Safari: A Technothriller

by Alexander Plansky

  “Great,” Jones had said. “When can we see it?”

  Sans had simply smiled and replied, “Patience is a virtue.”

  Sitting here in the library, a book now folded on her lap, she wondered what the purpose of this trip really was. It had been Sans’s idea to bring the interns here and the board had seen it as a golden opportunity to get some ground truth by having some executives tag along. But then Sans had insisted that Chang and Jones stay for the full two weeks – and have no contact with the outside world. Not that that seemed possible anyway. There was no WiFi and her phone had no signal here. She guessed Sans had his computers hooked up to some satellite connection, but he hadn’t breathed a word of it to her.

  “What is this guy’s deal?” Marder, the COO, had asked her.

  She had simply shrugged. “Billy’s an odd duck. He likes to do things his way. To get around him, you’ve gotta pretend to play by his rules and beat him at his own game.”

  And that entailed her doing pretty much nothing for the past few days. There were only so many Serengeti sunsets she could gaze off into before she started to wonder what was going on. It was odd that Sans had such an elaborate underground extension of the veterinary labs and it was odd that the interns seemed to be doing such menial tasks. It hadn’t been cheap to get them out here, but as always, she kept telling herself that this was Billy and that it would all become clear soon.

  She glanced at the cover of the book. It was a slightly weathered edition of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, which she found to be a surprisingly engaging read despite the Victorian prose. Patterson’s descriptions of the horrific, real-life animal attacks were utterly chilling. It made her think about Jones’s grisly end. What a fucking idiot, she thought, standing up and putting the book back on the shelf.

  Yawning, she walked out to the main foyer and looked around. The evening sun was glistening through the windows and reflecting off the chandelier. She looked to her left and saw the chef, Fatou, setting the table with help from some servants.

  “Excuse me?” she said, walking over. “Have you seen Billy around?”

  “Dr. Sans will be here soon,” Fatou corrected. “You may take a seat and wait.”

  Please, I’ve known him for almost twenty-five years. She rolled her eyes as she walked to her usual chair. Once she was situated, she looked around at the empty table. Where the hell is everyone? Jones was gone, the Courtney girl had bugged out early, and she hadn’t seen any of the other interns around since last night. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Brandon for a few days.

  She impatiently began twiddling her thumbs when she heard someone approaching and looked up to see Sans striding into the room. He seemed to be in a cheery mood.

  “How’s your day been, Ellie?”

  “A little boring, I guess,” she said. “Where is everybody? This place feels like a ghost town.”

  Sans gave a brief laugh. “Andy should be here any second now.”

  A moment later, Ramsay escorted a furious-looking Andy into the room. “What the hell did you do with her, you bastard?” he shouted at Sans.

  He remained calm and put up his hand. “Please, take a seat.”

  Ramsay brought him over to the chair next to Chang, then walked around behind Sans to sit across from her.

  Sans sighed and seemed to relax his shoulders. “Now that we’re all here, let’s enjoy dinner.”

  “Where the hell is Sydney?” Andy said.

  Chang glanced at Sans. “Billy, what’s going on?”

  He put up his hand towards her. “You will all have your answers in good time. But first, let’s eat.”

  A servant brought out a plate of Chapati bread for the table and returned with plates of nyoma choma chicken kebabs for each of them. They ate in silence. Chang saw Andy glaring at Sans repeatedly, but the man at the head of the table seemed perfectly calm, as if all was right with the world.

  Sans waited until they had all finished, then clapped his hands together. “I believe a friend is waiting for us. Let’s pay them a visit, shall we?” He stood up and led them to the front door, Ramsay following closely behind. Chang wondered what was going on. They marched out onto the patio and hung a left to the path through the woods.

  “You’ll finally get to visit the rest of the labs, Ellie. Our dear friend Richard was just dying to see them,” he said with disdain. His mood seemed to have become embittered on the walk over.

  Finally, they entered the building and Sans took them to the rear, where there were a stairwell and an elevator. “Let’s exercise, shall we?” he said, swiftly descending the steps.

  Chang and Andy waited at the top for a moment. She had a strange feeling about this, but Ramsay nudged her forward. When they finally reached the bottom, she saw that it was much darker down here and the lights cast a strange blue glow. They turned a corner and continued down a long hallway with some pipes running along the walls that she guessed were for gas. Everything else was metallic gray. It gave her an eerie vibe as they followed Sans around another corner and into a rocky cavern.

  “I never pictured you as one for theatrics, Billy,” she said, glancing around.

  He shrugged. “Times change.” He strolled off to the left, where she could see several barred cells along the wall.

  She peered closer at the one nearest to her. It seemed like there was something in there, a dark shape–

  A thing with gnashing teeth and red eyes lunged for the gate, snarling angrily and spewing saliva.

  Chang reeled back and heard Sans chuckling. She shot him an angry glance. “What the fuck is that?!”

  He smiled. “The results I promised the board. The base was a lion, but through the wonders of gene therapy I’ve enhanced it beyond its natural abilities. It’s about to be obsolete though, the latest version is far more advanced.”

  A second red-eyed beast appeared in the next cell over, but Sans calmly walked to the third and gestured for them to come closer. “See for yourself.”

  Slowly, she and Andy walked over. It was dark in the cage, but she could see something huddled at the back. It had a human shape. A head raised towards them and Chang saw golden eyes looking at her out of the darkness.

  “Don’t be shy, everyone wants to see you,” Sans addressed the creature.

  The eyes didn’t move.

  Sans sighed. “Insecurity; it’s a terrible thing.” He turned to Ramsay. “She must be starving, let’s give her something.”

  Ramsay silently disappeared down another hallway and came back a minute later wearing gloves and holding a fat, white rat in his hands. Chang watched as he slid a latch and a small opening appeared, which he then shoved the animal through.

  Before the rodent could even try and squeeze back through the bars, the creature pounced into view with lightning speed. It caught the tiny animal with its bare hands and sank its sharp teeth into the rat’s neck, blood drizzling down onto the floor.

  Chang covered her mouth. Even with the leopard-like fur, the creature’s face and sandy blonde hair were unmistakable.

  It was Sydney.

  The girl paused from eating and raised her head up, blood and bits of raw meat dripping from her jaws. She glanced between all of them and looked ashamed, then retreated to the back of the cell to continue her meal.

  “What the hell did you do to her?!” Andy hissed.

  “The same thing I’m going to do to you if you don’t shut up,” Sans said without looking at him. He strode forward and looked into Sydney’s prison. “Tomorrow, there will be no more troublesome behavior – only compliance, or I’ll start your friend here on the virus. I’m going to let you loose into the reserve and you’ll have a whole day’s head-start. You’ll be injected with a shocker implant that won’t let you get past any of the electromagnetic boundaries. I will start hunting you at night and if you can survive for a week, I’ll switch to tranquilizers and be able to re-use you. It is in your interest to provide me with the most thrilling sport of my life, or I may feel compelled to
replace you with your friend.” He pressed his face against the bars. “Do you understand?”

  At the back of the cell, a pair of golden eyes glared back at him. Silence.

  He smiled. “Good.” He turned back to his guests, both of whom were petrified. “Let’s head back to the lodge, shall we?”

  Suddenly, Andy rushed forward and gave Sans a strong right hook across the jaw. Ramsay was upon him in a second, throwing him to the ground. Chang tried to pull him away, but Ramsay smacked her off and began kicking Andy as he lay on the cavern floor.

  She regained her bearing and ran forward again, but this time Sans held her back. Chang saw a wild gleam in his eye, snarling with pleasure as he watched his assailant take a beating. She struggled to break free, but he suddenly yelled: “Stop!”

  Ramsay stepped back. Andy was doubled over on the ground.

  Sans let go of Chang and walked closer. “Try that again, and I’ll feed you to the hybrids right now.”

  “Don’t!” came a voice. They all turned to see Sydney at the bars, a look of worry on her face.

  “Oh look,” Sans said. “It speaks.”

  Three technicians had come out. One roughly grabbed Chang’s arm and the others hauled Andy to his feet. There was blood dripping from his nose.

  Sans began walking back the way they came. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he called behind him. “I need a bloody drink.”

  TRUTH

  The sun was just reaching the horizon when Chang walked out onto the balcony, her polo shirt-clad escort right by her side. Sans was sitting in a chair, flipping through a copy of Capstick’s The African Adventurers, a bottle of Tusker by his side. He appeared absorbed in what he was reading, then noticed she was there and raised his head. A warm smile came to his face.

  “Lovely view, isn’t it?” he said.

  Chang nodded. “Spectacular,” she said quietly.

  “I like to come out here and enjoy it from time to time. It’s best when there’s a cool br–”

  “How’d you do it?” she blurted.

  Sans smiled. “Lentiviral gene therapy. It’s the future.”

  “I mean how did you create the virus? How did you get it to do that to her?”

  “Well first, I removed the parts of the strain that caused illness and replaced it with, in her case, Panthera pardus pardus DNA. It’s more complicated in practice, but that’s the basic gist of it.” He almost made it sound simple. “I call it the Moreau virus. Catchy, don’t you think?”

  “But why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’d you do what you did to her?”

  He laughed. “You think I turned her into a monster.”

  “The only monster I’ve seen today is you.” Her eyes were cold as stones.

  Sans smirked and looked back at his book. “On hunting, Capstick once said: ‘That is man against himself, the last and purest of the challenges that made us men, not animals.’”

  “He also said: ‘There are no Great White Hunters. Mediocre, at best.’”

  “Well, if Mr. Capstick could see what I’ve done here, I’d like to think he’d reconsider.”

  “I doubt it. You’re a disgrace to the entire sport.”

  Sans glared at her for a moment. “You’re not the first to misunderstand me and you won’t be the last.” He went back to reading.

  After a moment, Chang clenched her fists, exhaled, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  He looked up, confused.

  “I’m sorry,” she continued. “I knew how much Jane’s death affected you, but I thought you needed space, not help. I should’ve been there for you more and instead–”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said, getting up and walking off to the edge of the balcony. After a moment, he turned around, looking angrier than before. “You know what? I really hate people like you, who come in at the end after someone’s had issues and think a few damn words are gonna make a difference. My whole life, I’ve had to find my own support and it got me this far. Aside from my parents, there have only been two people who actually helped me: my speech therapist and my wife. The first was paid to do so, and the other is dead.” He lisped the word first but seemed not to notice.

  Chang was silent. She looked off beyond the savanna to the west. The sun was gone now and the orange blur on the horizon was receding from the darkening sky. “They’ll find out,” she said, finally.

  “Who? Are you going to run back to the board, to the authorities? Do you honestly think I’d be stupid enough to let you leave?”

  “Someone will find out, eventually.”

  “How, Ellie? You and Andy are stuck here. I reported you dead in a safari accident along with everyone else.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “When?”

  “Last Thursday.”

  She was quiet for a moment, her mind racing. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He paused. “That depends on how this conversation ends.” Chang felt her muscles tense up. Sans smiled. “I’d advise you to choose your words very carefully from now on.”

  She swallowed. “After the interns are dead, you’re going to need new people.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can’t keep luring college students here.”

  “Oh no, of course not. They’re just prototypes, test runs. Long term, I have something far superior planned.”

  She wondered, if she elbowed the man beside her in the throat, how long it would take her to run down the stairs, out the back door, and up to the air field. Could she get the plane started in time? No, that was ridiculous. His other men would catch her before she’d made it out of the lodge.

  “And what’s that?”

  Sans smiled, clearly delighting in finally being able to tell someone all this. “I’m going to arrange for the greatest big-game hunters in the world to be kidnapped and brought here. Then I’ll use the Moreau virus on them, both the perfected versions of the current strains and new ones Graves and I are devising. That will be the ultimate sport: the finest wits in this game armed with the deadliest natural attributes.”

  “So it’s going to continue on forever, then? Or are you just doing all of this until you can create something that finally kills you because you can’t do it yourself?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’ve finally found my purpose, Ellie. I’m enjoying life for the first time in years.”

  “But you’re hurting other people.”

  Sans calmly shook his head. “You just don’t understand. I wouldn’t expect you to, anyway.”

  At that moment, everything changed. She thought back to when she first met him, a shy guy in one of her Stanford MBA classes. She’d always been good at making friends with introverts. In undergrad, one of her friends had accused her of taking the socially awkward under her wing as “charity cases”. The truth was, she’d been a pariah in middle school and no one ever extended special courtesy to her. Starting in high school, she’d decided to always give people like that a chance and it had continued ever since.

  Once his shell was broken, Sans proved to be a charmingly pleasant acquaintance. They’d become good friends and as the years went by she’d found herself being incorporated more into his social network, rather than the other way around. They’d kept in touch even as they worked in different fields; him in Big Pharma and her as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Over time, he developed much more confidence through success and tapped into his inner ability to lead and create a vision for the future.

  That was what had inspired John Giger, the CEO of the company following Gerard Sans’s death, to name Billy as his successor in 2003. He’d immediately begun making changes, moving the headquarters to America and shifting SansCorp’s focus from developing medicines towards genetic research and engineering. He’d eventually brought her in as the new CFO and told her his grand vision for the future of biotech. He’d been far more ambitious then.

  That Billy was gone.

  Now he was consumed solely by a hobby, pourin
g his energy and intellect into something that, even if she managed to escape this place, Chang doubted anyone sane would ever believe.

  “What would Jane think?”

  Anger suddenly flashed through his eyes. “Leave her out of this.”

  “Answer me. What would she think?”

  He stormed towards her, his face turning red as he spoke rapidly. “She would’ve understood, goddammit! She would’ve understood because I would have explained and she would’ve seen things my way, okay?” There was the lisp again, on seen.

  Chang glanced at the sweatband around his wrist. Today it was purple. A thought came to mind. She almost stopped herself from saying it. Almost.

  “It would’ve been better if she never found you that night.”

  Before she even knew what was happening, he had his hands around her throat and she was falling down, down to the hard wood floor. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the impact. When she opened them, Sans was gazing down at her with pure hatred. His grip continued to tighten and she realized he meant to kill her.

  The staff member was simply standing by in her peripheral vision. No one was going to help. She tugged at Sans’s arms but they didn’t budge. Her lungs were burning. She punched upward, connecting with one of his cheekbones. He shook his head and squeezed harder, his face contorting. His expression seemed almost inhuman.

  She struggled, she thrashed, she punched again, she dug her nails into the skin of his hands. He let up for a split second, and she started to wriggle free. He slammed her back against the wood multiple times. Blackness crept around the edges of her eyes. She opened her mouth, trying to take in any air that she could.