Book Read Free

Light Plays: Book Two of The Light Play Trilogy

Page 16

by N. D. Hansen-Hill


  “Why don't you go to hell?” Sterner replied, but he was smiling. “I think I need a rest. In fact, I think I'm gonna stay right here.”

  Chapter Ten

  Simon took the elevator to Level 6. He knew the video cameras were watching every step of his little trek through the facility, and wondered what they'd made of his make-work collection of clean glassware from cupboards, and his subsequent washing and replacement jobs.

  Probably nothing. It was a real techie task, and it was likely no one even bothered to count flasks, or question his methods. If someone raised a question, Security would assume he was following a menial reminder from one of the upper echelon, or because he didn't know what the hell he was doing and wanted to look busy enough to collect a paycheque.

  Level 6 was another matter, and visiting here was bound to draw some flack. By the time the elevator doors opened, Simon had adrenaline pulsing through every muscle. He had to work hard on maintaining his pose of nonchalance.

  Even if Denaro's ovaries weren't tucked away in a freezer on this level, there was a slim chance Rick might be here. Simon prepared himself for the unexpected. Whatever happened—if Rick was involved—it'd happen quickly.

  * * * *

  Getting Richard Lockmann's address had been easy. Lockmann. The mutant. For a moment, some of Nyle Brentworth's conservative religious upbringing cut through the fanatical zeal that had driven him over the last year—for nearly the length of time he'd been at Genetechnic. The zeal had been an acceptable balance to the things he'd seen—the unacceptable use of the God-given, to produce the unholy.

  He had a moment of scepticism, in which he wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Some careful digging through Genetechnic's records—specifically, some of Vizar's files—had revealed that the changes to Lockmann had been accidental.

  Accidental, yet successful.

  Nyle couldn't blame the man for his role in this. Even Lockmann's arrival at the plant had been beyond his control. It was just the term that Vizar had used—in some quick notes he'd entered on his computer—notes he thought nobody would access before he'd had time to encode and record them—"successful". Denaro had died, Vizar had died, Colby had died—the list went on and on. Yet, Vizar had termed it “successful". Denaro's research had succeeded, and the product was one Richard Lockmann.

  A killing machine, if he followed in his parent's footsteps.

  That was the problem: for all that the uterus which had birthed him lay a thousand miles away, other genes had given rise to the thing he was now. Caroline Denaro was as much his parent as the female who had swollen with his foetal presence. His birthparent had given rise to a human being. Caroline Denaro's swollen form had birthed an obscenity.

  Having thought it through, Nyle was somewhat consoled, and resigned to the decision he had made. He gingerly carried his inflammatory parcel to the car, and stowed it in the trunk. It would be there when it was needed. When the time was right.

  What was happening with Denaro's remains couldn't be allowed to happen to anyone else. That was the problem with today's science: alive or dead, they found a way to use you.

  Never again.

  * * * *

  The moment he walked into the room, he knew he was in the right place.

  She's here.

  Despite the hi-tech surroundings, Simon had the sudden out-of-sync vision of an ancient service—the brass and gilt imagery overladen with stainless steel and glass—the altars of formica—the tabernacle shielding a frozen god.

  Fanciful. Ridiculous.

  Even laughable.

  Instinct. Having met her once, he could never mistake the feeling again.

  Laughter was the farthest thing from his mind right now. Simon's insides were tightening in terror. Gut instinct.

  He'd been angry, and he'd expected that anger to carry him through. Anger, disgust, dismay—perhaps even a little despair. They were parting out cadavers now, for God's sake—taking her pieces to build their empire.

  Only God—the God that Simon still believed in somewhere deep inside—had nothing to do with this.

  Of all that Simon had expected to feel, the least of it was a chilling, gut-stomping terror.

  Suddenly, his flesh felt as cold as the fleshless remnants that lingered in that box.

  * * * *

  Daphne Morrison saw him enter the room. The opening of the door always alerted her now.

  Self-preservation. The words flashed in her head. There were some people who brought out instincts you never even knew you had. One of those people was Tazo Raeiti.

  Something about Raeiti sent a chill up her spine. It wasn't only the weird things he did—it was the way he was—the feelings or aura or whatever you'd call it that made you feel like he'd stick a knife in your back if you turned around.

  She didn't understand why Thomas Rider tolerated him. Raeiti came close to violating all the lab protocols—of undermining any sterile procedures they set up. She wasn't the only one complaining. Yet, every day, Raeiti turned up again, and nobody did anything.

  The only thing she could figure out was that he must be the idiot son of one of the company directors, or someone who'd been injured on Cliatso's turf, and who they kept on in a minor capacity to avoid a lawsuit. She couldn't think of any other reason why the staff would repeatedly have to tolerate his presence.

  She didn't understand the purpose of the experiments they were running, either. Apparently, the woman from whom these ovaries were taken had succumbed to disease, and their job was to determine if the disease origins were viral or genetic. Daphne wasn't too happy about it: she'd signed on as a plant physiologist, with training in molecular biology. She couldn't figure out why they'd want her here.

  Not that she wasn't grateful for the work. She'd been hired just about the time her sister, Kefra, had been laid off at Genetechnic. Since she and Kefra shared an apartment, one of them needed an income. Daphne was glad it was her for a change. It seemed there were an overabundance of plant physie people out there, with very few jobs. If it hadn't been for her sister's Genetechnic connection, and a good word from Daniel Vizar, Daphne was certain she'd never have made it into the Cliatso “club".

  Now Vizar was dead. She'd only met him a couple of times, but she'd attended his funeral. A lab accident. It reminded her once again of Raeiti, who was a fatality waiting to happen. She stared for a moment at the newcomer, just to reassure herself that Tazo wasn't lurking beneath the isolation suit.

  No. It was a stranger. Daphne sighed with relief, and concentrated once again on her work.

  * * * *

  His instincts were among the unspoken reasons Hylton found him useful. Simon wished he could follow his instincts right now. They told him to turn around and run.

  But, it was already too late. Caroline Denaro was here, all right, but he suddenly realised she wasn't confined to the metal and plastic box centred on the floor. Cores of her were littering the benches—in test tubes and Petri dishes; in Eppendorf tubes and serology discs; following electrical impulses through electrophoretic gels. Simon didn't need an education in laboratory science to know she was here.

  Simon no longer wished Rick were with him, to give him advice. The sight of this—after what he'd been through—would have killed him.

  The monster was loose, and they were helping her grow.

  It was his job to kill her—before she killed them all.

  * * * *

  What was he doing? The man who'd entered was confident enough to be one of Cliatso's Security people, but he seemed to be searching for something. As she watched, he sat down at a computer terminal and began to type. He downloaded some information on to a disk, then moved on to one of the portable computers that was lying on the bench. Again, same process: type, download, move on. Within twenty minutes, he'd covered every terminal in the room.

  Then, he headed for the freezer. The one that Raeiti always opened when he came into the room. The stranger lifted the lid, and shuffled around with a gl
oved hand, obviously looking for something. In the end, he nearly slammed down the lid in alarm. He went back to a computer terminal and began to type once more.

  * * * *

  Simon was worried. Not about the sheep in the room: he'd been right that if he acted like the sheepdog, they'd all stay in their pens. Rick had once handed him an article from a magazine, and told him it explained the scientific mind better than anything else he'd read. Rick had thought it was hilarious, because there was so much truth in it. It had been a list of instructions, for working in a lab.

  a. Tune out everything—conversation, time of day, songs on the radio, phone calls—as auxiliary. Distractions mean mistakes. Mistakes mean you have to do it over forty-nine times to justify your wrong answer.

  b. Nobody wants to bother with the politics of what they are doing while they are doing it. It robs you of the joy of new discoveries and, more often than not, merely makes a hassle. That's why political science is a field in itself.

  c. Actions speak louder than words. Trust someone who looks like they know what they're doing before you trust someone who merely claims they're an expert. Trust someone who claims they're an expert if that's the person who signs your paycheque.

  d. Negative results are as important as positive ones. But, positive results still look a damn sight better on the pages of a journal.

  Simon was surprised that he still remembered so much of it. It had gone into some storage receptacle in his brain, and he pulled it out now and flapped it around to give him confidence. Tune out everything, don't bother about the why's and wherefore's, act like an expert—get the job done. The part that bothered him the most was the last bit—about the negative results.

  In his field, negative results weren't worth a whole heck of a lot. Negative results right now could spell disaster.

  He'd known she was in the room the moment he'd entered. Well, judging from what he'd read and seen and deciphered from the computer files, he'd been right. She was here, just as he'd suspected: cores of her ovaries and skin pasted on the insides of test tubes and Petri dishes; dancing nearly endless spins in the centrifuge; filtering through sugars and salts; dividing and racing through gelid masses. Bits and pieces of the whole.

  Only the whole was no longer here.

  The freezer no longer housed her. They'd removed a portion, and would replicate its horror and preserve it ad infinitum, but the primary tissues, from which the samples had come, were gone.

  She's done it again. Waiting somewhere to catch her victims unaware.

  No, he thought. She can't. She can't come back. She's dead.

  He glanced around the lab. No, she's not. They won't let her die. He'd already gathered from the scattered lab records that most of them didn't really know what they were doing. Each a piece of the puzzle, but none of them with a picture, to know what they were really looking for. They were tinkering with the unholy and they didn't even know her name.

  Simon shoved his thoughts aside. As his eyes focused, he noticed one of the people was looking at him. She'd caught him in a bad moment, and now there was a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. What he could see of her eyes through the plastic.

  She was one of the sheep, who stood there working in the dark on death for millions. For just a moment, Simon did something out of character: he rewarded her look with one of his own. For a split second, he actually let her know how he felt—about her, and her work—about the ignorance that could let her toy blindly with damnation. Then he turned swiftly, and went silently out of the room.

  * * * *

  It was like a slap in the face. Or a punch in the nose. Degrading.

  Evil. Like Raeiti.

  No. She'd seen evil, though she hadn't given it a name till now. Raeiti had that quality—a sordidly pervasive stench to his being that corrupted what it touched.

  He touched the remains in the box so often.

  Corrupt.

  The stranger had been looking for them. And now Daphne recalled something else about his expression. Aversion, repugnance, yes, but also something else. Something remarkably like desperation.

  The man had not only wanted to find the woman's ovaries—he'd been quite desperate to locate them.

  Daphne looked down at her gloved hands. There was something wrong here. A sudden instinct made her reject what she was doing. She placed the pipette carefully back in its rack.

  Something terribly wrong, and I'm involved. It would explain why they tolerated Raeiti. He wasn't an “idiot child". He was a member of the team—just as she was. Suddenly she saw herself as the stranger had.

  She swallowed, noticing for the first time how the smell of the plastic shield left a bad taste in her mouth. Or maybe it was just that suddenly what she and the team of scientists were doing was souring her stomach. Plastering a smile on her face as camouflage, she left her work station and discreetly followed the stranger out the door.

  * * * *

  He was still in the anteroom. He'd shed his suit, and was busily shuffling through drawers now. When she came in, he turned away, toward the door.

  “Wait—” She glanced over her shoulder to see if she'd said it too loudly—if anyone had noticed. I'm not used to subterfuge. When she'd started here, half the thrill had been the privilege of working in such a secure facility. Now it felt like a prison.

  He didn't ask why. He just waited. She showered off the suit, then shed her gear.

  “They packaged them up yesterday.” She gulped, then added apologetically, “I helped.”

  “Where'd they send them?”

  “To Canuga—”

  Simon frowned. “Why?” he asked baldly.

  “Ends of the earth. They've built a research facility there. It's isolated—in case it turns out to be contagious.”

  Simon smiled coolly at that one. “It's contagious, all right.” He turned to go.

  “There's something else that might be related.” The way she said it told him she really didn't think so, but someone else obviously did.

  He waited silently for her to continue.

  She found his attitude unnerving. But, it's still better than Raeiti's.

  “There's another line of research paralleling this one. In a lab at the other end of the hall.” She went over to a cabinet, and pulled down a sheath of papers. “One of their people came in here on an inspection tour.”

  He hid his smile. It was obvious she'd resented the intrusion.

  “Judging from those, if you called it ‘pseudo-science’, you'd be doing them a kindness.” There was a trace of snobbery in her tone. “It's amazing what you can get funding for—”

  Simon didn't hear the last. The first page had a memo, to someone named Diaslio. But, it was the second which gripped his attention. It was a paper entitled, "Inducing Out-of-Body Phenomenon through Physiological Means". Midway down the page, someone had scrawled in "Denaro". The one that really got to him, though, was another pencilled note, down near the bottom. In a faint, nearly illegible hand, was the word "Lockmann" followed by a question mark.

  Now, the memo on the front made sense. It had said, "You may be right, Diaslio. The right stimulus might do it. Only time will tell.”

  * * * *

  “There's a scanner in the office. Over there—” She avoided stepping out in the hall with him, where the video cameras would pick her up. She had a feeling being in his company wouldn't exactly enhance her reputation.

  “Is it occupied?”

  “Shouldn't be. It's for our use.”

  He picked up the tinge of regret in her voice. She liked her job, but she wouldn't be able to go back to it now. Not if what she suspected was true.

  She confirmed it in the next second. “God damn it all to hell,” she muttered, glancing around, then giving a sigh. “Bloody hell.”

  “Feel better?”

  “Poorer,” she replied. “Poorer and better are opposites in my book.” She frowned. “Aren't you going?” she asked, a little resentfully.

  “What field a
re you in?” he asked. Hylton might be able to help her find another position when this was all over.

  “Plant physiology.” She misread his look of surprise. “I know—strange specialty to be dissecting a woman's ovaries. But I did my masters in molecular applications. They're kind of non-specific, if you know what I mean.”

  “What's your name?”

  “Daphne.” She was suddenly suspicious. “That's all you need to know.”

  “Daphne, plant physiologist. Holy Mother of God." Simon sank down into a chair. He had the sudden impression none of this was real. This was Rick's Daphne—the one he'd been e-mailing for over a year. The one he was so terrified of meeting “in the flesh"—for fear it would ruin his illusions—or hers.

  “What's wrong?” she asked in concern.

  For a moment he was tempted to show her the "Lockmann" at the bottom of the document, just to see how she'd react.

  No—what she doesn't know might keep her alive.

  “Nothing,” he said, but his eyes were twinkling. Hylton would die if he learned Rick's would-be girlfriend was working for FOCUS—on Caroline Denaro's remains.

  Yes, there is a God, Simon thought. Hylton would go apeshit.

  Simon couldn't wait to tell him.

  * * * *

  Simon scanned in the memo and the first page of the document—unwilling to take time for any more. They could get a copy of the paper elsewhere. What he needed was a copy of the writing. For a moment, he wished there was some way to smuggle it out. Forensics might be able to pick up some prints that could tell them more.

  He'd stolen a portable computer from the lab, and now added the scanned images to his growing file of information. The problem would be to get the file out of here. If he downloaded it into the maintenance file just as he was leaving, he might get out of here with his skin intact. Whoever was on the other end would have to be quick at retrieving it.

 

‹ Prev