Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  My bo shuriken! It was still lodged deep in his wrist. I grabbed it, twisted. That got me the scream he wouldn’t let me have the first time. He still wouldn’t let go. I thrust deeper. Then I snatched it out, corkscrew fashion. More blood sprayed me, a geyser now. I’d severed his radial artery.

  The abused hand lurched away now, breaking his vise. Problem was, his other fisted simultaneously, hurtling for my nose. If it connected, he could drive my bones into my brain.

  I jerked my face away, my open palm blocking his blow with nothing to spare, his fist still impacting my ear. I was covered in his blood now, nausea and pain still unregistering. One thing reverberated inside me. Matt. Get what you need to save him.

  Filthy hit me again, his knee plowing into my pelvis. Jagged sensations shattered out, sweeping me.

  End this. Claw his eyes out. He goes spastic with shock and pain, you drive your knee in his middle, throw him over your head….

  No—that was out—I needed him to see, to get me what I needed. Needed another maneuver. Go for the obvious—hope it’ll be enough.

  I stabbed my thumb into his wound, hooked. Then I shredded down with all my strength. That got him howling. And off me.

  I snapped to my feet in a hands-free rebound, landed in position, launched into atobi geri jump-kick, my platform-heeled foot ramming his face before he got off his knees. Micro-dresses—the next best best thing to stretch pants in a fight.

  He staggered backward, lost his balance. Just for a second. Then all his gym training kicked in and he rebounded to his feet, a wounded bull coming after me. No danger here anymore. Not from him. But anyone could still walk in, and then this would get sticky. Maybe more than I could handle. Get what you need and get out.

  I jumped over one of the fallen men, swooped down on the Beretta I’d kicked out of his hand. Still had four rounds in it. Having it waved in his face didn’t stop his mindless attack.

  I shook my head, leapt out of his reach, tsking. “You don’t realize yet that I just slashed your wrist, do you. That you’ll bleed out in minutes and you’re just shortening your time exerting yourself so much. Work it out, Einstein. The harder and faster your heart beats, the quicker it pumps your blood out of you.”

  He grunted, eyes widening in horror. And murderous hatred. “Bitch! Whore! Ya ain’t walkin’ outta here. Gonna skin you alive.” He tried to stagger to the door. Asking for help at this late hour? Didn’t think so. I rammed the butt of the gun into his neck.

  He stumbled back, sagged on the couch. He looked up at me, read in my lens-covered eyes that he wasn’t doing anything or going anywhere without my say-so. But I saw desperation, too. Hmm. The dead goons could have thought I didn’t warrant more backup than them. But maybe they’d kept the news of my real agenda to themselves, to be alone in their boss’s good graces. Seemed Filthy believed no one else was going to crash this party. Which changed everything.

  This might yet turn into a very fruitful night.

  Filthy fumbled his jacket off, tried to shred it for a pressure bandage, failed. He tried to wrap the sleeve. It didn’t work. He wrapped his other hand on his wrist, looking around in desperation for something he could use to stem his hemorrhage. He let go of his hand to undo his shirt. I kept kicking his hands down. Wondered how many times he had played with helpless women. What it felt like to be on the receiving end of a sadistic game.

  His pig-like whimpers were an open window into his feelings right now. As well as feeling rage and frustration, he was getting shitting-himself scared. Lovely.

  “I can save you.” I produced an elastic pressure bandage from my bag of tricks, waved it at him. He lunged for it and I stepped aside like a torero, let his momentum crash him into the wall. “I have a price. All you have of your ‘opportunity,’ a list of your affiliates, scientists, sub-dealers—everyone who has or could have had access to it. And your special way out of here.”

  “Go ta hell, bitch.”

  “Want to join your men real bad, don’t you. But it won’t be as quick for you. No one will come to save you. They know you’re expecting some action and won’t dream of interrupting you. Not with that temper on you. Face it, the only two who knew anything’s wrong are dead. I have you to myself till morning. And I’m good. You saw how good I am. I can make you last all night. And I can do a lot of bad stuff to you meanwhile, too. So what do you say?”

  He was gasping now. “I said go ta hell….”

  Holding out, was he? Gutsier and stupider than I had bargained for. Time for harsher lines of persuasion.

  I looked down on him, smirked. “Say, how about I send you there?”

  Thirteen

  “He’s gone!” Fadel’s indistinct words whistled through teeth clenched by swollen lips and a fractured jaw.

  In the past twenty-four hours, since I’d taken care of Filthy and returned to the Sanctuary, I’d gotten used to deciphering them. Did he just say—gone?

  Words and numbers, values and verdicts on the investigations printouts in my hand merged, melted. My mind blipped as I swung around, my stare slamming into the monitor, only then registering the import of the endless beep.

  “Crash-cart!” I yelled, flinging the investigations down. Hell. Hell! He hadn’t even fibrillated, had just taken a shortcut and flatlined! “Fadel, initiate cardiac compressions. Lucia, epinephrine, 2mg IV.”

  Neither moved, just gave me “what the hell for?” looks.

  I cried out, “Dammit, we have to try.”

  Fadel shrugged, more words hissing between his teeth. “You saw the CTs, Cali. He wasn’t coming back from that. I never saw such massive intracranial hemorrhage and cerebral infarctions. He was already brain-dead before his heart gave out.”

  “No, dammit.” Bile rose up to my eyes, my whole body tightening with anger, futility—and guilt. This was my fault. “God, I killed him.”

  Fadel shook his head, disconnected our patient from the electrodes. “He killed himself, and you know it. He’s been trying his damnedest for years and the only reason he hasn’t died a dozen times over is because we pulled him from the brink every time.”

  I squeezed my eyes. “And then we went and gave him the poison that did manage to kill him.”

  Fadel cocked one eyebrow, the only thing in his swollen face that moved. At least he hadn’t suffered a lasting injury from Matt’s assault. “He volunteered to test drive the Mutant, Cali, for a thick stack of cash. He did it for a living anyway.”

  I exhaled. I guessed Fadel was right. I knew he was. Josh “Taster” Dickinson was the ultimate test-subject in uncontrolled, high-risk, not-so-clinical trials of illicit drugs. With his name at the top of lists used by underground drug-producing labs, he’d turned his addiction into a job that supplied him with the cash to maintain his habit, and the side benefit of new highs and more potent addictions.

  Still it was a fact that Mutant, the drug I’d gotten off Filthy and into Josh’s system, was what had done him in. Whichever way I looked at it, I had had a hand in his death. A big one.

  My eyes panned to Josh’s body. Weird. He looked at peace, almost healthy and good-looking dead, when he’d always been used-up and vacant alive. Seemed the face he’d worn in life hadn’t been his, but his addiction demon’s. Seemed death had exorcised it.

  Megumi extubated him, threw the ET tube in the bin, sighed. “I guess we have the ultimate result for Mutant’s clinical trial.”

  Yeah, we sure did. We’d observed and examined to our hearts’ content as Josh had taken one dose after another, snorting the stuff, ingesting it, shooting it up. We’d documented every finding and observation, we’d drawn blood and CSF and urine, conducted tests before and after each dose, recorded values and reactions, peak action and half-life and excretion method. We had gotten all we could have hoped for on every dose-related clinical picture.

  The minimal dose, even with his drug-infested nervous pathways, had him manifesting clear sympathomimetic effects, the same as Matt’s first symptoms: the dilated pupils,
the cold, clammy skin, a rush like that of methamphetamine and Ecstasy, but far more powerful, and a real good vibe. So we gradually upped the dose to a “regular” one, then above regular. With every increase in dosage, feelings of invincibility, of being “metamorphosed” as he’d kept saying, had shot up exponentially.

  Guess that was what the label Mutant was all about. He had intense hallucinations, too, but their nature had been very different from Matt’s. That hadn’t been surprising. Hallucinogens’ effects were totally dependent on the user’s expectations and their basic character. Josh, being a veteran of dealing with chemically induced phantasms, had just sat there babbling, not moving a muscle. Weeping.

  But he hadn’t convulsed. Even with the highest dose. Not that I’d hoped he would. I’d hoped his symptoms would switch without the convulsive crisis. They hadn’t. That had been where our tests ended. I hadn’t been about to overdose him in hopes of duplicating Matt’s reactions. Even when he’d offered to go for an overdose. After all, with us in his condo, stacked to the teeth for every emergency, he’d been among the pillars of emergency medicine. He had insisted we’d pull him through anything. As we always had.

  And no. I hadn’t succumbed to the temptation. That overdose he’d taken on his own!

  Filthy hadn’t exaggerated Mutant’s instant addictiveness. Just a few hours after his last dose, Josh had been crashing, no doubt into the hell Filthy had bragged his poison sent users.

  I couldn’t decide if Josh, as a confirmed addict, had been more susceptible, or if his drug tolerance should have been higher and his reaction to Mutant less. Whatever—he’d lifted one of the powder vials from my bag before we left his apartment. We were already down the street when he opened his window and screamed. And screamed.

  We’d run back up, broke down his door and found him unconscious. We’d rushed him to the Sanctuary, and on the way I’d made an inventory of my samples and realized what he’d done.

  Before the CTs, we’d thought he’d been having a reaction like Matt’s last and continuing symptoms, but his brutal headache and instant collapse had had a totally different etiology. And as Megumi said, we got the final stage in our clinical trial.

  Overdose didn’t produce convulsions. Or the encephalitis-like syndrome Matt was suffering from now. It led to an explosive form of hypertension, generalized rupture of cerebral vessels, catastrophic intracerebral hemorrhage and rapid death.

  “I guess this brings us back to square one, huh?” Lucia covered Josh, looked at me.

  I gulped the acid filling my throat. “At least we know Mutant isn’t what Matt’s been poisoned with.”

  “Not necessarily,” Megumi interjected. “Maybe there is that fast release–slow release combination with another drug. Non-overdose symptoms elicited were similar to Matt’s first ones.”

  I shook my head, rattling my thoughts back into order. They were looking at me, expecting me to wrap this up. You did land yourself with the leader job. Get off your butt and do it.

  I stood up, nauseated, desperate, oppressed. I hid it well. “Fadel, Lab said they’re close to cracking the formula. Tell them to concentrate on finding out if tampering with the compound can produce another derivative molecule, if it’s possible to combine it in a stable compound with an opioid or an atropine-like compound, and if so, to test for the possibility of integrating both into fast-slow-release phases. And, if they succeed in that, to work on possible rapid-acting antidotes.”

  Fadel stared at me. What was that weird expression on his face? Was he in pain? Of course he is, idiot. Before I could say anything more, he turned, walked away, leaving us to handle disposing of Josh. Leaving me to do it.

  I felt Megumi’s and Lucia’s eyes on me. Make the decision. As if there was more than one to be made. No use pretending there was a choice here. We couldn’t afford to have this traced back to us.

  “Get a disposal team together. Have them drop him near his place. Then tip off the police, report his screaming incident and the people who took him. Make up specific descriptions. I doubt they’ll investigate his death much. Not with his history.”

  My words pulsed inside my head long after Megumi and Lucia had wheeled Josh’s body out, played over and over on echoes of my steady, emotionless voice. Even my friends who knew it had to be done had been unsettled by the way I sounded. They’d made no comment. Hadn’t needed to. But it had settled them, too, having me assume the responsibility of the gruesome plan of action. It absolved them, eased their burden, solved their moral dilemmas. We can just do our jobs, do as we’re told. Cali’s picking up the tab.

  What had Damian said? You act every day on the job, to gain your ends. Riding my moral high horse, I’d claimed that I didn’t con my friends or my allies. Seemed there were endless forms of doing just that. For their own good. Damian’s argument. Was I any better—any different? Or was I the same, only plain worse?

  No use debating my morality. Matt was still in a coma, we still had no diagnosis, and with the failure of Mutant’s “clinical trial,” and until proven otherwise, my only lead had been severed. I’d hit another dead end.

  Fourteen

  Everyone was dead. But I was alive, alone.

  I can’t be alone.

  Invisible tentacles pulled me down, slow, almost gentle. Inescapable. I sank into a river of blood, gushing along the convoluted folds of a brain. The tentacles spread into sheaths, encapsulating me, dragging me into caverns between tissues. My head was the last thing un-submerged. Couldn’t fight what I couldn’t understand. Desperation had long since burst my heart and I lay vacant, drained. Useless.

  They were gone. Why fight? Give up and rest. Die…

  “Cali!”

  No. Didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to know. Just let go….

  “Cali! Oh my God, Cali—help!”

  The capsule suffocating me quivered, unraveled. No! Wanted it to end—and the screams were dragging me back.

  “Cali, for God’s sake, open up!”

  I didn’t feel when I’d moved, but I was out of my bed at the Sanctuary and on my feet, wobbling and stumbling. I opened the rattling door. My eyes were open, too, my brain refusing to translate the images forming on their retinas. Something somewhere crashed. Then I crashed into my body and my mind into this world. Into another nightmare. A waking one. Lucia!

  Drenched in blood. A gash slashed across her clothes and flesh, gouged a deep cleft from her shoulder to just above her clavicle. An inch higher would have slit her throat. “Lucia! How did this happen? Who did this?”

  Her body shook, her chest wheezed. Her fingers sank between my muscles, transmitting her quakes and terror, shaking me down to my nerve roots. “Ayesha—God, Cali, Ayesha—just like Matt—then Ishmael and Fadel and Megumi and Doug—all of them went nuts!”

  Had they? Or had I?

  “Lucia—where are they? Did they hurt anybody else? Themselves? Each other?”

  “I tried to stop Ayesha. She had the electric saw—wanted to hack Josh’s body—kept saying that he did it, that she’d extract his kidneys and heart and liver and reconstruct Fatima…” Her gasps stopped, accumulated for a second as my mind churned, then burst into a wail. “What’s going on, Cali?”

  Frustration frothed. You expect me to have an answer? Why the hell ask me?

  I knew less than nothing. Which had below-zero significance right now. It didn’t take knowing a thing to stop it. At least now I knew I wouldn’t be causing them more damage when I did. That was my single objective. Anything else could wait. Would wait.

  I ran to my weapons’ closet. A combination-number lock. I had one? Concentrate, you fool. The code, the code…

  It hovered just out of reach, leaping away every time mnemonic pathways made a grab for it. God—I can’t remember when it was Clara died!

  I leaned my forehead on the cold steel, rammed it, once, twice. The wavering memory crashed back, boring back into its home in the deepest scar in my mind.

  My fingers slipped twice, me
ssing the entry. I slammed my palm into steel, the sting numbing my fingers steady. The right sequence poured from them. I snatched the closet open, pounced on my disaster bag. And the dart rifle. Non-stealth, maximum range and precision. Saved for desperate measures. It came ready with five megadose diazepam dart-syringes. Five. Not four, not six. Five. As if made for them. Oh God…

  Focus. Retrieve your training, Damian’s conditioning and the long hard years in every sort of battleground. Let it take you over. Detach yourself. You’re an instrument, first-and-only-time faultless. No hesitation. No other options. Get it done!

  I ran out of the room, towing Lucia. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. Last I saw Ayesha was when I locked Josh’s body in the morgue and left her trying to break down the door. Ishmael and Fadel were in ER—they ran after me—then—I don’t know!”

  Had to hope they’d dispersed, weren’t in each other’s sights. But my first priority was our critical patients—Matt, Juan, Mercedes. “Did any of them reach IC?”

  I thought Lucia gasped, “I don’t know—don’t think so.”

  “Who’s on shift there?”

  “Savannah and Al.”

  Good. Good! Now that those two weren’t trapped in the middle of a surgery, they were only second to our core eight in defending patients. Our core eight—we were down to two now….

  Not now. Get info. “And the rest of the Sanctuary?”

  She rattled off the names. Those she knew. There were about thirty more people, patients and their kin. “I think most of them were in ER. When—when Ayesha slashed me, I knew Ishmael and Fadel were on rotation there—I ran for help and—oh God, Cali! They were tearing at each other, blocking the door. I barely shoved them out of the way so the others could run out.”