by Eric M Hill
Electromagnetic emotion sensors transmitted to Ashley, examined her brain for signs of stress or duplicity or anything deemed worthy of caution, and relayed its findings back to the device via super nano packets carried on reverse waves. The second door opened.
Ashley looked at Dr. Engelberg. Her right eyebrow raised. “Boys and their toys,” she said, in a whisper.
Dr. Engelberg was repulsed by how she had suddenly switched character and conveyed such lethal sexiness. And that’s what made the young wolf so repulsive. She was lethal. Like this place. Like whoever it was he had been working for. This beautiful wolf, and whoever the big wolf was behind the scenes, they all could effortlessly change masks to fit the occasion.
Dr. Engelberg stiffened his backbone and stepped inside the room. The room itself was underwhelming. It was wide, but inexplicably small, as though part of it had been chopped off, and it was sparse. He’d thought that with the level of security needed to get into this room, there’d be more to it. An advanced lab. Exotic equipment. Perhaps—and he was immensely relieved this wasn’t so—another unlucky human guinea pig strapped to a table or chair. Something worthy of a double-door biometric entry.
But there was nothing except three men in dark suits. All middle-aged like himself. None whom he recognized. It was good that none of them wore lab coats. For it would’ve taken much more effort to cover their government origins.
One of the three men extended his arm and walked toward him. For some reason, he instantly loathed him. “Dr. Engelberg, I’m Jim.” They shook hands. “Glad to finally meet you. I’ve been following your work now for some time.” The man added, “I mean before your work of patriotism here. Your contributions in the field of behavioral genetics are…” The appropriate word wouldn’t surface. He smiled in defeat at his inarticulateness. “Guess that’s why you got a Nobel Prize. Ingenious. You’re a genius.”
Dr. Engelberg smiled politely and tried not to smell the dog crap coming out of Government Jim’s mouth. “No, I’m no genius,” he deferred. “I’ve studied hard and worked hard. Fortunately, I asked the right questions and looked in the right places for the answers. Given time, someone would’ve achieved what I achieved.”
The man didn’t let go of Dr. Engelberg’s hand. “Dr. Engelberg, you’ve not only connected dots in your research that have eluded other brilliant scientists. You’ve discovered dots no one even imagined existed. Look at what your research has done for Alzheimer’s and dementia. And not to mention the other things it has done and promises to do for the prosperity and well-being of your country.”
There was the proof that Jim, or whatever his real name was, was a government man. A corporate big shot was concerned about money, not the prosperity of the country. Dr. Engelberg, a passionless, polite smile still on his face, pulled his hand from the man. “Jim, do you know the origin of the Nobel Prize?”
“No,” the man lied, “but I bet it’s fascinating.”
“It’s that and more.” Before he quit today, everyone in this room would know exactly what he meant by “more.” “The prize is named after Alfred Nobel. Ironically, he was a pacifist who invented dynamite...and other explosives. Revolutionized mining and war. Helped a lot of people, but maimed and killed even more.
“In his last will, he directed that his vast fortune be used to give annual cash awards to those who had positively contributed the most to the world in the prior year in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. His words verbatim were to ‘those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.’”
Ashley looked at one of the men. Her usual smile was on her face, but I told you so was in her eyes.
“Alfred Nobel honestly concluded later in life that he had done more harm than good. That’s where the Nobel prizes come from. It was his way of trying to give back to the world what he had taken. But some things can’t be fixed.”
The room’s silence was awkward with the probability that the doctor’s little story about Alfred Nobel was a prelude to him proving Ashley’s troubling report true. The man patted him twice on the shoulder and finished with a reassuring squeeze and laugh. “Well, good thing you’re not into dynamite. No regrets for curing Alzheimer’s and dementia and getting rid of violent crime. And if there are any, I’m sure that what we’re about to show you, if it goes as we anticipate, well, you just may go down in history as the man who conquered violent crime and kept this country from imploding.”
Violent crime. So these people probably are VCE. Dr. Engelberg didn’t answer this new revelation. He’d sit through whatever this was he was going to sit through and speak more plainly afterwards. Besides, he was sure that whatever they were going to say to him or show him would only serve to get rid of his butterflies and strengthen his resolve to cut ties.
“Jim,” said one of the other two men who had received a transmission, “we gotta get going. He’s on the move.”
“Here,” said Ashley, handing him a small plastic container with a peel-back top, “put these on. They’re like old school contact lens.”
He took it and held it questioningly as everyone hurriedly put them on their eyes.
Jim spoke up. His friendly car salesman’s voice frayed. “You need to put them on now.”
Ashley took over with more diplomacy. “The experiment is about to begin. These lens will allow you to see it. The technology in the lens manipulates and mimics the eye to see what the test subject sees.”
“But—”
“Put them on, Dr. Engelberg.” She-wolf’s tone carried a barely masked growl. “We can’t miss this.” She watched sharply as he put them on.
“Sync,” said Jim, and an unseen technician at DVCE headquarters pushed a button.
Chapter 6
Dr. Engelberg joined the others in cushy chairs that faced the long wall that seemed to have been dropped in after the room had been built. The wall parted in the middle and rolled back on both sides until they were looking at a theater-sized smart screen. Or brilliant screen as it was known in the optics industry.
Suddenly, half the mammoth screen to the left showed two three-dimensional, colored images of a man, side by side. One showed the front; one the back. And above the images was a colored image of a brain. There were changing physiological data for the images.
The right half of the screen showed a home on a wooded lot and an SUV coming to a stop on a long, concrete driveway. The woman inside the vehicle looked at the face of the safety perimeter screen on the dash. The device scanned a fifty-foot circumference.
“Safety perimeter device neutralized,” the VCE technician said in Jim’s ear.
The safety perimeter device wasn’t perfect by any means. The federal Civilian Freedom Protection Act that had been passed to limit the development of some, and the employment of all, technology considered a threat to the continued freedom of the American populace from government tyranny, had mandated its limitations.
Nonetheless, it did a well enough job at detecting humans within its sphere that no blips meant there was no one lurking in the woods—at least not within fifty feet—or waiting for her in her home. The garage door opened. She drove inside. The garage door began to lower. Satisfied that there was no danger, she left the gun in her purse and exited the vehicle.
“Look at his PFC,” Ashley said, as though she were watching porn. It may as well have been porn. She was excited all over. PFC was an acronym for prefrontal cortex. It was the cerebral cortex that covered the front part of the frontal lobe of the brain, and it was showing them what they wanted to see.
“Look at area BA10,” one of the men said, in a similar porn heightened voice.
“Look at his acetylcholine level,” said another.
“He hasn’t blinked once,” said Ashley. “He’s watching her like a predator.”
Dr. Engelberg heard everything being spoken by his employers-captors. He saw the woman, but where was the man they were speaking of? Then he
remembered. Ashley had said he’d see what the test subject sees. But where was the test—?
The screen went crazy. It was like watching the work of an inexperienced camera man making a B- or C-rated movie. Images whizzed by one way, then the other. It was hard for Dr. Engelberg to make out what was going on. Then it became apparent. The rolling shots were no accident. It was the test subject, as they called him, scanning the darkened streets. Then there were bouncy shots as presumably the test subject ran toward the back of the home of the woman.
“What’s going on?” asked Dr. Engelberg.
“Home alarm and flood lights neutralized,” said the technician into Jim’s ear.
The man watched the woman’s outside lights go off and wondered at his good luck. He knew she had an automatic timer on her lights. So they should’ve been on. He looked at the upstairs bathroom and waited for its light to turn on. He had watched her many evenings from the woods as she showered. (Although he couldn’t see anything tasty through the hazed window.) So he knew which window to watch. He wondered whether his luck would hold, or would her flood lights come on when he sprinted for her basement door.
The bathroom light turned on.
The floodlights stayed off.
***
Tommy “the killer” Miller, or the shower rapist—both were accurately descriptive of the escaped felon—crept up the basement stairs and entered the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator with a latex gloved hand and looked for something good. He found a nice chicken leg, closed the door, and bit a hunk out of the leg. He thought of her leg and chewed with an evil smile. There was no big hurry. Amanda took long showers.
Tommy put the chicken bone in his front pocket. He stood in place and glanced at the counters of the large kitchen.
Ashley, Jim, and the other two men let out grunts, every single one of them shaking their heads with expressions of abject failure. “This sick bastard,” said Ashley. “He’s looking for a knife.”
The sound of knife yanked Dr. Engelberg out of his moribund trance. “Knife?” Hearing himself say the word was a bucket of iced water poured over his head. This wasn’t a movie. It was real. They were about to watch a woman be murdered! “What are you doing? Are we just going to sit here and watch this man kill an innocent woman?” he asked in disbelief.
No one answered; no one moved. They just focused on Tommy, who was now staring motionless at a set of knives on the counter, as though he was listening to the knives speak to him. Whatever the knives said was convincing. He went to the counter and put his hand on the black handle and slowly pulled out a big, long knife.
“But look at the pleasure center,” one of the men offered, reaching weakly for something to hold onto.
“This is Killer Miller, and there’s a ten-inch knife in his hand,” Jim said, angry at yet another impending failure. There was one year before the general election, and there hadn’t been a two-term president since 2020. Seven presidents in thirty years. Something dramatic had to be done about crime or the president would be the latest one-term president to be booted out in favor of the latest opposition promising to do what no one had been able to do since the Great Crime Spike of 2016—get crime back down to a reasonable level of murder, rape, and mayhem.
“Is anyone going to help her?” demanded Dr. Engelberg.
“We’re trying to help a million like her, doctor,” seethed Ashley. “Ten million! Fifty million! Get your eyes off this one woman and think like a scientist. Think like a patriot.”
There. It was out. She was definitely more than an assistant. She and the doctor locked eyes. His, angry and bewildered. Hers, just angry. She raised a slender finger and pointed at him. Her words came out of clenched teeth. “Now be quiet. Observe the data. Let us do our jobs.”
Thoroughly rebuffed and unnerved by the glares of the room of wolves—wolves whom he now knew were capable of anything—he sat down and resumed his tortured gaze at the screen.
Killer Miller reached the top of the stairs. A ten-inch knife in his hand, and his crotch pushing hard against his pants.
Chapter 7
Amanda lifted her chin and closed her eyes and let the hot water cascade off her face. It was a ritual. It was how she ended every shower. Two minutes or so of letting the water wash away the day’s negative energy as she thought about something beautiful. A sunset. A waterfall. A cool breeze. A good lay.
She turned off the water and took a deep, relaxing breath before opening her eyes. She looked down at her feet and wiggled her toes. She smiled at the thought of a pedicure. She pushed the shower door open and looked up.
All strength left her body.
She crumbled to the shower floor. Muscles paralyzed. Throat constricted. Whole body trembling. Eyes wide and fixed on the large, masked man standing over her with a huge knife in his hand. She wanted to say, Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want. Just let me live. But her throat was clamped so tightly that it felt as though she had swallowed glue.
“Hello, Amanda,” said Killer Miller.
Dr. Engelberg’s mouth opened wide in horror. His head shook. “No,” a weak groan slid out. It was as though the terrified woman was looking directly at him, into his own eyes. Wait. She is looking into my eyes. She’s looking into the killer’s eyes, and I’m looking out at her through the killer’s eyes. She sees me.
Ashley, Jim, and the other two men watched Killer Miller as though he were a drunk walking a tightrope over a thousand-foot gorge on a windy day as he carried a wiggling baby. They had facilitated his “escape” from prison because he was the perfect monster to test the CS (crime suppressant) drug on. A true psychopath. A raping and killing machine whose CU (callous and unemotional) score was off the charts.
If the Engelberg drug, Biochemizine, gave them proof of concept on Killer Miller, anything was possible. Violent crime could be dramatically reduced; maybe even eradicated. The president would win reelection in a landslide. And who knew? Maybe the experts’ predictions of an inevitable full-scale race war, or even general civil war, could be averted.
Yet here they were: Jeffrey Dean, (unofficial) special assistant to the president; Frank AKA “Jim” Cannon, Assistant Deputy Director of Science and Technology Branch, Department of Violent Crime Eradication; Mark Abercromby, Chief Research Officer, Science and Technology Branch, Department of Violent Crime Eradication; and Ashley Overton, Special Services Agent, Division of Special Services, Department of Violent Crime Eradication.
America’s finest.
Watching a psychopath with barely a breath being released among the four of them. For in Killer Miller’s hand was not only a ten-inch knife. It was literally the fate of the nation.
They watched with delayed strokes and heart attacks as he knelt and slowly traced her face, neck, and breasts with the very tip of the knife without drawing blood. Killer Miller took a handful of her long, wet hair and wrapped his hand around it and pulled her up. She grimaced, but didn’t stand.
“You want to die right now, whore? Get up!”
Amanda fought her paralyzing fear. When her legs refused, she cried, and the tears released enough of fear’s hold to let her move. She stood on shaky legs.
Killer Miller walked her to the bed as he looked down at her butt. Dr. Engelberg was trying not to puke. So were the others, but for different reasons. Then their fears came true. The violent psychopathic serial killer they had manipulated to break into Amanda King’s home so they could test their latest crime suppressant drug in the field did what none of them wanted him to do.
He raped her. Again and again and again. Then he beat her. Savagely. And all the while, the government four watched the charts in horror. Killer Miller’s warrior gene, the MAO-A gene, the one that had been hypothesized to be a major player in violent criminals, and the one they thought Engelberg’s discoveries had enabled them to affect, was basically giving them its middle finger.
Jeffrey Dean, Special Assistant to the President, turned away in disgust, but not because of what
Killer Miller had done to the poor woman. He turned away because of what this meant for the president (and what it meant for his own privileged job working for the president). And eventually his agenda allowed him to see the storm clouds of more devastating riots and even the apocalyptic civil war the fanatics were talking about seeming more likely than ever. How had a country like America turned into such a dangerous hellhole of a nation? He walked as far away from the others as possible and put a call in to the White House.
Staying true to the modus operandi that had given him the nickname, the Shower Rapist, Killer Miller dragged the unconscious and bloodied woman back to the shower. He left her limp body inside and went back to the bedroom.
“This sick piece of crap,” said Ashley, now her disappointment was clearly mixed with venom. Yes, it had been necessary to sacrifice the woman if it meant they had one-thousandth of a chance to save millions of other women from similar fates—something radical had to be done to stop the craziness in America, didn’t it? But something deep in the special services agent had been stirred by Killer Miller’s savagery. Something distant. Something foreign. Something bordering on…compassion.
Killer Miller now stood over the crumpled, bloodied woman. He wanted her conscious. The whore had to see her punishment coming. She had to see the wrath of God coming down upon her. She had to see the knife’s blade.
“My God, I can’t look at any more of this crap,” said the assistant deputy director. “Time is running out and this whole project has been nothing but a waste of it!” He stood up.
“Frank, look!” said the chief research officer, frozen in disbelief.
Frank looked. His eyes bulged. “Green,” he whispered. “Green,” he repeated. His eyes jumped to the data. His emotions took off like a runaway horse, dragging his questions and doubts toward a possible conclusion that conflicted with the reality of Killer Miller standing over the woman with a knife in his hand.