Authors: Dave Zeltserman
Chapter 57
The back door swung open and the two men who looked like hospital orderlies except for the fact that they were dressed in black instead of white led each of them from the van into the vestibule area for the back entrance to ViGen. One of the men swiped a security card through a magnetic reader attached to the inside security door, then keyed in a code for it to unlock. After the door was opened, they were taken to a small waiting room a short distance away with plastic chairs for them to sit. The two men left and locked the door behind them.
It was ten minutes later before the door opened again and one of the men was taken from the room. Another ten minutes and he was brought back and another man taken out. The one who was brought back sat slumped in his chair with a hangdog expression while he wrung his hands. Not caring whether the room was being monitored, Bill asked the man what they did to him. The man shook his head, but otherwise refused to acknowledge him.
As with the first man, ten minutes later the second one was brought back to the room, and this time Bill was taken. As he was led down a hallway, he started having second thoughts about what he was doing. He wasn’t so sure anymore about letting them inject him with God knows what. Maybe he was wrong, maybe it was some sort of psychosis-inducing drug after all. A cold sweat trickled down his back as he thought about that, and about who would be administering the drug—for all he knew it could be the same pink-faced man who had tried injecting him the time he was abducted.
Any chance he had of fleeing ended abruptly when he was brought into a room and seated with two muscular-looking types standing by his elbows and staring at him maliciously as if they were hoping for any sign of trouble from him. They weren’t the two ox-sized thugs from before, but they looked formidable in their own right. Another man dressed in a white lab coat also stood nearby. This man first studied the hypodermic needle that he held to the light, then peered down at Bill as if he were an insect, or more precisely, a lab rat. This man made a face as if he were smelling something unpleasant, which he probably was. In a flat voice he asked Bill if he knew what month it was.
“Saturday,” Bill muttered, his head lowered, acutely aware that even with the grease and other dirt he had smeared over his face these men could still recognize him. Well, once midnight had rolled around it had become Saturday, although that wasn’t the question he was being asked, but he figured that would be close enough for them.
Both muscle-bound thugs chuckled at that. “Close enough,” the man in the white lab coat said without any humor. He was a scrawny man with a thin neck and a pronounced Adam’s apple. “You need to take off your jacket.”
Before Bill had a chance to do as he was asked, the two muscle-bound thugs nearly ripped the jacket from him, then pulled his sweaters and two of his shirts off of him, leaving Bill with only a ragged tee shirt. After the man in the lab coat cleaned off an area of skin by his shoulder, he pursed his lips, giving Bill a closer look.
“How long have you been living on the streets?” he asked.
“Dunno.”
“Not too long, I suppose. You haven’t recently been released from a mental hospital, have you?”
“Dunno.”
One of the muscle-bound thugs smirked at that. The man in the lab coat lost interest and let his eyes glaze over, as if he decided it didn’t much matter. Bill tried not to tense as the hypodermic needle was pushed into his skin and the plunger pressed down to send its serum into his bloodstream. Whatever they injected into him, he didn’t feel any different afterwards. Then his heart almost stopped as he saw Dr. Henry Schlow standing in the room with them.
Chapter 58
The MIT professor stood off to the side in the same room with Bill as he scribbled notes onto a clipboard. How Bill missed seeing him before he didn’t know, but Schlow was there now. The news reports about his murder were fake, and the man was there in the room with them staring straight at Bill as he scribbled his notes, knowing damn well who Bill was.
“Describe who you see in the room,” the scrawny man in the lab coat asked.
Bill gaped at him as if he were joking, then looked away, steeling himself. This was a game to them. It had to be since they knew who he was. They had to with Schlow staring straight at him while he kept scribbling his damn notes.
“What was that?” Bill heard himself asking as he braced himself for what was coming next, his voice cracking only slightly. The man in the white lab coat had dropped the hypodermic needle on a nearby table. Bill scanned the room quickly for anything else he could make use of as a weapon.
“Describe who you see in this room,” the man in the lab coat repeated, some strain showing in his voice.
“Well, there’s you,” Bill said.
“What am I wearing?”
“I dunno, let me see.” Bill took hold of the man’s lab coat. As the man tried to resist, Bill was out of his chair, gripping the front of the coat in both hands and swinging the scientist hard into one of the muscle-bound thugs. The thug let out a startled grunt, was knocked off balance and both men fell to the floor. The momentum of throwing the scientist sent Bill lunging for the hypodermic needle. He gripped it like a knife and turned on the other thug who stared at him wide-eyed.
“There, there,” the thug growled unconvincingly as he took a cautious step closer to Bill. “No need for this. Just settle down.”
The thug showed both his palms in a ‘let’s just be calm’ gesture. He moved forward with a quick step and threw a roundhouse punch with his left fist. Bill ducked it. When Bill came back up he blocked a right hook while at the same time jabbing the needle deep into the thug’s cheek, pushing it a good three inches in.
“Sonofabitch,” the thug cried. As he reached for the needle, Bill kicked his feet out from under him and followed the thug to the floor. Using both hands, he grabbed the thug by the side of his face and banged his head hard enough against the concrete surface to put him out.
The scientist and the other thug were in the process of disentangling themselves when Bill crashed a chair over this other thug’s head. It didn’t knock him out but it sent him back to the floor. A hard kick to the jaw finished the job. Bill watched as the scientist crawled away on all fours, his eyes liquid with fear. With a start Bill realized Schlow was no longer in the room scribbling his notes. He hadn’t seen the MIT professor leave, nor did he hear the door open, but the guy was now gone. Bill grabbed his clothing and, finding the door unlocked, fled the room.
The hallway was clear. He made it to the back entranceway without coming across anyone, but found the door locked. Bill fished out the security card he had taken from Schlow, swiped it through the magnetic reader and entered Schlow’s access code. He was amazed to hear the click of the door unlocking. It shouldn’t have worked. The security card should’ve been disabled by now. Schlow should’ve made sure of it, but for whatever reason he hadn’t, and Bill didn’t give it much thought. Not then, anyway, not with the voices that were yelling out from beyond the hallway. They were of a frantic nature, mostly orders being shouted about what needed to be done about Bill, although they didn’t refer to him by his name, but by ‘subject three’, and he wasn’t too comforted to hear one of the men yell out how
subject three needs to be put down if necessary
, knowing full well what the man meant by
put down
. He didn’t wait to hear any more. He was out the door and running, first across ViGen’s back lot, then onto the street.
He sensed a blur of motion to his left. Something hit him hard enough to send him flying. Blackness enveloped him, and he was unconscious well before he bounced off the pavement.
Chapter 59
A nest of hornets? Bees? That’s what it sounded like were buzzing inside Bill’s skull. Also a rhythmic thud, like someone faraway beating on a pair of bongos. After a while the rhythmic thud grew louder and it dawned on Bill that it wasn’t a pair of bongos being hit, but instead someone was slapping his face to bring him back to consciousness. As he started to come to, he also realized the buzzing wasn’t as loud as his semi-consciousness had believed, and that the noise was the electric hum of motors, probably from electronic equipment. A guttural sound escaped from his throat and he stirred in the chair that he had been placed on. Strong sturdy fingers pushed open his right eye and shined a penlight into it, then the same with his left eye. Bill was too weak to fight it, and the light was too much for his eyes to deal with right then.
“Your pupils look okay,” a man’s deep rumbling voice informed him. “I think you only suffered a mild concussion. Knocked you out pretty good, though. You’ve been floating around in dreamland for over an hour.”
He hadn’t been dreaming, that was for damn sure. It was more as if a switch had been turned off, and had only just been flipped back on with the dimmer set low. Bill had an unpleasant dry taste in his mouth as if he had swallowed a handful of coffee grounds, and he started gagging from it before he was able to force out a whisper, asking if whatever vise they were squeezing his head in could they just take the damn thing off already. That got the man with the deep voice chuckling. “Open your eyes, Bill, and I’ll give you some Ibuprofen tablets. You have a few owies, that’s all. You’ll be fine.”
Bill struggled against the light, eventually opening up his eyes enough where he could accept a couple of tablets and a bottle of water.
“How do I know this is Ibuprofen?” Bill asked, his voice barely a rasp as if his throat had been scraped raw with sandpaper.
The man smiled at that. “Oh, come on. A tad paranoid, are we? Jesus, if I wanted to poison you, I had plenty of opportunities already, right?”
Bill had to agree with the logic of that. He swallowed the tablets, along with half the bottle of water. After massaging the area around his temples for a minute or so, his eyes started working better and he could see through the haze. Slowly the man sitting in front of him came into focus. Big and lanky, his gray hair cut almost to the scalp, his long, craggy face reminding Bill of a bloodhound, especially his eyes. The man’s thick lips were lifted in an amiable smile that felt genuine, the skin around his deep-set eyes crinkling pleasantly. Near the man was a table loaded with electronic equipment, all of it blinking and buzzing. Nothing Bill recognized.
“I should introduce myself,” the man said. “Although we’ve already met, so to speak. My name’s George. My good pals know me as
G
.”
“You’re the one who sent me those emails,” Bill heard himself saying.
G
broke into a good-natured laugh over that, his smile turning mischievous. “Maybe. That’s if I really exist and am not some figment of a psychotic alternative consciousness of yours.” He rose to his feet as he wiggled his fingers and made a wooing noise, as if he were a ghost.
Chapter 60
The man who called himself
G
broke out laughing. Laughed himself to tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his body still convulsing with laughter. He wiped tears away with the back of his hand. “That was cruel of me, especially with everything you’ve been through.” The amusement dried up quickly on
G
’s face, his canines showing through his smile as his lips tightened. “We had Henry Schlow under observation and were able to listen in on the conversation the two of you had. He lied to you, of course. Whatever they’re doing at ViGen, it’s not what he told you. And we know for a fact that you didn’t murder Joseph Hartley. You didn’t assault your ex-girlfriend either. And you certainly didn’t kill Henry Schlow.”
“No kidding,” Bill said. “Schlow’s still alive.”
G’
s smile turned patient. He sat back down in his chair with his hands folded in his lap and waited for Bill to continue.
“What the hell happened to me?” Bill asked, shaking his head. He grimaced, and gingerly moved his hand so he could slowly rub his forehead. “I feel like I was hit with a sledgehammer.”
“Something much bigger and heavier than that hit you, I assure you,”
G
said, smiling thinly. “Surveillance photos showed you earlier entering ViGen’s back entrance. Once we realized that was you we sent a car over for assistance, and the two of you collided when you ran out into the street. And sorry to say you took the brunt of the collision. Since armed men were running out of ViGen, presumably after you, you were put in the car and brought directly here. You were saying Henry Schlow is still alive?”
Bill started to nod, but a piercing pain from somewhere deep within his skull stopped him. He squeezed his eyes tight in a futile attempt to block it out. When the pain subsided, he went on, “Yeah, I saw him earlier when I was inside ViGen,” he said. “It’s funny, though. He must’ve recognized me, he had to have, but he didn’t say anything about it. You’d think he would’ve told them who I was.”
G
leaned over so that he had his elbows resting on his knees. He studied Bill thoughtfully, his lips twisted into a curious smile as if he were trying to make up his mind about something. “Henry Schlow’s dead,” he said at last. “We verified that. There’s no question about it. You couldn’t have seen him.”
Chapter 61
Bill didn’t believe what
G
was telling him. About Henry Schlow being dead. “I saw Schlow inside that room,” Bill insisted. “Unless he has an identical twin, that is.”
“He doesn’t have a twin,” Schlow said. “Why don’t you explain to me exactly what happened inside ViGen?”
“I went to that overpass in Porter Square, disguising myself to look like I was living on the streets—”
“And you did a good job of it. It took us a while to realize that was you.”
“Thanks. I was hoping ViGen would round up
guinea pigs
tonight, and they did, including me in their pickup. They brought me into a room where they injected me with something, and Schlow was standing in a corner taking notes as he stared right at me…”
Bill’s voice drifted off, his eyes glazing as if he were staring far into the distance. “I don’t think I saw him when I was first brought into the room,” he said in a soft murmur, as if to himself. “I don’t think it was until I was injected… fuck, that’s what they’re doing.” He looked up and stared with wonderment at
G.
“That’s what they did to Emily, and to Karen. And Gail Hawes also. They didn’t mean it with her. It was an accident, meant for someone else, but it worked all the same. Shit, even though she never had a daughter it still worked. And it worked with Trey Megeet, too.”
“What?”
Bill wetted his lips, his reporter instincts kicking into full drive, his skin burning with the excitement over what had just become obvious to him. “They’re creating memories,” he said. “Instant, vivid memories. Fuck, my memory of Schlow standing in that room is so real, so clear in my mind. Almost too real. And it all adds up. That’s why ViGen brought in top researchers in computer simulation and nanotechnology. The immunology stuff is just a smokescreen to what they’re really doing, which amounts to instant brainwashing. It explains how they were able to get to all of them so quickly. Christ, that’s why that guy saw angels and devils.”
“Slow down there, cowboy. Tell me again what happened once you were inside ViGen, except this time try taking a few deep breaths.”
Bill tried to take a deep breath but his head hurt too much.
“They took me into a room and injected me with some drug,” he said. “Then they asked me to describe who else was in the room. It must’ve been then that I thought I saw Schlow. That was what they were testing me for. The memory they injected into me was Schlow standing in the room taking notes.” Bill’s right leg bounced nervously up and down as he recounted this, a brightness shining in his eyes. “I feel shortchanged that they didn’t give me something more exotic, like angels and devils. Who the fuck are these people?”
“We don’t know.”
G
sighed softly. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Then who the fuck are you?”
G’s heavy eyelids dropped a bit, his smile losing a touch of its luster. “Sorry, sport, I can’t tell you that. What I
can
tell you, though, is that you need to expose them to clear your name, and since that would serve my purpose, for the time being you can think of us as your friends.”
“I don’t get this,” Bill said. “Why do you need me? Why don’t your own men infiltrate ViGen and expose them? It was easy enough for me to get in there tonight.”
G
breathed in deeply, filling up his lungs before letting it out slowly through his nose. The noise he made sounded like a tea kettle right before it starts whistling.
“I can’t do that,” he said, shrugging his heavy rounded shoulders. “I haven’t been able to obtain permission yet for engagement. There’s a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and politics in the spy game these days, more than you could ever imagine. And maybe it’s not even because of the bureaucracy, maybe it’s because my superior knows something that he’s not bothering to share. I don’t know. But I do know that for my own personal well-being I have to follow orders as they’re given, which for now is surveillance only. But—” and he smiled a crooked smile “—there’s no reason we can’t take advantage of what you might be able to discover. And there’s nothing in my directives that prevents me from lending you a helpful hand. And so far so good. I think you might be on the right track about what they’re doing there.”
“How do you know I didn’t kill Schlow?”
“I told you already we had Dr. Henry Schlow under surveillance. We heard your conversation with him and we tracked where you drove afterwards. It wouldn’t have been possible for you to have killed him.”
“How do you know I didn’t hurt Karen or kill her fiancée?”
G
showed a guilty smile. “Because we know who did.” He let out another heavy sigh. A pained look showed in his eyes as he continued, “We followed a pair of ViGen’s special employees to Hartley’s townhouse. You know both of them—you met them a few days ago in the back of a van. I wish we could’ve done something, but again, my orders are surveillance only.”
Bill thought about that and shook his head angrily. “This doesn’t make sense. You did more than just surveillance when your men drove into that van.”
“That’s right, we cheated,”
G
admitted. “But hell, anyone can get into a fender bender.”
“Was it you who cleaned up the crash site and made the crash disappear, or did they?”
“We did.”
Bill gave the matter more thought. A sick feeling settled into the pit of his stomach as he already knew the answer, but still he asked whether
G
could clear him with the police for the two murders and other assorted felonies he was being accused of.
A genuine empathy moistened
G’
s eyes. He sadly shook his head, said, “You know I can’t do that. I’d like to, I truly would, but it just wouldn’t be in our best interest. And even if it was I couldn’t do it. When I joked before about being a figment of your imagination, well, there’s quite a bit of truth to that. That’s how you have to think of me and my men. Ghosts. Figments. We can’t leave any imprint. As far as the real world goes, we don’t exist. So it’s impossible for me to step forward and help you, especially since I can’t share our surveillance photos and recordings with anyone.”
“This is bullshit.”
“I know it is,”
G
agreed. “But think of how much worse this would be if we weren’t helping. And speaking of help, I’ve got a toy for you.”
G
rummaged through a coat pocket and pulled out an iPhone which he handed to Bill.
“You’re a smart guy,” G said, “if you haven’t used one of these before, you’ll figure it out. I’ve added a web-site to it, which is password protected. Your username for the site is
withoutapaddle
, your password is your mother’s birthday. You remember what your mother’s birthday is?”
Bill felt his throat tighten as he nodded.
“Good. Check the web-site every few hours. It amounts to a bulletin board. I’ll pass information as I get it, and you can communicate to me through it.”
G
stopped to scratch lazily along his jaw. Suppressing a yawn, he nodded to Bill. “There’s a safehouse we can let you use in Chelsea. My guess is, you’ve got three or four days before the police pick you up so you’re going to have be resourceful if you want to break ViGen before that happens. If you get picked up, we’ll be disappearing like the ghosts that we are, so don’t waste anyone’s time trying to drag us into it ’cause no one will believe you. These folks at ViGen have someone in place at your old job monitoring and filtering emails, so I wouldn’t try sending anything more to your boss. It won’t get to him, just like your last email to him didn’t, and all you’ll be doing is giving them more information. I think that’s about it, and it’s late and I’m tired. Anything you want to ask me?”
“Yeah,” Bill said. He looked away and stared instead at his hands as he massaged the knuckles on his right hand. “If you’d been watching me you must know who Emily Chandler is.” With his voice dropping to just above a whisper, he added, “Can you let her know I didn’t kill those people?”
“Come on, you know we can’t do that. Besides, she wouldn’t believe me if I tried. This is up to you, Bill, to figure out a way. But we’ll be helping where we can. Put your clothes back on and we’ll take you to the safe house.”
G
handed Bill the bundle that he’d been carrying when he was hit by the car. It wasn’t until he tried pulling those other shirts and sweaters on that he realized how sore and stiff he was, like he’d been worked over with a baseball bat.
“We’re going to have to blindfold you when we take you out of here,”
G
said, handing Bill a black hood. Bill nodded glumly and slipped it over his head. After that G took hold of his elbow and guided him first out of the room, then out of the building and into a vehicle of some sort. About ten minutes into the ride, Bill asked
G
whether they were the ones to bug his car. He could hear the amusement in
G’
s voice as
G
told him that if they did Bill never would’ve found the devices. “At least not with that dime store contraption we saw you waving around,” he added.
With the hood over his face, Bill lost his sense of bearing and time seemed to crawl slower. He guessed the ride took twenty minutes, but it could’ve been much shorter. All he knew for sure was that the car didn’t stop during the trip. Either they ran lights or it was mostly highway driving. When the car came to a stop,
G
told him he could remove the hood. With it off, Bill could see that the windows were darkly tinted so that no one would be able to look in.
G
said, “Bill, we know you’re good with locks, and these should do the trick for you. Better that you break in anyway. Here’s some cash that should hold you until you’re either able to clear your name or the police nail you.”
G
handed Bill a small leather case and a roll of bills. Inside the case was a set of burglar picks. Bill counted two hundred dollars in twenties and tens. He put both the burglar picks and money in his jacket pocket. As he was getting out of the car,
G
stopped him to offer his hand. “I sincerely hope you find a way out from under this mess,”
G
said. Bill nodded and headed towards the house. It was a small bungalow and in the dim glow of the streetlights it looked rundown on the outside, with its small postage-stamp sized lawn just as bad. Bill looked back once to see the beige Toyota Camry
G
had driven him in waiting at the curb. Once he got to the front door it took him all of twenty seconds to pick the lock and get inside. He heard the Camry leave then.