“We’ve discussed it. Now it’s time for action,” he told her. With just a few questions, Dade managed to home in on the man’s age, hair color and most importantly it turned out, the color and make of his car. Dade went to his computer, hammered on the keys like a mechanical marvel, and within moments had a photo up on the screen. “This the asshole?” he asked her.
Again, she paused in the middle of the decision to admit it to him. “Yes!” came out like the flood from a collapsing dam. “Yes that’s the fucking prick!”
“Stay here,” he ordered her. “His address is close, right on the hill. It won’t take me long.”
“No,” she started to argue. “It wasn’t that bad. You’re just going to say something to him. Right?”
“He’s going to say something to you. He’s going to apologize. Meet me in the front of the lab in fifteen minutes.” He got up and disappeared out the door.
Ten minutes later, Bright blue-white light from Asylum One’s headlamps came up the cliff road and poured into the parking lot. Dade had only been gone a short time. Ann Marie wondered if that meant he couldn’t find the man. All her questions were put to rest the moment when the blonde-haired executive came tumbling out of the back of the truck and landed on his hands and knees. He was crying harder than he had made Ann Marie. The sight made her gasp.
“Told you it wouldn’t take long,” Dade said in quite a matter-of-fact way.
“Please God. Please God,” the executive said. “I just made a mistake. It wasn’t that bad. I don’t deserve whatever you’re going to do to me.”
Harkenrider grabbed him by the hair and suspended him in the air. His scalp started to ooze blood into the blonde hair. He carried him over to Ann Marie and dropped him down like a cat with a gift kill. “How do you know,” Dade asked him, “what I’m going to do with you?” He shot a chilling smile at the businessman. “Maybe you’ll apologize to my colleague and the matter will be closed. How do you know I’m going to do something horrible to you?”
The man sobbed so hard that it made his words difficult to understand. “B...B...Because,” he said. “I know who you are. You’re Dade Harkenrider.”
“Apologize,” Dade ordered the man.
“I’m so sorry,” he appealed to Ann Marie while on his hands and knees. He sounded perfectly genuine. “I was awful to you and there is no excuse for what I did. I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
Before she could answer, Dade lifted him over his head like a powerlifter with a truck tire. He started walking toward the cliff.
“What are you doing?” Ann Marie asked.
“There isn’t any sense in keeping something like this around. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m a god damned human being!” the executive shouted. “I just made a...” he said before it faded into sobbing. “Mistake!” he finally shouted. “I don’t want to be like the others. Please. Don’t make me like the others!”
“What are you going to do?” Ann Marie asked as though the whole walk-to-the-cliff was part of some act. She thought maybe this was part of some negative reinforcement and he would let the man go any second. She asked again, “What are you going to do? Throw him off the cliff like a stone?”
“Of course,” Dade told her as he hurried his pace toward the cliff. “It’s great for the ecosystem. The fish and crabs are gonna love this guy.”
“You can’t do this!” she told him. “There are laws! It’s wrong!”
Dade stopped, still holding the man high in the air like he weighed nothing. “What laws are you referring to?” He asked. “Laws of physics? Laws of nature? Or do you mean the laws of a primitive society that don’t apply to me?”
“I have a family,” the man pleaded. “A wife and a daughter. Please don’t make me like the others.”
“I’ll make sure your wife and child receive full financial support from the corporation,” Dade told him in a way that was meant to be reassuring. “They probably won’t miss you and they’ll probably be better off.” He started carrying the man to the cliff with Ann Marie following.
“So you’re not gonna inject me with something?” The man asked as his sobbing took on a different character, a relieved one. “You’re not going to make me like the others.”
“You’re thinking of someone else,” Dade said as he got close to the cliff.
“Wait! Please!” The businessman cried out. “I can help you. I know some things. Just please listen to me!”
“What interesting thing can you possibly tell me?”
“I’ve heard things,” the businessman said. “I’ve heard something is going down at the highest levels of the company. I know that Bernard Mengel is involved...And...And...some woman. They’re planning something.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
Dade threw the man so high into the air that it reminded Ann Marie of the circus. After a second or two of shrill screeching, the man and his screams disappeared into the surf below.
Ann Marie, who had spent the past few moments totally stunned, finally blurted out, “No!”
“That’s a little late,” said Dade as he started to walk back to the lab.
She wound up and punched him in the shoulder. Dade didn’t react but it hurt Ann Marie’s hand. “How could you do that!” She shouted, backing away like he was a dangerous reptile. “You’re a murderer! They’re going to put you away!”
“I know that seemed cruel,” Dade stopped and told her. He paused for what seemed to her like a long time, so long that she noticed the smell of the tropical breeze and heard some small animal climbing around in the bushes. “Maybe it was cruel but I point out that it was likely a very quick and painless death. It’s a hundred and ten foot drop from that cliff.”
The man’s last scream as he saw the ocean racing toward him echoed in her ears. She turned away from him. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “He didn’t deserve that.”
Dade spoke plainly while she kept her back turned to him. “A full grown man with the full power of money and the law grabs a young girl, half his size, by the hair. What sort of use is a man like that to anyone? Do you think the revolting things he said to you were chosen by accident? No. He chose them to injure you psychologically in addition to assaulting you physically. That thing wasn’t human. It was a predator. Predators like him are often pathetic but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.”
Ann Marie slowly turned around and met his eyes.
Dade continued, saying, “Humans have too hard a time with these predators if you ask me.”
“Again. You say that like you’re not one of us.”
“It’s hard to explain,” he said.
“Before you threw him over,” she began to inquire, “he said he didn’t want to be like the others. What does that mean?”
“He had me confused for someone else. I’ve never done anything worse than killing someone.”
“So you’re admitting to other murders too?”
“I don’t know what to say, Ann Marie.”
“I want you to let me take a trip in the tank,” she said.
“Where did that come from?”
“I’m tired of you keeping everything from me. I don’t want to be a helper. I want in.”
“You’re not going into that tank,” he told her. “Don’t waste your time trying to convince me.”
“Bernard said you were holding out on me.”
“Oh he did,” said Dade, smirking. “Well, if the honorable Bernard Mengel says it, then it has to be true.”
“I just saw you commit murder,” she said as she crossed her arms across her chest. She looked like she was holding the trump card to win the argument. She told him, “I would be careful.”
“Why? Are you going to tell on me?” He didn’t wait for her to respond before he went on. “You’re amazing, kid. It takes some nerve to threaten your boss, especially after you just witnessed that boss throw an important man off a cliff. Yo
u must feel pretty safe around me. It’s odd because I find most people seem to be afraid of me. I rather like it that way.”
“I know you won’t hurt me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She struggled to come up with an answer. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I just know. Call it intuition.”
“Teenagers,” said Dade. He rolled his eyes and started to walk back to the lab.
“Wait,” she said, catching up to him. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Why?”
“Shouldn’t we come up with some sort of story?” She asked, looking in the direction of the cliff and surf below. “You could say he fell.”
He stopped and faced her. “But you’re a witness. What do I do about you?”
“I won’t say anything. I’m on your side,” she said. “I promise.”
Dade studied her face in the moonlight. He seemed almost touched by the gesture and didn’t know what to say at first. He finally said, “I kicked down the door of the man’s home and dragged him out, kicking and screaming, right in front of his wife and little girl. Both of them and several neighbors saw me throw him into a rather distinctive six-wheeled vehicle and drive off. I don’t think I was stealthy enough to avoid attention.”
“Then the police are probably coming for you already.”
He started laughing in a quite pleasurable way. “You’re the greatest, kid!” he said like he had heard the best punchline. “That really would be something. I honestly hope they do stop by. It’s been a while.”
...
Later that night, when she made it home, she found her mother sleeping on the couch with an infomercial playing on the television. The volume was at a jarring level and probably audible to the neighbors. Ann Marie shut it off and her mom sprung immediately to red-eyed life.
“Where you been?” Lori asked as she started to yawn. “Why did you go back out?”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Lori opened her eyes wide and rolled them around in the sockets to wake up. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from the corners of her mouth. “If it was nothing,” she asked, “why are you back so late?”
“I was working. I was busy.”
“I remember the nice guy at the bar. I remember you driving us home several hours ago. Then I remember you going back out very late. Why? What happened?”
“I’m not answering all this!” Ann Marie started to shout. She surprised herself with intensity of the outburst and tried to get under control. “Listen, Mom,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about what happened tonight. Not now. Not ever. I think that I do enough for our family to earn a little bit of privacy. Don’t you think?”
“No. Not really.”
“Well, I’m not discussing it, mom. What are you going to do? Ground me so I can’t go to work? I make all the god damned money.”
“Don’t use the lord’s name in vain, honey. And there is no privacy when it comes to you and me, when it comes to family. Now, why don’t you just tell me what happened tonight?”
“OK,” grumbled Ann Marie. “I drove my drunk mother home after some disgusting asshole was harassing her all night. I tried to go to bed but I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to take the car, that I own, and go for a drive through this wonderful, beautiful hellscape of a city. Is that good enough for you?”
“Is it the truth?”
“Nope.”
...
The next day, Ann Marie found Dade in his laboratory and asked him the question that had kept her awake until almost dawn. “You seemed so sure about that man last night,” she started to ask. “You didn’t doubt for a second that he was a monster. It was like you knew what he was even before he did. How did you know?”
Dade quietly considered it.
“Was it just what he did to me?” She continued. “Is that how you were so sure that he was a monster? It was like you could see something on him.”
“What he did to you brought his death sentence,” Dade told her. “There is no doubt about that. But there was something else. Something subtle. There are humans out there that are different. They have a different glow about them. Once you can see, it looks a little like the little mirages you get on the surface of hot road. The odd halo was quite apparent with that man.”
“How can I see it too?”
“Why would you want to? What’s the difference?”
“Because,” she said, “it would be nice to be able to tell the good people from the evil ones. I could protect myself.”
“After one of my early tank experiments, a very deep trip, I started to see the halos on people sometimes.”
“Where does it come from? What does it mean?”
“The impact we leave on the world,” Dade said. “All of our interactions have an effect and these effects are cumulative. After a while, it starts to leave a trace around our bodies. We have evolved not to see it. Or,” he started to say, “the predators have figured out how to hide themselves.”
“Do I have one?”
“Of course.”
“What does it tell you?”
“I don’t think we should go into this,” Dade answered. “It isn’t very helpful.”
“Why aren’t you going to tell me? Is there something wrong with mine.”
“Not wrong exactly,” said Dade. “It’s just that...”
“What?”
“Pain,” said Dade.
“That can’t be right,” she said. “I’m not in any pain. I’m fine.”
“You asked what I saw.”
...
A few days later, Ann Marie arrived to the laboratory to find a black stretch limousine in front. Even though the car was in exquisite condition, it was at least thirty years old and looked like it had come from a previous era. Five Asylum Corporation security SUVs were parked around the thing. She remembered the limo from the day she first met Bernard Mengel.
The Sheriff looked concerned when he greeted her inside. “Good morning, kid,” he said. “We got problems.”
She followed him down the hall, where they found Bernard and Ivy Cavatica peeking through the door to one of the labs. They were being guarded by a group of armed Asylum security soldiers. Just a few feet away, Dade was blocking their path. He was joined by nearly a dozen DeathStalkers, including Bernard’s specially designed escort. The two opposing forces had locked each other in a stalemate.
Bernard seemed to be giving Ivy a tour of the facility. He gloated, shouting, “My dear boy, did you ever think that I would be walking these halls so freely? Oh how I’ve missed this place!”
“The only way you’re getting past me,” Dade told him, “will be as a puddle of red mush on the floor.”
“Hello Ann Marie,” Bernard said, noticing her. “It’s always such a pleasure to see you.” Before she could respond, he told her, “I do hope that our friend Doctor Harkenrider has been a good master. I trust he has been properly training his apprentice.”
“I told you, old man,” Dade said. “I’m no one’s master.”
“Well, I do hope that you change your mind on that particular issue,” Bernard said. He glanced over to Ivy Cavatica. “I, myself, have taken on a very promising new apprentice. Say hello, beautiful.”
“I already know Doctor Harkenrider very well,” said Ivy.
“The hell you do,” Dade said to her. He told Bernard, “You two are getting out of my facility this second or my DeathStalkers are going to swap your appendages for hers before we throw you both out.”
“He has no manners,” Bernard said. “I don’t know where I went wrong with his training.”
“No one trained me,” jabbed Dade. “You have absolutely nothing to do with who I am, old man.”
“Where is the gratitude?” Asked Bernard. “I thought that I could bring my new apprentice to see this very special place. I thought you wouldn’t begrudge someone the opportunity that I gave you.”
“You thought wrong,” Dade said.
“It’s a pity,” Bernard told him. “You two have so much in common. I thought you would hit it off right away.”
“Don’t count on it,” Dade snapped back while glaring at Ivy. He told her, “If you still have any free will left, you need to get away from this man right now.”
Ivy smirked at him, saying, “But it feels so good.”
“See anything special about her, Dade?” Bernard searched his face with a mischievous and knowing grin. “I know you two don’t know each other but I thought she might...” The old man looked as though he was about to come through with a punchline to a joke at Dade’s expense, but he just abandoned the topic. “I suppose you’ll figure it out eventually,” he said.
Harkenrider addressed the soldiers escorting Bernard, telling them, “Gentlemen, this isn’t your fight. The old man and Elvira over here aren’t making it any farther down this hallway. This is going to be true whether all of you survive the next fifteen-seconds or not. You are all just doing your jobs and we work for the same company. I don’t want to rip your spines out. I really don’t. But don’t force my hand.”
“OK. OK,” said Bernard. He threw up his hands in forfeit. “My beautiful apprentice and I will comply with little Dade’s request.”
“It wasn’t a request,” Harkenrider said plainly.
“My fine young thugs,” Bernard said to the soldiers, “let us depart this glorious chapel.” He held out his arm to Ivy like they were on a date. “Come now, my dear,” he told her. “We have some training to do.” He added, “It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”
The old man walked away arm in arm with Ivy. Along with his battalion of bodyguards, his DeathStalker followed him on his way out.
...
A few days later, while Ann Marie and Dade were working in the lab, an urgent message from The Sheriff came through the intercom. “Dade, we got a problem,” The Sheriff said. “I’m gonna need you to come down here to the main gate.”
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 17
