Project 137

by Seth Augenstein

  “Don’t really mean anything? What does that mean? What are you doing to her?”

  The nurse shook her head.

  “I told you, Joe—we all need to make sacrifices. Sometimes the most painful ones are the most necessary. After all, Mary is my friend, too. We’ll just have to wait and see what the experts have planned.”

  She patted me on the cheek with her latex palm, then turned back to her Atman.

  The white fog had completely cleared from the left room. A team in NBC suits streamed in from a side door and took readings throughout the small space, checks of the ambient air near the corpse. It was a silent flurry of activity. Some felt for a pulse at the jugular vein of the corpse, others removed some wires from his wrist and chest, peered inside his throat with a speculum, prodded the tongue, lifted the eyelids, inspected the unblinking stare. A half-dozen needles were stuck in the arms, blood was drawn. The largest member of the group walked up with a large cranial saw and positioned himself at Wetherspoon’s head, lining up for the first stroke of the razor-sharp teeth into the skull. But another member of the team held up a hand, wagging a gloved finger in the face of the sawman, whose shoulders slumped as he lowered the cranium cutter in evident disappointment. They continued collecting data on the cadaver. It was an orgy of violence, of precision brutality in the name of science.

  “And to think,” Betty mused, “That Old Man lived over a century, for millions of heartbeats—and all it took was a single breath of his own gas to stop it forever. Truly, I think there’s some kind of lesson right there. Probably something more poetic than scientific.”

  “You bitch,” I said.

  “Save the commentary, Joe,” she said, pointing to the other panel in the wall.

  Abbud, maskless, walked in from the right side of Mary’s room. An elfin figure in a mask and cap followed him. Abbud checked his Atman, then said something. A tall male nurse came in behind them, pushing a cart with gleaming steel implements. The three split up. Abbud did a circle around Mary, looking her over, talking into his Atman. The small person with him tapped into their own Atman—a stance I recognized but couldn’t quite place. The male nurse arranged the implements, holding them up for inspection. Forceps, a turkey baster, a scalpel, another speculum. I tugged again at my bonds.

  “Well, this is no fun,” Betty said. “We can’t hear anything going on. Let me get some sound here.”

  She tapped at her Atman. Seconds later, Abbud’s voice came through the tiny speaker embedded at the base of her thumb.

  “Can you hear me now?” he said, glancing through the two-way mirror.

  “Loud and clear,” Betty said. “Doctor, we have an audience today. A neutral third party to peer review your data.”

  Everyone laughed—except for me.

  “Dr. Barnes, I presume,” Abbud said, holding up a latex-gloved hand. “Hello, Joe. I’m glad you could finally be let in on the Project. Some of the progress we’ve made.”

  “If you hurt my wife, I will kill you, Abbud. You hear me?”

  On the other side of the mirror, Abbud giggled, and waved his hand dismissively.

  “Joe, Joe, Joe. No reason to be hostile,” he said, a split second’s delay between his gestures behind the window and his voice coming through Betty’s Atman. “There’s very little chance at all that Mary will suffer any permanent effects. She’s been extremely resilient to the toxins over the last three months, you know.”

  Taking a turn around the unconscious form on the examination chair, Abbud made some notes on the device on his wrist. His hand drifted to the table, and he picked up a scalpel. He held the blade high, and it spliced a ray of light. He smiled.

  “But I’d say there’s a distinct chance—maybe thirty percent, maybe more—of severe blood loss, and there just isn’t that much plasma on hand at the hospital today. So really, Joe—we should all brace ourselves for anything.”

  Setting the scalpel back on the table, he glanced through the two-way glass. This time he stared directly at me.

  “Because after all—there’s nothing definite in medicine.” He smiled. “As I have told you many times over our years working together.”

  A door swung open on the other side, and Abbud snapped to attention. In walked Dr. Yoshiro Fujimi, also maskless. Swinging around his neck was my own stethoscope, which he promptly flung aside. The speaker cut out on Betty ’s wrist Atman. Fujimi was enraged. He looked like a madman in a manic episode, hands swinging up toward the ceiling, spit flying out of his mouth, his normally-sculpted hair exploding at its part like a baseball ripped at its seams. Abbud cowered, backing away a few steps toward the corner. The tiny masked person sidestepped and exited out through the door, still tapping into their Atman, not even looking up. The male nurse just stood at attention. Betty left my side and darted out through the door.

  Something was amiss, amid their chaotic plan. There would never be a better time to free myself. As Fujimi continued his silent ravings, I yanked and tore against the straps. The prong on the strap around the left wrist was protruding the slightest bit. If I rotated my arm, the leather would come farther up the metal pin, almost to the hole. I tried twice, but it wouldn’t go. It just wouldn’t go, no matter how much I cursed at it. All that separated me from freedom and saving Mary was a tiny goddamned prong. I tried again. Again, nothing. A noise coming, a sound of footsteps. I leaned back. Betty Bathory came back through the door. Her hair was awry, tendrils of it snaking up off her shoulders.

  “A hell of a day, Joe,” she said. “You know those days when you’d swear the world was spinning slower? Well, this is one of those days.”

  I was just waiting for her to turn away so I could keep working at the strap. I glared at her, unable to contain the hatred coursing hot in my eyes. But she stared right back, her wrist raised to her face, one edge of her mouth curling up in amusement. For a second our gaze was locked in a magnetic hold. She turned, and I worked again frantically at the strap.

  But she spun back around quickly, and I froze.

  “Don’t get too excited, Joe. Even if you undo that strap, I’ll still have this,” she said, holding up a taser that she zapped in the air. “I’ll knock you flat on your ass. So be good—and pay attention. They’re about to begin.”

  On the other side of the mirrors the scene was orderly again, three men ready for the big procedure. Abbud assumed a position at the base of the chair, his Atman raised to record. Fujimi had calmed, and he was drawing the mask slowly over his face. He was now the model of concentration, brow creased, eyes narrowed, spectacles tilted on his sweaty nose. Approaching the unconscious form of Mary, he rolled the sleeves of his lab coat up his arms.

  “Goddamnit! I’ll kill you, motherfucker!” I screamed.

  But it was no use. Betty had turned the microphone off, and the wall was soundproof. Fujimi didn’t even flinch, and his voice was steady as he spoke.

  “Maruta number M616754, of the P-137 Almachius sample group, prepped for procedure,” he said. “Female is 37 years old, fertile. The Maruta has been given regular regimen of the Q-36 Ovulation Modulator to simulate pregnancy. The Maruta has been dosed with indexed toxin for four months through drinking water supply. Latest observations to be recorded at the moment of conception with control-group sperm.”

  The words came out in a torrent, and I was focused mostly on freeing myself from the cuffs. But the words echoed in my ears, and one by one they fell into place into my brain—their meaning, their import.

  Drinking water.

  To. Simulate. Pregnancy.

  Moment. Of. Conception.

  Control group.

  Sperm.

  Abbud had drifted to the space between Mary’s spread legs. His back was to the mirror. The Atman was still raised. But he pushed out his elbows, and the ends of his lab coat billowed out to either side. Then he was fiddling with something around his midsection. Then he stooped ever so slightly. I angled my head to get a better look, even though, in my utter horror, I already understoo
d what they intended to do.

  Abbud was unfastening his pants. Turning, he showed himself to be naked from the waist down—the pale fleshiness of the spindly legs, the black hairy mass surrounding a tiny stiffening member. A profane smile spread across his face. Fujimi stepped forward, held up a finger.

  “One second, doctor,” Fujimi said. “Before you begin the operation, we may yet appeal to the scientific curiosity of Dr. Barnes.”

  He tapped on the glass.

  “Dr. Barnes—can you hear me? Let me explain one thing. We’re working on a toxin used as a kind of prophylactic we’ve been giving your wife. The entire time she believed herself pregnant, it was really this pregnancy simulator. Her doctor, Abbud here, has been taking an antitoxin for about the same four-month period in preparation.”

  “Why?” I screamed.

  “Why, you may ask,” Fujimi continued, unhearing on the other side of the soundproof wall. “Simply, doctor, we’re testing population-level birth control. The world’s growth hasn’t slowed down like it’s supposed to. It has accelerated. We’ll be at twenty billion people by the year 2100. We believe we can fix that. We believe we can make a better living through a bit of chemistry. But we also need to make sure we can reverse it when necessary. Hence, the coupling you’re about to see—the test of whether the right toxin and antitoxin can cancel each other out, and whether the Maruta can conceive.”

  “That’s my wife, you motherfucker,” I said. “Not a goddamned log.”

  “Now the Maruta,” Fujimi said, continuing on, still unable to hear me, “is in a sedated state, so she won’t remember a thing. And lowered doses of this birth control toxin actually accelerate the maturation of the fetus. Essentially, Mary will have a child at the expected time. She will have the baby, and she will love the baby. Only you—and the Project—will be the wiser.”

  The doctor glanced over at Abbud, who still stroked his weedy genitals, as he stared up at the ceiling with a blissful look on his disgusting face. Fujimi patted him on the shoulder.

  “All this, of course, if the good doctor is successful in his injection,” he said.

  The three men in the room laughed, as Abbud’s hand kept working his penis.

  Betty hit a button. A light came up on her Atman, and she held it to my face. The microphone light glowed. I roared.

  “If you touch her…” I growled.

  “I want you to know this is a harmless procedure,” Fujimi said, still laughing. “We’ve done it at least five hundred times in this very room. It’s an age-old procedure; it’s been going on as long as there’s been a human race. Birds do it, bees do it. Just here there’s a bit more biochemistry to it.”

  More general laughter. I roared.

  “So the procedure is rape. Rape in the name of Science, right?”

  Fujimi shook his head, pacing the floor at the back wall, behind Mary’s head.

  “You have such an ugly way of putting things, Doctor,” he said, stroking a lock of Mary’s hair from her brow. “Don’t be so dramatic. We usually use a syringe. But Dr. Abbud said he was eager to administer the X-factor himself.”

  Abbud waggled his cock at the mirror. Everyone on the other side laughed again. Pointing at me, Fuijimi approached the two-way glass.

  “In a few hours, you’ll have your own choice,” Fujimi said, wagging his finger. “It’s up to you which side of the scalpel you’ll end up on, Dr. Barnes.”

  His voice lingered slowly on the last word. No one moved. A silence hung—the doctors and the nurse on one side, and Betty Bathory and myself on the other. Abbud continued masturbating with a stupid grin on his face.

  A crash broke through the Atman. The three on the other side jumped, then scampered to the left. My heart leapt. I tried to sit up, but the straps held me fast.

  A gun loomed in from the right side of the window. Two uniformed arms leveled it at the three. And then the shoulders and face of the gunman came into view.

  It was Lanza. I whooped.

  The encounter played out silently. Lanza shook the gun, yelled something. His face was set hard, like stone. The three men retreated toward the back-left corner, Abbud shuffling foot to foot, trying to drag his pants up from the floor. Mary’s head rolled on her shoulders. Everything moved in silence.

  Mary, wake up, Lanza’s lips said, grabbing her knee, shaking her.

  What… she said, head stirring, eyes still closed.

  “Zo, get her out!” I yelled.

  Lanza’s head picked up, like he had heard. He looked around and squinted at the two-way mirror for a moment. But he turned back to Mary.

  Mary, get up, Lanza’s lips said. He undid the straps carefully on her legs, averting his eyes from seeing underneath her gown. Lowering her legs to the ground, he loosened the straps on her wrists, still pointing the gun at the three men in the corner.

  “Zo!” I hollered.

  Lanza turned to the mirror, shielding his eyes from the overhead lights as he tried to peer through the two-way glass.

  Joe? said Lanza’s lips.

  “Zo, get Mary out!”

  Betty, who hadn’t moved at all since the unexpected arrival of the cop, rushed through the door on the left side of our room, the entryway the orderlies had carried me through. Lanza approached the glass, shielding his eyes with his hands.

  In the background, the male nurse had removed his mask. It was Culling. His lip curled to a sneer. He took a step forward, then another. His hand felt along the tray of instruments and grasped a scalpel. I watched in horror as the nurse crept up behind Lanza, the blade raised.

  “Behind you!” I screamed, my screech reaching an unholy register.

  Lanza stepped to his left—revealing the reflection of the nurse behind him. He spun around just as Culling lunged at him with the scalpel, bringing it down in an arc at Lanza’s neck. Three flashes burst from the gun, as they both fell out of sight beneath the window.

  Another flash of the pistol. Then—nothing.

  That moment was an agonizing eternity. A wave of nausea rushed up my throat. I only vaguely saw Mary stir, weakly trying to raise herself from the chair. The two doctors rushed at the spot where the two combatants had fallen. Two more pistol flashes and Abbud dropped his pants and fell, face frozen in an instant, blasted once through the chest. The other shot, however, missed Fujimi. It splintered a hole in the wall over his head just as he retreated to the other room and into the crowd of NBC-suited men.

  The gunfire had roused Mary. She was on her feet, her hands raised to her face in horror. She stepped forward twice in a druggy shuffle and stooped down below the windowframe. Seconds passed, the medical experiments room on the right was like a still-life painting—the tiny bullet holes, the wispy blood spatter on the far wall from Abbud’s exploded heart. I waited—and prayed.

  How could all this insanity, this senseless carnage, be happening a few floors below the rooms where I had saved lives for years? How could all the horrors of death have been secreted just yards beneath all the miracles of modern science?

  I hollered with a hoarse throat as Mary emerged with Lanza, one of his arms around her shoulder. The hand still holding the gun was coated in blood, clutching at his trapezius muscle. He said something to her, she nodded and said something back, and they headed toward the exit on the right side of the room. They opened the door and limped out, drugged and wounded. They disappeared outside.

  “Oh, thank God. Thank. God,” I said.

  I resumed working my way at the left wrist strap. Twice the pin held fast, sliding back into place just as I thought it was about to give. But on the third attempt, it poked up and out of the hole. One hand was now free. I reached over and undid the other, then worked at my legs. I rubbed my wrists and stood—wobbly on my feet, and groggy from the drugs. A pair of nurse’s scrubs lay on the floor. I took off the flimsy gown and got dressed.

  Looking up, my eye caught a dramatic turn unfolding in the left room. Fujimi was in midst of the swarm of NBC suits. The white figures en
circled their unprotected boss, who had just appeared in the contaminated room. He was barking orders at them, pointing toward the door on the left. But they didn’t move. They just looked at him with curious, tilted heads. He tried to make a step in that direction, but two stepped forward to block his way. Fujimi raved and shouted, his hair flopping side to side. But before he could work himself into another fury, he doubled over in a coughing fit. Clutching at his throat, hacking, he collapsed atop the body of Old Man Wetherspoon.

  The biohazard specialists surrounded their latest subject. At first a few gestured at one another, apparently in deliberation. With a few shrugs and a few nods, they closed in. Two pulled Wetherspoon’s body down from the chair. Three more pulled their struggling boss up in its place. As Fujimi was held down, four others strapped down his outstretched limbs. The ring of suited researchers held up their instruments, pointed them at their new Maruta, and another brought over the tray of surgical implements, a few grabbing swabs and syringes. The hulking cranium cutter slapped the blade of the bonesaw in his palm, waiting impatiently. Another reprogrammed the vital-signs scoreboard up on the wall.

  “Karma’s a bitch,” I said.

  On my side, the door flew open. Mary appeared, limping in, Lanza’s bloody arm clinging to her neck. Her free hand carried the gun. Lanza slid to the floor.

  “Oh my God,” I said, rushing forward, catching the bulk of the dead weight. Lanza smiled up at me through dreamy, glassy eyes.

  “My hero,” Lanza said.

  I tore the edge off my discarded gown and pressed it down on Lanza’s wound. I glanced at Mary. She wiped some of the blood off on the thigh of her own gown, then kissed me. A joy of relief surged through me at her touch. Her jaw clenched.

  “We need to get out of here—now,” she said, sliding the magazine out of the gun, counting the rounds. “We don’t have enough ammunition to shoot our way through any hospital security.”

  “Too risky,” Lanza added, grimacing. “Who knows what kind of guards the Bureau has down here.”