Project Pandora

by Aden Polydoros

  “Now we’re putting on a good show.” He stepped over Derek’s unconscious body and advanced toward Chris with the deadly grace of a panther circling in for the kill. His voice was husky, almost erotic. “Are you enjoying this, Elizabeth?”

  Is this one of his urges? she thought, running toward the two boys. Does he like to hurt people?

  “Hey, man, I’m done.” Chris raised his hands and backed away. “I don’t want to fight you.”

  “You disrespected her,” Hades purred, and though she couldn’t see his face, she was certain he must be smiling. “You profaned her.”

  “No, man, I didn’t say nothing.”

  “You need to suffer,” he said and lunged at Chris.

  “Please stop!” Reaching Hades, she grabbed a fistful of his costume to pull him back. The shoulder strap tore free, turning his toga into a skirt and revealing his back to her.

  Her stomach plummeted at the sight.

  Pale ropy scars stretched from his shoulder blades to his tailbone, ripping a devastating warpath through his bulging trapezius and lumbar muscles. In places, the scars were so numerous that his skin was buckled and creased like a scrap of old leather.

  Get hit with a buckle like that and it cuts deep, she thought as her vision darkened around the edges. Her legs liquefied beneath her.

  In her mind’s eye, Elizabeth saw a room she had never stepped foot in before. The room was as big as her high school’s gymnasium, with folding tables stacked along the walls. Metal poles extended from the floor to the ceiling, providing foundational support.

  On one of those poles, a pair of handcuffs had been soldered in place. A black-haired boy hugged the pole with shackled hands, sobbing in agony as blood dripped down his bare back and oozed to the floor. Each cry was punctuated by the snap of leather against skin.

  Subject Two of Subset A has committed the grave offense of attempted desertion, a deep, accented voice said as darkness descended over her like the wings of swarming ravens. This is what happens to deserters.

  First there was a shrill scream. Then there was nothing at all.

  Case Notes 17:

  Apollo

  The flip phone rang from its place in the cupholder.

  Keeping an eye on the road, Tyler reached into the center console and groped around until his fingers touched smooth plastic.

  He answered on the tenth ring. “Hello?”

  “Apollo?” a deep voice said, and he knew at once the name of the man the voice belonged to. He just didn’t know how he knew.

  He had half a mind to respond with every foul word in his vocabulary. His teeth ground together, trapping the profanities in the back of his throat.

  “Olympus is rising,” Zeus said.

  “Rot in hell, Zeus,” he spat, though a part of him wanted, desperately, to respond with the appropriate phrase.

  A stunned silence filled his ear.

  “Olympus is rising,” Zeus stammered, as if he thought repetition would make Tyler bare his belly and pant like a dog, eager for orders.

  “I know what you made me do,” Tyler snarled into the speaker.

  “How—”

  “I can’t remember it all, but I’m going to remember, and when I do, I swear, you’ll fry for it.” Then he hung up, rolled down the window, and tossed the phone into the street. He didn’t see it break, but he thought he heard a satisfying crack as it struck the pavement.

  Even if the phone was traceable, either by the manufacturer’s GPS or a rogue microchip installed after purchase, it didn’t matter. If the initial fall hadn’t killed the device and another car didn’t run over it, he would be miles away by the time Zeus retrieved it.

  With no destination, Tyler found himself driving aimlessly though suburban labyrinths. Once he realized what he was doing, he pulled into the deserted parking lot of a strip mall and parked facing the street. He didn’t like the thought of sitting still, but by driving around like this, he wasn’t just wasting gas, he was wasting precious time, too.

  “Think, Tyler,” he murmured. “Think. What are you going to do?”

  He thought about the gun.

  It would be easy, the voice in his head urged. Just cock the hammer and stick the gun inside your mouth. Aim it upward. Pull the trigger. It will be quick. Painless. Fearless. A much kinder death than what you gave them.

  “No! I didn’t kill them! I didn’t kill anyone!” He slammed his fists into the steering wheel, drawing the horn out in a long, lonesome wail.

  “I didn’t do it…”

  His breathless words seemed to linger for several moments after he had spoken. He rested his forehead on the top of the steering wheel and pressed his hands to his face, shuddering violently. Even with the heat on and warm air blasting from the vents, he felt frozen to the bone.

  There were four things he knew.

  First of all, he had killed people. He just wasn’t sure how many.

  Secondly, with his latest act of mercy, going to the police was no longer an option. He had left DNA evidence at the crime scene, and the girl knew what he looked like.

  Three, Zeus had made him kill. Tyler didn’t know who the man was or how he did it, but that was an indisputable truth.

  Four, thanks to that stupid, stupid phone call, Zeus was onto him now. He knew Tyler had defected and probably thought he remembered more than he actually did. And once Zeus found him, Zeus would kill him. There was no doubt about it. Zeus would kill him.

  Tyler took a deep breath and counted down from ten. He felt somewhat better once he reached zero.

  A single glance in the rearview mirror was enough to make him want to look away. Bleak misery cast a shadow over his face. The longer he stared at his reflection, the less he saw of himself. The closer he looked, the more he could make out the blood-soaked monster who had calmly executed a sobbing woman at point-blank range.

  Resisting the urge to smash the mirror, he took his smartphone from his jacket pocket. He had texted Shannon so many times he didn’t even need to refer to his contacts list as he dialed her number. His finger hesitated over the last digit.

  The memory of her lovely doe eyes and warm smile filled his mind.

  He shouldn’t get her involved in this. It wasn’t Shannon’s problem. It had nothing to do with her, and involving her would only put her in danger. But he felt so alone. He had no one to turn to, not even the foster parents who had agreed to take care of him.

  He remembered how she had helped talk him down from his panic attack. Just hearing her voice soothed him.

  Tyler sighed and thumbed in the final number. As he listened to the ringing, he tapped the fingers of his other hand against the steering wheel. He glanced at the glove box and found himself unable to look away from it, fixated by the gun that waited inside.

  Shannon answered the phone on the third ring.

  “Is that you, Tyler?” Her soft voice filled his ear, as reassuring as a warm breeze.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Did I wake you up?”

  “No.” She yawned. “I wasn’t asleep. I was doing homework. My battery’s almost dead, so I can’t talk for long. How was your day?”

  Sorrow twisted like a blade in Tyler’s gut as he realized he might never see her again. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, struggling to contain the frantic words that pressed against the back of his throat. There was so much he wished he could say.

  “Tyler, are you there?”

  “Yes. I’m still here.” He took a deep breath, suddenly finding it difficult to speak. “My day… I had a good day. I’m just tired.”

  “I can tell. You don’t sound like yourself.” She paused. “My phone’s going to die any moment. Give me a sec. I’ll see if I can find my charger.”

  “No, it’s okay. I need to go anyway.”

  “Oh.” She sounded slightly disappointed. “I’ll call you back in the morning, then.”

  “Yeah.” He wondered if he might ever see her deep brown eyes again, let alone the light of day. “Good night.�
�

  “Good night.”

  After hanging up the cell phone, Tyler returned it to his pocket. He leaned over the center console and opened the glove box. He took the gun and put it on the passenger seat then rutted through the box. The compartment was overflowing with documents, receipts, food wrappers, and fliers, which he shoved away in search of the road map he had purchased to compensate for his smartphone’s spotty internet connection.

  Once he found the folded booklet, he spread it over his lap, trying to make sense of the highway lines and barely legible text.

  Where can I go? Where?

  The map swam before his eyes, becoming a meaningless jumble of twisting lines. Frustrated, he scrunched up the paper, tossed it into the passenger seat’s footwell, returned the gun to the glove box, and began driving again.

  Though it was past rush hour, the Beltway was crowded to capacity. Of the vehicles he shared the highway with, more than half of them were semitrucks or cargo trailers. Yet as they approached, he found himself taking repeated glances in the rearview mirror. And as they passed, he looked into the cabs and searched the faces of their drivers for murderous intent.

  With the sedans and vans, he was even more paranoid, clenching the wheel and stooping over in his seat, anticipating gunfire. Even the motorcyclist who shot past him, faster than a speeding bullet, made him anxious.

  As he drove, images came to him like flashing lights, ghostly faces that were resurrected from the deep grave of his memory. He didn’t know their names, but he recognized them from recent news stories. Although the ghosts came unembellished with wounds or bullet holes, he knew they were dead. Just like he knew he had killed them, even though he couldn’t recall when or how.

  Even as fear caught him in a stranglehold, he drove without stopping. When tears prickled his eyes, he blotted them away with the back of his hand and kept the other hand firmly on the wheel.

  He wasn’t sure whom he was crying for. He didn’t want to accept that those people were dead and that he had killed them. It seemed impossible. A bad dream. A nightmare.

  Although he had passed many exits since driving onto the Beltway, he drove past them without considering turning off the highway. His gaze skimmed thoughtlessly over the green signs mounted on overpasses and along the side of the street.

  He didn’t know where he was going, but a part of him did. Presumably the same part of him that had picked up a gun and used it.

  Case Notes 18:

  Artemis

  Shannon awoke to the ringing of a cell phone.

  With a tired groan, she lifted her head from her desktop, dismayed to find that she had drooled all over her homework. Wondering if Tyler had called her back, she reached for her smartphone and discovered that it was dead.

  “The hell?” she mumbled, looking around for the source of the elusive ringing. Scooting her wheeled desk chair across the room, she tracked the noise to her dresser. She opened the top drawer and found a black flip phone nestled in a mess of underwear and socks, right next to a baggie containing a couple grams of weed.

  While she remembered purchasing the pot from Alan, she could not remember putting the mysterious cell phone in her dresser. Or charging it, for that matter.

  Her compulsion to answer the call overrode her confusion. As she picked up the phone, she looked at the caller ID. Restricted number.

  She opened the phone and lifted it to her ear. “Hello?”

  The caller’s voice was cold and tense. Instead of answering her greeting with one of his own, he simply said, “Olympus is rising.”

  “Pandora’s box is opening,” she said, suddenly wide awake. Her confusion disintegrated in an instant, leaving only calm detachment.

  “There has been an incident, Artemis,” Zeus said. “Do you remember Apollo?”

  A face drifted up from her memory. Blond hair and stunning amber eyes. Features that were trapped in pure despair, then softened and chilled by indifference, then again tortured by the greatest misery. Flickers of emotion like a dying candle in the dark.

  The phantom’s voice: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  “Yes.”

  “Apollo has gone AWOL.”

  No, not Apollo. Tyler. Tyler Bennett. That was his name, wasn’t it?

  No, it couldn’t be his name.

  “Your orders?” She stared at the blinking red numerals of the clock on her dresser. 9:45. Her foster parents would still be awake. Not that it really mattered.

  “Right now, I am tracking his movements. I have his GPS coordinates.” He paused, breathing so softly that for a moment she thought she’d been disconnected. When he spoke again, his voice was even harsher. “He needs to be taken care of, do you understand?”

  She gave a small nod. It made her feel a little better to know her expression couldn’t translate through her voice. Otherwise he would have seen her face contort at his next words.

  “Don’t risk trying to subdue him,” Zeus said. “Kill him.”

  “Understood,” Shannon said.

  “Get in your car and head north on Route 29. I’ll call you in fifteen minutes to update you on his location. Use the backup gun.”

  “Okay.”

  Even after Zeus hung up, she kept the phone to her ear. She listened to the hiss of the open line, thinking about how much it sounded like sand slipping through the stem of an hourglass.

  Time was running out.

  Shannon closed the phone and rose to her feet. She changed out of her pajamas and dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She put on a jacket and zipped it up. As she tied her shoes, she thought about nothing at all. She felt dead and adrift from her own body.

  She reached under her bed, testing the floorboards until she found the loose one. She pulled it up with ease and removed a small metal container from the space underneath. Nestled inside the box’s foam inserts were a concealed waist holster, a pistol with a ten-round magazine, and a silencer.

  She clipped the holster to her belt and secured the pistol inside. She placed the silencer in her pocket, where it could easily be accessed.

  With her burner phone stowed in her jeans pocket, she stepped into the hall and went to her foster parents’ room. She knocked on the door.

  “Come in, sweetie,” her foster mom called.

  Shannon opened the door and walked inside. Her foster parents were in bed, a bowl of popcorn between them. A corny comedy was paused on the TV screen.

  “I’m going out,” she said.

  “Where?” her mom asked, then glanced at the alarm clock. “It’s almost ten, sweetie. Isn’t it a little late to be—”

  “I need to go somewhere. It’s important. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  Her mom’s smile faded, and so did her dad’s. They didn’t protest as she shut the door, nor did they attempt to follow her down the stairs.

  After getting into her car, she rested her phone in the cupholder. Underneath her jacket, the gun felt like an anchor, both dragging her down and keeping her tethered. In a way, its weight was almost comforting, though the thought of using it on Apollo chilled her to the bone.

  She drove north. Ten minutes later, Zeus called her back to give her instructions. When he wasn’t speaking to her, he ranted aloud, to no one in particular.

  “Damn Hades,” he said at one point. “Where the hell is he?”

  Twice, he excused himself to make calls on a second phone. Shannon heard only snippets of the conversations. She discerned the words “Senator Hawthorne” and “hospital” and “Subject Nine of Subset A” from Zeus’s growl, but little else.

  These things did not bother her. She did not feel in complete control anymore. Reality had faded away the moment she had heard the words “Olympus is rising.”

  She felt so far away from herself, and she drifted further with every mile that took her closer to Apollo.

  Status Report: Subject 2 of Subset A

  Seventy-eight days since arrival. An interesting development with Hades today, after three rou
nds of electroconvulsive therapy followed by twenty hours in the sensory deprivation tank. I showed him an assortment of photographs (see attached) and asked him to identify the subject of the picture.

  (Refer to A2018.mp3 or cassette tape “Hades - Session 18” for complete recording of interview.)

  Exhibit 1: Spaniel dog next to a red doghouse.

  A-02: Uh. Bark.

  DK: Close. That’s the sound it makes, but do you remember the name for it?

  (Silence from 00:00:45 to 00:00:57.)

  DK: It’s a dog, spelled D-O-G.

  A-02: Oh, right. I forgot.

  Exhibit 2: A can of Coca-Cola.

  A-02: Thirsty. Uh. Drink. Fizz. Soda. It’s soda.

  DK: Good boy.

  Exhibit 3: 9mm pistol, maker’s mark clearly visible, serial number and barrel text blurred out.

  A-02: Beretta M9.*

  ____________

  *Note: In a physical test performed two days after session 18, the subject was able to dismantle and reassemble the Beretta M9 and the M40 rifle in record time. Marksmanship simulation results remain unchanged.

  DK: Good job. That’s perfectly correct.

  Exhibit 4: Subject 9 of Subset A, with her placement family.

  DK: What would you call this?

  A-02: I don’t know. People?

  DK: Do you know who any of these people are?

  A-02: No, sir.

  (Let the record show, EEG readings normal. Pupils are not dilated. No signs of external agitation. Heart rate is 40 beats per minute. Blood pressure is 108/60.)

  DK: What about the young woman in the middle, the one with blond hair?

  A-02: No.

  (Polygraph test shows a negative reading. Subject is telling the truth. Refer to file #A02-018 for complete test results and EEG readings.)

  DK: You don’t recognize her?

  A-02: Am I supposed to?

  DK: No. How does this picture make you feel?

  A-02: I hate it.

  DK: Why?

  A-02: I don’t know why. I just do, sir. Can we move on to the next one, please?

  Exhibit 5: Playboy centerfold depicting a nude woman in a provocative pose.