The Pain Colony

by Shanon Hunt

  “Hi, Sarah!” Barnett called back. “Don’t you sit out in this sun for much longer.”

  The woman waved in response.

  “Sarah is a six-month split,” Barnett explained. “She’s been coming for years.”

  “What’s a six-month split?” Garcia asked.

  “She’s here from April to September every year. She’s a strong believer in our holistic approach to pain management. In six months, she’s able to manage her crippling arthritic pain for the rest of the year. She spends an hour a day in our sensory deprivation tank and another hour a day on an inversion table.”

  Garcia winced, and Barnett laughed. “You just wait, young man. You’ll be thinking differently one day.”

  Malloy glanced at a handful of people walking together, listening to a guide walking slowly backward as he spoke.

  “Investor meeting,” she said. “They come out once or twice a year to see our latest technologies. Between you and me, I think they come for the free massage.”

  They arrived at what looked like a full-service medical center. Malloy raised an eyebrow at Garcia. This place was more than a spa. It could certainly handle spinal port implants.

  “We call this the infirmary, creatively enough,” Barnett said with a chuckle. “It’s similar to an outpatient surgical center. The infirmary was recently renovated with all-new, state-of-the-art surgical technology, but to be honest, it’s a pretty quiet place. We mostly do standard physicals and treat an occasional virus.”

  Malloy kept his expression carefully neutral.

  Barnett spoke to the nurse in the reception area, who hopped from her chair and trotted off down the hall.

  A few moments later, a doctor emerged. “Hi there. Jeremy Fitzgerald. I’m the attending here at the center.” His wavy, shoulder-length hair and deep tan made him look more like a surfer than a medical professional.

  Malloy introduced himself, and Garcia and explained why they were there.

  Dr. Fitzgerald winced regretfully. “Tyler Steele. Nice kid. I’m so sorry to hear that he’s passed.”

  Malloy hated it when people used the expression “passed,” like Tyler had passed into some new dimension where he was alive and well. It particularly irritated him when members of the medical community said it. A doctor of all people should know that Tyler hadn’t passed anywhere. He was dead.

  “Tyler was a nice young man, but he had the wrong idea about what we do here. He arrived hoping he’d be given easy access to opioids for his pain. However, we’re an opioid-free wellness center. We believe there are multiple ways to manage pain, but he wasn’t interested in learning. He left not long after arriving, if I recall—what, a couple of weeks?”

  He looked to Barnett, who nodded.

  “It’s a frequent problem with addicts or recovered addicts. They’ve been rewarded for so long by the immediate and powerful effects of the drugs they’ve taken that they have a difficult time accepting a drug-free pain strategy that takes days or even weeks to provide significant improvements. It’s a shame when we miss an opportunity to educate a young person. It could change the rest of their lives.”

  Malloy couldn’t help noticing the well-equipped surgical room they passed as they walked to his office. “Do any of your therapies involve the use of a spinal port?”

  “A pain pump? Absolutely not.”

  “What about something other than an opioid administered by a spinal port?”

  He shook his head. “Why do you ask?”

  “The victim was found with a small surgical hole at the base of his spine. We believe he was given a gene editing drug to manage his pain.” Malloy pulled out his folder and showed the doctor the picture that had been taken by the medical examiner.

  Dr. Fitzgerald studied it carefully. “I’m not calling that a pain pump. I’m not sure what it is. But I can tell you with certainty that there are no approved gene therapies for chronic pain, and certainly none that deliver the drug through the cerebral spinal fluid. I’d be awfully interested if there were.” He handed the picture back and looked at his watch. “I do need to get back to work. Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  Malloy thanked him, and Barnett pocketed her phone.

  “If you’ll give me a couple of minutes to rearrange a meeting,” she said, “I’ll be happy to show you around the facility and introduce you to some of our staff who might be able to offer additional insight. Perhaps we can talk you into a stay with us.”

  She flicked back a strand of hair with one alabaster hand, and Malloy wondered how old she was. Fifty? Sixty? Heck if he could tell.

  “We’d really appreciate that. Thank you.”

  As soon as Barnett disappeared back into the administrative building, Garcia reached for his cigarettes. Malloy turned away as the breeze sent the smoke into his face and strolled toward a lily pad pond. He couldn’t understand how someone could inhale cigarette smoke in this heat. It was hard enough to breathe.

  He took a seat on a bench in front of the pond. This really was a beautiful place. Several people, mostly older, were out and about, and a small group had gathered on a raised wooden platform to practice tai chi. Every guest wore the same outfit of white linen, which he found vaguely disturbing. It reminded him of a mental hospital in a horror movie.

  His phone vibrated. He didn’t recognize the number and sent it to voicemail. Garcia’s cigarette smoke seemed to be chasing him, so he stood and walked a few steps out of its path. His phone rang again with the same number. Barnett was nowhere in sight, so he answered the call.

  “Malloy.”

  A roar of white noise made him wince and yank the phone away from his ear. “Peter? Peter, are you there? Is that you?”

  He recognized the voice immediately. Was Jordan Jennings standing next to a goddamn jet engine?

  “Jordan, I’m kind of in the middle—”

  “They’re … germline cells!” Half the words were unintelligible. “The chimpanzees from Danny’s video. That’s what … with the Frankengene.”

  “Wait. Slow down, I can’t hear you. Why don’t you call me back when you get—”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Jordan bellowed over the noise. “That’s why they delivered the drug intravenously. They’re transfecting germ cells. They’re creating an F1 generation.”

  “I don’t understand.” He glanced up for Barnett, but still no sign of her. “Can you call me back this afternoon?”

  “Listen to me! Germline. Gene. Transfer.”

  He heard every word, but he still didn’t know what it meant. “What does that mean? Speak English.”

  A tall, well-built man pushing a young woman in a wheelchair was waving toward them.

  “Excuse me, sir?” the man called to Garcia.

  It was the smoking, dammit. This place couldn’t possibly allow smoking. Malloy took a preliminary step toward Garcia.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” he said into the phone. “I’ll have to discuss this—”

  “Peter! They’re making genetically engineered babies! A new generation. You have to find—”

  “I’ll call you later. I have to go now.” Malloy disconnected the line.

  Chapter 77

  Allison jounced around in the chair as Brad veered off the path in the direction of two men. One was an older man with a worn, leathery face and thinning blond hair, wearing slacks and a blazer. The other was a Hispanic man with long, straight hair and a T-shirt that read DEA. Cops. Were they looking for Austin? Or … her?

  Thankfully, Brad didn’t stop moving. He called out to the younger cop. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a no-smoking facility. Would you kindly extinguish your cigarette?”

  “My bad,” the man called back. He put out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe and pocketed the butt. That was nice.

  “I despise smoking,” Brad said. “And a guy as young as him? Shouldn’t he be vaping?”

  “Gosh, I can’t believe someone in your generation knows the word ‘vaping.’” She gri
nned at her own wit before she remembered she hated Brad.

  “Good one.” Although she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was smiling.

  He pushed her down a long, winding path for what seemed like half a mile until they reached a wrought-iron gate with a camera overhead.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re leaving the Vitapura and entering the Colony,” he said. “You’re going to love this place.” He pulled out his key card to unlock the gate and pushed her wheelchair through. The gate closed behind them with a slam and latched with a loud click that reminded her of a prison door.

  Her skin prickled as they entered what seemed like an entirely different world. “They’re kids!”

  Several buildings surrounded a large green courtyard. Young people, hundreds of them dressed in the same white linen clothing as she was, chatted animatedly in the courtyard, walked with purpose down the winding stone paths, or sat on the grass reading or writing. A small group sat on their knees in what looked like a meditative state. It looked like a college campus—well, like a college campus in heaven.

  Brad pushed her chair to a shady area under a tree that didn’t belong in the desert, looking over a courtyard of grass that also didn’t belong in the desert. Her spider senses were tingling. Something felt wrong about this.

  She turned her face up to Brad. “What is this place?”

  “This is the Colony.”

  She blinked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “It’s one of the largest studies of genetic engineering in humans in the entire world.”

  “What do you mean?” It looked like a world from a Twilight Zone episode. “They’re not human?”

  Brad laughed as if she were a cute girl he was trying to pick up in a bar instead of a ditzy blonde who’d just asked the dumbest question of all time. “Yeah, they’re human. They’ve come here from all walks of life, looking for a community of other young folks who can give them a sense of family. Some of them have been recruited from Jonathan’s outreach pain clinics across the country, but a lot of them—”

  She whipped around to face him. “Wait. You know about the pain clinics? They still exist?”

  “Of course they do. They offer a great service to local communities, especially in lower-income neighborhoods. The clinics are terrific. We move them every year or two to new areas, targeting different ethnic backgrounds. It’s important to test our gene therapies in diverse populations.”

  Indeed, this was the most ethnically diverse group of people she’d ever seen. They didn’t cluster together by racial background as she’d so often seen on college campuses, either. She was looking at a completely integrated group of seemingly content people.

  “So these people are all taking a genetic drug? Like a clinical trial? Is it … legitimate?”

  “Do you mean is it under the oversight of the FDA? No, it isn’t. I guess you could call it a very large biohacking experiment.”

  She was losing focus. A biohacking experiment. Biohacking, for god’s sake, like those crazies on YouTube who injected themselves with genetic drugs to try to build muscles or live longer. She’d seen a special on Netflix about it. But that was just some weird scientists who’d gone off the rails. She was now looking at hundreds of people being dosed with an unproven, potentially deadly genetic drug.

  God help us.

  “Are they all taking that pain drug? The one that killed those people?”

  “No, no, these kids here aren’t on any gene therapies yet, except for a handful who are testing our new memory elixir. These guys and gals are inductees. They have to prove their worth by showing sacrifice and commitment over time to ensure they’re appropriate for testing. And that’s where your brilliance comes in.”

  “How?” She was unable to turn away from a group of people lying on the grass talking. Everyone looked so content. Perhaps they were brainwashed.

  “We introduce them to extreme pain, similar to your pain experiments. The pain challenges, right? They learn to embrace pain as a positive experience. It’s used here as a tool, just like you used it with your subjects. They are literally living your thesis as inductees.”

  She stared at him, stunned. Her graduate school thesis. Her pain challenges. Jesus.

  Each of her thesis subjects had been challenged to withstand severe pain including electrical stimulation, extreme temperatures and pressure, and cardiovascular pain from endurance running. Using a variety of psychological profiling assessments, she was able to determine the effect of the pain challenges on their emotions, moods, personality traits, and self-image. The results had been undeniable. The subjects who had experienced and endured the most intense levels of pain had significantly higher positive self-images than those in the less challenged group or those who didn’t succeed. The challenged subjects described themselves as heroic, more courageous and virtuous than others—even superior to others. Some subjects reported visions and out-of-body experiences. Her experiment had been so innovative it had been published in the highly respected Journal of Neuroscience.

  But this … this was a gross misrepresentation of her research. She’d wanted to help people find ways to live with pain, not create a brainwashed, tortured cult.

  The air seemed to thicken, and she pressed a palm to her chest. She wanted to leave. She wanted to go back to the wellness center and pretend she’d never seen this place. But the pull of curiosity seemed to be stronger than her instinct to get out of there, because instead of insisting to leave, she asked, “How do you do that?”

  Brad beamed at the question. “Let me show you the purge room.”

  Chapter 78

  “Okay, I’m all yours,” Barnett announced as she stepped out of the administration building. “Let me take you through our amazing facilities.”

  Malloy had no desire to spend even an hour in such a pretentious resort, but just like drinking a second cup of dirt, it gave them an opportunity to ask questions in a way that the witness wouldn’t feel interrogated.

  “How much does a place like this cost?” Garcia asked, looking around at the perfectly manicured grounds. Grass wasn’t easy to keep up in the desert, and there seemed to be plenty of it. Not to mention the ornate stone fountains and koi ponds. And so many trees.

  “We have a three-month minimum stay at $18,000 a month. Packages go up from there. Most of our guests come either for the summer or the coldest winter months, which are quite mild here. We have some like Sarah, who you met earlier, who spend six months here.”

  Garcia exhaled a long whistle. “So $54,000 minimum? Shit.”

  “Tyler Steele was a restaurant manager,” Malloy said. “There’s no way he had that kind of money.”

  “Oh no, of course not.” She waved dismissively. “Mr. Steele came in through our nonprofit research corporation, for which we have a significant trust fund from various grants. His costs were covered.”

  “How does that work?” Malloy asked.

  “We have physicians across the US, and even some outside the US, who recommend patients without the ability to pay. For example, you might notice we have a lot of seniors here. But our mission is to find ways to manage pain starting at a young age, so we can develop pain management strategies that can be carried out over a lifetime. But most young folks can’t afford our fees.”

  “Most any-age folks,” Garcia added.

  “Touché! But that’s what the trust is for, to enable younger people suffering from chronic pain to start treatment at an early age. This provides us with data on how younger people respond to some of our therapies. Like this one.”

  They’d arrived at a small building, and she gestured for them to step inside. The lobby was unimpressive, with two more of the ubiquitous white sofas and a water cooler.

  “This way.” She led the way to a door and opened it, gesturing for them to enter.

  Malloy was instantly spooked. Illuminated only by a black light, the room was bare except for three glowing, egg-shaped contraptions large en
ough to hold a human. He felt like he’d stepped onto a science fiction movie set. The word that came to mind was pods.

  Garcia spoke first. “Sensory deprivation tanks.”

  “Yes, very good!” She clapped. “It’s an excellent but costly pain management strategy. The results are undeniable, though scientists can’t say definitively that the desensitizing effect is physical. Isolation tanks have quite a psychological effect. It’s possible that as our guests experience sensory deprivation, they also convince themselves that they feel no pain.”

  Malloy looked at her face to see if she really believed that.

  “All three are currently occupied,” she said, smiling to make her point. “And the effects last long after they leave the tank.”

  Garcia moved in for a better look at one of the tanks, but Malloy went outside to wait. Just being in the same room with those alien pods made him feel claustrophobic.

  Barnett followed him out. “I see you’re not a fan.”

  Slightly embarrassed, he shook his head.

  “Let’s move on. You probably want to inquire more about Mr. Steele. Let me take you over to our staff psychologist, Jeannette Meyers. Dr. Meyers is an accomplished PhD in both cognitive and behavioral psychology and has trained with some of the world leaders in hypnosis. She’s quite talented.”

  Garcia emerged from the tank room, and they followed her in silence. Malloy turned to Garcia, gesturing a cuckoo sign: This place is Looney Tunes. Garcia waggled his eyebrows, a look that said I wouldn’t mind a few weeks here. Malloy sighed. He frequently felt a generation older than Garcia, but this new age crap made him feel even older. His stomach burned, and he wished he had his Tums. Mostly, he just wanted to get the hell out of there.

  Chapter 79

  “With pain comes perfection. With perfection comes purification. This is the Father’s will for me. As a pure, I am responsible for the purification of the Colony and the propagation of purity into the world. This is the Father’s will for me.”