over. “His gun,” I said, nodding my head toward the baseball cap.

  “Oh,” Fang said. To the guy with the cap, he said, “Get over here. Now.”

  “Your girl’s going to—”

  And then it happened. The blond guy—the cool one—feinted behind the stack of boxes. Fang swung the weapon toward him and fired.

  I fell to the floor.

  Fang swung the gun toward the thug with the cap and fired twice, but by that time he had rolled out of sight, behind a large piece of boxed lab equipment. Best I could, I scrambled along the floor to where the baseball cap had disappeared.

  Fang was maneuvering toward where I crouched, as if I could be any help to him at that moment. I caught a glimpse of the baseball cap, now with an automatic pistol in his hand. Fang was directly between the two thugs, both of them crouching behind their barricades. He continued backing up, having forgotten, I guess, about the man behind him.

  My legs worked well enough to scrabble low around the pallets. I saw him, the baseball cap, squatting behind a large stack of boxed plastic Falcon tubes, searching for a clear shot into Fang’s back.

  Willing every bit of juice to my muscles, I jumped.

  He tumbled.

  “Doctor!” Fang yelled.

  I clawed for the weapon in the baseball cap’s hand. He was strong, younger than I was, better at this kind of struggle. He hadn’t just spent an hour with little blood circulating to his limbs. Despite my bite marks in his hand, I knew I’d never be able to overpower him. Somewhere deep in my cortex, there were a couple of neurons that weren’t totally burned by fear and anger and exhaustion. Those neurons fired.

  I heard the blast from the fire extinguisher, then a shot. Fang cried out.

  Three more shots exploded through the room.

  I rolled the man on top of me, which surprised him, I think, because the move put me in such a compromised position. All his efforts were now bent on keeping me from pointing the gun toward him. So, I didn’t. I swung the pistol at the row of liquid nitrogen tanks along the wall. I managed to squeeze off four bullets before I felt a kick to the side of my face. I nearly fainted from the pain, and went slack.

  “Jerk,” I heard the blond guy say, and he kicked me again.

  The hiss from the liquid nitrogen tanks had grown louder. I noticed the fire had gone completely out. I needed to get off the ground. I pushed myself to all fours, fell flat.

  “You fucking let him have a smoke,” the baseball cap told the blond, disgusted.

  Strong hands hauled me to my feet. They pushed me to where Fang lay, trails of blood coming from his head and torso, his body covered in yellow dust. The blond set the chair upright. “Sit down.” I did.

  “Fucker bit me,” the baseball cap complained. He wiped his bloodied hand on his pants, regarded it, wiped it again.

  “That stuff put the fire out.” The blond seemed distracted by the liquid nitrogen squirting from the tanks, cascading along concrete that was far above its vaporization point.

  “You didn’t have science in school?” the baseball cap sneered. “Nitrogen doesn’t burn. Oxygen burns.”

  The blond guy shrugged. “High school was like four years ago.” He watched the liquid. “You think we should get out of here?”

  “Nah,” his buddy replied. “There’s nitrogen all over the air. It’s, like, normal.”

  The liquid had cooled the floor enough that it wasn’t vaporizing as quickly and so could sheet farther across the loading dock. It s
lid to Fang’s body, and I watched the pool of blood freeze to a dusky red. Fang’s flesh—where it touched the floor—quickly froze. The medial side of his hand, his cheek. I could see the skin harden, become hazy as ice crystals formed, fracturing fragile cell walls.

  Some of the liquid circled the area beneath me, splashing the soles of my shoes.

  I began to hyperventilate.

  “I think he’s going to cry,” the baseball cap said. He and his friend snickered.

  But I wasn’t quite ready to shed tears. The hyperventilation was to saturate my blood with whatever oxygen was left at this height, to lower the blood’s acid content so it wouldn’t trigger respiratory centers as rapidly.

  I sucked a deep breath and held it.

  I kept my eyes on the floor, concentrated on keeping myself calm so as not to burn through my oxygen. I watched the liquid swirl and bubble and smoke, watched it pool around the plastic that had been under the chair. I listened to it boil.

  “It’s like school, man, when they froze the grapes,” one of the men said. I guessed it was the baseball cap, the one who still seemed to remember something from science class.

  “This is wild,” the other said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a toe hook under Wei-jan Fang’s hand. The forearm had stiffened and lifted like a board off the ground. “Cool,” the blond said, and they both laughed.

  Come on, come on. I felt the beginning of a burn in my lungs.

  “Hold the doc’s hand in it,” the blond guy suggested. “He bit you. Freeze his hand.”

  Come on, I prayed. Come on. I felt my heart pounding, felt my lungs begin to ache. I counted seconds.

  “Yeah,” the baseball cap agreed. “See how much surgery he can do then.”

  Damn it, I thought. My hand will be frozen to the bone. Dorothy will be dead. I will be dead. And we’d had a chance. We’d had a damn chance.

  A figure bent into my field of view. A hand grabbed my left arm and pulled it straight, pulled it down toward the floor. With a heave, my hand was thrust into the layer of liquid. For a second, it was just cold. Then, suddenly, it felt as though a blowtorch had been swept across my palm. I wanted to scream, but did not. I kept the air trapped in my lungs.

  The blond guy took out his cell phone. “I’m calling Kwong,” he said.

  Suddenly, the hand on mine relaxed. Then it fell away. Then it hit the floor, followed by knees and torso. Finally, the body splashed into the film of liquid coursing over the concrete. The cap rolled off the head.

  The blond guy yelped, “Hey,” and I saw him begin to weave. He kept himself upright for a moment—like a marionette twisting on its strings—then he toppled. His cell phone and a gun clattered to the floor.

  Despite the hyperventilation, the time had been too long, and I was dizzy from lack of oxygen. I tried to stand, but the pain in my left knee was too great. I grabbed it with my hands and forced myself upright, let out a short yell.

  I staggered to my feet. My lungs were searing now, and I stumbled to the outside door, crashed into it. I managed to get my fingers around the handle: it wouldn’t turn. I scrabbled at it.

  And then, without warning, I had it open.

  I fell to the concrete dock outside and sucked deep of the sweetest air I’d ever tasted.

  115

  THERE IS “NITROGEN ALL OVER the air,” as my genius, now-dead captor had noted. Seventy-eight percent of the air, to be precise. Though nitrogen is ubiquitous, it also happens to be extremely dangerous. It’s the cause of more laboratory fatalities than any other substance found. In large part the deaths are the result of complacency, of poor compliance to safety standards. No one really pays attention because no one thinks a little nitrogen is going to kill you.

  I’d been lucky that safety standards at Tetra were lax, that they hadn’t decided to store their LN2 in a big tank outside the building. Perhaps they were making the transition. More likely, they just didn’t care.

  In the lungs, nitrogen becomes greedy: the gas forces oxygen out of the blood and into the lung, effectively reversing normal gas transfer. The brain can become oxygen-starved in a matter of seconds. And oxygen-starved brains are not conscious brains.

  Much of the liquid boiled to a gas when the tanks were punctured. That gas gradually filled the room from the bottom up, first extinguishing Wei-jan Fang’s fire, then the lives of my captors. God bless the basic laws of chemistry and biology.

  My two friends in the loading bay should have studied a little harder in school.

  I looked at the palm of my left hand, the one that had been thrust into freezing liquid. The skin was inflamed, but there were no blisters; the frostbite had not been that deep. Still, the skin stung. Second-degree burn probably.

  I held my breath and took a hasty look back into the room. The three bodies lay motionless on the cement floor. The last of the liquid nitrogen was spilling from the tanks.

  By now, all the broken and bruised nerves—in my face, in my knee, my hand, my wrists—had decided to assert themselves. It was as if they knew I was out of the woods, and wanted to let me know there were some biological troubles that needed tending. And—damn me—I admit I did think of stumbling across the lot and leaving all this behind.

  It would be so easy.

  I hyperventilated again, and walked into the loading bay. The bodies looked grotesque, frozen flesh extending a few centimeters off the floor; warm, supple flesh above. It was as if a small sliver of them had been cast in wax, the rest living tissue. I took the blond man’s gun and cell, took the small black pouch from inside Fang’s jacket, and limped for the door.

  116

  I WAS IN THE BASEMENT hallway now, making my way toward the service elevator, trying to figure out the damned user interface on the blond guy’s cell. Finally, I got it. Last dialed call: Kwong.

  The last thing the tattooed bastard probably heard was his friend hitting the floor. From my left, from up the hall, I heard the sound of a door being punched open.

  Immediately I turned. I rounded a corner, dragged myself between beige concrete walls, along a scuffed concrete floor until I reached a set of double doors. I pushed the crash bar and opened the door.

  A continuation of the hallway, leading to an intersection. I kept moving. To my left, a short distance away, was the main set of elevators.

  I hit the call button. Once inside, I punched the button for the sixth floor. To find Dorothy and Tim, I would work my way down from the top. The elevator lurched skyward, then stopped. Ground floor.

  “Shit,” I breathed. I aimed the gun at the black split between the two doors as they opened.

  When the man standing on the other side of them saw me, his mouth opened and he fell back a few steps. I pictured what he saw—a man he loathed, face pulpy, rivulets of blood streaking across hands that unsteadily gripped a pistol pointed straight at his brain. I didn’t fault him for his panic.

  “Get in here, Dan,” I told him.

  Dan Missoula didn’t move. And, thank God, he didn’t try to shake my hand.

  “Move!” I reached out, and pulled him by the collar into the elevator. Grabbing the fabric caused pain to jolt through my frostbitten left hand. I smacked the button to the fifth floor. Change of plans.

  “I don’t…I don’t know what’s going on,” Missoula said. “I didn’t see anything. Please don’t…”

  “It’s after midnight. Why are you here?”

  “I figured something was going on with you and Alex. I figured the spill they talked about was a fake—”

  “What spill?”

  “There was a chemical spill late this afternoon. The HAZMAT guys came, but—”

  “There was no spill,” I interrupted. “They needed to clear out the building. Did Alex call you?”

  “No,” Missoula said, too loud. “No. I—”

  “Where’s Dorothy Zhang?”

  “Who?”

  I shoved him against the wall. He hit it hard. Strength was coming back into my muscles; the adrenaline
load I carried helped. So did my anger.

  “Where’s Dorothy Zhang?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Missoula whined. He was shaking now, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some pleasure in it.

  The elevator stopped on floor five. “Get out.” He didn’t move. “Get out!” I shouted, and pushed him through the door.

  My hand on Missoula’s collar, the gun in the small of his back, I shoved him down the hall. The lab where the transfections took place was to our right, Dan and Alex’s office to the left. “Is she in there?”

  “Who?” His voice cracked with fear.

  “Alex, you idiot.”

  “I don’t—I thought you were working with her on something.”

  “You were wrong.”

  Missoula’s keycard hung around his neck on a lanyard. I tore it off, held it next to the lab door. The lock clicked. “Open it,” I said.

  It should be known I mostly believed Dan Missoula. Earlier that day, he’d seen Alex and me confabbing about secret stuff, and he was obviously suspicious we were up to something. Hell, the guy was suspicious of me from the first moment I walked into Tetra. When the “spill” occurred and Tetra was cleaned out, he must have become even more wary. As it was, though, I couldn’t take a chance that he was telling the truth.

  A bank of fluorescents blazed at the far end of the lab, casting the big room in a dim, cold light. We moved past the cell culture room, where a UV light filled the small space with thick purple haze that filtered out to the lab through a large window. We moved past the benches topped with bottles of reagents: phosphate buffered saline, potassium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid. There were no humans here, but there was movement: orbital shakers gyrating like dancers, hot water bath shakers sloshing back and forth. Somewhere, I heard the whine of a centrifuge.

  To our left was a cold room, about ten by ten. A digital readout set next to its door showed 4 degrees Celsius, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.