“I had hoped for a less lethal demonstration, but I suppose that will do.” The suit turns to his men. “Get some additional guards, take him below for his implant, and have someone clean this up. Lesile, I will hold you responsible for any more trouble he might cause.”
Lesile’s smile vanishes. She snatches the hood from the floor and bags my head before grabbing my ankle chains and dragging me down the hall. I don’t even try to fight back. None of my muscles are responding, so I let her take me where we’re going like a bag of cotton. I’m bounced down a single flight of stairs. The sound of running generators gets louder, and I soon reach them. The room sounds enormous and the hum echoes like an underground garage. She drags me out of the stairwell and through another door. The smell of antiseptic reaches my nose before Lesile tosses me onto a surgical table and pulls the hood off. I’m in a makeshift operating room, and She straps me down with bands made of what looks like Kevlar.
It is a far too familiar scene, and it’s all I can do to keep from letting the flashback of Lesile’s tortures from making me lose my shit. It’s only through sheer stubbornness that I’m able to fight back my rising panic. There will be a reckoning. When I get out of this, there’s going to be a Black Friday of ass whoopings unleashed up in here.
A woman with brown hair tied in a tight bun and wearing hospital scrubs walks in. She checks the straps holding me down and rolls a tray of instruments closer to the table. She holds up a small circuit board a little bigger than a postage stamp with a small glass vial set in its center.
“Are you familiar with a toxin called the Cure?” She obviously knows the answer and keeps talking. “This is a satellite transponder. I am going to implant it in your brain. If you fail to do as you are told or attempt to tamper with it, a signal will be sent to release its contents.”
“Oh good, for a minute I thought it was a suppository.”
“Joke with me all you like, but you had better take this seriously. I have seen what this does to your kind, and it looks very unpleasant.”
A dozen smart-assed comments spring to mind, but I keep them to myself. I’m too busy wondering what the fuck she and the Mod Squad know about my kind and how far that knowledge goes. The primary purpose of the enclave and the rules we all—mostly—abide by is to keep our existence secret. The government knowing about us is the absolute worst possible thing that could happen. My only relief is being fairly sure it’s not my fault.
“It’s nice operating on your kind,” the doctor says as she picks up an unpleasant-looking power tool. “I don’t have to worry about anesthesia or heart failure.”
I wince when I feel the scalpel cut a neat line around my head. I block out the pain receptors and try not to think about what is going on. It’s a bit hard to do when she pulls my scalp back to reveal my skull. The oscillating saw starts up with a high-pitched whine. There is surprisingly little pain even when she pries the top of my skull off and sets it on the table like a soup bowl.
“Perfect. Now I’ll just slip this deep between the two lobes and close you up.”
Knowing she is digging around inside my brain without me feeling it is certainly disconcerting. The doc sticks my skull back on as if she were closing up a jar of mayo and starts stapling my scalp back in place.
“Make sure you get it on straight. If I have a sideburn running between my eyes you’re going to answer to my barber.”
“I am glad you are keeping a sense of humor through all this, Mr. Malone.”
“Yeah, I always keep them laughing—right up until I kill them.”
The doc looks to one of the guards. “Take him away. Mr. Malone, I suggest you behave. Cameras throughout the building monitor your every movement. If you try to escape or threaten anyone, an agent can press a button and kill you instantly.”
“Super. Does anyone plan on telling me just what the fuck is going on and what you want with me?”
“That information is not available to me, but I’m sure you will find out soon enough.”
Someone drops the hood back over my head, and my entourage nudges me down the hall. Paint covered the only window I saw, and most of the interior smells of renovation, so there is little to give me clues as to my location. Less now that the bag is over my head again. Even with the fresh paint and drywall, I can’t help but sense a familiarity with the place. I’m sure I’ve never been here, but perhaps I’ve been in something similar. It has a creepy hospital or boarding school vibe to it. I spent years off and on in schools for troubled youths. Maybe the ghosts of this place are calling out to me.
My guards escort me up a stairwell. Either this place doesn’t have elevators or they don’t trust me in such close confines. Lesile is walking ahead of the pack, and I can’t help but be curious as to her role in all this. She’s the last person I want to talk to, but my curiosity is stronger than my disgust.
“So why don’t they have you in shackles?”
“Because I already have one of those things in my head, and I know how to behave myself.”
“The hell you do.”
“I am smart enough to know when I am beat, and I like my life too much to let my ego do something that will only result in my death. You should learn something from that if you want to live beyond the next few hours.”
I count off three flights of stairs before reaching the top. One of the guards opens a steel door and pushes me inside, pulling off the hood as he does so. The door closes with a resounding clank, and I hear heavy deadbolts locking into place. I shuffle around the room, tapping the walls and stomping the floor with my boot in search of weaknesses. I don’t find any. The room is perfectly square and bereft of any furnishings. Once again, I get the feeling of a classroom or hospital room.
“You should relax,” Lesile tells me. “They obviously want you for something specific, otherwise you would be below.”
“What happens down there, other than brain raping?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re a psychotic bitch, but you’re a wily psychotic bitch. How did they catch you?”
Lesile smiles coyly and nibbles the tip of her finger. “I made a boo-boo.”
With her stunning beauty and soft accent, it’s damn hard to remember how much I despise her. She exudes sexuality like heat from the sun. Thankfully, she ruins the effect by talking.
“Leonard, you look like shit. I’m three times your age, and I look better than you. What have you done to yourself?”
“I’ve had a hard life.”
“You do not eat properly. You should feed more, and from actual people, not from a bag given to you like some sort of refugee or zoo animal.”
“You don’t know anything about my life. You didn’t know anything when you took it, and you sure as hell don’t know shit now.”
“Then tell me. We have nothing but time.”
“The only thing you need to know about me is that I’m going to kill you the first chance I get.”
“You were always such a shit, Leonard.” She winds a lock of ebony hair around her finger. “If you don’t want to talk, I can think of some other things we can do to occupy our time.”
I look up at the camera prominently displayed behind what I assume is some thick Plexiglas. “I’m sure the boys on the other end would love a show.”
“Let them watch.”
“How about you just keep on your side of the room and tell me what they want with me?”
“I don’t know, but they obviously have a use for you just as they do me.”
“What’s your use?”
“I help them identify and capture other vampires.”
“You know, a lot of people think I’m a real cocksucker…”
“Everyone thinks that.”
“…but I’ve never betrayed my own kind.”
“Leonard, I am my own kind and no one else. The only way I could betray my kind would be to sacrifice myself out of some idiotic sense of loyalty. You should learn that if you want to survive.”<
br />
“I need more than just survival. In fact, survival barely cracks my top ten.”
“Then you are a fool. I gave you a wonderful gift. If you choose to throw it away, then I won’t stop you.”
The hours roll by in silence. Lesile may as well be a statue, which suits me just fine. I shuffle around the room, still wearing my shackles and chains, until it becomes boring. I take a seat against the wall and close my eyes. I focus on the blackness inside my mind, but I don’t let myself slip beneath the surface of consciousness. My break could come at any moment, and I need to be ready to act in an instant.
I’m saved from my tedium when the door opens and the suit saunters in with a retinue of phaser-wielding henchmen. I’m not sure how long they had me sit here and stew, but I estimate it to be about a day to a day and a half.
The suit flips open a dossier and pretends to read it even though I’m sure he has it memorized. “Mr. Malone, you have quite a history—World War Two, Korea, Vietnam. KIA or MIA in every one, always near the end.”
“Yeah, those Asians are a troublesome bunch.”
“You must be wondering who I am.”
“Not really. I never feel the need to know the people I kill.”
“You certainly like to sing your favorite song, don’t you?”
“If you like the chorus, wait until I drop the beat.”
The suit closes the folder and smiles. “My name is Agent Snow. I am in charge of this operation.”
“Fed?”
“Homeland Security. Over the last few years, the NSA picked up some pieces of electronic chatter mentioning a highly toxic substance called the Cure. Their first thoughts were of a terrorist organization finding a cure for western existence, and they handed the case over to Homeland Security. When I saw a glimmer of what was really happening I created a black op more need to know than the mission to kill Osama.”
“I’ve never known the government to be able to keep secrets for long. This seems like too big an operation to keep quiet.”
“This is the most covert black op in history. Everyone who knows anything about this is in this building. They have little to no family and cannot leave the facility. There are two phones in the entire complex, and they are more tightly controlled than the vaults in the Federal Reserve. Our funding is completely under the table. Not even the President has a whiff of what’s going on here. We are completely self-sustained.”
“Okay, let’s assume I don’t think you’re full of shit. Why?”
“Necessity for one. It is rather difficult to identify your kind, but we’re getting better. Can you imagine the uproar if the populace found out there were vampires amongst them and that you consider them food? There would be a panic. People would be shooting every Goth kid and Twilight wannabe on sight. On top of that, there would invariably be some pinko liberal movement declaring your rights as human beings and citizens. If I thought we could just feed them to your kind I’d go along with it, but liberals rarely support their causes when they find out the real cost.”
“I can see why there’s not armed squads scouring the countryside, but that doesn’t explain why I’m here, or her.”
“Now we get to the crux of our predicament. About a year ago, we zeroed in on one of the cells, captured our first vampire, a sample of the toxic Cure, and a reformatted substance that seemed to make vampires instead of killing them.”
Goddam Percy and his fuck-up. What was once a goat screw just turned into a colossal disaster of epic proportions. The only saving grace I can see is the fact it is not widely known and is still contained. That won’t last for long, and I begin to get a chill down my spine in anticipation of where this little speech is going.
“As you probably know, Homeland Security’s primary mission is to protect our nation and people from terrorism. Many agree this is an impossible task if we are limited to defensive measures only. We had to take the fight to the terrorists but in a way that would not draw international condemnation. Too many people are already bitching about the drone strikes and, let’s face it, the drones are a Band-Aid not a cure. We needed to create small, highly proficient, and lethal strike teams to eradicate terrorist cells abroad, capable of operating for long periods of time without any support and who could not be traced back to the U.S.”
I start laughing. “You dumb sonsabitches. Let me guess, you made some super soldiers, and now they’re running amok.”
Agent Snow takes a deep breath and nods. “We needed to develop a way to hit these terrorist vermin’s nests while maintaining plausible deniability. Last year, we lost a helicopter carrying a group of Navy SEALs in Afghanistan.”
“And you thought a great way to reward their service was to turn them into monstrous killing machines?”
The agent’s face flushes and he glares at me contemptuously. “These men would do anything for their country. Even if they woke from their comas, their injuries were too severe ever to allow a semblance of a normal life. You were a soldier once. You knew men like these, and you know living as a cripple would be worse than death. We thought we found a way to not just save their lives, but return them to duty.”
“But they went rogue because you don’t know a goddam thing about vampires. You didn’t know the altered version of the Cure made vampires with extra bad attitudes. You didn’t know unleashing a top tier predator, one whose entire adult life has been focused on killing, would spark a bloodlust and cause them to go rogue. Where’s their leash? Why can’t you push the button and take them out?”
Agent Snow’s face is a deep shade of red, and he looks at me like a willful child who just got scolded. “At the time, we underestimated the healing ability and pain mitigation of your kind.”
I grin and shake my head. “You didn’t implant it in the brain, and they cut your little bomb right out.”
“Believe me when I say your model’s anti-tampering mechanism is vastly superior.”
“You still haven’t told me what you want from me.”
“I thought that would be obvious, particularly for a private detective such as yourself. You are going to clean up this little mess before it becomes an international incident and possibly a global catastrophe.”
“Two words spring immediately to mind. ‘Fuck’ and ‘you.’”
“You are hardly in a position to refuse, Mr. Malone.”
“What are you going to do, waterboard me?”
“You have a bomb in your brain. I think that should be enough to convince you of your only option.”
“I guess that would work on someone with a high regard for their life, so my answer is still ‘fuck you.’”
“I was told you were an obstinate bastard. Your kind in general seems reluctant to cooperate. Of the four vampires we have captured alive, none would speak of their organization or society. The only exception to their reticence was when we asked them to give us the name of just one vampire. Can you guess the name they gave, every single one without exception?”
“That’s kind of hurtful, yet I feel a sense of pride having made such an impact on them.”
“Perhaps you value the life of another more than your own.”
The suit nods to one of his flunkies and the hood drops back over my head. They prod me out of the room and force me down the hall before stopping. I hear a door open, and they shove me into another room. Someone pulls the hood off my head, and I fall into a fit of laughter when I see Vincent chained to the wall.
“And I thought I was going to have a bad day. If you think this is leverage, you really have to work on your intel. It’s this quality of information-gathering that had us looking for Saudi terrorists trained by Afghani Al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
“Forgive me if I doubt the sincerity of your enmity. I understand Mr. Van Graff is something of a figurehead in your society.”
“More like a dickhead. You would have had better luck convincing me to do what you want by promising to kill him. But I hate being told what to do more than I dislike Vincent, so go fuck yo
urself.”
“Perhaps Mr. Van Graff appreciates his life more than you do and will convince you it is best to cooperate.”
Agent Snow and his goons leave me in the room with Vincent, but I’m sure they’re hearing and seeing everything. Despite my bravado, seeing Vincent here is deeply disturbing. Not because I give a shit about him, but because it means the government has gotten its hands on the highest ranking vampire in the entire northeastern United States. Vincent is a treasure trove of information, and if they can pry his secrets out of his head, it could bring down not just our enclave but our entire society.
I decide it’s a good idea to make Vincent’s importance look as poor as possible. “How on earth did they manage to get you?”
Vincent does a great job of maintaining his stick-up-the-ass composure. “It is not important.”
“Please tell me it was a honeypot. It was wasn’t it? What was his name? I bet he was a Filipino boy, wasn’t he? I always took you for a flip sticker.”
Vincent rolls his eyes and gives me an exasperated sigh. “Since you enjoy making japes as to the inference of my sexuality, let me put your assumptions to rest.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“I have been an avowed homosexual since 1853 and a practicing one a good deal longer than that. What’s the matter? Is it no longer fun now that you know the truth?”
“No, now it just sounds like a hate crime. Who wants to be that guy? You’re a real dick.”
“Perhaps. This is an unmitigated disaster, Leonard, and we must figure out a way to resolve it. If that means doing as they ask, so be it.”
“Do you really think they’re just going to let us go if I play the part of their dog?”
“Of course not, but it will at least give us time. As much as I despise you, I know you are the most likely person to succeed in carrying out their executions and creating an opportunity to resolve this dilemma. These people do not fully appreciate what an unpredictable pain in the ass you can be.”
Blood Conspiracy (Brooklyn Shadows Book 2) Page 5
