"Chain Reaction" Power Failure Book I

by Andrew Draper

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Sodium Amytal hit Jenny’s weakened body like a rolling shockwave. Her anxiety melted away and her fragile stomach relaxed as the edges of the room began to close in on her in pink and purple waves. She struggled against her mental bonds, forced to watch in morbid fascination as her world began to stretch and warp. Her surroundings turned into a grotesque canvass painted from a palette of Silly-Putty. Without warning or wanting, sleep washed over her like ocean waves.

  Her interrogators watched over her like concerned parents, waiting for the window to open. It took only minutes.

  Head lolling from side to side, random flashes of disconnected memory played on the big screen of her mind like movie trailers. Into the rapidly-collapsing black hole of this drug-induced haze, a sound penetrated her increasingly random thoughts. She chased the sound through the maze of her mind. The ‘Will-o-the Wisp’ voice darted to and fro across her consciousness, letting her mental fingers draw close but never quite grasping it.

  “Doctor Ryan, can you hear me?” the voice asked.

  She willed herself to answer, but she could muster no sound.

  The voice grew little louder, more insistent. “Doctor Ryan, can you hear me?”

  She heard herself speak, but almost didn’t recognize her own voice, the words sounding so dreamy and distant.

  “Yes, I can hear you. You don't have to shout.”

  She opened her eyes to small slits. The faces looking down at her seemed to melt and blend in quick succession, first one man and a woman, then several of each. She could see them, but couldn't concentrate long enough to keep the images from dancing before her eyes.

  At Clark’s insistence, Trish tied Jenny’s hands and feet to the bed frame, and the two prepared to start the interrogation.

  The drugs left her quite pliable and Trish took Jenny on a wild roller coaster ride through her emotions and fears.

  She was back at the lab…and she was late.

  Jack will be here soon. Maybe it would be better if I met him at his office, keep him out of the lab.

  She remembered testing the battery and congratulating herself. Just as she basked in the afterglow of her success, the sequence of events jumped forward in her mind.

  I forgot my keys in my coat. Better go get them.

  Pushing the door open, she remembered the feeling of unease washing over her, that creeping sensation of being watched. The fear took hold, spreading through her as she entered the lab. Her stomach clenched into a tight knot. She heard a noise. Someone’s here!

  Her mind reeled at the images and produced a blood-curdling scream, but it never left her lips. Clark watched her cringe as her fear vaulted. Slowly responding to Trish’s voice and direction, she shivered and shook.

  “It’s okay. We’re here to help,” Trish’s comforting words reached her, making her fears diminish. “Just tell us what we want to know and it all will be over.”

  “The project will be safe?”

  Trish nodded at Clark, winking.

  “Yes. The project will be safe.”

  “It’s so dangerous. I just wanted to help people.”

  “Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll make sure your project is safe.”

  “And then I can go home?”

  “Yes. Then you can go home.”

  The floodgate of her psyche opened and her captor rode the wave like the ‘Big Kahuna’.

  “Now she’s ours.” Trish said.

  After Jenny stopped her violent trembling and could speak again, the two began questioning her in earnest.

  Walking around the right side of the bed and up to the head, Trish looked down at her captive. “Dr. Ryan, I want you to listen carefully, this is very important,”

  In her drugged state, it took the scientist several seconds to connect just enough brain cells to respond. “Okay.”

  Trish exercised a drug-induced control over the terrified woman and caused her to relate all the details of the Ever-cell project. Two hours later, they knew more about the good doctor than she knew about herself. Trish and Clark immediately came to the same conclusion.

  “Murphy isn’t smart enough to come up with this operation on his own,” he said. “If he were, Ryan would already be dead…so he must work for Temple. It’s the only explanation that fits.”

  “So, revered leader, what now?” Trish taunted him, as if she didn't already know the answer.