Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1)

by Christopher Rankin

  She was hit with a strange urge to reach out and touch the wall of the tank. When she did, she felt how warm the thing was. It was perfect body temperature, ninety-eight or ninety-nine.

  Dade Harkenrider suddenly opened his eyes.

  She dropped her hand and took a step back. She felt a rush of warmth and panic. He was staring right at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, backing up from the tank. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I came up here. I’m so sorry.” Harkenrider just floated, staring back at her with a dreamy, drugged quality. “I just wanted to say thank you for the car. That’s all. I didn’t mean to interrupt your experiment, or whatever this is. I won’t tell anyone what I saw. Just please don’t fire me. I didn’t mean to be nosy.” He wasn’t responding at all and she quickly realized that he couldn’t hear her from behind the thick acrylic.

  The automated lid on the top of the tank started to open. Still somewhat dazed, Dade floated to the top and tried to pull himself out. His limbs seemed only barely under his command. He looked like a man that had just come out of deep anesthesia.

  Ann Marie climbed to the top of the adjacent ladder and tried to help him out of the liquid. Under the layer of warm, slippery fluid, she could feel his muscles tremble as he tried to pull himself out. He started to gag and his body jerked like he was about to vomit. She grabbed his hand and helped him down the ladder.

  He was naked except for the sensors, wires and the black harness that connected everything and covered his pelvis. Clear liquid poured from his mouth as his lungs pushed out the breathing fluid. He coughed and wheezed while he acclimated to life on land. With his legs shaky and his balance off, he staggered to the other side of the lab. He nearly collapsed on one of the tables. That particular table looked like it had been constructed for that specific purpose. It was as though the process was somehow routine.

  She stood over him and noticed a thick, very old-looking scar on his chest. It was right at his heart. It looked as though he had been through serious surgery. After all the strange things she had seen in the last few minutes, the scar on his chest was somehow in the foreground of her mind.

  “What happened?” she asked, reaching out like she was going to touch him. “What’s this scar?”

  “What are you doing up here?” He asked with his hair dripping. He seemed to be coming to his senses and tried to pull himself up. His balance was still quite off and he didn’t get very far off the table before he had to lay back down.

  “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t allowed,” he told her, softening his expression. “It’s just that I don’t get many visitors.” He tried to pull himself up again. This time, Ann Marie took him by the hands and helped him to his feet. He picked up a long, black terry cloth towel that was hanging next to the instrument panel and put it over his wet skin.

  “Why are you doing liquid breathing experiments?” She asked while her brain was flooded with even more questions. “Is that a fluorinated solvent in there? Is it perfluorohexane? I bet it is. Are you using this stuff for sensory deprivation?”

  “Did you tell me why you’re here yet?”

  “I wanted to thank you for the car.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s necessary to thank someone for the most expensive gift you’ve ever been given.”

  “I didn’t get you that car,” he said, coughing up the last of the breathing fluid. “Your scientific ability did.”

  “I guess,” she said. “But still, thank you.” She hesitated before adding, “I guess I just have one question. How did you know what kind of car I wanted? You got everything right including the paint and interior.”

  “The internet history on your work computer,” he said. “You kept showing up to work in a taxi cab. Then you needed a ride. I figured you were in need of a vehicle. I asked the Sheriff to check to see if you were looking at any cars on the company computer. He told me you were looking at the same one practically every day. I figured that was the one. Had it delivered early this morning.”

  She turned her attention back to the strange tank of liquid asking Dade, “That stuff in there, it’s a fluorocarbon, right? You can dissolve more than enough oxygen in there to breath. I remember reading about liquid breathing years ago but I thought the work was abandoned.”

  “Not entirely abandoned.”

  When Dade turned around to lift another towel from the hook next to the chamber, Ann Marie noticed a fresh eight inch gash on his shoulder blade. It looked like it had just been stitched up recently and was still very painful. “What happened there?” she asked.

  “I slipped getting out of the tank last week. Being in there messes with my motor function sometimes.”

  “Who stitched you up?”

  “I programmed one of the manufacturing robots,” he said as he tried to walk across the lab floor. His legs themselves seemed confused as though he had just spent the last ten years as a quadriplegic. The act of walking looked like it had suddenly become as difficult as the tango for a man who had never danced. “I’m working on developing a robotic system to help me get safely out of the tank. My arms and legs barely work sometimes.”

  Like a man at the end of a marathon, he let himself collapse back on the table.

  “There are human beings on Earth that can help you cross a room.”

  “I can’t compromise the lab,” he said, shivering into his towels. “If something got out, it would...” Even though he was speaking to her, Dade seemed to be at least half way somewhere else. His eyes were closed and his mind seemed to be spinning.

  She asked him, “What do you mean? What got out?”

  “I can’t let it happen again,” he said. “Not a chance.”

  “What are you talking about? Do you need me to get someone?”

  “No!” Dade shouted, sounding like someone delirious. “Don’t let anyone in.”

  Standing like a loved one identifying a body, she looked at her boss, now completely incoherent and vulnerable on the table. “Do you want me to move you to a more comfortable place? This table is kind of ridiculous. I feel like an undertaker.”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he said shaking like he had just been pulled out of a freezing river. “Sometimes the comeback from the tank can be a little tricky.”

  She told him, “I don’t know what you’re doing here. But you clearly need someone to help you.”

  “I’ll work it out.”

  “It’s dangerous. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, shutting his eyes and looking as though he might fall asleep at any moment. “I’m gonna build a robot to help me. I just need to get around to it.”

  “What are you doing here? What are you doing with this crazy tank?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Why don’t you explain it to me? I’m not an idiot.”

  After thinking very carefully, he said, “Learning.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No,” he told her. “Not for a while.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would you want to?” He asked. “You’re a normal human being. You’re also just a kid.”

  “I’m not just a kid,” she retorted. “I thought I was chief chemist at the most advanced lab in the whole world.”

  “You are.”

  “Then why don’t you treat me like a colleague and not like some child you’re babysitting. I’m offering my help with your experiments. Why don’t you just let me help?”

  Dade considered it. Then he replied, “You should be out making friends, enjoying your success and living your life.”

  “What life?” she asked. Her expression took a turn for the dark. “My mom, the only family I’ve ever known, barely stays home long enough to sober up. I haven’t made a single friend in California, my own age or any other age for that matter. When I do meet people,
they don’t know how to talk to me and I don’t know how to talk to them. I have nothing in common with them or anyone else I meet. I’m alone like I’ve always been in this wonderful life.” She realized that she had started into a speech and added, “Sorry. I don’t know where all that came from.”

  “Fine,” said Dade, who had been listening intently to her every word. “I could use a hand with my research. I usually work at night. Today was just a test, a dry run. It works better at night. Is that a problem?”

  “My mom will barely notice I’m gone. Besides, she goes out practically every night as it is.”

  They agreed for Ann Marie to start the following Friday evening. After a while, Dade fell asleep on his cot in the corner of the lab. She left him and went back to her lab downstairs. The day finished up uneventfully. As she walked across the empty parking lot on the way to her brand new car, she looked up to the top of the building where she knew he was.

  By the time she drove halfway down the hill, it was beginning to get dark. Stray wisps of fog were starting to tumble across the pavement. Ahead in the road, she noticed the slinky body of some kind of flesh and blood animal.

  A coyote, the first one she had ever set eyes on, faced her in the middle of the road. She could see its chest rising and falling with every breath. The fear and curiosity sparkled in its eyes. Very different, she thought, from Dade’s creations. The coyote was fascinated with Ann Marie. It moved a few steps closer as she slowed down the car. She put the sedan in park and, for a while, the two just stared at one another.

  The coyote noticed something. It froze every muscle in its body in a fraction of a second. It had taken its attention away from Ann Marie and was now focused on something else in the bushes. Just before the animal took off in a mad, primitive sprint of self preservation, she saw the look on the coyote’s face. The animal looked like it had smelled the stench of death.

  In the trees by the car, a woman was staring at her. She was perhaps only five or six feet away and leaning against a palm. The young woman had rather plain features, with hair dyed as black as modern dye chemicals would allow. A black robe with red lining ran down to her bare feet. Her skin was pale and covered in a subtle smattering of freckles. She lifted up her hand and waved.

  Ann Marie noticed there were at least a dozen more women in robes behind the girl. They were all waving in the just the same way.

  Ann Marie forgot that she had taken the car out of gear. When her foot hit the accelerator, the engine in her new car screamed but the sedan went nowhere. The strange woman approached the passenger side of the car. Ann Marie quickly locked the doors.

  The woman put her face up against the glass and spoke in a way that made her sound highly drunk or delirious. She said, “You’re going to meet him. He’s already taught us so much. He’s going to teach you too.”

  Ann Marie thew the engine into gear and just before the car took off, she noticed the woman had done something to the car window. With her heart pounding all the way down to her fingertips, she drove down the precarious windy road until she saw something familiar. She pulled into the parking lot at The Pink Pelican.

  When she saw the nearly full parking lot and a few patrons outside, the panic became tears and she screamed. It was difficult to work her hands until she settled down but she was finally able to dial the Sheriff. She let him know what had happened. He and his best security force went to investigate.

  A few moments after she hung up, she remembered that the woman had done something to her car window. Something was scrawled out in what looked like blood. The woman had written: MoneySexPower.

  Chapter 4

  The Drowning Tank

  “Well, it looks like you’re finally going out on a Friday night like a proper teenager,” Ann Marie’s mom remarked to her. “You got a date?”

  “I’m working.”

  “It’s Friday night and you’ve already been there once today. You’re driving all the way back?”

  “That’s right. I’m working.”

  “Fine,” said Lori. “Work your Friday night away. Do you think you could give me a ride to The Pink Pelican on your way?”

  “Sure.”

  Lori could tell her normally attentive daughter’s mind was far away. That piqued her curiosity even more. She asked, “Why are you working on a Friday night all of a sudden? This is the first Friday night you’ve been out since we moved to California.”

  “I know. It’s work.”

  Lori raised an eyebrow as she studied every aspect of her daughter’s expression. It looked as though she was inspecting a cargo hold for signs of contraband. “Working with anyone in particular?” She asked. In that mere moment of Ann Marie’s hesitation, her mother managed to glean volumes of information. “It’s that handsome boss. Isn’t it?”

  “So?”

  “So nothing. I was just curious.”

  “We’re performing an experiment and it works better at night,” explained Ann Marie.

  “I bet,” chuckled her mom. “That’s a nice new car you have out there too. I thought we were broke.”

  “Stop it, mom.”

  “Don’t tell me that’s what you’re wearing. It’s Friday night for God’s sake, girl.”

  “I’m not dressing like some slut! Besides, I told you I’m just working. That’s it.”

  Lori raised her palms in her own defense, saying, “Whoah. I was only kidding around with you. Can’t I joke around with my own daughter?” Then she seemed to answer her own rhetorical question, saying, “Oops. I forgot. Never make any jokes about your important scientific work.”

  “I don’t mind giving you a ride,” said Ann Marie as she calmed herself down from the outburst. “I can pick you up from the bar when I’m done.”

  “Wow! Door to bar service,” said Lori. “I got the best daughter in the world.”

  ...

  Later that evening, Ann Marie arrived to the main gate of The Asylum. The place felt more alive than it did during the day. Caroling insects and the sounds of wind in the tropical trees reminded her that she was very far away from Philadelphia. The building’s metal shell was lit with white light up to the pinnacle, where Dade Harkenrider’s lab glared red.

  When she found him up there, he was taping sensors to his chest while the tank warmed to body temperature. The room was bathed in red light. Except for the sensors and the wiring harness that covered most of his pelvis like tight underwear, her boss was naked.

  Under the fume hood across the room, he was performing a complex chemical synthesis with a mess of glass tubing. The whole thing looked like an interchange of a superhighway.

  “Is this stuff only stable in red light?” she asked, trying not to stare directly at his nearly naked body.

  “You got it,” he said. “It’s very sensitive stuff. The blues will rip it apart.”

  Ann Marie looked at the sculpture of glass and metal, which ended in one Erlenmeyer flask. This is where the end product, the strange hallucinogenic chemicals, collected. Needlelike crystals, like quills on a porcupine, glowed inside the flask. She put her face up to the fume hood to get a better look. The crystals started to flicker like lightning bugs.

  “I thought I knew about chemistry,” she said, looking at the stuff like a zoologist admiring a bizarre new species. “This stuff is really weird. Where did you get the recipe?”

  Dade glanced over to the tank and told her, “Same place I get most of them. In there.”

  “How do you test it before you take it?”

  “I don’t.”

  His answer shocked her more than the strange chemicals in front of her. “What!” she said. “How do you know it won’t kill you?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re telling me that you’re just gonna inject yourself with a completely untested psychotropic drug? You don’t even have a clue what it will do.”

  “That’s one of the reasons why I have the tank.”

  “What?
So you can drown if something goes wrong?”

  “Exactly,” answered Dade. “The acrylic is seven inches thick. When it goes dark, it gives me full sensory deprivation and, if something happens and I become dangerous for some reason, the tank should be able to hold me.”

  The monstrous cylinder stood close to eleven feet tall from floor to ceiling. Dade climbed to the top of the ladder and unsealed the lid.

  He stopped for a minute. There seemed to be something he wanted to bring up to her. “The other day,” he said. “The Sheriff told me that you saw something strange by the road. You OK?”

  “Fine,” she answered quite unconvincingly. “It was just weird. Nobody tried to hurt me or anything.”

  “You told The Sheriff it was a woman.” He asked, “You did say she was wearing a robe, right?”

  “I saw a whole bunch of women out there. It looked like some group of weirdos.” She remembered the writing on her window. “What’s MoneySexPower?” She asked. “I had to wash that crap off my window.”

  Dade seemed bothered by that piece of information but not surprised. “Sick kids abandoned by their parents, abandoned by everyone,” he told her. “It’s easy for something dark to get in.” He added, “They’re no threat to you. They just like the laboratory grounds. They think it gives them magical powers.”

  “Does it?” She asked, expecting some sort of snide remark.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he told her quite seriously, “it does. What we’re doing, all these experiments in the tank, it does something.”

  Taking a seat on the edge as he prepared to lower himself in, he remembered that he wasn’t alone. “This should be a short trip,” he said. “Twenty minutes max. All I’ll need is your help out of the tank when I’m finished.”