The Medusa Prophecy

by Cindy Dees

  He stepped forward, his brow creased in alarm. “Talk to me. What’s happened? Where are the others?”

  Another voice came out of the darkness, startling Karen badly. She lurched around. Anders. “The Medusas are back at camp. They’re safe.”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Jack demanded.

  Karen fell to her knees in the snow, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth.

  “Something’s wrong with her. She’s been getting more and more irritable the past few days. Has quit sleeping. Is prone to violent outbursts.”

  Anders’ words floated over her head, sound without meaning. She’d almost killed Jack. What had happened to her? Something had snapped, and she’d become the embodiment of evil—death directed at a man she respected. She might not always like him, but he’d certainly done nothing to her that warranted killing him, other than make her long-held dream of being in the Special Forces come true. She owed him gratitude, not murder!

  Anders continued somewhere in the distance. “She left camp by herself tonight. I followed her to keep an eye on her. It’s incredibly dangerous to travel alone out here.”

  “No kidding,” Jack growled.

  “I wouldn’t have let her kill you. I’d have shot her first.”

  Karen vaguely registered the rifle in Anders’ hand as he stepped forward. It didn’t matter. He could kill her flesh, but the monster would go on. It had no body, no form. It invaded minds and took them over, bending them to its twisted will.

  “Kill me?” Jack repeated in shock.

  “She had your back. Made a charge at you with her knife raised. She stopped at the last second before I pulled the trigger.”

  And then Jack was on his knees in front of her. She couldn’t look at him. She’d almost killed him. “Talk to me, Karen,” he said quietly. “What’s happened?”

  How was she supposed to tell him about the monster? About how it made a person hunger for blood, how it drove a soul over the edge into madness?

  An arm came around her shoulders. Not Jack. Anders. Warmth registered. She must be cold, then. But she felt nothing. She was empty. Had the monster gone?

  Anders spoke soberly. “We encountered some Samis the first day out. The Medusas asked if they’d seen any outsiders set up camp in the area. The Samis led us to what we thought would be you and my men. We attacked the cabin. Turned out to be a probable drug lab. We got into a shootout.”

  Jack frowned. “You’re only carrying training rounds.”

  Anders grunted. “No shit. It was a close thing. Your women are remarkable.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was knocked out and Karen hauled me out of there. Saved my life.”

  “That sounds like the Karen I know.”

  “We moved the small, nearby Sami encampment to a larger village where they’d be safe from reprisals from the drug makers. Karen came across one of the drug gang’s scouts. Killed him. Nice piece of work, actually. Neat. Silent. You taught her well.”

  Jack nodded at the compliment, and Anders continued. “Not long after that, she started acting funny. Twitchy. It was little things at first. Stuff that should’ve made her laugh irritated her. She started having trouble sleeping. Got more volatile. Stopped sleeping.”

  “You think making the kill messed her up?”

  Karen felt Anders shake his head beside her. “She handled it just right. Wasn’t thrilled to have had to do it, but wasn’t bothered by it. I don’t know what’s done this to her.”

  “Is that all?” Jack asked.

  Anders finished his quick debrief. “We need to call in the location of the drug lab and get a fully armed team to go out and deal with it, but the Samis’ cell phones and radios aren’t working. The Medusas figured out you’re jamming all communications signals in the area. Karen built a nifty little signal tracker and used it to home in on your position. We were going to zero in on you and make a simulated assault tomorrow.” He shrugged. “But instead, we have this.”

  Staring down numbly at the ground, Karen saw when Jack rocked back on his heels. Her brain felt like mush. She was missing something obvious. Something important.

  “Let’s get her warmed up.”

  Right. Like that was going to do any good. But she let them lead her over to Jack’s igloo. Anders ended up crawling inside with her while Jack stayed outside, which was just as well. She couldn’t imagine letting Jack put his arms around her, share his body heat with her. He belonged to Vanessa. And then there was that whole bit about having just come very close to killing him.

  Anders wrapped the two of them, parkas and all, in a couple of Mylar blankets and spread Jack’s sleeping bag over them. And then he hugged her close, murmuring, “I’ve got you now. You’re safe. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  She wasn’t the kind of person who let anything get the best of her. Ever. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her entire life, but she mumbled, “Help me, Anders. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  His arms tightened around her. Strong. Safe. A shelter from the monster. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I can’t go crazy. It’ll ruin everything. The Medusa Project is too new. If a woman cracks up in the field, they’ll shut down the whole project. Oh, God. What if I hurt one of my teammates?”

  “You’re not going to hurt anybody. And you’re not going crazy. Maybe sleep-deprived. Overstressed. But the very fact that you can ask such questions tells me you’re not crazy. Rest now, Karen. We’ll sort this out together.”

  She subsided. The silence was deep and cold and complete. And for the moment, it quelled the source of her earlier, unreasoning rage. How long they lay together like that she had no idea. But Anders never wavered. He shared whatever warmth, whatever comfort, he had without reservation.

  She might even have slept a little.

  Some time later, she jerked to full consciousness when Jack appeared in the tunnel opening. His igloo was too small for him to come all the way inside with Anders and her already overfilling the space, but his head and shoulders fitted through. He propped himself up on his elbows to talk to them.

  “I just had a very interesting conversation with your headquarters, Larson.”

  “Do tell,” Anders said mildly, not letting go of her. Not shy about embracing her in front of Jack, was he? She couldn’t say the same. She was acutely uncomfortable cuddling up with Anders in front of anyone. Her feelings where he was concerned were too new, too deep, to want to expose to others.

  “I mentioned that one of my operators had gone through an episode of some kind but was doing better now. And the controller commented that it sounded like what was going on down in Oslo.”

  Karen closed her eyes as sudden understanding washed over her. Of course. Oslo. The drugs. Seizures followed by violent outbursts. She hadn’t had any full-blown seizures, but she’d been twitchy as hell. Unable to sit still long enough to sleep.

  “The barrels of powder,” she muttered.

  Anders nodded. “It has to be.”

  Karen turned to Jack. “We know where the drug is getting made that’s making everyone go nuts in Oslo. It’s the same stuff that’s making me go nuts—I hope. When you tell the Norwegians about it, could you please give the Medusas the credit for finding the lab so we can stop romping with the reindeer trying to impress these guys?”

  Jack laughed. “There’s my old Karen back.”

  “You may have your Vanessa, but I’m not your Karen.”

  “Like hell. I trained every one of you women. You’ve all saved my life and I’ve saved yours. We’re family whether you like it or not.”

  Karen subsided. He considered her family? Her misery over having nearly killed him deepened. Was the attack only a result of the drugs or was it something else? Schizophrenia? A multiple personality disorder, maybe? Except she could remember what the other Karen, the one in the grip of the monster, had thought and felt. She was that other Karen, too.


  Jack asked casually, “Do you remember what was in your mind right before you attacked me?”

  “I was just thinking about that. I remember it all. How I felt, what I did. I’m not going split personality on you. Crazy, maybe. Possessed, even. But there’s only one of me.”

  Jack shook his head. “You’re one of the most level-headed people I’ve ever met. I’ve seen guys crack in the field and this isn’t it.”

  Anders chimed in, “Absolutely not. This came on too suddenly. And you showed none of the usual erratic behaviors of an operator losing the edge.”

  Whether or not they were being truthful or just saying that to make her feel better, she didn’t really care. It was reassuring to have two such experienced Special Forces soldiers tell her she wasn’t going nuts.

  Jack asked, “Is Mamba close by or is she back in the village?”

  “All the Medusas are a couple miles from here. We figured it would take the whole team to knock out both you and Anders’ team.”

  “When it gets light, I want to find her. Have her take a look at you.”

  Karen nodded. “She treated a Sami kid last night who probably ingested the same stuff I did.”

  Anders commented, “I spoke to the boy’s father earlier. He thinks his son has been doing drugs pretty steadily for the past several months. Maybe it takes building up a bunch of this stuff in your system to suffer the full effects.”

  Yeah, like death. Karen sighed. “I doubt Mamba will be able to tell anything without running tests in a hospital.”

  The men met that observation with silence. There wasn’t much else they could do for now.

  She became aware of a new emotion roiling deep in her gut. Not rage this time. Oh, no. This was Fear. Capital F.

  Did she have it in her to pull back from the precipice a second time? It had been a really close thing to regain her senses before she did something tragic and irreversible. What if next time she didn’t stop at the last second? What if Anders wasn’t behind her with a rifle next time, ready to take her out?

  What if she lost it again, and next time she killed someone?

  Chapter 13

  Oslo, Norway, March 7, 11:00 a.m.

  The phone on his desk rang, and Jens set down his cup of coffee a little too hard. It splashed on the latest murder file, which lay open on his desk. Swearing, he brushed the coffee off the paper as he picked up the phone.

  “Schumacher,” he bit out.

  “This is Marta Ogden down at the coroner’s office.”

  He sat up straighter. She was the chemist in charge of analyzing all the tissue and fluid samples taken from all the people who’d gone ballistic in Oslo over the past week. “Do you have something for me?” he asked.

  “We’ve made a positive ID on the unidentified chemical that’s showing up in all your murder cases. As we first suspected, it’s a variant of lysergic acid diethylamide. One of the ethylamides has been replaced with a methyl benzoate, and a carbon chain rearranged—”

  She must have heard his brain glazing over through the phone line because she stopped abruptly. “I bet you want that in lay language, don’t you?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Somebody has tweaked an LSD molecule and come up with a new compound that’s never been recorded before.”

  “LSD? The hallucinogenic?”

  “The very same.”

  “I’ll be damned. Good work,” he commented. “Okay. So we know what the marker molecule is. Who’s making it? What kind of lab facilities would it take to make this stuff?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” the chemist retorted. “This stuff is a variant of LSD. It isn’t a marker molecule at all. It’s a drug in and of itself. As in potentially capable of causing psychotic episodes all on its own.”

  He frowned. “Yeah, but it’s only showing up in miniscule quantities in our perps.”

  The chemist answered heavily, “I know.”

  Holy shit. Jens sat bolt upright in his chair and knocked the coffee cup completely over this time with the telephone cord. Fortunately, the hot liquid sailed off the side of his desk harmlessly to the floor. “Are you telling me that a few molecules of this stuff is enough to make people run around randomly attacking and killing before it kills them?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’re running more tests. Problem is, I don’t have isolated samples of this stuff that I can feed to lab mice to see what happens.”

  “Take a guess at what would happen.”

  “I’m a scientist. I don’t guess.”

  “Indulge me. People are dying out there on the streets.”

  “LSD is what’s known as a psychotomimetic drug. That’s a fancy word for mimicking psychosis.”

  Jens interjected. “In other words, you take LSD, and it makes you temporarily crazy.”

  “Close enough. The thing is, these types of drugs affect everyone differently. Some people have good trips and some people have bad trips. Some people hear music and others go suicidal—or yes, homicidal. With me so far?”

  “Yup.”

  “What I’m guessing—and it’s purely a guess at this point—is someone has synthesized a variant of LSD, either by accident or on purpose, that consistently causes the subject to have a bad trip. A really bad trip. The kind where the subject becomes aggressive and violent.”

  “When someone takes LSD, how much of it shows up in blood and tissue samples after the fact? Does it dissipate quickly and only leave behind a trace?”

  “Oh, no. LSD resides in certain cells, sometimes for years, after the subject takes a single dose.”

  “So if our marker molecule is some sort of LSD, why isn’t more of it showing up in our perps?”

  “You’re asking me to guess again.”

  “Go ahead, Marta. Live dangerously.”

  She laughed at that.

  “Okay, Jens. Here goes: I’d guess a small quantity of this stuff was cut into some other drug. Maybe it was an attempt to give users a particularly powerful drug experience—perhaps to encourage them to come back to the same supplier for more. Or, for that matter, it could’ve been a prank. Someone thinks they’re getting a little coke—get a quick buzz and a boost of energy—but instead, they get a psychedelic trip. Joke’s on them. Worst case guess, someone knows exactly what this stuff does and contaminated the drug supply with it intentionally.”

  “Talk to me about making this stuff.”

  “It would take a fairly basic laboratory. Nothing elaborate, but you couldn’t do it in your garage. You’d need specific equipment. Given its chemical makeup, it would probably be a white powder. LSD melts at around eighty degrees Celsius, so if our variant acts the same, relatively low cooking temperatures—a normal household stove or even a Bunsen burner would be sufficient. LSD tends to be more stable at cooler temperatures, so I might expect there to be a refrigerator to store it in.”

  Jens snorted. “It’s winter in Norway. All they’d have to do is set it outside.”

  “True.”

  “Anything else for me?”

  “We’re going to try to isolate enough of this stuff to inject it into a mouse and see what happens. Could take a while.”

  “Hurry, will you?”

  “I’m working about twenty hours a day on this.”

  Geez. “Remind me to take you out to dinner after this is all over to say thanks.”

  A pause. Crap. Was that good surprise or bad surprise that made the phone go silent like that?

  Finally she said in what sounded like a no-kidding fit of shyness, “I’ll hold you to that, Jens.”

  Hot damn!

  She continued, “In the meantime, look for a new wholesale supplier. Someone you haven’t seen before. Might be passing through town—here to release this stuff and then leave before all hell breaks loose.”

  He retorted dryly, “Then he’s long gone by now. Hell has most certainly broken loose in Oslo.” On that depressing note, he added, “Call me if you get anything else.”


  “I will.”

  Jens hung up the phone and stared at it thoughtfully for several seconds.

  Ivo interrupted his train of thought. “Did I just hear you invite Marta Ogden out to dinner?”

  Jens looked up, scowling. “What of it?”

  “Jesus. It’s a match made in Heaven. She’s as bad a workaholic as you.”

  “She involved with anyone?” Jens asked casually.

  “Not to my knowledge. Good-looking lady, too.”

  And to stop that glint in his partner’s eye from becoming a series of embarrassing questions or comments, he said quickly, “Marta says to look for a new drug supplier in town. Someone looking to release this stuff and then move on.”

  “Like the elusive Izzy?” Ivo replied.

  “Exactly.” Jens reached for the phone to call Yurgen in Tromsö. If it took cold conditions to store the drugs, northern Norway was the place for that.

  Lakvik, Norway, March 8, 2:00 p.m.

  A burst of light accompanied the opening and closing of her hut door. She blinked awake as a dark shape loomed over her.

  “How’s she doing?” someone murmured. Aleesha.

  “Starting to come around.” That was Anders. “When you said you were going to knock her on her butt, you weren’t kidding. She’s been out for twelve hours.”

  “She needed the rest.”

  Karen mumbled, “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here.” She squinted into the shadows. There was Anders, sitting on the far side of the fire, watching over her as he had been doing around the clock for the past two days. All through the return trek, first to rejoin the Medusas and their Sami escorts, and then back to Lakvik, he’d never left her side.

  As she’d predicted, Aleesha couldn’t tell much about the condition of Karen’s blood or brain without further tests. She had, however, given Karen a shot when they’d got back to Lakvik last night and knocked her out cold to get some much-needed sleep.

  “What time is it?” Karen asked Anders.

  “Two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Wow. She had slept like the dead.

  “How’re you feeling?” Aleesha asked.