Apocalyptic Fears II: Select Bestsellers: A Multi-Author Box Set

by Greg Dragon

  The glass door resisted her push, but then popped open with a hiss. Cool air rushed out and caressed her cheek. It smelled slightly of rubbing alcohol.

  She stood there for a moment, then stepped through the doorway. The walls were lined with glass cabinets, and inside each was a cart with a half dozen shelves. A light had come on, casting a dull red glow over everything.

  The glass door whispered shut behind her, the magnetized rubber seal cutting off Jamie’s moans of pain in the hallway. Angel turned back to the cabinets, both fascinated and disturbed. On each shelf of each rack were six plastic boxes, and inside each box were rows upon rows of glass vials.

  This was no nurse’s office.

  But what it was, exactly, she had no idea.

  Chapter Forty Two

  There were eight refrigerated cabinets in all: three each in the opposite and right-hand walls, two more in the wall behind her. The wall to her left, the one shared with the hallway, was blank.

  “What the hell are all these bottles?”

  She pulled open the glass door of the closest cabinet and lifted the lid from one of the plastic boxes so she could remove a vial. The top was sealed with a rubber stopper, the kind used for sterile access with a needle, suggesting that the dark liquid within was intended for injection.

  Affixed to the bottle was a simple machine-printed label with a barcode and some text:

  She puzzled over the word undifferentiated, wondering what it might mean. She replaced the vial into the box and checked the next one:

  Hepatic? she thought. As in liver?

  The next several vials seemed to confirm her suspicion that these might be cell types, possibly derived from undifferentiated stem cells, perhaps even from a single person, whomever this Subject 145 might be. It would explain the contents of the first bottle, but not why they were here.

  On the other hand, the solution looked nothing like a suspension of cells. Furthermore, cells would not remain viable under mild refrigeration, and certainly not sealed inside an airtight bottle. They would be dead within hours.

  It was possible that they had been fixed in formalin, perhaps for genetic analysis. But then again, the black slurry did not look like any type of histological fixative solution she knew about. Perhaps they’re checking for—

  Stop it! What are you thinking? This is a computer factory, not a molecular biology lab!

  Except, of course, it wasn’t a computer factory, was it? Just like that room out there wasn’t a nurse’s office. Those were lies, just like everything else had been.

  Quickly checking the next several bottles in the front row of the same rack, she found more tissue types, ranging from muscle and bone to cardiac and neural, as well as adrenal, corneal, and epidermal. Bottles occupied every slot in the seven rows behind the first, bringing the total to sixty-four in each box.

  There had to be close to twenty thousand bottles stored in the cabinets.

  The adjacent box contained an identical layout as the first, with the only differences being the subject (147) and the lot numbers.

  She ignored the voice in the back of her head telling her she was wasting too much time, and instead lifted the entire box out of the fridge and carried it out to the other room and set it onto the benchtop.

  The man on the floor squirmed and tried to speak. He was red in the face from struggling. The look in his eyes was filled with hatred. Angel went over to check that he wasn’t getting loose, ignoring his grunts.

  Satisfied that he wasn’t going to work himself free, she went to check on Jamie. The girl had made it to the middle of the hallway and had collapsed in a heap. “How are you feeling?” Angel asked.

  Jamie turned her bloodshot eyes up at her. “Did you . . . find anything?”

  Angel hesitated, then nodded. “Maybe. Give me a few minutes. I want to check something real quick.” She stood up. “Did you happen to have an employee number?”

  Jamie didn’t answer right away.

  “Jamie?”

  “Two-two-four.”

  Angel hurried back and checked the lid of the plastic box. Like the vials, the box was marked in the corner with a white label, except this one included a black and white head shot of a Chinese man and his name underneath. It read: SHEXIN, YING - 147.

  Subject 147.

  She returned the box to the shelf where it belonged, then searched until she found the box labeled 224. Despite knowing what she was going to see, an icy shudder of recognition spread through her when both Jamie’s face and her name were there. Unlike the other boxes, however, this one contained only a single bottle. Puzzled, she retrieved one of the full boxes and brought them both out to the laboratory.

  You need to leave, Angel. Jamie needs surgery.

  “In a minute,” she muttered to herself. “Just want to check something.”

  She quickly assembled a needle and syringe, then extracted about a dozen milliliters of the black liquid from the UNDIFFERENTIATED vial from Jamie’s box. The solution appeared viscous in the bottle, but it passed surprisingly easily through the small bore needle. Without bothering to locate a clean microscope slide, she added a drop of the colloidal solution to the slide that was already on the stage. It looked like glittery black paint.

  Plucking the stool from where it had earlier fallen onto the floor, she set herself down in front of the microscope and squinted through the eyepiece. Under magnification, the solution appeared mostly clear. The black coloration was due to the high density of tiny black pellets floating around in it like bits of metal filings.

  “Not cells,” she muttered to herself. They were definitely not cells.

  So, what were they?

  As she moved the slide across her view, the leading edge of the liquid encountered a tiny splinter of bone and engulfed it. Curiously, the black pellets seemed to be drawn to it, as if the shard were magnetized. They amassed on the surface of the splinter in growing numbers, moving through the liquid in a clearly non-Brownian, non-random fashion.

  Out in the hallway, Jamie’s cries rose and fell. Then came the sound of her body sliding against the wall. But Angel didn’t heed it. She was completely absorbed by what she saw. A moment later, her fascination turned to horror.

  The pellets were beginning to change shape.

  With a choked gasp, she pushed herself away from the bench, knocking the stool over once more and stumbling against the back counter. Her hands scrambled over the equipment as she fought to stay on her feet. Something came on with a soft whir.

  “Mon dieu!” she cried out. “They’re . . . alive!”

  Chapter Forty Three

  What the hell are they?

  And directly on the heels of that thought: What are they doing?

  Donning a pair of disposable latex gloves, Angel removed the slide from the stage and wiped it clean with a tissue, then added a drop of the solution from the vial labeled HEPATIC and slid it back beneath the lens. Once more, she saw a clear solution in which thousands of tiny black—

  viruses

  —pellets swirled around.

  Curious, she increased the magnification and readjusted the focus. One of the pellets edged into view, an opaque, roughly disc-shaped object with a stippled surface. If there had been any doubt before that it was a cell, it was completely dismissed now. It was unlike any cell that she had ever seen before. They were too small to be human, and too large to be bacterial. If anything, their symmetry and uniformity resembled that of viruses. But she’d never known any virus to be so big.

  The record, as far as she could remember, was a mimivirus discovered in a French water tower a decade or so earlier. At three-quarters of a micron in diameter, it was considered a veritable giant, yet still puny compared with the smallest human cells, spermatozoa, which were ten times as large. She guessed these objects to be almost the size of a human sperm cell.

  But what if it is a virus? What if they created it?

  She shuddered at the thought.

  After several seconds of w
atching, she pushed away from the scope in confusion. Unlike the objects on the previous slide, these had remained completely inert. On a whim, she tapped some of the bone dust from the Petri dish beside her onto the glass. Once more, the objects migrated toward the splinters, but when they contacted them, they simply stopped. She scanned several fields to make sure she wasn’t missing anything, but it became clear that nothing was going to hap—

  “Don’t. Move.”

  Angel froze as a hand dropped heavily onto her left shoulder — not hard, but firmly enough that she knew it meant business — and a small button of cold steel pressed against the base of her skull.

  “Keep your hands up on top where I can see them.”

  Once more, she obeyed, not moving her hands away from the scope. Shifting only her eyes up and to the side, she saw that the man on the floor was still there. This was someone else, someone who had managed to enter the room without her knowing it, who’d moved around the bench and edged up behind her with the stealth of a ghost.

  “I got the text you sent,” he quietly said. The hand dropped from her shoulder, moved down along her side, then swept front to back. It located the pistol and removed it from her waistband. “You shouldn’t have tried to get cute. That’s how people screw up.”

  Angel’s head spun. The stranger had appeared so suddenly that she hadn’t had time to panic, but now the terror was starting to rise up inside her, pushing away the shock and sending her toward that edge. “I-I didn’t hurt your man,” she said. “I mean, I could have killed him, but I didn’t.”

  “Quiet,” the man warned, his voice low and ominous. “I hate groveling.”

  “Please. I don’t want to die.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should let you live.”

  The gun jiggled against her head, then the frisking resumed on the other side. Angel found it nearly impossible to breathe, much less speak.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, sliding the gun to her middle back as he checked her calves. “Why are you here?”

  “I-I . . . ,” she stammered, but her mind couldn’t seem to form any words.

  “You had a chance to leave. Why didn’t you? You could have taken the girl and disappeared.”

  Anger flushed through her. That’s exactly what she had wanted to do, what she had planned to do, until Jamie convinced her to come back. She shouldn’t have listened to her!

  But then a vision of the girl lying in the hallway came to Angel. There were no more cries, not a single sound, and the vision changed: Jamie’s throat had been slit, and her lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling. “What did you do to her?” she demanded. “Did you kill her?”

  The hand was back on her left shoulder, gripping firmly. “Stand all the way up. Slowly. Keep your eyes forward.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “That depends on you. My orders were to kill you, make it look like an accident. As far as the girl . . . . I didn’t do anything but tie her up. Someone I know has a burning desire to talk to her.”

  Burning? He’s taunting me.

  “Listen,” Angel said. “She needs surgery. She won’t live long enough to be questioned if—“

  “She doesn’t seem to be in any distress. Catatonic, yes, but otherwise fine.” He turned her to her left. “Now, walk. Slowly.”

  Catatonic?

  “Turn right. Stop. Kneel.”

  Angel lowered her eyes to the man on the floor. “I could have shot him,” she said again. “He tied me up. But after I got his gun, I could have shot him. I’m not a killer.”

  “I know. Now kneel down and untie him. Slowly!”

  The hand remained on her as she knelt. The button of pressure against her skull went away for a moment, then she felt it again, shifted to the top of her head, pressing down with deadly potential. Slowly, she reached forward and, with trembling fingers, tried to work the knots loose.

  “I-I can’t. They’re too tight.”

  “Keep working on it.”

  She didn’t know if she could. Her vision was blurring, and her head was pounding. She realized she was hyperventilating and tried to make herself breathe deeper and slower, but it seemed to only make matters worse.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said. She hoped that talking would help slow her racing thoughts. And her breathing. “You killed those people in the village.”

  His silence only focused her anger even more.

  “Yeah, I bet it was. I can smell it on your skin, the death. I hope you burn in hell for what you’ve done, murdering hundreds of innocent people.”

  She heard him suck in a sharp breath, though it might’ve been her imagination. She was surprised that he didn’t strike her.

  At last the knot began to give and a few seconds later she had it undone.

  “Now stand up. Back away.” He pulled her up, then angled her to the side and pushed her face down against the bench. The gun shifted back to the notch at the base of her skull. “You okay?” he asked, speaking to the other man.

  Angel watched him stand up. He pulled the gag from his mouth and gave Angel a deadly look. “Sorry, boss. The other bitch cold-cocked me when I was—“

  “Go check on her. She’s in the hallway. And I think I saw your shoes out there.” He handed the man his pistol back and told him not to harm the girl.

  After they were alone, the man pulled Angel up again and guided her back to the stool. “Pick it up, then sit down on it.”

  Up until now, she hadn’t been able to see his face. She didn’t know what she expected to find when she did. A man with scars, perhaps. A face of stone, cold and heartless. Dead eyes. Bald head.

  A tattoo of flames running up his neck.

  She stepped slowly forward, relieved to be away from his hand and the gun. Then she turned to face her captor.

  He’d backed away as well, putting distance between them so he could react if she tried something. He still had the gun trained on her, both hands steadying it. It was now aimed at her chest. Center of mass, she thought, as she slowly picked up the stool. No chance of missing. Her knees were shaking so badly that she almost fell sitting on it.

  She raised her eyes and was surprised to see that his face had no scars or tattoos. His hair was cut short, sprinkled with gray, and thinning. He looked surprisingly normal. And his eyes . . . .

  His eyes showed nothing at all. No anger. No pleasure or sadness. They were flat, toneless, though anything but lifeless.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Why are you here?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly glanced at the screen. “And you better talk fast.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  He tilted his head at her, as if to say, “Do I need to explain the seriousness of your situation?”

  “I saw what you did at the crash site,” she said. “I saw it, and I made a video recording. I had it posted online, so now the world knows what you did— what you’re doing! They know I’m here and—“ After a stuttering start, her words came out in a mad rush, but he stopped her with a simple shake of his head.

  “You’re lying. Start over.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “There’s no video.” He stated this with such conviction that she had no choice but to believe him.

  “I recorded one,” she stammered half-heartedly. “I sent it to—“

  “Enough.” He held up a hand to silence her, then stepped quickly over to the door and glanced out into the hallway. “You okay out here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Sit tight for a few minutes while I question this one.”

  “Will do. But what the hell is wrong with her? It’s like she’s, I don’t know, totally out of it.”

  “Just stay alert,” the man replied. He kept his eyes on Angel the whole time, studying her like she was a puzzle he needed to figure out.

  He shut the door and leaned against it. He didn’t seem at all surprised that Angel hadn’t taken the opportunity to grab something to attack h
im while he was distracted. To be honest, she didn’t think she’d have the strength to make a successful go of it. Her body was a quivering mass, and whatever grip her mind had on sanity felt tenuous.

  He stood there for a moment without speaking, without moving, still without showing anything on his stony face. Just studying her.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he finally said.

  Chapter Forty Four

  Angel gripped the edge of the bench, trying to keep herself from falling. “Is that what you told the others before you burned them to death? The villagers? Did you tell them they weren’t going to die, either?”

  “They’re not dead,” he said, keeping his voice low. A muscle in his cheek twitched once, then went still. He lowered the pistol and stepped closer.

  Angel shook her head, confused as much by the statement as by his conciliatory tone. “But— No! You’re lying. I saw it all! The mountain and village, the people, everything burned. I saw the plane—“

  “Yes, my orders were to burn it all, including any villagers. No witnesses.” He put the pistol back into his shoulder holster and held up his hands, as if to make her believe his sincerity. “What you saw didn’t really happen.”

  It took a moment for Angel to parse this. “But . . . I was there.”

  “I moved them all out. I presume it was probably around the same time you were at the Buddhist hospital rescuing the young lady out in the hallway. I’m curious, though, how did you even know she was there?”

  “We went into town to— Wait, you moved them? What about my interpreter, Jian? He went up to the burial site last night. He didn’t come back.”

  Something flashed across the man’s eyes. “When?”

  “After we returned from the hospital. We were running late. It was around dusk. He went up while I stayed in the village. That’s why I saw the plane. I heard it fly over and barely escaped with my own life.”

  The muscle twitched in his cheek again. He blinked slowly, then shook his head. “The village and hill were cleared an hour — hour-and-a-half — before sundown. If your man went up there afterward then he . . . . Look, I’m truly sorry. I didn’t know.”