Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  “But I’ll deprive them of their playgrounds, exterminate all their puppets, their clientele and pushers—their mutations. It will take something even more atrocious than all they do to put an end to it. With my precise orchestrations, my weapon will breach every fortress, leave no one secure in their invincibility. It will scare and subjugate everyone equally. It will force humanity to surrender their vicious ways, in pure self-preservation. For a while.”

  And the scary thing was, he made sense. Gruesome, undeniable sense.

  I’d felt that empathy with his cause and methods before. It had scared me shitless then, too. He’d sensed that potential in me, that extremist ingredient. He’d been confident he’d bring it to the fore, sway me to his cause. He’d had a right to think it.

  I did feel the tug. After years of dwelling amid disease, destitution and depravity, I sometimes felt the need to strike out at everything and everyone, the causes, the facilitators, even the victims, both the cowering ones and those who struck back in all the wrong places and at the wrong people, perpetrating the atrocities and the madness.

  Good news was—I’d never do it. Even if I sometimes played judge and executioner, I had no desire to play God.

  So, Jake’s plans had expanded. No place, no one was exempt.

  But now he had the time and the upper hand, he was again trying to convert me to his way of thinking. I should let him try. It was my best weapon, his obsession with me.

  Give him a good argument, stimulate him, please him. You know just how.

  Oh God, yes, I did.

  I raised a gaze injected with all my heartache. “I can—I do condone annihilating the warmongers. But why kill their victims? Why not give them a second chance? Maybe they won’t turn out to be future oppressors as you stipulate. Maybe once better markets and opportunities open, they’ll rush to them.”

  His gaze was all tolerance. “This remains your one flaw, Cali. You choose to be blind where so-called innocents are concerned. Wars, with their profits, ideologies and inherited conflicts, leave no innocents.

  “You know I once was a bleeding heart, risking my life to help the ‘helpless.’ And I told you how, during my years of enslavement, being among the ‘victims’ made me see them for what they are. Previous and future aggressors. The so-called weak, who both breed monsters, and who oppress and exploit whomever they can. They aren’t only beyond redemption, but they refuse it at any cost.

  “I heard only evil from mothers’ lips, fostering violence and preaching extermination. Survive so you can kill and enslave the enemy’s people. Manipulate your saviors, exploit and invade them, as is you’re divine right and duty. As for the rest, the normal people in the modern world, in their pursuit of the moral high ground, they are the obliviousness and self-indulgence that perpetuates the proliferations of those parasites who are gnawing at civilization’s pillars. And this is but one reason why anyone touched by war or perpetuating it has to be eradicated.”

  “But this leaves no one,” I choked. “We’re all touched by war one way or another. Are you planning to end all life on the planet?”

  “As if that would be a tragedy.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, my radical cure will not be a euthanasia. It will only be a massive amputation to stop the advance of widespread gangrene. My targets are extensive, but what are millions, even tens or hundreds, in a planet of over eight billion and madly increasing? Of course, my financiers believe I’m ridding them of all their enemies and competition. And I will be. Until it’s their turn.”

  Wow.

  But the real wow-worthy part was I knew he could actually do it. Do anything his nihilistic mind could conjure up.

  Okay, another try. “Why not start with excisions, instead of amputations? Get rid of the masterminds? See how things improve with them gone? Leave those who are innocent today alone.”

  “I know why it is so painful for you, Cali. You were always so prone to letting your heart rule your head. I love that about you. But then, who am I to take you to task over it? I let you rule my priorities, too.” His hand brushed my cheek.

  I shuddered.

  Something flitted in his eyes before he sighed. “I’m only putting into effect the part of the Hippocratic oath that you’ve chosen as a way of life. I am ‘effecting prevention, for prevention is better than the cure.’ You’re as radical as I am, Cali, but you still have that line you won’t cross. And it’s because of that line that we stand on opposite sides, when we should be hand in hand. You know that eliminating the festering ulcers of civil, religious and ethnic wars from the face of the earth is the only humane thing to do. And I—all I ever wanted is you—with me.”

  I opened my mouth and his hand caressed it shut. “You don’t have to be a part of what I do, and I won’t interfere in what you have to do, even if it’s against my work. But on the personal level, away from the mission each of us has embraced, man to woman, can’t you accept that we were made for each other?”

  Was this my cue to laugh? Or weep?

  Neither, moron. Just say you accept.

  But if I accepted too easily, he’d see through it. And if I told him what I really thought, it wouldn’t help any. Better play the resistant-wavering part to the hilt.

  “Jake…” I sobbed for good measure. And it wasn’t faked in the least. “The years without you, thinking you were dead, the changes we both underwent—the heartaches and uncertainties and anger and if-onlys—I don’t know anything anymore….”

  He smoothed my hair, passion and sympathy blazing on his unique face. “I understand, especially when Damian has done everything he can to further confuse you. Too bad I couldn’t put him in his place, couldn’t play my hand earlier. But how I wanted to, and to let you know Damian is one of my lackeys.”

  What?

  A rap on the door took him from me, left me hanging.

  His men. Speaking Spanish. Said everything was ready.

  What was? The strike? And just what the hell had he meant? Damian, his lackey? Through his alleged control of PACT, or did he mean something else? Something more direct? More awful?

  And where was Damian? What could have happened? I hadn’t felt any disturbance. Had he discovered my capture and was now canceling the plant’s invasion, changing tactics toward saving me?

  What was going on?

  Ask Jake. He’ll tell you. He loves to talk to you. He needs to let you into his mind and plans.

  Or did he only want me to think so? Giving me only what he wanted to give, reading me, playing me at the game I presumed to play on him? With a mind as superior as his, anything, even coming back from the dead, was possible.

  And here he came, the ultimate maze. A thousand questions collided in my mind. The agent, the biomatrix, what he’d done, where he’d been, what he’d meant. What was that in his hand?

  As if I didn’t know. A syringe. No guesses who it was for. Or why he was coming back with his men flanking him.

  Uh-oh. Ten men. Dammit. He valued me highly.

  He murmured to them, “Suavemente.”

  I got that. Gently. Wondered what he’d say when I crushed a couple of larynxes and jumped him to used as shield.

  “Don’t, Cali.” He knew, huh? Was there no surprising him? “Please.”

  I almost choked on the look of tender warning in his eyes. “You should know I’m just programmed to fight, as long as I can. Nothing to do with you, you understand?”

  “I do.” He sighed, the very sound of regret. “Your need to be in control rivals mine. I would have left you conscious if I could.”

  “That’s what you have here? A sedative?”

  Translucent azure turning dense cobalt. “You can suspect me of using anything worse on you? You still doubt the extent of my emotions for you?”

  Oh, spare me!

  “But I can see you intend to fight no matter what I say. And I know how lethal you can be, and are.” He said that with ultimate pride. Jeez. Why did my tenacity and violence appeal so much to these deadly men? �
�If you start crushing windpipes and cracking skulls, these vermin might panic and disregard my orders. They might hurt you. I can’t let that happen.”

  He snapped his fingers, gave orders in Spanish. In seconds, a man ran in with my disaster bag.

  I watched Jake sort through my hidden-in-plain-sight arsenal. He was probably the only one who could fathom what each item was for, who’d probably find more diabolical uses for each one, in far more lethal combinations.

  He picked the components of a dart gun, twirled them in his hands. Virtuoso hands.

  Those hands had initiated me into womanhood, into saving lives, performed miracles, snatching hundreds of lives from massive disability or death. Then images shifted from memories to conjectures. I saw them performing the dark magic that had brought the biomatrix into existence, the insidious assassin that confounded and horrified first, turned the very victims into the ultimate threat.

  Had he known who my friends were when he’d had his men infect them? How could he have? How did he do it? Why?

  Why all of it? Why couldn’t it be different? Such massive potential, warped, wasted—such vast intellect…. Why had it survived when his soul had been consumed?

  Ponder the unfairness of fate and alternative courses of history later. Act now.

  He’d given orders not to hurt me, at least not to shoot me point-blank. That was my only chance. Had to take it. Would worry about ticking him off later.

  I hurled my saucer at the closest thug, catching him in the eye. His snapped into a protective ball and I charged him, using his huge body to ram two others off their feet. I jumped on the couch, springing off it to launch at the closest one, catching him in the throat with a flying yoko tobi geri. He dropped. I landed on the next, spinning him around, using him for a shield, anchor and pivot, swinging, ramming the next two in the groin. The others roared, charged, the element of surprise and ordered courteousness depleted. If they caught me, it was over.

  I somersaulted behind the couch—had to reach my hidden weapons and… Uhh…

  I didn’t feel the sting, just a sickening expansion—the rush of fluid squeezing between my muscle fibers. Jake had shot me with my tranquilizer. It was already working.

  I sagged to the ground, saw him approaching me calmly, coming to kneel beside me, looking down on me in regret. “As much as I would have loved to see you finish them, I had to stop you. I’m sorry to sedate you, but I want you with me in this historic moment, and I just don’t have time to talk this through, to convince you that you don’t have to fight me.”

  Two questions burned holes in my fogging mind.

  Damian. And how he’d survived in Russia.

  I asked the second.

  He stroked my cheek, bent to carry my going-limp body. “I survived by understanding you, Cali. I anticipated you’d try to stop me, even if you had to kill me. I thought you might use one of the drugs you used on our common enemy. I was ready with the antidotes. And a few others, along with some necessary supplies, in case you surprised me. I pretended I’d shoot to kill, forcing you to do the same. It was the only way to break the stalemate. But my gamble was very precarious. You did surprise me with the succinylcholine. There was no real antidote for it, so I had to make you leave, before I suffocated. After you ran away, I could barely intubate myself before I was totally paralyzed. I still almost suffocated, then nearly died of exposure as I recovered. The whole ordeal left me with an even more intense appreciation of you.”

  I moaned. “Oh, Jake…”

  Why did you have to be so hopelessly warped? Such a perfect devil? One who loves me so completely, so insanely? Why can’t you just hate me? Why won’t you give me cause for peace of mind…when I kill you again….

  Absurdities frolicked at the periphery of my vision, my consciousness. Heralds of la-la land. Blotches of darkness replaced those, encroaching from all sides, vying for my center.

  The last thing I felt was cool, soft sensations. His lips. Like that first time they’d ever touched me. Gentle, worshipful, at my pulse—my slowing pulse…

  Thirty-Six

  I’d been awake for some time.

  I’d seen no reason to let anybody else in on the fact. Unconscious people make their captors relax, talk, spill beans.

  Not that I’d held much hope of gathering many spilled beans in Spanish. Or with all the noise. I’d gotten a surprise—a pleasant one for a change—when there’d been close-enough-to-be-heard and English beans spilled. Jake’s multinational allies, no doubt.

  One thing I didn’t need telling was where we were. On a plane. Cargo, from the sound of the engines. From the peeks I got, I was almost certain it was an Ilyushin Il–76, or “Candid” if we went by its NATO reporting name. From what I heard over the drone, we were on our way to a major aerial strike. Which meant this was probably an Il–76MP firefighter, able to dispense the agent from the two fire-retardant tanks. If so, and according to their capacity, major didn’t begin to cover it.

  Did Jake really have fifty tons of agent?

  Wouldn’t put anything past him. Not that any less would be less catastrophic.

  But no use worrying about it. Doing something about it seemed a better choice. The only one. And to do something, I needed to gather as much info as possible.

  I estimated over twenty fellow passengers, commando types, armed to the teeth. All those for me? If so, even after my performance back at the plant, I was flattered. Aside from them, cargo planes had flight crews from two to five—two pilots, and possibly a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator.

  We’d had three mid-flight re-fuelings. Our destination must be farther than twice the three-thousand-mile maximum range of a fully loaded I1–76. Hmm—over six thousand miles, plus the first leg in the return trip. So where could we be heading? Iraq? Afghanistan? North Korea?

  But I had a feeling I knew where. And another feeling I wouldn’t get more info pretending sleep now.

  Time to put on a wake-up show.

  I stretched my unbound limbs. Yeah, Jake hadn’t had me trussed up. Had me in a cot even, covered. Very considerate. And convenient. I’d been preparing undercover, so to speak.

  I’d seen the coming-out-of-sedation grogginess times enough to pull it off, watched him approaching through twitching lids. He sat down beside me, taking my face in both hands. My heart expanded at his gentleness, before compacting again. Wondered when it would just give out.

  The Jake I’d met back in Russia, after his eight-year imprisonment, had had a Clint Eastwood–Steve McQueen harshness. Now he was back to looking like my Jake, back to Paul Newman sheer beauty and Errol Flynn flamboyance. Just so this could hurt even more. I turned my face in his palm and squeezed my eyes.

  He fondled them open. “We’ve almost arrived, my love.”

  I blinked back the tears, steadied my gaze. “Where?”

  He knew I was stalling, and loved it. His beautiful eyes crinkled. “You know where. The place that was my home for eight years. I owe it to that region to put it out of its misery first. The spraying tanks have enough aerosolized agent to kill everyone within four hundred square miles, taking care of refugee camps, rebel outposts, government and armed forces installations with all civilian neighborhoods in between. This operation will be my calling card. Regretfully, I have to disappear for quite a while afterward. When I deem it right, I will resurface to strike again.”

  Didn’t seem there was any use stalling anymore. No time.

  Time to play my last card. “I’ll never be yours if you go through with it, Jake. It won’t be Damian who comes between us then, it’ll be the people you kill.”

  He just smiled. And what a smile. Compassionate, all-knowing. Hypnotic. “Ah. Damian. The sod is my accomplice, even if he isn’t bright enough to be so knowingly. It’s time you learned Damian’s mission in the Caucasus wasn’t to search and destroy all, as he said, but to search and destroy the people, and retrieve my weapon.”

  “No!”

  He sat back, the ve
ry amalgam of understanding and irony. “Don’t like the truth, darling? Or are you just angry that you let yourself be so thoroughly taken in and used? And by such an inferior creature?” He sighed deeply. “The objective of the attack on the paramilitary compound was to salvage my work. Even though Damian and his team went against my set plan and tried to sacrifice you and your team. I’d planned his demise after he got me out, but you remember how things went wrong. Of course, being a low-minded low-rank, Damian didn’t know PACT sent him there by my orchestration. And he thought they’d use the weapon to their own ends. But being base and dense, doesn’t make him less of a mercenary monster.”

  Wow. What did he need the agent for? He was mass destructive enough just talking. “You’d make anything sound plausible, Jake.”

  He laughed, rich, spine-tingling. “That’s true. But all I need here is the truth—that PACT themselves are the ultimate terrorists. But contrary to me, their and Damian’s motives aren’t ultimately altruistic. You suspected it. You have shunned Damian. But that only made him decide to force you to surrender to him. So he infected your friends, eliminating your support system. And it worked. You’re back to counting on him, back in his arms.”

  I sat up, feeling the blind need to escape. But escape what? Realization? The explanation of my distrust of PACT? Of Damian?

  No. No! Never Damian. Never this.

  “Quit trying to screw with my mind, Jake. This isn’t how you get me on your side.”

  Sensitive fingers ran up my back. “I’m just filling in the spaces for you, darling. Who else but Damian can come close enough to your friends to administer the agent? Who knew whom to target in particular, to cost you your security and strength and leave you flailing? You went to Colombia thinking you’d find out how they’d been infected, but when you found those I experimented on, you couldn’t explain the delay in onset of symptoms in your friends. Because there was no delay. He infected them when you gave him his marching orders.”