The Adjusters

by Taylor, Andrew

  Ever so carefully, he raised his head so he was peeking through the window. Inside the operating theatre two doctors in surgical scrubs were moving around a table. On the table a white sheet covered the unmistakable shape of a person. There was some kind of frame at the top of the table, designed to keep the sheet off the patient’s head, but the angle Henry was looking from made it impossible to see anything else.

  One of the doctors, a grey-haired man whose face was obscured by a mask, leaned over the end of the table with a scalpel in his hand. His partner, a bald-headed doctor, said something that was inaudible through the glass. The grey-haired doctor poked at something under the sheet with the scalpel and the body on the table twitched violently. The other doctor moved round, lifted the sheet and checked the patient’s hand, which was secured to the table at the wrist by a Velcro bond. Then he checked the patient’s ankles, which were similarly bound.

  Henry frowned as he watched the doctors step away from the table. What were they doing? And why was the patient strapped down?

  The grey-haired doc looked at his watch, said something, and the two men moved towards the doors. As they exited, grey-hair tossed the scalpel into a nearby sink.

  “That was too close!” Christian said. “Let’s get out of here before they come back.”

  “Wait,” Henry said. “I want to get in there and take a look.”

  Christian pulled down his face mask and stared at him as if he was crazy. “You what?”

  “There’s something wrong. They’ve got that patient strapped to the table.”

  “We’re not here for this…”

  “We’re here to find out what’s going on, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on then. I think we can get into the theatre through those doors up ahead.”

  Henry rose, but Christian stayed where he was, looking sheepish.

  “What’s the matter?” Henry demanded.

  “I…uh…don’t like the sight of blood. And operating theatres kind of freak me out… I get sick just watching House…”

  “Okay, okay,” said Henry, aware that time was ticking away and the surgeons might return at any minute. “Just wait here. I won’t be long.”

  Leaving Christian, he moved swiftly to the end of the window and took a door into another corridor that curved round the side of the theatre to the entrance. Pausing to listen for the sound of the doctors coming back, he opened the door and slipped inside.

  The operating theatre was silent and Henry was aware of his footsteps as he approached the table the patient was lying on. There was movement at the window and Henry looked round to see Christian stick his head up and give him a make it fast signal with his hand. Henry nodded and walked slowly towards the table.

  As he passed the patient’s feet he said softly, “Hello? Are you awake?”

  There was no response. Where the doctor had checked the patient’s wrist restraint the cover was raised, exposing an arm. There was a pattern of injection marks above the patient’s wrist and Henry was reminded of Gabrielle when he’d met her at the gas station. He’d taken the needle marks on her arm as evidence of drug abuse – but had she merely been a patient at the medical centre? And what had she been injected with?

  Henry moved round the table so he could get a look at the patient’s face under the raised cover. What he saw made him freeze with shock… He blinked twice, trying to process the image… It was like something from a horror movie…

  The patient was a little older than him. The kid’s eyes were closed and his face looked peaceful enough, which was surprising as the top of his skull was missing. The top of his head had been cut away just above the eyebrows, exposing the delicate grey matter of his brain resting in the skull cavity. A metal frame was locked around his neck and jaw, holding his skull off the table.

  A wave of nausea rose in Henry as he looked over the glistening surface of the kid’s brain, but he just couldn’t look away. Flecks of blood and white bone matter stood out on the ridged, grey surface…

  Henry took a step back, colliding with a metal rack of surgical instruments. The rack went flying and collided with the wall. Scalpels and clamps clattered noisily against the tiled floor.

  As if disturbed by the noise, the eyes of the kid on the table flicked open – wide and staring and full of horror…

  The kid’s mouth opened and he moaned two desperate words…

  “Help…me…”

  Henry stood staring as the horrific figure of the kid on the table continued to plead with him for help. The kid thrashed against the bonds holding his wrists and ankles in place.

  “Help…me!”

  Moving forward, Henry took hold of the Velcro restraint around the kid’s exposed wrist and tore it open. The kid immediately grabbed Henry’s arm, nails digging into his flesh.

  “It’s okay,” Henry said, moving round to the head of the table. “You’re going to be okay.” The kid’s exposed brain had been hard enough to look at before, but now his eyes were open and he was conscious, there was something obscene about it.

  “What…what have they done…to me?” The kid rolled his eyes, as if trying to see the top of his head.

  Henry shook his head, not knowing what to say.

  “I want…to get up…”

  “That’s not such a good idea,” Henry said, looking at the frame holding the kid’s head in place.

  The kid waved his free arm around frantically and started screaming. “Let me up! Let me up!”

  “No!” Henry said, trying to silence him. “You have to be quiet!”

  THUD.

  Henry spun as something slammed against the glass observation window. On the other side, Christian was raising his fist to bang the glass again. He mouthed something.

  They’re coming!

  At that moment, the door at the end of the corridor flew open and a security guard burst through. Christian barely had time to back away before the guard was on top of him. Henry was powerless to do anything as his friend was rammed against the window. Christian’s nose smacked it hard and he slid down, leaving a smear of blood on the pane.

  “Christian!” Henry yelled.

  The door to the operating theatre clattered open and the bald-headed surgeon appeared, framed in the opening. He looked at Henry with wide eyes. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”

  Henry backed away, looking around for some means of escape. He noticed a door on the other side of the theatre. By now, the surgeon had snatched up a syringe gun and was lunging at him. Henry grabbed a table and heaved it towards his attacker. The surgeon went flying amidst surgical instruments, letting out a cry of pain as his hand came down on a scalpel on the floor.

  Not wasting another second, Henry threw himself at the door to the rear of the theatre, hoping it didn’t just lead to a cupboard. To his relief he found himself in another corridor and he ran without thinking.

  A door crashed open further down the corridor and a man’s voice shouted at him to stop. Henry pushed through a set of double doors to get away. Christian was caught – the best thing he could do now was get out of the building and tell everyone what he’d seen in the operating theatre. He didn’t know what the hell the doctors thought they were doing, but he knew it wasn’t right.

  And it had to be stopped.

  Henry started trying doors along the corridor. The first two were locked, but the third led into a darkened room. He locked the door behind him and looked around. He was inside some kind of lab full of long workbenches and large, glass-fronted machines. Many of the machines were covered in dust sheets and there were toolboxes lying around, as if the place was being upgraded. Despite this, it reminded Henry of the time he’d visited his mother’s workplace. A horrible thought occurred to him: could she be involved in all this? Did she know what was going on in the medical centre? He immediately dismissed the thought. One of his mom’s favourite words was “ethics”. She was always going on about the ethics of this or the ethics of that. No
way would she want to be involved in anything that was happening at the medical centre…

  He moved to the back of the lab and found another side door. He tried the handle… Locked. The main lab door rattled as one of the guards tried to open it. There was mumbled discussion on the other side – clearly the guards didn’t have a key. Good, thought Henry, that buys me some time. He needed some kind of tool to force the side door open…

  The lab door shook on its hinges as something heavy smacked the other side. The guards were throwing themselves against it.

  Henry reached for a toolbox lying on top of a large, cloth-covered object on the nearest workbench…

  The lab door juddered as the guards hit it a second time. One of the hinges came loose from the wall with a grinding sound.

  As he picked up the toolbox, the cloth slipped down to reveal a tank that was filled with a dark, yellowy liquid. In the half-light, Henry made out several objects suspended in the murk and peered in to make out what they were… They seemed strangely familiar…

  Human brains?

  Four of them hanging in suspension. Henry gasped.

  The guards hit the door again, but somehow the last hinge held. One of the men on the other side let out a yell of frustration.

  Henry grabbed a hammer from the toolbox, went to the side door and slammed it down on the handle twice with all his might. The lock smashed on the second blow.

  There was a crash from the other side of the room and the main door flew off its hinges. Two security guards staggered into the room, carried by their own momentum, and collided with a workbench. Behind them, the grey-haired doctor waited in the doorway.

  “He’s there!” the doctor yelled. “At the back of the lab!”

  In a desperate effort to buy himself time, Henry grabbed the edge of the tank and heaved it over. There was a mighty crash as the glass shattered, spilling its contents across the floor of the lab. Then Henry threw his shoulder at the door. It swung open and he tore out into the night. A second later he was running across the gravel.

  From behind him, he heard the voice of the doctor cry out: “The specimens! Forget him! Pick them up! Get them off the floor!”

  Henry put his head down, realizing that he had come out on the other side of the medical centre. A door clattered open somewhere to his right and footsteps crunched on gravel. A torch beam flicked through the darkness at the back of the centre. He moved low and fast to his left, following the building round towards the front once more. There was no other way out of the complex. The surrounding wall was too high to climb on all other sides.

  Making the front without being spotted, Henry paused at the corner of the building and scanned the way ahead. The courtyard in front of the centre was deserted and the gates were still open. Was it some kind of a trap? Surely they had to be expecting him to come this way.

  Another torch beam flickered behind him and he broke from cover, heart thundering in his chest…

  He sprinted for the gate and flew past, along the driveway and into the cover of the trees, pulling off the surgical gown and mask as he ran. Henry didn’t look back, although he could hardly believe he’d made it out. Then cold realization struck him – he’d left Christian behind, not just with the guards, but with those doctors. Did they have Christian strapped to a table already? Were they cutting his skull open even now, ready to remove his brain?

  He had to rescue his friend. And he was going to need help…

  “Mom!” Henry yelled, bursting through the front door of their lodge. He was breathless from running and covered with sweat. If the guards hadn’t identified him by sight, then they would have probably got it out of Christian by now – one way or another. He shuddered, thinking of the methods those doctors might use to extract information. It was only a matter of time before they showed up at the house.

  “Mom, Christian’s in trouble!” he yelled again, moving through the lounge, which was in darkness. Something didn’t add up. Henry checked his watch and saw that it was only 10 p.m. Mom never went to bed so early… And she would have certainly waited up until he got back…

  A light was on in the kitchen and he moved towards it, pushing through the swing door. And froze in shock at what he saw…

  His mom was sitting at the table, a glass of wine in one hand, laughing as if someone had just told a joke. Her other hand was on the table, almost touching that of a man seated beside her.

  John Mallory.

  “Henry!” Jennifer Ward said in surprise, pulling her hand back from the table as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. “I didn’t expect you back so soon!”

  Henry advanced into the room. “What’s going on here?” he asked, aware that the question was pretty stupid. It was clear enough what was going on. His mom and the head of Malcorp were having some kind of wine-drinking, hand-holding date in the kitchen while they thought he was safely out of the way for a few hours.

  “You’re covered in sweat!” Jennifer said, rising from her seat and moving over to touch his forehead. “Are you sick?”

  Henry turned from her to Mallory, who sipped his wine and gave him a concerned look.

  “Are you okay, son?” Mallory asked.

  Henry looked back at his mother. “What’s he doing here?”

  Jennifer gave her son an exasperated look. “John…Mr. Mallory popped over to see how we were settling in…”

  “What, does he want to be your boyfriend or something?” Henry asked, aware of the nastiness in his voice. “He’s like sixty years old!”

  “Henry!” Jennifer snapped, anger in her voice.

  Mallory pushed his chair out and half rose. “Perhaps I should be going…”

  “Stay right there!” Jennifer said, before turning back to her son. “How dare you speak like that to a guest in our house…”

  She stopped at a heavy banging on the front door. Henry looked round and his mom must have recognized his anxiety at once. She placed a hand on his arm. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  The banging came a second time. Mallory rose swiftly from his seat. “I’ll get that,” he said, sounding relieved for the chance to get out of the kitchen. He moved through to the lounge before anyone could argue.

  As he left, Henry turned back at his mom. “I have to tell you something,” he said urgently.

  “And I have to tell you you’re bang out of line!” she hissed back. “How dare you act like a spoilt ten year old and embarrass me? And so what if I want to have a glass of wine with my boss?”

  “Mom, I’m sorry…”

  “And he is not sixty, goddammit! Do you know how difficult it is to meet decent—”

  “Mom! I’m sorry!” Henry said this with enough emphasis to make her stop. “I have to tell you something. Please.”

  Jennifer took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “Christian and I broke into the medical centre this evening—”

  “You did WHAT?”

  “Those are Malcorp security guards at the door. They’re chasing me because we got inside and saw some things we shouldn’t. They got Christian, but I managed to run away…”

  Jennifer put her hand against her temple and looked at Henry with wide eyes. “This is not happening. Tell me this is a joke, Henry.”

  “It’s no joke, Mom,” Henry said, feeling suddenly ashamed that he’d kept everything from her. He looked through the gap in the kitchen door and saw Mallory talking to one of the security guards. At any moment they’d be marching in to take him away. “Listen, Mom, you have to believe me. This is going to sound crazy, but—”

  “You mean more crazy than my son breaking and entering my boss’s property?”

  “Yeah. Malcorp is doing something to the kids around here. That special education programme the principal told you about is just a cover for some kind of experiment they’re running…”

  “Henry…”

  “Just listen to me! I saw a kid inside the centre. He was strapped down to a table and they’d cut the top of his head o
ff! They were gonna do something to his brain!”

  Jennifer opened her mouth to say something, but stopped as the kitchen door swung open again. Henry backed away, expecting to see a guard there – but there was only John Mallory. He looked at them with a neutral expression.

  “John, I’m so sorry,” Jennifer said. “Henry started telling me some crazy story…”

  Mallory held up a hand. “It’s okay. Really. I sent the guards away. I thought it better that we clear up this misunderstanding ourselves.” He turned his attention to Henry. “What do you say?”

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” Henry replied. “I’ve seen what goes on inside your hospital.”

  Mallory actually smiled at him. “And what is going on exactly? What am I getting away with?”

  Henry was momentarily at a loss for words. The head of the conspiracy that he and Fox and Christian had uncovered was standing in his kitchen, asking him to explain what he thought was going on.

  And he found he didn’t have the answer.

  “Maybe we should take a look at the medical centre,” Mallory said, glancing at Jennifer. “And I think there’s someone your son should meet.”

  With that, he held open the kitchen door and waved his hand through. “Come on then.”

  Henry was about to protest, but his mom shot him a look that made it clear he was treading on very, very thin ice. Without a word, she walked past Mallory. Powerless to do anything else, Henry followed her through the lounge and out to a waiting buggy. As the head of Malcorp emerged from the lodge and climbed behind the driver’s seat, Henry could have sworn he saw a glint of pure satisfaction in the man’s eyes.

  “I am so sorry, Mr. Mallory,” said the red-faced head of security as the Malcorp boss strode into the medical centre reception, closely followed by Henry and his mom. “I don’t know how this could have happened.”

  “Well it did happen,” Mallory said brusquely. “I’ll be conducting a full review of security here at the centre. Then I’ll decide whether or not you get to keep your job. Now get out of my sight.”