The R.E.M. Project: A Thriller (The Ocula Series, Book 2)

by J. M. Lanham

  His appearance could have improved, if only he had taken the time to make an honest effort. Drawn-in shoulders and long, dangly arms were easily fixed with the correct posture and a high-calorie diet. His pale skin would have likely been olive brown like his father’s, had he taken the time to step away from his computer and out in the sunlight every now and then.

  But Fenton Reed had never been interested in keeping up appearances. Instead, his passion lay in combinations of ones and zeros flying through sophisticated processors and flashing across digital screens at lightning speed. Computers clicked with Fenton in a way people could not. By his senior year of high school, his obsession had landed him in hot water. While peers worked on senior projects like volunteering at the local nursing home or adopting a mile of highway, Fenton had been raising money to fund a booze cruise by hacking into the local board of education and changing the grades of underperforming classmates—for a nominal fee, of course.

  Fenton was far from a mastermind, but he had a knack for breaching sites with low-end security. He had considered using his skills to book a free room more than once; would have been nice to lounge up in a clean room while sleeping under the sheets for a change. But then he would have run into other issues. Fake credit cards. Fake ID. Security cameras with image recognition technology. With everything that had happened lately, he just couldn’t risk it.

  Instead, he’d decided to keep a low profile, sticking to the kind of motels that offered weekly discounts for extended-stay guests while he conducted his research.

  In the beginning, disappearing had been easy. His parents were divorced, both living in different states. He had lived with his grandmother throughout high school, but had moved out to split the apartment rent with a buddy living on the north end of Atlanta.

  That’s where the situation with Asteria had reached its boiling point. Back when he had had enough cash to live comfortably on the road. Nowadays, cash was scarce, and charity was non-existent. At least some things are still free, he thought, even if they do come and go.

  A semi-truck blew by, the gust of wind like an unfriendly nudge, reminding him to scoot over. He took a few steps off the shoulder and kept walking, thinking back on the last time he had seen his apartment almost a year earlier.

  Fenton had suspected he was being followed for several weeks, starting shortly after his participation in a clinical trial that promised to cure his incessant insomnia. It began innocently enough. A familiar car in the rearview in front of his apartment building. Then the same car at work. And school. And the pharmacy.

  Once he noticed the driver always matched the car, he started to worry. But despite Fenton’s fear of being snatched up and stuffed in a trunk, it never happened. The man watched, and waited. And the one time Fenton worked up the courage to confront the man sitting in the complex parking lot, he sped off, tires chirping, as Fenton took note of the sign stuck in the back glass that simply (and unconvincingly) stated TAG APPLIED FOR.

  The stalking carried on for weeks, turning into months. Eventually, Fenton learned to ignore it. He called the police a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it. The mysterious car always left the scene well before the cops ever showed up. It was obvious the only station playing in the four-door sedan was the local police scanner’s Greatest Hits.

  But everything changed the night of Fenton’s dream.

  He hadn’t had a dream in years, a prolonged bout of insomnia preventing any meaningful sleep from taking place. (When he did finally crash it was from pure exhaustion, sleeping straight through without any awareness of the time that had passed.) That night, however, Fenton experienced the most lucid dream of his life. He was standing in his kitchen, fridge door open, staring into the artificial glow like a moth to a flame. The fridge hummed loudly, the sound consuming him and ringing in his ears.

  The humming stopped. Then three distinct knocks at the door.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  He closed the fridge and walked to the front door. Light beamed in from the peephole before being eclipsed by the figure on the other side.

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  No one answered.

  Fenton leaned forward, a single eye peering through the peephole. Only darkness. Black. Whatever was outside was very close to the door.

  Then the door came in.

  Locks busted and wood crashed as the door slammed into Fenton’s face, knocking him back and onto the floor. He lay there motionless in a pile of splintered trim and molding as the shadow of a man stood between him and the door. The man’s coat was long and black, his hair high and tight. Aviator shades covered his eyes, with a face harboring a distinct mark on his upper lip, like an old surgical scar for a cleft palate.

  Fenton propped up on his elbows, then leaned to one side to touch his forehead. He looked at his fingers: bloody. He glanced up at the man standing over him with just enough time to see a fist coming at his face.

  BLAM.

  Then he woke up.

  The first memorable dream he had had in years, and it turned out to be a nightmare. Some sleeping pill, he remembered thinking. The event had rattled him so much that instead of sleeping in that Saturday morning, he got up a little earlier to catch breakfast at a local mom-and-pop diner down the street. It was supposed to be nice out, seventy-five and sunny. He figured getting a little work done at the restaurant might do him good.

  At the diner, time seemed to pass a little faster than back at the apartment. Several hours had already gone by before Fenton realized his morning escapade had turned into an afternoon affair. He decided to leave, packing up his laptop and taking his time walking home to watch the drivers and cyclers and other pedestrians out and about while enjoying some of that vitamin D everyone was always talking about.

  He was a building away from his apartment when he noticed a figure on the catwalk near his door—a man, tall and dark. The sight unsettled him, but he was still too far away to draw any meaningful conclusions. He ducked into a side street, opting to take the long way around and approach his apartment from the north side.

  After a ten-minute detour, Fenton was trudging up the north-side stairwell that led to his apartment on the seventh floor. The stairs were opposite the elevator lobby that was central to the building; if the man was watching his room with one eye, he would likely be spying the elevators with the other.

  Fenton reached the top of the stairs, came to the north-side corner of the catwalk, and stopped for a moment to catch his breath (which was a bit labored for a kid his age, but then again, this was the most exercise he’d had in a minute). He slowly peered around the corner, fighting the pain in his chest to keep his huffing and puffing from giving away his position.

  One look down the catwalk and his suspicions were realized. A man in a long, dark overcoat, sporting a high and tight haircut, with Aviator shades, faced his door. Fenton squinted to zero in on the details. Sure enough, the man had a visible scar, right above his upper lip.

  “No way,” Fenton said, apparently a little too loud.

  The man turned and immediately recognized his target. “You! STOP!”

  Fenton didn’t comply. He took off in the opposite direction, busting through the stairwell door and flying down the stairs, skipping every other one on the breakneck descent. He had already made it halfway to the bottom when he heard the same door slamming open above him.

  Don’t stop. Just run.

  He reached the bottom fast, but his escape was hampered by a snagged backpack on the ground-level door handle. He reached back to unhook his bag and glanced up. The man was making time, rounding down the stairs, one hand skimming the rails, the other clinging to a gun.

  Fenton was winded beyond belief, but the sight of the semi-automatic was all it took to get him moving again. Adrenaline kicking in, he freed his bag and sprinted down the street—and away from his apartment complex for good. Within twenty-four hours, he was two hundred miles away from the city, holed up in a sleazy South Georgia motel, sear
ching the Internet and wondering what in the hell had just happened.

  That was almost a year ago. Now, Fenton finally had some answers. But, one thing remained a mystery:

  Why was everyone doing everything he wanted?

  It wasn’t an exact science, by any means, but there was no denying that in the year Fenton had been on the road, a lot of things had turned in his favor. The Mulberry Hotel was a perfect example of Fenton’s good fortune. Jerry Kirkland was old, crabby, and couldn’t have given two shits about a nineteen-year-old computer geek who had fallen on hard times. Kirkland wasn’t running a charity; he was a graduate of the Old School, living by a closefisted code of pay up or get out. So why was it that he had let Fenton stay in room 110 rent-free for the better part of a month?

  The question was perplexing, but Fenton was starting to suspect it had something to do with his old Ocula prescription, the bottle found in the bottom of his backpack a few days after fleeing Atlanta (however insane the idea of a magic mind-control pill sounded). He didn’t have enough to last more than a couple of months if taken regularly, so he saved it for nights when he desperately needed sleep.

  Some nights, it helped. Others, it did not.

  On the bad nights, Fenton was left with a debilitating headache, leaving a trail of sweat-soaked sheets on the beds of whatever motel he had stumbled into the day before. Eventually, after hours of excruciating pain and retching dry heaves, he would pass out from the sheer agony of it all, slipping into a deep sleep, eyes dancing rapidly under their lids into the wee hours of the morning.

  Fenton was always surprised when such bad nights led to such good fortune the following day, but that was almost always the case. A stranger approaching him on the street, placing a wad of cash in his hands. Another offering the keys to his car. Even the owner of a motel offering to put him up rent-free for a month, all following horrendous nights of migraines Fenton had never experienced prior to the clinical trials.

  All the following nights had been filled with fortuitous dreams.

  He walked down the rural highway, pondering the strange sequence of events and looking up into the clear blue sky. An airliner soared high above, the shiny and silvery fuselage leading a pair of contrails in its wake.

  He thought a ticket out of the country sure would be nice. So would some answers. But, like the plane flying five miles above, both were far out of reach.

  Chapter 5:

  End of the Line

  “What do you mean, we’ve got to leave?” It was clear Michelle was not a happy camper, but they didn’t have time to sit still and debate. The tent had to be dismantled, the coolers and chairs loaded up, and Aaron’s junk picked up and packed into the sedan.

  The sedan. Shit.

  Alejandro Aguilar had helped Paul secure the car months ago as a personal favor to Claire. Paul had hoped Aguilar would hook him up with the entire Walter White package. New name. New identity. Cozy little cabin in the woods.

  Unfortunately, Aguilar had said the car was the best he could do. And the traffic stop meant the tag was now linked to his driver’s license. He would have no choice but to ditch the ride.

  Shit shit shit.

  Paul would have a lot of explaining to do along the way. He started breaking down the tent while Michelle waited for an answer.

  “That’s what I said, Michelle. We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous now.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Traffic stop,” Paul said. “I got pulled over on the way into town.”

  “What for?”

  “Speeding.”

  Michelle deadpanned. “You’re joking, right?”

  Paul didn’t answer. He wadded up the tent, then crammed it into the back of the car.

  Michelle grabbed his arm. “What exactly does this mean, Paul?”

  “It means we’ve got to get rid of the car.”

  “And trade it in for what, a horse and buggy?”

  Silence.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” Michelle asked. “We can’t rent a car, because we’ll show up ‘on the grid.’ We can’t call any of our friends or family for help, because we’ll show up ‘on the grid.’”

  Michelle’s use of air quotes wore on Paul’s nerves, but he let her vent. “We’ve been stuck out here in the middle of nowhere for the last six months, and we’re no better off than we were when we left. And now we have to get rid of the car? What do you want us to do, Paul? Live off the land like a bunch of fucking pilgrims?”

  Aaron started crying from the playpen nearby. She walked over to console him while Paul hastily packed. Soon the playpen was in the back of the car, along with the rest of their lives, stuffed gracelessly in the back of a weathered Mercury.

  Michelle watched and judged from the picnic table, bouncing her son on her knee while staring at Paul with eyes that could cut through steel.

  “And what about Aaron?” she said. “Do you think this is the kind of environment we should be raising our son in?”

  “Of course not. It’s only—”

  “Temporary? Jesus, Paul. How many times have you told me it’s only temporary? Temporary was supposed to mean a few weeks, maybe a month, just until you could find others to corroborate your story. But none of that’s happened, has it? You’ve been dragging us from one state to the next, with no way to get us out of this mess. It’s no wonder I had to pay the bills, back when we had bills to pay. You can’t even remember to mail a check from one month to the next . . . Why on Earth did I ever think you could take down a major pharmaceutical company?”

  Paul snapped. “Listen, Michelle. We wouldn’t even be in this situation if—”

  “I swear to God, Paul. If you say one more time I had something to do with this, I’ll call Asteria myself.”

  “Well, what other explanation is there, Michelle? I sure as shit didn’t sign up for the Ocula trials, and you were the one always harping on me about my sleep. You even brought it up the day I was kidnapped, for Chrissake.”

  “Why on earth would I drug you without telling you, Paul? And where would I even get the drugs to begin with? For you to even think I had something to do with this is a whole other level of messed up. Really says a lot about your opinion of me.”

  “It’s not that, Michelle. It’s just that no other explanation makes any—”

  “Just save it, Paul.” She got up to strap Aaron in his car seat, stopping halfway to put her finger in Paul’s face. “You know, you can be a real asshole sometimes.” She loaded up the youngster, then stormed to the passenger side and got in, slamming the door hard enough to rock the car.

  Paul couldn’t argue with her assessment, but he did have a point. What other explanation was there for Ocula being in his system that day? The mystery behind his initial contact with the medication was the subject of every argument Paul and Michelle had had since they’d gone into hiding.

  The evidence was intriguing, but still circumstantial. Michelle’s concern over Paul’s sleep the night before his kidnapping; the fact that his own brother had had access to Ocula after participating in the clinical trials; and Michelle’s occupation as a registered nurse. That was it. Nothing concrete, no smoking gun. But Paul still couldn’t shake the gut feeling that something wasn’t right. Whenever his mind found relief by defaulting to the logic, it always drifted back to something Michelle had asked him the day he was kidnapped:

  “Did you sleep good last night?”

  Simple enough question, Paul thought, at least on the surface. But the more he thought back to that moment, the more that heavy feeling of dread and doubt would creep back in. It wasn’t the question itself, but the manner in which she had asked it.

  Not once. But twice.

  Paul hadn’t really heard her the first time; his mid-morning tirade directed at the blissfully insane drivers who made up Atlanta’s rush-hour traffic took precedence over small talk. But replaying the events in his head, there was no mistaking the fact that Michelle had asked him the seemingly
benign question twice. It was also a question she rarely asked, if ever.

  Paul knew the evidence was thin, and to some extent, ridiculous. He wanted desperately to be the good husband, to believe everything Michelle had told him. But then there was that gut feeling, pressing and tight, like an unseen hand reaching deep into his chest and giving his insides a twist every time he was beginning to feel like he could trust his wife again.

  So much had happened since the kidnapping that he could no longer discern between the truth and fiction anymore. If Michelle hadn’t drugged him, then who had, and why? His brother Alex had been taking the drug; had he somehow dragged Paul into this mess?

  Paul would start to believe there was a corporate conspiracy targeting the Freemans, but then he would always recall something drilled into his head in statistics class: Correlation does not imply causation. Over 2,000 people participated in the clinical trials held in Atlanta, right down the road from the Freeman clan’s old stomping grounds. And ever since their father’s death, Alex had been an insomniac. It wasn’t out of the question to think Alex had signed up for the trials, told Michelle how wonderful Ocula was, then loaned a few out for her to try on her restless husband.

  For Paul, it made a lot more sense to think family members had been swapping miraculous little sleeping pills rather than pharmaceutical bigwigs singling out the Freeman brothers for illegal experiments.

  Whatever the truth was, the lack of a clear-cut explanation was taking its toll on Paul’s marriage. He picked up the rest of their gear, stealing glances at Michelle in the side mirror while he finished loading the car. He could see her flared nostrils from the rear—no question she was pissed. He closed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side, taking a deep breath before getting in. They sat in silence for at least a minute before Paul spoke.