A voice spoke to her through her clenched eyelids. “You gave us a good chase.” She didn’t know the voice, but it was distinctly male.
Not quite good enough, Grace thought.
“Take your time in opening your eyes. I’m in no hurry. I’m just here to chat.”
Sure you are. That’s why I’ve got wrist and ankle cuffs.
“My name is Ethan Lacklin, by the way. I apologize for my son’s brutal methods. I asked him to hold you for me, but I did not expect him to make your stay so uncomfortable.”
Ethan Lacklin, Jordan’s youngest son–the vocal opponent of attempts to undo the aging process and the one who had recently proposed new birth restrictions. The one Grace had hoped not to encounter. She hated when her fears were substantiated.
Finally, she managed to pry open her eyes and get a good look at her captor. He was an old timer, but she knew that–this one frozen in age at about fifty years old, though he didn’t look it. His sleek black hair had not even the tiny hint of gray that his nephew, Alex, had, making her suspect generous quantities of hair dye had gone into it in the past four centuries. His face wasn’t as lined as it should have been, making her wonder if plastic surgery had come into play as well.
He wore an expensive, dark blue business suit and stood with an easy confidence. This was a man who was used to getting what he wanted.
“It’s nice to meet you, Grace.”
She turned away from him and studied the room instead. This was probably a basement room, judging by the gray cinder block and windowless features. The only way in or out was the sliding metal door through which Ethan had entered. The only furniture in the room was the chair upon which Grace sat.
This did not feel like the sort of room one usually left–ever.
“You can speak, you know,” Ethan said.
Grace pursed her lips.
“All right, I can talk for a while. Like I said, I want to apologize for your mistreatment. I only had one son because I’ve seen too many of my peers stabbed in the back–literally–by their offspring. Still, Carl isn’t bright and he’s got this evil streak in him.”
Grace almost laughed. She managed not to, but she didn’t manage to hide the twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“Something funny?”
Only that your father described you the same way. “No.”
“Good to know you can talk. Anyway, I sent Carl up here after Alex, hoping his cousin could wise him up. Didn’t work, obviously.”
The room fell into silence for a moment before Ethan continued. “Would you feel more comfortable without the cuffs?”
A trick question?
“It’s not a trick question,” Ethan confirmed.
“Yeah.”
“All right, then.” He stepped behind her and ran the key over the slot. A second later, the cuffs fell to the floor.
Grace brought her wrists in front of her and began massaging them. They tingled, but slowly the feeling returned.
“Anyway, years ago I told my son that if anyone came looking for my father, he should let me know. This, at least, he did. Unfortunately, in the meantime, he seems to have invented some wild stories about what might be behind this request. He and this dimwitted friend of his, Roy Cooper, who now owns this farm, seem to think this is some kind of child’s treasure hunt and you hold the map.”
“Huh?” Grace clamped her mouth shut and bit the inside of her cheek.
Not literally, of course, but they’ve got money and power on their minds. They don’t want to let you go until they find out exactly how you can make them ‘Real Establishment,’ as they like to call it. I don’t think they have a clue what they’re talking about, but there it is.”
This time, Grace managed to keep her confusion to herself. Perhaps it was not for her to understand the minds of rich people trying to get richer. It was clear, though, that Ethan had not told his son what was going on. It was equally clear that he did know, and he wanted her to confirm what he suspected–that someone had found out what his father had done. How he knew was a mystery she might never unravel.
“For the moment, I’m letting them believe there’s something in this for them. Meanwhile, I thought you and I could have a chat about who you’re working for and exactly what they know.”
Grace stared at the door, pointedly not looking at Ethan.
“I know Matt Stanton hired you, of course. Everyone does. There are some idiots in Kansas City who haven’t looked past their own revenge–against you and Matt–far enough to question why he hired you, which works for me. Those who are asking aren’t asking loudly enough, which works for me as well. I think they’ve gotten too used to the slower pace of life nowadays.”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Grace concentrated on stilling her rapidly beating heart. He wasn’t saying it in words, but he didn’t intend to let her out of this room alive with the information she had. Now he just wanted to know who else he had to kill.
“I hope you won’t play games with me, Grace. Silence is fine, but I don’t like lies. You and I both know what you’re after.”
How did he know, though? The question began to intrigue Grace more than it had a moment ago. Had he known his father’s whereabouts long after everyone else lost track of him? Why him, of all people, when Jordan hated him?
“Alex knows, too, which is a shame. He’s a smart man.” Ethan lowered his voice. “He’s almost got my son convinced this is all about Dad’s old biowarfare research and you’re looking for a new super virus to help thin the population.”
Grace wanted to shout at him not to hurt Alex, but she kept it bottled up inside. Such an exclamation would not help Alex or herself. In fact, it was more likely to get one of them used as a tool against the other. She had to convince Ethan that Alex meant nothing to her, which was proving surprisingly difficult given that she had only known him for a few days.
“You’re a smart woman,” Ethan said. “You can work this out on your own. You and Alex have lost. This farm is no longer in confusion. With the passing of old Mr. Cooper, Roy is in charge and nobody’s questioning his authority. Matt won’t rescue you. He may send men inquiring after you, but he’s probably working on hiring someone else now. He surely knew you might fail. He probably has a backup already.”
He was probably right about that part, damn it.
“I’m sure you knew when you took this job that you might not survive it.”
This is the part where he tells me he’ll let me live if...
“I’d love to offer you your life if you talk right now, but I think you’d see through that, anyway. So, I’ll give it to you straight up. If you tell me the truth, I’ll kill you quickly and as painlessly as I know how. Meanwhile, I will only have to kill those who know about this. I can spare the lives of, say, everyone else who happens to be in the Medicorp building when it explodes.”
Grace’s mouth fell open a fraction of an inch.
“I see you understand me. I knew we could be civilized about it.” Ethan gave her a practiced smile. “I tell you what; I’m going to have the guards bring in a chair for me so we can be more comfortable. If you like, I’ll have the house cook whip you up whatever you like. I spotted some chocolate in your bag and I understand the cook here is an expert at making candies. We can have a little feast. Have you ever had orange duck?”
“Er–no.”
“You’re in for a treat, then. You sit here and think about what I said, and I’ll be back in half an hour.”
With that, he turned and swept out the door, letting it slide shut with an ominous clang behind him.
She wouldn’t leave this room alive. That seemed certain. What was less certain was what she should do with the time she had left.
It did not occur to her for a second that Ethan would not follow through on his word. He would blow up Medicorp and he probably had the resources to do it. The right words...the right equipment smuggled to a radical pro-life group, and they would sacrifice themselves to blow up anything, n
ever realizing how much damage they had just done to their own cause.
On the other hand, a random strike like that was unlikely to get everyone involved. For all the death and destruction it would cause, such a strike would be inefficient at best, unsuccessful at worst. Ethan had to know that.
She couldn’t tell him anything. As much as the idea of letting Ethan kill thousands of people bothered her, the dream that Earth might one day return to a natural order had to stay alive.
It was no choice at all. The real question was: How much torture would she have to endure before the end? Could she hold out?
Later–half an hour like he’d said–Ethan came back in, accompanied by one guard with a chair and another wheeling a cart laden with food. The aromas coming off the strange and wonderful looking dishes were unlike any Grace had experienced before. She vaguely recognized some potatoes and vegetables, various meats cooked in ways that made them unfamiliar and unidentifiable to her, and there, to the side–chocolates.
Her mouth began to water.
“Just place the cart between us, please,” Ethan said to the guard. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
A minute later, they were alone, seated on either side of a feast.
“I always enjoy talking over dinner, don’t you?” Ethan gestured at the empty plate in front of her. “Help yourself. Your arms are free enough, even if the rest of you isn’t. I haven’t poisoned that food.”
To demonstrate, he cut a portion of some kind of meat and placed it on his plate. Then he took a generous helping of mashed potatoes and grabbed a hot roll from a basket. “This is the duck I was telling you about. A rare opportunity, indeed. You should try some.”
He didn’t say this would be her last chance. He didn’t have to.
Grace tried to think of a good argument to refuse the food. It didn’t feel right, but her stomach growled loudly in protest at her thoughts.
She took a little from each of the plates Ethan had sampled. The duck really was good, a richer meat than she was used to, but amazingly flavorful and tender.
“That’s better.” Ethan poured two glasses of water from a pitcher and handed one to Grace. “No alcohol. No tricks.”
Grace took the water, waited for Ethan to drink, and then took a drink herself.
“So, have you thought about what I told you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I’m not going to tell you anything.”
Ethan nodded, completely unflustered, as if they really were having a normal conversation. “You weren’t alive before The Change, of course. I find that many members of your generation are idealistic about The Before Time.”
Grace took a bite of potatoes cooked with cheese and some kind of spice. She barely suppressed an indecent groan. Ambrosia. The food of the gods.
She wouldn’t let him bribe her with it, though.
“There has always been poverty. The poor have always made up a certain slice of the population. The larger population means they are greater in number, but not in percentage. The skilled and hard-working have always been able to find work. Take yourself, for example.”
Blatant lies. Grace wondered if the rich really believed the things they said sometimes. She’d heard them on political shows from time to time. Not that she often watched political shows, but sometimes she felt the need to be depressed.
The poor were a much bigger percentage of the population than they had been before The Change. Unemployment was almost fifteen percent and the poverty line stretched to encompass over eighty percent of the people. The middle class had virtually disappeared.
Grace shook her head. “I’ve lived most of my life below the poverty line, Mr. Lacklin. Even now, I live month to month and barely make ends meet.”
“I understand you recently made a lot of money.”
That I’ll never get to spend.
“Anyway,” Ethan said, “the nutri-bars feed the masses. Many have been forced to find creative solutions, but that’s what adversity does. We get stronger. What ingenuity will the next generation bring, I wonder?”
Better ways to kill one another, probably. A little cynical, perhaps, but the natural order had to be restored somehow. Nature lost one way to control the human population–aging–and was now desperately searching for others.
“There’s so much to do in one lifetime. I remember, in the time before The Change, making a list and crossing things off because I would never get a chance to do them all. When The Change started, I crossed them back in. I’ve been to every nation in the world, tried every type of food imaginable–”
“That’s fascinating,” Grace interrupted. “How many people do you suppose get a chance to do that?”
“Not enough,” Ethan said, his face falling into a frown. “Which is why I’ve been an active proponent of birth restrictions for many years now. If we don’t control the population through sane measures, nature will take over.”
“And has.”
“Average life expectancy is still about one hundred and fifty years,” Ethan said. “That’s nearly double what it was in my lifetime. Not to mention the extra years are healthier. Do you have any idea what it’s like to get old and die?”
Grace shook her head.
“Of course not! You young people see us Old Timers and think this is what it’s about, but it’s not. The ones who were already too old almost all died soon after The Change. A body can only maintain a certain level of decay for so long. But the rest of us–we’ll never know it, and I am talking about so much more than wrinkles and gray hair–the grotesque images put forth by a young population of artists that has never seen their subjects. I’m talking about up here.” Ethan tapped his head. “Aging takes your mind. It takes who you are.” He tapped his chest, too. “It takes your strength and replaces it with pain.”
Grace remembered the grieving Jordan, Ethan’s father, talking as if he had lost his wife before her death.
“You never watched your mother die the way mine did. You never had to decide she was better off dead than continuing to live as a hollow shell.” His voice broke and for the first time, Grace felt the truth in his words. She had a glimpse beneath his mask and saw perhaps a hint that he wasn’t as evil as his father had thought–or did a little compassion in an otherwise ruthless man counteract evil?
A question for another time, assuming she lived. Which was a pretty big assumption.
“My father knew what he was doing. The Change wasn’t an accident, so finding him won’t change a thing, even if he’s alive, which I doubt.”
“So why kill me?” Grace asked.
“I don’t like to leave things to chance. I haven’t seen my father in a long time, and men can change. Besides, for all I know someone out there is already too close.”
Grace concentrated on her food.
“You should tell me what you know,” Ethan said. “You don’t owe anything to Matt. That man’s a son of a bitch, anyway. In case you haven’t figured it out, he has no intention of reversing the anti-aging process until he can figure out how to make an exception of himself. He’s got the money, the resources, and all the time in the world. He may even think he’s a humanitarian–helping the world in exchange for his own immortality. Who knows?”
He may be right. It didn’t matter, though. At least with Matt, there would be change for the better, even if he didn’t join in. Ethan Lacklin, on the other hand, would have the entire world self-destruct.
“Go to hell.”
“Language!” Ethan said. “I’ve hit a nerve, haven’t I? I may be a bastard, but at least I’m an equal opportunity bastard.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure your birth restrictions would limit the rich as well as the poor.”
“I only had one child. Why shouldn’t everyone else?”
“I don’t have any. Why shouldn’t everyone else? This world’s a hell hole, and it’s cruel to bring children into it.”
Ethan cleared his throat. “I see. So, then, I
don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you learned about my father or who else knows about it?”
Grace shook her head.
“Well, let’s explore the possibilities.” Ethan poured himself another glass of water and offered some to Grace. She refused, but listened out of curiosity. She wanted to know how Ethan knew about his father.
“First, you obviously didn’t run into this information on your own. Mr. Stanton hired you, so he must have given it to you. He’s already on my list of targets.”
“Good luck,” Grace said. She’d seen rich men go after one another before. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it turned into a small war. She didn’t understand the politics involved, exactly, but she wondered what would happen if these two powerful men targeted one another. Would The Establishment line up and take sides? Would the entire structure crumple from above?
Nah, there had to be some kind of check. It had never escalated that far before.
“Well, thank you,” Ethan said, “but I think I’m okay. You see, as a whole The Establishment doesn’t want to see aging resume. They’ll back me when I take action against him.”
Ethan stared at the empty plates in front of them. “Ready for dessert?”
The chocolates weren’t quite enough to make Grace think she’d already died and gone to heaven, but they were close. This wasn’t the cheap excuse for imitation chocolate she normally had access to. Someone had used real cocoa beans or at least, that’s what she told herself. Something in this chocolate made it rich, creamy, and smooth.
“The thing I’ve been wondering,” Ethan said, “and please let me know if it’s true, is whether Mr. Stanton somehow got hold of Dad’s diary. We never found it, you see. I’m sure he took it with him when he ran after the murders because he stayed in his cabin for a while, and we had that bugged, too. But he didn’t stay there long “
Grace didn’t remember any entries made after the murder. She didn’t let her confusion show, though.
“I know you have the diary, or have listened to it. You know where my father was when he left his last message. You know who he had met and who he might have told about his research. In four hundred years, he might have left quite a trail. I want that information.”
The Immortality Virus Page 18