by Karen Harper
“Here,” he was saying, “go up these steps a bit and look in one of these dewars, which might as well be coffins. You mentioned Darcy rambling on about lighted faces as well as a fish that could not breathe. I’m afraid we’ll find both here at Onward.”
He stepped up on the metal ladder outside the closest gray metal dewar and, with his hand on her elbow, tugged her up, too.
Claire looked in and gasped. Almost screamed. No hair on its head, for it must have been shaved, but a person floated inside, with eyes wide-open as if in surprise. But, she thought, her eyes weren’t quite wide enough open yet. She had to know more.
30
“Amazing. And horrible,” Claire whispered as though the bodies floating in their capsules could hear. “I’ve heard about this, but—to think it’s here, and that Darcy was brought here. Let’s go. Let’s take Ralston to the police or call them.”
“No, my dear. We have unfinished business with Clint Ralston for taking Darcy away and experimenting on her with that memory-tampering drug. You see, although it took me a while, when I heard that she came back remembering nothing, I knew. So many of the mothers talk to me at the library, and one was fearful her wealthy father was going to spend a fortune at this place. She said there was even a drug available here to make one forget the past sad things in a life when preserved for a new life. I comforted her but gave it no more thought because I was so busy, and it seemed so—so far out.”
“But then when Darcy came back that way...”
“Even before that, because the woman had shown me that the logo of an orange butterfly was on all her father’s correspondence with Onward. True, I followed Ralston to this site, but I knew where it was before, and feared Darcy had been kept here—the butterfly connection, of course. But I had to be sure, not make a mistake where I exposed myself to Clint Ralston or to the police. Even when Darcy returned, supposedly safe and sound, I dedicated myself to finding answers—to finding all this—though I hadn’t been inside before today.”
“But you researched it somehow.”
“I’ve been up day and night getting answers. I interviewed a man in California who thought I worked here at Onward, a man planning to be brought here just before he dies so that he can be quickly preserved. I found him through a so-called forward-thinking group online.”
“And I thought Nick and I were pursuing answers—but nothing like that.”
“You didn’t follow Ralston to work, you see. And then learn that he had an alias and was hiding this Onward endeavor from everyone but his family—and his ‘customers.’ To preserve a deceased person, the belief is that brains must not die. The corpse—or just the head for some who want the ‘economy package’—must be quickly preserved in liquid nitrogen. I take it that’s what we see above these dewars in those canisters so that more can be poured in if needed. Uncap and tip those,” he said, pointing upward, “and freezing liquid nitrogen pours out in the form of a frozen mist. But let’s bring in the mastermind of Onward to explain things to us before—well, before we are done with him.”
“And then,” Claire said, wishing her voice didn’t sound so shaky, “take him to the police. For kidnapping and imprisoning Darcy at the very least. They use that drug to erase bad memories in their victims—their clients. So their experiments on her were not only using the drug she was given to block her bad memories of her kidnapping and being experimented on here. The staff here must also be studying the butterflies and maybe dolphins’ brains to learn how to suspend life until those preserved are ready to be brought back.”
“Exactly. I regret I could not ask you to help me when I did all my research, but you would have run to the police, not to mention your lawyer husband, and we needed not only revelation but another form of justice here. Now, let’s get Ralston and force him to prove all that to us, with not only a gun to his head but with the threat—yes, a threat—that all of this will be not only exposed, but ruined, if he doesn’t talk.”
“You mean cut off the electricity that keeps these dewars and everything going? Or by stopping the liquid nitrogen feeds? But they must have a backup generator. After all, this coming hurricane could stop the power.”
“Oh, they have a huge generator out in back they could use. The man I talked to here assured me of that when he thought I would like to be part of this—in a dewar, that is, not as the one who would, and will, bring this all down.”
* * *
Standing in the front hallway, Nick was talking to Ken as fast as he could, trying to convince him he should go with him out into the storm. To Nick’s surprise, Ken had showed up here on his way to his hurricane assignment at Germaine Arena about twenty-five miles north of Naples on I-75. He wore a bright orange slicker, which dripped water onto the tile.
“Man!” he’d said when he first came in and saw Will’s painting. “That does look like Darcy!”
“Ken,” Nick was arguing now, “let me go with you. If you get a call about where Will turns up, or if he or Claire call you, I’d go with you, be there with you to help her.”
“What if she calls you here?”
“We don’t have a landline anymore, and Will must have her phone. If he calls again, I’ll talk to him, find out where she is. If the lines or cell towers go down, I’m hoping you would know what to do to stay in touch with the authorities.”
“So you’re volunteering to help with hundreds of panicked people seeking shelter at Germaine Arena during the storm, and that’s why I would take you with me? Simply as a concerned citizen volunteer, in case I’m asked by my boss, is that right?”
“Yes, damn it. The kids are protected here, our friends should be safe with them in this sturdy new house and the worst part of this storm is supposed to be at least a day out. Yes, if you’re asked by your superiors, just say I’m a concerned citizen, say whatever, but I know as soon as we hear where Claire is out there in this mess, you could get there, and I’d go with you. It’s all I can think of to keep from going crazy over her safety. It sounds like a replay of the Darcy mess, I know.”
“I got that, Nick. Okay, I got you, so get stuff together fast. Maybe one or the other of us will hear from her or Will and can work together. If I get fired for dereliction of duty, will you hire me at the law firm, maybe working security?” he asked with a roll of his eyes.
“Bronco’s got that gig,” Nick said, exhaling in relief, that he could work with Ken, even kid with Ken. “But we could sure use a new computer genius, since Heck may be moving to Miami.”
“Me doing that would be the day. Go get ready, and let’s hope the winds don’t put trees or branches in our way. And,” he called after him as Nick sprinted away, “just keep your mouth shut in my vehicle if we get any calls. Now hurry up!”
* * *
Claire was appalled at how controlling and commanding Will could be, a man she’d seen as polite, even kindly, almost meek. He had his gun barrel pressed hard to the back of Ralston’s head just above his neck, although the man’s hands were still tied.
With her following, Will marched him to one of the computer consoles—a string of them, all in screen saver mode—and shoved him down into the ergonomic chair. Will ripped off Ralston’s taped gag with one hand, still pressing the gun tight to him.
The screen saver read Onward to an Eternal Life with a falcate orangetip flitting across the screen.
“First of all, disable the alarms, phone system and intercom but not the internal computer system!” Will ordered the trembling man. “You’re all so ‘smart’ here, everything is linked. I don’t trust you to just give verbal commands, so do it!”
“Not—not my job description, b-but I can try,” he stuttered.
His hands were shaking so badly that he messed up commands at first, then deleted those. Will hung over his shoulder, keeping an eye on each move. “Who went to pick up those butterflies that day? Your lackey Jedi?”
“Yes. Yes, it was him. Darcy said he couldn’t have them unless she checked with Tara Gerald, and
she’d have to check with the client who had brought them. When he started to take them anyway, she said she was going to call the police, and he—he just lost it. He knew we needed more subjects to test with the propranolol. No one was there, even when he checked Tara’s house, so he took some falcate pupae from there, too. He had chloroform along to sedate the falcates so they could be easily gathered, but he used it on Darcy when she protested and threatened him before she could phone for help.”
Will said, “And when he brought her here and the news media was all over her disappearance, you just kept her to experiment on, you bastard!”
Will’s voice was not his own, either. He pressed the barrel of the gun even tighter to Ralston’s head. “If you don’t do exactly what I say, your staff here won’t even have your head in one piece to pickle in these liquid nitrogen containers for your future life.”
“I said I didn’t take her. I insisted she be released!”
“Yeah, after you’d scrambled her brain, kept her from her family! You made us—her daughter—suffer, too!” Will insisted. “Get her lab results and print them out. Now!”
Ralston fumbled around a few different screens, then brought up what Will wanted and sent a print command. Above the line of six keyboards with large screens, a printer jerked to life and spewed out three pages.
“Get them, Claire,” Will said, and she did. Glancing at them, she saw the last page had also printed at the bottom a color photo of Darcy with some sort of a mask over her face, lying on a gurney. Yes, Darcy had recalled that, fearing the mask and that she couldn’t breathe. Claire almost showed it to Will, but that could come later. He was crazed enough right now.
“So onward to a tour of this warped Disneyland,” Will said, jerking Ralston to his feet but keeping the gun in place. “In my extensive research about Onward, once I figured out what you were hiding, I read people thought Walt Disney wanted to be cryopreserved, but it turned out to be rumors. You see, Ralston, I have done a lot of work on all this in a little over a week. And this week will seem like nothing when you spend the rest of your life—your lackey Jedi Brown, too—in prison. And all these poor people who believe there will be a future when they are pulled from their liquid nitrogen swimming pools someday will be lost, and so stupid to have trusted you.”
“We’re learning more. We’ll find a way, cures for old age or what caused their disease. We’ll bring them back to life! And the suspended animation knowledge from the animals will be of great benefit to all mankind—the space program, too—invaluable, lucrative!” Clint insisted, nodding toward a large drawing Claire had not noticed. In it, astronauts secured by straps, slept in their space capsule on the way, no doubt, to someplace light-years away.
Will just swore under his breath, yanked Ralston out of his chair and shoved him down the hall.
“You know,” Will said, “I’m afraid you’ve been reading your own propaganda about the future—wealth, fame. It may all be a pipe dream, if you can’t bring them back, or if the earth explodes in nuclear war, or if an asteroid hits here or—who knows? Maybe because someone shoots you.”
Claire wanted to stop Will, but she had to keep him calm and bide her time now. Surely he wouldn’t endanger his own future by killing this man? Besides, he must want all this to come out, to be a warning to others.
As she followed along, holding the papers that would help Darcy’s testimony at this man’s criminal trial, Claire wondered what else they would find in this house of horrors.
* * *
“You might know the big boys need more storm data,” Mitch told Jace as they flew into the eye of the storm again after a rough ride through the increasingly powerful outer bands of Jenny.
“It may help Floridians realize how bad this could be,” Jace said as he looked ahead across the eight miles of the eye of sunny sky calm, literally before the other side of the storm. He knew mandatory evacs were happening below in some areas. He fought to keep his mind on his controls and not on his loved ones on the ground.
Above the windshield the small plastic figure of Yoda from Star Wars finally stopped its wild swinging from the WC-130 turboprop bucking the outer band winds. One of their sister planes had Kermit the Frog for their mascot, but Jace’s crew had voted for the small but wise and powerful genius Yoda. They needed that—someone really smart to figure out how to weaken, even defuse, horrible hurricanes like this. Yoda was a Jedi master, the Jedi fighters’ trainer. Wasn’t that the nickname of the guy that had something to do with someone Claire and Nick suspected for something? He couldn’t recall exactly what they’d said, but he remembered the name.
But back—back to concentrating on every move up here.
Again, the crew measured air currents, dropping their last dropsondes with their little parachutes toward the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the coastal areas near Naples. The beautiful blue calm passed quickly. While Jace concentrated on the controls, and they headed into the northern outer bands, Mitch opened the all-call to the crew and told them, “Batten down the hatches, mates. Back into the big blow to get out of here and head back home.
“You know,” he told Jace, cutting off the all-call, “for once I almost feel sick to my stomach. I skipped breakfast, and we’ve been up here too damned long. At least I don’t have any cookies in me to toss, but maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Yeah. Prewedding jitters.”
“Very damn funny. But it just makes me think we should move ahead with our idea of a Fly Safe private pilot school. Nick said he’d have no problem freeing up that name legally, despite the save-the-animals group using it, because our company would be so different.”
“Later for chat. Here we go.”
They bounced into the brutal outer bands again, hopefully, Jace thought, for the last time on a Hurricane Jenny mission. This baby was trouble. At least all those he loved were safe.
* * *
Claire saw the next room down the hall called Your Future was much smaller and not so intimidating. Except, that was, she saw shelves of chilled, thick plastic envelopes that seemed to be moving inside a refrigerant unit with clear doors, from which a strange, muted sound emanated.
Will said, “Glassine envelopes of butterflies, right, Ralston? No doubt falcate orangetips, doped up by the cold, yet fluttering to be free. And perhaps the black ones you released at the memorial service for your brother, thinking Tara or I would be blamed for that.”
“Red rims,” Claire put in. “They were, weren’t they?”
“It was all Jedi’s doing,” Ralston muttered. “He thought the butterflies were a good idea, even when I told him to leave well enough alone. The man’s unstable. He kidnapped your sister. He would’ve killed her outright if I hadn’t insisted on using her as a test subject. I’m the good guy here! I let her go in the end, didn’t I?”
Apparently, Clint’s desperate pleas failed to soften Will’s heart as he pressed the gun barrel against the man’s head.
“Will,” Claire said gently, hoping he wouldn’t blow the man’s brains out, “when he’s arrested, we need to get Tara here and have these butterflies freed and taken care of.”
“You checked out they were red rims?” Will asked her. The mention of butterflies seemed to defuse some of his anger. “So, both of us have been tracking down this maniac. I’m proud of you, Claire, proud of Darcy, too, and you must tell her that.”
So reassuring, Claire thought. Will was calming down now, sounding more like himself. He was going to let her go, going to let her get back to her house and to Darcy after this nightmare, though it sounded as if he might also have plans to disappear. However awful this experience, Will kept his promises. Surely he would soon get her back home.
She sighed as they left behind the haunting sound of hundreds of butterflies fighting to be free. In the next room, a large one, she gasped as the overhead lights automatically came on. Darcy’s frenzied words, her warped memory, came back to Claire as she looked around.
In a lighted tan
k about the size of a rental truck, swam a single dolphin, and it didn’t have much room to move or rise above the surface to breathe.
31
The driving was so bad through increasing wind and rain that Ken pulled over into a parking lot when a call came in from headquarters. Even though the wind was howling and the rain beat on the squad car, the dispatcher’s voice carried. Nervous and scared, Nick frowned out into the increasing storm as the flashing bar lights on top of the car reflected in the clinging rain.
The female dispatcher was spieling off an address near Doctors Pass. Nick turned to listen, his pulse pounding.
“See the man Jedi Brown at that address,” the woman said. Her voice crackled a bit. “Mr. Brown says his employer, Clint Ralston, was taken by force by an unknown man with a gun from this address. Mr. Brown has the incident and suspect on home security camera. Can you take this on your way to the arena, Lieutenant Jensen?”
“Roger that,” Ken said. “I’m not too far, will swing by on the way. Over and out.”
Bingo! Nick thought. This desperate move to stick to Ken was going to pay off. Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on Claire for taking risks.
As Ken pulled out of the parking lot and turned back the way they had come, he told Nick, “You got that? One of our favorite persons of interest, Jedi Brown, called the sheriff’s desk to say that not only had his boss, Clint Ralston, disappeared from his home but that he has security camera proof of who took him by force with a gun.”
“Obviously, he doesn’t know who or he would have told your dispatcher.”
“If he knew, I bet Brown would already be on the kidnapper’s tail.”
“Brown could be the guy who took Darcy—or else Ralston’s kidnapper is. It can’t be Lincoln Yost, because Jedi would know him. Yost had to be on the take, working for whoever is studying all those falcate orangetips boarded at Tara Gerald’s, though I don’t think she knows who she was really dealing with. I just hope the kidnapper’s recognizable on the camera in this weather. This storm isn’t really even here yet and it’s one of the damn darkest ones I’ve ever seen.”
