THE FLENSE: China: (Part 3 of THE FLENSE serial)

by Saul Tanpepper

  "What experiment?"

  "What? Nothing."

  Angel held up the full syringe. "This came out of the undifferentiated bottle from Jamie's box. Plus, there were no other bottles in her box, so I don't think she'd been injected with them yet. If this was all some kind of experiment, then she might have been some kind of negative control."

  The man stared at her in unmasked disbelief. "I didn't understand most of that. What do you mean she hadn't been injected yet?"

  "When we were at the hospital, she kept saying that something got inside of her, through the wound from the bone. I didn't . . . believe her. I thought she was a little crazy, or maybe in shock. But now I think she was right. Whatever these things are," she said, gesturing at the box. "They got inside of her from this piece of bone. They've been doing something to her body."

  "Making her sick? Is that why she's—"

  Angel shook her head. "No. She has other problems. She needs surgery for her injuries. It's something else, I think, something she showed me earlier today. These things are—" She paused and shook her head. "They're doing something to her, changing her body somehow, altering its ability to heal."

  "Healing! That's what Aston was talking about."

  "Who's Aston?"

  "Someone I'm hoping you never meet. Are they contagious?"

  "Infectious? No, I don't think so. Maybe." Angel abruptly stood up. She'd wasted too much time. Out in the hallway was a girl who needed medical care, and here she was chasing theories down rabbit holes. "I need to check on Jamie."

  The man grabbed her arm to stop her, and in that moment all of the doubt flooded back in again. He had duped her into revealing everything she knew. He really was a bad man, and she'd been a fool to believe him.

  "Nobody else knows who I really am," he told her, keeping his voice low. "That man out there is just a hired hand, meant to follow orders without asking questions. He knows I've been trying to get answers behind the company's back, but that's as far as his involvement goes. And as far as my trust in him extends, as well."

  Angel blinked stupidly. She was relieved to hear him tell her this, but also confused that he would entrust her with this secret. And yet she still knew nothing about him or whether anything he said was true. It could all be an elaborate charade.

  She started to gather some syringes and needles. "I-I need to draw some of her blood. I want to see if they're in there."

  He pulled out his pistol and gestured toward the door with it. "Okay, but remember, you need to act like you're my prisoner. It's very important that you look plenty scared."

  She nodded. As far as appearing frightened, looking down the barrel of his pistol, she didn't have to act at all to make it convincing.

  Chapter Forty Six

  "Twenty minutes, sir," the pilot announced.

  Alvin Cheong sucked in a deep breath and stretched. His brain felt too big for his skull, and his stomach was more-than-slightly upset. He'd drunk more of the whiskey than he had a right to. One of the curses of being Asian was a genetic predisposition to intoxication caused by a polymorphism of the ALDH gene involved in alcohol metabolism. It also made his skin flush, sometimes uncomfortably. Though he had an affinity for the taste, he abhorred the physical results, which was probably how he'd managed to avoid becoming a full-fledged alcoholic over the years.

  Nevertheless, at the moment, he was grateful for the whiskey's inebriating effect, as it had lessened the tedium of sorting through the papers and helped shorten the duration of the flight. And as he gazed upon the neatly arranged stacks with a level of muted satisfaction, it also helped dull the disappointment he felt at gaining so little additional insight into the relationship between the woman he'd entrusted to verify his team's suspicions and the two men to which she'd been most close as an adult. What's more, Cheong had been unable to dig up any more information about David Eitan's invention or the person or persons who had expressed interest in it once upon a time.

  To another man, these details might have seemed insignificant, but Alvin Cheong's mind kept returning to them time and again.

  He knew he had only just begun to scratch the surface in his quest to understand the woman better. His team still had thousands of photographs and the encrypted files on her laptop to sift through. And his assistant in DC still hadn't gotten back to him, which itself was a bit troubling. But then again, he tended to immerse himself so deeply into his roles that he sometimes forgot to surface as regularly as Cheong would have liked.

  The photographer persona had been one such example. Cheong had balked at the cost of the cameras DeBryan had purchased for the charade, but he'd insisted that anything cheaper and Missus de l'Enfantine would have seen right through the guise. And the boys he'd hired to rough him up on the island had been unnecessarily careless with the expensive equipment. One of the camera bodies and a lens had been damaged beyond repair. They were fifteen grand worth of junk now.

  Worthless, just like this bottle, Cheong thought, tipping the neck of the Macallan over his glass. He reconsidered, then angled the bottle away and decanted the remaining eight thousand dollars of rare amber liquid down the drain of the bar. It's just money, after all. It'll all be useless soon enough.

  He started transferring the sorted piles into the box they'd come in, alternating orientations by ninety degrees so that they could be easily separated out again later.

  And that murder in Shanghai. It had been DeBryan's idea, a bit of excitement to throw the woman off balance, render her emotionally vulnerable. Cheong had been opposed to the elaborate plan, thinking it needlessly complicated and too unpredictable. He also felt bad for manipulating her in such an underhanded way, especially given the traumatic circumstances of her parents' death a few years back.

  "She's seen worse since then," DeBryan had assured him. "My murder will give her a reason to feel like she has a stake in this."

  Cheong had acceded, but his concerns were very nearly realized when she almost caught the fake murderer in the garage. That had been unexpected and too damn close for his comfort. He told DeBryan that it had been careless of him hiring a drug-addicted homeless man to play the part, especially one who would turn out to have advanced lung cancer. But then again, no one noticed or cared when he ended up disappearing.

  Cheong wondered idly what DeBryan had done with the body. He knew it was better not to ask such questions.

  DeBryan. DeBryan. That wasn't even the man's real name. The thing was, Cheong wasn't sure what the man's real name was. Since 6X had paired them up nine months before, he'd known him only by the characters he played as he weaseled his way into peoples' lives — Shawn Chesser, Armand Rosamilia, Mark Tufo, and a slew of equally improbable names — only to discover later that they were actual people, authors, in fact. The man had a penchant for horror novels, especially post-apocalyptic, which seemed apropos but also somewhat disconcerting. Cheong occasionally wondered if the man actually looked forward to the end of the world.

  "What's next," he muttered to himself, as he shut the flaps on the box. "Stephen King?"

  Too obvious.

  There was a knock at the door to his private cabin. He quickly donned his gloves, then unlocked it and invited Emily in.

  "We're starting our descent, sir," she quietly told him.

  She was a meek little thing, and despite his constant assurances to her that he appreciated her attention, she still couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. It saddened him that she had been so abused as a child, that her psyche had been so badly damaged. He had hoped to bring her out of her shell.

  If ever he'd possessed parental feelings for anyone, it was for her.

  "There's tape there," he told her. "Please seal that box up and make sure to hand deliver it to my hotel room. No one else is to touch it," he added, though he knew it was an unnecessary stipulation. She knew his quirks and always followed his instructions to the letter. She was deathly afraid that he'd fire her, send her back out into a world to once more fend for herself.
He would never do that, though. "Thank you, Emily."

  A chime sounded and the pilot came over the intercom to tell them to prepare for landing. Cheong returned to his seat and belted himself in. Emily finished sealing the box, lifted it into her arms, and left him alone, shutting the door quietly behind her. It locked automatically.

  He sighed and closed his eyes. In an hour, he'd be in the de l'Enfantine estate on the outskirts of Lyon. He hoped that effort would prove more fruitful than his searches so far had been.

  As the jet descended to ten thousand feet, the pressure in Alvin Cheong's head turned to a dull throb. In another half hour or so, the migraine would force the contents of his stomach, including approximately a thousand dollars' worth of partially digested expensive scotch whiskey, back up his throat, soiling the floor of the car that was currently sitting in the plane's hold beneath his feet.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  "Slowly."

  Once more with his hand on her shoulder and the pistol pointed at her head, the man led Angel across the room.

  "Open the door. Good. Coming out!" he shouted into the hallway, startling her. " Now step out. Slowly!"

  She did as he said and, despite his assurances to her that it was all for show, she didn't have to pretend at looking fearful. She entered the hallway, again feeling the weakness in her knees which threatened to drag her to the ground, and she immediately turned left beneath the firm guidance of his hand. The grip on her shoulder tightened slightly, slowing her, holding her back. She winced, but kept going.

  "One step at a time. No sudden movements. Do as I say if you know what's good for you."

  Jamie was sitting on the floor leaning against the door to her office, her wrists and ankles bound in front of her but not tied together. She stared slack jawed at an invisible spot on the opposite wall, breathing slowly and steadily. To Angel's surprise, she didn't appear to be in any distress at all. She wanted to ask what they did to her.

  "Everything okay?" the man guarding her asked. "You were in there a long time."

  Angel was surprised to see that his anger was gone. Instead, he looked nearly as apprehensive as she felt. Was it because of those strange shapes beneath Jamie's shirt? A quick glance confirmed that they had grown larger, and Angel realized with a start that her diagnosis was wrong yet again.

  But if not hernias, then what?

  She was at a loss to explain the girl's condition.

  "Boss? Everything okay?"

  "Everything's fine," the man behind her replied. "We're just going to draw a little blood from the girl."

  "Blood?"

  Angel frowned at the man, but he wasn't looking at her. He seemed to be staring instead over her right shoulder toward the other end of the hall.

  Something's wrong. What is he looking at?

  The other man must have sensed it, too, because he shoved her down just as the gunshot rang out. Angel tumbled to her knees, landing close to Jamie. There was a second blast and the head of the man guarding her suddenly hinged backward, spraying blood and brains and bone from a gaping exit hole in the back of his skull. He stepped back, throwing his arms forward. Then his knees buckled beneath him. He toppled like a tree, spattering more blood and tissue onto the walls and carpet when he hit.

  Angel screamed. She panicked and scurried over to Jamie. She was aware that she was spouting gibberish — a mixture of French and English words — yet she seemed unable to stop herself. She pressed against the girl, who hadn't flinched at the gunshots, hadn't even blinked, and tried to make herself into a tiny ball.

  "Shut up!" screamed a high-pitched voice behind her. "I said shut the hell up, you stupid bitch!"

  She clamped a hand over her mouth and buried her face into Jamie's shoulder, but she couldn't stop the whimpering sounds from escaping. She expected to feel the pain of a slug slam into her at any moment, but it didn't come.

  "Goddamn it, Norstrom! You were supposed to kill the bitch reporter. Instead, I find you sticking your nose into nobody's business! What the hell is wrong with you?"

  Angel turned her head around. The man—

  norstrom his name is norstrom he called him norstrom!

  —was sprawled out on the floor clutching his side and grunting in pain.

  Standing over him was an extremely obese man in an oversized tan business suit, one side of which was covered in blood droplets. He aimed his gun down and sneered.

  "I knew I couldn't trust you."

  "Aston," Norstrom panted. "You . . . bastard. You lied about everything!"

  "Lied? Oh, that's rich. Seems you lied to me about the women escaping and heading to Chifeng. You think I didn't know you were up to something? You think I can't read that stupid little poker face of yours? Huh? You're not as smart as you think you are. You're just some dumb, stupid grunt. You clean up other people's shit!" He gave Norstrom a vicious kick, eliciting another groan from him and a scream from Angel.

  Norstrom pushed himself onto an elbow. The carpet beneath him was wet with his blood. "You said there would be no risk to my men. You infected those people with those things—"

  "Infected? No no no! You've got it all wrong, my friend."

  "The . . . things you told me about," he panted. "In the car. What you couldn't tell me before."

  "For your own good. But now you know, because you couldn't keep your goddamned nose out of it. You've been trying to get unfettered access to this place since the day you arrived. Didn't you think I'd get suspicious? And the way you ran off, saying you were going to Chifeng. I knew you were lying. I'd hoped I was wrong, but I guess I wasn't."

  "You . . . lied . . . to me."

  "Well, for what it's worth, I wanted to tell you the truth, believe me. I wanted to tell you everything, because then you'd understand, you'd see all the good we're doing here, why we have to test and refine and test again. But I couldn't. I was bound by my oath of secrecy. Besides, you wouldn't have believed it anyway."

  He leaned against his cane and laughed. The sound of it chilled Angel's blood.

  Norstrom had worked his way over to the other side of the hall and was trying to prop himself up against the wall, but he kept sliding to the side. He was growing weaker by the moment. Blood leaked out through his fingers. His breathing had become alarmingly labored.

  "Should I put you out of your misery?" Aston asked. "A wound like that." He shook his head. "It doesn't look good."

  Norstrom didn't answer.

  Without warning, Aston fired the gun again, and a spurt of blood arced from Norstrom's shoulder, splattering the wall behind him and sending droplets to the opposite wall. The dying man folded forward, slipping to the floor once more. His face went suddenly gray.

  Angel screamed, this time drawing Aston's attention to her. He stepped over Norstrom's legs, jabbing the tip of his walking stick into the injured man's shoulder until he hissed in pain. As he lurched over to the two women, he picked up the dropped pistol. It had been sitting at Angel's feet the whole time, just waiting for her to pick it up.

  "Don't, please," she pled, raising her hands. "I don't know anything. Please."

  Aston shook his head. "Why don't I believe that? Isn't it the job of a reporter to know things? To tell the world?"

  "She's not . . . ," Norstrom said. His voice was fading, but it was enough to make Aston stop. "She's a doctor. Leave her alone."

  Surprised flickered over Aston's face. Then he smiled. "A doctor? How fortunate. Now move away from the girl," he told her, jerking the gun to the side.

  "Why? She's—"

  The gun exploded again, a blinding flash and an explosion. Angel screamed and pulled herself into a ball.

  "Shut the hell up with that goddamn screaming!" Aston shouted. He pulled her hair, dragging her away from Jamie.

  The pain was terrible, but it was nothing compared to the horror of seeing the gaping hole in Jamie's lower leg. The flesh had been shredded by the force of the slug entering it. Angel moaned, unable to help herself, and it brought Aston'
s fist crashing into her face, sending her reeling against the wall.

  "I told you to shut the goddamn hell up! See? It didn't even hurt her! Look at her! She didn't even feel it." He aimed the gun at Jamie's other leg.

  "No! Stop!"

  Incredibly, Jamie was still just sitting there, no expression on her face. No pain. No fear. Her leg had been blown half off at mid-calf and she just sat there like she was watching a movie.

  She's in shock. The pain finally got to her. She's not conscious. She can't be!

  "I need you to do some surgery," Aston said.

  "What?" Angel stared at the madman, trying to understand what he was saying.

  "I need you to do a job for me."

  "W-what job?" She glanced over at Norstrom in fear. "I can't stop the bleed—"

  "Get away from him!"

  Angel pulled back.

  "She's not a part of this," Norstrom said through gritted teeth. "Just leave her out of it."

  "Are you still with us?" Aston said, whirling around. He raised the gun.

  "No!" Angel cried. "Enough shooting. I'll do what you want."

  Aston chuckled. "See? She's smarter than you, Norstrom. She wants to be a part of this. Of course, she already was. She made herself a part simply by coming here in the first place."

  He hobbled over to her and leaned down as much as his ample frame and cane allowed. "Here's what I need you to do. That girl there, the American? See, she stole some intellectual property from my company. Oh, maybe steal is a bit disingenuous, since she came into possession of said property unknowingly and rather quite against her will. You might say it was an accident."

  He snorted and turned around. "Quite the happy coincidence, that turn of phrase, don't you think, Norstrom?" The smile slipped away, leaving the pale, waxy face of a ghoul.

  "Unfortunately, the company doesn't care about semantics," he growled at Angel. "It simply cannot tolerate anyone retaining unauthorized possession of its property, no matter how they came to have it."

  "What property?" Angel asked, though she suspected she knew.