by Alten-Steve
Foletta turns on her, his cherub face flushing red. “Who the hell do you think you are, Intern? I’ve been running asylums since before you were born.”
“Then you know I speak the truth. One hour a day, that’s all I’m asking for.”
“And if I agree?”
“Then I’ll cosign his evaluation as you requested.”
Foletta’s gray eyes scrutinize her, sweat beads dripping down the side of his face. “One hour. Nothing more. And you’ll sign his evaluation before lunch.”
The yard at the South Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center is a rectangular stretch of lawn surrounded on all four sides. The L-shape of the main building encloses the perimeter to the east and south, the north and western borders walled off by a twenty-foot stark white concrete barrier topped with coils of barbed wire.
There are no doors in the yard. To exit the grass-covered atrium, one must ascend three flights of cement steps, which lead to an open mezzanine running the length of the southern side of the facility.
Samuel Agler walks across the expanse of lawn, enjoying each blade of grass squeezed between his bare toes, luxuriating in every breath of fresh, unfiltered air. Tilting his head back, he allows the sun’s rays to beat down upon his face, causing his flesh to tingle and his blood vessels to vasodilate.
Dominique watches him, feeling the eyes of every guard upon them. “How do you feel?”
“Reborn.”
Mick and I finally have everything ready, we’re getting you out tonight.
How?
I’ve been staying late, pretending to be studying for my certification. Paul Jones makes his last round at eight fifteen, then the night guy takes over—Luis Lopez. This is Lopez’s second job, and his wife just had a baby, so he usually dozes off by eleven in one of the pods. I’ll spike his coffee just to be sure.
First-floor security is wired in to every video camera, how do we manage to bypass the system?
Raymond works the night shift this week. I’m going to bait him into paying you a late-night visit. He’ll shock you before he attacks. Mick gave me a device that will interfere with the transponder receiver on your ankle cuff. Slip it inside your shoe before you leave the yard, then once you’re alone in your cell adhere it to the ankle bracelet so it covers the wireless antenna. Mick will be waiting outside for you in a white van.
They stroll past the concrete wall, Sam’s eyes casually inspecting every crack and fissure. What about you? You’ll be a fugitive.
When Raymond wakes up, I’ll be lying next to him, unconscious. You’ll erase the master tapes before you leave to protect my cover story. We’ll rendezvous when we can.
You mean in Nazca?
How did you know that?
Mick took you there weeks ago. Whatever you saw—it made you afraid.
Let’s stay focused on tonight. She checks her watch. Stop walking and put on your shoes, I need to give you the device.
He stops and kneels in the grass, slipping on his shoes.
From her pocket she removes a metal wafer the size of a stamp and casually drops it on the ground.
Sam slips it inside his shoe.
One last detail—we need to get into a fight. I’m going to ask you to leave. Walk the other way. That will alert the guards. I’ll stop them from Tasering you and insist that I handle the situation. When I approach I want you to backhand me across the face. Hard.
I can’t do that.
Yes you can. Think about Laura and Sophie. This is your only shot at saving them.
Dominique checks her watch again. “Quit stalling, Sam. It’s time to return to your cell.”
Sam hesitates, then walks the other way.
Anthony Foletta watches the yard from his third-floor office, his eyes focused on Samuel Agler, his mind on the voice on the other end of his cell phone. “… he’ll be in to replace your regular night-shift guy, who will have car trouble. Pull the master fuse on the seventh-floor security cameras at ten fifteen and leave it out for twenty minutes. That’s all the time he needs to take care of our friend.”
“What about the autopsy?”
“The autopsy will indicate Agler died of heart failure.”
“Understood … Jesus!” Foletta jumps out of his chair as he witnesses his intern backhanded in the face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your boy just flipped out in the yard. I better get out there before he ends up in the infirmary!” Foletta hangs up, charging out of his office.
A thousand miles to the north, Pierre Borgia hangs up the receiver inside one of the Situation Room’s acrylic privacy booths, the secretary of state smiling to himself.
32
The magnet failure last week at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) means that the accelerator will not be up and running again until early spring 2009, say officials at CERN.
The LHC has lost up to a tonne of liquid helium after some of its superconducting magnets inadvertently heated up. […] The collider is designed to accelerate the subatomic particles known as protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts, far surpassing any other accelerator on Earth, and smash them together in search of new particles, forces and dimensions. To keep the project on schedule, the team running the accelerator near Geneva have decided to skip a planned test run at an intermediate energy level and re-start the LHC in 2009 at the full beam energy of 7 TeV.
—PHYSICSWORLD.COM
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008
South Florida Evaluation and
Treatment Center
Miami, Florida
8:23 p.m.
Paul Jones finishes his rounds, returning to his security station to collect his lunch pail and car keys. He finds Dominique sprawled out on the vinyl couch, studying.
“Either you’ve suddenly become studious, or you and Lopez have something going.”
“Please. He’s married with a new kid. I’m just cramming for my written exams, and it’s a lot more quiet here than at my place with my parents.”
“How much longer are they staying with you?”
“At least another month.”
“How’s your face?”
“Still swollen. Guess I learned never to let my guard down.”
“You should have shocked him the moment he walked away from you. Don’t hesitate. Second chances are rare with these hardcore crazies.”
“Understood. Good night.” She waits until Jones leaves, then makes a fresh pot of coffee, adding a dozen sedatives to the brew.
An hour passes, still no Luis. Anxious, she takes the elevator down to the first floor, unbuttoning the top three buttons of her blouse.
Raymond has his feet propped up on his desk, the security guard engrossed in a college football game on a palm-size TV. “Going home, Sunshine?”
“Not yet. What happened to Luis Lopez?”
“Called in with car trouble. The agency has a sub on the way. Why? You hot for that little Mexican dude?”
“Actually, I prefer barrel-chested redheads.”
Raymond turns to her, flashing a yellowed grin. “About time you came around.” He approaches, his eyes glued to her cleavage. “You have no idea how many times I thought about this.”
She backs up as he’s suddenly pressed against her, his thick calloused fingers caressing her buttocks. “Ray, slow down. Can we just talk a second? Ray … look at my face, did you even notice my swollen cheek? Do you know who did this to me? It was my patient, the guy I risked my internship trying to help out. He hit me so hard I saw stars.”
“Don’t worry. When I finish with him he’ll be in a body cast.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“After we’re through.”
“Ray, stop. Ray, someone’s coming!”
The man is in his late thirties, his shaved head and dark eyes hidden beneath a New York Mets baseball cap. The security uniform remains taut over a wiry muscular frame. “The agency sent me. Open up.”
Raymond looks him over. “Got any ID?”
/> The man holds up a security card, his mannerisms far too professional for this line of work. Dominique shudders. A hired assassin?
“You’re on the seventh floor.” Raymond buzzes him through, then hands him a transponder and magnetic passkey on a chain. “I assume you know how to use this?”
“No problem, big fella.”
Raymond scowls. He waits until the man steps onto the elevator before returning his attention to Dominique. “Now, where were we?”
Samuel Agler hears the elevator ring. He listens intently for the guard’s footsteps, but there is no noise.
The CIA assassin slides in stockinged feet down the hall, moving silently toward cell 714. His orders are to subdue the target, then inject him with the drug. Pausing outside the pod, he checks his watch: 9:58 p.m.
Too soon. Slowing his breathing, he examines the transponder, waiting …
Anthony Foletta dons rubber gloves as he keys into the third-floor electrical closet. He quickly locates the rectangular metal fuse box labeled LEVEL 7 and opens it. Aided by a flashlight, he scans the rows of three-inch fuses until he finds the one corresponding to “Vid Cam.” Using a flathead screwdriver, he pries the fuse free from its slot, then returns to his office to wait.
Raymond is all over her, tearing at her clothing, his bulk too large and close to fend off—just like her cousin so many years ago.
Dominique’s heart pounds in her chest, the anxiety making it impossible to breathe. The more she pushes his groping hands away, the more incensed he becomes, driving her panic to a frenzy. She tries to scream, but his garlic-laced tongue muffles her words. She bites down, tasting blood as her mind screams:
Sam! Help!
The cell door opens. The assassin aims the transponder.
Sam flops onto his back on the floor, his mouth frothing with the mixture of water and toothpaste, his mind focused on the turn of events. New guard. He wants me subdued.
The guard moves in quickly, the hypodermic needle concealed in his right hand.
Wham! Sam’s heel catches him in the chest, the powerful kick crushing his sternum while causing the bundle of nerves in his solar plexus to spasm. He writhes on the ground by the open door, wheezing air.
Sam contemplates taking the guard’s uniform when he hears the desperate cry from the void:
Sam! Help!
“Uhh!” He looks down in disbelief, the spent hypodermic needle protruding from his calf muscle, the guard lying on his side, grinning.
“Trick or treat.”
Sam kicks the smile off his face before stumbling backward, the cell spinning in his head, his heart pounding, his mind tracking the icelike presence in his vein as the foreign substance circulates methodically through his bloodstream—
—slowing to a crawl as Sam slips inside a strangely familiar corridor of existence, the air gelid, his movements propelling him out of the cell and into the awaiting elevator.
Steroids have shortened Raymond’s fuse, turning lust into an act of aggression. He spits out blood, then balls his fist and punches Dominique in the face, breaking her nose.
She goes limp beneath him.
The elevator rings, causing him to look up. The doors open.
Turquoise-blue eyes race toward him behind a blur of white, striking him with the force of a tank. His rib cage crushes his internal organs and squeezes his heart muscle so hard his aorta bursts a second before his spine shatters against the cinder-block wall.
Dominique awakens to flesh so hot it scalds. She is moving impossibly fast through the reception area on a gurney, only somehow it is not a gurney. Before she can fathom who is carrying her she is outside, looking up at a blurred night sky.
The heavens are replaced with the back of a van. Mick’s voice echoes in her brain, the sound shaping into words—escorted by the explosive pain in her face.
“… he’s been drugged. Dom, I need you to drive the van. Dominique!”
“Okay!” She climbs behind the wheel and accelerates away from the asylum, using her sleeve to wipe blood and tears from her swollen face.
33
We are born with the schizophrenia of good and evil within us, so that each generation must persevere in self-recognition and in self-control. In ceding to the automatic reassurance of our logic, we have abandoned once more those powers of recognition and of control. Darkness seems scarcely different from light, with the web of structure and logic woven thick across both. We must therefore cut away these layers of false protection if we wish to regain control of our common sense and morality.
—JOHN RALSTON SAUL
VOLTAIRE’S BASTARDS, 1992
“I am great. My place is now higher than that of the human work, the human design. I am their sun and I am their light, and I am also their months. So be it: my light is great. I am the walkway and I am the foothold of the people … I am the vanquisher.”
Seven Macaw dances before Chilam Balam and his followers in the shadow of the great temple, the evil one’s eyes red and serpentlike, his fanged teeth stained blue. Every inch of his skin is tattooed, his fingertips ending in sharp clawed nails.
The scent of burundanga powder is heavy in Chilam Balam’s nose. He can feel the toxin moving through his bloodstream, delivering its icy wave of paralyzing rigidity to his muscles. Terror turns to panic as he loses the capacity to breathe, the air wheezing from his mouth like a downed deer succumbing to the arrow.
I am Chilam Balam who led you across frigid wasteland and shoreline blackened with death. I am the Jaguar Prophet who guided you to this fertile land. Will no one come to my aid?
A warm light, soothing in its brilliance, appears above his head. The voice of Viracocha reaches out to him from the void: You gave them everything, and still it was not enough. Greed has led them to the dark side, where chaos abounds. And yet they could have had it all—happiness and eternal fulfillment beyond any riches.
How, Lord? How could they have had it all?
Simply by understanding the true test of existence—that we were created to love one another, that our own fulfillment comes when we treat others with dignity.
And what of Seven Macaw?
Evil is the necessary test that determines whether your nation is worthy of the gift of immortality. This generation is not. The people are laden with selfishness and want, the seed of evil passed on to their children. Their hands are stained by the blood of their enemies, their altars soiled from human sacrifices. Do you believe this is what the Creator desires? Do you believe the Holy One seeded man so that He could watch his children destroy one another through the self-validation of hatred and intolerance? Prayer is nothing more than a burden when the assembly tramples flowers in the Creator’s garden. Justice washes clean the soul only when the oppressed are aided, the powerful rebuked, the fatherless cared for.
Chilam Balam’s heart goes silent, the air still, save for Seven Macaw’s blade severing his head from his neck.
His body slips away, the warm light catching his soul, embracing it. He gazes upon his decapitated vessel and his fallen nation—the people crying out in horror as their holiest of temples buckles with their dead prophet, the pyramid’s base collapsing beneath an avalanche of greed and negativity, envy and hatred.
—try to open your eyes.
The female voice startles him into action. He struggles against an immovable weight until he realizes he has no arms.
Fight your way out. Create pain.
He stands amid blackness and feels for the wall, bloodying the cold stone with his face. Over and over he strikes the dungeonlike enclosure until he finds his hands tingling somewhere in the abyss. Encouraged, he bashes the pit’s rounded walls harder, all the while opening and closing his long-lost appendages, the pain giving birth to arms. His fingers walk up his broken upper torso to the diseased flesh he has bashed into pulp and claw at the amber sealing his eyes until he unveils the light—
—a narrow slit of geography teasing him from above—a torturous crevice of rock situated
between daylight and the rat-infested hovel he now occupies. He looks around, his mind, fighting to awaken from its forced hibernation, still too numb to comprehend his surroundings.
He reaches high along the cracked ceiling into the crevice, managing a precarious grip of rock. Pressing his bare feet along the ceiling for leverage, he pulls himself into the fissure and begins climbing, working his way up the narrow shaft. Shards of limestone slice apart his flesh, tree roots force him into binding contortions that pin him so tightly to the earth he can barely draw a breath.
Finally he emerges to daylight, his effort rewarded with a rush of briny air.
His perch resides at the summit of a mountain. A fine white mist conceals the sea to the west—he can hear the waves as they batter the rocky shoreline below. Looking down, he can make out a symbol, glistening with sun-doused moisture on the mountain’s western face—a massive trident, carved deep into the rock.
Then he sees the man.
Tall and pale as the mist, with matching silky-white hair and beard and piercing Mayan-blue eyes, he is standing by the summit’s edge, waiting.
“Are you my guide? The one who will take me to Hunab K’u?”
“You have not earned the right to see the Creator.”
“Who are you to speak to me in this manner? I am Chilam Balam, the greatest prophet in history.”
“If you were such a great prophet, Chilam Balam, then how were you defeated in battle? You should have foreseen the evil of Seven Macaw and struck him down. Instead, you continued to feed upon the tree of knowledge until it satiated your ego and blinded you to your quest.”
“Quest? What quest?”
“You were tasked with advancing the evolution of the Hunahpu. Your desire to bathe in the light of Hunab K’u for yourself alone has brought darkness to your people.”
The mist clears to the east, unveiling a city situated in a mountain valley. Once-fertile land has dried to near-desert conditions, the surrounding hillsides plundered for their minerals.
A bloodred pyramid towers above the city, its surface sparkling with encrusted gemstones. Thousands of worshipers have gathered below. A dozen wait to be sacrificed.