HALLOWED BE THY NAME

by James Somers

  •••

  Trenton surveyed the scene at Genetic Corp, from behind one of the border hedges. Everything was dark now. Yellow police tape crossed the front of the building, warning people not to tamper with the crime scene. Despite a moonless night, Trenton saw the two police officers attempting to hide themselves in the shadows.

  He felt like an owl hunting mice in the dark—a silent but deadly predator. Nothing would keep him from claiming his mutagen formulas. They belonged to him. Without those formulas, he wouldn’t be able to share his discovery with the rest of mankind. Without those formulas, he wouldn’t be able to stop the worst effect of the mutagen.

  •••

  Officer Bunch pulled the wrapper off a stick of gum and pushed it into his mouth. He chewed a few times, then blew a bubble. Pop.

  “You want to let everyone in the world know we’re here?” his partner hissed.

  “Shut up, Jack,” Bunch said.

  Jack sent him an unfriendly hand gesture. “Who you tellin to shut up? You don’t want any of this, Bunch.”

  Officer Bunch wadded up his gum wrapper and tossed it at his partner. “You’re worried about me giving up our position, while you stand there smoking that nasty cigar? You can see it glowing a mile away.”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, I think this is a huge waste of time,” Bunch complained. “That kook ain’t gonna show up. Who calls out a SWAT unit for one guy, anyway? This is crazy.”

  Jack blew out a puff of cigar smoke and smiled. “Doesn’t bother me—as long as I’m getting paid overtime.”

  Officer Bunch jumped at a crashing sound from the parking lot in front of them. He drew his MP5 submachine gun to his shoulder, aiming the night-scope into the darkness. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded like somebody kicking the side of a car, or something.”

  “There aren’t any cars in the parking lot.” Officer Bunch swept the night-scope back and forth. “There’s too much glare coming off those street lights.”

  Something shifted within the green field of his night vision optic. Massive glare from the street lamp filled the scope. “What the—?”

  Officer Bunch looked up just in time to see the street lamp come crashing down on their position. Bunch jumped out of the way, as the four-way lamp head smashed into the ground. He rolled over and saw the massive steel pole lying horizontal on the concrete where he had been standing. His partner lay crushed beneath it. “Jack!”

  A blur darted through his peripheral vision. Officer Bunch raised his weapon, only to have it snatched from his grasp by a shadowy figure. The breath exploded from his chest as the intruder punched him in the breastbone. Even his flack jacket didn’t diminish the impact. He flew off the ground, landing against the side of the Genetic Corp building, unable to breathe.

  “Too bad about your partner,” Trenton said.

  Officer Bunch tried to cough, wheeze, anything to get air into his lungs again.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Trenton assured him, “you’re going to join him, momentarily.”

  Officer Bunch’s eyes bugged, his face turning a rich cyanotic blue. He slumped down the wall, losing his fight for air.

  14 INTRUDER

  “Hey, I’ve found something else,” Jay said. He bit off a piece of delivery pizza. “This file is encrypted.”

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked.

  “It’s entitled, “Full Burn Side Effect.” The encryption will take longer, but I can hack it.”

  Joseph walked into the room with his cell phone open. “Jonathan, that was the police.”

  “Detective Stamos again?”

  “No. This was about the morgue. Apparently, there has been a robbery. Someone has stolen your body.”

  Jay snickered as he typed. “If they only knew.”

  “Actually, that’s what concerns me,” Jonathan said. “Won’t they do an investigation?”

  “They certainly will—especially with the connection to the shooting and Trenton,” Joseph said.

  “They’ll find the door was kicked out from the inside,” Jonathan said.

  “Probably with your bare footprints on the floor—maybe even your blood on the broken window glass,” Joseph said.

  Jonathan grimaced. “That will lead them back here.”

  Joseph agreed.

  “Then we’ll need to hurry this along, Jay,” Jonathan said. “We’ve got to leave.”

  “Why not just tell the police what’s going on?” Jay asked, taking another bite of pizza.

  “Not until we actually know, for ourselves, what’s happening,” Jonathan said.

  •••

  A brief hint of static squawked in Michael’s earpiece. “Detective Stamos, we’ve got a street light down outside and two men dead.”

  So that’s what it was—he’s here. “Right, copy that,” Michael replied. “Everybody on your toes. Our suspect has arrived, gentlemen. Remember, he’s extremely dangerous. He’s already made the first move—shoot to kill.”

  His SWAT unit responded, “Copy that.”

  Michael lowered his night-vision visor. The building had been blacked out for a good reason. Hopefully, forcing Hallowed to stumble around in the dark would give Michael, and his team, the edge they needed to take him out—an edge his partner had not had a couple of nights ago.

  Images of the doctor’s experiment haunted him now—a white rat tearing two of nature’s most dangerous predators to pieces. Trenton Hallowed had become the white rat. Suddenly, Michael had the sinking feeling his SWAT unit would not be enough.

  He had gone through the training himself, some years back, but ultimately decided on becoming a detective instead. His father had been a detective. It was important to Dad.

  Michael heard glass shatter in the distance. He and two other officers responded. They glided down the hallway using the shadows for cover—their MP5s trained ahead of them. The thin carpet helped mask their steps. They drew close to a corner.

  Michael heard a scream, both in his headset and ahead of him. One of their fellow officers flew past the intersection into view, slamming into a decorative vase in the corner. The hallway erupted in machine gun fire, as the officer recovered and fired in the direction he had just been thrown from. Another gun went off, almost simultaneously.

  Michael ran forward as the officer fell under return fire. He reached the corner, stopping with two officers in tow. When Michael nodded, they rounded the corner and caught sight of a man. Michael noticed a uniform and held his fire, but the officers with him did not. “No, don’t!” Michael warned.

  The officer screamed through his headset, as they cut him down by accident. “Hold your fire!” Michael ordered. As soon as the officers realized what had happened, Trenton stepped out from behind the slain officer, he had used as a shield, and fired. One of the SWAT officers went down. Michael ducked behind the wall, as bullets chewed up the sheetrock.

  “Give it up, Hallowed!” Michael yelled.

  Trenton laughed. “Why if it isn’t Detective Stamos. Are you the one responsible for throwing me this grand party?”

  The second officer with Michael shot out from the corner, but was immediately hit by the body of the officer Trenton had been hiding behind. He fired in a panic, just before the dead body smashed into him. Michael pushed his submachine gun around the corner, found Trenton in the night-scope, and fired. As soon as he did, Trenton disappeared.

  More laughter. “You’ll have to be quicker than that, Detective.”

  Michael switched ammo clips and called into his headset. “Officers down in the west wing, repeat, officers down. Suspect is in the west wing and armed. Dispatch, this is Detective Michael Stamos at the Genetic Corp building. We have the suspect surrounded, officers are down. We need backup, immediately, and paramedics to the scene, copy?”

  Trenton’s voice boomed at him from everywhere, over the intercom system. “Do you suppose they can get here in time, Detective? You and your men don’t have long to li
ve.”

  “Copy, Detective Stamos, backup and paramedics are en route to your location,” the dispatcher said through Michael’s earpiece.

  Michael checked on the second officer. He was unconscious, but alive. Michael rounded the corner again. He didn’t know where the main intercom might be controlled, until he saw a hallway phone receiver dangling—recently dropped. He breathed deeply, made sure his weapon was ready, and proceeded down the dark hallway. “All right, Hallowed. I’m coming for you.”

  •••

  Joseph came back into the study where Jonathan and Jay sat at his computer. “The police scanner is going mad, sir. A SWAT team is calling for backup at Genetic Corp. The suspect is Trenton Hallowed.”

  Jonathan winced at the name. “Trenton went back to Genetic Corp?”

  Joseph sat two large suitcases down on the floor, next to some other supplies he was gathering for their departure. Jonathan looked at his bodyguard. “What do you really think is going on, Joseph?”

  “Sir, your cousin was in the same room, in the same chemical fog. For all we know, Trenton may have been using the mutagen on himself. Maybe Detective Stamos has been tracking Trenton for good reason.”

  Jonathan stood up. “Trenton…a murderer? I don’t believe that.”

  “Sir, we don’t know the full effects of this Generation X Mutagen. We’ve already witnessed its effect on the lab rat in the experiment, and its ability to heal you of fatal gunshot wounds.”

  Jonathan leaned on the desktop. “Joseph, do you expect me to believe my own cousin is a superhuman, serial killer?” He pounded the desk once with his fist, in anger. The legs shattered, and the desk tumbled sideways into the floor.

  Jay caught his laptop just in time. “Hey!”

  All three of them looked at the pummeled piece of furniture, horrified.

  “Sir, we clearly must consider all the possibilities,” Joseph said. “Trenton has gone back to Genetic Corp for a reason. An entire SWAT team is calling frantically for backup, against one man.”

  Jonathan stammered, searching for an answer, looking at the shattered desk. “Okay, Joseph. Why would he go back there with the police waiting for him?”

  They looked at one another, simultaneously coming up with the answer. “The mutagen!”

  Jay turned to them. “You have to read about the side effects of this stuff, written in this journal entry.”

  Jonathan joined Jay on the floor with the computer. “There’s no time, Jay. Can you stop access to Trenton’s files from here?”

  Jay smiled. “Does a bear—”

  “All right, just do it and hurry,” Jonathan said.

  “Do you want me to shut him out completely? There’s vault access, and everything, available here.”

  “The vault is where he got the chemical for the experiment,” Jonathan said. “Yes, shut down everything. If that stuff does what we think, then we can’t let him have it.”

  Jay’s fingers flew over his keyboard—their natural environment. “I’ll lock it up so tight, with encryption, he’ll never even get into the mainframe.”

  Joseph grabbed the suitcases off the floor. “We’d better get moving, Jonathan. With all of this going on, the police won’t delay very long in coming here—especially if Trenton escapes Genetic Corp.”

  Jonathan grabbed some of the duffle bags Joseph had assembled in the room. “Do you think Trenton would come to the house?”

  Joseph looked at him. “If he does, we don’t want to be here.”

  15 ONSLAUGHT

  Static mingled with shouts and screams, in Michael’s earpiece, as he hurried through the dark corridors of Genetic Corp. He heard Trenton speaking. “You’re missing the party, Detective.”

  The sounds of sporadic gunfire echoed off the walls. Michael proceeded with caution looking before and behind. He saw muzzle flashes playing against the wall up ahead. Another voice screamed and was abruptly silenced through his earpiece. He ran toward the end of the corridor and stopped short at the corner, finding a double doorway just beyond.

  Michael checked his ammo reader—almost a full clip left. A guestbook sat upon a podium on the opposite side of the doorway. He had seen this before. Michael had signed the guestbook at the party celebrating Trenton Hallowed’s grand exhibition. Beyond the doorway, he would find the huge foyer with its double staircases and buffet tables.

  Michael noticed his earpiece only carried static now. None of the officers spoke anymore. “This is Detective Stamos, is anyone there…copy?”

  Trenton’s rasping deep voice answered him. “I’m still here, Detective.”

  His voice sent a shiver of fear down Michael’s spine. He had not only heard Trenton Hallowed through his earpiece, he had heard him in the foyer, beyond the open doors. “I’m waiting, Detective.”

  Michael breathed deeply, held it, rounding the corner with his weapon aimed in front of him. His shiver of fear transformed into a stampede. The bodies of his SWAT team hung before him in the foyer, from their own grappling cords—a hangman’s dream come true.

  His gun almost fell out of his hands. “The best we had—all dead,” he whispered.

  “Don’t they make wonderful marionettes, Detective?” Trenton taunted.

  Michael searched for Trenton’s voice and found the madman standing on the landing above the open foyer. A silver, metal banister topped panes of frosted glass all the way up both staircases, terminating with a larger pane bearing the Genetic Corp emblem—a double helix. Trenton stood behind it, smiling at his handiwork.

  Seeing him renewed Michael’s resolve. He launched himself into the foyer among the bodies, using them for cover as he fired his submachine gun. The decorative glass exploded in front of Trenton. He leaped away as sparks ignited on the metal railing and stonework around him.

  Michael pushed his way through the dead team members, trying to track his elusive target. Trenton appeared half way down the right staircase, firing one of the weapons he had taken from his victims. Michael used the corpses for cover. Bullets riddled the bodies, spraying Stamos with blood, but he wasn’t giving up.

  Michael returned fire. His better aim sent Trenton on the run again, amid a hail of bullets and shattered glass. The ammo clip ran dry. Michael snatched out the double clip, flipped it, and inserted the other end with fresh rounds. He pulled, released the bolt, then took aim.

  Two tear gas canisters sailed away from the balcony, leading trails of yellow smoke. Trenton stood at the point of their origination, cackling. Sirens wailed outside on approach to the building. “I’ve no more time to play with you today, Detective,” he said. “I’ll leave you to explain the deaths of these men to their wives, and children.”

  Michael tried to find him—his eyes burning like fire. The cloud of tear gas billowed around him. He stumbled into bodies, causing them to swing like pendulums. One body slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. He choked on fumes. Every mucus membrane in his head screamed for mercy, emptying in a vain attempt to clear the irritant.

  •••

  Trenton ran from the balcony above the foyer as the tear gas filled the room below, swallowing Detective Stamos. The sirens outside multiplied, growing louder. He had to get to the lab and retrieve his mutagen formulas and the extra gas cylinders.

  The lights came on—power restored. They’re coming into the building. It suited his purposes as well—power to run the computers.

  Trenton kicked the lab door open, just in time to see the main vault door closing. “No!” He raced across the lab, reaching the door with less than a hand’s breadth of space. The massive door stopped, becoming flush with the wall. Trenton heard the steel bolts sliding into place within the mechanism. He slammed his fists into the door, but it was no use. Not even his new strength could penetrate the vault.

  He turned back to the computer terminals which lined the counters, and ran to one of them. Trenton typed in his access code. He could still open the vault, and retrieve the gas cylinders, while he downloaded his formulas
onto a jump drive. Access Denied.

  “What?” Trenton fumed.

  He tried again, but the computer repeated the message. Trenton grew enraged and punched his fist into the flat screen monitor, shattering it to pieces. He moved to another terminal and tried again. The message repeated. He had to force himself not to destroy this terminal too.

  Trenton heard police officers entering the building, commands given, and gasps of horror at the carnage left for them in the foyer. He had to hurry. Taking on an entire police force, probably in riot gear, would not do him any good now.

  “Come on!” He tried something else—typing in commands to show him why the computer had denied him access. He hit the enter key and waited.

  Trenton couldn’t believe the message displayed on the screen. ERROR—ENCRYPTED FILES NOT AVAILABLE—LOCKDOWN COMMAND—JHALLOWED.

  “Jonathan!” Trenton screamed. He smashed all the computers left on the counter.

  “Up here!” someone shouted.

  Trenton turned as two policemen, in body armor and gas masks, opened fire on him from the doorway. He grabbed a rolling chair and whipped it sideways toward them. The chair crashed into the doorway, causing the men to flinch away. Trenton took advantage of their distraction and ran toward the door as the chair hit the floor. He charged forward, grabbing the body armor of both men. Trenton lifted them up and threw both officers over the railing. They dropped four floors to the foyer below, where a host of police officers had assembled.