Madman's Monster

  And I finished with, "I don't know why they held him as a prisoner, or why Dimitri Lagos has an interest in him, but there must be a reason that we are missing." I stopped and thought for a second before asking, "Does what they did to him make any sense to you?"

  Chris nodded, "Maybe a little. I’m only guessing here but I think those surgical scars are actually implantation sites."

  "Implants?" I remembered the ugly winding scars that covered Zach’s arms and torso, "What do you think they would implant?"

  "Don't know for sure, but my guess is that if you actually touched the scars you’d find that there is something solid beneath each of them."

  "Ok, for argument sake, what would that mean? "

  "Well I doubt they would be microchip tracers or anything like that. I mean, if they were as simple as location devices, then why would they need more than one, plus a backup or two? From what you are describing this guy literally has hundreds of these things in his body."

  "Hundreds?" I asked in astonishment.

  Chris shrugged, "It sounds to me like they were targeting the major muscle groups.”

  I nodded my understanding, "So the purpose would be?"

  "I think they might be delivery systems."

  I frowned, "You just lost me."

  Chris nodded, "Basically, I think they implanted a slow dissolving capsule of concentrated chemicals, not unlike the prescription pills you swallow, but only release their contents when they come in contact with another chemical, probably one made naturally by the body, and probably, I'm guessing here, but adrenaline."

  "That's even possible?"

  "Sure. A few years back a hormonal implant called Norplant was in the news. It was basically a birth control pill, but instead of a woman needing to swallow it daily, the pill was implanted into a woman's arm or hip, and released hormones slowly over the course of time. It freed the recipient from the burden of having to take pills on a daily basis, and it was proven to be just as effective."

  "So why the hundreds in Zach?"

  "I am assuming whatever is in the implants isn't systemic. It's local, but they wanted a systemic result, so they just put it everywhere in his body where they wanted to get the effect."

  "Why adrenaline?"

  "Because it's only released at times of stress. If it were a constant then he'd either run through whatever was in the capsules too quickly, or burn himself out. My thought is, if these guys were trying to build some kind of, I don't know, super soldier out of Zach, then he'd be releasing adrenaline whenever he came under stress, which is also the time he'd need whatever was in the capsules."

  I supposed that made some sense, "Anything else it could be?"

  Chris nodded and looked a little queasy, "They tortured him?"

  I nodded, "We believe so."

  Chris paused and shuddered, "They were trying to break him. Break him in every conceivable way."

  "Yes, but… Wait, what do you mean?"

  Chris raised his beer bottle in the air and showed it to the waiter, who waved that he got the message, and held up two questioning fingers in response. Chris gave him the thumbs up, and then looked back down to the tabletop.

  "Okay, just guessing here, but I think the only way to accomplish what you are describing is if they killed him, Steve. Literally tortured him until his heart stopped, and then resuscitated him only to start the whole process over again."

  I felt my mouth drop open slightly, "My God."

  "It would show on the EKG as if he’d had a heart attack.

  "Why would they do that?"

  "The brain can last about three minutes without oxygen before it starts to deteriorate. Hypoxia can lead to severe brain damage if the oxygen supply is cut off much longer than that before resuscitation. Now, remember this is all conjecture, but from what you describe I am fairly confident that they were inducing a controlled amount of brain damage."

  I thought a second, "You think that’s why he's having trouble talking, isn’t it?"

  "Maybe, a side effect of multiple resuscitations could be why his eyes seem to turn more red when he is excited or stressed and why they ebb when he is more relaxed."

  I looked at Chris, "Yeah, what the hell causes that anyway?"

  "Just capillary fill. What you're seeing are the capillaries filling with freshly oxygenated blood at a massive rate, which happens whenever his blood pressure rises. It's actually pretty benign, despite how it looks, but the talking problem could be something more sinister."

  "What?"

  "I have only heard stories or rumors about this, and no actual practice, but it seems to me that they were trying to program him."

  I frowned, "Yeah, that’s what Larson and I figured as well, but why so much torture and why risk killing him?"

  "So they could rebuild him. Just like I had to learn how to move again after being shot, maybe the recovery from the brain injury involved a degree of re-education and the psychological input of ideas or directives? I don't really know...I'm no psychologist."

  I thought about it and shook my head, "But brainwash him to do what?"

  Chris just shrugged, "Don't know, but didn't you say that guy Dimitri was interested in him?" I nodded as Chris continued, "Well maybe it's something that Dimitri wanted? There has to be some kind of trigger that will set his programming off."

  Again I asked, "But, to do what?"

  "A guy like that? My guess would be to send him into a place where the human version of a tank is required."

  Chapter 41

  The four of us went back to the hotel in two separate cabs. Larson rode alone in one cab while Chris, Lei and I rode in the other. We didn't really speak, Lei and I weren't in the mood and Chris was occupied taking in the sights, wowing at the neon and the women sexily dancing outside the bars and trying to entice new customers inside. I was watching him closely. He had over exerted himself, both physically back at the hotel, and mentally, while working on Rogers. I probably shouldn't have been concerned, because after all, Alpha himself said Chris was ready to get back into the real world, and that meant he had a certain degree of self-control to use our medicine whenever he felt the pangs of the thirst start to build inside him. It was one of the first lessons any of our kind had to learn before they were allowed to leave the collective, but the way he was eyeing the working girls made me worry.

  Then again, and in all fairness to Chris, it could very well be that he was hungry for something very different. I had always known the guy was a "horn dog", and throwing him into the middle of the largest sex-tourist city in the world was like throwing an over-eater into a Las Vegas buffet.

  "Chris?" I asked softly.

  He didn't stop looking out the window of the cab as he mumbled, "Mmmm?"

  "You okay, man?"

  He was silent for a time and then he turned from the window, "I guess," he said sadly, but he also sounded in control.

  He began shuffling around in his seat as all eyes turned to him, "I was just checking out the girls. You know, seeing if I could locate any accidental, or deliberate, nakedness. I’m getting pretty riled up too, and have started undressing the girls in my head, you know, just good clean American fun, right?"

  "Sure," I said, agreeing with him maybe a little too quickly.

  "I was thinking about what I might want to do, you know, after this is all over."

  I smiled, "I thought we were going fishing?"

  Chris nodded, "Yeah, but before that. Maybe before we head back stateside."

  "You thinking about getting some?" I said it with as non-judgmental a tone as I could, but it just sounded stupid coming out of my mouth.

  "Well...sure. I mean, it has been almost two years."

  Lei immediately chimed in, "What?! Two years!"

  I put a hand over my eyes to try to stop the headache I knew was about to come from lancing any more deeply into my head.

  "Two years!" Lei said again, "Oh God, how can you even think of anything else. Want me to have the driver pull over? Y
ou can meet us back at the hotel when you're done. Probably only take a minute or two at this point, we could probably wait for you..."

  Chris laughed, then realized she was serious and looked at me, "Man you got a good one there, bro."

  "I do," I said and winked at Lei, "But you were in the middle of saying...?"

  Chris nodded, "I was thinking of how soft skin would feel as I ran my hands over it. How it would taste as I kissed it. I miss the physical contact, you know?"

  "Sure," I spoke very quietly, I knew where this was going.

  "And then, I was kinda getting aroused as I thought about the more sexy bits and could even see myself, you know, "doing it". All tied up in the arms of someone pretty and stuff when, and I don't even know where the thought came from, but I had a sudden vision of grabbing on with my arms and legs and going for her throat."

  I watched Chris' eyes and saw such a confused and frightened look in them that the awkwardness of the confession was lost on me. It would have been lost on any of our kind, because we knew about it. We had all been there at some point and had an entire community of support to help us through it. Chris was on his own, and dead center in the middle of the most sexually tempting place on earth. He shifted around some more in his seat and pulled what looked like a large ballpoint pen out of his back pants pocket. I recognized it as an Epi Pen, normally used as an emergency delivery system for administering Epinephrine, to people allergic to bee stings, in order to stifle the reaction of the poison in the sting, and prevent them from going into anaphylactic shock. He looked at the pen, took a deep breath, and slammed it into his thigh. There was only a slight snapping sound, as the pen’s delivery system injected a dose of our special serum into the large muscles of his thigh. He tensed slightly, as it took effect on his body, and then he relaxed as the relief of what he had been feeling washed over him.

  "Better?" I asked, more to break the silence inside the vehicle, than for any other reason.

  He nodded, saying nothing, as he once again peered out the window. A look of sad longing was on his face as he said, "Any idea how long it should take before I can tell the difference between the early stages of the hunger, versus simply being horny?"

  "How do you feel now?" I asked.

  "Depressed mostly," Chris admitted.

  "Then you do know the difference," I said matter of factly, "You just took the serum, and you don't "want" girls anymore. That means you were more hungry than horny."

  "That really sucks, you know?"

  "Not really," I continued, "If you ever get confused, just take a shot. Besides, like you said, it's been two years for you, so you're bound to have some conflicting signals, especially in this city.

  Chris shrugged. I wanted to say more but Lei put a hand on my arm to keep me quiet. She was right. This was Chris' battle and he needed to figure some of it out for himself. We could help and we would, but first Chris was going to need to come to terms with who, and with what, he had become, and that was the one thing we couldn't help him with.

  Our cab arrived at the hotel first. Lei and Chris made their way to the elevator while I waited for Larson to arrive in his. Maybe I should have been worried about leaving Lei alone with Chris, given the delicate state he was in at that moment, but I wasn't. Lei could take care of herself, and even if she couldn't, I figured if Chris had any self-control, he could at least hold it together around my girl out of respect for our friendship.

  I paced around the outside of the hotel's entrance, just trying to clear my head and think about our next move. Obviously we were going to have to infiltrate the camp, but it was going to be a daunting task. We were more than a little outnumbered by the mercenaries protecting Whelan, which brought up another issue to mind. Who was funding him? Mercenaries cost a lot of money and they certainly don't risk their lives on the cheap, so where was the money coming from? My first thought was that he sold off the stockpile of medicine he had taken from Pharmanetics two years ago, but it only took a few seconds to discard that idea. Dr. Whelan was the only one who knew how to turn the blood of my people into the medicine that Pharmanetics had been developing. He didn't have the time to have produced enough of it to pay for the tents, much less the small army at his disposal. That meant someone was financially backing him.

  My thoughts pointed toward our “friend” Dimitri. The Russian clan was certainly wealthy enough, no question there, but if Dimitri and Whelan had a falling out, then how was it that Whelan was still able to afford the men at his disposal? It's not as though they worked for free. They'd walk out on him the instant his checks didn't clear, so where was the money coming from?

  I shook my head, as if that would clear the fog that had built up inside my brain, just as a cab pulled up to the front of the hotel. I saw Larson as he climbed out of the back of the cab and began walking toward me. I greeted him with, "Hey Larson, Lei and Chris went upstairs about five minutes ago and are gathering what they need from the room."

  Larson had simply nodded his head in response, when I heard a soft tinkling sound that seemed out of place in the moment. It was as if the normal noise of the city was intruded upon by pieces of glass hitting the pavement. What peaked my interest about the tinkling noise was the absence any initial crashing sound of glass breaking.

  "What?" Larson asked when he read the look on my face.

  I shook my head, "I don't know. I thought I heard, something..."

  I turned, walking along the sidewalk running parallel to the front of the hotel, with Larson following behind me. I still hadn't seen anything, but something crunched under my shoe, and when I lifted my foot there was a small circle of white powder sparkling in the light. I quickly realized I had stepped on a piece of glass, explaining the sound I had heard, but as I looked around I couldn't see any broken windows or other sources of the glass.

  I looked over to Larson and noticed him looking up the side of the hotel. I stepped back and trained my eyes up the side of the building as well. At first I didn't see anything particularly interesting and then something burst out the side of the hotel in a cloud of broken glass. I just stared stupidly upward and watched the black spot fall and grow larger in my vision until my brain again clicked back to the "on" position and I realized that I was standing almost directly below the falling debris.

  I shot back, and to the side a few feet, never taking my eyes off the falling material. I don't know when I realized that the black spot was a person. I'd like to say it was instant recognition of the flailing arms and legs that tipped me off, but the truth was that it had been the scream that grew from nothing and increased in volume as the body plummeted. The scream stopped abruptly when the body landed on the concrete, right shoulder first, and the smack of the skull against the pavement was as sickening a sound as I had ever heard. It left a smear of blood at the initial impact site and then actually bounced a few inches up and to the left before coming to rest in an abnormal tangle of limbs.

  I turned away at initial impact, more to protect my eyes and face from any additional glass or body parts that might shoot off the ground, as opposed to not wanting to watch the unpleasantness of the man’s death as he hit the ground. As soon as the sounds subsided I looked back, but I didn't stare at the brains smeared on the ground, or the grotesquely dark puddle that began slowly spreading away from the body. What caught my attention was what the man was wearing. It was all black combat gear just like the people who we fought back at that village.

  "Oh crap!" I cursed as I bolted for the hotel entrance. I had reached the door before someone who had also seen the body hit finally registered what they had seen and screamed. Everyone on the street was turning to look and see what had happened, some people were even rushing from the hotel, while a couple of security people were talking into their radios, probably trying to figure out from which room the body had fallen.

  I knew the room, and I just hoped that I could get there before it was too late.

  Chapter 42

  I arrived at the elevator, s
aw that there was one car that was standing open at the ready and decided it would be faster than the stairs. I jumped in and started hammering the button for the twenty-ninth floor and tried to will the doors to close faster.

  I almost screamed when Larson stuck his arm in between the closing doors and caused them to open again. Somehow I managed to restrain myself from throttling him as he climbed in and the doors closed again. Larson looked relaxed as the car rose while I began pacing in the limited area that the elevator car allowed with the three of us inside.

  We were barely halfway up when Larson said, "Let me go first."

  "What?" I said, shocked by his voice, which was louder than the wordless, classical rock being pumped through the elevator’s speakers.

  "They might be covering the elevators. I'm armed," he showed me his sidearm, "and I'm guessing you're not?"

  He was right. I had stashed the guns before we went to the restaurant.

  Larson looked at me calmly, "Let me clear the hallway before you go rushing in, okay?"

  It was not "okay", not "okay" at all, but I knew he was right.

  "...Okay," it was all I could manage as the two most important people in the world to me were under attack and I was stuck in the middle of what seemed to be the world's slowest elevator, listening to a musical rendition of "tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree."

  Hell. I was definitely in hell.

  What was even worse, was that when the elevator arrived, I had to wait for the all clear from Larson before I could leave the elevator and get to my people.

  Of course, the elevator did finally arrive, and the two of us hugged the sides of the car as the doors slid open. Immediately there was an explosion of sound and the back wall of the car seemed to come apart in tiny pieces of metal and wood, but Larson had made a good call about the bad guys covering the elevators, and I watched as he calmly readied his weapon. The instant the gunfire stopped he pivoted and shifting his body position so only his arm and one eye peered around the edge of the door, his pistol jumped twice as two rhythmic double taps exploded with a sound that might have destroyed my eardrums inside the confined space of the elevator car if I hadn’t protected my hearing with my hands.