by Alex Archer
Stone rambled on for several more minutes, detailing the changes she was seeing in her physical form, but Annja stopped listening, her thoughts lost in the realization of what she’d just heard. Stone’s mention of the prion they were trying to replicate was the key.
A prion was an infectious particle composed of abnormally folded proteins that tended to cause progressive degeneration in the central nervous system. Rather than multiplying in the host organism the way viruses do, prions induced normal, healthy proteins to convert to an abnormal version of the same particle. Prions were the culprits behind diseases like mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
But Stone seemed to be suggesting that they’d discovered a prion that worked in the exact opposite fashion. Instead of converting healthy proteins to unhealthy, abnormal ones, this prion was reviving the proteins that were breaking down due to age, bringing them back to their original healthy state. By altering the proteins within the cells, they were, in effect, changing the cells themselves, reversing the effects of age and disease from the ground up. If she could find a way to control the process, Stone could quite literally prevent the human body from aging. It was a stunning achievement.
Still, the devil was in the details, and Annja knew that for all the good this project might do in the long run, there was a dark side to it, as well. The very name that had been given to the project—Project Báthory—spoke of the darkness and pain at the center of it all. Clearly Stone had continued with her research and produced a viable product, which she was selling to the highest bidder. But like Báthory before her, Stone was using the blood of innocents for the sake of her own personal agenda, and Annja wasn’t about to let that continue.
She couldn’t let it continue.
The monitor was wireless, but it didn’t take Annja long to find the computer’s tower sitting on a shelf next to the desk. She pulled the tower down, unscrewed the side plate and then tore the hard drive, a rectangular case about the size of a large cell phone, free of its mounting bracket. She left the now-useless tower where it was and slipped the hard drive into her pocket.
She was just coming around the side of the desk when there was a knock at the door.
“Hello?” a male voice called out. “Director Stone? Are you in there?”
Before Annja could say anything, the door began swinging open.
28
When Radecki arrived in the security office, he found two men on duty. As luck would have it, they were the same two men—Gregor and Chovensky—who had tried and failed to scare off Creed the other night in Čachtice.
He smiled when he saw them; they would be perfect for the job.
“Get me the feed from the containment level for the past thirty minutes,” Radecki ordered.
Chovensky jumped to comply. He clicked through several screens and hit a few keys, then spun the time signature dial backward, rewinding the video. “Coming up on the central monitor now,” he said, pointing.
Radecki leaned closer and said, “Back it up to the point where you see me coming out of containment cell six.”
Chovensky fiddled with the controls and finally an image popped up on the monitor in front of them, showing Radecki and his two companions stepping out the door of the containment cell.
“That’s it! Right there.”
“Got it,” Chovensky said.
“Okay, now advance it slowly.”
The camera only had a thirty-degree arc, so Radecki wasn’t surprised to see his digital self, along with his two companions, walk down the hall and disappear while the camera stayed trained on the door to the containment cell.
Chovensky moved to pause the feed but Radecki stopped him. “No,” he said. “Let it run.”
The security guard did so, and the three men watched the empty corridor for a few moments.
“Speed it up a little,” Radecki said.
Chovensky complied. The tape skipped along until a figure entered the screen from the left side and approached the door to containment cell six.
“Slow it down now.”
At regular speed, the figure resolved into that of Nurse Phillips. Radecki watched as she approached the containment room and then used the key card around her neck to open the door. Phillips stepped inside the cell.
“Leave it running,” Radecki ordered.
The rooms had originally been designed as storage spaces, so there weren’t any cameras in the cells themselves. The best he could do was watch the corridor and see what happened from there.
Less than five minutes after Phillips entered cell six, the door opened again, this time from the inside. It wasn’t Phillips who stepped into the hallway, but Creed. She was wearing Phillips’s white lab coat and appeared to have something in her hand.
“Can you zoom in on that?” Radecki asked.
Chovensky worked the controls, zooming in and enhancing the image at the same time. When he was finished, Radecki could easily see what it was that Creed was carrying.
Phillips’s key card.
Not good.
“Start it up again,” Radecki said. “Let’s see where she goes.”
This time, both men got in on the act. Chovensky worked the first camera, running the feed until Annja stepped past the lens and was therefore out of sight. At that point, Gregor took over. Since the cameras were time synced, he could switch to the next one in line, moving down the hall without dropping Creed from sight. In that fashion they followed her down to the end of the hall and then watched as she used the key card to call the elevator.
The elevators didn’t have cameras in them either, but Chovensky and Gregor were already calling up the feeds from the cameras outside the elevators on the other levels as Radecki said, “Find her. I want to know where she went and where she is now.”
There were a tense couple of minutes as the two men negotiated the various possibilities, but it wasn’t long before Gregor said, “Got her! Conference Level B.”
He put the feed up on the master monitor so they could all see it.
Annja emerged from the elevator and began making her way down the hall. As before, the men followed her with the cameras, watching as she wandered down several hallways, apparently searching for a way out.
Radecki found himself hoping she’d discovered the exit. It would be so much easier arranging a fatal accident if she was outside in the real world rather than locked down here with them.
But it wasn’t to be.
About five minutes after getting off the elevator, Creed looked back with some anxiety on her face and then swiftly moved to the closest door.
She swiped the key card and, when the lock flashed open, slipped inside the room, easing the door shut in her wake.
Gregor spoke up before Radecki could voice the question.
“Conference room, second floor. The one that overlooks the medical ward.”
They watched as three employees walked past in the hall outside the room and then waited several more minutes for Creed to emerge, to no avail.
Perhaps she was still in there.
He was thinking of heading in that direction when the screen in front of him fluttered several times and then went dark.
“What happened to the feed?” Radecki demanded as he felt his pulse begin to race. If he lost her now...
Gregor grimaced. “That camera’s been on the blink for the past week or so.”
“Why wasn’t it fixed?”
“Authorization hasn’t been approved. It was submitted earlier this week but the director hasn’t signed off.”
Another sign that she’s slipping, Radecki thought. “Find her!” he said. “I want to know where she is in this facility at this very moment.”
“Yes, sir.”
Radecki pulled out a chair and sat down while his men began scouring security tapes, trying to locate their missing prisoner.
29
With nowhere else to go, Annja did the only thing she could think of. She quickly stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.
She was just in time.
She could hear the newcomer’s voice growing louder as he came into the room.
“Director Stone? Are you all right? I saw the door was damaged and...Director Stone?”
There was silence for a moment, followed by approaching footsteps and then a knock at the bathroom door.
“Director Stone? Are you all right?”
Annja reached into the otherwhere and drew forth her sword, even as she rapidly weighed her options. She didn’t particularly like any of them, truth be told, but she had a hunch that whoever was out there wasn’t going to go away until he made sure Stone was okay.
Covering her mouth with her hand to muffle her voice, Annja called out, “I’m fine.”
“Okay, no problem, then. I’ll just wait here.”
Come on!
Annja had been hoping her visitor would leave once he discovered that “Director Stone” was in the restroom, but no such luck. She would have to go out there and deal with him.
She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.
Her visitor had opened the blinds and was standing near the window, looking down into the medical ward. He was curly haired and wore a white lab coat over dark slacks.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, keeping his eyes on the patients below. “I brought the latest pathogen reports and thought we might go over...”
He turned and saw Annja standing there, sword in hand.
She nearly smiled, the expression on his face was so comical. She didn’t blame him for his shock, though. A woman wielding a sword and standing between him and the safety of the hallway was probably the very last thing he’d expected to see when he’d got up this morning.
Or any morning, for that matter.
“Close your mouth before you swallow a fly,” she told him wryly.
His jaw snapped shut with a loud clack.
Annja had planned on tying him up and leaving him locked in the bathroom, but now she had other ideas. He’d mentioned pathogen reports, which meant he probably knew exactly what was going on around here. He could fill in the blanks in the narrative she’d constructed.
“Sit down in that chair and don’t move,” she told him, pointing to the leather desk chair she’d just been sitting in. “You and I are going to have a little chat.”
He glanced at the chair and drew in a deep breath.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be in the director’s office. I’m going to call security and see to it...”
He’d started toward the door, thinking perhaps that the weapon was just for show and that Annja wouldn’t have the courage to use it.
She quickly disabused him of that notion, flicking her wrist and sending the very tip of the blade lashing toward his face, cutting a two-inch furrow across his cheek.
“I said sit down,” she told him as his eyes grew wide and his hand clamped over the injury on his cheek. From where she stood, Annja could see the blood well up between his fingers and run in little rivulets across his hand.
He sat.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Theo. Theo Owens.”
“What do you do here, Theo?”
He shook his head, wincing at the resulting pain from the cut on his cheek, but he ended up answering her anyway.
“I’m the assistant lab director.”
“Lab director, huh? Sounds pretty important.”
He looked at her, his eyes blazing. “Don’t you mock me! You have no idea what we’re doing here!”
But she did, and she let him know it in no uncertain terms.
“You’re kidnapping women and using them against their will in an illegal drug trial. Something I fully intend to put a stop to.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” he said, sitting up straighter and glaring at her.
Annja smiled. “Try me.”
“No, you can’t. You don’t understand. What we’re doing here has worldwide significance.”
Annja nearly laughed, but she decided that he might just stop talking out of spite, and that was the last thing she wanted. Instead, she said, “Do tell.”
“The prion research we’re doing here can literally turn back the clock. Solve problems such as cancer, senility, simple old age. With the products we’re developing, we’ll be able to ensure that the best and brightest of us live lives considerably longer than we do now.”
“The best and brightest?”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “But of course. Who else would you give it to?”
She ignored the question; if he didn’t already see the “us versus them” theme inherent in his statement, she wasn’t going to educate him.
“You’re using those women against their will.”
Owens missed her tone apparently, because he said, “Yes! Yes, we are, I know that! But you don’t understand—we need to do it! We’d be morally remiss if we didn’t!”
Morally remiss? Are you bloody kidding me?
Somehow she didn’t think he was.
He went on. “This is clearly a situation where the good of the many outweighs the civil rights of these few individuals. The prion we’re studying is only found in those of a particular bloodline that dates back to the 1600s, a bloodline that’s becoming more and more diluted with each passing generation. If we don’t act now, the prion may very well be altered through genetic changes that we have no control over, breeding out the one quality that we need to solve the problems plaguing our society today! We must act, and we must act now!”
Annja couldn’t believe what she was hearing. That anyone could have so little respect for the lives of others made her sick, and she had to look away for a moment to keep her temper in check and not carve him into little pieces for his arrogance.
When her attention shifted away from him momentarily, Owens made his move.
He surged up out of his seat, shouting something incoherent as he tried to get to the door, perhaps thinking that if he could get out into the hall he might be able to summon help.
For a split second Annja was caught off guard. She hadn’t imagined that Owens had it in him, and yet here he was, making a break for it. Instinct caused her to raise her sword, but she realized even as she did so that she was probably going to need this sick son of a gun to get out of this place, especially if she intended to rescue the women.
So she stuck out her foot just as he went rushing past.
Owens’s shin hit her outstretched ankle, and he toppled over like a runaway freight car, slamming face-first into the carpet.
To his credit, he didn’t stay down, but immediately rolled over and tried to get back to his feet. Unfortunately for him, Annja reacted quicker than he did. She stepped in front of him, blocking his way with her sword.
“You really shouldn’t have done that, Theo,” she told him.
A few minutes later Owens was back in the swivel chair, though this time his hands were bound behind his back with the cords Annja had cut from the window blinds.
30
“Got her!” Gregor crowed.
Radecki was out of his chair and next to Gregor’s in a heartbeat. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“Coming out of Director Stone’s office,” Gregor said, pointing at the screen where Annja could be seen emerging from the room behind a man in a white lab coat.
“Who’s she with?” Radecki asked, tapping the image with his finger. “And is that a sword she’s carrying?”
The newcomer turned out to be Theo Owens, one of the geneticists working on the project under Stone. His hands were tied securely behind his back. As Radecki looked on, Creed gave Owens a shove that sent him stumbling down the hall. She was clearly forcing him to take her somewhere.
And the instrument she was using to enforce that request was, indeed, a sword. Where it had come from or how she’d gotten it, Radecki didn’t know. He didn’t remember anything like that being in Stone’s office, but perhaps it was a new addition. Maybe Creed had picked it
up from somewhere else in the complex before getting to Stone’s office. Either way, the game had changed now that she was armed.
“Keep them in sight. I want to know where they’re headed.”
Gregor did as he was told, using the cameras to keep an eye on the duo as they made their way down the hall. Rather than taking the elevator, they headed for the stairs, which allowed the security officer to keep them in sight at all times as they descended to the floor of the medical ward. Once there, they made a beeline for one of the patients in pod three.
Radecki crossed the room to the weapons cabinet, took a set of keys from his belt and unlocked the door. He removed a pistol in a shoulder holster and a stun baton, keeping the former for himself and giving the baton to Chovensky before relocking the cabinet.
“Where are they now?” he asked as he slipped the shoulder holster on and checked that the gun was loaded.
“In the medical ward,” Gregor replied.
Radecki nodded. That would make sense; Creed seemed to have a hero complex. Must be going for the donors.
He took a pair of two-way radio headsets from the rack below the cabinet and tossed one to Chovensky.
To Gregor he said, “We’ll be on channel nine. I want you to keep her in sight at all times and radio me if she starts to go anywhere, understood?”
Gregor nodded. “Got it.”
“Chovensky, you’re with me.”
The big man grinned and nodded.
Time to put an end to this, Radecki thought as he swept out the door with Chovensky in his wake.
* * *
ANNJA KEPT HER sword low but still pointed at Owens’s back as they headed down the corridor. He appeared docile now, perhaps having learned his lesson back in the office, but Annja was taking no chances. He was going to help her get Csilla and then lead them out of this place, or he was going to get hurt. It was that simple.
Owens led her back down the stairs she’d come up only a short time earlier and into the medical ward.
“Now what?” he asked, glaring at her over his shoulder.
