Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  Xavier threw open the gun's cylinder and saw five Smith & Wesson bullet rims staring back at him along with one empty chamber. This piece wouldn’t even scare off a schoolyard bully, he thought. Modifiable magnetic accelerator guns—or MAGs as they were often called—were the standard weapons of choice between your average street punks and gang members these days. If the kid ever got into a shootout, he might as well be packing a squirt gun. The other item in the wrapping was an oddly-shaped piece of metal with a cylindrical stem, roughly three inches long. It was an automatic powered lockpick—a handy little gadget, incorporated with a series of individual rotors and upgradeable software designed to simultaneously decode an interior locking matrix. It literally made the correct key, electronic or otherwise from inside the lock. The kid probably had an apprenticeship with a local crew. Those punks had gotten awfully organized in the past few years, co-opting tricks of the trade from the pros and fortifying themselves with ex-gang muscle. They’d committed a shitload of high-scoring robberies and had every homeowner in the tristate area cashing out their kids’ college funds for security upgrades. Xavier weighed the idea of using it, and then pictured himself getting shot by a retired investment broker’s twenty one-year-old trophy wife. Regardless, he pocketed the items and headed back into the house. At least, now, he might have something that could defend him from his next unwelcome encounter with sobriety.

  Chapter 3

  Washington, D.C., August 25, 8:13 a.m.

  As Isaac made his way to the senator's office, the echoing webscreens drowned out any hope he had of not having to cancel his date with Vera Stucky from the secretarial pool. The entire country was either waking up to the smell of fresh brewed coffee and or the frantic news flash about MIT. Isaac pinched his nose. The camarilla of corporate news heads would just love to stamp this one on Beaumont's Washington time-sheet. In the last three months, the senator had been firing some real curveballs at the biotechs—just getting back into shape after recovering from rumors of his indirect ties to Chad Maguire and his delinquent son; to accuse the senator of spurring on these attacks would make for blockbuster ratings. To his credit, Isaac had had Beaumont mostly steering clear of the more “few rounds shy of a full clip” theories, until Beaumont proved that a number of insurance companies were selling their genetic stock from coverage exams. Although it wasn’t in the realm of little green men infiltrating Capitol Hill—or worse, Wall Street—it had managed to add some buoyancy to his assertions of technology run amok. Antiglobalization, corporate plutocracy and radical environmentalism were all big issues inciting small minds. But none matched the painful growth spurt of biotechnology and its detractors. The duplicating technologies of the already rife biotech firms made them monsters, omnivorous moneymakers, and on average, they were being hit three to four times a year. And, yes, many had significant financial relationships with higher education. But, until now, no one had had the stones to actually hit a school—let alone the likes of an MIT. This would change things, Isaac thought.

  In his prime, Shane Beaumont had made a name for himself as a staunch liberal activist and cutthroat attorney, honing a reputation for being the steel thorn in the side of big business. He'd won more billion dollar judgments on behalf of the American consumer than any attorney in history. Given that he maintained this unique integrity, even post the formative years of his Washington career, Isaac was fairly confident that, press-wise, he could keep things to a dull roar both coming and going. Unfortunately, with the incidences of domestic terrorism having nearly doubled in the last five years, the public was really jonesing for a scapegoat. Nothing like a casserole of rising ocean levels, corporate crime, and easier access to bomb-making materials to bring out the worst in people.

  Issac paused just short of the senator's office door as a volley of beltway-style profanities resounded from inside. “Fuck! That little cowboy pecker-wood son-of-a...”, he heard...and then thought, Oh that's right, this could be another public opinion windfall for the president. He pinched his lip, deciding to delay his entry until the all-clear. That reminds me I need to grab some ibuprofen on the way home tonight. He sighed into a hand as the cursing of the president’s name continued to eat a hole through the office door.

  Almost three years ago, Pharmaceutical, health insurance, and biotech company dollars had landed the president on the White House lawn like fresh puppy poop. Beaumont knew drilling through the brickwork of corporate money that had achieved such an end wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park. Goodness knows it was proving next to impossible on the Hill. However, in spite of such powerful and often cantankerous opposition, Beaumont kept his fingers crossed, as there were swirling press rumors that had the president being advised to temporarily scratch his biotech campaign contributors from his Christmas list. The low tide of re-election would rise to a tsunami before long, and an act of selfless defiance might serve to undo the reputation of pandering and corporate ass-kissing, which his democratic opponents were using to frame their campaigns—a task which had only gotten easier in the years following the election. Just weeks into the new administration, a Boston-based biotech company, ArtiGen, was accused of illegally cloning a human. The reproduced child was rumored to have suffered massive physical complications and ensuing ailments that eventually led to his death. Yet, for every such sensational account nipping at the heels of the growing biotechs, their egregious expansion never waned. The ubiquitous entities had an addictive stock appeal that nurtured a love/hate relationship among the public and as much as that fact may have worked in Beaumont’s favor, it made a dead security guard at MIT the last thing he needed.

  When Isaac finally entered the office, Beaumont was standing behind his desk, morosely hunched over with his palms suctioned to the blotter. He'd abandoned the profanity, but was still shouting—probably at some arrogant journalist just trying to rile him. His shaded dark eyes were lasering the video on his desk-com and he wore a frown that must have added twenty years to his already wind-burned face. His course hair had a tangle or two in it, as always, and his full figured nose, characteristic of his Lebanese decent, was gnarled at the corners. A committed vegan, Beaumont's shabby suit fit so loosely against his thin frame, he could always get a job standing in a cornfield should he ever lose an election. But what Isaac noticed most was how his corrugated brow was out-muscling the senator's antique-style horn-rimmed glasses. It made Isaac want to double back and reenter draped in Kevlar.

  “Don’t call me here again,” Beaumont shouted at the machine. His fist slammed against the panel, cutting off the call. When he noticed Isaac, he straightened up, wriggling like he had a steak knife lodge between his shoulder blades. “Goddamn reporters! They can’t wait to hang me out on this! And where the hell have you been? I’ve been fielding this shit by myself all morning!”

  “Sorry, sir, I was on the phone with the Boston FBI trying to get an update.”

  “And?”

  “They got a call a half hour ago from a claimer.” Isaac paused. “PHANTOM.”

  Beaumont sighed impassively, like no other answer was possible. Nothing of this scale had happened for almost a year. The bomb that exploded in the security guard’s hands was just one of three such devices strategically planted around the annex in University Park. The combined blast pattern had devastated at least fifty percent of the south wing, where they had just completed construction. It all seemed to be done with the precision of a professional demolition job. Which was a perfect match to the Modus Operandi of the so-called Patrons of Humanity And Natural Tendency Of Mankind.

  “My contact in the bureau says they’re going to be working overtime on this one,” Isaac said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Beaumont quipped, “especially considering that PHANTOM is supposed to be history!”

  Isaac pulled his PDA from his pocket and began tapping. “I’ve been coming up with some ideas on how to use this.”

  He had more to say but Beaumont raised a hand, cutting him off.

  “Do you
believe in what I’m doing, Isaac?” Beaumont asked, straightly.

  Isaac blinked, unsure how to answer.

  “I mean, do you believe I’m doing what’s right for this country?”

  “Well, sir, I...”

  “Because I do,” Beaumont declared.

  Isaac hid his relief that the question was rhetorical. He was far too uneasy about this one. Beaumont had spent the last two months griping about the biotech firms gaining too much influence with higher education. In fact, he specifically went on a tangent about Hudson Labs and MIT. He hated that merger. Thank God, Isaac had convinced him to largely sit on his opinion in public. It wasn’t so wide a leap to imagine such a coincidence giving way to a juicy scandal or even an investigation.

  “What is it about our own destruction that fascinates us more than space exploration or curing disease, or achieving world peace? Did you know we secretly piss away millions of tax dollars every year trying to develop a weapon that creates artificial earthquakes? Earthquakes! For fifty years, our kids went to bed every night wondering if they’d wake up to their last minutes on earth, and now it’s like nobody remembers. We say we love our world, but we can't stop looking for more efficient ways to destroy it. For some stupid reason, we just have to keep picking at it.” Beaumont snorted. “Guess it’s true what they say about those who don’t know their history.”

  He sauntered over to his office window with his fists tucked tightly into his ribs. He then gloomily stared down at the cabals of various protesters and news media people making their daily rounds, as it were, on the capitol steps.

  “Bombs, guns, tanks,” he said, “those are weapons they understand, weapons they'll rage against. But threaten to slowly and methodically wipe out humanity with a few well-constructed and well-placed strands of DNA and, they don't know what the hell to say about that.”

  Isaac was speechless. Beaumont had become increasingly somber with every word. “Perhaps you should pull back until the vote is over, not give them any more reason to accuse you of instigating these maniacs' actions through political rhetoric.”

  “It's too late for that. Not to mention our 'independent' friends from Maine and Vermont are vacillating like broken paint-mixers; if I stop pushing now we'll lose them. Do you know how hard it is to increase regulation on any industry, let alone one as prevalent as biotech?” Beaumont exposed a fist and it trembled beneath his chin. “Those biotech bastards have to be stopped,” he said, his teeth encased behind narrowed lips.

  He turned from the window and looked at Isaac as if he’d just seen him. “But these damn screwball terrorists are just as dangerous,” he said. His eyes fell back to the crowd below. “Jesus, why can’t we just stop picking at it?”

  Chapter 4

  Cleveland, Ohio, August 25, 8:34 a.m.

  Xavier squeezed the gun’s handle as if he was trying to get juice from it. Just pull the damn trigger, he thought for the third time. He suddenly recalled how he'd gotten the bruise beneath his eye. Certainly twitching his finger was easier than walking on juiced up legs.

  “Elana,” he whispered and rocked the back of his head against the wall. If she were here, she'd know exactly what to say to him right now. She’d blow his mind with some long-forgotten sliver of wisdom from Shakespeare or Confucius and have him thinking what an idiot he was for taking things so seriously.

  But Elana wasn't here.

  She wasn't here and he was. What would her hotshot poets and philosophers have to say about that? Where was the fucking justice?

  He peered deeper into the crosshatching of the gun's handle then traced his lip with the barrel. Ask and ye shall receive.

  Xavier closed his eyes and immediately saw the blood again. There was so much blood. Buckets of it. Moses had stepped in it, tracked it all over the floor like an absent-minded child who'd come in after playing in the mud. All we had to do was get him on the god-damned truck, Xavier thought. He ground the gun's sight into his forehead. It broke the skin and a spot of blood surfaced.

  ****

  “You have a big head,” Elana said, after sliding into the transport’s passenger seat while Xavier set himself behind the wheel.

  “That’s the problem with women,” Xavier replied. “You always mistake arrogance for confidence. Now me, I’m confident. I have reason to be. I...”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, in her “Oh, please” voice. “I meant you have a huge cranium. For some reason, I just noticed how big your noggin looked from the side. It’s a miracle you can fit that helmet on it.”

  “Shut up,” Xavier said rearing up.

  Elana laughed like a school girl who’d stolen her classmate’s candy. “So much for that professed confidence.”

  Xavier laughed. Only Elana could get away with a shot like that and make him enjoy it. Shit, if it wasn't for her last name, they could enjoy a lot of things together. Well, her last name and...now this. He glanced in the rearview mirror as Derrick Moses turned his back in pursuit of the barracks. Xavier had rolled up on the couple just as Moses was partaking in a generous handful of Elana's heart-shaped ass. Of all the jerks in the world, he thought. Elana could have any man she wanted with that cutesy smile and plain-face beauty; why in the hell...?

  “I take it I wasn’t supposed to see him?” Xavier asked.

  Elana clamped her mouth, unsure whether to give anything away. Xavier was astute, but maybe he was guessing.

  “He’s just a friend,” she said, “like you.”

  “I got plenty of friends. None of them would ever let me grab that much ass. Well, maybe a couple.”

  “Did my father assign you to spy on me?” Elana asked in a sudden persecutory tone. “Is that what you were doing?”

  “No! No, Elana, come on. You know I wouldn’t do that.” He was sure to look her straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t.”

  Elana quickly cooled down. “My father doesn’t really want me dating soldiers,” she sighed, “especially ones on the same base. He doesn’t have anything against them. It’s just that he thinks a soldier’s lifestyle is more than 'a woman like me' should have to endure. At least that’s how he puts it.”

  “He doesn’t want you dating soldiers, or he doesn’t want you dating Moses? He’s been written up a few times, you know?”

  “His name’s crossed Daddy’s desk once or twice, but he’s not what you think.”

  “I think that you’re too great a girl to end up bunk-mates with a guy like that.”

  “And just what do you have against him, Xavier?”

  “Elana, I just...”

  Xavier literally bit his tongue. He had almost said it. He had almost told her that seeing Moses’s greasy branch-grippers on her body made Xavier want to kill the guy. He averted his eyes, before he made things worse. “Forget I said anything. I was just voicing a little concern, you know, like any brother would for his baby sister.”

  Elana blushed. “It’s all right, she said coyly. “I understand.”

  And she did too. She “understood” that men—military men in particular—could more easily lay waste to a small village than express their feelings with any amount of affection. Indeed, Elana had toyed with the notion of seeing Xavier's underwear drawer up close, but he was just so...perfectly male. He was handsome, rugged, athletic and worst of all, hopelessly aware of the trifecta. Even his name was sexy: Xavier, pronounced with a Z sound at the beginning instead of an isolated X, like X-ray or some pretentious thing like that. What the hell could he possibly need with me? she thought. If Elana had one major flaw, then that was it: needing to be needed. Maybe she could “work” on Xavier in a way he hadn’t experienced before, but his type would quickly resent it. Resent her. No. Best to stick with someone whose rejection she could live with.

  “Let’s go,” she said with a noncommittal smile. “I’ve got classes in the morning.”

  They rode the short distance to the colonel’s house in a cranked out silence. They then exited the transport and as Elana climbed the front
steps, she paused just shy of the door. At one point, Xavier glimpsed his friend Max Porter getting a head start on patrol several yards away. He quietly cursed the impending third degree.

  “Xavier,” Elana said, and spun on her heels, confronting him, “Do you...”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not stupid,” Xavier interrupted.

  She waited.

  “I won’t tell your father anything. He’d just take it out on me anyway.”

  Elana smiled graciously and then kissed Xavier's cheek with the gentlest brush of her skin to his stubble.

  It electrified him.

  She let her eyes fall into his as they stood beneath the glow of the porch light. With a few well-timed and deliberate twitches, Xavier communicated for Elana to spare his heart and not start something neither of them could finish. Fast on the uptake as usual, Elana just delivered a womanly “Good night,” and went inside.

  ****

  “So what made you join up?” Xavier asked.

  “Habit,” Max Porter answered, sipping his ginger ale as they chilled at the bar of the Brigade Tavern, off base. A drab little place with the environs of any male-centric establishment. Xavier didn't much care for it, but no place was perfect and it was better than lounging around the barracks looking for something to do with your thumbs.