[Anthology] Killer Thrillers

by Nick Thacker

  Mark stood and walked to the door. He tried to peer up and down the hall, but couldn’t see far enough.

  He shouted. “Hey! Anyone out there?”

  The sound reverberated abruptly through the small concrete and glass room. His voice was weak. He had been drugged. He repeated the call and found strength returning to his lungs and body.

  He waited. A minute passed, and he yelled a final time. No one came, but he remained standing in front of the glass wall.

  The faint sound of clicking heels reached his ears, and when he looked to the right, he was surprised to see a woman approaching him from only a few yards away. This room must be well soundproofed, he thought.

  “Hi, Mr. Adams,” the woman said, in a lilting and upbeat tone. “Sorry. This is quite a trek for us, but we heard you yelling through the closed-circuit system.”

  Mark was amazed. He hadn’t seen anything that clued him into there being a one- or two-way radio system in the room. But somehow they’d heard him. He didn’t let her see his confusion.

  “It’s okay, Mark—hope you don’t mind if I skip the formalities—that’s a pretty fancy room you’re in. Seems rather unassuming, I admit, but it’s not devoid of its surprises.”

  “Who are you?” he asked through the glass.

  The woman on the other side heard him perfectly. “I work here. Analyst, actually. Boring stuff, but hey—we don’t get visitors often.”

  Mark frowned.

  “Right,” she said. “Sorry. We picked you up earlier out by the silos, and my boss wanted to make sure everything was kosher. Couldn’t have you getting all antsy on us, you know?”

  Mark couldn’t believe his ears. “What the hell do you want?” he said, crossing his arms.

  “It’s okay, Mark, there’s nothing to worry about. We just don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. That’s why you’re in here. I want to ask you some questions.”

  The young woman waited, but Mark’s expression remained stoic and constant.

  “Okay, well, ah…First, what’s your—sorry. I guess I already know your name.”

  Mark stared.

  “Right. So, Mark, where do you work?”

  “I’m a computer security technician.”

  “Technician?”

  “Technician,” he said again.

  “What exactly does a computer security technician do?”

  “Technical stuff. On computers.”

  The woman paused, looking back at Mark. “Listen, Mark, I want to help you. I really do. But I need something in return.”

  “Yeah?” Mark said. “What’s that?” He knew the answer, but he needed to keep the woman talking.

  “I need cooperation. I need to get these questions answered. They’re really just a formality.”

  “If there just a formality, why can’t we skip ahead to the good stuff?”

  The woman on the other side of the glass flinched, but quickly recovered. “Sorry, these are my orders. Can I count on you?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Great. So what exactly do you do?” she asked.

  “I told you. Technical stuff. Computer programming, database stuff. What do you want from me?”

  The change of subject didn’t phase the woman. “I see. And how long have you been doing, uh, ‘computer stuff?’”

  “Twelve years.” It was a lie, and he could tell the woman knew it. Her eyes flicked—the briefest of moments—down to a small piece of paper she was carrying, but then returned to his.

  “Twelve years. I see. And do you have any children?”

  Checkmate. The question, otherwise unrelated, was posed specifically because his only child, Reese, was twelve years old. He was dealing with a smart woman.

  “I do. One. A boy, also twelve.”

  “Right. Thanks, Mark. Also—”

  “No. My turn. What am I doing here?” he asked, a little too abruptly.

  The woman answered in stride. “We’re holding you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For the time being.”

  “Why?”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you uncomfortable?”

  Mark was slightly taken aback by the question. The details of his interrogator suddenly rushed to the forefront of his mind. She’s gorgeous, he found himself thinking. Long, blond hair. Tall and skinny, but not too much. Before he got lost in his train of thought, he answered. “No. I’m perfectly comfortable. I’d like to know what’s going on here, though,” he said.

  “I understand. All in good time. First, can you tell me specifically what you were working on—the last thing you were working on—at your job?”

  “I can’t.”

  “And why is that?” The woman flicked her head to the side, causing her hair to fall gracefully down to her shoulders.

  “Because, it’s, uh, a private account,” Mark said.

  “Did you do any defense contracting in the past year?”

  The question startled him. It was unrelated to the last. Had they finally dropped the small talk?

  “Listen, I—”

  “Sylvia,” she said.

  “Right. Sylvia, you know I can’t—”

  “Mark, did you do any work for a company called Nouvelle Terre?”

  He swallowed. Did she really just out herself that easily? he wondered. What game is she playing?

  He answered. “Yes.”

  She looked at him, staring through the glass, but didn’t ask a follow-up question.

  “Yes, I did. We had a contract with them, but it was terminated. We tried to reinstate, but it was denied.”

  She arched her eyebrows.

  He wouldn’t give in, so she stared harder through the glass.

  “Sylvia, come on. It was just a contract…”

  She didn’t move.

  He realized this was the end of the negotiations. Silent, he stepped back a few paces and stood in front of the bed. If she’s going to play hardball…

  Her eyes pierced his and waited a few seconds, then she turned on her heel and began walking away.

  “That’s fine, Mark. If you want to play it this way, I’ll let Reese know.”

  “What?!” Mark yelled. “You have Reese?”

  She stopped. He yelled again. “Sylvia—stop! Do you have my son?”

  He caught the faintest of smiles appear on the side of her face. She turned, walked back, and stared into the room. “Mark, I need you to be honest with me, understand?”

  He nodded his head.

  “Deadly honest.”

  Again, he nodded his head, a tear forming at the side of his eye.

  “What do you know about Nouvelle Terre?”

  33

  Sylvia Etienne-Grey’s heels clacked down the hall leading to her boss’s office. The whitewashed walls seemed to close in around her, and she couldn’t help but shiver. The sterile lights threw brightness into every crack and corner, but her skin crawled as she made her way through the halls.

  A right turn into a deserted hallway with nothing but a janitorial closet, then a left, and she was in the so-called executive suite.

  She laughed silently. There was a single occupied office in this hallway—Jeremiah Austin’s. The hall itself seemed slightly darker than the others, though she wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion or not. None of the halls had natural light, so a single burnt-out fluorescent bulb could change the brightness level in an almost subconscious way.

  Austin’s office was really just a large closet with a desk and a few shelves along the wall. He’d stocked the shelves with the bare essentials: a few textbooks on biology and chemistry, a collection of National Geographic and other magazine editions featuring articles written by Austin, and a record player.

  Sylvia knocked once, then entered. They were the only two working at this hour, but she knew her boss appreciated his privacy. She turned the handle, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

  Austin didn’t look up from his MacBook Pro, so she entered and
stood just in front of his desk. She glanced around the office again, taking it all in.

  The office, while lacking in traditional decor, was covered in plants. Austin had plants ranging from small desktop varieties like the dionaea muscipula—venus flytrap—to larger potted trees and flowering bushes. The plants surrounded her, blocking out sound and absorbing the air in the room. It felt stuffy and stifling in the room, and the humidity had risen to an almost unbearable level.

  Austin’s hobby bordered on the insane, but Sylvia had to admit that the man was the best botanist she’d ever met. He could recite the latin names of each variety—and subspecies—of any plant he saw, and he knew their medicinal and common uses as well.

  She had always chided herself for letting it become one of the features of Austin she was most attracted to.

  “Sylvia,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper, and he still hadn’t looked up from the computer.

  “Jeremiah. Hi, um,” she began.

  He frowned, and she stopped talking.

  Finally he stood, then glanced up at her with a bored expression. “Are we on track?”

  “Yes,” she replied, “We’re getting somewhere.”

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached down to his computer and clicked around for a moment.

  Sylvia heard a pre-recorded audio file begin to play.

  “Listen, I—”

  “Sylvia.”

  “Right. Sylvia, you know I can’t—”

  “Mark, did you do any work for a company called Nouvelle Terre?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. We had a contract with them, but it was terminated. We tried to reinstate, but it was denied.”

  A brief pause.

  “Sylvia, come on. It was just a contract…”

  Sylvia’s eyes widened. “You recorded this?”

  “Don’t you understand that I’m not a man of chances? I don’t have time for—”

  “Yes,” she said, interrupting him. It was a risk, but she was livid. “Yes, I know you’re on a tight schedule, and I can respect that. This project will be completed on time, and I will get that information, Jeremiah.”

  He looked her up and down, slowly, examining her figure. A slight lift in his upper lip told Sylvia all she needed to know.

  She stepped forward, moving carefully around the desk. “Austin, is everything okay?”

  She reached out with her left hand, placing it gently on his bicep. He looked down again and moved the mouse around on his computer’s desktop.

  “Can I get you anything?” She looked toward the rolling liquor cart and decanter at the front of the office. She knew there was only cranberry juice inside; Austin didn’t drink.

  “No.” He rolled his shoulder, brushing her hand from his arm, and she stepped back around to the front of the desk. “I need to keep moving, and if you can’t deliver…”

  Was he threatening her?

  “You know I can deliver.”

  “Then why is it taking so long?”

  She couldn’t answer that.

  He paced around the office and stopped at a large purple flower in a ceramic pot on the shelf. “Do you know what this is?”

  She didn’t.

  “It’s called aconitum napellus, or monkshood. The flowers are beautiful, and so it makes a fine addition to a home garden. But crush the root and eat it, and you’ll be asphyxiated.”

  “Really?”

  “Without fail. It contains a compound called alkaloid aconite, and it’s been known to cause silent, virtually untraceable deaths.”

  He moved to another plant, this time a huge-leafed bush that stood behind a glass enclosure.

  “And this. This is called hogweed, heracleum mantegazzianum, and it can grow over twenty feet tall. It’s extremely potent, and just touching it causes lesions, blindness, and eventual death.”

  He continued around the room, Sylvia growing more and more terrified by the minute. She knew a few of the plants, but had no idea that each of them were toxic or poisonous to humans.

  Finally, he came to an assuming—actually, quite beautiful—flower in another large pot. She knew this one.

  “That’s an angel trumpet, right? South American?”

  He looked impressed. “Indeed. The brugmansia, and yes. It’s found in South American countries, and it produces my favorite effect. It produces scopolamine, which can be turned into a powder, a liquid, or any number of simple-looking materials. Scopolamine is highly reactive, but completely unnoticeable to the victim.”

  She waited for the final blow as he said victim.

  “Scopolamine, once in the bloodstream, and combined with the other toxins found in the trumpet—hyoscyamine and atropine—causes the victim to act in strange ways, though completely unaware of what they’re doing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Experiments range from subjects driving to random locations, acting out in violent ways, and even overeating to the point of death. It depends on the subject, of course, but in some cases it can be temporarily controlled.”

  “Controlled? How?”

  “Electrical pulses, usually, but to some extent also with a reverse-engineered cocktail of proteins found in the animals and parasites that use the angel trumpet as food and shelter.”

  She recognized this last statement. “That’s what your research was back in Philadelphia, right?”

  “Yes, but with different implications. I was able to combine both the electrical pulses and the proteins into an injected compound. The electrical signals need to be activated remotely, but generally it’s a completely workable solution.”

  “Solution to what?”

  He reached for a box on his shelf, and placed it on his desk. Sylvia watched curiously as he opened the box and withdrew a syringe. He stabbed himself with it, and he must have noticed the shocked expression on Sylvia’s face.

  He smiled. “Sylvia, you know exactly what all of this is. The project’s scope is larger than any we’ve tried to accomplish, but you and I both know we can’t accomplish anything else without bringing it all back down to the granular level. You continually refuse to do as I ask, especially when it comes to that boy.”

  He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, letting the chemicals take their effect.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about! But it doesn’t matter. I’ve now got his father and the leader of their crack team ready for surgery, so I’ve been able to sidestep your little games. Compassion is a curse, Sylvia, and the sooner you learn that the sooner you’ll be able to truly understand all of this.”

  He walked over to the computer and pressed a key. “Speaking of ‘little games,’ I thought I might show you one of mine. I can assure you—this whole thing is going to play out my way, whether you like it or not. I hope you understand that.”

  Immediately, small vents in the ceiling began emitting a gas into the office. Sylvia shrieked and ran for the door, but Austin stepped in front of it. He grabbed her wrists, smiling into her brown eyes. “Sylvia, calm down. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. I just wanted you to share this with me. I want you to understand what we’re working on here.”

  His thumbs rubbed the undersides of her wrists, and she faltered a bit. He caught her, and she felt herself going to sleep.

  No. Her eyes opened, and she saw Jeremiah’s concerned expression. He had a fiery look in his eyes, though, as his hands dropped hers. She tried to step backwards, but found her feet locked to the floor.

  She willed herself to move but found her body completely unresponsive to her brain’s commands.

  After a minute, a feeling of complete relaxation overcame her, and she was stunned to realize what Jeremiah had injected into the room.

  Brugmansia.

  Angel trumpet.

  She couldn’t voluntarily move, but her unconscious mind now had complete control of her movement.

  Jeremiah approached her again, this time closing the distance bet
ween them to mere inches. He jerked her toward him, his hand pushing against her lower back, and she could feel the warmth of his body.

  She screamed—not out loud, but in her own head, but it was useless.

  She couldn’t even object.

  34

  “So how old are you?” Nelson asked.

  Erik answered in clipped English. “Twenty-six.”

  Nelson opened his mouth to speak, but Jen spoke from behind them. “Wow, you look, uh…”

  “Older. Yes. I know,” Erik said. “I have always appeared older than I am.”

  Jen could understand that. Erik’s stark features didn’t match his pleasant and unassuming personality. His head was rectangular, with squared corners around his chin and the facial appearance of Frankenstein.

  “And what were you doing for Dr. Richards?” Nelson asked. He was walking behind Saunders and Carter, followed by Erik and Jen directly behind him. They’d walked in silence for thirty minutes, but had yet to find the exit that would deposit them on the lower levels.

  “I was an assistant. Research and lectures, but I was also her personal assistant.”

  “Personal, eh?” Nelson said.

  “Not like that. Lin—Dr. Richards—was the only professor who took an interest in my work when I came here. She understand the challenges I faced, or at least accepted them.”

  “What kind of challenges?”

  “I am interested in a specific sort of oceanography that does not garner much of a following,” he said.

  No one asked another question, waiting for Erik to continue.

  “My undergraduate work back in Russia was in general oceanographic studies. But my real interest is in more obscure fields. My graduate work with her, when I had time to focus on my own, was in celestial oceanographic geology.”

  “Celestial oceano-what?” Nelson asked.

  Jen wasn’t sure if the young man was playing with them all or not. “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Yes. I understand the effect is has on the established scientific community, but I cannot deny the truth. Ever since childhood I have been fascinated with the possibility.”