For a long moment, Jane couldn’t speak. The idea was so heinous, so antithetical to her training and beliefs, that she couldn’t even wrap her mind around it. “For God’s sake, why?”
Dani grimaced. “Money. He says a drug like that could create an army.”
It was a type of bioweapon she’d never considered. She’d refused two job offers because the labs offering her positions made their money primarily in government contracts. On the surface, all three were developing defensive drugs, but Jane had enough of her mother’s paranoia and her father’s academic mistrust of authority to see that the only way one could develop a countermeasure was first to come up with the weapon.
The latch clicked, and the door swung open to reveal two bored-looking men with guns. They were both short and dark haired and could have been brothers. One had had his nose broken at least once, because it had a distinct misalignment, while the other had a mustache.
“You are to come down to the laboratory,” said Mustache.
“Frick and Frack,” muttered Dani. “They follow me everywhere.”
Mustache led the way through the house while Nose took up the rear. Dani hadn’t been kidding about the mansion. The place had been let go for far too long, but the soaring ceilings, intricately carved columns and archways, and massive chandeliers all spoke of its former glory. Recent owners had brought in hypermodern, obviously expensive furnishings that clashed hideously with the old-world grandeur of the home itself.
Mustache took them through a thoroughly modernized kitchen and out a side door into a short, low-ceilinged corridor. The walls were stucco, as was the ceiling, but there were no windows or decorations and the floor was cement with two two-foot-square tiled panels and a large drain in the center. Jane could imagine it as either bunker or kill room all too easily, and neither made her comfortable. She hurried to the other end.
They emerged into a large, well-equipped lab. A half dozen men worked at various clean, well-organized, and amply lit stations. No one spoke except to examine readings, and the few words she could catch were in Spanish. She found Bryan hunched over a microscope and marched over to him.
“What the hell is this, Bryan?”
“Ah, Dr. Evans.” Her name was a verbal sneer in his mouth. “This is your new lab, where you’ll be working for the foreseeable future.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I’ve been asked to keep you undamaged, at least for the moment. But Daniela here has no such protection. She will suffer for your disobedience, as her brother suffered for hers.” He smiled then, a grotesque rictus, and spoke to Dani. “Go ahead, my darling, tell them what happened when you said no.”
Dani trembled and wrapped her arms tightly around her own body. Jane’s first impulse was to comfort her, but a warning deep in the primitive, lizard brain part of her mind she seldom heard prevented her. This man would see compassion as weakness, and to show weakness here was to lose any slim advantage she might have.
“There are cells,” Dani said at last. “They took me to one. It’s the only time I’ve seen Varo in person since I got here. They wouldn’t let me near him, but they made me watch and listen while they broke his index finger. They never told him why, just said it was my fault he was being punished.” She turned pleading eyes on Jane. “Do you think he blames me?”
“No, I do not. You’ve been his big sister his whole life, and he knows you would never do anything to hurt him.”
She focused on Bryan. “Why me and Dani? Surely there are people you could pay to do this work. That has to be easier than having hostages.”
“But you’re the best, Dr. Evans. And this research is right up your alley. No one else will be able to make sense of it as quickly, to develop a functional protocol with such efficiency. And, frankly, anyone else we’d want to do this would ask for too much money. No, you’re not going anywhere. You’ll be allowed to sleep in a comfortable space, and we have brought in clothes for you. You have no need to fear that we’ll drug your food or otherwise dull your brain. We need you functioning at the top of your game. But don’t mistake these courtesies for a lack of vigilance. If you sabotage anything in the lab, Dani will suffer. If you try to escape, Dani will suffer. If you do manage to escape, you will suffer. The jungle around this compound is inhospitable to say the least. It is also controlled by a very vicious cartel, Los Hijos de la Madre Muerte. We have protection, but outside these walls you’d have none. They’d take you, break you, and sell you to the highest bidder.”
Not good. No wonder HSE hadn’t been able to find Dani. Not only were they working off the wrong premise, but she’d been taken far from the bounds of civilization as well. Jane had seen a television special on the Hijos that showed how the cartel had survived the deaths of various leaders. The narrator had sounded hopeful that the death of the current leader—a woman, no less—in the United States would signal the end of the Hijos for good. But apparently it hadn’t happened. Dealers in drugs, weapons, even people, cartels like the Hijos guarded their privacy fiercely.
But Bryan was here. And Jane had given Eric Bryan’s name, thank God. Eric wouldn’t give up. He’d promised that much even when only Dani was missing, when there was no reason to believe she was still alive. He might not want a relationship with Jane, but he would never let her disappear.
So she had to stall. And spy. Because sooner or later HSE’s resources would dig up a trail, and she needed to be ready. But she couldn’t afford to let down her guard or act out of character. They had to believe she did not think anyone would come for her.
Luckily, taking the easy way out was distinctly out of character, so she didn’t have to do it.
“If I’m going to help you, I have a few demands of my own.”
“You don’t get to make demands,” said Mustache. But he was the hired help. She ignored him.
Bryan held up a hand. “Let’s hear the good doctor out.”
Her mind whirled. What to ask for first?
“I want Dani as my assistant.”
Bryan shrugged. “Easy enough.”
“And she shares my room.”
His face went thunderous at that, confirming her worst fears about what Dani might be suffering. It had been the ‘my darling’ that told the tale. Bryan Axlerod was a psychopath, and she would bring him to his knees if it was the last thing she ever did.
But she maintained a bored expression. “Both my assistant and I need to be well rested to do our best work. If she’s out of my sight, I will be concerned and won’t sleep.”
“Fine. Whatever. You two lesbos cuddle up.”
“And last, we want to see Alvaro every day. Maybe you could arrange to have him take breakfast with us. No more ‘proof of life’ photos—they don’t suffice to keep my assistant calm and productive.”
“Is that all? Or does the queen have other demands?”
“That’s all for the moment. Unless you’d like to introduce me to your boss?”
He barked a laugh. “Wouldn’t you love to know who’s financing this op.”
“I’d like to thank him for telling you not to abuse me.”
“No thanks necessary. If he thought beating the shit out of you would be more effective, he’d have ordered that. In fact, he might change his mind tomorrow if you don’t produce the results he wants in short order.”
She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat and kept her voice even. “Then I guess I should look at where you are in terms of development. I’ll need all the paperwork and history files to catch up.”
Which she’d go through as slowly as possible. Hurry, Eric. Please.
Bryan set Jane up at a desk while he assigned Dani to work with one of the others.
“You don’t need her yet,” he said when Jane complained, “and everyone here earns their keep. Dani already knows what we’re doing. She can join you when you’re caught up.” He p
ulled a laptop off another desk, opened it up, and set it down on the desk he’d assigned Jane. She watched for a network icon, but none appeared. That would be too much to hope for.
“We’ve entered the fourth research phase,” Bryan said, opening a window that filled the screen. The picture flickered like an old movie, but then the pixels resolved and Jane realized she was looking into a darkened room, where half a dozen young men lay on cots. An IV pole stood sentinel over each bed with three bags attached, slowly dripping liquid into the veins of the sleeping men.
“These men are Group Two. We tried many, many individuals before Group One, and some of those individuals have gone on to do great things. Group One should have been a success. And at first, they were. Strong, focused, dedicated. But then they self-destructed.” Disgust coated his words. “Every single one. That’s when our backers agreed to bring you in.”
“What on earth do I have to do with them?”
“Everything. Your research provided the key to shaping perfect soldiers out of our crop of young local men desperate for a few extra bucks. You see, not so long ago, recruitment into a group like the Hijos de la Madre Muerte would be enough to guarantee loyalty to a cause. But loyalty is in short supply these days. Fear of a common enemy is the only effective motivation.” He tapped a key on the laptop, and a constant murmuring whisper almost like white noise came from the speakers. Concentrating, Jane could make out a few words in Spanish, but nothing that made sense.
“Oh, right,” Bryan said, “language isn’t your thing.” He brought up another window. “This is the script.” While Jane read, he lit a cigarette and breathed in the smoke. Jane tried not to cough when he blew it back out, but cigarette smoke always made her throat itch. She focused on the screen.
The Black is coming. Only the Hijos can protect you from the Black. The Black will swallow you whole. The Black will destroy your family. The Black will consume you. Velasquez will save you. The Black will try to seduce you…
It went on, more and more of the same. The end was coming in the form of “the Black,” and only fealty to the Hijos and their leader, Velasquez, would save them. No wonder she hadn’t been able to understand the Spanish. The English barely made sense, though the words felt like spiders crawling up her spine.
“This isn’t anything I would touch. Ever.”
“Oh, but it is. Those IVs are filled with solutions we developed by reversing the principles used for Project Calm and Project Phobos. Essentially, we’ve found a way to give our…volunteers…a variant of schizophrenia. Unfortunately, the first group who successfully completed the training couldn’t live with the repercussions and they self-destructed.”
Jane’s stomach lurched. He’d caused six men to commit suicide and had not an ounce of remorse.
“This batch is doing better, but they need constant reinforcement. It’s not practical. When Clive patented his new formula, we realized we needed to add a stabilizing chemical to our compound. We tried one before you got here, but it caused a reaction with what they were already taking.”
“You do realize that exact issue forced us to change everything with Project Calm. I can’t just slap the same buffer chemical we used into your formula like a Band-Aid. There’s no guarantee I’ll ever be able to stabilize those men, not with what you’re doing to them.”
“If you can’t, you—and Dani—will suffer for it. Clive was fond of bonuses. Velasquez, your new employer, prefers consequences to rewards. So if I were you, I’d think really, really hard as you read the research. Your best work is the only thing that will save you.”
Chapter 7
JANE PAGED THROUGH the research slowly, which proved harder than she anticipated. Science had always been her savior. If the other kids didn’t want to hang with her, there were always books to read. She had started with history, seduced into reading by the Arthurian legends, but then she picked up a book on medicine and magic and became fascinated. A couple of books on the history of medicine taught her about genetics, and by age ten she understood that she might end up like her mother, though she still wasn’t certain what that meant. Her parents, although they saw her intelligence, refused to discuss her mother’s condition. The following year, a therapist recommended she deal with her ever-increasing fear of schizophrenia by learning more about the disorder on her own.
Taking the advice to heart, she’d asked her father to take her to the library directly from the therapist’s office. The first books she tried assumed a far greater knowledge of biochemistry than she had, so she traded them in for beginner texts in chemistry and biology. Psychology came later, as she tried to understand her classmates and herself. She’d gotten a grip on the chemical and electrical bases of brain function—and dysfunction—but she’d never managed to make sense of people themselves. Their motives and behavior remained a mystery.
So she continued to study. And in one respect, Bryan had been correct: the research was right up her alley. Someone on this team had imagination. Not Bryan. Not only was the scope of the project beyond him, but also the solutions they’d already tried were far from anything he would—or could—come up with. In fact, she was hard pressed to believe anyone trained at an accredited institution would conceive a program like this one. It combined light therapy, drugs, torture, sleep deprivation, hypnosis, and mild electric-shock therapy. Traditional labs would never bother with such a complex system,
because they were seeking real-world solutions, treatments people could access without too much difficulty. Every additional step in a treatment, every hurdle, even a single extra pill in a day made patients less likely to remain compliant with their routines.
The people who volunteered to be altered at the fundamental level at which Bryan’s project—Project Warlock—changed them were unlikely to go off plan. They’d also probably be supervised constantly, although the original project description discussed the possibility of long-lasting injections, implants, or even gene modifications.
The first skim through, done as slowly as possible, took four hours and gave her all the information she needed, especially since she had no intention of helping Bryan succeed. Of course, he wouldn’t know that. He had always struck her as a worker bee, a follower. But maybe that was just a disguise? If he’d been planted at AHI to grab the phobia and schizophrenia data, playing the dullard would have been a smart move.
She flipped back to the beginning of the large sheaf of papers and called Bryan over.
“Can you mark for me who did each of these trials so I can talk to them? From my admittedly brief skim of the data, the results descriptions are not complete.”
“That’s because they failed.”
So the dullard thing hadn’t been an act. How the hell did the lack of that natural curiosity that was the hallmark of a good scientist get by Clive? He must have been on really good postgrad teams where others took up his slack. “You know how it works. If I know the exact reactions in each trial, the results might give me an idea of a new direction. So I’ll want to interview the scientists and make my own notes.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “You’re stalling.”
Yup. “For crying out loud, Bryan, you’ve seen me work. This is how I do it. You’re the one who brought me here. If I can’t talk to the others, how am I supposed to advance the project?”
“I didn’t bring you here. I don’t think we need you. And I don’t believe you want to advance the project. Why the hell should you?”
She shrugged. “Because the science is fascinating. What you’re doing here is completely new. Sure, people have experimented with bits and pieces before—using light to change memories from bad to good, testing Ecstasy and emapunil for PTSD, propranolol for guilty memories, gene doping for all kinds of performance enhancements—but nothing on this level. Not even close.” At least, not since MKUltra. But that would probably not be a wise comment to make.
• • •
; THEY BROKE FOR the day at six, and Nose led Jane and Dani back to their room. A garbage bag containing Dani’s few possessions, all jumbled together, had been tossed on the bed. When Jane opened a dresser drawer to begin helping Dani put away her shirts, she found clothes in her own size already there. Including underwear. More than anything that had happened to that point, even the kidnapping itself, the sight of those clothes brought home her complete lack of privacy.
Bryan had said there was nowhere to run, and after dropping them at the room Nose did not bother to lock the door, making clear his complete lack of concern about the possibility of escape. Still, they might be being watched. Or at least listened to. Damn. She’d hoped to be able to tell Dani about Eric and HSE, provide her a glimmer of hope, but if the room was bugged that was out of the question.
“How did you guess about . . .” Dani’s eyes went to the bed. “Because you did, didn’t you? That’s why you asked to have me stay with you.”
Jane’s stomach rolled and every muscle tensed. She could barely look at Dani for fear the anger would consume her. “Believe me,” she said through clenched teeth, “I didn’t guess. I’m not good at that kind of interpretation. But Bryan practically held it up in front of my face. Even when the two of you were dating, he never called you by pet names, at least not in the lab. And what I said was one hundred percent true: I’d get no rest at all thinking of you dealing with him.”
Dani nodded. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend. You know, before.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You were great. You invited me out, made me feel as if I was part of your life. That was amazing. It was totally my fault that I never accepted, didn’t know how to be a proper friend.”
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