“Yeah, but unconscious. We caused his car to lose control and he flipped three times. He’s been out since.”
Maddy could see dried blood on Omar’s shoulder and arm, and his head appeared wounded. They put him in Andee’s chair and the two medical people looked him over.
“How is Bodey?” Jake asked.
“Good. They gave him a mild pain killer after cleaning him up. He’s sitting over behind the console. Want to go see him?”
Jake nodded, kissed the top of her head and smiled. “First, I need a drink or something. I’m dying of thirst, but I’m glad to be back.”
“I’m glad too. Come on, I’ll get you a soda while you talk to Bodey.”
* * *
Jake and Maddy walked over to the console and as soon as Bodey saw him, he smiled and said, “See! He’s perfectly fine. I knew he’d be all right.”
“You look a little better,” Jake said.
“Doin’ ok. They gave me something for pain and it’s working pretty good. If I had a beer, I’d probably be passed out.”
“I’ll get your soda.” Maddy walked to the kitchen.
“What’s the verdict on the arm?” Jake asked.
“In and out. No major blood vessels involved. Just meat. I should be fine. It just hurt like hell.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this, man.”
Bodey waved his hand at him like it was nothing.
Jake looked around the room, trying not to look too hard, but not being able to help himself.
“They took her away,” Bodey said. “Her, the general, and that other guy. I don’t know where. Maybe in the back.”
Jake nodded.
Three people dead in his lab in one afternoon. One of them his best friend.
It was hard thinking about her in some plastic bag, unceremoniously shuffled to some back room so the living didn’t have to contemplate the dead.
Death. It had been a part of Jake’s life for what seemed an eternity now. His life traded for the secrets of death. He wasn’t sure who had made out in the exchange.
His world was in such turmoil, swinging from one extreme to the next, sometimes in just a matter of seconds: Marrying Beth, burying Beth; finding Maddy, losing Teri; seeing the afterlife, and being blinded by it. He was surprised that he wasn’t in some insane asylum, playing checkers with a guy who urinated on his hands because he liked the smell. Maybe he was in the asylum and this was all a dream. Some drug induced state where he would never be able to tell reality from hallucination.
Thinking like this made the world seem to tilt. A strong sense of vertigo grabbed him and he had to steady himself against the counter for fear of falling over. Maddy came up with his soda, saw him stagger a little, and took his arm, steadying him.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, looking around a little dazed. “I guess I was feeling a little overwhelmed by all this. It feels like a dream to me. I can’t believe Teri’s dead.”
“I know,” Maddy said. “I keep trying to stay positive, but it’s difficult. So much good has happened to me in the last few weeks and then so much bad. You know, we’ve spent all this time trying to either keep the balance, or bring it back from chaos, that we haven’t seen our own lives. Is something trying to keep us balanced? Not too much good, or too much bad?”
“Life has always been this way,” Bodey said, “just not this intense.”
Peter walked over. “Good job out there, we would’ve had a much harder time getting to him without your help.”
“How is he?” Jake asked.
“The docs say mild concussion. And of course the gunshot wound and the dog bite. He’s still unconscious and that’s fine. It will make him much easier to deal with while you hook him up.”
“I said I would help you catch him,” Jake said. “I’m still not comfortable with what you people want to do to him.”
“And I explained to you before, it doesn’t matter what you’re comfortable with. We need the information in his head and we’re going to get it no matter what your concerns or morals.”
“Yeah, and this is the same argument that got us here,” Jake snapped. “You shot my friend and then got my partner killed. What if I refuse?”
Peter started to reach for his gun.
Before Peter could get it all the way out, Jake said, “I know what comes next. You’ve pointed the gun at my head before. It didn’t do any good then and it won’t now.”
Peter held the gun in his hand, looking at it like it was something curious or foreign to him.
He looked up, said “Fine,” with a smile on his face, and pointed the barrel at Maddy’s head. “How about now?”
Maddy froze and Jake put his hands up trying to calm Peter down. “All right,” Jake said, “just don’t hurt anyone else, please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I knew you’d see things my way,” Peter said, lowering the gun. “I’m out of bullets anyway.”
He removed the clip, dropped it in his pocket, pulled another out and rammed it home, chambering a round.
“Well—I was.” He smiled again, tightly, and then became serious. “Hook him up.” And he turned and walked away.
65
January 19, 2010 8:30 p.m.
Orange Park, Florida
Jake had finished connecting all the leads to Omar. The terrorist was still unconscious and that had made his job a lot easier.
He and Maddy were at the console booting up the system, getting ready to test the connections, when Bodey said out of nowhere, “We don’t have to do this.”
“I’m not risking anyone else’s life,” Jake said. “I’ll do what he says and then we’ll be done with it.”
“Do you think it’s going to end with this one?” asked Bodey, grimacing a little as he shifted in his chair. “This is just the beginning.”
“Doesn’t matter, I can’t take the chance of him killing Maddy or you. I couldn’t live with it. He wins.”
“He doesn’t have to win.”
Jake turned, looked at Bodey and was about to say something, but saw that he was smiling.
“Do you think he knows about the disc?” Bodey asked.
Jake thought hard for a moment, trying to line up everything in his head. It was difficult keeping the days straight.
“He might not,” Jake said. “I know I’ve never said anything to any of them, but he may have some video of us using it. Whether or not he knows what he’s looking at on the video, I don’t know.”
“Take the disc out of the drive and put it in your pocket. At least we won’t have all the fireworks, like with Frank.”
“I’m not sure what we’ll get,” Jake said, ejecting the disc and slipping it into his lab coat pocket. “We were still getting some mild effects and energy spikes without the software upgrade, remember?”
“I don’t think that conduit will open up though,” Bodey said. “And that’s the main thing.”
“I’m not positive it won’t. They’re going to induce this NDE and that’s got to be some pretty powerful stuff. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
“Want me to keep the disc in my purse?” Maddy said. “It’s right here under the counter.”
Jake slipped it into her hands. “Yeah, that would be better.”
Maddy grabbed her purse, put the disc in and then pulled out some makeup and pretended to freshen up. Jake glanced around. No one seemed to be paying attention to them.
“Whenever this happens, I want all of you to be ready to duck and run,” Jake said. “If we get anything at all like what we had with Frank, it could be dangerous.”
Maddy and Bodey nodded.
The system had booted up now and Jake started the software that calibrated the connections. The body mold they were using was a little bit small, but there were only very minor losses of data and they were all in the acceptable range. Jake didn’t think it would make a noticeable difference in the quality of the playback. He didn’t care anyway.
Peter’s medical team had been setting up their equipment while Jake had been making the connections and calibrating the system. They looked about ready. Jake walked over to them.
“I’m ready whenever your people are,” Jake said to Peter.
Pierce nodded and said, “All set.”
“Just curious,” Jake said, “how is this going to happen?”
“We’re going to give him two drugs: morphine and pavulon. The pavulon will paralyze him, and the morphine will sedate him.”
“If you sedate him,” Jake said, “I can’t guarantee the results will be what you want. His brain may produce hallucinations associated with the medication and we don’t have enough experience with drugs to tell the difference. In all our previous cases we made sure no other types of drugs were in their systems so we wouldn’t have to deal with any questions later. Is the morphine necessary?”
“Uh, no—but it will be extremely uncomfortable for him. Basically, it will be like suffocation to him. He will not be able to move or breathe and this will lead to hypoxia and then myocardial infarction. A heart attack. It can be quite painful and frightening.”
“Good,” Peter said. “The son of a bitch deserves some pain. Don’t give him the morphine.”
Pierce nodded slowly and started to turn back to his work when Jake said, “How will you bring him back?”
“What difference does it make?” Peter said. “You just do your part and you let us worry about the rest.”
“Fine, just tell me when to push record.” Jake returned to the console area.
Maddy saw his face and said, “What’s wrong?”
“They’re basically going to torture him is what’s wrong. Dammit, I wish I could stop this!”
“What’s going to happen?” Bodey said.
“Part of this is my fault,” Jake said. “They were going to sedate him and then paralyze him so he couldn’t move or breathe, inducing a heart attack. I told them the morphine they wanted to use would interfere with his reality and asked if they had to use it. Pierce told me it would be painful and frightening for Omar if they didn’t.”
“Let me guess,” Maddy said, “Peter told him not to use the morphine.”
“Yeah. He thought he deserved a little pain. This just keeps getting better and better.”
Nobody had anything else to say.
Jake couldn’t risk anyone else being shot or killed and he couldn’t think of any other way to stop the test. Sure, he could sabotage the system, or fake a malfunction, but that would only delay the inevitable.
He kept asking himself why he was having such a problem with this.
The bastard had killed Teri. Why should he care what happens? He had been angry enough at the man to help capture him, why couldn’t he harden his heart enough to see this through without feeling so guilty?
Because you’re not an animal, a voice kept saying in his head. You’re not an animal.
“Well,” Jake said, “let’s see what he’s dreaming about.”
“It’s probably in Arabic,” Bodey said, and that broke the tension a bit, causing Jake to smile and Maddy to giggle.
Jake turned the system on and watched the monitors. At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but as the screen cleared up, Jake understood. He went to get Peter.
“I need you to see this,” he said to Peter, and led him back to the console.
Jake pointed at the screens and said, “I turned the system on to see what we’d get, and this is what’s going on in his mind.”
“What am I looking at?” Peter said.
“It’s a view of the underside of the body mold over him—through slitted eyelids,” Jake said.
“He’s awake?”
“Yes.”
Peter actually smiled, turned and instructed his people to restrain him in the chair. Omar immediately began to struggle, but they were able to keep him from loosening the leads as they secured him in the chair.
Pierce told Jane (the woman in the lab coat) to start the I.V. She had to have Morris hold his arm steady because he kept squirming, even in the restraints, and she was having a hard time hitting a vein. Finally, the catheter had good blood return and the I.V. was dripping into his arm with a solution of normal saline to keep it open until they were ready for the drugs.
“Let’s do this,” Peter said, and then to Omar, “I hope they can’t bring you back.”
This only made him fight more and Peter laughed. “All right,” he said, “hit record.”
Jake started the software and they all watched the screens.
* * *
Omar had been feigning unconsciousness ever since they put him in the chair.
His arm and shoulder ached, his head hurt, and he was having a hard time thinking clearly. His plan had been to wait for the right moment and ambush one of them, but the opportune time had come and gone. He was now at the mercy of whatever contraption they had him strapped to.
He had overheard them talking about the drugs they were going to give him and this terrified Omar more than anything he had ever been through in his life. The fear was like a clawing, living thing.
His body hummed like a thousand angry bees and the panic he felt took his breath away. He thrashed and bucked, but could not break the grip of the restraints holding him to the chair. A needle pierced his right arm and thinking this was the drug being injected into his body, he twisted and shook his arm trying to keep the needle away. Strong hands grasped his upper and lower arm and pinned it so that no matter what he did, he could not wriggle away. The needle found its mark and he waited for death to come.
* * *
As Pierce administered the Pavulon into Omar’s I.V., Jake watched his struggles quickly grow weaker and then completely stop. On the screens, Omar panicked and Jake could feel this as he watched.
“Start the timer now,” Pierce said.
Jane pressed a button and a large LED clock began counting down from four minutes. Jake presumed they would begin reviving him after this time.
Peter wandered over to the console area and watched the screens intently, seeming to enjoy the discomfort Omar exhibited as the oxygen levels dropped in his blood stream.
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Omar’s mind shouted in Arabic as Peter translated with a whining sarcasm.
Jake looked over at Omar’s body and saw that it was completely still and all his facial features were slack. Respirations had stopped, blinking had ceased, nothing on him moved.
“O2 Sat dropping,” Jane said. “89%, 88%...”
The timer showed 2:51 left.
Omar’s Arabic had changed and Peter continued to translate. “I must breathe! The pain! My chest will burst! I must breathe!”
“O2 Sat 78%. Heart rate dropping,” Jane said as Pierce bent to check some other gauge.
“When will he start having his Near Death Experience?” Peter asked. “I thought this is what you people did?”
“We’ve never recorded one happening live,” Jake said. “I have no idea what to expect. For all I know, it could happen in a split second, and we wouldn’t even know it. From what we understand, time doesn’t elapse at the same rate it does here.”
“Great,” Peter said. “How will we know?”
“I guess when we play it back.”
The timer was down to 1:02.
Omar’s Arabic had deteriorated to a continuous, mumbling, ramble that Peter didn’t bother to translate. The visions on the screens were graying out, starting at the edges and slowly collapsing in, like tunnel vision.
“O2 Sat at 50%! Heart rate 23—no—flat line! Heart rate is flat line!”
The EKG and O2 Sat monitors began alarming and then all hell broke loose.
Andee’s monitors had closed into a pinpoint of light and then sprang back open showing a view from above as Omar’s Near Death Experience began.
Music poured out of the speakers and then split the air as the sound seemed to come from everywhere.
Discordant
notes clashed together as an ear splitting noise. It caused everyone to cover their ears and involuntarily duck, trying to avoid the cacophony that permeated the room. Jake likened it more to the angry bellow of some animal or prehistoric beast, than music.
The room reverberated with the sound and the glass panels separating the console area from the chair began shattering. On the monitors, an orangish hue emanated from the top right corner and images of Omar’s life began flying past him into the strange light, slowly changing it into a blood red ball of pulsing luminosity. The images were blurry and passed by so rapidly they were indistinguishable from one another.
The ground beneath them began to tremble and shake violently, as if an earthquake were somehow happening in the sandy soil of Florida. An earthquake only targeted at this building. The floor suddenly shifted to one side and then quickly back in place and Maddy fell to her knees while Jake and Peter steadied themselves on the console. The trembling stopped.
“Fifteen seconds!” Jane yelled, trying to be heard above the noise.
Pierce nodded, sweat breaking out on his brow as his eyes darted around frantically.
Jake helped Maddy back up. “Are you ok?”
She nodded her head up and down and Jake went back to the monitors. The coolant system was pegging the needle at 95%. He looked up at Bodey and their eyes met for a moment, and then Bodey shrugged, as if to say, Keep going.
Jake looked up at Omar’s body and noticed Pierce and Jane trying to take in all that was happening. Apparently someone had forgotten to brief them on what to expect. Pierce kept ducking and bobbing his head as if something would fly at him out of the woodwork, and Jane, though she was doing a better job of dealing with it, looked as if she was about to vomit.
“This is normal!” Jake shouted at them. “It gets worse here in a moment,” and smiled.
They glanced at him like he was out of his mind.
“Time!” Jane shouted, moving the body mold up and out of the way. The video monitors showed interference in the display as the sensitive equipment was jostled.
Near Death (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 1) Page 24