by Ethan Cross
He had known Powell would refuse to kill his pet program even before he spoke the words.
People were going to die here.
Maybe a lot of people.
And maybe he could stop it.
He could get in contact with the Arizona governor. Pull some strings to get Powell shut down.
But that would seal the fate of Powell’s experiment for sure, and Marcus didn’t want to do that if he could avoid it. Plus, the Director and Fagan would probably side with Powell.
He told himself there was nothing he could do—and maybe there wasn’t—but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t go over Powell’s head and shut this place down because he wanted to catch this guy, because some dark traveler inside him wanted to hunt.
He said, “I can’t tell you exactly what’s coming, Powell. I don’t know why this guy is doing this. Not for sure. But I know enough to be sure that it will end bloody. Maybe you should take a moment and consider whether or not this place, this idea, is worth people’s lives.”
Powell stepped down a small set of stairs and said, “Don’t force me into that kind of choice, Agent Williams. Philip says that you and your team are his best and brightest. Catch this man for me. Outsmart him and stop whatever ‘bloody’ event is coming.”
Marcus ran a hand through his hair and looked back to the screen. The image was frozen on the lifeless form of Ray Navarro. He turned to Andrew and said, “Think you can still remember how to perform an autopsy?”
*
Ackerman stretched his arms and legs as they finally released him from his chains. There were two guards from the CIA black-site facility still tagging along. They were joined by four others who must have been from the local sheriff’s department. Ackerman noticed the state on the uniform’s insignia. Arizona. He knew it well. He had spent a lot of time on the run in the southwest. He liked the wide-open spaces. More places to hide—less people to hear screams.
The Director received a call and excused himself. Maggie hovered around the open airport hangar like a falcon with a full stomach, not yet ready to pounce but always lining up its next meal.
The guards instructed him to strip and change into the orange jumpsuit of an Arizona Department of Corrections inmate. One of the sheriff’s deputies gasped at seeing his scars. Ackerman guessed that his jumpsuit would have long sleeves to hide his father’s handiwork from the world, but he found that he had only been half right. The jumpsuit was short sleeve. But someone had the foresight to add a long-sleeve white thermal as an undershirt.
Maggie frowned at him as he pushed the sleeves of the thermal halfway up his forearms.
She said, “What’s with the box?”
She kicked her sneakers against a metal transport container with his initials on it.
“My books.”
“They didn’t let you have any possessions at the black site. Hell, the only thing you own is that bowie knife you talked Marcus into letting you keep.”
“I love that knife. Are you taking good care of her?”
“Sure, we walk it every night. What’s with the box?”
“I told you. My books. They wouldn’t allow me any possessions, but they did set up twenty stands on the outside of the glass. I could see the books there, any I wanted to read or read again, and then the guards would flip the pages for me once an hour. It was part of the deal we made with the CIA in exchange for me cooperating in their tests. I requested to bring them along, so that I could finish them more quickly if I have any down time on this mission.”
Maggie unstrapped and opened the container. As she picked up each book and set it aside, she read the titles aloud. “The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Rostov Ripper: The Story of Serial Killer Andrei Chikatilo, The Bible, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Pawn by Steven James, Some big medical book, Max Lucado, The Five Love Languages?”
She looked up at him and cocked her head. Her expression was half disdain and half question.
He said, “What? In order to manipulate people, you first need to understand them.”
Maggie tossed the books back into the box and closed it up.
He said, “It’s good to be working with you again, little sister.”
She didn’t respond. She just checked her watch and went back to hovering.
Ackerman pulled the crate over and sat down within the circle of armed guards. He closed his eyes and imagined himself on a battlefield with soldiers dying and crying out all around him. Then he got bored with that and switched to the Middle Ages at the time of the Black Death. He imagined the piles of burning bodies. He drank in the aroma.
He lived in that time for fifteen minutes until the prison transport bus arrived. It was long and earth toned, and its engine growled and snorted like an overweight rhino. The windows were barred. The perfect tour bus for his kind of celebrity.
The guards worked in tandem to get him secured and loaded aboard the bus. Maggie didn’t even say goodbye or wish him good luck. But that was okay. He forgave her.
As he boarded the bus, he saw that either he had this entire transport as his personal limousine or he was the first pickup. Either way, it made him feel special.
And Words of Affirmation was one of the five love languages.
The guards placed him in a random seat in the middle of the bus. Then they departed and a moment passed before the hydraulics whirred and the bus took off. Almost an hour later, the bus made a second stop and loaded on ten more men in matching orange. They seemed to be using the local sheriff’s department and its parking lot as a bus depot for unloading from one bus to another. It made sense, he supposed. A police station was by definition a secure location, or at least as secure as anywhere could be.
Philip had mentioned that the experimental prison was ramping up to capacity and making regular drop-offs of new prisoners as they pressed the prison’s population up to the projected second-tier capacity. Ackerman saw two more buses pull into the lot. Each had the name of a different prison stenciled on its side. Guards unloaded about twenty inmates from one of the buses and loaded them onto his bus.
None of the convicts spoke. They had been told not to, and there really wasn’t anything to say.
They loaded a young Hispanic man to his left. The kid looked street smart but anxious, like a wannabe gangster always looking for different angles.
But Ackerman forgot all about the kid when the guards seated an interesting new arrival into the spot in front of him.
He waited to speak until the prisoners were all secured and the bus was rolling toward its final destination, but then he leaned forward and said, “I love the scar. Did you actually get that Glasgow smile in Glasgow?”
With a thick Scottish accent, the man said, “I’d be happy to demonstrate the technique for you, friend.”
Ackerman laughed. “So it is a genuine Glasgow! I ask because I’ve always wanted to do that to someone. Snip the corners of their mouth and make them scream. The reaction. The pain. The inner conflict as they fight against the animal desire to acknowledge the pain. It all sounds so fascinating.”
The dark-haired man looked over his shoulder at Ackerman, and then he settled back into his seat. “I’ve been on both the giving and receiving ends, and I’d much rather be the one doing the cutting.”
And there it was again.
Ackerman felt it like a shiver, a pulse of information only received on some primal level. It felt like a small beacon announcing another predator in his midst. It was electric and exciting.
Ackerman said, “So what are you in for, friend?”
“Killing someone who asked too many questions.”
Ackerman laughed. “Oh, come on. You can do better than that.”
The man with the Glasgow smile said, “I’m not here to make friends or enemies. I’m just doing my time in solitude, so mind your own—”
“Keep it shut, ladies!” a big guard in a brown uniform yelled from the opposite side of a security fence.
Ack
erman leaned back and imagined himself in the Middle Ages again. There would be ample time later for making new friends and enemies alike.
*
Andrew popped his knuckles and picked up the scalpel. It had been a long time since he had performed an autopsy, but he hoped that cutting people open would be the medical equivalent of riding a bike. Foxbury’s morgue was small and cold and clean, but Navarro’s body had filled the whole room with the smell of smoke and evacuated bowels. The prison’s doctor, a white-haired man with kind but serious eyes hovered over the opposite side of the table. The old doc said, “Back when I was an Army medic, we had to be ready for anything. But even back then, we weren’t ready for crap like this. This is becoming a whole new level of FUBAR.”
Andrew gave a noncommittal grunt, knowing he had seen much worse than this, and this was just getting started.
He focused his mind on the task at hand.
They’d already given the body its external examination. Checking for any clues to the cause of death. Taking samples of the hair and nails. Then he took the scalpel and created a y-incision in Navarro’s chest. With the old doctor’s help, he peeled back the skin and muscle. And, exchanging the scalpel for the rib separators, he cracked apart the skeletal barriers keeping him from accessing Ray’s organs. He had been taught the Rokitansky, the Virchow, and a few other methods for autopsy and dissection he couldn’t remember the names of. But, if his memory served, today’s procedure mostly called for Virchow.
The difference between Andrew’s days as a medical examiner and today’s autopsy was that he now had the flexibility to go off-book. The old prison doctor and one of his nurses could weigh the organs and run down the checklists. He already had a theory that could save some time.
He had watched the tape of Marcus’s talk with Ray Navarro before his death. The young man’s voice had seemed overly hoarse during the discussion. As if his throat had been wounded somehow. Andrew had assumed, at first, that the injuries had come from a blow Navarro incurred during the shooting incident. But after seeing the way that Navarro died, he realized that Navarro’s throat could have been damaged because he was forced to swallow a foreign object prior to coming to work on the day of the shooting.
Andrew went straight for Navarro’s stomach. He spilled and examined the contents. And there, among the expected juices and partially digested food, he saw two things that didn’t belong.
One was an old coin.
The other was the object responsible for Ray Navarro’s death.
*
Marcus had called the Director and updated them on the drive back from the airport. Maggie was happy about that. It meant that she may not have to hear Marcus’s voice at all when they reached the prison.
Maggie entered the room marked as Control Center East and didn’t even acknowledge him. The Director introduced her to Powell, who flirtatiously described his grand plans for Foxbury.
Maggie took it all in. She asked questions about security, and Powell had just offered a demonstration when Andrew rushed into the CCE.
He announced, “Things are getting weirder,” as he deposited two evidence bags onto the desk beside Spinelli’s workstation. He displayed the contents and said, “This is what I found in Navarro’s stomach.”
One of the items was a coin. An old coin. The more Maggie looked at it, the more she guessed it was probably an ancient coin.
The other object was pill shaped but much larger than any pill she’d ever seen. It was the size of a loaded Swiss Army knife, and it looked about as complex as one. There was an LED display in its center. The whole thing appeared watertight. The two ends looked like they unscrewed. One was clear and empty; the other end was just a metal tip like that of a missile.
Marcus was the first to say what most of them were thinking. “What the hell is that?”
Andrew said, “Best I can figure it, the device is designed to lodge in the victim’s stomach. It has a timer. The clear end held what I assume was some kind of fast-acting poison. When the timer ran out, it released the poison, killing Navarro.”
Maggie leaned in close. “Poor guy had to swallow this. It looks custom fabricated.”
Marcus said, “What about the coin?”
Andrew replied, “That was also in his stomach. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to Stan to have him give us a work up on what it is and what it could represent. Then I think we should have the sheriff rush the actual coin in for metallurgic testing and also put a rush on finding out what type of poison was used.”
Marcus nodded. “Good thinking. We may be able to trace either of those back to a source. Have Stan keep in touch with the locals on it.”
Andrew then used a pair of latex gloves to pick up the pill-shaped device. He said, “But that’s not everything this little guy was designed for.” He unscrewed the cap from the metal end of the device and held it up for all of them to see. It was a USB dongle, like a thumb drive.
Marcus closed his eyes and cracked his neck. Maggie always noticed him doing that when he was preparing for a fight.
He said, “What do you want to bet that’s a message from our killer?”
*
After intake processing, they fitted Ackerman with new accessories for his wrists and ankles. A big, ginger-haired guard explained the security system and rules to all of the new prisoners. Ackerman had already heard this information, and he noticed that his new friend from the bus, the dark-haired gentleman with the Glasgow smile, also seemed disinterested.
Then they shuffled all the new arrivals to their cells—or, apartments as the guards called them—and released them to go on their way. The guard explained they would receive their jobs in the morning, but right now they had some time to familiarize themselves with the facility. It was the fastest intake process Ackerman had ever seen. Even to him, the whole prison seemed rushed together, as if the man who designed it didn’t have the time or money to do it right and so he did the best he could with what was available at that moment.
Three minutes later, Ackerman was standing in the prison yard, unrestrained and anxious to hunt. He analyzed the small clumps of convicts scattered around the paved areas and gravel running track. As he quantified and weighed each group of his fellow inmates, he was reminded of the film Jurassic Park.
He had never actually seen the film. He had merely noticed it playing on a television once in an electronics store, right before his father had ordered him to murder the shop owner and his wife. The scene from Jurassic Park, which Ackerman had glimpsed, showed one of the scientists arriving at the park and seeing the dinosaurs for the first time. The scientist commented on the dinosaurs moving in herds.
Ackerman felt like that scientist as he surveyed each group of prisoners and made a mental checklist of how he would ferret out the truth from this place. He didn’t expect it to take long.
He thought of those old prison clichés. Like establishing dominance by picking out the toughest guy in the yard and provoking a fight. In his experience, such public spectacles were rarely necessary or effective. Groups of men like this tended to fall into a natural food chain regardless of such displays. It was a primal thing, the lizard brain’s survival instincts at their most pure. Maybe it was the smell of fear or something hormonal. Ackerman wasn’t sure. He made a mental note to look up the biological reasons. He was sure that someone out there had studied, quantified, and devoted their life to acquiring such knowledge. But regardless of the biological motivations, as he walked among the prisoners, he could sense it. Some of the convicts gave off the scent of gazelle. Some smelled like tigers. Some lions. And others had the aroma of lion tamers, the heads of gangs, the leaders of packs of dangerous animals.
Ackerman knew that he had always given off a unique primal aura. He was different in a way that naturally frightened others. And the lizard parts of their brains told his fellow convicts to steer clear of what was different and therefore frightening. He supposed that was why prison populations so naturally formed into herds
along racial lines. They did so out of fear. And he supposed that was also why he didn’t conform to many social standards, seeing as he lacked that fear.
On some instinctive level, the other convicts knew to stay out of his way
He rarely needed to prove that to anyone.
But there always seemed to be that one guy.
That one convict whose instincts weren’t very in tune with reality. The gazelle who was curious about the lion.
And, from the cocky look in his eyes, the man now walking toward Ackerman was that guy.
*
Marcus told Spinelli to pull up whatever was on the drive, but she refused, explaining, “Our system is completely offline to avoid any intrusion. A closed system. That drive could contain a virus designed to overwrite code and take down our whole grid. Anything. We need to have it tested.”
From the back of the group, Powell’s PR rep, Bradley Reese, said, “I have my personal MacBook here. It’s not connected to the system, and it’s brand new. Could we use that?”
Marcus opened his hands to Spinelli and said, “Would that work?”
Her expression told Marcus that she didn’t like it, but she said, “Bring me the thing.” Then she crawled under the desk and came back out with a video cable. She took the laptop from Reese, booted it up, and attached the cable using an adapter. The portion of the monitor wall previously occupied by Spinelli’s system changed to an Apple logo and then Reese’s virtual desktop. Spinelli then brought up a terminal window and started typing commands. She said nothing, but Marcus guessed that she was doing something to make Reese’s system more secure.
As Spinelli’s fingers flew over the keys of the laptop, Marcus’s gaze strayed to the other four sections of the display wall. The other headset-wearing techs in the room were also typing away, and each section of the wall showed cameras zooming in on certain inmates as the software threw out alerts and the techs monitored for potential infractions.