Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “There we are,” Trineer said. He pointed out the designated room number. He and Bruckner approached its door and Trineer knocked out the pattern sequence. A code lock sounded and they entered anxiously.

  From the far corner of the room, Calvin Ross stood shirtless, with his back to the two arrivals. He was fiddling with the lamp he’d unbolted from the nightstand. He’d removed both its LED and the shade. Trineer assumed he was still exacting his personal grade of exploratory surgery on the place, as bedbugs had an entirely different meaning to Ross.

  “You’re right on time,” Ross said, “for a change.”

  “Amtrak bullets don’t fuck around,” Trineer said.

  “Have a seat. I just got out of the tub. There’s some nuts on the desk if you want.”

  An open cloth sack of assorted nuts lay just inches from a fliptop computer on the characterless Formica desk across from the single bed.

  “They were grown in non-reconstituted soil—completely organic,” Ross exclaimed. “My family comes from several generations of farmers. They knew that you never screw around with what you put in your body...or what comes out of it.”

  Trineer broke out in laughter. “Or what comes out of it! That's funny, man.”

  Bruckner saw Ross set the lamp down and pick up another object from the nightstand.

  Ross turned and approached his guests, carrying a finger-sized signal sweeper and magnetometer.

  The first thing Bruckner thought was that Ross didn't quite look the way he had imagined. That is to say, he didn't look like a terrorist—or for that matter much of a criminal. His eyes were deep, but casually so. The rest of his face was almost shockingly plain, average, like an untouched canvas on a painter's easel. His body was slender and symmetrical and his dark brown hair laid thick and smooth against Ross's skull. He resembled a young tough from a movie maybe seventy years old and Trineer's throwing out the name “Elvis” suddenly made sense. As Ross stood in front of him, Bruckner also noted that he lacked the scent of freshly rinsed lather so common after bathing.

  “Just a precaution,” Ross smiled, holding up his equipment.

  Bruckner, of course, knew better. It was a precaution, but one that served more to gauge reactions rather than detect listening devices. The sweeper Ross used looked modified, like something Bruckner had once been shown by a friend in the CIA. Ross ran it the entire length of their frames, pausing ominously at Bruckner’s crotch.

  Nothing like threatening a guy’s nut-sack to make him jumpy, Bruckner thought. McCutcheon was right to send him in without any body-ware.

  When he finished his sweep, Ross smacked a glare on Bruckner that would’ve unnerved a cobra.

  “You got something for me?” Ross asked.

  Bruckner pulled the slip-disk from his pocket, nice and easy.

  Ross plucked it from his hand like a bird on a bread crumb. That's when Bruckner noticed Ross's hands—how extensively scarred they were, like they'd been stitched back together in some places. Did he have a mishap or two in bomb-making 101?

  Ross went to the corner of the room and dragged out a box that looked like a space-age footlocker and flipped it open. It was a lead-lined container with an airtight magnetic lid.

  “Come on, with this,” Trineer complained.

  Ross shot him a look, no different than a pistol to Trineer's head.

  “What?” Bruckner inquired.

  “We're strip-teasing again,” Trineer said. “Just go with it if you wanna get paid. I swear he enjoys this.”

  After, stripping to their shorts, Trineer's and Bruckner's clothes were stuffed into the box and its lid sealed tight. Ross then slid the slip-disk into the side drive of his fliptop. He put a thumb to his lip as the file displayed itself, out of view of anyone else.

  Bruckner promptly made an effort to appear both curious and naïve, which wasn’t easy when you were mentally plotting out scenarios to keep you alive. There was always a tendency to think the bad guy would develop spontaneous telepathic powers.

  “Everything cool?” Trineer asked.

  “Fine,” Ross answered smoothly. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Fine for you. I've got one of the prettiest camel-toes you've ever seen waiting for me back in C-Town, but she requires plenty of drinking and dancing to get her in the mood; know what I mean?”

  Ross pointed to a red dufflebag on the corner of the room's double bed. “Over there.”

  Trineer opened the bag and pulled out several stacks of fifty and one hundred-dollar bills. He began counting out his take and didn't have to get far to know it was short. “Why can't anything ever be easy? This isn't even half of what it should be, Elvis.”

  “Yeah how bout that,” Ross replied, scaling up the belligerence. “I was expecting a six figure advance after we finished up north, but the interested party reneged after someone literally hand-delivered the fucking package to some poor sap who shouldn't have even been there!”

  MIT! Bruckner thought.

  “I did my job, man!” Trineer proclaimed. “I reconned! It wasn't my fault!”

  “Abort,” Ross blared. “Do you know what the word abort means?” He strode up to Trineer, nostrils smoking like five-alarm fires. “It means to kill! You were told to kill all activity and report to me if anything out of the ordinary happened! But you didn't do that because you were too busy worrying about getting paid! You knew you wouldn't until it was done and you didn't want to wait.” Ross lowered his voice as if plenty hadn't already been said in the stranger's presence. “You know, I read some philosophy once that said what you fear most is what you call into being. That makes you a powerful creator of your own destiny, Trineer. So congratulations! You were afraid of not getting paid so much that you actually willed it into existence.”

  Bruckner thought back to McCutcheon's warning. Could this “interested party” of Ross's be part of the leak? The thought made him swoon. Or maybe even the source itself! The biotechs had their share of detractors in Washington, but to think anyone would use Ross as a weapon against them. Sheee-it.

  “I don't mean to interrupt,” Bruckner said tepidly. He had to say something. He was looking too much like a human sponge, standing there silent in his boxers. “But you've still got all my money, don't you?”

  “Yeah you'll get yours,” Ross answered, not looking at him. Ross then wandered back to the desk and plopped into its chair. He tickled the computer's keyboard and looked at Bruckner with eyebrows creased up the middle. “You're not a bad hacker, Mr. Buttrick.”

  “My dad did a ten-year stint in Silicon Valley when I was a kid. Used to read software script to me as a baby.”

  “There's gotta be a lot less dangerous ways for a guy like you to make some extra cash.”

  “You came along at the right time. The dean of sciences at Case Western had me shit-listed because I spoke my mind on all their creepy biotech mergers. It's been a nightmare ever since, so I'm transferring out of state. Figured I leave them a little parting gift.”

  “Pretty fucking bold of you.”

  Bruckner pointed at Trineer. “Well now, he told me you weren't going to hurt anybody, just screw with the records and stuff—you know, make a statement. I'm no fan of the biotechs. I think what they do is shitty: trying to legalize cloning, mandating genemods for the military, force doctors to use cloned organs and all that. But I wouldn't like, go out and commit violence against anybody.”

  The decision was made long ago to stick with the innocent-but-morally-flexible-kid routine. It would make Ross less suspicious of Bruckner since homegrown mad-bombers like himself—although more prevalent than ever—didn't exactly grown on trees. And Bruckner would, no doubt, be in over his head pursuing the role as bioethical jihadist. The gamble was in convincing Ross that the kid wasn't a potential squealer. To that end, it was decided to cast Bruckner as a cybercriminal with plenty to lose if he got caught. Who are you talking about, Ross? Bruckner thought. Say it!

  Ross looked Bruckner square in the eye. “That's r
ight, completely harmless. The student and faculty records will be a rude awakening, something to get the world-of-higher-education’s attention. In the best case, a blatant, but simple security breach might spark an investor’s exodus from BioCore. It would certainly delay any ongoing business and create a flurry of contract renegotiations. Students would transfer in droves. The school would be hemorrhaging money.” Ross sucked at his teeth on the last sentence. For all the apocalyptic extract he was able to toss into the batter, the end result still left a damn bitter taste in his mouth. In fact, the part about contract renegotiations would probably cost him a night's sleep. A small price to pay, he thought. He'd do anything for an inroad to BioCore, that hulking atrocity. It had cost him greatly and he vowed never to rest until he'd planted his flag atop its smoldering rubble. He nibbled on his nonexistent thumbnail and leered at Bruckner like a horny sailor. First things first.

  “Did you know my father fought in Desert Storm over thirty years ago?” Ross asked rhetorically, out of nowhere.

  Bruckner sharpened, hoping whatever he was about to hear ended with a more concise confession to MIT.

  “Saddam Hussein was big on chemical warfare. Mustard gas, Anthrax, Botulinin—he’d stockpiled tons of that shit...along with a few other choice items. When our government decided they were going to go to war and potentially get hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans killed for oil, they engaged in a handful of classified field tests of all kinds of counteractive agents. Many of them were developed through private contracts to biotech companies. My father hadn't been back less than a month before he started showing symptoms—headaches, joint pain, loss of appetite. They were symptoms 'easily explained through any myriad of conditions that may or may not have had anything to do with his service,' as they put it. It wasn’t until he started having the visions and hallucinations, kind of like H-ball, but twice as strong, that we suspected he’d been exposed to something. In fact, I heard H-ball’s base compound was made from similar stuff. It must have been showing up in his blood tests for weeks, but was listed as...previously undocumented. The Army said that it had been testing an antimicrobial near a weapons’ stockpile discovered underneath a mosque in southern Baghdad, but only after it had been secured and all personnel separated from the site. You can only wonder why an Army doctor kept telling him he was fine...only to have a county coroner find enough converted toxins in his system to defoliate a forest. The poison wasn’t listed as the cause of death, by the way. It was the shotgun blast that scattered his head all over the kitchen. You see, he felt really bad about killing my mother with that same rifle after he’d mistaken her for an ax-wielding demon in the height of one of his hallucinations. She was preparing dinner, chopping peppers. When he realized what he’d done, he braced the gun against the floor, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.” Ross wrapped himself in his arms and sat up straight. “It’s a wonderful country we live in, this U.S. of A. Don’t you think?”

  Bruckner said nothing. He figured Ross had told that story before and, fictitious or not, it was probably best to let the lunatic indulge in his illusion of having achieved the high ground.

  “Damn, man,” Trineer said. “You sure know how to bring down a room.”

  “I’ve got to piss,” Bruckner announced and waited for Ross to give the okay. After Ross nodded in the direction of the bathroom, Bruckner sauntered over to it and closed the door behind him.

  A mild steam from the tubful of hot water that Ross apparently forgot to drain clung in the air. Bruckner thought the bathwater appeared more freshly drawn than recently used as he pondered his evolving picture of Ross. He was not unlike other bioethicals; he had a thing for naturally grown food and took baths instead of showers, probably to simulate the feeling of being in a lake or pond. These were small things to be sure, but stuff Ross probably wouldn’t give two shits about if he wasn’t trying to play the role of fanatic.

  “Peel away the layers and Ross is as common as they come,” is the way McCutcheon had put it. “Medical ethics, human dignity and biological right of choice are nothing more than politico phrases and pseudonyms given to Ross's pyromania—his sadism. If he had gotten a bad haircut when he was five, he’d be bombing barbershops today.”

  There was a rap of knuckles on the bathroom door.

  “Hey, Buttrick,” Ross called from outside.

  “Yeah,” Bruckner answered.

  “Did I leave my ring in there?”

  Bruckner glanced down at the sink. A ring commemorating the Michigan State University class of 2012 lay next to the cold water valve.

  “Yeah, it’s here.”

  “Could you hand it to me if you’re still decent?”

  Bruckner picked up the ring, snapped a mental photograph of it then opened the door.

  Ross rushed the room like a one-man swat team. Brandishing the lamp that he’d unbolted from the nightstand, he pushed Bruckner into the full tub with a splash that soaked the floor. He then thrust the lamp’s plug into a small wall outlet by the fogged mirror, threw down the toilet's lid and hopped onto it, feet on the seat. He pitched the lamp into the tub. He watched as Bruckner's eyes popped from their sockets and blood ran from his mouth where he’d bit into his tongue. Every light around them flickered like indoor lightning flashes and the room smoked with a foul vapor.

  Trineer stood outside the door, and shouted through gritted teeth. “Fuck, man! Oh, fuck!” He was panicked, but didn’t want to draw attention to the room. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  Ross pulled the plug from the outlet and dismounted the toilet. It wasn’t likely this Buttrick had any type of implant. Ross's sweeps would’ve detected it and Ross would’ve killed him where he stood. It probably wasn’t on his clothing either, because, again, Ross would’ve found it before Buttrick stripped. If he did miss it, it was fried now.

  “I don’t get it!” Trineer said barely breathing.

  Ross grimaced like he had a brain freeze. Of course you don’t, you dumb shit! “Take a breath for God’s sake,” he said snippy.

  “Why the fuck did you do that, man?”

  “He was a Fed! I knew it the minute I plugged in the slip.” Ross went to the desk and spun the fliptop so Trineer could see the flashing red indicator. Beaumont's purloined software had stopped, cold, the slipdisk from inserting its tracking beacon and spyware onto Ross's drive. “I couldn’t let him leave.”

  Trineer stood silent, for a moment then eventually threw up his hands in surrender of Ross's resourcefulness. What could he say? Ross wanted a hacker, so he got him a hacker. It wasn't his fault Buttrick was a fed. Trineer wandered over to the magnetic locker. Fair enough, he thought. Ross wasn't getting what he paid for so...He opened the locker, reached inside and tossed Buttrick's—or whoever he was's—clothes aside and grabbed his own. No way he was sticking around to help clean up. Dead bodies weighed a ton and there was still the chance somebody had heard something.

  Ross watched Trineer put on his pants, letting him get one leg in. He shook his head, ashamed of himself. Then he pulled the gun from the desk drawer.

  Chapter 16

  Cleveland, Ohio, August 26, 7:08 p.m.

  Xavier wandered around the historic warehouse district in an undetermined direction. His head pounded as he tried to recall how he had gotten there. He thought he remembered someone having pity enough to put him on a bus after he explained he had no fare and said he didn’t remember where the house was. Guess he slurred his sentences, like he always did when his tongue was backstroking in gin, and it sounded like “warehouse”. Xavier supposed there were worse places to be stuck. He sometimes enjoyed strolling around the historic Victorian buildings, many built before the Civil War. He could imagine them as massive time machines that, if he entered, would transport him back to a realm where he had the advantage of no one knowing who he was or from where he'd come. What a coward, he thought. It was always about escaping with him. He beat his fist against the jagged brick of one of the buildings until p
ain registered. Then his forehead fell against the wall and he ground it into the spot.

  Why should he even give a shit where he was?

  Why should he care at all...about anything? He screamed through his clenched teeth. Why did that chamber have to be empty? Why? Why didn't he let that bastard in the alley just do the job for him? Suicide by asshole; it would've been perfect. Why? Damn it! Why?!

  Xavier turned away from the lines of mortar and peeked out at the western sun kissing the lip of the horizon.

  And he knew.

  That’s why, he thought. That's why he didn’t just pull the trigger a second time, then and there. Because three days ago he'd smiled at a woman light years out of his league—though not as beautiful as the one from the alley—and sat for two hours in a playground where the eight-year-old boy, ever alive in his broken soul, yearned to dangle from the jungle gym. Because apple fritters and chocolate milk still tasted good together. Because grandpa Willie never got mad. Because, just like that big yellow ball in the sky that effortlessly imposed its routine on the rest of us, Momma never gave up!

  Gave up?

  Xavier's thoughts froze. He squeezed his pocket only to be reminded the gun was gone.

  “You're dead,” he whispered to himself. “You're dead.” Fuck you! Fuck you!

  Xavier's legs suddenly chugged forward, all on their own. A group of passersby had to dodge him as he barreled past, like a car with four flat tires. Get out of here! Get out of here was all he could think, but he couldn’t run fast enough. He rounded a corner and came to fall against a bus shelter just as the Superior Avenue crosstown was squealing to a halt. He dug into his pockets and came up empty. He scooted in behind the last passenger boarding the bus and overwhelmed the driver, begging for a ride. Maybe it was generosity or just the one-two punch of gin and the dog shit on Xavier's boot, but the driver acquiesced and directed Xavier to “please” take a seat as far to the rear as possible. Xavier then sloshed to a row of empty seats at the back of the bus and morphed into a fetal position under a window.