by Kira Peikoff
Never had he felt so validated; in a flash of epiphany, he understood that his whole long career at the DEP, his journey to fully reestablish himself as a servant of God, was just now peaking. Of course, God had known it all along, had offered the guiding hand and the patience to help him get here. What a terrible fool he had been to doubt his intuition, even for a second. Relief dawned on him, weighty and comforting, as he realized that his divine link had been secure all along. He would never worry again that he was alone with guilt, for there was always the Lord leading him to redemption.
“Amen,” he breathed.
In a blur, he managed to make it safely back to Arianna’s apartment building and parked askew next to the curb. With a hand on his gun, he ran inside, flashing his DEP badge to the doorman.
“Arianna Drake,” he demanded.
The doorman looked flustered. “Is everything okay?”
“She’s under arrest,” Dopp said. How satisfying to finally speak the words!
“Apartment 3R,” the man sputtered. “Third floor, make a right.”
Dopp ran into a waiting elevator, jabbed the button for the third floor, then raced out into the hallway and made a right, skimming the numbers on each door until he reached 3R. He turned the knob; the door was unlocked, and he pushed it open, expecting to see Trent waiting there for him.
But the apartment was dark.
“Hello?” he called, flipping on the light switch next to the front door. A living room to the right and a kitchen to the left were both empty. Holding his gun forward, he walked down the hallway toward a closed door. He knocked.
“Trent?” he yelled.
There was no answer.
He pushed open the door and saw an unmade bed, a dresser, and a night table. A whistling breeze blew in from the window, billowing out the curtains.
No one was there.
He swung open the door to the closet and was surprised to find it practically empty, with just a few fancy-looking dresses hanging inside. About two dozen wooden hangers hung bare on the rack.
Dopp shook his head in confusion. How could they be gone? Hadn’t he just spoken to Trent?
And then he felt a glimmer of understanding—and the deepest betrayal.
There was only one other place they could be.
* * *
By the time Dopp reached the clinic, he was breathless and sweating despite the bitter air. He whipped out his DEP badge, the key to the sensor on the outside of every fertility clinic, and waved it in front of the door. A green light flashed, and he opened the door, stepping into the waiting room. The lights here, too, were off, as if everyone had gone home for the weekend. He wasted no time rushing past the empty chairs to the door that opened into the clinic’s nerve center: its hallway, flanked on either side by examining rooms. All the white doors were closed. Dopp cocked his gun as he prowled the hallway. A strange high-pitched alarm was emanating from one room off to the right. He reached its door and opened it slowly, expecting to see someone, but inside was just an empty office. On the wall, on a flashing screen, was a picture of himself, snapped by a security camera seconds earlier as he had stepped into the waiting room. In the picture, his face was dark red, and his hand was withdrawing the gun from its holster on his belt.
He gripped his gun tighter and let out an exasperated grunt; it was only a signal screen. Within two minutes, its alarm faded out. Back in the hallway, Dopp slowed his step next to each door, listening. As he walked farther down, he heard it: a quiet but steady beeping. It was coming from the last room on the left, which was labeled OR 2. He stopped in front of the door and turned the knob. It was locked.
“Open up!” he shouted, smacking the door with the side of his gun.
There was no response. Then he remembered he still had Arianna’s keys. She owned this hell; surely she could open its doors. He pulled the key ring out of his pocket and steadied his hands enough to insert a random one into the lock. His fury mounted as the key refused to turn, as did the next one. But the third one fit, and turned the lock with a satisfying click. He leaned the side of his body against the door as he pushed it open, keeping his sweat-soaked gun close to his chest, finger on the trigger.
He craned his neck around the door. Five pairs of horrified eyes met his own, familiar and strange, male and female. About ten feet away, there was Arianna, lying on her side on a surgical table, with her knees bent, looking utterly appalled to see him. Under her stiff gown, a handful of wires stuck out from her chest area and led up to the machine that Dopp had heard outside: A beeping screen on top of a podium displayed a line of jagged peaks and dips, and green numbers that were spiking—155/95, 157/100, 160/105.
Dopp’s gaze darted from the screen back to Arianna’s ashen face and then to the strange man and woman behind her. The man was sitting down, eye level with Arianna’s lower back, but Dopp could not see what he was doing. Next to the man, a frightened-looking woman stood holding a plastic bag of murky fluid that was hanging from a tube dangling from a pole. The tube was connected to a needle that disappeared behind Arianna’s body, into her back, right where the man was focused. But now his face popped up over Arianna’s waist, lips parted dumbly, and he was gaping at Dopp as if he were a monster only imagined, never expected to appear in the flesh.
Dopp looked to the left, and there was the traitor himself, standing next to an older, white-haired man who showed no fear; rather, sharp grooves cut his forehead and his eyes scrunched into slits amid a maroon flush of rage. Trent’s face had drained in comparison.
“How could you?” Dopp roared, feeling power in the blast of his own voice. “You knew this the whole time and you let it happen! You helped it happen!” Dopp instinctively lifted his gun, knowing he was in a room of killers.
Trent’s lips moved, but his face remained stricken. “Put the gun down,” he commanded; his tone was an attempt at calm, hinging on urgency. “Put the gun down, boss,” he repeated. “You don’t need the gun.”
Dopp let out a little gasp, lifting the gun higher, point-blank with Trent’s chest.
“Put your hands up right now,” he growled. “You’re under arrest.”
Trent obeyed, stepping backwards, slack jawed.
“Stand still!” Dopp shouted. He turned to the old man. “Hands up! You are all under arrest! You’re all killers!”
The older man pursed his lips as if he were about to spit.
“Just do it, Sam,” Trent implored.
“Aha,” Dopp said. “So you’re Sam, the author of this little gem.” Still keeping his gun aimed, Dopp pulled the crumpled ball out of his shirt pocket. For the first time, the old man’s eyes shone with terror. He raised his arms.
Dopp smirked and tossed the letter onto the floor, near Sam’s feet. Sam bent down to snatch it up. “Stay still!” Dopp shouted, returning both hands to his gun. “Keep your hands up!”
Dopp turned to face the doctor whose hands were buried behind Arianna’s back. “Hands up where I can see them!”
The man shook his head. “I can’t—I can’t move them!”
“You can’t?”
“Please, sir, I can’t take my hands off the needle or it will fall out. We’re almost done, look.” He nodded toward the plastic bag that the woman next to him was holding. It was almost fully drained, and she was squeezing it ever so gently.
“It’s almost done,” the woman pleaded.
“Both of you put your hands up right now,” Dopp snarled, feeling the smooth trigger of the gun under his forefinger, cocking it in their direction.
“Please don’t hurt them!” Arianna moaned from the table. The machine next to her was beeping wildly. “They’re just helping me get the cells!”
The cells.
Dopp looked harder at the plastic bag, and then recoiled. He bristled, and his hands shook as he swung the gun toward her, the ringleader, the Devil incarnate.
“No!” came a man’s shout off from the left side. “Stop!”
But Dopp was already narr
owing his eyes down the gun’s slick barrel, looking straight at Arianna’s chest. Another voice shrieked, and then all of them were shouting together, a chorus of manically pitching voices. Dopp’s finger dwelt on the trigger, sliding down a ravine of its own sweat; he eyed the goal, the heartless heart that in her was nothing but a muscle.
Then he heard a savage voice roar above the rest. In his peripheral vision, he saw two bursts of flesh charging at him from the left side, and his finger knew before his mind did, knew he could not wait a moment longer before squeezing the trigger.
* * *
The sound of the shot echoed in Trent’s ears as he lunged forward, arms splayed, feet off the ground, suspended in the air a moment too late. Never had he acted so decisively, with no fear of man or God, no moment’s hesitation, only the split-second knowledge that his own judgment was all that mattered and all that ever had.
Amid the blur of screams around him, he smashed into Dopp with the full force of his body’s momentum and they crashed blindly to the floor. He landed on top of Dopp’s chest, opening his eyes just in time to see the gun fly away from their bodies and skid across the floor, just out of range. Dopp writhed underneath him, reaching for it, but Trent drew back his fist and punched him in the face with an involuntary cry, and then again, harder, pummeling him with a degree of rage he had never before felt.
Dopp groaned as his squirming ceased. Still straddling him, Trent reached for the gun, stretching his arm as far as possible, leaning toward it, until he was able to pinch it with two fingers. He brought it firmly into his grip and turned back to face Dopp. Blood streamed from Dopp’s nose, and he was coughing and gasping between breaths. His eyes widened at the gun in Trent’s hands.
“You want me to die?” he choked out.
Trent’s lip curled up in disgust. “It’s either you or me.”
Then he slid backwards on Dopp’s stomach, knowing that what he was about to do wasn’t so much a choice, but a forced action in defense of his own—and the others’—survival. Tightening his grip on the gun, Trent curled his finger around the trigger, aimed the barrel at Dopp’s forehead, and fired a single shot. The gun kicked back as the bang resounded. Trent jumped to his feet, looking away from the blood that instantly burst from the hole between Dopp’s vacant brown eyes. The sickening smell of burned flesh floated upward from his body.
Trent backed away with dread, suddenly aware of the sobs that were coming from behind him. His throat constricted as he turned around, not prepared to find Arianna in a similar state; and then he gasped.
On the floor, facedown, was Sam. Blood was pooling under his chest, spreading out at a frightening rate, and his arms and legs were strewn at awkward angles from his body. Emily was kneeling next to him, and she looked up at Trent in tears.
“He’s dead now, too.”
Trent dropped the gun. Her words matched the scene, but his comprehension lagged behind. “What?”
“It happened so fast,” Arianna murmured. Trent looked up from Sam’s body to see her, still lying on her side—intact—on the table; her face was stark white. “The gun went off, I closed my eyes, and then he was on the floor.”
“He jumped in front of you,” Dr. Ericson breathed. He was still sitting behind her, holding the needle in place in her spinal column.
She stared down at Sam’s body in disbelief.
Trent shook his head, unable to speak. Emily was crying next to him. They said nothing, not knowing how to proceed from such a moment, for proceeding would involve accepting the reality of his death.
Dr. Ericson’s anguished voice broke the silence. “It’s our fault. He would have dropped the gun if we had put up our hands.”
Emily’s eyes met her husband’s. “No, I don’t think so. He wanted her.”
Trent saw the glistening of tears spill over Arianna’s lids. She said nothing, only squeezed her head and whimpered.
“The transfer, it’s done,” Dr. Ericson said quietly. Trent looked at the bag; it was empty. He watched the doctor remove the long needle from her back, and then covered the area with a gauze bandage.
“We have to get out of here,” Trent finally said. It was the only thought that seemed clear. He looked over at Dopp, whose face was now drenched in dark red blood that slid over his chin and neck onto the floor. Trent knew the memory of the sight would haunt him as long as he lived.
“What are we going to do with them?” Emily asked, motioning to the two bodies.
Trent shook his head. “We have to go. What can we do?”
“How can we just leave Sam behind?” Arianna cried.
“It’s not him anymore,” Emily said sadly.
Arianna’s face twisted in pain, and Trent found his legs and rushed to her side. He grabbed her hands and buried his face in her neck, feeling a cry rise in his throat. “But at least you’re okay,” he breathed. “You’re going to be okay.”
She did not respond, but clutched his hands; he felt her heart thumping against her ribs, strong and alive.
“We have to hurry,” Dr. Ericson said, coming around the surgical table and intercepting them to remove the wires attached to her chest. “Come on.” He turned to his wife and held out a hand. Before taking it, Emily gingerly reached inside Sam’s pockets. She pulled out his wallet, keys, and cell phone, snatched the crumpled piece of paper near his feet, and then rose reluctantly, pulling on her husband’s hand. When she took a step away from Sam’s body, the sole of her shoes tracked his blood on the floor.
“I want to say good-bye,” Arianna whispered. “Help me.”
Trent slid his hands under her body and scooped her up under the knees and neck, careful to avoid disturbing the gauze on her naked back. She sank against his strength, her legs dangling limply over his arms. He lifted her over the table’s edge and lowered her so that her face was nearly touching the back of Sam’s head. She leaned in closer and planted a kiss on it, leaving her lips pressed against his thin white hair. Gently, Trent pulled her away.
“We have to go,” he muttered.
Before she could protest, he swept her up and followed the Ericsons out the door. Their steps echoed down the hallway as they ran to the waiting room, and then out of the clinic and into the chilly black night, with Arianna’s surgical gown flapping in the air, exposing her bandaged back to the wind. Trent’s chest heaved against her side as he followed the Ericsons around the nearest street corner. Parked along the curb, a black car was waiting for them there.
TWENTY-THREE
The television in the apartment looked ancient—a hulking box about a foot deep, perched atop an antique wooden dresser. Trent, Emily, and Dr. Ericson were huddled in front of it, waiting for the Monday evening newscast to begin. Arianna was resting on the sofa out in the living room, having chosen to restrict herself from all news, lest the stress interfere with her recovery. Trent knew she was suffering enough guilt over Sam’s death not to be able to cope with any further fallout from Friday night’s events.
In the three days they had lived at Sam’s old apartment, two vigils were ongoing: one over her and one over the television. So far, her body was showing no signs of rejecting the transferred cells, and Dr. Ericson was optimistic that she had cleared the first seventy-two hours, but said she was still far from safe. It was crucial for her to remain as relaxed as possible, since stress hormones could trigger an adverse reaction, so she was taking a daily regimen of antianxiety medication along with prednisone, an immunosuppressive drug. While Dr. Ericson monitored her health, Trent and Emily traded shifts at her bedside, trying to distract her from grief and worry.
But it was difficult for Trent to conceal his own struggle to adjust to the drastic changes in their lives: splitting two dingy rooms and one bathroom between four people, eating canned food, staying inside day after day, while wan sunlight poked through the threadbare curtains. All his belongings remained behind in his apartment, which was now under government scrutiny. But it was too soon to risk leaving this apartment while the cit
y searched for them, so Megan had generously brought him the basic toiletries, along with a hastily selected wardrobe of discount clothing.
To communicate with the outside, the group had Arianna’s TracFone. Their own four cell phones, and Sam’s—traceable by satellite—were floating somewhere in the Hudson River, flung there from the West Side Highway during their drive uptown after the transfer. Credit cards, also, were traceable, so the Ericsons had liquidated their bank account in advance and stashed hundred-dollar bills galore into their suitcases. Arianna had not been able to do the same under Dopp’s close observation, and Trent had had zero time to prepare, so the money of both of them remained tied up in accounts; Trent worried that they would never be able to retrieve it without setting the Feds on their trail.
But most of all, he was striving to adjust to the new emotional paradigm of their lives. Sleep eluded him as he thought about Dopp’s bloodied face and lifeless eyes. Trent replayed the scene in his mind over and over: the feeling of the sweaty gun in his hand, the loud bang of the shot, the sudden smoking hole in Dopp’s forehead. This time, Trent thought, he really had become a murderer. Yet he knew he would do it the same way again. Dopp had fired the first shot—had escalated it to that level—and Trent was the only one who could fight back. Arianna had even called him a hero. Underneath his feelings of trauma and horror, there was no regret—only sadness.
And a constant, overshadowing worry about being caught. Paranoia was a powerful force: it was a vacuum that sucked away relief; it was a reason to wince at footsteps outside the door and to cringe before every news update on television. Would they ever be able to react any other way to the jarring beeps of a breaking news announcement? Yet the archaic television drew them in like campers around a fire, mesmerized by the flames they had sparked.
