The timing of the visit seemed odd. His mother kept to such an ironclad schedule that she usually gave two or three days’ notice of her visits, sometimes as much as a week. Such departure from her routine had Edward wondering what might be at the core of his mother’s urgency. He envisioned her showing up ruffled and bedraggled in a slept-in suit after some magical breakthrough in her plans for his treatment.
Instead, Elizabeth Grey strode into his private hospice room in her customary regalia—navy-blue power suit, diamond stud earrings, perfect hair and makeup, false eyelashes.
So much for bedraggled.
Edward wasn’t even the first person she addressed. “How is he?” his mother asked the older nurse, who parroted the usual bit about his condition and that they were doing all they could to keep him comfortable. While his mother grilled Nurse Ratchet, Debbie sat by his side offering quiet comfort, which he appreciated.
Edward’s mother then turned to him and flashed her trademark plastic smile, a masterpiece of cosmetic dentistry that, like the green eyes behind it, was absolutely contrived. Her default look, Edward thought with a smirk.
“How are you feeling?” his mother asked as she stepped up, glancing around at the dimness of the room with a disapproving cast.
“I’ve had better days,” he admitted.
“Well, let’s get a little light in here, shall we?”
Edward felt Debbie tense at that, but neither of the nurses tried to stop his mother from opening the blinds and flooding the room with a million lumens of sunshine. Edward’s pupils contracted painfully to pinpricks, but he didn’t complain. His mother did what she wanted; the rest of the world could only deal with it.
“So how are you today, darling?” she asked with a sudden gush of concern as she took a seat beside him.
Edward took in a halting breath and then released it. “You know how I’m doing, Mom. I’m dying of cancer, remember?”
She blinked as if that hardly registered in her mind. “You know the doctors and I are doing everything we can to fix this.”
“But you can’t, can you? I’m dying of cancer, and even your billions of dollars can’t save me.”
She winced slightly and pulled back from him. “That’s not fair. I have my researchers working on this—”
“And it got to my brain anyway. It’s only a matter of time now, Mom. I’m sure they’ve told you how long I have left.”
The answer was two months tops, probably only one.
“I had another seizure the other day, did they tell you about that? And they’re going to come more often and get a lot worse, so unless your researchers can magically produce a cure in the next few weeks, I’d rather you skip the pep talk.”
Her countenance cycled through several emotions—first affronted, then angry, then forcefully hopeful. She leaned forward and squeezed his hand harder. “Things will get better,” she insisted. “I have the most prestigious doctors and researchers in the world working on this. And we both know that you can beat it. Others have and you can too. I am going to fix this. Do you understand?” She stared him straight in the eye with the same intense conviction she’d shown from his first diagnosis.
By this point, Edward had already heard the same words from her mouth, seen the same look in her eyes, felt the same grip on his hand a hundred times.
And he had grown tired of it. Tired of everything.
His mother had to be going through the motions at this point. Why else would she continue trying to convince him that he was going to survive?
Edward took in a weak breath and allowed her to finish her spiel—her soliloquy, really, as no one else was listening. When she had finished, he replied, “Okay.”
She responded with a resplendent smile. “That’s the spirit. Keep on fighting, tiger.”
But he had no intention of doing that at all. Let her live in her fantasy world and fight the good fight. He’d had enough. Capitulation had become logical, and part of him was glad, as it freed him from his mother’s expectations of him. Finally, he could simply be himself.
And that was the one thing that he couldn’t tell her, though he’d confessed his plan to Debbie after suffering a particularly bad seizure the previous week—the one that confirmed the cancer had invaded his brain. “You know,” he’d whispered in the scratchy voice he always got when they tubed him, “I’m actually glad she can’t fix this.”
Debbie had looked confused.
“She thinks she can save me,” he told her. “We all know she can’t.”
“What are you talking about?” Debbie asked, failing in her attempt to feign innocence.
“I’m going to die. Everybody knows it. And I’m glad.”
“Why?”
Debbie hadn’t been his nurse for very long at that point. The older nurse’s previous partner was a black man who had been dismissed from his care for some reason, probably because he understood Edward’s wish without ever having been told.
“Because my life has always been about her, what she wants me to be. I’ve never been allowed a chance to plot my own destiny.”
Debbie shook her head. “I’m sure that’s not the case.”
“Oh, it is. Believe me. She needs to control everyone and everything around her, right down to the tiniest detail. And if she can’t be there to micromanage a situation, she’ll assign someone to do it for her. That’s what killed my dad.”
Again, Debbie appeared confused. “I thought he died in a plane crash.”
“I’m pretty sure he was drunk at the time.” Edward remained confident in his assumption. His mother could impel a saint to take up the bottle. Hell, his father might even have staged the accident to get back at his mother, to finally gain some control by planning his own suicide.
Debbie looked shocked.
“Trust me. Once you get to know my mom, you’ll see what I mean.”
And she had.
Edward sat silently while his mother rambled on about new treatments, his favorite basketball team, how he would finish his degree at Yale once he’d beaten cancer. Edward couldn’t have cared less about any of it and wondered the entire time if he had the guts to escape his mother as his father had. It’s as good an exit as any, he decided, and nothing a sane person could blame me for. The time had finally come to convey his wishes to her—to wrest control of his life from his mother and seize it for himself.
* * *
Elizabeth Grey recited the information she’d memorized regarding LeBron James and Edward’s beloved Cleveland Cavaliers. When she finally got a smile out of her boy, she knew she’d gotten the details right.
She hadn’t wanted to take time off from her work to visit at a crucial time like this, but it was important to keep Edward’s spirits up. She’d read somewhere that cancer was like an ocean, and only positive thinking could keep Edward afloat. Lose that and you’ll sink, she recalled, gazing deep into Edward’s yellowing, bloodshot eyes. Like a shark drowning because it stops swimming.
She never stopped swimming, and neither would her son. Sometimes she wondered if he truly appreciated her herculean efforts to keep him alive: how she had strong-armed the boards of several pharmaceutical companies to get him on experimental drugs and shanghaied the most renowned cancer specialists from the best hospitals to treat her son. Just the other day she’d been forced to address this team of doctors, a couple of who were growing recalcitrant regarding the aggressive treatment program she demanded.
They’ve haven’t seen anything yet. Once I have the substance... She thought of the shitshow playing out up in Alaska. Max Ahlgren and his team had a reputation of succeeding when others failed, but Elizabeth could only place so much confidence in anyone, regardless of their stellar performance record. If she wasn’t on the scene and running things, she could never be certain the assignment would be carried out properly. She might urge Edward to keep faith, but she hated putting her own faith in the hands of anyone else.
And if Ahlgren enters the ship...
She purged the thought from her mind and concentrated on Edward. Her breath caught in her throat for an instant. He would have been—no, he will be the image of his father. Edward had inherited his father’s blond hair and strapping physical stature. He would regain the latter two once he’d defeated the cancer.
I will kill for him, if that’s what it takes, she thought not for the first time. Only this time the thought took verbal form as she whispered under her breath: “I will kill for you.”
Edward looked up at her. He opened his eyes a little wider and seemed about to say something when her phone rang. Elizabeth sighed in frustration and vowed to reiterate her orders to Cynthia: no one was to call during her visits unless it was a matter of life or death.
The phone kept ringing.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Mom, I’ve been thinking a lot—”
“Hold on, darling.” She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the screen. Though the number wasn’t in her contact list, she recognized it from recent conversations. “Peter?”
“Ms. Grey.” Banner’s drawl made the two words sound endless. “I have an idea on Alaska, but we’ll need to act fast.”
“All right. Hold on a minute.” She covered the microphone on the cell phone. “This is a very important call, Edward. I have to take it.”
“Yeah. They’re all important.”
“I’m sorry. It has to do with your treatment.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“And we will talk about it, darling, here in a couple of days when I know a bit more. You must keep faith, Edward. I need you to trust in me for just a bit longer. Can you do that for me?”
Edward stared at her and said nothing.
“A couple more days. We’ll have dinner then, okay?”
“Sure.” Edward reached for the controller to recline his bed.
“My darling boy.” Elizabeth bent over and kissed him on his overheated cheek. “I’ll be back soon, and I think I’ll have some great news. I love you.”
“Yep. Love you too.” He was already lying on his back with his eyes shut, and that was how his mother left him.
All the breath left Dr. Kumar’s lungs in a single forced exhalation when he hit the wall. Max didn’t give a damn if he’d broken the old man’s ribs. He’d lost a man and he wanted answers—and he would do whatever it took to get them.
“Well!” Max barked into Kumar’s face.
Kumar gasped frantically for breath and shook his head. “I signed an NDA and my reputation—”
“Will die right along with you,” Max finished. He drew his pistol as he spoke and shoved it under Kumar’s chin. “You have three seconds, Doctor.”
“Fine, but I really don’t know much. It broke out before I had a chance to study it.”
“Where did it come from?”
Kumar closed his eyes. “From the ship.” He uttered the words with obvious reluctance.
His answer only succeeded in further angering Max. “What ship? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You really are in over your head, aren’t you?”
Max narrowed his eyes at the doctor, but he added nothing further.
Harlow answered for him in a whisper: “It’s an alien spacecraft buried beneath the glacier.”
Max turned his attention to her, his eyes bulging in disbelief. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. What kind of science fiction bullshit are you trying to sell me?”
“Total bullshit,” Red scoffed. “They created that monster, whatever it is.”
“I’m inclined to agree.” Max nodded. “I’m thinking Elizabeth Grey was genetically engineering some kind of weapon for the Pentagon.” It seemed a plausible explanation, considering the creature’s capabilities. It also explained Banner’s interest in the operation.
“You’re wrong,” Dr. Kumar stated flatly. “That creature formed out of an unknown substance found on the spacecraft. The scientists working onboard thought it might be sentient, but they didn’t have the proper equipment or environment on board to fully study the substance, so they sent it to my lab for testing. Then it broke free.” His voice trailing off as the reality of the last few words hit him.
Max could sense the truth in his voice despite how incredible the story sounded. He lowered Kumar back to the floor and holstered his pistol. “How many are there?”
“It’s hard to say. It displays intelligence at the cellular level, and the cells seem to be able to organize themselves in any number of ways. They can combine, divide, form different types of tissues and organs. I have only seen the one, but there’s more of the substance on the ship. A lot more.”
After numerous interrogations over the years, Max possessed a finely tuned bullshit detector. He knew he was finally getting some truthful answers out of Kumar. Answers that bore dread like none he’d collected before. On rare occasion, he’d been forced to retreat from an enemy in the face of hopeless odds. This situation, however, raised the hair on his neck.
You wanna leave? Best do it now before another of your men gets wasted.
He thought of the disabled Sea Stallion sitting on the helipad. Even if they could somehow repair it, which he doubted, attempting to fly it out with no copilot and no hours at the stick in the midst of a raging ice storm amounted to suicide. He then thought of Banner.
What does he know regarding all this?
“Where are the hard drives from your lab?” Max asked Kumar.
“I didn’t know they were missing.”
“They are. Who took them if not you?”
“There must be survivors on the ship,” Harlow replied in a hopeful whisper. “Dr. Jung, maybe Dr. Rogers, or some of her team.”
“What are they in charge of?” Max asked her.
“Dr. Jung is head of the overall project. Dr. Rogers was in charge of research efforts aboard the ship, she’s something of a lone wolf.”
“Sounds like you know her. What’s her specialty?”
Harlow laughed. “Being brilliant. She holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton and headed the research team Ms. Grey contracted from Stanford. She’s kind of a recluse. I’ve never actually met her.”
“And both of these scientists spent all their time on the ship?” Max asked.
“No.” Kumar shifted uncomfortably as if he anticipated paying for this betrayal. “Dr. Jung conducted his work in the camp most of the time. Dr. Rogers, on the other hand, I spoke to briefly upon her arrival. After that, she entered the ship and rarely returned to camp. We communicated via email until a couple of days ago. She’s had the most hands-on experience with the substance and the ship. Maybe she knows something that could help, assuming she is still alive.”
Max nodded, stalling for a few moments while he pondered the team’s next move. An actual spacecraft, he wouldn’t have believed it, had he not spent the last ten minutes fighting something plainly not of this Earth. If Kumar were his only source of intel, he still might be skeptical. The man kept his secrets close for a university publish-or-perish academic, so Max figured he’d done plenty of government work in the past. But Ms. Harlow seemed genuine and logical. She didn’t want to die out here at the hands of the creature.
An alien.
“Have any of you three been on the spacecraft?” Max asked the survivors. None had. The negative responses from Quinones and Harlow weren’t surprising, but Kumar seemed too arrogant to let himself be pushed out of the main line of inquiry. “Not even once, Doctor?”
Kumar shook his head ruefully. “No. Access was strictly controlled by Ms. Grey, but believe me, I begged.”
“Is there a map of the floor plan anywhere?”
Gable piped up warily, “And why is that important?” His face said he knew the answer already.
“Because we need to board that ship and find Dr. Rogers and Dr. Jung,” Max replied, his decision made.
Gable popped to his feet. “Whoa, just a minute, Chief. I didn’t come along on this j
ob not to get paid, and according to our contract that dig site is strictly off limits.”
“We have no choice,” Max stated. “Our contract also states we’re to secure this installation. We need to find a way to kill that thing, and this Dr. Rogers might be our only answer. Besides, we are the only hope these people have.”
“Yeah? I don’t give two shits about these people and neither do you, so you can drop the fucking Boy Scout act. Who knows if she’s even alive? We blasted that thing with seven guns and couldn’t kill it. If there’s more of them down that hole she’s dead sure as sunrise.”
“We’ll take that chance. There’s no other option.”
“Like hell there isn’t!”
“Well, take it then!” Max stepped up to Gable, nose to nose. “Go on, Johnny; door’s right there.” He pointed to the gaping hole in the wall. “A couple dozen Greytech security men are lying dead out there, but if you think you can hike out of here on your own and beat this thing with pure Alabama shit-kicker attitude, I damn sure won’t stand in your way.”
“I’ve made myself disappear in deserts with no cover for miles around, Chief. You think I can’t march out of here and make it back to civilization?”
“Go for it. That thing will sniff you out before you’ve humped a mile.”
“We’ll see.”
“Nah, Johnny.” Sugar reached for his arm. “You can’t do it. There ain’t no runnin’ from this thing.”
“I ain’t runnin’ from shit but an empty bank account and my own grave, not that any of you bastards will be left to bury me.” Gable stepped back from Max and addressed the team: “This is a bad decision, and all of you know it. And this ain’t the first time you’ve shoved us into a hornets’ nest, Ahlgren. That last mission was a total goatfuck—we’re lucky any of us survived. And what about Georgia, huh? We didn’t all come back from that one, did we?”
“How the hell could I have seen that coming?” Max asked. “And this is a dangerous job, or have you forgotten?”
“No, I ain’t forgot shit. You are the one who seems to have a death wish. Seems like you forgot what happened to your CIA team...”
Existential Page 13
