Dangerous Minds: A Cyrus Cooper Thriller: Book One

by Xander Weaver

  Although Cyrus could recognize the samples as tissue, he had no idea what the jars represented. Ashley had said that Gertrude’s work included vivisection. Apparently he was looking at the proof. The organic samples were enough to turn his stomach. Cyrus turned his head away so he could get a glimpse over his right shoulder. There the shelves had given way to massive cylindrical tanks that contained hundreds of gallons of the same liquid used in the smaller jars. Only the contents of these containers were not scraps of unrecognizable biological tissue as they had been in the smaller containers; these larger tanks contained twisted and contorted cadavers, suspended in the transparent solution.

  The bodies, Cyrus quickly realized, were human—more or less. While they were disfigured in grotesque and horrible ways, they all had their head, two arms, and two legs—give or take. The bodies looked like some kind of organic mutation or cancer had been allowed to ravage them unchecked.

  And while he could only see three such tanks from his position on the gurney, Cyrus had the sense that the horror show continued all along the wall behind him.

  “My alpha specimens,” Gertrude said simply in response to Cyrus’s speechless examination of the freakshow. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Beautiful?

  At first he thought she was being sarcastic, but judging by the proud gleam in her eye, Gertrude Waterford was entirely serious. She looked upon the display of barbaric aberrations with a mother’s pride.

  “You did this?” It was more accusation than question, and all he could bring himself to say. Never before had he been stunned beyond reason.

  With a satisfied, egotistical smile, Gertrude walked slowly past the front of the display starting from the far end. She moved slowly, taking in each tortured body as if it were an independent piece of priceless art.

  “The larger specimens were my earlier work,” Gertrude explained, pointing to the massive canisters containing complete cadavers. She seemed to favor the samples in the smaller jars, though she showed substantial affection when she pointed to the twisted remains of the mutated corpses over Cyrus’s shoulder. It was even more troubling because she was showing far more emotion for the samples than she had for her own grandchildren.

  “Admittedly, crude attempts before science finally supplied me with the tools necessary to take my work to the next level.” At that, she glanced at the smaller samples, not full bodies or even parts, but unidentifiable tissue.

  “She killed William,” Ashley said in a sad, hollow voice, speaking for the first time.

  An image of Ashley laying unconscious on the cold tiles of her balcony flashed through Cyrus’s mind. The violence of the seizure was unlike anything he’d ever witnessed. And the blood that flowed from her eyes? He’d never seen anything like that before. Though Ashley had described her connection to her brother only briefly, it seemed that severing the connection was as physically traumatic as it was mentally painful.

  Cyrus cast an accusatory glance at Gertrude. He didn’t actually expect the woman to deny her granddaughter’s claim, but he was shocked when Gertrude simply shrugged it off. “He had become too difficult to manage,” she said. “What can I say? He wouldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  “My God,” Cyrus virtually spat. “He was your grandson. How could you?”

  While the question was meant to draw a response, he wasn’t prepared for the look he received; Gertrude stood stock still, studying him for the better part of a minute. The entire time, her focus was cast upon him with laser-like precision.

  Finally, Gertrude broke her gaze. But only long enough to readjust the positioning of her cane before slowly beginning her approach. “William and Ashley are not my grandchildren,” she said.

  If the statement didn’t trouble Cyrus, then the questioning glare she offered with the statement did. She wasn’t trying to shock him, he realized. She thought he already knew as much—but that wasn’t the point she seemed to be attempting to make. It was as if she was trying to gain understanding of some, as of yet, unspoken suspicion.

  He had no idea what she was driving at.

  “They have more in common with the specimens in these jars,” Gertrude continued, further appraising his reaction.

  Cyrus was adept at rolling with information as it became available. It was crucial to survival in undercover work. Still, he found the revelation almost as shocking as the callousness with which it had been revealed.

  Ashley looked at her grandmother in utter bewilderment. Her gaze quickly gave way to shock. Several moments of silence followed, and while Cyrus tried to process Gertrude’s admission, he could only guess what sort of stress it had brought upon Ashley.

  The silence in the room seemed to last forever. Not surprisingly, it was Ashley who first found her voice.

  “You raised us,” Ashley said, accusation clear in her tone. “Mom and Dad died before we could walk and you took us in. How can you say that?”

  Gertrude shook her head as if that were the most foolish thing she had ever heard. “You and William were twins, but you had no parents,” she said with cold detachment. “You were twins, born and bred in a lab. My lab.

  “If you have a mother or a father at all, surely I’m the closest thing to either.”

  Staring at Gertrude through wide eyes, Ashley didn’t know what to say. Cyrus, on the other hand, was getting a better idea as to what was going on. Glancing over his shoulder, he took another look at the disfigured forms in the tall cylindrical tanks.

  Alpha specimens.

  That was what Gertrude had called the grotesque figures. His stomach turned another summersault as he realized that the birth of William and Ashley had been the result of a related experiment. “Praxis,” he said aloud, as much for himself as for Gertrude.

  “Of course,” Gertrude said with a smile. “It’s why you’re here, after all. Is it not?”

  Cyrus thought about how the Coalition had tasked him with the retrieval of Gertrude’s database. It would contain all of her research, as well as a complete accounting of the atrocities she had committed. But somehow that didn’t seem like the accusation she was making. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t get the sense that she knew anything about the Coalition or their interest in her.

  Meeting her eye, Cyrus remained quiet.

  “I know who you are,” Gertrude said with a smile. “There’s no reason to hide it. Certainly not from me, of all people. I just want to know why I wasn’t approached sooner. I’ve been waiting for so long.”

  While Cyrus didn’t know what she was talking about, the gleam in her eyes told him that she wasn’t referring to the Coalition. Beyond that, he needed more information.

  “You think you’ve got it figured out?” Cyrus urged. He needed to get her talking if he was to have any chance at understanding what was really happening.

  One more look at Ashley told him that she was on the verge of mentally checking out. The loss of her brother combined with the betrayal of her grandmother was potentially crippling to her on a psychological level. And to be told that she was nothing more than a walking, talking lab experiment? How did anyone process information as insane as that?

  “You know about Praxis,” Gertrude insisted. “And I’ve examined your genetic scans.” She motioned toward the massive scanner at the rear of the room. “I know who you are.”

  Making a show of pulling on his restraints, Cyrus shook his head emphatically. He’d been pulling at the bindings cautiously ever since waking and knew they couldn’t be defeated through sheer force. Still, he pulled violently at the leather bands that lashed his wrists to the side of the gurney, rattling the cart loudly in the process. “Praxis? I heard you mention it on the phone once last week and again earlier this week. That’s all I know. What is this all about? Why are you doing this?”

  Gertrude was confused by his refusal to admit what she believed to be true. “Then why are you here?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Cyrus snapped. “I’m a temp,
for God’s sake. I was hired as your assistant, you crazy bitch!”

  Offering a devious grin, Gertrude shook her head. “I know that much isn’t true.”

  Gertrude waved to someone who, up until this point, had remained hidden behind Cyrus. She motioned the unseen figure forward. A pair of men wheeled a gurney from the back of the room and parked it a dozen feet in front of Cyrus. A long, white sheet covered the contents of the cart but did little to disguise the form of the body beneath.

  With a signal from Gertrude, one of the men lifted the sheet away from the battered and lifeless face of Lacy Osbourne. Though he hadn’t seen her since their brief encounter when he interviewed for the position with Gertrude, Cyrus recognized her immediately.

  “She didn’t have a lot to say,” Gertrude said with a dismissive shake of her head. She seemed less concerned with the loss of the woman’s life than she was with the effort that had gone into interrogating her.

  “But in the end, I believe it was because she honestly didn’t know very much,” Gertrude went on. “Still, what she did say was very helpful.

  “The evening before you and I met for the first time, your CV appeared in Miss Osbourne’s database for the very first time. She was certain of this,” Gertrude said with inflection. “You see, I went through a fair number of applicants before you came along, and Miss Osbourne became well acquainted with the candidate pool before we were through.

  “I find it curious that a qualified and, admittedly ideal candidate, should literally appear out of the blue. Don’t you?”

  Under normal circumstances Cyrus would’ve been inclined to remain silent when faced with such a question. It seemed as likely to be rhetorical as not, plus he was literally choking on the bile that had risen in the back of his throat at the sight of what Gertrude had done to Lacy Osbourne.

  “I believe the term used was, overqualified,” Cyrus said. He was doing his best not to grind his teeth with the statement.

  Looking at Lacy’s lifeless face, the only part of her that was exposed from beneath the featureless white sheet, Cyrus felt rage. He fixed Gertrude with a bracing stare that somehow contained every ounce of emotion he was feeling, and he growled the words, “Gertrude, what-have-you-done?”

  The old woman staggered backward a full two steps at the horrified sound of Cyrus’s voice, the look on her face as though she’d just been physically slapped.

  Chapter 30

  Mayflower Lab Facility

  Hennings, South Carolina

  4:17 p.m.

  Standing still at the back of the room, Hondo listened to everything that was being said. Though he kept his distance, he remained just within earshot of the conversation at all times. Still, he had no idea what was happening. Cyrus was strapped to a gurney a dozen feet away, and as much as he wanted to let his friend know that support was on hand, he had yet to make his presence known. He was running his own play on Gertrude. He only hoped it was the right move. Infiltration operations were not his bailiwick, and the truth was that he didn’t know what he was doing. Aside from the play he’d listened to Cyrus run on the crew in a bus garage on an earlier operation, he had no idea how to react when dealing covertly with an adversary. His experience had always consisted of direct combat. And at that moment, he realized how much he preferred combat to what he was doing now. The sneaking around, the lying—the constant fear of saying the wrong thing and being shot before he had a chance to defend himself…frankly, he had no idea how Cyrus functioned under such conditions.

  Still, a debt was a debt, and when Cyrus called in his marker Hondo had been quick to accept the challenge. At the time, he expected that infiltrating the security detail assigned by the Aragon Group would be the hardest part of the job. But he had followed Cyrus’s instructions and made short work of vetting process. A third party—an independent contractor out of Miami—had provided Hondo his legend, or falsified work history, background and personal details, in tradecraft terms. All Hondo had to do was arrange a fortuitous accident for a member of the five man detail that was regularly assigned to Gertrude Waterford. For this, Cyrus had targeted Denton Stubbs, the 28-year-old field medic attached to the team. Using the forged work history and credentials that had been inserted into the Aragon Group’s secure database, Hondo replaced the injured medic when Waterford requested her usual detail for a new assignment. The next thing Hondo knew he was in Hennings, South Carolina and part of a team charged with securing a hostile target on the 6th floor of the Templeton Tower building. The target turning out to be Cyrus shouldn’t have been the surprise that it was, but that the identity had caught him so fully unprepared impressed upon Hondo just how ill-equipped he was for the work at hand.

  It was a thought that ran through his head repeatedly while he listened to his friend being questioned. He knew only that another target had already been assassinated. The order was executed by another member of the team before Hondo was even aware that it had been given. It was another fact that weighed heavily upon him. Though he still didn’t know who the target had been, the man’s death was on his conscience. He’d been inserted into the security detail to provide support to his friend, but he had no idea if Cyrus would have had him prevent the sniper from killing the man at some railway yard. There had been no way to ask, even if he’d been aware of the order in advance.

  The frustration of the assignment left Hondo with pent-up anxiety and no means of release. He stood in a sealed laboratory many stories underground with four well-trained and well-armed security operators; mercenaries, he corrected himself. But when he focused his attention on them more closely he found comfort, realizing that they lacked discipline. Each of the four men moved around the lab in a relaxed manner, secure in the false knowledge that they had the situation well in hand. These men were not as skilled as he first thought. The understanding brought him a degree of relief and renewed hope that things would break in their favor.

  After arriving in the lab, Cyrus had been secured to the wheeled cart with thick leather restraints. Waterford had then decided to dismiss half of the security detail, sending them to the installation’s commissary while she dealt with matters in the lab.

  When Hondo realized he was about to be dismissed, he knew he needed to act and made a desperate play that he’d hoped would keep him in the room. He stepped forward and commented to Waterford that he had seen their target before. Unsure what direction to take his deception, he left the statement ambiguous at first. It was either the right thing to say, or entirely wrong.

  Waterford’s interest in his comment was immediately apparent, and Hondo knew he had gained room to work. He just wished he knew the right direction to take the lie. But when Waterford demanded to know what Hondo knew of Cyrus, he had a hint…pointing him in the proper direction. He explained that he didn’t know Cyrus first hand, but their paths had crossed on an earlier security assignment. The concept was in keeping with his cover as part of the Aragon Group, so it seemed reasonable.

  Hondo went on to explain in vague details that he had worked a four-man security job in Peru a year earlier. While there, he had encountered Cyrus. Though at the time, Cyrus had been working under a different name. He couldn’t recall the name used, offhand, but the details of the mission didn’t seem as important to Waterford as the fact that Cyrus had been in Peru and was using an alias. It was just as well, since Hondo was reticent to provide any additional details that might foul up his deception somewhere down the line.

  He was already afraid he’d crossed into dangerous territory by hinting at the use of an alias, but the look he saw on the old woman’s face at the mention of an alternate name and a vague location like Peru, made Hondo afraid that he hadn’t set the hook deeply enough. Certain that he needed to stay in the room, he’d forged ahead, providing additional information against his better judgment.

  The ploy had worked, and Hondo had been allowed to stay in the room. But it might have worked a little too well since Gertrude decided to keep the entire team on hand until
she better understood the man she was dealing with. Once more Hondo was left to question how Cyrus could operate under such fluid conditions.

  More troubling for Hondo was how his story might hold up once Cyrus was confronted with it. They hadn’t agreed on the backstory, and the more he thought about it, the more Hondo realized how clumsy his tale had been. It was very likely to fall apart the moment he was put in front of Cyrus and forced to press the matter of their past encounter.

  The one thing Hondo felt he’d done right since entering the lab was to inject Cyrus with a mild stimulant to rouse him back to consciousness ahead of schedule. He’d managed the injection without being noticed. The move hadn’t been without concerns, though. Hondo had witnessed the blow that rendered Cyrus unconscious in the first place. Seeing as that there was a very high probability of a concussion, he feared for his friend in the short term as a result.

  Whatever happened in the lab, Hondo knew that it needed to happen quickly. And, above all, he needed to get Cyrus and the girl out of there as soon as possible.

  Chapter 31

  Mayflower Lab Facility

  Hennings, South Carolina

  4:29 p.m.

  “You forget,” Gertrude continued. “I’ve seen the results of your blood work. I know who you are—I know what you are.”

  The accusation threw Cyrus for a loop. He took a long look at the woman and decided that she wasn’t bluffing. She was referring to something specific. But whatever it was, he didn’t have the slightest clue.

  Blowing out an exasperated sigh, Gertrude signaled the pair of guards to move the now fully covered body of Lacy Osbourne out of sight. Retrieving a thin handheld tablet computer from a nearby cart, Gertrude tapped the screen and brought the device to life. It took only a few more taps before she retrieved the information she required. Turning the device toward Cyrus, she held it up in one hand. “Your test results,” she accused.