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Chemical Burn

Page 35

by Quincy J. Allen


  “So, is that the T-Rex?” I set out coffee cups for us.

  “No. That’s what’s really clever about all this. What they’re shipping isn’t drugs.”

  “So where do the drugs happen.” I put in several heaping tablespoons of sugar as Xen smiled knowingly at the excess.

  “At the dry cleaners.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. These guys have to have some kind of specially built cooling unit. Basically, you pour this mix into one end, cool the liquid to about negative ten degrees Celsius, and voila!” Xen snapped his fingers, “T-Rex crystallizes out of the liquid. The liquid is siphoned off and can be used as regular dry cleaning fluid. It’s a little different, but probably just as effective. What’s left over goes into west coast party-hounds as T-Rex.”

  “And soon the world, with Pyotr’s help,” I said filling Xen’s cup with fresh coffee.

  “Yep.” Xen added cream, a little sugar and took a sip. “Like I said, it’s brilliant. I couldn’t have come up with it. It’s given me some ideas, though. I think I understand why they wanted me dead, though.”

  I smiled. I’d already pieced that together, but I wanted to hear Xen’s version. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, your stuff, the silicon-based molecule …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well it’s cheaper to make, totally non-flammable, more effective, easier to dispose of and, if my calculations are correct, non-damaging to the environment. Silicon is basically sand, and your stuff would simply return to Mother Earth.”

  “Yeah. So?” I asked.

  “Well, it would revolutionize the dry cleaning industry. Every state in the country would legislate requiring it, since your stuff probably isn’t cancer causing either. It most certainly wouldn’t contaminate ground water and soil the way the tetrachloroethylene does. DiMarco would be out of business.”

  “Exactly,” I said, smiling.

  “But what about Nikolov at SolCon? If he is who you say he is, then he’d have even more to lose with the silicon-based version.”

  “He’s a very cool customer, that one. And he used it exactly the way he always intended. Leverage. He’s all about leverage. With the threat of the new cleaning liquid, he could force DiMarco into a business deal whether the Italian wanted to or not. You ever read Sun Tzu?”

  “Back in college,” Xen said, “but I don’t really remember any of it. Not my bag.”

  “Yeah? Well I’ve read The Art of War, and I like it. I’m absolutely certain Nikolov not only read it, he memorized it. Probably could have written something like it. That son-of-a-bitch doesn’t make a move against someone until he’s certain he’s got his victim by the balls with a gun to his head. Then he lets the guy choose between having dinner or getting his testicles cut off. It’s an easy choice every time, and Nikolov always wins.”

  “I bet he’d kill to get his hands on this data,” Xen said ominously.

  “I’m certain of it.” I looked thoughtful for a while as I calculated the implications of Nikolov in the picture. I suspected that Nikolov had orchestrated most of what was going on from way behind the scenes. He also funneled the information about Natalia’s project to DiMarco. If I was right, Nikolov was even more dangerous than anyone suspected. “Look, I’ve got to go do some thinking. Can you start digging into that data and see if you can pull out anything related to where they were shipping to and any other logistics?”

  “Yeah. I was just getting into that stuff. I focused on the chemical data first ’cause I figured it was more important.”

  “You figured right. Now find out anything you can about the operation. I’ll be up in a few hours.”

  I went downstairs and stripped down. I grabbed a blindfold off of the wall and placed it over my eyes. I stepped to the center of the mat and proceeded to go through my forms. There were fifteen of them, and I completed the first cycle at a very slow speed, the motions resembling Tai Chi. I repeated the cycle, increasing the pace. I rotated through them, getting ever faster until my body became a blur of motion.

  I let the old me, the predator, take hold and kept the pace for another thirty minutes until my skin turned dark gray and hot to the touch. My skin would turn pitch black if I went long enough. Breathing deeply, I stopped and stood motionless for a few minutes, not feeling anything other than my own heartbeat. My thoughts were crystal clear, and the rational, sensible Justin burned away, leaving Jalin burning like a hot spike within me.

  I removed the blindfold, stepped over to the nearest kick-bag and worked it with blurring speed. Elbows, fists, knees, shins, and feet flew into the bag from every direction. I hammered away at it in a hailstorm of blows. The sound became a mantra for me, a rhythm that cleared my mind and allowed the gears to flow freely. I stopped thinking about my body after the second or third rotation of the forms, and motions took on a life of their own, my body doing what it had been designed to do—inflict injury.

  Finally, the blows came in slower and weaker. My body ached from the exertion, and I slowly became aware of my surroundings once again. Jalin faded, and Justin drifted back into phase. It’s always a strange sensation shifting between the killer and what I’ve come to realize is the real me. There was a time when those roles were reversed—Jalin had been the real me, and Justin nothing more than a veneer. But the past couple of decades had allowed me to shift them, and that shift is what allowed me to have a relationship with Rachel.

  I stepped away from the bag and lowered my arms, my breath coming in hard, fast pants that blew off the excess heat.

  “Good lord!” Xen said from the stairs.

  Jalin leapt into my consciousness. My fists came up fast, and my head snapped like lightning towards the intrusion. My face contorted into a mask of rage, my eyes wide, bloodshot, almost crazed. I stared at Xen for second upon second, my face slowly drifting from rage to one of calm as I forced Jalin back down and Justin came completely to the forefront. My body paled slowly as well, my breathing expending the excess heat.

  “What are you?” he asked, a touch of fear and awe carried in his voice. He stepped up to me slowly.

  I relaxed my shoulders and lowered my fists finally, stepping away from the bag and facing Xen. “I am what they made me, Xen.” A deep, troubled sadness clutched at my insides. It’s what Rachel had seen on the patio and what Xen saw now. It was that part of me that had been harnessed by tyrants and used to inflict agony and death upon any who got in their way. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you think those Russians we killed deserved it?” I asked.

  Xen looked surprised.

  “Especially the last one …” I added, “and what I did to him?”

  Xen thought about it for a while and then he nodded his head. “Yeah, I guess they did. He certainly did.”

  “You want to hear something funny?” I looked into his eyes, and he could tell there wasn’t any humor there. “The funny thing is that the part of me that killed him … is just like him.” I stole my gaze away and looked down, ashamed. “I used to be that guy, Xen. A long time ago, but it was me just the same.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You wanna know why I do what I do? Why I keep going after guys like DiMarco and Nikolov and the people that work for them?” He looked at me expectantly. “It’s because of a word not used that often where I come from.”

  I looked at him again, and I’m sure he could see the guilt in my face. “Repentance.” He still didn’t say anything as he tried to understand. “Xen, please don’t be afraid when you see me do what I do. This is as much a part of me as my arm or heart. I could no more change this than you could your gift for chemistry. I’ve just learned to control it. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah. It does,” Xen said, putting his hand on my shoulder in an attempt to comfort me. He pulled it back immediately, astonished at the heat coming off my body. “You’re cooking!” he exclaimed and then put his hand back. He peered closely at my face and
skin. “You’re not sweating.”

  “Nope. They wrote out sweat glands. Unnecessary with my metabolism.”

  “Amazing,” he said in disbelief. “Remind me to never piss you off.”

  “I will,” I said, running up the stairs. “Come on, let’s go for a swim. I need to cool off.”

  “Excellent idea,” he said, jogging after me and pulling off his shirt. “Although I do want to get back at that data.”

  “Deal.”

  ***

  The First Domino

  I swam a hundred slow laps to cool off while Xen continued his research on the laptop from a lounge chair on the patio. My skin turned back to normal, so I got out of the pool, walked past the engrossed chemist, and stepped into my bedroom through the sliding glass door.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I whispered in her ear as I kissed her neck.

  “Name it,” she said, kissing me firmly.

  “Do you trust Marsha?”

  “Completely.”

  “Then can you find a way to bring her into the fold about all this? She’s going to have to know about the doors, at least. If you can find a way to keep it at that, great, but she’ll probably want to know more. Tell her what you have to, but don’t offer much.”

  “Sure. I think I can do that. Why me?”

  “Practice. You have to get used to tap dancing around this topic, and I trust her completely. There’s little that can go wrong, no matter what you say, and you’ll know what it’s like to avoid certain subjects.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I believe that will always be more than enough, Rachel.” I smiled and kissed her again. “Marsha will be back in a few hours, and Xen and I have to go take care of some business back at the loft.” She nodded as I stepped towards the door. “Oh, one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you talk to her, do it any place but the kitchen … preferably outside.”

  “Why?”

  I winked at her without answering and went back outside.

  As I closed the door, I turned to look at her. My insides ached for her in a way I’d never experienced before, suddenly taken again with the dread of losing her. I also feared her ever seeing what Xen had just witnessed. I couldn’t change my nature, even if I wanted to, and the fact is I am very different from humans in many respects. I’m very different from j’Tarians as well, and it pleased me that I would finally have someone to share my life with, beyond Magdelain anyway. I could only hope that Rachel wouldn’t ever be too scared to be with me.

  I went back out on the patio, and Xen looked up from the laptop, setting it aside on the table next to him. “I have what you wanted.”

  “Logistics?” I asked.

  “Schedules, volumes, and destinations. They’re a month old, but the previous month’s report isn’t all that different, so there doesn’t seem to be that much flux. It’s simply gotten bigger. Do you think Jackie spent most of his time at the plant or at the downtown office?”

  “I looked that up. He generally goes to the plant. I’m guessing because there’s a smaller chance of running into anyone. “

  “That sounds like Jackie. Life of the party … if he’s the only one there, anyway.”

  “You’re not that much different, you know,” I said, smiling.

  Xen gave me a hurt, I’m-completely-offended look and then chuckled. “Yeah, well, I’m much better looking.”

  “Not with that haircut!” I chortled. His rounded skull had grown a dark layer of stubble. I grabbed the laptop. “Come on.”

  I headed into the house, and Xen followed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The loft. I want to check on Mag, and I need to use one of my terminals.” I looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “Sounds to me like you’re already getting domesticated, mister,” he said and chuckled some more.

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I asked about where Jackie spent most of his time, because wherever that is will most likely have the most recent data.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I agreed. “That’s where you’ll be going when we hit the place Sunday night.”

  “Me?”

  “Yep. And you’ll be in their office building alone.”

  “Great,” he said dejectedly.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all worked out … well, mostly. There shouldn’t be anyone in there.”

  “I thought you said Jackie liked to work nights … what if he shows up?”

  “He’ll be otherwise occupied. Trust me. And here,” I handed Xen the laptop as we stepped up to the front door. I put my hand out on the panel, ran through the combination and pushed the door open into the loft. We stepped through.

  “Mag!” I shouted. “Set up with the laptop over there,” I said to Xen, pointing to the desk. “And use the chair. I’ll stand. Send that logistics stuff to O’Neil, and let him know what’s in it. If his guys haven’t found it yet, that’ll speed things up for him.” I headed for the fridge, pulled out some orange juice, prepped it with sugar and guzzled it. “You want something?”

  “I’m good,” he said, shaking his head.

  I pulled out my phone and composed a text as I walked back over to the desk. Mag came bounding in from the closet. “Hey, Mag. You want to spend a few days at the house?”

  She shrugged and gave me an Okay, sure look.

  “Alright, go eat something big, okay? And you’ll have to stay cougar while you’re there. Marsha’s staying with us.” Mag nodded and went back out the way she came. I finished the message and hit SEND.

  “What are you sending?” Xen asked, looking up.

  “Telling O’Neil to look for the data. You send it yet?”

  “Going out now.”

  “Okay, compose a second one to him and give him a detailed description of how it all works.”

  “You got it.” Xen started typing.

  I stepped up to my computer, put on the circlet, tilted the monitors so I could see them from a standing position, and powered them up. “Search: VeniCorp systems,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to create a user account for you and set up a card. It should give you maintenance and admin access, and then tonight we start setting off alarms at the office.”

  “What for?”

  “Simple. If I disable the system from here any time between now and Sunday, someone could notice and turn it back on. You and I are going to make it look like the system is sending false positives. They’ll turn the system off until they can get it fixed, which should buy us the time we need.”

  “What if they fix it before we go?”

  “I’m going to fix that, too. They use ConSek as their vendor. I looked that up while I was researching the VeniCorp hit. Their trouble ticket is going to mysteriously end up at the bottom of the pile. It’ll be next week before they complain about it, and by then … well, it won’t matter.” I turned back to my screens and raced through data, finally pulling up a list of users for the building’s door and network access. I scanned it quickly. “Perfect.”

  “What?”

  “Take a look. They’ve got an Ops guy with fat fingers who is also lazy, apparently.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Dupe logins with transposed characters. He even did one for Jackie … god, how I love Ops guys. It’s guys like that who make my life so much easier.”

  Xen watched as one of the user boxes centered and grew on the screen. I pulled up the keyboard, rapidly typed characters into two boxes for the user SHOAJ and closed out of the box. I opened a drawer and pulled out a pen and sticky, quickly scrawling something on it.

  “Here,” I said, pulling off the sticky and handing it to Xen. “Memorize this.”

  USER: SHOAJ

  PASS: B@ND1T

  DOOR: 1234

  “There, see … the O and A are transposed. Their guy should have eliminated the account. Instead, he ga
ve me a Christmas present.”

  “Why the funky password?” Xen asked.

  “They require strong encryption … needs a special character and a numeral. That ‘I’ is the number one. Someone on their team knows what he’s doing, at least.”

  I grabbed one of the Prox II cards sitting on the desk and slid it into the imprinter. Navigating to the door system, I pulled up the SHOAJ account and activated it. The light turned green on the imprinter after a few seconds.

  “Here,” I said, pulling the card out and handing it to Xen. “Don’t lose this either.” Xen stuck the note to the card, folded it around, and then slid the whole thing in his pocket.

  Mag walked into the room, her muzzle and claws stained with blood.

  I looked up and nodded. “At around midnight we’ll use the door to enter their building, walk around the inside of the office, set off the alarm, and then leave … and do it again at three a.m. Twice tonight, once Tuesday, none on Wednesday and two or three times on Thursday. By then they should disable the system until they can get it repaired.”

 

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