“Graham, do you think all of this is necessary?” I said, referring to his use of deadly force.
“Your girl’s right, man. I thought we were cool,” Joel said.
“We’re still cool. If you guys are held at gunpoint it won’t be your fault. Alec, look in that bottom drawer there and get the duct tape—very slowly of course,” Graham instructed.
“Very slowly,” Alec mimicked but obliged him while muttering something under his breath and turned slowly to open the drawer.
“Dude, you know those guys have way more firepower than your one gun and they are gonna come down on you, hard once they get in here…” Joel said. He looked at me in a way that suggested he’d be satisfied with that outcome.
“I put the lock on the front door,” I said to Graham, as a matter of fact.
“They’ll just blow it off,” Joel added.
“The back door is locked too. We’ll cross any other bridges when we get to them,” Graham replied.
Alec retrieved a full roll of duct tape from the drawer, closed it back and slowly turned so Graham could see that he had it in his hands. Graham instructed me to bind their hands and feet and warned them that if they made any noise that I’d tape their mouths as well. It wasn’t easy for me to tie someone up, though I knew it had to happen in order for us to get out of there unopposed. Graham again told them to behave as I started with Joel, taping his feet, winding in a circular motion around and around––seven or eight times each before moving up to bound their wrists. I figured it would be more effective if I bound their hands behind their back as they grumbled and swore under their breaths. I apologized, saying that they would get back to their jobs as soon as we left.
Alec and Joel now sat there somewhat awkwardly leaning forward a little as Graham helped to move them to the floor. I told them that at least they’d be little more out of the line of fire should things come to that. I was hoping that it wouldn’t go that far. Graham tested the durability of the taped and seemingly satisfied with it, he gave me a nod. He told me to watch them as he went outside and jogged past the window headed in the direction of the door we came in. To say the office was uncomfortable with him gone and Joel and Alec glaring at me was an understatement. I didn’t give them any eye contact as I instead walked to the door to see what Graham was up to. Graham was already jogging back to the office door where he stepped back inside.
“We should be alright for a while. After all, those doors are designed to keep people out,” he reassured me.
“I hope you’re right,” I replied.
At the very same moment, we all heard vibrations coming from the door. We could also hear someone on the other side yelling, instructing someone to open the door. Graham didn’t budge an inch as we stood there and listened until it stopped. His fingers deliberately checked the safety of the handgun as he carefully laid it on the desk next to the monitors. I couldn’t help but stare at the manufacturer’s emblem on the black polymer handle grip, which was also printed out Smith & Wesson along the stainless steel barrel. Graham flipped on the switch to all of the monitors and their screens turned blue in color. Someone outside banged on the door again a few times.
“Can you tell us why they are obviously pissed over you leaving? We deserve to know that much,” Joel questioned.
Graham ignored Joel as he waited for a command screen to come up on the computer.
“Dude, come on, we’re tied up. Can we at least know why?” Joel exhaled, frustrated.
I looked at them both, pitifully sitting on the floor. They had nothing to do with what we were doing there. If I were in their shoes I’d want to know what was going on as well, and be reassured that my life wouldn’t be taken for granted. As if on cue the phone rang, which made us all jump. I knew it would be the next thing they’d try if no one answered the door. I also assume that the phone call is the step before they literally blow the door off from its hinges like Joel said a moment ago.
Graham was about to answer when I reached before him to answer. “I’ll deal with it,” I said as I picked up the phone and without anything quick-witted to recite, I calmly said, “Hello.” There was a five-second pause before a voice that I was familiar with, one who also brought fear to me responded.
“I’ll take my hundred dollars, as soon as this is over.”
“What?”
It took me about five seconds to realize that Davenport wasn’t talking to me. He was instead talking to someone next to him. It was equally confusing to Graham, Joel and Alec who all looked at me waiting to find out the tone of the situation at hand. I shrugged my shoulders indicating I had no clue either.
“It won’t be long, isn’t that right, Seanna?”
“You tell me,” I calmly replied. I was willing to do battle with his smugness for as long as I could.
Davenport while being aggressive was also the king of cool, along with being the king of arms. I knew this was sort of a showdown and although it was true we had only one gun, I wasn’t about to let him ruffle me. He would use his voice, authority and tactical knowledge to wear me into submission but I would use my own voice and the fact that I had nothing to lose anymore to keep everything level. My mission stood the same. I could tell the virus inside of me picked the perfect time to act up again. I could feel pain again coming on. I moved the phone away from my face to take a deep breath, holding my hand up to Graham who was ready to take the phone on my behalf. I put it back to my ear and sat on the desk silently.
“Okay, I will. Your desire is to get off of the premises… A wild guess says you’d use one of those cars inside to head somewhere in the direction of, ah, Princeton, perhaps.”
My mouth dropped as my eyes narrowed and searched the floor for answers. I tried not to say anything or respond as Graham waited anxiously. He put his hand on my leg, which got my attention. I pointed at a pen that was on the desk a few feet away. Graham handed it to me along with a piece of paper from the top of a stack in the corner. I neatly scribbled, ‘He knows’ on the corner, large enough for Graham to see.
“Your uncle knows?” Graham whispered to me. I shook my head, missing part of Davenport’s rambling.
“…told you before of your options. The reality is that you are confined to a space that is surrounded and it will be only a short time before those doors go down and you and your boyfriend go down as well.”
“Your point, Mr. Davenport?” I said, trying not to skip or stutter my words.
“Your uncle and Dr. Strauss will be here shortly. I would hope not to have him see things go a certain way but I will have this resolved, at whatever end, shortly.”
“You can tell him to call me when he gets here,” I replied as I hung up and took a deep breath.
I felt my point was made, and although hanging up on him was a decision made in haste, I hoped that Davenport would wait until my uncle made it to the garage before barging in and taking us down as he described and as I believed would happen. I figure I bought us a few minutes to get our game plan together. I relayed to Graham what Davenport told me and while Joel and Alec sighed and whined about our doom, theirs included—I told Graham it was time to get our act together so we could make a decent attempt to get as far as we could. When he figured it was Davenport I had talked to, he lost none of his spirit, about which I was glad, because Davenport had certainly put fear into me over the last week. He liked to pull triggers and I was familiar with that quality in him.
Graham ran his fingers through his hair and I naturally went closer by his side, standing near him as he quickly worked through his mind a plan of action. I rested my arm on his shoulder and tried on my own to think up the best solution possible.
“They know about Princeton…” I reiterated.
“It doesn’t change the fact we need to get out of here,” he said while putting his hand on my arm and giving it a squeeze.
Graham looked over at the keys on the wall.
“The yellow knobs are the keys to the armed trucks right?” He asked Joel
.
“Yeah, but there are no weapons in them. They take ’em out every time they park ’em.”
“Good.”
Graham got up, took the gun from off the desk and went to the wall where the keys were. He grabbed two sets under the yellow numbered knob labeled “two” and “three.” He told us to sit tight while he ran out of the office again. Thirty seconds later I could hear the door of a vehicle opening followed the sound of a diesel engine roar to life as it switched gear, accelerated, moving for a little while and then was put back in park and then turned off. I went to the doorway of the office in time to see that he parked the van sideways next to the back entrance door of the garage. Graham was now in the second armored van, come to think of it, which was probably among the same vans that were at his house and brought us here. He turned the engine on and this time drove past the office through the narrow lane where I stood toward the front of the garage and maneuvered the vehicle to block the door through which we came. He climbed out of the vehicle and started jogging toward the garage again.
The phone rang.
I quickly went to answer it and sat in the chair where Graham sat before. I picked up the phone but said nothing this time. I didn’t know who or what to expect. My face and arms began to sweat as I automatically wiped my forehead and looked over in time to see Graham back in the doorway.
“Seanna… Seanna, are you on the line?”
“Yes.”
I heard a heavy exhale before my uncle Lloyd started talking again.
“Sweetheart, you’re the cause of a lot of concern right now. How are you feeling?”
There was a long pause before I decided to speak.
“I am taking Graham and we are leaving—simple as that. You can tell your pit bull Davenport to back off and let us go.”
There was a long pause before Lloyd decided to speak.
“Seanna, I can’t let you do that… I think you understand in your heart and mind, why.”
“You know, Uncle, I knew you’d say that but I don’t understand why. We talked about my will before when we were in your office. I still have my will, but you won’t honor it. Since I was brought here I’m remembering some things from my childhood that I didn’t before. I remember my mother taking my brother and I to what I thought was the doctor’s office for check-ups. I sense now that something from that time is connected to what’s going on now,” I recalled.
“Your mother wasn’t ever fond of lying, Seanna. Did she ever explain to you her troubles conceiving after her and my brother married?”
During the pause, I could hear several voices in the background but no clear dialogue.
“No, she did not.”
As far as I knew I was born four years after they were married. The fact that I was born some years after their marriage wasn’t an exceptional scenario. I figured my mother wanted to explore her career options a little while after graduating from Rutgers. That along with her newly immigrated husband, who I’m sure wanted to take some time to get used to living here in America and settling down to find a job. It made perfect sense to me and sounded responsible, in all honesty.
“Well my dear you might’ve been born in earlier if they had their wish. They wanted to start a family right away, my brother found employment here in the states right away.”
I said nothing.
“Your mother and my brother came to me after two years of trying, hoping to experience the blessing of childbirth. They were both aware of the accomplishments with in-vitro fertilization and as a young doctor, I was eager to help… You are here as a result of those efforts, so is your brother. Though it was unconventional, it was made possible, nonetheless.”
They were successfully creating families in the laboratory since the late seventies. I wanted to know what this had to do with what was going on right now.
“Okay, so my mother and father needed some help, what does this now have to do with this?”
“Besides her husband, your mother wanted you and your brother more than anything else in the world. She would’ve done almost anything after almost two years of trying. Imagine, month after month of negative pregnancy tests. My brother’s fertility tests were normal so the issue seemed to be with her. She took this to heart, knowing the thousands of dollars it would’ve cost her for treatment after treatment with no guarantee. At the time it would’ve cost tens of thousands of dollars to successfully carry a baby to term on her own.”
“Yes. So where do you factor into all of this? Where does this factor into all of it?” I said, referring to the facility we were now in.
“The eighties were a marvelous time for things like in-vitro. At the same time there was a sort of curiosity growing for the creation and extension of life at the cellular level. I don’t have time to teach cellular biology as I know it, but I’ll suffice to say that everyone at that point was curious about cellular regeneration now that we could create human life and sustain it in the lab. All we basically needed was X and Y. What lay beyond that was the newest fascination.”
I was beginning to be bothered by my uncle’s description of what happened during that time. My parents never talked about that time in our family history so I figured it was never a big deal to begin with. I doubt that there are many other people out there who were truly interested in how long it took for their parents to conceive children, especially when the oldest was born only four years after marriage. It all just seemed normal. I looked around at Joel and Alec, who were both flustered, excited and tired-looking at the same time. Graham disappeared out into the garage area again before I knew it. Part of me secretly wanted to negotiate a deal to somehow exchange everyone except me, to guarantee their safety while I try and make it to Princeton on my own. Davenport just told me flat out that he was aware of our plans to go to the University laboratory. I loved Graham more than I could ever say but not enough to risk his life trying to get out of here. I weighed a lot in my mind while my uncle was telling me that my mother conceived me unnaturally at such a young age.
“Seanna, darling you need to know that it wasn’t it as bad as you think. Your mother was able to carry you and Junior to term.”
“Okay, so what’s the big deal, then?”
“The big deal is in stem cells. You know it’s always been the promise land, even now for treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries. There is even the possibility to regenerate dead cells to an extent. Where there are cells, there are whole organisms,” he said as his voice began to gain an excited but cautious tone.
“That’s a little far-fetched don’t you think?” I began to say before I was cut off.
“You and your brother’s DNA—yours and his, were a part of formulas that were used for cellular regeneration projects. Honestly the technology was not entirely supportive of such endeavors until recently so your samples sat frozen for almost two decades. We used yours first because you were the oldest, of course.”
I couldn’t believe what was coming from his mouth. I knew where this was headed––I just didn’t want to hear any more.
“Something obviously got fucked up, Uncle. We have dead people strolling around if you haven’t noticed. Please don’t tell me this shithole of an experience that’s affected millions of people is because of you,” I said, trying to keep my composure.
“Not mine, directly. There’s always someone in the group willing to push the limits though, which is why I need you to stay here. You are carrying an infection that, in you, is more like the blood relationship of your relatives. You and it are coexisting in the same body and you’re alive still, it’s nothing short of amazing.”
I don’t know where my uncle’s been the last week but the virus has not been co-existing with me. I’ve constantly been on the brink of death and when I’m not briefly crossing over into deadness, I’m battling intermittent pains while at their peak could make a whale walk on land.
“You have an interesting interpretation of co-existing… Is that what you think we’
ll be able to do? Get this all under control and co-exist with it? If that’s the case, you can send someone in to put a bullet in my head right now,” I said truthfully.
“Seanna, that’s not what it’s about. I’m here going to these extents to correct someone else’s mistake.”
I heard another voice say something to my uncle. It sounded like they said, “We’re ready when you’re ready.” I looked up at Graham who was now standing right next to me. I covered the mouthpiece of the phone as I whispered to him that they are about to try something. With his gun in hand, he immediately went to the door to look for any signs they were coming in. My uncle spoke to me once again.
“Seanna, if the screen on the computer monitor isn’t already on, will you please turn it on? Any of the monitors will work, actually. We’re patched into all of them.”
The monitor Graham turned on all of a sudden went from black with the NGT Labs logo to a blank gray screen and then quickly turned to a picture of a plain, unfurnished room in a black and white video. I didn’t need to have a color picture to see there were two people there––a male and a female. My eyesight registered their identities quicker than my mind could process, or it could have been shock setting in as a buffer, but I saw countless experiences with them flash in front of me, almost as if I were dying. It was already too late for my mother and my father.
Affliction Page 20
