Project 137

by Seth Augenstein

  “I could believe you, Joe,” he said coldly. “But that doesn’t change the fact I have a job to do. I have to follow orders. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Motioning toward the doorway, Lanza unclasped the holster of his service pistol. But he didn’t draw the gun—instead he stepped aside to let me pass. We walked, one-and-two, down the hallway. We started down the stairs. I groaned as the cuffs seemed to tighten on my aching wrists.

  “So all the years we grew up together mean nothing. Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve gone through. All that is nothing,” I said.

  “It’s not nothing,” Lanza said, pushing me, making me descend quicker. “But you know how it is, Joe. It’s a job. If I don’t do it, they’ll find someone else who will. Someone’s always watching—and listening.”

  Lanza tilted his head to the side, toward the standard-issue camera on the epaulet of his uniform. Everything was being recorded, in real-time, and monitored in some far-off bureaucratic office. We neared the bottom of the stairs.

  “Sure,” I sneered sardonically. “Makes sense. I understand.”

  “You know how it is, with child support and alimony and everything,” Lanza said. “If you’re as innocent as you say you are, you don’t have to worry. Judges and juries don’t just go off half-cocked.”

  I stumbled a bit, and Lanza went around me to steady my walk. It was then, or never. In one swoop, I shoved him and yanked at the gun in the holster. But the clasp had been refastened. Lanza easily brushed me aside and pinned my neck to the wall with his forearm.

  Face mashed against the wallpaper, I felt the hard barrel of the pistol jammed into the base of my skull. I could feel a different kind of blackness seep into the corners of my senses—but this was a dangerous, complete nothingness.

  “See…where…coming from,” I spat. “But…listen… You’re…like…brother.”

  Lanza released me, and I gasped for breath. He holstered the gun and snapped the clasp. He shook his head at me.

  “We can talk on the way to the hospital,” Lanza said. “But don’t do anything stupid like that again, bro.”

  I shuffled behind him to the door. I wouldn’t try anything again—escape was out of the question. Outside Lanza’s patrol car waited, idling. My best friend pushed me to the back of the car, stuffing my head down inside like any other perp, slamming the door behind. Lanza climbed behind the wheel.

  “About these cuffs,” I said. “The least you can do is toss me the keys. I can’t run or anything.”

  “No can do, bro,” Lanza said, looking past me as he backed out of the driveway in the street. “Protocol.”

  The car cruised along the suburban streets. At first, I stared at my friend’s eyes in the rearview mirror. But then I turned to the window, watching the yards passing by, house after house with the same dimensions, setbacks, shutters, and color—all exactly like mine.

  “You wanted to talk,” Lanza said.

  “I was going to tell you about how Mary is a guinea pig for some psychotic doctors engaged in a massive conspiracy, and how I needed your help to save her from them. But that’s a moot point now.”

  Lanza pressed a dashboard button. Pinpoints of light there and on his epaulet flicked off. He nodded at me in the rearview.

  “Alright. We’ve got a minute or two before dispatch notices the cameras are off.”

  I took a deep breath. This was my last chance to get my friend to understand, to help me save myself, save Mary.

  “Mary was taken to Saint Almachius,” I said. “She’s part of a Bureau experimentation program in the hospital basement. They take missing persons there, runaway teenagers and homeless people and prostitutes who just vanish. Thousands all over the country disappear every year. A lot of them go into that basement, and ones like it, every single day across the country.”

  Lanza was silent for a moment. He snorted and started to laugh.

  “Joe, I don’t know what you expect,” Lanza said, shaking his head. “You’ve got twenty-two counts of murder against you. I’ve been around long enough to know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Nobody’s ever charged for no reason. They have your fingerprints all over the scene at the school and at the apartment complex. Video of you at each place.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face and breathed hard, struggling.

  “They said you were the only one who could have had the expertise and opportunity to put together the attacks, goddamnit. They’re even saying you poisoned that poor bastard you framed for the plague outbreak and the school bombing. What was his name—Le Mallard?”

  Lanza paused, catching my unblinking glare in the rearview.

  “You’ve been acting crazy. You just need help,” Lanza continued. “And if you’re really innocent, you’ll have your day in court. Justice will be served.”

  Moments of silence. I breathed deep and laid down in the backseat.

  “Nothing to say?” Lanza said, glancing over his shoulder down at me.

  “If my own best friend, my only family I have besides my wife, won’t believe me,” I said softly, “then why should I bother? It’s over. There’s no chance for Mary or the baby. None at all.”

  Lanza banged the steering wheel with his fist.

  “You’re delusional, you know that?” he said. “Your wife is in the hospital because she’s sick, and your baby is sick. Nothing more. There’s no big conspiracy out there, Joe. How could something like that even exist?”

  I remained silent in the backseat. There was absolutely nothing left to say.

  “I get it,” Lanza continued. “You’ve lost your mind. The old Joe I know never would have gone off the deep end like this. That’s why they sent me to pick you up and bring you to the hospital first, before the jail. So you can get treatment.”

  I sat up straight in the seat. Our eyes locked in the rearview.

  “See—they want you to bring me to Saint Almachius,” I said, my voice rising. “When’s the last time you heard of anyone wanted for murder taken to the hospital first?”

  “I arrest injured suspects all the time. We take them to jail after they’re stabilized.”

  “Exactly,” I said, thumping my chest, my arms, my face like an ape, with my handcuffs rattling harsh and metallic. “Where’s my injury, Zo? Why do they need to take me to the hospital when they could just take me right to jail and start due process? Under FOJA’s grand jury rules, they could have me indicted before midnight. Why wait?”

  Lanza glanced at me, then turned away, shaking his head, his brow furrowed.

  “Your injury’s in your brain, you maniac,” he said.

  Lanza pressed a button, and the lights came on again on the dashboard and on the shoulder of his uniform. The gray shutter between the driver’s side of the window and the backseat whirred shut, separating them. I was shut in. I couldn’t even hear the police radio crackling.

  It didn’t matter. The cop cruiser was almost to Saint Almachius anyway. The familiar streets and traffic lights passed by, and then the hospital was dead ahead. My breath caught in my chest.

  TO FREEZE TIME ITSELF

  U.S.A., 1968

  The limousine came long and low around the turn and rolled toward the armed guard. It slowed as it approached the checkpoint, then stopped at the gate. They always stopped the limousine, no matter how many times their seniormost expert Dr. Fujimi had come through, day after day and year after year. A moment’s pause, and the driver’s window lowered with an electric whir. The guard raised his hand to his brow—but not quickly enough for Fujimi’s liking.

  “Morning, Sam. Morning, Dr. Fujimi,” said the guard, saluting the blacked-out windows in the back of the limousine.

  “Morning, Corporal Grimes,” said Sam, smoke rising around his beefy face, up to the brim of his cap. “How’s the girl?”

  “She’s doing a bit better, Sam,” Grimes said. “She sleeps through the night, at least. The bleeding stopped. The neighbors have stopped complaining.”

&nbs
p; Sam smiled, stretching the folds in his face as he blew smoke out his nostrils.

  “That’s great to hear, Mike,” he said. “Really great.”

  Grimes smiled and scurried back to the guardhouse, reached in, and punched the button. The bar of the gate started to lift. Grimes squared his shoulders to the limousine and saluted again.

  “My regards to the doctor,” Grimes said, looking again to the black windows. “And please thank him again for me. I don’t know if he can hear me.”

  Sam touched the brim of his chauffeur’s cap, smiled sympathetically.

  “I’ll get him the message,” he said, as he raised the window of the limousine.

  Fujimi heard him, but only glared through the blacked-out windows. The car zoomed through the gate. It rolled through the base, past the signs for the laboratories and the euphemistic facility names—cleaning, grouping, the recreation center. From the back of the limo Yoshiro Fujimi—née Shiro Ishii—watched it all pass, as he had done every day for years. Ever since he arrived in America for his new life, with an entire facility at his disposal. All he had to do was be this new person Dr. Fujimi, and he could continue his work. A guard standing on the corner of Ditto Avenue stopped and saluted the limo. Ishii fought down the urge to scratch the unending itch under the scarf around his neck. He glanced up and Sam’s eyes were staring at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Doc, I don’t know if you heard, but Cpl. Grimes said his daughter’s doing better. He thanked you,” Sam said, making the turn, touching his cap at another guard who stood there saluting.

  Ishii waved his hand dismissively. The itch in his throat had vanished as quickly as it had come, and relief washed over him. Perhaps the narcotics were finally kicking in.

  “I wanted to make sure you heard, since I know you took a keen interest in the girl’s case,” continued Sam. “A lot of people really appreciated what you’ve done for the infected kids.”

  Ishii just nodded. The limousine slowed, made another turn around the edge of the low brick building, and went all the way to the back, stopping at the usual spot next to the dumpster with the Bureau seal on the side. That seal let the rest of the Fort Detrick know this was a place for the Project—and no one else. It was the secret center of it all. The secret of secrets.

  “Here we are, Doc,” said Sam, getting out.

  Ishii struggled to pull himself out of the seat, but Sam opened the door and his powerful hands lifted him and propped the doctor up on his feet, with no more effort than if Ishii was a plush doll. Ishii nodded again, held out a one-dollar bill with a tremoring hand. Sam pushed it back at the doctor.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Doc,” said Sam. “No tips.”

  He ushered the doctor to the low green door, which Ishii unlocked with a key off his belt.

  “I’ll be right here, Doc,” said Sam, patting him on the shoulder. “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

  Ishii nodded and hobbled inside. Lurching down the smooth gray hallways under the bare lightbulbs, Ishii made the three turns to the stairwell, then carefully stepped down, clinging to the railing with his damned shaking hands. It grew with each step. Then he was under the emergency lamp, which cast its faint glow at the door. Ishii used his key and went inside.

  The hallways were bare, the doors all shut as the experiments proceeded. Ishii glanced through each eye-level window. Inside were gowned and masked surgeons: one washing up at the sink in one room, another donning gloves, another calling back to a nurse, a still-silent drill dripping blood onto the sheet atop a subject, a nurse in another room turning a wet spattered skull over in her gloved hands philosophically. Ishii glanced in at each, then kept going, the routine of a Monday morning. Business moved on as usual. The work proceeded—and would continue without him, he thought absently, still shuffling forward.

  From far-off, he heard music. The tinny echo of Frank Sinatra’s voice cut by the whine of a power tool and the mechanical whine as it ground through bone. Ishii smiled for the first time that day. The troops liked their work, and they were making progress. That much he could always be proud of.

  His office was the one at the end of the hallway, a room only slightly bigger than an American jail cell. This too had become part of his new life in this strange new American world.

  They had put him here on his third full day at Detrick. He had taken one look at it and turned on his heel. Still carrying his box of books and papers from the Manchukuo days, he had marched right to the commander’s office, and he had yelled—in Japanese—about how dissatisfactory the working conditions were and how was he expected to get any work done when they stick him in jail like a common criminal, and so on. The commander tapped his cigar in an ashtray and nodded. He pushed a button on the intercom next to him and barked something in muddled English. He had barely taken his finger off the button when two MPs arrived, threaded their arms underneath Ishii’s elbows, and carted him off. The struggle was violent. In a few minutes they arrived back at the same bare room with the single small desk. The two grunts dropped him in the chair, turned, and walked out. Groaning, Ishii dropped the box and slumped to the side. His ribs ached. He held his hand to his nose. It came back bright red with blood. He reached for the tissues at the corner of the desk and stuffed one up each nostril to stanch the flow. Without another word he unpacked some of his boxes, his hands shaking in rage as he placed each binder and book on the empty shelves in perfect chronological order, preparing for his new job. There would be no further bargaining. He was employed by the Company, and they would give him the tools he needed, and nothing more.

  Almost twenty years later, Ishii’s hands shook with age and illness as he packed up that same box, now yellowed and tattered. His weak fingers slid small sheaves of yellow brittle papers with Japanese characters into the small box. The newer, whiter papers were written in English. They had been removed on handtrucks by personnel over the weeks Ishii had been on sick leave. He wasn’t surprised. The last news they had of him could not have been promising. They must have assumed the worst. But like everyone else before them, he had proven them wrong. By sheer dint of will he had again triumphed where only defeat had been possible.

  He laughed—but no sound came, only the pain again. He pulled down the scarf and lay his neck bare, finally giving in to the urge to scratch around the raw hole in his throat. He lightly fingered the tender flesh around the bandage and felt the soothing sensation of his fingertips sating the dying nerves within.

  No good in being a medical researcher if you didn’t strive to further the work; what better place to start than on oneself? His subordinates at Detrick had fought him at every step, but eventually even they had to admit he had a point. If a doctor was willing to give his own body for science, then he deserved to be able to make that sacrifice. Ishii placed the last of the papers in the box, and he lashed it together with twine, triple-knotted.

  The papers he’d leave to the Unit. They would need them, with all the competition from Naito and Kitano, those reckless fools and their damned organization. The audacity to call it the Green Cross, to organize it as a corporation in plain sight. And all while working on the pandemic retrovirus…and negotiating with the Russians. The Unit—the Project, whatever the idiots in America called it—would need everything he’d left behind, to keep ahead of those morons.

  A tiny knock at the door. Ishii felt a tingle through him as he heard it—the same knock as every morning for five years. He shuffled over, leaning on the chair. He twisted the knob, and slowly pulled the door inward.

  There stood Leslie, blonde bobbed hair, white lab coat open to reveal a green dress sheathing her buxom hourglass figure. She held some files in her arms.

  “Dr. Fujimi,” she said, her jaw dropping open, her stupid eyes bulging wide. She set the files aside on a nearby shelf, and then grabbed his arm, pulling his weight onto her shoulder. “Yoshiro, you need to sit down.”

  She pulled him and, without complaint, he shuffled in her direction toward
the one chair left in the office. She helped him ease down into it. The perfume off her breasts caressed his nostrils. As she slowly withdrew, his hands lingered at the small of her back. She froze in place, compliant and tense, willing, but his hands fell at his sides. She straightened, her dramatically circumscribed eyes wide as they searched his face. She reached out and touched his cold hand, which lay on the armrest, but he could barely feel her warmth. She kneeled beside him. Her eyes stared into the hole in his throat—she couldn’t meet his gaze for more than a moment. A tear tumbled down her cheek. Her lips, pasted with pale lipstick, trembled.

  “Yu,” she said softly. “Yu, I love you. I didn’t know if you would come back, if you would get out of the hospital. They wouldn’t tell us anything. I called the house but hung up before she answered. I prayed…”

  Her pinky rubbed his thumb. He could feel that, at least—the warm touch that had sustained him for five years. But he withdrew his hand. There was no time for any of this—he had no time left. He stood, knees unsteady, and he shook his head at her.

  The years of working together, in the lab, in the conference room, and even those hours still on the clock in the plastic-sheeted motels. All of that seemed to surge through those pale blue eyes of hers as she stared at him, the eyes narrowing, turning to glass. This woman was the last one who would ever love him.

  Well, he was glad all that was over now, at least.

  As if sensing his thoughts, her face crinkled.

  “Just as well that you can’t talk, Yu,” she said. “You’d probably just say something hateful to me, or about America. How Shibayama is so much prettier this time of year. I’m so sick of hearing about those fucking cherry trees. That fucking country.”

  She ripped the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and threw it on the ground.

  “I guess you need a wheelchair so you can get out of here?” she said, sneering, half-smiling. She wiped her eyes. “Well, let that be my parting gift to you, Dr. Fujimi.”