by S L Shelton
The remaining auditors lowered their heads to refocus on their work, clearly anxious to separate themselves from M.C.’s ire.
Garfield watched as the security men led Janet away then turned to M.C. after they disappeared around a corner. “That’s her computer and phone,” he said, pointing at her space at the table.
M.C. stared at it for a second then looked at Garfield. “Find out if she shared it with anyone then bag it.”
Without another word, M.C. left the room. The satisfaction he had imagined at seeing her forcibly taken away wasn’t present. There was no drama, no groveling. Only her tears gave rise to mild hope for some sating of his desires—but no—even that had failed to satisfy.
He rode back up to his office, listening to his stomach rumble in painful earnest. He had delayed long enough. The wait had not been worthwhile.
“Is my soup here?” he asked as he came back into his temporary office suite.
“Not yet, sir.”
He felt his face flush with heat. “Why the fuck not?! Was I not clear?”
The secretary recoiled and reached for her phone.
“How hard is it to order a simple fucking lunch?!”
She scrambled to dial, trying but failing to maintain calm as he shouted at her.
“Maybe this job is too difficult. Maybe I need someone more competent. Maybe I—”
“The delivery man is in the lobby now, on his way up,” she said, trying to derail his rant.
“Don’t interrupt me!”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“You should be.” He stood in his doorway and looked out the window on the other side of the room, poised at the edge of continuing his bullying—but even that had proven unsatisfying. “Shit,” he muttered.
It was a stupid outburst. He was out of control, he knew it. Spiraling stress, fearing the outcome of his investigation and the repercussions if he didn’t produce—I’m so screwed.
He went in and slammed the door without a backward glance at his secretary. The heat in his corner office rose even with the air-conditioning. He sat in his chair and let the sunlight bake the skin on the back of his neck for a moment as emotion welled in him. He felt his control wane. A whimper slipped from his lips, and his hand shot to his mouth to prevent another.
Still, the panic rose. The other hand clamped over the first, and after several moments of stifled breathing through his pinched nose, he had restored some semblance of calm.
I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail.
From the floor under his desk, he retrieved his briefcase. With shaking fingers, he dialed the combination on the dual wheels and opened it. As his pulse began to rise again, he unbuckled his pants and let them drop to the floor before reaching into the case for the “strap”.
It was a simple velcro strap except for the dozens of pointed metal studs riveted to one side.
His heart beat faster as he pulled it out then lowered his shorts. Carefully, almost reverently, he looped it around his most sensitive parts. The cold, bracing feel of the metal against his skin caused his eyes to close involuntarily, and he breathed out in a rush. Maneuvering the strap around his scrotum so that it acted as if it were a cinch on a sack, he slowly tightened the device.
He lashed the tail of the Velcro around the pinched flesh once before he pulled his shorts up. As he carefully bent to raise his trousers, a knock preceded his secretary opening the door and entering his office. “Sir, your soup is—”
He slid his briefcase in front of him on the glass desktop, covering his masochistic project. “Out!” He screamed, tightening the muscles in his groin and delivering a sharp tug from the strap.
He needn’t have yelled—she had already turned and was closing the door before he uttered the command.
A moment passed as he collected his bearings. Embarrassing as the episode may have been, he was confident she saw nothing. He buckled his pants and adjusted the fall of his newly restrained “package” as he walked to the door. Outside, his secretary was flushed red, no doubt believing she had walked in on him masturbating.
“My soup,” he said more calmly, quietly, with a smile of understanding.
She got up and came around the desk, cautiously holding the delivery bag in front of her as she approached.
“Thank you,” he said with genuine warmth. “I’m sorry about before.”
She nodded hesitantly as he took the bag containing his lunch.
“Please contact all auditors and investigators on this project and have them assembled in the conference room at four fifteen…after the bank closes. The meeting should take no more than twenty minutes.”
She nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
He watched as she returned to her desk and sat, the bright crimson blush still lingering on her cheeks. “And have my driver waiting for me downstairs for after. I want to be back at the hotel by five.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, that time without making eye contact.
He nodded soberly and turned, closing the door before going back to his desk.
Sitting slowly to ensure nothing important got crushed, he breathed out the stress he carried. With a shaking hand, he picked up his phone.
“Hola. Escorts Ejecutivo Premium,” came a woman’s flinty, sexy voice.
“Inglés, por favor,” M.C. replied, breathless.
“Sí, of course. How can I help you?”
The quiver of his fingers forced him to switch hands. “This is Mister Newborn. I had a pair of young women come to my hotel suite two days ago… Amante Imelda and Amante Dessoria, I believe were their names.”
“Sí. The Sheraton?”
“Yes. Suite twenty-five eleven.”
“Would you like to make appointment?”
M.C. breathed out in a nervous rush. “I would.” He flexed his shaking hand and tried to rein in his anxiety. “But only Dessoria…when I’m finished with my business meetings today at five.”
“Dessoria can’t make it at that time, but Imelda can.”
M.C. took a sip of cold tea from his mug then set it back on his desk. “I’ll pay double if Dessoria is there when I arrive at five. Imelda wasn’t…wasn’t firm enough.”
“Understood. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“Excellent. I’ll be sure to send her back with a little something extra for you as well.”
“You are very kind. Thank you.”
“No. Thank you.”
He breathed out once more, letting the skin of his scrotum grow accustomed to the stretch and pinch. More calm seeped into his back and shoulders.
“I can do this,” he said quietly as he swiveled his chair around to stare out the window. He opened the soup and sipped it carefully. I can find the money. I own this bitch…she’s mine. Whoever stole it will regret being born, and I will be the one who paints the target on him.
six
Friday, April 29th
7:55 a.m. —Granger Psychiatric Hospital, Loudoun County Virginia
WOLF felt a slip of consciousness return—subtle, sweet, like a warm stripe of sun cast across the back of the neck on a winter day. The jolt came an instant later as Scott’s consciousness stirred.
Sleep, he said to Scott’s yawning, confused mind.
He leveraged his growing awareness against the rising Scott and pushed him back into the dark abyss of memory. The assault was unrelenting, and had it been an effort of physique rather than a mental exercise, he would have strained every muscle in his body.
Sleep.
Time remained absent in the struggle. The duration of the fight to subdue Scott could have taken a second or a year. It wasn’t until Scott once again safely slumbered that time became a reality—the waking of the parietal lobe restarted the brain’s internal clock. That’s how Wolf knew it was exactly 10.35 seconds later that his eyes opened.
“You’ve put me in a very difficult situation,” Nance said as Wolf blinked the crust from his eyelids.
His gaze danced aro
und the room, seeking any indication of actual time, location, threats—full analysis mode. The watch on Nance’s wrist read 7:55. Is that a.m. or p.m.?
The room had no windows, but the light sneaking under the crack of the door was a combination of 4500K commercial fluorescent and 2700K diffused sunlight in the orange range.
Morning.
And more immediately important, Roger Gallow, Chairman of GGP labs, and Mike Nance’s personal human puppet stood at the foot of the reclined restraint chair, pointing Wolf’s pistol at his head.
Still restrained, the drugs burning out of his system slowly, Wolf reached out of his foggy restraints to scan his body. Chemicals in bloodstream, he thought but couldn’t immediately identify all of them. As if injected with adrenaline, hope surged when he realized he could no longer detect the bullet in his brain.
“Well, that was worth the wait,” Wolf said through a dry, grating throat.
Nance stepped closer and lifted Wolf’s eyelids one at a time before stepping back. “I’d hoped I’d get to talk to Scott.”
“Scott can’t talk.”
“Not with you holding him captive,” Nance said with a wry smile.
“Scott’s consciousness is unable to navigate the brain damage,” Wolf said, following Nance with his eyes as he circled the restraint chair. “In fact, if I lost control of this body, Scott would wake long enough to suffocate and feel his last heartbeat.”
Nance nodded slowly, glaring at Wolf through slits. “I surmised that much when you coded under a simple general anesthetic…I debated not restarting your heart.”
“I’m happy to see you had a ventilator and a ventricular assist device on hand,” Wolf replied, matching Nance’s grim tone. “I don’t think you could have pulled me out of the induced coma fast enough to save either of us if you hadn’t.”
Nance breathed in deeply, slowly, then shook his head as the breath slipped out of his nose in a long sigh. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I—”
“It was a rhetorical question. I wasn’t looking for input.”
Wolf nodded his head toward Gallow. “Why don’t you ask him? He’s uniquely qualified to render an opinion on the subject.”
Nance laughed and turned to Gallow. “What would you do under these circumstances, Roger?”
“I’d do as you told me.”
“Well, that wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped,” Wolf muttered.
Nance laughed louder.
Wolf tested his restraints discretely. “Roger’s opinion notwithstanding, I think you realize what I’m doing is too important to be derailed.”
“There are others, I’m sure, who can deal with a little corruption in the government. What makes you so important that it fails without you?”
“Well, for one I have over a hundred billion dollars of Combine’s operational money.” He smiled broadly. “That’s become the operational funds for exposing the—”
“A hundred billion?” Nance repeated.
Wolf nodded and tested his bonds once more with a little more force. Though the head cage and chest strap were gone, he remained tied down, wrists and ankles. However, the ankle restraints were a single strap threaded through a hard plastic block—a medical restraint not meant for holding a prisoner.
Nance sat on the edge of the cabinet next to Wolf. “Tell me more about Combine.”
“No.”
Anger flashed across Nance’s face. “You aren’t exactly in a position to deny requests.”
“I’m in the perfect position,” he said. “I alone hold the encryption keys required to bring them down. I alone have mapped the structure of the organization. I alone am capable of physically defeating the assets they are using as their own personal security force.” His voice rose with each utterance until he was yelling, flexing his muscles against the straps once again. “Your enhanced assets.”
Nance stood, shaking his head. “Defeating them? I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but until a few hours ago there was a bullet in your brain…Scott’s brain.”
“I noticed that.”
“And I have more bad news for you,” Nance said, registering doubt and regret in his microexpressions. “The treatment I formulated for your neural-pathway scarring…”
Wolf glared at him, a sense of dread building. “Yes?”
“I repeated the Ambux protocol that saved everyone else who’d been exposed.”
Wolf’s mind began searching frantically through his system for the effects of the second generation Ambux virus. He found traces of it rewriting pathways in the scar tissue where the bullet had been in his head.
“You idiot!”
Something akin to defiance spread across Nance’s face and posture.
“Please tell me you used the same formula Scott imbibed when he was ten,” Wolf said.
Nance shook his head slowly. “That wouldn’t have been a cure. That would have just made you stronger.”
Wolf closed his eyes, a feeling of defeat threatening to overwhelm him. “So, you isolated Scott’s DNA and replicated the second generation Ambux drug to overwrite the damage caused by the incompatible fragments.”
Nance nodded.
“And I’m the damage that’s being corrected.”
Nance nodded again, more solemnly. “I felt that if Scott was still in there, he might have a better chance of repairing the damage with his own DNA…even if it meant losing his fragmented enhancements.”
Well, that’s something that might make Scott happy…if he lives through learning how to breathe again.
“Quite a gamble,” Wolf said, regaining his composure. “Too bad you didn’t choose to have a conversation with me before you acted on your emotions.”
A flush of red colored Nance’s cheeks. “I didn’t do this to him!”
“Really? Then who would you say is ultimately responsible?”
Nance sat on the cabinet, glaring at Wolf for a moment. The color leached from his face, and his shoulders slumped when the accusation hit some personal depth of culpability.
“You’ve killed us both,” Wolf hissed through gritted teeth.
“Perhaps not. There’s a chance that—”
“He’s wanted by every law enforcement agency on the planet! There are a handful of dedicated, rogue CIA and Navy operators relying on what’s trapped in this head!” He yanked at his restraints, thrashing. “And as soon as I can no longer manually force his heart to beat or his lungs to draw breath, he will die!”
He kicked his legs out and back, twisting as he struggled against the nylon straps around his ankles.
“Calm down,” Nance snapped, causing Roger Gallow to adjust his pistol grip and focus his aim more precisely on Wolf’s head.
Wolf glared at him and kicked once more, harder. He felt the nylon pop and readjust beneath the chair’s metal frame. Gallow took a step closer.
“Relax,” Nance said and waved Gallow to back away. “It won’t happen all at once. There’s time to draw everything down and work on autonomic function.”
“How long?” Wolf asked, narrowing his eyes.
Exhaustion flooded Nance’s face and he pressed his fingers to his forehead as if a massage there would produce a precise answer. “If it responds the way it did sixteen years ago, two weeks.”
Wolf laughed in helpless, hopeless release. “Two weeks?! Well, no problem then. I should be able to wrap everything up in a nice bow and teach Scott how to breathe again with that much time. Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Your sarcasm won’t help anything.”
“No. It won’t. Having a treatment that fixes the scarring in Scott’s brain would’ve helped,” he said bitterly. “But you’re correct…my sarcasm does nothing to improve our situation.”
“The scarring occurred because you are present.”
“I didn’t cause my own splinter personality… Those things occurred long before I was self-aware.” Wolf’s eyes flashed to Gallow. “You might as well just pull that trigger now
.”
Gallow raised the barrel of the gun a fraction of an inch.
“Enough,” Nance snapped. “There was no alternative. The damage was worsening, and there was only one feasible treatment. I made a judgment call.”
“Great call, Doc. You’ve killed us both.”
“Both? Both?!” Nance stood over Wolf, his face red with rage. “You are a chemically induced personality disorder…a fracture, schizophrenia, a psychosis…a disease of the mind.”
Gallow lowered the pistol as Nance blocked his aim. In the split second the barrel was no longer aimed at Wolf, he kicked up, snapping the already weakened nylon webbing holding his feet.
Throwing his feet over his head, he trapped Nance with his knees. The momentum and the extra weight of Nance exerted sufficient force to snap the bolts holding the chair to the floor.
They tumbled backward, knocking over the cabinet of instruments as they fell. Gallow circled around seeking a clear shot as Wolf grasped at the instruments with his still restrained hand.
“No! Don’t kill him,” Nance yelled at Gallow as he scrambled away from the chair.
His words, however, were moot. Wolf wrapped his fingers around a scalpel and deftly flicked his wrist, slicing the restraint. With his other hand still firmly tied, he pushed the chair forward like a snow plow, slamming into Gallow and sending him to the floor. Wolf jumped from under the chair after cutting through the last strap and landed on Gallow’s chest.
“Stop it! You have no enemies here!” Nance yelled. “You’ve just had brain surgery. You’re going to harm Scott!”
Wolf turned and looked up at Nance through angry eyes as his powerful climber’s grip closed, one hand on Gallow’s gun wrist, the other on his throat. “You harmed Scott.”
Nance stepped forward and Wolf stripped the pistol from Gallow’s hand, turning it on him. Gallow remained frozen, staring at Nance as if awaiting an order.
“You’re right. I should have talked with you. I should have tried to ascertain the extent of the damage to your brain before I administered the treatment.” Nance stepped closer, hands extended and open.
