It was about five-thirty in the morning by now. The lighting in the reception area was muted but still bright like a showcase that never dimmed. Danny sat down on the leather sofa, hearing the coosh of his weight sinking into the padding. He would simply wait. Hopefully, Nina would fall asleep in the storage room and he would exercise patience until Conlan showed and then they would have a little talk, until his burden was eased and his courage or possibly, his cowardice made itself known.
Nina left the storage room almost as soon as Danny had left her. She knew she had promised to mind Danny and stay put but she was monstrously bored and after minutes went by with the soles of the oversized shoes clopping on the floor (“boring…boring…boring…”) and her fingers (she imagined) dancing like octopus tentacles on her newly extended legs, and her head seesawing back and forth on her shoulders like a clicking metronome, Nina bounced up on her feet and cracked open the door and peeked out into the corridor. She wrapped the lab coat around her like she was a spy on a secret mission and tip-toed so the sound of her shoes wouldn’t alert anyone. Unfortunately, because they were too big it was impossible to walk in the shoes without being noisy so she slipped out of them and padded down the corridor in her bare feet. There were windows on some of the doors and she peeked in when she could, pressing her nose against the glass panes. The interiors of most of the rooms looked uninteresting to her, nothing but desks, tables, shelves, articulated lamps filling the solemn spaces with the lights turned out. One was cluttered with strange equipment—mad scientist stuff—unlike the room she had awoken in after the transformation which was as spare as a museum exhibit room—with the pod-like glass chamber at the room’s center, a padded platform table nearby and the operating console rising from the floor.
A strand of hair freed itself from the clamp and fell across Nina’s face, and when she moved quickly the aroma of Shaw’s clothes wafted up to her nose, causing her face to contort in disagreeable ways. She spied the elevator bank Danny had found but was way more interested in the lit room she came upon first—the kitchen, with its visible refrigerator and pantry cabinets. Still in her spy persona, Nina stealthily looked both ways before she placed her hand on the knob and was delighted when the door clicked open.
She immediately made a line to the refrigerator and opened it. Her eyes widened with delight as leftover feasts presented themselves to her like a pirate’s bounty. There were containers of leftover takeout—chicken, half sandwiches and an assortment of salads which Nina pushed away so she could look at the other, more tantalizing offerings. Nina took the covered plastic containers and stacked them, one by one, until she had five. She let the refrigerator door shut and awkwardly slid from a standing position to a sitting one, her legs splayed open grasshopper-style.
“Man-oh-man-oh-man-oh-man!” she chirped happily, for Nina hadn’t eaten for the longest time. Shaw had given her some shortbread cookies but nothing he could give her could possibly taste any good so she had spit it out. She decided to start with a sandwich near the bottom of the stack. Pulling the lid open, she separated the bread to see if her first, second or third wish had come true.
“Tuna!” she squealed and took several bites without stopping until the sandwich was gone. “Mmm,” she said, reaching behind her to open the refrigerator door again. She grabbed a bottle of fruit punch Snapple and began to wash everything down.
“Next!” Nina declared, as she sorted through the remaining containers and stopped at a quarter rotisserie chicken and eagerly popped open the lid.
Danny didn’t have a watch to consult but he figured he had been seated for about forty minutes. In that time, he had let his mind wander to soft-focused daydreams featuring the life he never experienced as a young man. All the harsh, ugly edges were gone—the desertion of his father, his alcoholic mother, the graceless women he had slept with but felt nothing for—and instead he only pictured himself young and in command of his destiny, confident and in control. Sonya was there but only as the girl whose soft cheek met his with adoration, not the strong-willed young woman who challenged him often and clashed with him to distraction.
Rising to his feet, Danny took a few steps and enjoyed the clicking sound of his heel on marble. He turned to the closed glass door leading to Conlan’s suite and tried the handle, rattling it hard a few times. As his mind drifted back again into an agreeable reverie, Danny turned and looked through the door and visibly jumped back a step. Facing him was Gordon Conlan, his eyes fierce and unafraid as he looked up and down at Danny.
Flipping on the light from within, Conlan continued with his fearless pose. “What do you want?”
“I want to speak with you,” Danny said.
“About what? Do you know what time it is? Shall I call security?” Conlan asked harshly.
“My name is Danny Fierro…and I want to talk to you about Bio-Justice.”
Dr. Conlan’s eyelids closed halfway and after an extended moment, he passed his hand over the laser sensor on the wall a few feet away, and the door clicked open.
Four of the containers had been emptied, the food inside consumed by Nina who now lay curled in a fetal positon asleep, her breaths coming in slow huffs, a thread of chicken still dangling off her lower lip.
A series of loud noises did not wake her and only when she heard adult voices shouting outside the kitchen did she stir.
“Where’s the polisher?” a man’s voice yelled.
“Solly used it on Level 3,” a woman’s voice yelled back.
“Well, why doesn’t he return it when he’s done with it?”
“I don’t know. You gotta ask Solly.”
“Damn.”
Nina was wide awake now. She had backed herself into a corner away from the window on the kitchen door. She tried to make the food containers disappear from sight but kicking at them with her legs just scattered them over the floor. The voices got further away and Nina heard the elevator doors open swallowing up any further human sounds. Nina kicked at the containers again, this time managing to make them disappear behind the refrigerator.
Without shoes to encumber her, Nina scampered back down the corridor to the storage room. She returned to the exact spot where Danny had left her as if it erased all of her disobedience to Danny’s instruction.
When Nina heard the voices again, it was soon followed by the sound of a churning machine, the floor polisher the male janitor had gone to Level 3 to retrieve. Nina worried that the man and his loud machine would soon enter the storage room. She looked about and spied the door to the cold unit across the room and moved closer to examine it.
“So you live here—”
“It’s my home,” Dr. Conlan explained to Danny. “I have all the amenities here. Besides, I have no family. My work—that’s all that matters to me.”
“I wanted to hurt you. Maybe kill you,” Danny confessed.
“Yes, I saw that gun behind your jacket,” Conlan said matter-of-factly.
“And you aren’t scared?”
“Mr. Fierro, I’m too old. Every day, I’m surprised I’m still here. If it happens, it happens. It’s ironic that I should have dedicated my life to the research of age progression and for me personally, I am quite indifferent to it.”
“I never used to think about death,” Danny said, “but since I went through Bio-Justice, that’s all I think about.”
“There. You are living proof that Premium Sentencing works. It truly is rehabilitation that succeeds on the most existential level.”
“If you call success tearing the soul out of a man until he doesn’t feel human any longer.”
“Mr. Fierro, pardon me, but when you try to combine sentiment with science—the two don’t mix.”
“But isn’t science supposed to help people?”
“It does by and large.”
“Dr. Conlan, I’ve got a six year old girl who was aged to where she has a woman’s body, so one of your pervert scientists could take advantage of her.”
Conlan chuckled derisi
vely. “Please, Mr. Fierro. Did you read this in comic books?”
“I’ve seen the girl.”
“Impossible. Look, even if it were true, there must have been some basis for this kind of research.”
“Wouldn’t you have to approve of such an experiment?”
“I’m afraid I’m not privy to every subject of study,” Conlan said with growing irritation.
“But if you knew of it, would you approve of it?”
“Certainly not, if there were a malicious or prurient intent behind the research.”
“But you’ve left the door open.”
“Science is just a series of questions,” Conlan said without inflection or tone. “You can’t be afraid to ask the question.”
“There are questions you should be afraid to ask. That’s why we have a conscience.”
“Oh, my God, I’m being lectured to by a murderer. Please, Mr. Fierro, if you’re going to kill me, pull out your gun and shoot me. Otherwise, please leave my office.”
“If I killed you, what good what it do? The world is swarming with others who would take your place.”
“You paint such a bleak picture,” Conlan sighed. “But now, I must say goodbye. It’s been good—our talk.”
Danny kept thinking about how easy it would be to slide the pistol out and pump a few bullets into Conlan—for Paris, for Vic and Art, and all the rest. But he couldn’t. He thought of Nina waiting for him and he was certain now that he had to retreat and survive, if only for her. “I need to get out safely.”
“Come,” Conlan said, leading the way into his adjoining office, “at least I can help you with that.”
Conlan’s office, while not that of a Fifth Avenue CEO, was nevertheless luxurious and a showcase of contemporary design. Danny stepped forward while Conlan moved behind his desk. Danny looked about, noticing some framed photographs lining the doctor’s wall. One aged photo depicted Conlan as a young doctor standing proudly in a modest lab in Boston. In another, standing with his elderly parents, he cradled his Nobel Prize in his hands. The next one was more contemporary with Conlan clustered with other scientists, presumably his esteemed staff. He recognized Dr. Sarkis, sour as ever, and Dr. Felice Bennett, with longer hair and softer around the eyes. There were others he passed over until he stopped. One of the doctors, a tall, slender man with retro eyeglasses looked at him from the photograph and from a memory seared in his mind—from a room in an abandoned factory with the droning sound of the dying descending into hell. It was the unmistakable face of Jonas Pasteur.
“Who is this?”
Dr. Conlan leaned forward to look where Danny had pointed. “Oh, Dr. Ellison. He heads one of our chemical research labs here. Been with me for six years.”
Danny closed his eyes. If he had enough bullets, could he get them all? His mind overflowed with fantasies, vivid death wishes where evil would be lined up and he would go down the line and punch out each one with a single bullet between the eyes.
“May I have your gun please?” Suddenly, Danny was hearing Conlan’s voice and became aware of the gun in Conlan’s hand pointed at him.
“I thought you were going to let me go,” Danny said.
“You must be joking,” Conlan said. “When you told me your name, I thought I might crack. You see, Mr. Fierro, I’ve been waiting for you before I even knew you existed.”
CHAPTER 22
The male janitor was singing aloud as he wrapped the thick electrical cord around the floor polisher. By the time he opened the door to the storage room, Nina had already entered the cold unit and was hidden inside.
Nina heard the janitor rummaging around in the room still singing soulfully to himself. She sat silently on the floor, her fists balled up, hoping he would not see the cold unit door cracked open. Pushing up against some plastic storage racks of vialed solution, Nina shifted her body against a black nylon sacked bundle. There was a zipper down the front of the sack and a few teeth had been left open at the top.
Finally, the rummaging outside the cold unit ceased and Nina was hopeful the coast was finally clear. She leaned forward to listen for any sounds coming from the cracked door opening and put her hand on the nylon sack to leverage herself as she pushed herself up. Her weight faltered a little against her hand which sank into the lumpy contents of the sack. Curious, Nina pinched the zipper tab between her fingers and pulled it slowly all the way down. At first, the bleached form appeared like a scale model for a human anatomy class but the surface of it was soft and heavy, slick with moist succulence. It was the colorless head, neck and shoulder of a young girl that spilled out of the bag onto the ground next to Nina. The vacant eyes with milky pupils stared up lifeless. The features of the girl’s face looked both childlike and post-adolescent as if the ages had fused together. The neck was slender and long, yet the shoulders were rounded and simple like a child’s.
Nina’s scream was one of primal terror, as if she were seeing herself in the lifeless specimen. Kicking her legs to get away, Nina shrieked and kept shrieking until she scrambled out of the cold unit, bolted through the storage room and out into the corridor. Tears were streaming down Nina’s horrified face and she cried audibly as she ran as hard as she could, without a destination. Her feet slipped on the slick floor, her legs collapsing under her as she took a tumble to the ground. Nina’s immediate response was to cry but the rush of footsteps from both sides of the corridor halted any tears and she looked up helplessly at the two security guards who stood over her.
Danny was escorted by three armed men from Conlan’s office on the 15th Floor back to subterranean Level 4, where he was forced into a padded chair in a holding room, his wrists and ankles fastened with leather restraining straps. Two of the men stood guard at the two corners of the room behind Danny who faced a table with two steel backed chairs.
Dr. Rhys Sarkis and Dr. Felice Bennett entered the room and took the seats behind the table. Sarkis smiled which was quite an unpleasant sight. Felice, on the other hand, just looked straight ahead at Danny, her expression giving away nothing.
“Mr. Fierro, what intrigue we had going on there! My name is Dr. Sarkis. I believe we’ve met before. And you know Dr. Bennett.”
“Felice, isn’t it?”
Felice Bennett’s cool façade betrayed her and she flinched, not expecting Danny to remember her.
“Subject number 14392,” Danny elaborated. “You guided me through my adjustment period.”
Felice nodded. “I remember you. You had the girl who wrote you goodbye.”
Danny grimaced. “Sonya. Yeah, there’s another Bio-Justice success story for you.”
Felice could see the pain in Danny’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Danny angrily pulled against his restraints. “Let me loose—”
“In a moment,” Dr. Sarkis said. “We need to limit your movements while we conduct a few more tests with you.”
“We’ll be taking a few more blood samples from you,” Felice explained.
“And if I say no?” Danny said, facing Sarkis.
“I’m afraid that’s not an option,” Sarkis replied. “We can take the samples with you conscious or unconscious. It makes no difference to me.”
Felice gave Sarkis a grim look, uncomfortable with his address. Danny picked up on the tension between the two and smiled at Sarkis.
“Well, as long as I’m not being forced,” Danny said.
Felice Bennett moved her chair to where Danny was seated and opened a case with empty vials, sterile needles and a syringe. She rolled up Danny’s sleeve. After Danny made a fist, Felice found a ready vein and swabbed it before inserting the needle. While Felice was withdrawing the first of five vials, Danny started to chat with her as if Sarkis were not also present.
“Why was I brought here against my will?”
Felice cleared her throat. “We needed to detain you for very good reasons.”
“Is there ever a good reason for kidnapping?”
Felice saw what was going on. Danny
was trying to use her as a foil, putting on a show to make her look bad in front of Sarkis. Well, she wasn’t having it. “In matters that pertain to the public health,” she explained, “we have a right to quarantine.”
When she looked up from Danny’s arm, his eyes were right there to meet hers. “You know, Felice, I think Dr. Sarkis over there believes what he’s pitching. Somehow, I don’t think you do.”
Felice’s game face crumbled. She looked down guiltily as she withdrew the third vial of his blood.
“What’s going on here, Felice?”
“Just research,” Felice said.
“Research…”
“It’s the foundation of all scientific knowledge.”
“What if that research goes too far?”
Dr. Sarkis sat quietly listening to the exchange, as if Dr. Bennett were taking an oral exam and he was evaluating her.
Felice made sure she captured Danny’s eye and said quite deliberately, “Research is just a series of questions. You can’t be afraid to ask the question.”
Felice looked strangely uncomfortable with her own answer and finishing up, quickly labeled the vials. Danny, on the other hand, could not help but smile, recalling Conlan’s almost identical answer, as if he had just been reintroduced to the mantra of a secret religion.
Nina sat in a holding cell similar to Danny’s but smaller and without restraints. The two security guards looked more curious than convinced of any security threat she might represent. One of the guards, Eric Greenwood, a young-looking thirty-seven, fancied himself somewhat of a ladies man even though he was married with four kids, and he took the more aggressive lead over his partner, Ty Sheldon, mostly because he couldn’t deny being physically attracted to the confused young woman.
“OK, let me ask you again—what’s your name, miss?”
Nina kept her mouth closed, still acting the spy—this one captured and under interrogation.
Bio-Justice Page 20
