by C. J. Lyons
I looked around. The doors in this section were painted green. I shuddered as I realized where we were: the medical ward. The same section where Tommaso had killed himself while we were questioning him last night. I was surprised the walls and floor weren’t covered in his blood—silly, since all the blood had been contained to the dentistry room where his body had been strapped to an exam chair. Still, the air felt sticky, and I wrinkled my nose against a coppery scent.
“You know the air down here is filtered and recirculated like a thousand times a day, right?” Flynn asked as she noticed my reaction. Clearly, being so close to the scene of our crime didn’t bother her in the slightest. “We moved most of the medical gear to the section where the kids are, but no way could we move these.” She opened a door and switched the lights on inside a room the size of a college dorm room. Only, instead of beds, there were two large containers shaped like eggs resting on their sides. “They kind of look like space pods or something, don’t they?”
I walked around one. It was a little more than ten feet long and four feet across with a curved hatch at the front. The roof of the tank was just below my eye line, and the base was angled to make it easy to climb in and out without any of the super-salinated water leaking out from the inside. Flynn went to the rear and adjusted some controls. “Doesn’t take long to heat up. Both the air and water will be the same as your body temperature. Did you know there’s more salt in there than in the water in the Dead Sea? You can’t sink, no matter how much you weigh.”
“Did you read the instructions?” I was surprised; Flynn wasn’t a by-the-book type.
She grinned, giving me a fleeting glimpse of the schoolgirl she might have been if her life had turned out differently. “I Googled it. An hour in there is like four hours of sleep, and with everything going on right now, I don’t have time to sleep, so I tried it this morning. It really worked. Can’t remember feeling so relaxed.”
Clearly, she hadn’t used the sensory-deprivation experience to delve into a sadistic serial killer’s memories.
Flynn realized that and immediately sobered. “What do you need from me? Should I be monitoring some vital signs or that EEG thing? Louise showed me some of what she was watching for.”
“No. I should be fine.” It was a lie—I had no idea what to expect. I wasn’t even sure if the EEG monitor was safe in the water, so I used that as an excuse to take it off. My hair was clammy and stiff with sweat, but soon it’d be coated with the salt water. I slid my pill case from my pocket. It was a palm-sized octagon designed to hold a week’s worth of meds, but I was lucky if the pills I shoved inside its compartments lasted a day. In addition to the pharmaceutical-grade PXA, I was balancing my symptoms with a cocktail of a variety of amphetamines, mega-doses of vitamins, melatonin, doxycycline, quinacrine, and anything else Louise and I could find in the literature that had shown to be of any help.
Flynn handed me a bottle of water, and I swallowed the meds. “There’s an intercom,” she pointed to the speaker grill on the side of the module. “I’m leaving it on in case you need anything.”
Except I’d be in a fugue, frozen, unable to speak. I didn’t bother correcting her—not as if anyone could have anticipated my particular needs when they designed their new-age flotation tank. I stripped naked and climbed inside, sliding my body into the warm water. As soon as I sat down, my legs tried to float, the rest of my body as well, but I held on to the safety bar beside the door as I acclimated myself.
There was a soft blue light inside the tank. I tapped the light switch beside the door, turning it off. Flynn leaned in, one hand on the hatch. “Sure you don’t need anything?”
I shook my head, the meds rushing through my system. I now understood why addicts called it a “buzz.” A million wasps vibrated beneath my skin, threatening to separate it from the rest of my skeleton. The floaty feeling of the tank only heightened the sensation.
“Hey, Angie,” Flynn said as she lowered the hatch. “Kick Leo’s ass. Don’t let him get away with it.”
She spoke as if I was about to confront Leo the killer rather than the wispy remnants of his memories. But I understood the sentiment. I knew, logically, that there was no way Leo the person, not his mind nor his personality, could be resurrected simply because I held his memories.
Somehow, that did nothing to squelch the terror spiking my heart rate so high my pulse beat inside my throat, throttling me as if Leo’s hands were tightening around my neck. Helpless, I slid the rest of the way into the tank, the hatch shutting behind me, leaving me in total, absolute silence and darkness.
I wanted to shout, protest, bang on the hatch, beg to be released back into the light, but as the fugue overtook my body, my scream died, silent.
Thunder and drums and crashing cars and whirling neon music filled my awareness. My body was gone, left far, far behind as I swept through the dark alleys of my mind, feeling as small and helpless as a rodent scurrying through a garbage truck, about to be crushed. I wanted to stop, to bolt and hide, but I forced myself forward, deeper into the shadows, searching for the memories of a killer.
Chapter 31
TYRONE’S MEN SHOVED Ryder back into the elevator cage and lowered him back into the darkness. Thankfully, they didn’t lower him completely—a thin sliver of light ate into the black at the gap between the cage’s roof and the rock wall.
Ryder hunkered down at the front of the cage, easing his makeshift shim from his coat sleeve carefully. He couldn’t afford to drop the tiny box cutter and lose it through the gaps in the mesh steel floor.
As he worked, he caught snippets of Grey and Tyrone’s conversation. “One place large enough to hold the cohort and their families...” Grey said. “If we surround it...choke points...trapped.”
“We have the...C-4...hospital would make an excellent diversion.” Tyrone’s voice was much easier to hear, even if his words were more frightening.
Ryder squirmed as pain lanced through his hand and a sticky tendril of blood streamed from a cut. Using the tiny box cutter blade as a shim wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. He repositioned himself, braced the blade, and held it in place, sliding it in front of the toothed jaw of the cuff. Then he ratcheted the cuff tighter, the metal pinching his wrist. One click, two...there! The teeth slid against the metal of the box cutter’s blade without finding purchase. He yanked back in the opposite direction, and the cuff opened.
Score one for the good guys. He pocketed the box cutter while he shook the feeling back into his hands and massaged his sore wrist. Then he tackled the second cuff.
Above him, Grey and Tyrone shouted out orders to their men. There was the noise of equipment being moved and a few words making it down to where Ryder waited. Sounded like Grey and Tyrone had decided on a plan of action and were moving out.
Finally free of the handcuffs, Ryder readied himself for escape. He didn’t want to show his hand too early, so he waited until the noise had died down. Then he forced himself to wait some more, hating every second he counted down, knowing that it could mean lives lost.
After a full five minutes had passed without any signs of movement in the cavern above him, he secured the box cutter in his pocket and swung up to the front support beam, following the route Grey had taken earlier. At least Ryder had the light coming from above to aid him—although he still avoided looking down the shaft. The impenetrable blackness was a surefire route to vertigo.
As quietly as possible, he pulled his legs up through the gap between the top of the wall and the metal ceiling then reached for the chain support and shimmied up. There was one gut-wrenching moment when his leg slipped and he hung over the abyss, but he quickly regained his footing. The elevator cage swung with his motion as he clung to the chain, feet planted on the corrugated metal roof.
Next, a leap of faith onto the gate above him, then up and over to firm ground. He landed with a louder thud than he’d intended. Scurried into a dark corner behind the crates he’d seen earlier and waited. No one came. Surely
they hadn’t left him unattended?
He searched the crates for weapons. Nothing. Even more worrisome was that there were several C-4 containers that were also empty. He edged over to the table. Gone were the maps, leaving no easy way to know exactly what they were targeting. Also gone were the Good Samaritan ID badges.
No sign of any means of communication, at least not in this back section. He edged into the front cavern, skirting the shadows alongside the old hospital building, and craned his head around the corner to the entrance. Only a few lanterns remained. The tables had been swept clean, and the stockpiles of weapons were missing.
Still...it couldn’t be this easy. There had to be a guard. Where? Despite his coat, Ryder shivered. Remembered long, lonely nights of guard duty when he was in the Army. He scanned the area—too many blind spots between the cavern’s natural contours, abandoned equipment, and the rock falls. Then he heard a small scraping noise.
It came from behind the plywood wall he stood beside. Of course, the hospital building—shelter from the wind and cold, probably where they’d set up their kitchen and maybe a heater as well.
He considered sneaking past the dilapidated lean-to of a building and escaping on foot, but there was no time: He needed a vehicle, a phone, a weapon, and, if possible, some answers. All as quickly as possible. Which meant confronting the opposition.
Strategy would depend on their numbers. Ryder slipped around to the front of the building, edging a glance through the window closest to him. Lantern light cast a white-blue glow on the old-fashioned rippled glass. Inside, past gingham curtains rotted by time, was a room containing the rusty metal frames of three narrow cots, a few upended crates, a desk, a kerosene heater, and a man bent over a camp stove, coffeepot in hand.
He didn’t move as if he had training. His MAC-10 machine pistol was slung carelessly across his back. The only other weapon Ryder spotted was a semiautomatic in a holster strapped to the man’s thigh. He was younger than Ryder and taller, bulkier, but Ryder had the edge of surprise, not to mention experience.
At least that’s what he told himself as he skirted the window and crept to the doorway missing a door. En route he scanned the area for other weapons but found nothing that suited his needs as well as the tiny box cutter. Hell, if hijackers could bring down entire airplanes armed only with box cutters, he could take out one guy.
Not giving the pessimist inside him time for a rebuttal, he sprang through the door and pounced on the other man. Ryder didn’t waste time or energy on any of the silly fair-fight tactics they used in the movies. This was real life with real lives on the line.
He grabbed the man in a chokehold and drove the box cutter as deep as it would go into the space between the man’s skull and the top of his spinal cord. Then he wrenched the blade back and forth until the man went limp.
The whole thing took less than three seconds—it was over before the other man even had time to mount a defense. Hell, it was over before the guy’s brain had time to register that he’d lost control of his body. The guy crumpled to the ground, a whoosh emerging from his lungs with the movement, eyes wide open. If Rossi was here, she’d tell him he wouldn’t truly be dead for another few minutes, until his brain ran out of oxygen, but Rossi wasn’t here.
Ryder was glad of that. Never wanted her to see him like this—methodically taking a life as if it was nothing. Logic and ethics and even the law were on his side, but he’d just erased a person, someone unique who’d never lived before and who would never be created again, an entire existence banished forever from the universe because of Ryder’s actions. He’d considered trying to take the man alive, restraining him and questioning him, but there simply was no time and it was much too risky. If Ryder didn’t make it out of here alive, there was no one who could warn Rossi and the others.
He stripped the man of everything useful: his ballistic vest, weapons, parka—not his boots, they were too small—and a cell phone connected to a private VoIP server. First call he made was to Rossi, but it went straight to voice mail.
“They’re coming for you. Tell Price and get out of there. There’s at least eleven men, highly armed, including explosives, and I’m not sure how many more. ETA thirty to forty minutes if you’re lucky. I’m on my way to help. Love you. Be safe.” Then, just in case she missed it the first time or thought he didn’t really mean it, he added, “I do love you.”
Next, he called Devon Price. Thankfully, the other man answered. Ryder gave him a quick rundown, keeping his words as vague as possible using the unsecured phone. “I’m not sure exactly what they have planned, but if you stay, you’re sitting ducks.”
“Maybe they want us to leave? Easier to catch us when we’re vulnerable.”
Ryder appreciated Price’s dilemma. Wrangling all those kids and their families, all civilians and unaccustomed to stealth or able to defend themselves, it was a tough call to make: stay where they had some security behind the locked doors of the tunnel bunkers but also then could be trapped? Or try to sneak past Grey and Tyrone’s men, make it to another location where they might end up facing the exact same problem?
“Your call. You don’t have much time, so sheltering in place might be the answer—all those civilians, next to impossible to move them on such short notice.” As they spoke, Ryder was scouting the entrance to the mine—no signs of any other guards. A single pickup sat unattended a few yards away.
“They might not even find us—it’s a maze down here. You could wander lost for days.”
Ryder thought about that. Along with other Gestapo tactics. Despite the fact that there was a man dead, maybe this escape had been a bit too easy? “Get your people organized, but don’t do anything until I get there.”
“But—”
“Have your father’s security expert,” Ryder cut him off, “meet me where we first met—where the dog played with the kids and we had ice cream. I’m on my way.” He hung up, hoping Price figured out his cryptic message. They’d first met at Good Sam’s where Ozzie had been keeping the kids at the Advocacy Center company. He hoped the ER was busy—he needed the cover.
No sense delaying up here any longer. If it was a trap, he’d done his best to warn Rossi and Price. If not, he’d be there soon to help.
Chapter 32
IN MY OTHER fugues, all of my attention had been focused outward as my senses became hyperacute. Being able to hear, smell, feel things beyond my normal perception had saved my life and others’, including Ryder’s, making my fugues both a blessing and a curse.
But now, with nothing to stimulate my senses, all my energy focused inward. Sensations of past events swirled around me as I was caught in a maelstrom of memories. Not just from my life, but the lives of all of the people whose memories I’d collected. The impressions, captured moments important and trivial, of six lives in addition to my own, now including Daniel’s. I did the math. It was two hundred and eighty-nine years’ worth of memories.
Caught in the vortex of time, it felt as if every moment of those two hundred and eighty-nine years whipped through me, slicing into my consciousness, fighting for attention. How had Daniel done it? Reached into my mind and grabbed what he’d wanted without being suffocated by the weight of all those myriad fragments?
Somehow he’d lasered right in on Leo’s data...and my own memory of my father’s death. I tumbled through the void, sights and sounds and smells bombarding me, no gravity to orient me, no sense of time to guide me. Vertigo tossed me about like a leaf caught in a hurricane; if I’d been in control of my body, I would have been seasick by now.
Focus. I knew what I wanted: Leo and Tommaso. When did they first meet? What had they been working on besides the PXA formulations? I concentrated, and slowly a world built itself around me.
At last there was solid ground beneath my feet. I watched two men talk over coffee as they sat at an outdoor cafe, sunshine warm against my back although I cast no shadow, their voices clear despite the fact that I was several feet away. It was Leo’s memo
ry. I wasn’t inside his head, but not quite outside it either. Instead, I faced the direction he faced, the air around me wavery as his focus and gaze shifted.
The man he was with was Tommaso Lazaretto. The scenery wasn’t anywhere in Cambria City. Somehow, it felt more like the memories Daniel had shared of his time in Italy. I listened to the ambient noises: traffic horns a little sharper, higher pitched than I was used to, and a foreign language murmuring around the two men. Definitely Italian. Either Leo or Daniel must have spoken it, because the more I listened, the more I understood. Just as I understood they were in Florence.
I turned my attention back to Leo and Tommaso. “I analyzed the compound you brought me,” Leo was saying. “Very interesting. You say your family originally developed it from venoms?”
Tommaso nodded. “Insect and viper venom. The formulation evolved over the centuries. We created several variations, including some using psychedelic mushrooms and herbs, others that required more exotic venoms...my family has made quite the study of useful organic compounds.”
“Your family? Who are they, the Borgias?”
“Actually, we trained Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia. But we aren’t interested in killing—”
“No, I can see that by this chemical structure. This compound has the potential to bind with neuroreceptors that control pain, sensation, and pleasure. With the right formulation, you could turn this into a drug to brainwash someone, control their mind, torture them—or provide them with ecstasy beyond imagining, so much so that they’d become catatonic and die from sheer pleasure while their body wasted away. The possibilities and commercial potential are outstanding.”
Tommaso smiled indulgently at Leo’s excitement. Leo wasn’t stupid. He detected the other man’s condescension but considered it a small price to pay to be able to work with the compound he’d already begun to think of as his own.
