Running into the Darkness

by D. A. Bale

  “Frederick! Where on earth are you going?”

  Great. Abbie only waited around the corner for him to get fed up before making her appearance. He hated it when she called him that – sounded just like his mother.

  Warner turned to face the sour-puss glare of the First Bitch, standing all high and mighty in her green suit accented by taut pasty skin, the result of too many face lifts. Forsdale had indeed saved him from worse situations – and there she stood. It’d been his good fortune when Ben had taken over the task of helping the woman with her diabetes injections. The reactions she’d have to the medication would have her in a stupor for hours and he didn’t have the patience for it or her anymore. Why Ben had gone from a medical background into politics was his own stroke of luck.

  Warner responded to her pinched stare with one of his own and a growl in his voice. “Abbie, I’ve been waiting for over an hour. I have a vital bill in my office awaiting my signature. You may not consider my time and position significant, but the nation does.”

  “Pish – you’re a mere figurehead, a puppet for special interests. In my lifetime, I’ve known truly powerful men.”

  Her gray eyes narrowed. Warner refused to give her the pleasure of a scene concocted for the photographers and staff and continued down the hall. The continual glare pierced between his ribs like a knife. He no longer cared.

  The Oval Office was silent, drear. No pretty young thing waited for him to take his mind off his troubles. Even so, he’d sworn off the dalliances, no more bulging tits and tightness between their legs to soothe his daily frustrations.

  Warner slipped into Forsdale’s office through the side door, silently poured himself a brandy and stared at the painting of the old ship – the HMS Resolute – before returning to the Oval Office. The Resolute desk glistened under the soft light. Interesting how a grand, old workhorse of a ship could be reduced to nothing more than a stodgy piece of furniture. The thought brought back memories of that awful day in Santa Fe – Jim’s lifeless eyes, blood everywhere. Just like the great ship, a great man had been cut down in his prime, and for what?

  A month had passed but it still felt like yesterday. Warner sat at the desk and massaged his temples. The sound of shots fired, bullets whizzing past, all swirled in his mind as he opened the file to sign the new bill. No big ceremonies in the Rose Garden for this one. It was too personal – too raw.

  The fight over the bill had dragged on forever in the Senate, languishing in Committee with the threat of a filibuster if it reached the floor for a vote. But after Warner lost his best friend to the smoking barrel of automatic gunfire, party loyalty and sympathy quickly revived the bill with a unanimous Committee vote and overwhelming support on the Senate floor. Only five idiots dared vote against the ban to manufacture automatic weapons for public consumption. The military might need them, but no reason existed any longer for the public to garner access to such weaponry.

  Legal challenges already loomed. Most likely the bill wouldn’t make it past Supreme Court scrutiny before being struck down as unconstitutional. Days, weeks, or months – it didn’t matter. He’d accomplished something for a cause greater than his own selfish existence.

  With a flourish of ink, Warner scribbled his signature on the document, making it law for the time being. As he rose, the pen clattered to his desk. He lifted the snifter of brandy toward the heavens.

  “For you, Jim.”

  Chapter 23 - Road Map

  Samantha wanted to die.

  Humiliation set in the moment they stripped her of the soft robe and paraded her to a platform in front of a gilded three-way mirror. Debrille’s sharp voice rang out as she hunched her shoulders to conceal her body and hide her flushed face. Any moment she expected to stare down the barrel of Marcus’ gun or feel his hand smack her across the butt.

  Gramm’s voice echoed in her head – chin up, young lady.

  Naked save for the tiny pink thong Debrille so graciously allowed, Samantha raised her chin and focused on the lazily twirling brass fan hanging from the ceiling. They’d made her wear pink – of all colors.

  Her body became a roadmap as Marcus and Debrille discussed their game plan and drew the dotted lines, marked the V’s, and swiped the arrows with the blue marker. No, not a roadmap but a map of war. No longer a woman standing in front of a mirror, Samantha had become nothing but an object to them. She had become a weapon of war, and the generals were plotting out how best to use her.

  General Debrille, I say we take this northern path through the mountains here. No General Marcus, we should follow the southern route through the bush.

  Cold hands gripped and lifted her breasts, probed her butt and prodded her nearly concave stomach. Perhaps instead of a weapon she was merely going to be the horse ridden into war by the cavalry, as they lifted her feet and inspected them as if they were hooves. A horse – she’d always wanted a horse when she was young, but that was before…

  “Lift your arms,” Marcus commanded.

  Samantha felt like saluting but obeyed mechanically and stole a quick glance at their task. The man was all work, not even seeing her body as a woman but as the tool they planned to make of her. Leering eyes from one of the creepy goons in black drew her attention. She glared at him, but all he did was smile and let the hint of his tongue glide over his lip like a snake tasting the air. How she wished to drop-kick the beast. When was practice?

  Hide the emotion, Samantha. Bury it deep.

  Debrille had drilled the statement into her since day one just like her instructors back in medical school. No rage, no anger, no pain, no embarrassment. Just stone coldness, see actions as only a means to an end and nothing more. In other words, Debrille wanted her to be nothing less than a robot. Thus far, through all the sweat and study, that concept had been the hardest part of her training to grasp. Forget happy or sad, but what was her motivation if not her rage toward Warner for all he had done to her family? It gave her reason for breath upon awakening to another day. But Debrille wanted even this pushed aside.

  Samantha was rudely awakened from her deliberations by a stinging slap to her ass.

  “I said stop moving!” Marcus yelled, and he jerked her arm nearly from her socket.

  Stumbling from the platform, Samantha’s free hand came whistling through the air as if it had a mind of its own. A red welt in the shape of her hand swelled across Marcus’ cheek. Her hand burned.

  The guards pounced on her and groped her flesh as if they were lions in a feasting frenzy. They took turns grasping at her breasts and sliding their hands over her sweating body. The greater the number of goons it took, the more strangely powerful Samantha felt, until they finally succeeded in subduing her.

  “Get your grubby paws off me!”

  Debrille gripped her chin and surmised. “Well, well, well. So the cat is in there after all.”

  With all her fury and humiliation, Samantha glared back. “Do you have no sense of decency, parading me around naked like a piece of flesh in front of this testosterone filled horde?”

  “Don’t worry, Sam. No one here sees you as a woman,” Marcus offered. “You will be merely a weapon of destruction when we are finished with you.”

  Samantha stared questioningly at Debrille. “I’ve been driven to inhuman lengths physically, strained whatever brain cells I still possessed learning all you required these last months. When are you going to include me in this grand plan of yours?”

  She received a raised brow from Debrille in response. “Did you not agree to do all you were told when I picked you up out of your pit of despair and brought you here? No questions asked?”

  The fight drained from Samantha’s limbs. The goons released her as Debrille tossed her the last shred of her dignity. The robe merely drooped at her side.

  “Will you not at least explain this?” Samantha gestured to the map drawn across her body before shielding it with the robe.

  “Ah, Dr. Marcus please do the honors.”

  With medical coldnes
s Marcus related, “You are scheduled this morning for breast augmentation. We’ve also decided it would be wise to add lift to your buttocks and round them out.” He smiled slightly then, but it didn’t reach his eyes – it never reached his eyes. “That will give more leverage.”

  The room swam. Samantha stared incredulously first at Marcus then Debrille, then back to Marcus again. “Surgery?”

  She’d wielded a scalpel numerous times, but to go under one herself? For what purpose? Again her gaze redirected to Debrille. “And when were you planning to inform me that I would be undergoing this plastic Barbie transformation?”

  Debrille motioned for his henchmen to follow as he strolled from the room, calling over his shoulder, “Enough questions for today. Get to it, doctor.”

  Samantha shuddered and searched for escape. Never had she thought joining the Elite would require undergoing the knife. “I don’t understand. How does this play into my getting to Warner? What am I to become, some stylized sex goddess?”

  Marcus grabbed her arm, pricked it with a hypodermic and picked up her sagging form to usher her to the medical unit. “Very well put, Sam.”

  Chapter 24 – At Death’s Door

  The Wichita skyline lit-up like the Fourth of July as the downtown Christmas lights flashed on into the night. The Thanksgiving turkey had hardly digested before Christmas celebrations started, the holiday more of a leaping point to the main event these days. Few people seemed to slow down and appreciate the simple things in life anymore, such as the importance of family and friends.

  Emeril Eddis sighed and turned his chair from the sixteenth floor Epic Center view back to his desk and sealed the letter. The legal documents needed his attention, but more and more he found himself drawn to the enigma of Samantha Bartlett and her family. Somewhere, somehow he’d missed something vital with them, and as the family attorney he should’ve known everything. First Detective Roberts asking about the house blueprints. Then Mr. Proctor asking about Samantha’s student loans. How those enormous bills were paid was a complete mystery.

  Insurance payoff for the house and even the forthcoming sale of the property wouldn’t have been enough to cover her loans. Just to make sure, he’d called the bank president and reviewed the payoff through the Department of Education to ensure the government guarantee to the bank hadn’t been written off after filing her death certificate. No such luck.

  As an attorney, he should’ve questioned more instead of accepting the premise of a gas leak in the house. Detective Roberts probably still had this as an open case file, for more than just his personal connection to the family. But why? Perhaps after court Monday morning, he’d drop by the precinct and ask a few questions of his own. As a family friend, he owed them that much.

  Maybe he really was getting too old to be doing this, his instincts slowing with creeping age. Maybe retirement wouldn’t be so bad since he and the missus still had their health. They could do a bit of traveling. Just as Samantha’s death taught him – you never knew when your time was up.

  A figure stepped from the shadows near the office doorway, eyes molten with a look of death he’d come to recognize. A weapon raised and squared between his eyes.

  “How did you get in here?”

  The man’s voice sounded calm, smooth – a practiced assassin. “We have our ways.”

  “What do you want? Who is ‘we’?”

  “You should have left well enough alone.”

  The rapid spit of fire silenced the questions.

  ***

  Their calculations had gotten way off.

  The high-speed train hardly stopped before Marcus disembarked and raced through the facility, past the greenhouse and to the research lab. After clearing through all of the biometric security points, he plucked two syringes from the refrigeration unit and tucked them into the portable dry ice module before heading to Debrille’s suite. The shakes had likely begun.

  The man would still blame him, even though he’d had to make another run to clean up loose ends. He couldn’t keep taking care of researching, training, and ops. Others were brought in long ago to take care of that particular issue. Debrille probably just enjoyed knowing he had the authority to make such unnecessary demands. Well this was his own fault. Let the asshole suffer for a little while.

  Marcus found Debrille hugging the toilet, his retching so severe it had the guards turning green. The sight of such a powerful man performing a common human ritual made him laugh on the inside – but he dare not show it if he hoped to live.

  Debrille had enough state of mind to berate him between heaves the moment he opened the door. “You’ve nearly…killed me…this time.”

  Marcus ignored him and directed two of the guards to assist Debrille into his bed, while another hooked him up to the cardiac monitor and pulled out the defibrillator. The equipment had long ceased to be necessary, but it didn’t hurt to keep it handy in the event of an emergency. They were, after all, dealing with a potentially lethal substance – that is if the dosages weren’t one hundred percent accurate in each lot.

  With practiced care, he slipped on gloves and drew the first syringe from the container, ice having begun to form around the plunger from the extreme temperature. The contents had to remain stabilized in a near frozen state at injection, though it made the liquid entering tissues at body temperature excruciating for the patient. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror those first test subjects endured under the crude Soviet serums. At least they’d provided a base substance model from which he’d perfected a viable formula.

  Foam flecked around Debrille’s lips like a rabid dog as the liquid entered his veins. The man made no attempt to conceal his agony as he retched amid convulsions. The reactions continued in close succession while Marcus watched the clock and waited to administer the second vial. Their timing had to be dead on.

  The whine of the monitor echoed around the chamber as Debrille flat lined. His eyes bulged from his skull. His breathing stilled. Marcus counted to ten then plunged in the second needle.

  Then waited.

  The beep of the monitor started erratic then smoothed into a slow, steady rhythm. Debrille’s chest heaved. His face relaxed and eyelids drooped.

  Once Marcus was certain of Debrille’s sleep pattern, he excused the guards and packed away the syringes to refuel later. He pulled a thick medical file from Debrille’s nightstand, made notes and reviewed its history. The reactions concerned him. They were growing more severe, the requirement of injections occurring more often than even a year ago. Debrille was developing a tolerance to the drug. They’d have to take development all the way back to square one if Debrille wanted to keep his proverbial fountain of youth.

  Otherwise they’d all have to eventually give it up to the natural progression of time.

  Chapter 25 - Goddess of the Night

  The thin scar along her jaw line had disappeared. The familiar reminder of that horrible day of loss had marked her for so long, but now the identification had been stripped from her. Samantha ran her fingers along the empty space almost as a farewell to a lost friend.

  Five weeks – Samantha still felt sore over her entire body. Again she opened the emerald silk robe and stared at her new body in the cheval mirror. Marcus should’ve saved himself the trouble and just completed a brain transplant into a new body. The medical technology the Elite had exposed her to thus far was still unbelievable. The voluptuous curves, enormous and perky breasts – well, those were kind of interesting. But the iris transplant looked just bizarre. Emerald green eyes stared back where before she’d had brown. She didn’t even want to know where the plugs had come from for the long auburn hair.

  Yep, certified Barbie doll.

  Marcus had said he would go easy on her, be careful with her healing incisions which were amazingly miniscule. She didn’t feel up to this yet, but Debrille insisted. Maybe she never would. Best to get it done and over with, especially considering she had no choice.

  The goons came aro
und eight. Debrille had to make such a demonstration of the whole affair. Two guards walked before her and two behind as if she were royalty or something, probably afraid she might try to run away. Where on earth could she even run away to in this maze of tunnels? Hell, even if she tried they’d just activate the ear chip and splatter her remains across some unknown area, that is if she were able to make her way to the surface somehow.

  The door to Marcus’ suite creaked as she entered the empty living quarters alone. The lights were subdued, a fire crackling in the marble hearth. The guy lived pretty sweet in his suite. Ebony velvet draped along the walls as if there were actual windows behind them. A white suede sectional took up the center of the room with a huge polar bear rug in the middle, its jaws gaping wide as if it would swallow her in one bite. A rustic mahogany table sat to one side surrounded by several chairs as if the doctor did a lot of entertaining. A bottle of wine nestled in a bucket of ice. Maybe it would be a good idea to get drunk first.

  Samantha hugged her robe closer. Her legs trembled, as she perused the selection of books along the wall. Anything to get her mind off of the inevitable.

  At the clink of glass, Samantha glanced over her shoulder to see Marcus. The black silk robe hung open on his muscled frame as he popped the cork from the wine bottle and poured two glasses. His hands were irritatingly steady as he held a glass out to her. Samantha grabbed it gratefully and downed the contents in one gulp.

  Samantha averted her eyes and felt heat rising to her face. “Tie your robe, please.”

  “I guess I’ve become rather accustomed to this. I’ve trained a lot of women over the years.”

  And she would be only one more in the mix. Samantha stormed over to the table and poured herself another glass of wine, sloshing almost as much on the table as what ended up in her glass. Marcus took the glass from her before she even had a chance to steal a sip. Instead of his usual roughness, his hands were gentle as her turned her toward himself and raised her chin.