The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  Yuri went still.

  Like an animal in heat, the popinjay strode toward his victim, gun still at the ready. “Want to hear about Anna, Yuri? That bitch killed eight of my men before Dr. Chen finally finished her off--”

  “She shot Anna?” Yuri said, his gaze flicking back to Wey Chen,

  She nodded.

  Yuri’s wiry body clenched like a single muscle, and began to vibrate its full length. Terry, still holding onto him, watched his face from the side, searching for a clue as to what he would do. His features remained as rigid as a porcelain mask. “And Kyra?” he asked.

  The tormentor studied Yuri’s expression the way a connoisseur of portraits might savor a particularly well captured likeness. “Yes, she shot your daughter as well,” he finally replied, his tone having switched to one of sympathy.

  Terry recognized the tactic. Torturers called it the change-up. An unexpected show of kindness at the right vulnerable moment could crack a man’s nerve faster than days of beatings. At least that’s what DOD had taught. Except here no psychological twist of the knife would be necessary.

  In taking Kyra from Yuri, they’d destroyed the flesh of his flesh.

  His features crumpled into anguish. Sobs convulsed him, expelling air from his lungs, and his next breath became an agonizing bray. Terry felt him sag, and struggled to keep him on his feet.

  The tormentor watched, his eyes glittering. “Killing him now would be too much of a favor,” he said, that inflamed gaze fixed on his victim, devouring every second of the man’s misery. “Why not prolong things? Do a little target practice.”

  “If you insist,” she said, still in her shooter’s pose.

  He brought his gun level with Yuri’s groin. “Let’s start here, lady’s man.”

  “No!” Terry bellowed, throwing Yuri to one side and leaping in the opposite direction.

  Wey Chen fired twice, the sound no louder than two quick gasps for breath.

  Terry felt nothing, and assumed she’d hit Yuri.

  But the Russian remained on his feet, wearing a look of disbelief as he checked his groin with his hand and found no damage.

  They gaped at one other in bewilderment.

  Until blood began to spatter at the feet of the tormentor. He swayed, sank to his knees, and pitched forward, the back of his head having been turned into a pulsing bowl of crimson hair and shattered bone. After a few twitches, he lay still, but continued to bleed. Scarlet geysers jetted from his wound into the air as his heart pumped itself out, and the open skull filled to the brim, then overflowed. Terry, too stunned to speak, stepped away from the spillage as it spread toward his shoes.

  Yuri, equally dazed, stayed put, his stare fixed on Wey Chen.

  “Anna’s alive, Yuri. So is Kyra. I shot the team sent to kill them,” she said, rushing forward and locking the door to the chamber. Next she knelt down to retrieve a set of keys from her former comrade, deftly avoiding the flow of blood.

  Yuri’s gaze remained locked on hers, his expression more dumbfounded than relieved. “Anna’s alive? Kyra too.” His voice quavered like a lost child’s. He sank to the floor and sat motionless, oblivious to the crimson pool that crept nearer.

  “Listen to me, and pull yourself together.” She knelt at his side and gave his shoulders a gentle shake. “I only set it up to appear that she died in a shoot-out.”

  While Wey Chen spoke, Yuri’s eyes remained blank. “Why would you tell anyone that we were coming?” he asked, as if not able to get beyond that one point.

  “You really thought you could sneak into a place like this unnoticed without being let in? I reported that I’d set you up so he would allow you to enter. Best yet, no one else is aware that you’re here.”

  “How the hell can you be sure of that?” Terry asked, a grand prix of suspicion toward his former student doing laps through his head.

  “Trust me. I insisted we conduct trials today to keep everyone busy. I also insisted that he not alert the guards as to your arrival. “Warned him that even trying to act naturally, they’d still be watching for you and glancing at the hills, thereby making it obvious that we were expecting you.” While talking, she got to her feet, hurried over to the control panel, and brought the projector to life. “I also suggested he wait here, to be able to say he personally apprehended the two biggest threats to our program. The pompous fool couldn’t resist that chance to shine.” Her fingers worked the dials and switches with a precise ease that only years of experience could achieve. “Finally, I advised that he sign out to his second in command and pretend to be in Guangzhou for the day, thereby explaining his absence at the trials. Again the man complied. Sorry for the subsequent dramatics, but I was waiting until you were away from his line of fire, in case the idiot’s trigger finger twitched...”

  It all sounded so logical, so carefully planned out, so brilliantly executed. Then why did he still feel that something about the whole elaborate set-up didn’t make sense, an unease born even before he and Yuri climbed into an Aerflot container outside Vancouver?

  The collage of colors and shapes from what looked like a gallery of microbes flowed over the corpse, camouflaging it along with the expanding pool of blood. “Let’s go,” she said, walking over to the door and undoing the lock, gun still in hand.

  But Terry’s attention had been galvanized by the stream of images. They were unlike any living things he’d ever seen, yet vaguely familiar. “Wait. What are those?” he asked.

  “There isn’t time, Ryder. I’ll explain everything--”

  “No! These are chimera. New viruses. Nothing to do with SHAKES. What the hell else is going on here?”

  “Not now, Ryder.”

  But he felt drawn to the images and, walking into the projection, allowed them to swim around his head. They were so different, yet recognizable, as if the contents of his own imagination had escaped his skull. These were things that he’d encountered only in his nightmares, the what-ifs that had always haunted him after his team talked through their worst-case scenarios. Yet here were those imagined demons brought to reality--the brilliantly colored spirals of DNA, the known gene sequences of identifiable microbes interspersed with the helixes of vipers and black widow spiders. And beyond them stretched a sea of completely new life forms, millions of spherical, ovular, pyramidal, or cubed translucencies, their surfaces covered with everything from spikes to tentacles to craters to tiny suckers to twisted outcroppings topped with fuzzy balls--all as he’d first created them in his mind.

  Someone had reached into his blackest subconscious and stolen what lay there.

  He turned heel and strode over to Wey Chen. “How did you get this?” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. His throat gone dry, the words came out in an angry rasp.

  “Like everything else in this room, we pirated it. Now move--”

  “This doesn’t exist--”

  “You won’t exist, unless we get out of here. I beg you! Follow me to your package, and I’ll show you the exit. Anything you see here will be made clear soon enough, trust me.”

  “Trust you?” His hands tightened, the fingertips digging into the flesh beneath her coat.

  She didn’t so much as wince, but took the pain, as if it were her due. “Please, Terry, we must leave.” Her voice had a surreal calm.

  He broke into a sweat. She was right, they had to escape. But the compulsion to know the origin of those organisms had overwhelmed him. “Tell me!” He pressed her against the door frame, finding himself in the grip of a need that he couldn’t break. Until a tiny inner voice said, Focus! You’re insane!

  He slowed his breathing, relaxed his hold, and shoved her away.

  She stared at the tremor in his fingers, and tried to touch his arm. “I’m so sorry, Terry.”

  He jerked back from her, loathing himself for once more having let rage usurp his will. “Don’t you ‘sorry’ me. Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it. Not for me, not for two hundred million and counting!” And not for Carla, he thought, unwill
ing to let this woman witness any part of his private pain and trivialize it with her damned apologies. He walked over to the control panel, snatched up the Uzie, and held it out to Yuri. “Let’s go.”

  The man snapped out of his glossy-eyed state, stood, and leveled a stare toward Wey Chen that promised to cut through her bullshit with the authority of a well-wielded axe. “Where are Anna and Kyra?” he said, taking the weapon from Terry. Venom had replaced the frailty in his voice.

  “I’ll tell you about them as we walk.” She pushed them both out the door, and locked it behind her.

  Terry frowned. “If somebody else goes in there--”

  “Nobody would dare. I’m the only one with clearance.” She started down the corridor.

  So logical. So well planned. So too neat.

  Both men followed, peppering her with questions.

  “What if anyone comes looking for you and knocks?” Terry asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in there as soon as you leave. Now let’s get the package, and keep your voice down!”

  God, he hated spook-speak.

  “I asked you about Anna,” Yuri said. “And Kyra.”

  “I told you, they’re safe.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  She continued to lead the way at a run. “Look. I helped them best I could, by making everyone think they were dead, including the FBI. Now no one’s looking for them.”

  He stayed hot on her heels. “But you saw Anna, with Kyra? They’re okay?”

  “I saw them running away in the fog, across the mud flats . . . .”

  Terry knew instantly that that was a lie. Whatever happened at Wells Beach involved a lot of Anna’s blood being left on a cottage floor. If she ran across mud flats, it was while hemorrhaging. But he let Wey Chen continue. Because whatever her game, he needed Yuri functional, and lies were all that would keep him that way, for now.

  “Wait a minute. When did this happen?” Yuri demanded.

  Oh, oh, Terry thought.

  Wey Chen picked up the pace even more, as if the faster she zigged and zagged through the maze, the better she could twist her way through a story without anyone spotting the loopholes. “Last Tuesday, one week ago today.”

  Yuri turned to Terry. “Then why didn’t the president say anything--” His eyes flared. “Shit, you fuck! She did tell you!”

  “No, not at all.” Terry scrambled to cover up. “The FBI probably didn’t read Wey Chen’s body scenario the way they were meant to, and so no report--”

  “Quiet, you two!” she said, and turned into an alcove with a big metal door.

  It had no window.

  She fished a key out of the bunch taken off her late boss, and fitted it into the lock.

  Terry felt his excitement mount. At last he’d get his hands on treatments for SHAKES.

  The door creaked as she pushed it open. No one had oiled this one.

  He peered down the dimly lit corridor. For as far as he could see there were cubicles with bars on them. This was a cell block.

  “What the hell?” Yuri said. “Where’s the serum? The tapes? Everything you promised.”

  She drew a breath and appeared to brace herself. “It’s already in the US.”

  Terry recoiled.

  Yet some part of him was not surprised. That’s what had bothered him from the beginning. Everything but the vaccine samples could have been smuggled out electronically. And Wey Chen, if she were free to travel, might just as easily have carried out a canister of serum herself. But Yuri had refused to tell him why they must make the journey to pick everything up, other than to say that she’d insisted he arrange transport using the Siberian Express.

  From the slack-jawed dismay on the Russian’s face, he obviously hadn’t figured on her putting the goods beyond his reach.

  “All of it’s safe, I promise,” she said, warily eyeing Terry and Yuri. “But hiding them is my insurance, to make sure you keep your side of the deal.”

  “I’ve had enough of your promises,” Yuri said, and grabbed her by the tunic.

  Terry stepped between them. “Talk now! Both of you. Why the hell are we here?”

  “Please, Terry. You must believe me,” she said, ripping free of Yuri. “What you’re after is hidden, but waiting for you. Formulas to make the vaccine, the drugs that block the protein production, even the explanation of what you saw back in the projection room--everything you wanted, only to be picked up--”

  “Then level with me! Why bring us here?”

  “To transport what I couldn’t get out of China.” She took off down the cell block.

  “Let’s move it,” Yuri said, face florid with anger, and started after her, but just fast enough to keep up, apparently resigned to forgo the rough stuff.

  “Somebody damn well better tell me what’s going on!” Terry said as he followed at a run past the empty cells.

  They both ignored him.

  Glancing sideways, he noticed an occasional shoe, fragments of cloth, even a pair of glasses lying on the bare floors--belongings of the most recent tenants. In one corner lay a doll made out of rags.

  At the very end of the block they approached a second metal door, also windowless.

  Arriving a few strides ahead of them, Wey Chen unlocked it and rushed inside.

  The room was bare except for two cots.

  The bedding appeared surprisingly clean.

  And on one slept a little girl who looked about seven. A pile of Donald Duck books lay scattered on the floor.

  Wey Chen scooped up her daughter, covers and all. “My Jade--she’s sedated. I’m allowed to sleep with her, and that gave me the chance to slip her a lorazepam an hour ago, before I headed to the firing range.” She breathlessly thrust the child into Terry’s arms. “Take her. I’ve said my goodbyes.” Her voice sounded emotionless, smooth as ice, but she had a troubling gleam in her eyes, the kind psychotics get in a peak of euphoria, after they’ve convinced themselves that all their problems are finally solved, usually just before they pitch head first off a bridge.

  She had totally sandbagged him.

  To deny him the smoking gun that he’d come to find had been a nasty twist, but a possibility he’d allowed for. Handing him a child to smuggle out of China--he’d never seen it coming. “This is absurd--”

  “There’s no time!” She ran back into the room, bunched up the girl’s bedding and, molding it into a curled form, covered the shape with one of the other sheets.

  “Won’t they check on her?” Terry asked, his imagination already careening through the thousand ways such a Mickey Mouse plan would fall apart. Definitely not what he’d signed on for.

  “No. I’m the only one who brings her meals, and in an hour it’s breakfast. I’ll leave the projection room, return here, and put on an act, taking her the food as usual. The jailer who supervises us usually doesn’t give her or the room a second glance...”

  While explaining, she pulled a long tuft of black hair from her pocket and placed it so that the ends were peeking out the top end of the bed sheet. The cuttings looked sleek and natural, probably snipped from the girl’s own head.

  Nice detail.

  As for Yuri, veins the size of tree roots snaked up his neck again. “I ought to leave her here,” he said. “The deal was that we take her and my package. How do I know you even took it to the US, or if you did get it out, it’s still where I can find it--”

  “Relax!” Wey Chen had cut him off with a new tone of command in her voice, having clearly taken charge of the operation. “It’s there, Yuri. Think about it. The only way I can be sure she’ll get an even break in the US is that I keep my end of the bargain.”

  In seconds she’d re-locked the door, and they were running through the deserted cell block again, Terry carrying the child.

  Guiding them back the way they came, she outlined the rest of her terms. “When I hear Jade tell me that she’s safely on a plane and in the air, I’ll
tell you where to find what you want. I don’t need to warn against making that call until you’re well out of Chinese air space, for your own safety. And don’t even think of forcing her to say all’s well before you’re on that plane. She has a code word to tip me off.” Wey Chen handed him a card bearing a long number sequence. “This will put you directly through to my cell.”

  “How do you get away?” Terry asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “What?” Yuri said. “Then how will you take our call and tell us where the goods are?”

  “You just make sure to get her free and clear before anyone here realizes what I’ve done.”

  Yuri’s flush deepened to the color of raw liver as they ran. “But we’ll need at least twelve hours to get that far. If they do catch on sooner, through no fault of ours, we end up with nothing.”

  “Live with it.”

  “Damn it,” Terry jumped in, equally determined not to get this near the prize and come up empty. “You know I can be trusted with her--”

  “On the Siberian Express, it’s him who calls the shots,” she said, jerking her thumb at Yuri, “and he’s the kind of guy whom you pay only on delivery. Otherwise, he could just abandon Jade, to make his own escape easier.”

  “I won’t let him. Jade’s safe passage will part of my terms. He needs me to broker his own deal.”

  “My terms stay, Ryder. No discussion.”

  The tenuous grip that Terry had on his temper slipped completely. If he hadn’t had the girl in his arms, he would have shaken Wey Chen into submission. “Terms? Listen, you manipulative butcher. Gambling a whole fucking world of lives, for any reason, isn’t terms. It’s goddamn terrorism--”

  “I trust you to find her a good home, Ryder,” she said, speaking in that quiet monotone that chilled him.

  There’d be no making her bend. For this woman, nothing mattered now except to save her child. It was a blinkered, single-tracked obsession.

  They came to the spiral staircase. Yuri raced up it without hesitation, resigned to the fact that she had the upper hand, and intent on getting out of there as speedily as possible.

  Terry paused and adjusted his hold on the sleeping girl. “What have you told Jade?” he asked. If this had to be done, better he know what fantasy the girl might be clinging to when she woke up, not shatter it by saying the wrong thing and throw her into hysterics. Because if her mother had spun some story about coming to find her, that the two of them would live in America, a fantasy is all it would be. Wey Chen, should she by some miracle get out of this place alive, would never get a pardon or make a deal for immunity, not after being up to her elbows in blood.