From Filth & Mud

by J. Manuel

  Jacob doubted that his friends had survived. He was now seriously outnumbered and outgunned, a point that was driven home by the ensuing onslaught. He took a quick inventory and realized that he only had a few rounds left in his rifle and eight in his thigh-holstered pistol. He wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, and his attackers seemed to know it because they slowed their fire; now it was accurate and taunting. He popped out from behind the fan and dispatched on of the guards with two short bursts from his rifle before the bolt locked back over its empty magazine. Reinforcements streamed through Eckert’s office and out onto the roof. Jacob recognized their familiar black fatigues and the XPS insignia emblazoned on their shoulder patches. They were John’s men, and they joined the BioSyn guards in a phalanx. The line of men drew down on him and opened fire once again.

  Jacob emptied his pistol as he dove for cover. It would be over soon, he thought as he sat against the riddled fan, but then a deafening silence interrupted the cacophony of the night. There, just above the ringing in his ears, he heard Eckert’s voice.

  “Come out, Jacob! It’s over! I promise that my men will not open fire.”

  Jacob sat quietly until Eckert called for him a second time.

  “She belongs to me, Jacob! Not you or anyone else. She’s no good to you without my people. I promise that I’ll give your son the treatment.”

  Jacob moved away from his position and roared back: “Monte-Alban told me that Lilith is a weapon. That’s what you want, nothing more! There’s no cure, at least not one that you want.”

  Eckert’s face contorted above a magnificent grin, and in that fleeting moment, Jacob understood his adversary. There was no reasoning with him. He lusted for power. He didn’t care if the Chinese, or anyone else, got their hands on Lilith. He just wanted Lilith to be unleashed on the world. He would extort the highest price for her sale and watch from his throne atop the BioSyn tower as the world’s powers battled for her.

  “I knew that it would end like this, Jacob. I cherish the battle.” Eckert stripped off his jacket and calmly cast it aside. “Your redemption is through me,” he spoke as he climbed onto the landing pad and stood in the middle of the X-centered ring. “Join me, Jacob!” he pleaded before extending his arms in a striking messianic pose.

  Jacob was out of options. He was unarmed, and Eckert’s men awaited with weapons readied. He cautiously joined Eckert on the landing pad. The wind swept furiously here; its echoing wail leaving no doubt that death was near. John had cautioned him about Eckert’s fighting prowess, but this was not a fight, this was war. Eckert was the enemy and in order to vanquish him, Jacob would have to revisit that dark place that had haunted his dreams for the past decade; the dark place where he’d lost himself and his control, seeking vengeance for Mendes’ death.

  Jacob gathered himself on one edge of the landing pad and looked around the platform, quickly searching for any weapon that he or Eckert could use. The city lights polluted the night sky with a reddish hue and cast a bloody shadow on the impromptu arena. The moon hid, distant, gray, and faded behind inky clouds. At this height, the sounds of the city were obscured by the wind, which now threatened to knock him over. Eckert stood impervious to its force. With a flick of his hand, Eckert waved his men inside and waited for the office doors to slide shut behind them. The two combatants stood isolated on the blistery pad.

  “What do you say we start this endeavor?” Eckert paused momentarily as if awaiting Jacob’s response, but in another instant he sprang into a full sprint toward Jacob.

  Jacob whirled around and ran to the office doors. He sensed Eckert gaining with each stride, closing in as he neared the doors, a hair behind him, but Jacob did not slow down. Instead he sprinted faster still until the very moment of impact with the doors. He planted his right foot into the door and spun his body, driving from his foot through his hips and up through his spine. The forceful chain reaction seamlessly transferred through his body like an uncoiling snake as it drove through his shoulder and into the tip of his right elbow, which he drove into Eckert’s nose. It immediately shattered and sprayed blood onto the glass. Jacob attempted to follow up his surprise attack, but Eckert expertly covered his face in a defensive shell, and Jacob’s onslaught was rendered impotent. Eckert parried one of Jacob’s wild haymakers and threw him to the ground with ease.

  Jacob was stunned by the suddenness of the technique, but he managed to roll away from Eckert’s stomping heel. He sprang back to his feet, bounding back several times to create space between him and his attacker. Eckert spit a thick wad of blood and pawed at his nose.

  “Not bad, Jacob. I didn’t expect that from you. You got first blood.” Eckert smiled through his bloody teeth as he continued to walk Jacob down. “You won’t land another strike. I assure you.” Eckert closed the distance in the blink of an eye and connected with a kick to Jacob’s left leg, which instantly buckled. Eckert stopped to admire his work as Jacob grimaced. Blinding pain drove through the sciatic nerve on the outside of his leg. Eckert connected with a quick jab and then backed off again, toying with his prey. He was light on his feet. His attacks were effortless, artful, and devastating. Jacob continued to give ground, trying to create space between himself and Eckert only to have that space stolen by another crushing kick to his leg. He winced in pain as Eckert’s shin repeatedly dug into the now tenderized meat of his quadriceps. He resisted the urge to buckle to the ground, but just barely. That would be certain death.

  “Come on, Jacob! I expected more from you. You are supposed to be a worthy adversary.” Eckert unleashed his leg like a whip and snapped it against both of Jacob’s legs. “How about that, Jacob? You see I am sporting about it. I could very well just keep targeting the one leg until I break your femur, but there would be no fun in that, at least not now, not so soon.”

  Jacob rallied and dove headlong into Eckert, attempting to tackle him, but Eckert pivoted immediately and struck Jacob with a fist behind the ear that instantly robbed him of his equilibrium. Jacob windmilled his arms and landed hard on the edge of the landing pad. He clung to the edge as the world spun around him and his eyes drifted in and out of focus. Pushing himself onto his elbows, he attempted to rise to his knees, but his legs refused to respond; meanwhile, Eckert stalked relentlessly. He stood above Jacob and kicked him with a flare of revulsion. Jacob rolled helplessly down onto the roof surface, which dropped over the tower’s edge just a few feet away.

  “Pathetic! You disgust me, but mercifully no one will know how you fought here today. You can count on me to tell a good story about you to your two boys. Well the one anyway!” Eckert cackled. “What would you like me to tell him, Jacob? That you were a hero or a coward? Maybe I should tell him that you were robbed of everything before I ended your life? And what should I tell him that you died for, that you abandoned him for?” Eckert bent over him and yanked him by the collar up onto his knees then crashed a fist into Jacob’s orbital bone. Jacob fell from the force of the blow. The taste of salty blood oozed into his mouth. Eckert bludgeoned him mercilessly with a quick succession of blows. “Do you know what I admire about you?” Eckert paused his hammering. “It’s that you refuse to give up. Your insolent attitude is quite astonishing, but I’ve broken many men like you. You all die the same way, face up or face down.”

  Eckert kicked Jacob’s limp body toward the edge of the thousand-foot drop. The chill wind bit into Jacob’s face and carried away Eckert’s rants. He willed himself to his elbows, and his arms vaguely complied as his executioner steadily approached. Jacob rose to his knees, warm blood streaming down his face, while Eckert stood victoriously in front of him.

  “And now for the kill!” Eckert stepped behind Jacob and wrapped one arm across his throat and the other around the back of his neck. The pressure slowly increased and Jacob’s carotid arteries were gradually clamped. “I enjoy feeling the life leave a body. It is truly an intimate experience. Right here, in this moment Jacob, I am your angel of death.”

  Jacob st
ruggled against the pressure at first, instinctively grabbing at the arm that was crushing his windpipe, and pulling against its murderous grip to no avail. Moment by moment he weakened, his strength sapped, his mind not responding, he flailed desperately at Eckert’s face.

  “Let go, Jacob. Let go. It’s okay to let go,” Eckert whispered into his ear.

  And then he did. He simply let go, and gave himself to the Leviathan, the one that had haunted the shallows of his subconscious, the one that had called for him since the day he had buried it in the filth and mud that fed the brackish waters of the Shatt Al-Arab. It now rose from its watery grave and emerged in its true form, a human figure, whose reanimated eye stared back at him and judged. But Jacob had no advocate this time, no alibi, no redress, just a plea for mercy, and it was granted. He was forgiven. Jacob was cleansed and ready to receive his soul once again. Jacob nodded to his longtime tormentor and it to him, then closed his eyes and held on tightly to Eckert’s crushing arms. He mustered his remaining energy, dug his heels into the ground, and pushed with all of his might, driving violently to the tower’s edge until he was falling, free.

  Eckert screamed and tried to release hisarms, but Jacob held on for death as his tears were lifted from his eyes, offerings to the heavens above. He felt Sarah’s warm embrace around his arms while the boys hugged his waist as they always did. They would be okay.

  Then there was peace.

  EPILOGUE

  Alexi and Dima walked through the maze of the FSB headquarters led by Katerina who remained shackled to the case. She told them to wait as she approached the two massive guards that stood outside of Col. Golovkin’s office. She turned to Alexi and Dima after a terse discussion and motioned for them to approach. The first guard opened the door to the office inside and entered with Katerina, Alexi, and Dima in tow. The second guard followed the group closely behind, his Strizh pistol at the ready.

  Alexi and Dima sat for a few minutes until Golovkin strode in. The Colonel was pleased. He had just won a large victory over his FSB counterparts.

  “So where the hell is it?” Golovkin was in no mood for pleasantries. He wanted to see the prize for himself.

  Katerina unshackled the case from her wrist and swiped her thumbs over the fingerprint scanners above both latches of the case. The case whirred softly and then offered the audible click of the springing locks. Katerina opened the case and turned it toward Golovkin, revealing the contents within. Three super-cooled titanium vials were held tightly within the impact-resistant molding of the case.

  “There it is: Lilith.”

  Katerina rose slightly out of her chair to hand it to Golovkin, but one of the guards pushed her back into the seat and wrested the case from her. Golovkin smiled and extended his hands, but the guard walked past him, dropped the case into Dima’s lap and stepped away.

  There on his lap, on top of the case, lay a Strizh pistol with a suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. Dima turned his head to the others, reached for the pistol, then began to smile. In one quick motion the pistol was leveled at Golovkin’s head. Then it fired. The resulting pop was shocking, though it was not loud. Dima stood, walked behind the desk to Golovkin’s chair, and pushed the body out of it. He placed the still smoking pistol on the wooden desk with a satisfying clunk and took his seat.

  Alexi was still in shock, but he was the only one. Without being instructed, the guards carried the body out through the side door. It would be professionally disposed. Katerina stared at Alexi with her Makarov firmly in hand.

  Dima smiled at his partner and said, “Golovkin was not true PRYAMO material. He’d reached the highest office he was going to, and PRYAMO was getting tired of his eccentricities.” Dima searched Alexi for any sign of hesitation while Katerina awaited her command.

  “Tak!” Alexi replied. “What’s my next mission?”

  - - - - - - -

  Manny looked at the excised brain that sat on the laboratory table in front of him. Sadness overcame him. He picked up the tray on which it sat and walked around the laboratory. He looked at the well-formed gray matter, which was miraculously pristine. It did not betray any hint of its violent end. He placed it down on the dissecting tray. He was curious. Would he find the small, gray dot? He slid the tray carefully into the side slot of the Level 4 surgical cabinet. He placed his hands into the gloved compartment and pressed his biohazard suit’s visor against the objective lenses of the microscope as he began the delicate dissection.

  Manny excised the tissue around the cerebrum of his friend’s brain and there, a few layers in, he saw it. He removed the tissue around the dot and transported it to a glass slide. He placed a slide cover on the sample and prepared it for the scanning electron microscope. He moved it beneath the focusing aperture of the powerful microscope and rose from his seat to a large, wall-mounted display. The screen was soon filled with an ultra-magnified image of the dot. Millions of dormant Lilicytes packed together in a colony. He observed the mass in silence. It was life and it was death and it was both at the same time.

  He stared at the colony and noticed that the Lilicytes were bonded in their second generation construct. He smiled and tapped the display. Lilith had cured his friend of an unknown cancer. A tear crept out of Manny’s eye and hung upon an eyelash. He was grateful that he could help Jacob if only for an instant, though in truth it was Isaac who had. He had never met him, but obviously he had been brilliant, though daring was probably more apropos. To think that the solution had been there all along, perhaps it was obvious to Isaac because he had never been vaccinated against measles and did not have the antibodies to stop Lilith’s reproduction. Although he had only done it as a last-ditch effort to create a massive amount of Lilicytes in a short period of time, the reward that came from that risk was immeasurable. The Lilicytes that he injected into himself had not been exposed to measles antibodies, which muted their antigenic-drift response.

  The Lilicytes that had been injected into every other test subject had been exposed to measles antibodies, and as a defense mechanism, the Lilicytes began to adapt their protein coats to battle against the host’s immune system. This adaptation created the second generation Lilicytes that had a higher than desired affinity to each other and this had caused the deaths. The same mechanism had worked its sabotage in the mice experiments. It had taken some time for Manny to unravel the mystery, but the pieces came together when he revisited the genesis of the experiments. The mice, like most lab mice, were transgenic, and they had been modified to express human measles virus receptors CD46 and CD150 in order to promote Lilith’s infective capabilities. The mice were supposed to be kept in sterile environments, but somewhere in the delivery chain from the supplier to BioSyn’s own lab, they had come in contact with the live virus. The mice that had made it to the trials were the survivors that had developed an immune response, and thus the resulting strokes. But because Isaac’s Lilicytes had not been exposed to an immune response, their second generation, or the Isaac Strain, as he called them, behaved much more like the Phase 1 Lilicytes in the petri dish tests.

  And then it came to him. Manny’s realization crested over him like a river. He could use them. This would be Jacob’s gift to his son, his final selfless act. Manny removed the Lilicyte colony and prepared it for reintroduction into a new host.

  - - - - - - -

  Aiden boarded his jet once again bound for D.C. Irina was working on archiving all of BioSyn’s and XPS’ systems. He would be meeting with Senator Thompson, and this time he was ensuring that he’d have the upper hand on the intelligence folks. He tapped the small, titanium carrying case and smirked—his ace in the hole. He was pretty sure that none of them knew of its existence or the fact that their own lackey had been keeping it from them. He could not wait to see the looks on their faces when he, their tech monkey as some of them disparagingly referred to him, revealed it to them. He would also reveal the fact that with near certainty, the Russians and the Chinese also possessed it as well. That was a reacti
on that he also couldn’t wait to see.

  His plan was straightforward. He would use Lilith to negotiate a lucrative contract for the development of special biological projects. He’d been looking to expand Collier Analytics into other product lines, and with his recent acquisition of the intellectual property through surreptitious means, he was rather well positioned to take advantage of whatever market opportunities presented themselves—besides he had the lead scientist in the field sitting next to him on his plane.

  Aiden turned to Manny, “You never get used to flying like this. It’s like having your own wings.”

  - - - - - - -

  Sarah approached the casket escorted by Luke and Nathan. John held her tightly as she collapsed under the emptiness, which now crushed her heart. She wailed inconsolably as Luke and Nathan gripped her waist tightly. Their tears soaked through her skirt, Jacob’s favorite, a light-blue mini that she’d worn on their first date. She also wore the matching light-blue and white halter top. She wore her sorrow over everything else. Her parents couldn’t find the energy to stand; Jacob’s would have been there, had they known their son, and he them. All those in observance sat with their heads hanging low as if the gravity of the Earth had concentrated on that melancholy ground.