by Jason Parent
The man sighed. No taste for classic cinema either, I suppose. Ah, Hollywood these days. It’s all about bang bang, poke poke, screw screw, boom. Repeat.
“I do like the boom, though.”
“Huh?” The guard’s brow furrowed. A bead of sweat ran down his temple. “State your business or leave. If you take one step closer—”
The man took one step closer.
The guard waggled his gun. “That’s it. Get down on the ground and…. Wait. First, slide off that backpack. Slowly.”
The man complied. He shrugged then relaxed his left shoulder, shimmying the strap off. His hair fell over his eyes, but between the strands, he watched the guard closely. With tortoise speed, the man raised his arm out of the loop formed by the strap and bag. The pack swung loose but remained caught over his right shoulder.
He dropped that shoulder. Gravity and the weight of the backpack sent it careening down his arm. Right before it hit the ground, he grabbed its strap and pendulum-swung the backpack at the guard’s face. The pack’s inertia shifted violently toward its intended target and collided with his chin. The man let his body follow his arm’s movement, pirouetting out of the way of any wild shots the guard might get off.
The gun fired only once, and the bullet hit dirt a few feet away.
Before the guard could recover from the backpack’s blow, the man threw a left cross that hit him square in the temple. It drove him to a knee, but he held on to his assault rifle. He was trying to raise it when the man rammed his kneecap into the guard’s downturned forehead.
The guard rolled onto his back and lay motionless. His attacker crouched beside him and pressed two fingers into the guard’s carotid artery. A strong pulse tingled his fingertips. He picked up his backpack and continued into the parking garage, whistling as he went.
When he reached the bottom floor’s center, he picked a row of cars at random. The row he selected began with a Fiat, and for some reason, that felt almost sacrilegious. So he opted for the next row over. That line of vehicles began with a BMW.
He plopped his bag down against the BMW’s tire and crouched to open the flap he’d marked with a black cross matching the one on his forehead. He reached in and pulled out one off-white rectangular brick, then another and another, stacking them beside himself as a mason might, ten in total. Carefully measured wire, exactly the distance from the center of one parking spot to that of the one adjacent to it, connected each brick.
He began humming the tune to NCIS: Hawaii, an American television show that had played in rerun syndication hell for all eternity in his Campania home outside Naples. With the calm meticulousness of a surveyor taking boundary measurements, he slid the last bar in the chain under the BMW and out the other side. Then he walked around the car and repeated the process under the Lada Kalina parked beside the Bimmer.
He did this seven more times before sliding the brick halfway beneath the final vehicle in the row that his plastic explosives could accommodate. He trotted back to the BMW and gave one last look over the parking garage. It was as empty of people as it had been when he walked in. If security was watching him on its cameras, it had yet to send in the troops.
He listened, trying to detect anything his eyes might have missed. The only sounds he heard were the crunching of gravel under his worn black boots and his interspersed whistling. He had moved on to a popular Italian game-show theme.
He pulled a fuse box from his pack and connected its long wire to the brick under the BMW. He smiled, unable to resist feeling a tad excited. Blowing stuff up was always his favorite part of the job. In fact, it made him want to sing.
So opera it was. “Anges pure, anges radieux, portez mon âme au sein des cieux!”
Heh, again with the French. As he ducked behind a fancy-looking SUV, probably belonging to one of those highly paid, think-they-know-everything scientist assholes inside the complex, he stifled a squeal of delight and pressed a button.
Then came the boom.
A powerful blast blew out the SUV’s windows and those of many of the vehicles around him. Shards of fiberglass and plastic sprinkled his hair and vest. He stood to marvel at his destruction. Black smoke spread across the garage like heavy fog, rolling over vehicles as if it were a living creature, the kind seen only in horror movies and rare days at Loch Ness. He covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve. The smoke billowed out and up, rising quickly, pushed free from the air upon which small fires below needed to feed, greedy asthmatic flames sucking blissfully at their inhalers.
The man’s eyes blurred in the scratching, caustic smoke. Something crashed down beside him that looked like a fender, except it was all twisted and melting and sizzling with heat. Car alarms blared in a cacophony that made his singing sound as melodic as the fattest of The Three Tenors. Still, he stood his ground, beaming as brightly as the fire. Many times, he’d questioned whether he should transition to a more traditional line of work. That moment, however, was not one of those times.
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He drew the blade and used it to carve ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ into the SUV’s door. This should throw them for a loop.
He smirked. The words meant nothing to him. Not a thing. All he cared about was opera, ridding his country of American syndicated television, and blowing stuff up. And getting the job done. No matter what the job was, he always got it done.
Still, a little Latin will give those ASAP dumbasses fodder for their idiotic theories if they ever show up. He knew the ideas the phrase might inspire. He had a role to play, and he was going to give them a show. Stealth wasn’t an option with the security measures set against him. Misdirection was always an option, as long as it got him inside. And damn, did he love a good conspiracy theory, something almost as bizarre as the truth.
Maybe I should just tell the truth. They won’t believe me anyway.
Tires screeched in the distance. And here they come. A Hummer and two Jeeps pulled up and jolted to a stop at the front of the carnage. Men with gas masks poured out of each vehicle and began to canvas the area with assault rifles raised. He knew them instantly since they wore the trappings – blue blazers over white button-downs, ball caps, and navy slacks – of ASAP security personnel.
“Mercenaries for hire.” The man scoffed. “I should know.” He made no attempt to run or hide. “The secrets they must be keeping….”
He said a quick prayer and put his hands on his head just as one of the mercs spotted him. The armed guard pointed his weapon at the man and called over his friends.
“Don’t move,” the ASAP mercenary said.
But the man with the black cross on his head did move. He raised his arms to the heavens and shouted, “I am Dante, and this is my inferno!”
A moment later, something collided with the back of his skull. His legs gave out. He was falling, his mind going blank as he plummeted into his abyss.
Chapter Five
“Come on, Monty,” Clara begged. “It’s me. What happened?”
Monty grumbled but relented without much of a fight. “Reports coming in are saying some whacker blew up the parking garage.”
Clara gasped. “Oh my God! Was anyone hurt?”
“Nah, just a lot of property damage.”
Clara released a breath. “I guess you were right about the protesters. It had to be one of them, right?”
“Don’t know for sure. I’d like to hurt the guy who did it, though. I bet it was the same freak who blocked my car this morning. I knew he was trouble.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“You bet I could. The guys are saying he’s got a black cross on his forehead. Unless there’s more than one of him, or he’s in some goddamn cult, it’s the same jerkoff.” He shrugged and took a deep breath. “Anyway, we’ve got him, and it doesn’t look like anyone was hurt. A lot of people will be speaking with their insurance
companies shortly, but the important thing is that sicko didn’t injure or kill anyone.”
“What will ASAP do with him? Turn him over to the authorities?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to. Some questions are better left unanswered. But in the meantime, we’re going into lockdown in case the jerkoff has friends. Just a precaution…like your quarantine.” Monty faked a smile an infant could have seen through. “I guess you could say that right now, you’re confined to a cell in a giant prison we’re all stuck in. I hope you understand—”
“Of course, Monty.” Clara winced and looked away, hoping Monty would take her words of understanding at face value. She did understand, and she certainly couldn’t fault him for her screw-up. Warmth spread through her face, and she wondered just how red her cheeks had become. How could I have been so stupid? So goddamn clumsy? Merde! Why do I have to be so goddamn weak and pathetic?
She closed her eyes and took a breath. “Well,” she muttered as she backed away from the chamber, “if I am infected and it’s going to kill me, I might as well learn how.”
As off-putting as the idea was, Clara just shrugged and sighed. She felt fine – as fine as someone suffering from severe MS could feel, anyway. She was fairly certain she hadn’t touched the sample. Even if she had, the sterilization chamber probably would have killed anything on her. Even if it didn’t, Molli was probably just another virus with no practical effects, beneficial or ill. And if it did end up being the engine of her demise, death really didn’t seem all that bad.
“Everything broken can be fixed,” her mother had always said. And for every disease, a cure awaited discovery. Someone smart enough just had to find it or figure out a way to create it.
Someone smarter than me. Clara frowned as she thought back to her experiments.
In its defrosted form, Molli wasn’t exactly dormant, but air-quality-control readings and initial testing and observation had ruled out the threat of airborne transmission. If Molli samples contained bacteria that were communicable in other ways – perhaps a contact disease like anthrax, for example – researchers would be better off learning that sooner rather than later. But they were light-years away from injecting it into live subjects, with a mountain of bureaucratic bullshit and three other viruses standing in line in front of Molli, in that regard.
The sample had only been isolated for a few days. Clara was finally getting a chance to study it under something with higher resolution than a light microscope. And since she had time to kill….
She donned a new pair of gloves, a face mask, and eyewear. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bacteria culture and another petri dish containing amoebas used for viral testing. The amoebas were to act like worms on hooks, trapped bait with nothing to do but wait for the big bad virus to come take a bite. The first three viruses had consumed the amoebas at varying intervals and in varying concentrations – nothing surprising or noteworthy. Clara expected much of the same from Molli in the baseline tests.
She reached for a syringe then changed her mind. She opted instead for a larger sample of the virus, contained in a long, flat-bottomed test tube. A rubber plug around its lip fixed an eyedropper to its repository. The test tube was empty. The long, narrow cylinder of the eyedropper was not.
Giant viruses had earned their nomenclature by virtue of the fact that they could be seen under light microscopes. Clara opted for such a microscope for her first experiment of the day with Molli, hoping to catch any reaction that might occur inside the dish without limiting herself to an area of minute circumference. She monitored the changes in the overall concentration of the petri dish before getting down to the microbiological impacts.
She set a Dictaphone on the table and clicked Record. “Amoeba Test A001, a single drop of Molli from a standard, three-milliliter Pasteur pipette.” She slid the entire petri dish underneath the microscope’s lens. The lab had been equipped with several microscopes that were adjustable so that their traditional slide table could be removed and lenses lowered to look directly into larger samples. The light source came from special plates built into the laboratory table itself, upon which the microscope and sample were placed.
Having set up the petri dish this way, Clara considered dropping a dash of stain into the clear solution but decided against it. She peered through the scope, made sure everything was aligned to her liking, and removed the eyedropper carrying the Molli sample from its perch. She squeezed the dropper’s bulb as she held it over the dish. A single drop of Molli clung like a tear to the end of the dropper then plummeted into the solution.
Not expecting a whole lot, Clara looked away for only a second or two as she returned the dropper to its test-tube stand. When her gaze returned to the dish, she jumped and let out a tiny yelp. The solution appeared to be boiling. It reminded Clara of piranha devouring a cow during a feeding frenzy she’d come across on the Discovery Channel – not quite Shark Week, but still pretty cool, except maybe for the cow.
She didn’t dare touch the dish beneath the scope for fear of spilling it. Instead, she stared in wonder as the solution took on a purple hue and released an odor that resembled ethanol but with hints of pine sap.
Clara rubbed her chin. “Pray tell, my dear Molli. What on earth was that all about?” She stared at the dish until her eyes blurred, distracted by the many thoughts racing through her head. “I know one way to find out. But first….” She grabbed the Dictaphone. “Initial results of Test A001. After sample injected, solution immediately disrupted. Appeared to be boiling. Solution took on a purplish color in less than five seconds. Will study the solution under higher magnification for further analysis.”
She clapped and hummed, showing a giddiness that, since her infliction, she felt only when making new discoveries or scientific advancements. Carefully pushing aside the light microscope, she opted for an instrument with considerably more power. She rotated the lenses of the electron microscope until her desired magnification clicked into place. She rolled over to the refrigerator and, in her excitement, grabbed the mother lode of petri dishes, filled with so many amoebas that it looked as if a jellyfish had exploded into countless mini versions of itself, sans tentacles. The dish remained steady and level as she transported it to the laboratory station, safely resting on a small tray built into her wheelchair’s arm, like those on some airlines.
Clara took a deep breath to steady her hands, which were shaking from a combination of nervousness and excitement. Her heart beat a little faster as she slid the dish onto the table. Despite her eagerness, she didn’t spill a drop in the transfer or in positioning her sample beneath the scope.
“Amoeba Test A002,” Clara said into the Dictaphone. “Repeat of immediately preceding test. Single drop of Molli from a standard, three-milliliter Pasteur pipette. Higher amoeba concentration. Magnification: transmission electron scope, one hundred thousand X.”
Clara assumed the bigger dish and higher concentration of amoebas would slow the reaction time of whatever had happened in the first petri dish. And she couldn’t be sure what had happened, anyway. She had several guesses but refrained from speculating until she conducted further experimentation.
“All right, Molli.” Clara grabbed the dropper and hovered the end of its tube over the petri dish.
Laboratory microbiology had advanced to the ease of point and click, the microscope being hooked up to viewing screens, scanning devices, and image replicators, as well as computers capable of composite analysis. Clara just needed to know where to aim her scope. She lined up its lens as best she could on the area she wanted to magnify, but under that magnification, the dropper cast a giant shadow over the dish. Under normal research practices, her advanced magnification at such an early stage would have been like trying to find the clichéd needle in the haystack. But given the turbulence she had witnessed in the first petri dish, she figured her haystack was equal parts needles and hay.
“Let’s
see what you got.” With a gentle squeeze of the dropper’s rubber bulb, Clara released a single drop of Molli into the mixture. Without removing her eye from the scope, she placed the eyedropper in an empty beaker nearby and prepared to watch and wait.
But she didn’t have to wait at all.
The solution instantly roiled like an angry sea. At first, Clara saw nothing except liquid in motion and amoeba moving away, seemingly fleeing as if they were an intelligent species, from the turbulent disruption. Clara chuckled. They can’t be fleeing. Amoebas wouldn’t know enough to retreat. They have no instinctive fight-or-flight reactions. However, watching them move in the same direction regardless of which way the solution rocked made her wonder otherwise.
She dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Then she saw Molli. “There you are, ma cherie.” Clara blinked, clearing the blur from her eyes. She pinpointed the organism and upped the scope’s magnification, too enthralled to record her steps. “Are you…growing?”
Molli certainly appeared to be, and not just a little. The virus was expanding like a balloon pumped full of helium. Clara stared in awe. She could make out its details with uncanny precision. Her heart thumped, sending pressure pains through her chest.
This is no virus. Of that, Clara was fairly certain, but what to call the life-form in her dish eluded her. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Molli’s outer boundary, if she could call it that, was constantly changing. It had a sharpened, multi-pointed sickle cell-like shape that was fleeting, the ‘virus’ becoming amorphous one second then whole again the next, with an entirely new frame. Stalagmites shot out from a bulbous central mass and retracted, only to reappear elsewhere on the single-celled organism’s body.
And it had a great many genes, not unlike the bacteria that sat nearby, but Molli seemed prokaryotic, its genes swimming around inside the organism willy-nilly without a central nucleus base. She wondered how the allegedly brightest minds in all of science could have misclassified something so unique, so beautiful, so incorrectly.