“George?” I whispered.
I stepped toward the prostrate form, which was right in front of the flashing television. I hesitated after each and every burst of light, as I drew closer, and closer. My pulse raced faster with each foot forward.
“George?” I said, standing over the body.
No answer. The TV stopped its flashing. I paused in the dark. My heart pounded, listening for the slightest reply. The dark was impenetrable, the silence total. Crouching down, I waited for the television to flash again. It didn’t. After a minute I went into my pocket for the Atman’s light.
A hand grabbed mine. I yelped in terror.
“Doc,” said a dry voice.
“George?”
I pulled my wrist away and hit a button on my Atman. The pale glow lit the face of MacGruder, who was stretched out on the carpet.
“George,” I said. “Where is the light switch?”
MacGruder’s crooked finger pointed feebly at a corner. I followed it and found a switch behind the china closet and flicked it. The glare was blinding, but gradually I could open my eyes. MacGruder lay halfway between an easy chair and the television.
“Doc,” MacGruder rasped.
“Yes, George?”
“The damned thing burns,” MacGruder said. “They’re…killing me.”
He gestured vaguely toward his left forearm—where the Atman had been implanted. I went to him and lifted his sleeve. The device was blinking—flickering with the same strange incomprehensible digits that had appeared on O’Keefe’s Atman. The device was scalding to the touch, whirring with unstoppable energy.
“Please, Doc,” MacGruder said. “Please get it out. It hurts…it’s…killing…”
“Just hold on a second, George,” I said. “Everything will be fine. Let me think.”
I stood and drifted toward the next darkened room. A rotten smell hung. When I hit the lights, a dirty kitchenette appeared before me. A knife was what I was after—I needed anything sharp to carve out the Atman. There was no time to panic. In front of MacGruder, I had used that skill of mine—to casually downplay the gravest dangers. But in the kitchen my hands shook. MacGruder wouldn’t be alright. I had seen the ultimate outcome twice now. I pulled a fishing knife and a grapefruit spoon from the drawer. They were the only implements I found which would work for the job at hand. I also grabbed an old stiff towel and returned to the living room.
MacGruder was already unconscious. Losing no time, I pulled off the old man’s shirt, tied the towel tightly around his bicep. I pulled over a chair from a corner, and placed the arm atop it. Then I sawed with the blade through skin and muscle, around and under the device, which grew hotter and hotter to the touch. Halfway through the incisions, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a thick oven mitt to grapple the sizzling metal. The TV flashed on and on and on.
MacGruder moaned. But I gritted my teeth and kept going.
“Just a little farther now, George,” I said, using my calmest tone.
I incised for another few minutes, cutting around the soft flesh, but it wouldn’t come free. The metal was anchored, probably to the bone. Thousands of implants of the X-rays had never shown anything like this. I tugged and yanked—the stubbornness of the machine in the flesh was sickening. The blood kept flowing, soaking through the whiteness of one towel, then another I grabbed from the kitchen. I howled. I was losing another patient. I was losing George MacGruder, who was also my friend. I needed help, any expertise, another pair of eyes.
I knew where I could find that help. Even if I loathed the thought of calling him. I pulled out my own Atman, I swiped on the screen, and I waited. On the second ring, I heard the voice I needed.
“Hello,” Old Man Wetherspoon croaked.
“Doc, I need your help,” I said.
“Joe? Is that you? You sound like shit,” said the creaky voice. “I hope you haven’t gotten yourself arrested at that damned hospital.”
“No. Doc, I’m at a patient’s house. I need your expertise,” I said.
The single mention of expertise seemed to awaken the Old Man. I heard rummaging and grunting on the other end, like the Old Man was sitting up in bed for the first time that day.
“What kind of expertise? Personal? Professional? Romantic?” he said.
“I can’t explain now,” I said. “It’s an emergency. It’s about the thing we’ve been talking about. Can’t talk over this line.”
I gave him the address.
“Hurry. Get here as soon as possible,” I added.
The Old Man grunted again, then hung up.
Ten minutes was all MacGruder had. Although MacGruder’s life was not violently spasming out of his body like O’Keefe’s had, it was still slipping away. The device was still attached to him, even though I had severed most of the connections. Despair welled in me. His pulse was faint, his breathing shallow, and though the bleeding had slowed to a trickle, it was still going. I tried once more with the grapefruit spoon to pry out the device, started the red flow again, then set it aside and stanched the wound. The towel had been scorched by the Atman’s heat. I found a new one from a kitchen drawer. I knelt at the body, pressed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying not to feel the weight of each second ticking by.
“You’ll be fine, George,” I whispered. “Help is on the way. Just hang on.”
MacGruder only groaned, through his fever and delirium. Thunder rolled far off outside the house. The television flashed. But this last time, it stayed on.
I paid no attention at first, focusing instead on the pressure on the blood vessels of my patient. But then it was simply unavoidable. I turned my head and watched the intro of How Low Can You Go screaming on the screen, though it was on mute. I had never really sat down to watch the show before, and a curiosity simmered within me, I must admit. A woman was offered a pink envelope by the host, a razor-bald man with pirate earrings dangling from each lobe. She accepted the envelope with a slim delicate hand. But she looked apprehensive. On the screen behind both their heads, a man was strapped down to a strange gurney with metal restraints. He cringed as medieval-looking tongs dangled something writhing and alive, but out of focus, over his head. I cringed, too.
I reached down, felt for MacGruder’s pulse. It had weakened to a throb. I cursed Wetherspoon, willing him to drive faster in his stupid old gasoline car.
And then I lost myself in that depraved TV show.
The How Low Can You Go host said something, eyebrows bouncing provocatively. The woman glanced in the direction of the camera. She turned toward the imprisoned man, obviously her husband. Her head tilted to the floor in shame. She placed her hand to her face. The camera zoomed in to a close-up of her lipsticked mouth.
Yes, the pink lips said, very visibly. Yes.
The camera flashed to the full shot of the captive man. The tongs lowered, and the television showed very clearly the walking gnarly legs and wicked stinger of a scorpion descending inch by inch.
Then a split screen: the man’s horrified face from above, underneath the airwalking claws of the creature, and a sideview of the distance between the nose and the descent of the scorpion. The creature stopped falling, two inches from flesh. The stinger lashed downward, narrowly missing its target. Any further descent would have the poisonous creature within striking range.
The camera flashed back to the host. An amusement arched his eyebrows, pursed his lips. His perfectly-plucked eyebrows jiggled. He asked her something.
Then a shot of the woman, who had her hands on her face, not even looking at him. There were seconds—moments lasting ages—as she shook with some kind of indecisiveness. She shook her head. A pause.
An intense close-up of her moist lips. Darker and closer than before, trembling. They parted—a glimpse of the teeth, a hint of tongue.
“Yes,” she said. And she nodded.
“ONE BILLION DOLLARS!” the screen flashed. The letters glowed. A flash to the woman, who grabbed another envelope from the host, this time big and gold. They embraced, he
kissed the crown of her head. Balloons fell from above. Strobing lights all around. The crowd went wild. A shot of the woman again, wiping away the tears of joy tumbling down her face.
Then a cut to deepest black. A fade-in to the nose, the scrambling claws and the stinger, descending and unavoidable. The tongs widening, releasing. The screams.
I left MacGruder’s wound, stumbled to the television, and hit the power button just as the scorpion landed on the man’s screaming face. I took a deep breath.
The doorbell rang. I ran to the door and opened it. Old Man Wetherspoon stood there, at the entrance, sopping wet. A jagged lightning bolt broke the sky. Rain fell in torrents, splashing up from the porch in the dark morning light.
“Storm came through just as I left,” the Old Man said, stepping inside, brushing sheets of water off his rubberized sleeves. “Even twenty years ago we didn’t have these goddamned flash monsoons. I’ll never get used to them.”
He stopped in the hallway.
“So…whose house is this? What’s the emergency?”
“MacGruder’s. That’s him on the living room floor,” I said. “He’s about to die.”
The Old Man’s jaw clenched. I pointed toward the back of the house. We walked to MacGruder. Wetherspoon stooped to the body and inspected it, lifting the eyelids, feeling at the jugular, gingerly pulling the towel away from the Atman and the wound. At a touch, the device singed his fingertip, and he recoiled with a curse. He stood up and rubbed at his face with his open hand. Focus fell across his face.
“Did he butcher himself—or was that you?” Wetherspoon said.
“That was me. I had to. The damned thing’s killing him.”
“Now he’s dying of blood loss, Joe.”
“But I had to do this. I saw this happen before, Neal,” I said. “That journalist with your papers—Jim O’Keefe. He died right in front of me. His Atman heated up, he went into convulsions, and he fell into some kind of septic shock right outside the funeral home. Died in minutes.”
Wetherspoon stared at me, hard, for a few seconds. His arms crossed, he looked calm. But that businesslike grimace on his face was something I have never seen before.
“Do you have a pen?” he said.
I laughed and pointed at him.
“Goddamnit, Neal. What, you want to record a dying man’s pulse? Is this your part of Project 137? What goddamned paper can you even find outside your office?”
Wetherspoon didn’t blink. He held out his hand.
“Joe, give me a pen,” he said.
I noticed a desk across the room. I reached inside a cup and pulled out a dozen ancient ballpoints. I thrust a fistful of them at the Old Man.
“You want pens? Here are some goddamn pens,” I said.
The Old Man inspected, then plucked a single black one out of the bunch. He held it up between his index finger and thumbs, looking at me pointedly. Then he stooped to inspect the body again. He pulled aside the towel and glared at the Atman.
“Knife,” the Old Man said.
I searched around, found the fishing knife next to his foot, and handed it over.
The Old Man used the knife to pry up the device. The blood started flowing again, but Wetherspoon’s hands worked slowly, they worked with assurance. Holding the opening at the side of the Atman, he probed around with the sharp end of the pen until there was a soft click. He pushed inward. Something beeped. Then he removed it, wiped the blood on the carpet, flipped it around, and used it to push a button on the interface. The device’s light faded and died. Wetherspoon replaced the towel, wrapping it tightly to stop the bleeding, then stood.
“Well, that’s that,” he said. “And now…you probably have questions.”
“We don’t have time for questions—the man’s dying,” I said. “We’ve got to get him to a real hospital.”
“The Atman is off,” the Old Man said. “We just have to make sure he doesn’t lose too much blood, and then we stitch up these wounds from your botched surgery. We’ll get him somewhere safe—maybe Clara Maass. Not Saint Almachius.”
Wetherspoon pulled out his own Atman and sent a message. He stuffed it in his pocket and walked toward the back of the house, feeling his way around the rooms in the twilit house. I stooped to check MacGruder’s vital signs. They had improved, and the device was cooling down. I stood. My older colleague was rummaging around in the kitchen. I glanced around the corner. A bolt of lightning back-lit the Old Man’s shadow. I went toward it.
Wetherspoon found the switch for the kitchen just as I entered. The Old Man searched through cabinets and pulled out a glass. Then he walked right past me and back to the living room. He staggered a step or two, swaying over the carpet.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, rushing forward to catch him if he fell.
“I thought I saw it somewhere…ah, here,” the Old Man said, pulling out an amber-colored bottle from a collection on a nearby table. He poured some into his glass, downed it, and poured another. “It’s a good brand—a good year.” He held it out to me.
Anger jolted through me, and I slapped it out of his hand, and the glass thunked on the carpet. For a moment, Wetherspoon stood there, his fingers still spread, holding empty air.
“I don’t want a goddamned drink,” I said, through clenched teeth. “I want to know what the hell Project 137 is, and how you’re involved. You goddamned liar.”
Wetherspoon stared at me for a second, wide-eyed. A transformation came over his face, softening his features. Fatigue sagged his jowls. The Old Man seemed to age in mere moments. He nodded, and reeled back onto the nearest couch, like the drink had immobilized him. Setting the bottle at his feet, he held his head in his hands.
“You read the dossier. What else do you need? A diagram? A flow-chart?” he said.
I sat in a rickety wicker chair across from him and leaned forward.
“I read what I could,” I said. “I read enough to know that you’ve been lying to me since the first day we met.”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” Wetherspoon said, holding up a crooked finger. A fire flared in his eyes, for a moment, the contrarian look I’d always known and expected out of my mentor. “I’ve never lied to you. I respect you too much for that, Joe.”
Those words were too much, at that particular moment. I shook my fist at him.
“Goddamnit, Neal,” I said. “A far-flung conspiracy was right under my nose, and you’ve been involved in it for decades. Now it’s killing people.”
“Conspiracy—now there’s an interesting word,” the Old Man said. He picked up the bottle, set it on the ground between his feet. “If it’s just the powers-that-be playing their normal games—and everyone’s in on it—is that a conspiracy?”
I had no answer. I just stared at him. Wetherspoon continued.
“So you only read part of it. Tell me what you know, and I’ll fill you in on the rest.”
“Some sweeping program of human experiments, involving what I take to be biological and chemical weapons,” I said. “Gassing subways, inundating streets and homes with germs, without warning or clear documentation. It’s been going on for almost a hundred years. And you were there from the very beginning.”
The Old Man stared at me. I shrugged. But he smiled.
“If only it was that simple,” the Old Man said. “There’s so much you don’t know…”
Thunder rumbled, followed by a flash of lightning outside as the monsoons rattled the windows. I growled at him, a sound emerging from deep within I could not control.
“You’ve known the whole time! And it’s not like this is history—this is still going on. My patient is dying on the floor here because of it.”
My hands trembled with rage. I stood. I stepped toward Wetherspoon. My fist closed tight. I felt the urge to wind up and deliver a haymaker on the jaw of a man triple my age, a gnarled relic from a century before. Wetherspoon held up his hands, reading my thoughts. But his face was slack and impassive.
�
�Now, Joe,” he said. “I was no guiding hand in any of this. I’ve been against the Project since the turn of the millennium, and I’ve lobbied to get it discontinued. Why do you think they were after me? Why do you think I went into hiding? I wasn’t on vacation—they knew I was against the program, and that I had too much information to be able to just quietly slip away. So sit down and have a drink—I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Trust me—at least for the time it takes for me to tell you my side of this sordid story. At least you can give me that.”
I sneered.
“You’ve got five minutes, Old Man,” I said, using the nickname I’d never uttered to my mentor’s face before. “Five minutes. And then I start beating it out of you. And if you think I’m kidding, just try me.”
I paused. We locked eyes.
“Just try me,” I repeated, without blinking, clenching both fists with whitened knuckles.
Wetherspoon took a pull off the whiskey bottle. Releasing one finger off the bottle, he pointed at me.
“You’ve always had spunk, Joe,” he said. “That’s why you deserve nothing less than the unvarnished truth.”
“Do we need to move MacGruder?”
He shook his head.
“The bleeding’s stopped. He’ll live. We, on the other hand, might not. There’s not much time, Joe. I’m sorry I have to rush this explanation. What do you know about Maruta?
“Don’t know her,” I said.
“It’s not a person, Joe. It’s the Japanese word for ‘logs,’ Joe,” said Wetherspoon. “You know what the Bureau calls the basement of Saint Almachius? The lumber mill.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my stomach bottoming out.
“Back before either of us were born, during a kaleidoscope of horrors once called World War II, the Japanese had a biological warfare unit. They called it Unit 731,” said Wetherspoon. “Its leader was Shiro Ishii.”
“Shiro Ishii?” I said. “Like the one who’s been logging into the hospital terminals?”
“Not exactly, Joe. Let’s just say Ishii made sure he’d be around a long time after he died,” Wetherspoon said. “So, when Unit 731 struck a deal with the Americans, and crossed the Pacific, Joe they just flipped it. It became Project 137, Joe.”
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