by Joseph John
Time passed and no leads arose, and the media moved on to fresher tragedies and scuttlebutt. The House Select Committee on Assassinations published a report filled with meaningless doublespeak that summed up to an official shrug, and public interest turned the page.
Sam Harrington did not. To him, it became an obsession. Stop at the Café del Mar and order a coffee. Revisit the NYU Medical Center, Jaffe’s apartment building, the empty offices of Lark Morton, and the Garden. Question everyone and everything. Review statements and conduct follow-up interviews. Scour the Web for some sign of Shawn Jaffe or the people who’d done this. And when he finished, he did it again. And again. And again.
He pawned off any new cases that landed on his desk or tossed them aside to deal with later. When he got home, he kissed Jenny and ruffled Jason’s hair before retiring to his study with a whiskey to go over his notes for the day. Newspaper clippings, photographs, and index cards hung from the walls by pushpins, and lengths of string crisscrossed from one to another to establish interconnections. Day by day, the structure grew until it wove its way across all four walls like a giant spiderweb of clues and hunches.
Each morning he bought the New York Times—hard copy, of course—and checked the classifieds. On one morning like any other, he shuffled into his office and tossed the paper on his desk. He started to take his jacket off and froze.
The front-page headline read, “President Hoyt Backs Plans to Build a Better Soldier.” The Department of Defense had awarded Roman Biogenics the largest defense contract in history. Genetic augmentation—soldiers with superhuman strength, stamina, and speed. The image below the headline showed a uniformed specimen with shoulders the size of bowling balls tapering to a narrow waist. He charged the camera like a raging bull, arms pumping and lips pulled back from clenched teeth in a primeval war cry.
But the article wasn’t what caught Sam’s eye. It was the file lying next to it.
The day prior, for the umpteenth time, he’d gone over the hit-and-run at the medical center. The documents fanned out from a manila folder like a hand of cards, and a picture of the van, a white Dodge, lay next to the newspaper and the image of the charging uniform, as if about to run him down and claim another victim.
But with a little luck and genetic augmentation, maybe he’d be fast enough to get out of its way.
It clicked. Shawn Jaffe had handed Hoyt the presidency on a silver platter. Afterward, Hoyt’s support had ensured Roman Biogenics won their contract.
Sam logged onto his computer and spent the rest of the day learning about the company’s endeavors in genetic augmentation as well as pharmaceuticals and medical research. He established a premise that involved psychoactive drugs and mind control and broached it with Lieutenant William Thompson.
“I don’t know, Sam. It sounds a little too Manchurian Candidate to me. It’s time to let it rest.”
But he didn’t let it rest. Instead, he spent weeks haunting Roman Biogenics’ corporate headquarters in Manhattan’s financial district. He roamed the halls and loitered in the lobby, scribbling notes and snapping photos of the employees, which he ran through facial rec and pinned to the walls in his study.
Soon after, he found Lieutenant Thompson waiting in his office. He leaned against the corner of Sam’s desk, arms crossed, his expression black and stormy.
“I got an earful from the mayor today,” Thompson said. “He was not happy. Seems one of my detectives has been harassing a certain corporation with friends in high places.”
Sam snorted. “Harassing my ass. I’m working a case.”
“I thought we agreed to let it rest.”
“You agreed to let it rest.”
“It’s over, Sam. You wanna make a fool of yourself, do it off the clock, not on the taxpayers’ dime.”
But the next time he paid Roman Biogenics a visit, a black suit flanked by a pair of security guards greeted him at the door and told him this was private property, and he needed a search warrant to enter. Sam snapped the suit’s photo and stalked off.
He railed on about conspiracy theories. Rumor at the precinct had it he’d lost his edge and was coming unhinged, but screw them.
Less and less often he got home before his wife and son were asleep. If Jenny woke, the inevitable argument ended with her in tears, and he slammed out of the house and drove to a bar to get shitfaced while obsessing over his notes and files.
After one such night, he woke in a hotel with no idea how he got there. It was as if a fissure had opened in his mind, a boundless chasm with no end. On one side, he stormed out of his house and tore into the night. On the other, he woke in a room that reeked of drugs and sex. He stared over that great divide with no idea how he crossed it.
He peered out from beneath his eyelids, smacked his lips, and yawned.
And his eyes flew open as he sat up in bewilderment.
“What the hell? What the hell?”
His head felt like someone had batted it around in a lively game of tetherball. He clenched his teeth and breathed.
A heavy knock rattled the door. “Police. Anyone in there?”
A scattering of empty beer bottles lolled on the floor. A bottle of vodka lay on its side on the dresser and had leaked its contents onto the faded brown carpet. In the ashtray on the nightstand lay the remains of a half-dozen joints. Next to it, a hand mirror dusted with a white powder reflected the glare of the morning through the thin curtain that hung from the window like his burial shroud.
The door’s electronic lock beeped as it disengaged. The handle turned.
Sam threw the covers back, meaning to leap out of bed and race to the door. Instead, he stared at himself, dumbstruck.
He was buck naked.
This wasn’t happening.
His clothes were gone.
The door swung open, and two uniformed officers peered into the room, framed by the fire of dawn. “Anyone in here?”
Sam wrapped a sheet around his waist and stumbled out of bed. He raised a hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the glare. “Officers, I’m—” His legs tangled, and he fell forward and sprawled on the floor.
They found five grams of cocaine in a glass vial, three ounces of marijuana in a ziplock bag, and a handful of MDMA pills—ecstasy—in a plastic packet. They found his car in the parking lot of a strip club called Runway 69, fifteen miles from the hotel. Three days later, after his balls began to swell and ache and it felt like he was pissing shards of glass, they found he had the clap.
But they never did find his clothes.
He told Lieutenant Thompson he’d been set up. They drugged him, took him to the motel, and in the morning, they made an anonymous call to the cops.
“They,” Thompson said and stared at him across the expanse of his desk with a look of pity that made Sam want to slug him.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Is there an echo in here? Yes. They.”
“You said you don’t remember what happened.”
“They drugged me! Of course I don’t remember. But do you seriously think I spend my time in seedy motels getting wasted and banging strippers? Come on. You know me, Bill.”
“I’m not sure I do anymore. You’ve been at this thing too long. It’s eating you up, man.”
“I’m telling you. I’m on to something with Roman Biogenics. That’s why they did this. To discredit me.”
“Well, they did a hell of a job,” Thompson said.
Sam crossed his arms. “You think I’m making this up?”
Thompson shook his head. “Doesn’t matter what I think. You’re done, Sam.”
“What?”
“I need your badge and sidearm.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“Come on. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
Sam snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Fine. Fuck this, and fuck you, Bill.”
He pulled out his badge and slung it across the desk as if skipping a rock across a pond. It spun along, and Thompson
tried to trap it beneath his palm but missed. It flew off the far side and landed on the floor with a dull, anticlimactic thump. Thompson stared at it, his shoulders slumped. Sam slammed his holstered pistol on the desk and left without another word. Three decades of service as one of NYC’s finest, and that’s how his illustrious career ended.
Thompson’s pitying gaze was nothing compared to the hurt and betrayal reflected in his wife’s eyes. She said she believed him, but even if she did, facts were facts. See exhibit A—gonorrhea. It takes two to tango, baby.
He whiled away his retirement slumped in front of the holo-screen or on a bar stool somewhere and tried not to think. When he began to wonder whether Shawn Jaffe had been nothing but another crazy asshole with a gun, he took a drink. When he began to wonder if he got blitzed and cheated on his wife with a stripper who’d taken his clothes and given him the clap, he took a drink. When he began to wonder if he was losing his goddamn mind, he took another drink.
After Jason left for college, Sam moved into the spare bedroom. He and his wife were like strangers, but when Jenny suggested they see a counselor, Sam suggested he see another drink.
She’d have stayed with him regardless, as stalwart as Captain Smith going down with the Titanic. But as he took on water and began his inexorable descent into the abyss, he refused to let her sink with him. Instead, he left her, shivering and alone in a vast ocean, yet alive and whole.
When Shawn Jaffe showed up at his door, Sam’s first instinct told him the man was either a body double or a symptom of his madness. When he made up his mind that Jaffe was the real deal, it was a matter of faith—not in Jaffe, but in himself, and that everything he’d done and everything he’d lost had been for something. It was like a douse of ice water that shocked him out of his regret and despair. He felt like a man resurrected. Here were his retribution and the answers to so many questions.
They crowded into the elevator, and Chad Dodd thumbed the button for the ground floor.
“Gary Reed was one of the scientists assigned to Project Phoenix,” he said. “Ran the show with Bernd Hoefler—the guy you met earlier at the lab.”
Emma Tyler nodded.
“Reed started going on about how we were playing God. It’s like, no shit, Sherlock. That’s exactly what we’re doing. Our species is fucked, and we’re fixing it, upgrading to Mankind 2.0. But that poor naive bastard was convinced we were screwing with the ‘natural order,’ whatever the hell that means. When no one backed his play, he went dark—completely off the grid. Until New York, that is. Son of a bitch contacted the Delta and tried to blow the op.”
Tyler raised an eyebrow. “He told the Delta he was a clone?”
“Nah,” Chad said. “Just gave him a vague warning we were watching him or some shit. Guess he planned to tell him the rest later, break it to him easy that he was born and raised in a petri dish. Fortunately, we had eyes on the Delta. Our boys recognized Reed and took him out.”
The elevator doors opened, and they spilled out onto a marbled floor in a cavernous lobby. Footfalls and conversations echoed around them as they wove their way toward the front entrance. Granite pillars rose several stories toward the lobby’s ceiling, where a holographic projection of corporate’s latest propaganda spun in a lazy circle—antibiotics to combat the latest superbugs, artificial organs and tissue engineering upgrades, designer babies, extended lifespans, genetic augmentation.
For Joe Public and the drones at Roman Biogenics, it was all theoretical. Only a select few knew about Project Phoenix, and fewer still were apprised of the details. All these people—a city of millions who lived and died and left behind a legacy of diddly shit. Stories forgotten, a stone cast into a pond, a ripple, and still waters. But Chad and his team, their actions would echo on.
A black four-door Suburban waited for them curbside in the dying twilight. The Alpha clambered into the third row behind a wire mesh partition that separated him from the backseat, where Tyler sat. Chad slid into the passenger seat and swiped at his tablet while Jensen squeezed in behind the wheel and bulled his way into traffic amid a blare of horns with the stolid grace of a glacier.
“Take the Expressway toward Queens,” Chad said, then continued his story. “Sam Harrington was the detective assigned to the investigation. Pain in the ass was what he was, like a goddamn pit bull. Wouldn’t let go, even after we wrapped up the op.”
“And he’s still breathing?” Tyler asked. “Why didn’t the company just remove the threat?”
“We tried. A couple times, actually. First time, the Delta saved his ass. The second time was at his house. Son of a bitch had bigger balls than we gave him credit for. He fought off three of our agents, killed one of our best—guy named Randy Carlson.
“I’d known Randy since forever. We grew up together, went to the same college. Served in the Marines together, too. Two tours in Mexico. I probably wouldn’t have made it through that shit storm in one piece if it hadn’t been for Randy. And when I got out and joined the company, he came with me.
“He was the closest thing I had to family, and Harrington just snuffed him out. I swore to God if I got the chance, I’d pay him back. Instead of killing Harrington, I’d take his family from him and see how he liked them apples. But hey, I’m not completely heartless, and killing his wife and kid wouldn’t have solved anything.
“So instead, we set him up. It wasn’t hard. Poor bastard was already coming apart at the seams. He spent just about every night in some bar or another, and on this particular occasion, he’d gotten three sheets to the wind with no help from anyone. We slipped him a little Rohypnol and gave him the night of his life. Sex, drugs, rock and roll—good old Detective Harrington partied like a porn star.
“Then we placed an anonymous call to the cops, and they busted him. He lost all credibility, along with his job, his family, pretty much everything.”
“So now he’s motivated,” Tyler said.
Chad shrugged. “He’s just one guy.”
At the intersection of Bowery and East Houston Street, the holographic traffic signal winked from green to yellow. The car in front of them sped through the intersection, and Jensen brought the Suburban to a stop at the crosswalk as the hologram turned red. A crowd of pedestrians surged across their path.
“They scurry like sedated beetles,” the Alpha said with a low chuckle. He sat with his fingers laced through the latticework of the partition, forehead pressed to the wire mesh. His eyes gleamed. “Imagine driving into them, their insectile cries, the crunch of their bones like carapaces beneath the heel of the boot.”
Chad tapped at the digital wristband Bernd Hoefler gave him in the lab. The Alpha’s graphene choker constricted, and he gagged and fell back in his seat, clawing at his neck.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Chad said. “Do as you’re told, and we can all live happily ever after when this is over. Capisce?”
The Alpha nodded frantically. His face had turned a curious shade of plum wine. Chad tapped again, the choker loosened, and the Alpha gulped for air like a bass out of water. His eyes burned with fury, but he remained silent.
The light turned green, and Jensen accelerated through the intersection. Chad returned his attention to his tablet and frowned. “Echo-7 is on the move,” he said. “Headed in our direction. I’m guessing he’s got Harrington in tow. Pull over until I figure out where they’re going.”
Jensen eased the Suburban to the curb. Chad tracked Echo-7—and, presumably, Harrington—as they took the Expressway and the Queens Midtown Tunnel to Manhattan and turned onto West Forty-Second Street.
“Huh,” Chad said.
“What is it?” Tyler asked. She leaned forward and peered over his shoulder at the screen.
“They’re headed toward the West Side. Maybe Harrington will do us a solid, pay a visit to his former colleagues at the Midtown North Precinct and end this cat and mouse bullshit. But I doubt it. Probably going to somewhere in Chelsea. Or Hell’s Kitchen. Fuck if I know. Could be anywhere. It does
n’t matter, though. There’s nowhere they can hide that we can’t find them. It’s only a matter of time before this is over.”
Gunfire belted out a violent harmony, and whoever was dragging him let out a choked cry and staggered away. He fell into the mud. The back of his helmet slammed into the ground, and the front tilted over his vision. He reached with his left hand to push it out of the way, but his left hand was gone, replaced by a bloody stump of meat and bone that hung in tatters like a war-weary flag. He moaned and squeezed his eyes shut. A cannonade of vertigo rolled over him in waves, and he turned his head and retched. A thin line of saliva swayed from the corner of his mouth and distended into the mud as it mixed with the falling rain.
Shawn Jaffe jerked in his seat, and the sounds of combat and the jungle morphed into the bleat of horns and the rumble of the Cadillac’s engine. His heart hammered in his chest, and he let out a shaky breath. Tucked into the waistband of his jeans, his pistol pressed into the small of his back like a reassuring hand.
Harrington glanced at him. “You okay?”
They rolled to a stop as the holographic traffic signal stretching across the road turned red. Harrington said something else, but the words were muffled and unintelligible. A wilted newsstand sagged near the corner of the intersection. Above its shelves of sodas and candy bars, racks of magazines and newspapers hung in rows, both digital and paper editions, lit by a soft fluorescent glow. A fossil of a man slumped behind the counter and picked at his fingernails.
He didn’t know how long he lay there—forever, maybe—bleeding out onto the jungle floor. The angry chatter of gunfire faded, replaced by the soft patter of rain on leaves and the chirrup of cicadas. He wanted to tell his daughter how much he loved her and how proud he was of her. He wanted to tell his wife she was the best thing that ever happened to him. But mostly he wanted to die. A shadow detached itself from the darkness and stretched over him like an epilogue. The barrel of a rifle lifted the brim of his helmet, and he stared into the face of the enemy. The Vietcong said nothing and pointed the barrel into his face and pulled the trigger.