Chapter 17
Earlier that evening, Michael Bennet and Iain Marcus had rushed into the lab before leaving for Baltimore.
“Where’s Charles Egan?” Iain asked Dr. Wulfric.
“He’s not here. He’s off today.”
“Is there anyone else here, at the lab?”
“No, we’re alone. Here, sit.” Dr. Wulfric motioned to two chairs at the front of his desk and sat down himself. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and pointer finger.
After a moment he said, “Let’s get down to it.”
Dr. Wulfric took a file from a stack of files on the edge of the desk and flipped it open.
He said, “We have a bit of a situation on our hands.”
No shit, Iain thought.
“I’ve reanalyzed Ben’s blood sample. I don’t understand how the results I’m seeing are possible. The Nano, it can’t work this way. It’s just … not possible.”
“What is it Peter? Speak frankly.” Iain’s professionalism was wearing thin.
Dr. Wulfric paused a moment, closing his eyes to continue rubbing the bridge of his nose. “The nanoparticles, they’re still alive in his blood. Rather, they are dying, but also replacing themselves. They are regenerating.”
“Replacing themselves? How is that possible? He has not received an injection in over a week. The stuff lives for, what, twenty-four hours?”
“Twenty-four to thirty-six. It doesn’t have a set parameter for its own demise, but rather dies off naturally. Some particles die before the others. However, it simply cannot survive for longer than thirty-six hours. It doesn’t have the capability.”
“So—”
“So … it has begun to replace itself. The Nano is reproducing in his body. It is adapting to its own, well, ecosystem, if you will. Ben’s biological cells are coexisting with the nanoparticles, and they have formed a rather symbiotic relationship. It’s reproducing much the same way as many single-celled organisms, a process called binary fission. Basically, each cell divides in two, grows, and then divides in two again. Even though the Nano is dying off, it is reproducing at a greater rate than its natural mortality; and although it is reproducing very slowly, slower than we would see with most bacteria, it is not dying off. The numbers are steadily increasing.”
“Jeeesus,” Michael let out.
“How is that possible?” Iain asked. “We designed it—You—designed it to leave the body, flush itself out completely, so no traces could ever be found. We learned our lesson with Etha—”
“I know, Iain.”
Dr. Wulfric leaned across the desk. The saga of Ethan Moore was the saddest and most difficult chapter in Dr. Wulfric’s entire career, the worst outcome that could ever happen as a byproduct of his scientific research. He screwed up badly, and the result wiped out an innocent man’s existence. Ethan was a young man, only twenty-three. He was troubled, had no family or friends, was raised in foster care most of his life, and continually suffered with headaches and insomnia. It was Dr. Wulfric’s fault that Iain and Michael visited Ethan’s apartment all those years ago.
He screwed up the serum back then, and he did it again now.
But how—how did I make another mistake?
After the debacle with Ethan Moore, depression plagued Dr. Wulfric, and he announced his retirement—for real this time. Without any choice, Mr. Kalispell scrapped the project. All that time and money wasted. The old lab was stripped, the documents burned, and his precious Nano serum poured down the drain.
Several years passed, and Dr. Wulfric was enjoying his retirement, alone, in a little house out in the woods, surrounded by nature. His dirt driveway never saw any visitors, until that one day, when Iain Marcus showed up unannounced. Dr. Wulfric heard the car bounce over the rolling potholes from where he was fishing at a shallow lake, only a stone’s throw from his house. It was too early in the morning for the mail delivery truck. He felt a sense of dread.
Dr. Wulfric waited, staring out over the gentle lake’s surface, shining back a million reflections of the sun, like the razor-sharp edges of a broken mirror. He turned to see a man in a dark suit walking toward him through the trees. “Iain. What are you doing here?”
“Peter, It’s good to see you. How is everything? I see you’re enjoying your retirement. It’s pretty out here. Quiet.”
Iain was smiling, but he stopped short of the lake by several feet. The hairs on Dr. Wulfric’s body stood on end.
“Listen,” Iain went on, “I’ll get to the point. Mr. Kalispell sent me to talk to you. We’re starting work on Lucy again and he wants you back on the team.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide. “After everything that happened? That’s prepos—”
“He’s not just asking, Peter.”
“Iain … the work we did, all of the research. It’s gone. We’d have to start from scratch. It would take a lifetime.”
Iain shook his head. “Not exactly. Mr. Kalispell never destroyed the Lucy prototype, and I kept backups of many of your files. Lucy is safe and in working order. We’re in the process of setting up a new lab.”
“That was my work, Iain, years of my life!” Dr. Wulfric felt his blood boil. Lucy had been his obsession, his baby; it even cost him his career at Johns Hopkins. It changed him from a respected member of the scientific community, to someone the other professors—his colleagues—rolled their eyes at. His recent retirement gave him plenty of time to contemplate the choices he made, the mistakes with Lucy, and to accept the fact that he was now too old to change the outcome of his decisions.
“Mr. Kalispell ordered me to destroy all of the files and told me Lucy was going to be dismantled, melted down. He told me—”
“It’s time you stop talking and start listening.”
There was a moment of silence as Dr. Wulfric absorbed the gravity of Iain’s words and demeanor. He looked at the ground.
“Lucy will resume with or without your help. The research is not yours—it belongs to Kalispell Industries. Lucy belongs to Mr. Kalispell, not you. If you come back, he is offering you all the time you need and unlimited finances. Your pay will be beyond adequate. There can be no mistakes this time around. You are being given the opportunity to finish the project you spent your life trying to perfect, and this time, we will finish Lucy.”
“But Iain, what about Ethan?”
“What about him? That was the past, Peter; it’s time to look to the future.”
“I … don’t think that I can.”
“I advise you,” Iain’s voice lowered, stressing each word with emphasis, “to weigh your options … carefully. Mr. Kalispell not only has backups of the research, but enough paperwork tying you to Ethan Moore, and the Nano that you made back then—illegally.”
“Iain … what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying,” he took a step forward, shifting Dr. Wulfric closer to the water’s edge, “is that you have an amazing job opportunity presented to you. And if you don’t know exactly what I’m saying, then the best course of action would be to choose your next move wisely. You know what Mr. Kalispell is capable of.”
Dr. Wulfric swallowed back words that were now lost to him. The gentle lapping of lake water against the bank cut through the silence as Dr. Wulfric weighed his options. There weren’t many.
“Let’s go inside,” he finally muttered. “Let’s go inside and figure this out.”
Iain nodded, stepping aside. “After you.”
After nearly an hour of negotiation, Dr. Wulfric agreed to once again lead the Lucy team. He was offered ample time to perfect his research, perfect the Nano. Nothing would be rushed. He would have time to correct any mistakes. He would be in complete control of the lab. His word was God.
After months tinkering with the serum with the help of his new assistant, Dr. Charles Egan—a genius he hand-picked—the Nano was finally perfected. With all the positive results, the doctor felt confident to restart human experimentation.
Now here he was, with I
ain Marcus looming before him, just like that time in the woods.
Dr. Wulfric spoke, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “No one was as affected by what happened to Ethan Moore as much as me. No one.”
Iain sighed, “Just tell us what’s going on, Doctor.”
Dr. Wulfric sighed. “The Nano is working with the neurons in his brain, interacting with the electrical output and signal they emit, especially in the pons and frontal lobe—”
“In English, Doctor. Please.”
“The Nano in his system has infiltrated the circuitry of his brain, using it almost how we use a computer. It must have begun in Paris when the serum was slightly altered, but it was reproducing in such low numbers that it was easy to overlook. I reanalyzed a blood sample taken in Paris, one in Rome, and one from two days ago. The Nano transmitters from the injections in Rome recognized the Nano transmitters left in his body from Paris; it adjusted to the weaknesses of its outdated self and began growing stronger. The Nano in his body now is not the same as the Nano we’ve been injecting him with. It’s mutated.” He took a sip from a glass of water. “The Nano is programed to learn, to remember particular nuances in the circuitry of a subject’s body and brain. But never was it programmed to learn from itself. The Nano is doing its job, and doing it well. Too well. It’s evolving.”
The color drained from Iain’s face. “Is it contagious?”
“I … don’t know. No, I don’t think so. I have to further test it to be sure; introduce it to new hosts and different blood samples.”
“There’s no time for that.” Iain looked like he was about to scream; the veins in his temples were throbbing with his pulse. “All right,” he said, “so the serum is still in his body. How does he know what happened in Drapery Falls? His dream, it played as if through my eyes, what I saw, exactly how it went down. It’s not possible.”
Dr. Wulfric sighed. “Do you dream about that night often?”
“I … don’t know.” Iain felt his cheeks redden. “I guess I do. Occasionally.”
“Occasionally, or often?”
“I guess often. Often enough.”
“You must have dreamt about it that night in Rome, the night he got the migraine, and again on the return flight home. Do you remember dreaming about Drapery Falls either of those times?”
Iain shook his head. “No. I don’t remember my dreams at all those nights.”
“Well, I believe you must have. I believe that Ben’s migraine in Italy was triggered by the quick reproduction and the changing nature of the Nano in his body. The mutated serum was able to achieve what we have been striving for—it picked up on the neurological activity of a person who had not been injected with the Nano. Your room in Rome was next to Ben’s, and your seat on the return flight was right beside him. He received your dreams like a radio receiver picks up a signal within a certain range. It took itself to the next stage of it’s own evolution.”
“Jeeesus,” Michael let out again.
Dr. Wulfric asked, “Did you sleep on the plane ride home?”
“Yes, I did.” The color drained from Iain’s face.
“The worst part,” Dr. Wulfric sighed, “is that the Nano is not only picking up on Ben’s neurological activity—it’s becoming a part of it. He’s beginning to experience dementia and mental instability because of it, and it may only get worse as the Nano continues to reproduce and evolve. The troubling part is that Ben’s immune system should have flushed away the Nano from the very start. The Nano is designed to be recognized by the body as a low-level bacterium—a threat, like a common cold. Any Nano lingering twenty-four to thirty-six hours after injection is flushed out of the body by its natural defenses. For some reason, in Ben’s case, his body is not fighting the Nano the way that it should. There’s a block—something’s blocking his immune system from working properly.”
“Is it curable then? Can you cure it?” Michael asked.
“I … I don’t know. I have to run more tests. I need to get Ben back in the lab. In time, maybe, yes. Almost certainly. All I have to do is find out why his immune system is failing.” He paused. “I think we can all take a guess at what’s causing that.”
Iain dismissed Dr. Wulfric. “And while you’re taking time to figure this out, he’ll not only be experiencing severe mental instability from our experiments—illegal experiments, might I remind you—but could possibly be contagious with a blood-borne parasite, the Nano, or whatever it is now. He could also start remembering more about Drapery Falls at any given moment.”
“Iain—”
“It’s already there, in his brain. We saw it play back from his dream, all of it, not just what he told us. It could come to him at any time. Perhaps he’ll remember that you were the one who filled the syringe with the toxic dose of heroin, along with whatever else you mixed in that concoction.”
“I had to do it, Iain, and it will haunt me until the day—”
Iain put his hand up, waving Dr. Wulfric to be quiet as he took out his cell phone and dialed a number. He left it on speaker as it rang.
Dr. Wulfric went back to rubbing the bridge of his nose, very much wanting a large glass of scotch from the bottle he kept in the desk drawer, only a few inches from his knee.
A deep voice echoed out from the phone.
“Iain, what’s going on?”
“Yes, Mr. Kalispell …” He did not know where to begin.
Chapter 18
Iain Marcus and Michael Bennet were close to the intersection of 295 and 40 at the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Iain called the surveillance team stationed outside Ben’s apartment, leaving the call on speaker.
“Good evening. Rose’s Roses.”
“It’s me. Have you heard anything?”
“No sir, Mr. Marcus, not since this afternoon.”
“Has he left the apartment?”
“No sir, not that we’re aware of. He’s been silent all day. We’re parked around the block with a clear line of sight to his car, and it hasn’t moved. We heard some mumbling this morning, something about having a headache and wanting to lie down. There hasn’t been any activity since. We presume he’s sleeping.”
Iain looked at Michael. He knew Michael could read the anger radiating from his eyes. He was furious at the incompetence of his surveillance team.
Presume … Presume!
Someone should be watching the door at all times, and they should never answer ‘not that we’re aware of.’ A simple yes or no is the only acceptable reply. But Iain bit his tongue. He would have to tolerate the unprofessionalism of his men, for now. He had no other choice; it was too late in the game to change the team.
“Did he talk to someone earlier? Was he on the phone, or was someone in his apartment with him?”
“No, sir; neither. He was mumbling. It was hard to make out. The shower turned on and off, a few doors opened and closed, and then he was mumbling, talking to himself. We could make out the comment about the headache, but that was it. Oh, and he dropped a glass of something hot, maybe coffee. We heard him shout like he was burned, and there was a crash. The audio from the microphone outside his window has deteriorated significantly since we were fully operational. We need to get in his apartment to run diagnostics. We could break a window again.”
Iain rubbed his temples. “We were lucky that worked the first time. If he calls his landlord we’ll be found out.” Months earlier, the team had thrown a brick through Ben’s window while he was at work. They showed up at his door early the next morning, wearing uniforms and carrying toolboxes, telling a very hung-over Ben that his landlord sent them to fix the window. The team did fix the window, as they said they would, but also installed a microphone in the high corner of the shade. “Besides,” Iain continued, “do you even know how to repair a glass window? Mark Stevenson was on the team back then, and he did the actual repair work.”
“I … no sir.”
Christ, he was lucky he wasn’t paying these guys to think. “Don’t do a fucking thing. W
ho’s stationed outside the door?”
“No one sir, we haven’t been given the order—”
“I gave you the order when I said we’re back at fucking Status One. Do you not understand—” He stopped short and took a deep breath. “Station someone outside his door. Now. Call me immediately if you hear or see anything. When I give the order for the team to break down, do it at once. The truck has to be stripped and dismantled, and the team is to disperse. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Iain hung up without saying another word.
Michael sighed from the passenger seat and closed his eyes. Iain’s old partner had really let himself go over the years. He had a tire around his belly, and his face was becoming wide at the neck. He was not the same soldier Iain had parachuted into Fallujah with in the dead of night, behind enemy lines and before the war had technically begun. Michael was old now—hell, Michael was old back when they were in Iraq—but he had really started showing his age the last few years.
The worst part, Iain thought, wasn’t that Michael was gaining weight or showing his age; it was that he was beginning to form his own thoughts and ideas. That was something that could not be tolerated. In the services, orders were never questioned, and emotions were never displayed. They were like stones back then, rocks—silent and hard, emotionless and strong. They did what was asked, no questions, no complaints, no regrets.
He’s becoming soft, Iain thought. Not the hard man he used to be, and certainly not the same person he was two years ago.
Drapery Falls changed him—that much was for sure. Drapery Falls made Michael question his actions. It made him feel regret and sympathy, feelings not allowed in his line of work. He’d seen Michael kill grown men over a dozen times. Iain himself had a tally of seventeen direct kills; many more indirect, from orders he’d given to his men. He once saw Michael slice the neck of a Taliban informant tied to a chair without the slightest hesitation or show of remorse. The informant was screaming, “I family, I father! I America!” His words echoed off the rock walls in that small cave. Michael walked to the man, grabbed the little hair left on his head, and slid the blade of his knife across the man’s throat. Blood sprayed like water from a hose with a thumb pressed over it. They watched as the informant convulsed in the chair, gurgling and choking on his own blood, trying desperately to free his bound hands to grasp at the laceration that was quickly draining his life down the front of his chest.
The Experiment of Dreams Page 18