Parks rubbed his eyes and thought. Making a decision would be so much easier if he were able to remember exactly what had happened in that alleyway. To the best of his knowledge, he didn’t personally know anyone associated with the Russians or the Chinese. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t investigating one side or the other or both. After a few minutes of getting nowhere with his memories, he said, “What do you want me to do?”
39
Jonas returned to the interrogation room, stopping right outside the door. When he had left Cain, Jonas’ anger had taken him to a very dark place, a place where he could kill a man without a second thought or any remorse, and it was a place where he had not ventured in over forty years. He had never expected to ever feel that way again.
People like Cain didn’t deserve to live, and for some reason, Jonas had discovered that the only justice those types of criminal minds understood came from someone else getting down on their level and inflicting pain like they’d never felt before.
A prison term wouldn’t teach Cain anything. The battering that Boony had instructed Jessica to inflict upon Cain did little more than bruise his sociopathic ego. And yet, Cain remained smug, unfaltering, and without any remorse. Regardless of the punishment, Cain would never have the compunction to admit his faults. Those like Cain never repented. Sadists thrived on reaping pleasure through others’ misery, whether mentally or physically. They didn’t view the damage as occurring to another human being. They simply never cared.
Jonas entertained the idea of letting Cain wait for several hours before he returned to finish the interrogation. Jonas had seen the fear in Cain’s eyes, the slight crack in the guard’s exterior. The longer Jonas left him to wait in solitude, the greater Cain’s uncertainty grew. Regardless of an apology or a plea for leniency, Cain understood his impending punishment would be severe. That alone was enough to keep him worried.
Jonas’ rage had softened from his relief of seeing Derek alive. Shedding tears of joy had mellowed him and crying about anything was never a part of his nature. He almost wanted to berate himself for letting his emotions bring him to tears, but he realized that he shouldn’t feel any shame because Derek knew without any speck of doubt how much Jonas loved him.
Jonas stared at the closed interrogation room door. Delving back to his previously heated anger wasn’t easy, and he’d rather avoid it. But he couldn’t be rational and calm with someone as unrealistic as Cain. Anything less than fiery indignation allowed Cain to entertain the idea that Jonas had merely tried to frighten him with an all bark and no bite routine. So Jonas needed to appear more seething when he entered than when he had left, vanquishing any doubts Cain might have about how ironfisted Jonas really was.
He cleared his throat and opened the door.
Cain was leaned partway over the table with his head tilted down. His body swayed slightly, like he was nearing sleep. When Jonas slammed the door shut, Cain jerked and glanced up.
The moment they made eye contact, anger surged afresh inside of Jonas. It wasn’t an act or a bluff. He recalled what Cain had intended to do to Jessica, like he had done on many occasions before.
Jonas pulled the knife from its sheath in one quick flash. The blade gleamed as he approached the table, looking down at Cain. “Now, where were we?”
Dr. Lee stood at a bed inside the infirmary and watched the nurses attending to Roy, whose paralysis had not lessened. “What happened to him?”
The nurse hooking up the I.V. shook her head. She pointed to the guard.
The guard told him about the insects in Mine Shaft 15. Dr. Lee listened with great intent and genuine concern. Fear furrowed his brow.
“Thousands of them? There are thousands of them? We need some specimens to get some of the toxin and analyze it.”
“Clark has taken them to the lab.”
“So they have some of them?”
The guard nodded. “And a few dead ones, too.”
“Good,” Lee said. “That’s good. Maybe they can get it analyzed soon. We need a strong antitoxin, in case this happens again.”
Clark stared at the three strange insect-like creatures. Encased inside the thick glass, the creatures had never made any attempt to escape. They were quite intelligent beings, for what most people considered only insects.
When he had first stepped into the lab and set the glass box on the table, the creatures tapped the glass, trying to get his attention. Two of them joined their center legs together and formed the letter, H. The other one formed the letter, I.
“Hi?” Clark asked. He shook his head. That was a far stretch of the imagination, even for him. It was nothing less than a bizarre coincidence.
Anna, a chemist, approached the table where he stood, looking at the insects. She was five foot four, slender, and her black hair was pulled into a tight bun.
The three insects slightly tipped their heads in a small bow and repeated forming the letters.
“What the hell are those?” Anna asked, leaning closer to see them.
“I found them in Mine Shaft 15.”
“Cre-e-epy looking,” she replied.
The trio formed the word, HI, again.
“What is that they’re doing?” she asked.
“Looks like they’re trying to spell.”
Anna laughed and shook her head. “Ah, now, don’t be ridiculous. That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Look for yourself. See? Those two have formed the letter H with their legs, and the other one has made a capital I.”
“Coincidence. Nothing more.” She chuckled.
“They’ve done it three times consecutively,” Clark said. “The first time, sure, even I considered it an accident or a coincidence, but this seems deliberate on their part. They want to communicate with us.”
Anna frowned at him. “What kind of scientist are you?”
“A geophysicist.”
“You study rocks and rock formations, right?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You ever check the rocks inside your head?”
The statement perplexed him. He didn’t see any reason for her to become verbally abusive and insulting toward him. After all, geology was a science, too. He often wondered why scientists outside his field viewed geoscience beneath theirs. But a geophysicist wasn’t someone who simply collected rocks. They studied so much more.
After her insulting remark, the three creatures tapped against the glass wall sharply, catching her attention. When she looked at them, they formed an F and a U. Her face reddened, and Clark burst into laughter.
“I suppose that’s a coincidence, too?” he asked.
“Go play with your little space bugs, boy, and leave me the hell alone.”
“You know what’s really weird about what they did?”
“No, what?” she asked, already giving him a heavy brow.
Clark smiled. “They can read minds.”
“Oh, really?” Anna rested her hands on her hips. “You give them that much credit?”
“Yep. Because after your rude comment that was exactly what I was thinking right before they made those letters.”
Anna grunted and turned to walk away, mumbling under her breath.
“You don’t have to hate me because of my profession.”
“That’s not why I hate you.”
“Look,” Clark said in a softer tone. “There are several other dead creatures like these. We brought back their corpses. Their toxin is quite potent. They have killed several of the miners. One of the guards who was working with me died as well. It would be quite helpful if you could extract some of the toxin to find out the derivatives so we can try to formulate a proper antitoxin. Whether or not you like me or my degree, you need to understand these insects outnumber us by perhaps tens of thousands.”
Her eyes widened. “Now, you’re being serious?”
Clark nodded. “Deadly serious. Jonas has men working
to block the hole where these bugs entered into the corridor. But if that attempt fails, you and I might as well be a victim like Shad. Hell, we all could die.”
“Where are those dead bugs?”
He pointed toward the cardboard box the guard had left on a different table.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry for my rudeness.”
“As a geophysicist, I’ve heard far worse. Believe me. We tend to be the butt of other scientists’ jokes.” He shrugged. “Why? I’ll never know.”
Anna smiled. “I promise from now on I’ll try really hard not be condescending. Your field does have benefits for us, here and on earth. I suppose finding these creatures will help your career, too?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Now, you’re being overly modest. If I discovered a new element on Mars that we don’t have back on Earth, I’d be leaping and shouting about it. I’d be getting my groove on.”
Clark chuckled, watching her do a few moves. “I imagine so. That’s what makes being on Mars so exciting.”
She smiled. “It has its moments, but once my term here is over, this lady is heading back to Earth.”
“You don’t like Mars?”
“Honey, we left so much behind. Good food, theaters, concerts. We have nothing here that compares. Red dust if you look out the bay windows. Hell, the brochure they gave me failed to include the misery part of being here into the proper perspective. And the cold—” she hugged herself and shivered. “I’m tempted to go back and snuggle any one of my old ex-boyfriends.”
“It’s that bad?”
“When you consider I came here to get away from those deadbeats, and now they are starting to look attractive? Yeah, baby, it’s that bad.”
Clark turned his attention to the three insects. The first creature returned to standing on all six legs but kept its attention strictly on him. Although it did seem strange to him, he believed they were actually trying to communicate. He went to a counter and rummaged through several drawers until he found a notepad and a pen. Then he unhooked a keyboard from a foldable computer tablet.
He took the items to the tabletop where the insects were caged. He held the keyboard upright with the space bar against the tabletop so the insects could see the letters. The trio of insects studied the letters with keen interest, their little heads tilting back and forth. Finally, the one that seemed to be the leader of the group tapped its right foot against a letter. Clark wrote it down. The insect continued picking letter after letter and the space bar after each completed word, and to Clark’s amazement, it did actually spell out a message:
Beware. Only us three, your allies be.
40
With an intense glare, Jonas sat across the small table from Cain. Cain’s eyes remained focused upon the sharp blade held tightly in Jonas’ hand.
Cain finally broke the long silence. “So, what’s your verdict?”
“I think castration is a good start.”
Cain halfway smiled, expecting a partial grin from Jonas in return. Jonas didn’t offer the slightest humorous facial expression. His cold unrelenting eyes bore into Cain. Cain paled, and his tiny smile retracted.
“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think, sir?” Cain asked.
“Now it’s sir? It’s amazing how manners can rise to the surface whenever such a severe sentence is enacted.”
“Surely, you’re not serious about actually doing that, are you?”
“I did mention it was a good start. Not the entire punishment.”
Cain swallowed hard. “Look, surely there’s some kind of plea bargain for me? On Earth, I’d get an attorney and a chance for a reduced sentence.”
“We’re not on Earth.”
“I don’t think you’d do it,” Cain said. Sweat cropped on his brow.
“Are you challenging me?”
“No, sir. I . . . I can’t see you taking a knife to my—”
“Here’s the thing, Cain. The reason I know I can do it is because Jessica was innocent.”
“Innocent? She’s a damn prisoner!”
“And you were her guard, dammit! She might be a prisoner, but that doesn’t give you the right to violate her.”
Cain noticed the boiling anger rising inside Jonas. “She didn’t know it was going on. She has a Sleeper Chip.”
“You see? I expected you to go there. The fact that she wasn’t aware isn’t justification. I come from a different generation than you. Because of my age, it’s easy for me to ask myself, ‘what if Jessica was my daughter, and I found out that some scumbag was fucking her without her consent?’ For me, there isn’t a simple solution that requires only one type of punishment. I’d ensure the person suffered, and in no way would he ever be able to even contemplate doing that to anyone else. When I’m finished with you, you will be reminded every day of your crime.”
“Barbaric punishments? That won’t set well with authorities.”
“And what you did isn’t barbaric?” Jonas asked.
“Your punishment far exceeds my crime.”
“File an appeal.”
“How?”
Jonas stood. “Ah, that’s right. You can’t.”
“So there’s absolutely nothing I can do to plead my case?”
“Cain, the prisoners here are the worst of the worst. But you’re a monster in a different category altogether. You’ve betrayed everything you were hired to be, and regardless of anything you say, you can’t undo what you did. No one here influenced you to act like this, which means this was your secret nature that you had somehow kept hidden from everyone else as you grew up. I believe others that personally know you can testify to it because you probably did perverted things to them, but you silenced your victims through threats, fear, and intimidation.” Jonas leaned toward Cain and pointed the knife at him. “My guess is that you suffered a similar thing when you were a boy, too. Right?”
For the first time since Jonas had talked to Cain, guilt hung on Cain’s face. Sadness reflected in his eyes. He glanced down and slowly nodded. Tears surfaced and dripped onto the table like raindrops. The hardness and smugness that Cain had tried to maintain vanished as his mind shifted back to his earliest memories when he was the victim.
Jonas walked to the door and opened it. In the CIA, he had worked as a profiler, amongst other things, and the information he dropped on Cain wasn’t mere guessing, it was the typical history and behavior for why some men became rapists. Without even knowing it, HR had placed Cain into the ideal situation where he held absolute power over any woman that was controlled by her Sleeper Chip. The Sleeper Chip was a dangerous tool in the hands of the wrong CAM-L controller, but Jonas understood that no amount of rationalization with Grayson would make him abort the use of the chips in the mines, not with the type of prisoners he kept requesting. Although Grayson might have thought he was doing the overcrowded prisons on Earth a favor by taking the nastiest prisoners into his labor force, he was most likely setting up the Mars encampments for devastating failure. Needless to say, Jonas disliked the use of the Sleeper Chips more and more.
Without saying another word to Cain, Jonas stepped outside the door and locked it. While he didn’t plan to exact the punishment that he had threatened Cain with, he did intend to have a chip implanted into Cain and send him to the mining pits. After discovering the Martian insects, they had lost several miners. He didn’t like that Cain wouldn’t know or feel his punishment, but he didn’t want to risk the chance that Cain might escape from their grasp. If he obtained weapons, Cain wouldn’t hesitate to seek retaliation. That wasn’t beneath him. Vengeance from Cain wouldn’t be mild.
After Jonas returned to the security office, he sent a phone message to Grayson about the Chinese robots Derek had encountered, asking what they could do. During the fifteen-minute wait for a response, he called the laboratory where Clark had taken the Martian insects.
“What is it, sir
?” Clark asked.
“Did you talk to the chemist about getting a toxin analysis?”
“She’s working on it right now.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Sure. But, you’re not going to believe this,” Clark said.
“What’s that?”
“These creatures are quite smart.”
“In what way?” Jonas asked.
“They can spell.”
“In English?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
Clark chuckled.
“See? I knew that was a joke,” Jonas said.
“No. I’m laughing because I can’t see people believing it the first time I tell them. But, it’s true.”
“How is that even possible?” Jonas asked with a frown. “They’ve not been around us long enough to learn our language, even if they were capable of spelling in the first place.”
“In many ways, I wish that you were correct on that, sir. But, I think we’re in a lot of danger since I know that you’re wrong.”
“Wrong?” Jonas frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Clark explained how the creatures had formed letters with their bodies and then the warning he had been given from their letter choices off the keyboard. “I’m not trying to alarm you, sir, but if what they’re saying is true, the rest of these insects in the corridor and the open chamber are hostile and will attempt to kill us the longer we stay here.”
Jonas sat in stunned silence for almost a minute. “Tell the chemist that I need her to get a move on finding out the chemical components in the toxin. Express how critical the information is, for all of our sakes.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell her.”
Jonas ended the call. He rested his elbows on the desk and placed his chin atop bridged fingers. The worst he had imagined settling Mars to be was the harsh terrain and the extreme cold. He had never expected to find living creatures or the threat of assassin robots. There was a limit to their defense capabilities inside of Olympus Mons. Prisoners already greatly outnumbered them, but the Sleeper Chips maintained control, provided no more malfunctions occurred. The insects, which could incapacitate a man in seconds with their toxin, were an even greater threat since they were inside Olympus Mons with them. Because of their camouflage and small size, they could be concealed in any of the cracks and crevices in the surrounding walls. Realistically, there was no safe place to hide from them.
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