by Steven James
© 2013 by Steven James
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4474-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
“Steven James knows how to tell a story that gets under your skin and challenges the way you think as only the most talented writers can. If you’re looking for a mind-bending tale, strap in and take the ride with Singularity. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
—Ted Dekker, New York Times bestselling author
Praise for Placebo
“The writing, pacing, and plot lines are impeccable.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The recipe for this one will be to take the darkness of Poe and the creativity of The Matrix, mix in science, and add a dash of faith/religion.”
—Suspense Magazine
“It’s no surprise when the final act hits, the pages start flipping madly.”
—Crosswalk.com
“Placebo is an edgy, multilayered thriller.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4.5 stars
“Placebo is fast-paced, interesting, moving. All with James’s signature style and flair.”
—The Suspense Zone
To Eddie Brittain and Rick Altizer
Friends for life
I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.
—Mitch Hedberg, comedian
It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.
—Socrates in Apology
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
Epigraph
Interface
Venom
Pursuit
Maelstrom
Dust to Dust
While She Sleeps
Up in the Air
Garbage Bags
Sin City
Sealed In
Flapjacks
Disarray
Looking Twice
Harsh Mercy
Billboards
The Singularity
Lipstick
Autonomy
Dust of the Dead
The Arête
The Black Card
Turritopsis Dohrnii
Body Doubles
Target Practice
The Undersecretary
Prions
Breathless
Seruvian Trolls
The Hideaway
I’d Like You to Meet Betty
Down the Rabbit Hole
Solomon’s Dilemma
The Warehouse
Access Codes
The Three Laws
Roses and Thorns
Timeline
A Girl’s Best Friend
Eyelids
The French Drop
Misdirection
Silverado
Outside the Box
Groom Lake
Secrets
The Green Door
Building A-13
Descent
Tarmac
The Syringe
The Escort
The Fear of Dying
The Offer
Backstage
Antidote
Plunge
Coordinates
The Only Honest Profession
Fallen Princes
Lovelock
Aspera
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Steven James
Back Ads
Back Cover
Part I
Interface
15 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada
Plyotech Cybernetics Research & Development Facility
Sublevel 4
9:32 p.m.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“No. Black. Thank you.” Thad Becker had learned early on in this business not to allow anyone to add things to his drinks or season what he ate. It was a delicate balance—showing trust and exhibiting prudence. But in the end you can either be careful or you can pay the price.
He accepted the cup from the person he’d come here to see: a dark-haired, fit, Caucasian man in his late fifties who called himself Akinsanya—a Nigerian name that meant “the hero avenges.”
Thad had done his research. It’d taken calling in quite a few favors, but he’d found out who the guy really was: a retired Army colonel named Derek Byrne. A former sniper instructor, Byrne was not a man to be trifled with.
He also knew about the kind of research Byrne was focused on here at Plyotech: a program that was not, according to any of the company’s books, actually taking place. It was the kind of research the people who’d hired Thad had expressed keen interest in: robotics, mechatronics, informatics.
And, of course, cybernetics.
Which was what had brought him here.
They were in a high-tech conference room down the hall from where Byrne and his team did surgery on the primates, inserting the electrodes into their brains to see if the chimps could control mechanical apparatuses simply through the electrical activity generated in localized parts of their brains.
Here in the room where they were meeting, a robotic arm with an intricate and realistic-looking hand rose from a stand in the center of the table.
Byrne dumped a spoonful of light gray powder from an ornate ceramic bowl into his own cup. He swirled it into his drink until it disappeared, coloring the coffee a grayish-brown, then he took a sip.
It was not creamer. It was definitely not sugar.
Thad tried his coffee. As far as he could tell there was nothing unusual about the taste. “The people I represent,” he said, “are very interested in seeing the results you spoke about on the phone.”
“Yes.” Byrne sat facing Thad and the two hulking former Special Forces soldiers turned mercenaries whom he’d brought along with him. They were here to do a little work on Byrne if necessary, if the results weren’t satisfactory or if he proved too unwilling to share the findings. After all, Thad was a man of action and did not take kindly to people wasting his time.
An Indian gentleman in his mid-sixties and wearing a lab coat stood beside Byrne.
Thad took another sip, then set down his cup and gestured with an open hand toward the older man in the lab coat. “I was told we were going to be alone.”
“This is Dr. Malhotra,” Byrne replied. “He’s part of my team.”
Thad nodded politely to the doctor. “I’m pleased to meet you—and I mean no disrespect, but . . .” He eased his cup to the side, leaned forward, and eyed Byrne coolly. “I was told. We were going. To be meeting. Alone.”
A moment passed. Byrne’s eyes flicked to the two men Thad had brought along. In the end he said nothing about their presence, but simply addressed the
man at his side: “Doctor, perhaps you could step into the hallway while I demonstrate our progress to our three guests here.”
“Certainly,” Dr. Malhotra said in a thick accent, but in a tone that was impossible to read. Thad gestured for one of his men to escort the doctor out of the room. While he did, Thad’s other man unbuttoned his jacket, revealing his holstered 9mm Glock 17, and smiled intimidatingly.
Byrne did not appear intimidated.
Once it was just the three of them, Thad folded his hands, laid them on the table, and directed his full attention at Byrne. “Now. I believe you have something to show me, Colonel.” He added that last word to make sure Byrne realized he knew his real identity, that this sophomoric game of using a code name was not going to get him anywhere.
Without a word, Byrne rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a bandage encircling the middle of his forearm. He unwrapped it carefully, exposing a healing incision just over three centimeters long.
“How many were implanted?” Thad asked.
“The array contains one hundred and twelve electrodes.”
“I would’ve thought the incision would be larger.”
“We’ve made great strides lately in reducing the size of the unit.”
Thad shifted his gaze to the robotic arm in the middle of the table. “Show me.”
Byrne depressed a button at the base of the stand that supported the arm. The mechanical hand closed once and then rested in a partially flexed position.
He laid his left arm palm-up on the table and then slowly curled his hand into a fist. As he did, the robotic hand replicated the gesture precisely, down to the minutest flexion of each finger. The colonel twisted his hand and then flattened it and formed a fist again, all gestures that were mirrored exactly by the robotic hand.
“The implant,” he said, “is only four days old, and the body tissue around it is already pulling it into position in my arm, giving us every reason to believe that the permanent implants won’t be rejected by the recipients.”
“Yes, okay,” Thad said somewhat impatiently, “you can remotely control the robotic hand when you move your hand, but that’s not what we were promised; we’ve seen that before. I was told you were—”
“Neural impulses. The nervous system.”
“Yes.”
“Slide your coffee cup closer to the arm.”
Thad did as the colonel requested, and then Byrne took two long, slow breaths, closed his eyes, and remained completely still.
A moment later, the robotic hand slowly opened and rotated counterclockwise. The mechanical arm angled toward the table while Byrne opened his eyes and concentrated, staring intently at the cup.
The arm bent at its artificial elbow and wrist, curled the pointer finger through the cup handle, and depressed the thumb and middle finger in opposition against the handle, just as a human might do when picking up a coffee cup.
The cup was close to the base of the arm, creating an awkward angle, and just like people would naturally do, the robotic arm slid it out slightly to create a less abrupt angle for the wrist and then raised it.
All the while, Byrne did not move his own arm or hand at all. His fingers didn’t even twitch.
Finally, the robotic arm came to rest holding the cup in position as if it were about to lift it to someone’s waiting lips.
Byrne let out a slow breath.
“All that just by your thoughts?” Thad asked quietly.
The colonel nodded. “The electrodes connect to my nerves, and the same impulses that would move my own muscles can be used to—”
“Yes, yes.” Thad was already deep in thought and was not particularly interested in the physiological or neurological specifics—the people he worked for could work through all of that. “How long did it take you to learn to do that? To control it that well?”
“Nearly a month.”
“You said this implant is four days old. How did . . . ?”
Byrne rolled up his other sleeve and exposed a series of six scars, some healed more than others, on his forearm.
“And you’re saying this same technology can be used with soldiers to move exoskeletons?” The scene in Aliens of Sigourney Weaver using the giant exoskeleton to fight the mother alien came to mind. That, and the perhaps more applicable and contemporary example of Iron Man fighting other exoskeleton-equipped bad guys.
But even in the movies, the characters needed to move their muscles to manipulate the robotic exoskeletons. This bionic technology that Thad was looking at was in an entirely different league.
Byrne said, “With the lightweight exolimbs we’re working on, direct brain-machine interfaces, targeted muscle reinnervation, and electrodes that are embedded in all four extremities, tomorrow’s soldiers will be able to carry three-hundred-pound packs at sprinting speeds while exerting 90 percent less energy than they would if they were running with no pack at all.”
“And”—Thad was musing aloud—“even if they get shot or lose the use of one or more limbs, they’ll still be able to move the exolimbs through their thoughts.”
“Eventually, that’s what we’re shooting for, yes. Paralysis will no longer be a detriment to battle readiness.”
Thad evaluated that. Yes, the people he worked for were going to be very interested in this indeed.
He knew Plyotech did some contract work for the Department of Defense’s research and development branch: DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And that might prove to be a problem here.
“And the Pentagon?”
“They’re aware of our research but know nothing about our progress. You’re the first group we’ve contacted.”
As Thad was considering how to tell the colonel that he and his men would be needing to come with them now, tonight, he heard a heavy thud in the hallway. It was a sound he knew well—that of a body falling to the floor.
He gestured for the mercenary behind him to check it out, and the man whipped out his Glock and stalked toward the doorway.
Byrne watched silently from across the table.
Thad unholstered his own gun, but even as he did, he heard his man collapse behind him and felt himself becoming waveringly dizzy. He snapped around and saw the former Green Beret lying on the floor convulsing.
Thad spun and leveled his gun at Byrne, who was pulling on a pair of latex gloves.
“What did you do?” Despite his best efforts, Thad felt his arms growing heavy and slack.
Byrne spoke softly. “Put down your gun, Thad, before you hurt yourself.”
He was about to squeeze the trigger, but before he could, both arms fell limply to his sides, causing his weapon to topple harmlessly to the floor.
“The coffee?”
No, that doesn’t make sense because—
“No.” Byrne shook his head.
“The grips,” he muttered, “of the guns, you coated them . . .”
“With Dalpotol.” Byrne stood and approached him. “Yes.”
“But how did you . . . get to . . .” He was slumping in his chair now and finding it increasingly difficult to form his thoughts. His hands began shaking involuntarily.
“You and your men had an escort visit your room last night, my friend.” He rose and kicked the gun aside. “You shouldn’t have left her alone, even for a minute. And you should have perhaps checked your weapons this morning. You can never be too careful about the people you trust.”
A wave of convulsions began wracking Thad’s body, and Byrne unpocketed a pill. “This is to stop the seizures.” He placed it on Thad’s tongue. “Do your best to swallow it.”
Thad actually believed him, yet in an act of defiance he tried to spit it out, but the pill had mostly dissolved already and his muscles were relaxing, the convulsions dissipating—however, none of that offered him any strength to go after Byrne.
The colonel walked past Thad toward the downed man. A moment later a handgun’s report echoed sharply through the room, and then Byrne returned and lowered Thad
gently to the floor.
His head lolled to the side, and he saw that his man had been shot at point-blank range in the temple and was most definitely not twitching any longer.
Byrne straightened out Thad’s arms and legs, and though he tried his hardest to stop him, he was unable to fight him off, to stand, to resist at all.
“Do you know what the problem is with most medical research?” Byrne asked him.
Thad’s mind was reeling, his thoughts shifting across themselves, sliding into and out of focus. He tried his hardest to concentrate on what was happening, but he didn’t feel like he was able to bring his attention back into alignment at all. “What is . . . ?”
“The problem. With most medical research today. Do you know what it is?”
Thad tried to sit up but found it impossible. “The . . .”
“Human trials. It simply takes too long for a drug or a treatment strategy to be approved for human trial. Monkeys, yes. Mice, no problem. But in this case, we need to know if it’s possible for someone who has four paralyzed limbs to be able to use his thoughts to move the robotic ones, and we need to find out as promptly as we can if we’re going to move forward with this project. To do that we have to test the implants in that situation, and since this research hasn’t exactly been made public yet, we couldn’t just pull in any quadriplegic off the street for the experiment. You can see why it’s necessary to use a volunteer from the inside. You have the honor of being that volunteer.”
The realization of what was happening finally struck Thad, and struck him hard.
Four paralyzed limbs.
Four paralyzed—
He heard another gunshot in the hallway and recognized it as coming from the 9mm SIG P226 his other man had been carrying. However, he did not hold out much hope that he’d killed the doctor, but rather guessed he’d met the same fate as the former soldier lying fatally shot just a few feet away.
“There are different ways we could do this,” Byrne went on. “For most people it happens through an accident—horseback riding, a car wreck, sometimes a football player has a head-on collision and snaps his neck. I think you’ll appreciate that I want to get this right the first time. Here”—he touched Thad’s spine near where it connected with the base of his skull—“a scalpel is much more precise, more reliable, and you shouldn’t leave something like this to chance. We tried drugs on two other people. Neither made it through without needing a ventilator, and that’s just not the result we’re looking for here. A scalpel is really the way to go.”