Authors: Matt Betts
30
The doctors, scientists, men with clipboards, and women with needles cleared out of the large room, leaving only Pel, Garrett and Rivers with Leonard. Garrett looked around the room, taking in the equipment and stifling a sneeze from the smell of bleach. He settled himself onto a rolling chair that the doctors used to wheel themselves from station to station. Pel stood against the nearest wall, clearly still uncomfortable with the whole situation. Both she and Garrett were fine with interrogations, they’d questioned suspects before, but this would be something different. They were quickly entering a gray area, one clouded by the mix of drugs that had been fed to Leonard to keep his power from emerging. But how much was that cocktail affecting his judgment, were they essentially asking the man things he had no choice but to answer?
“Let’s talk about how you became this thing,” Rivers said.
“Thing? I think I’m pretty handsome. What’d’ya mean
thing
?” Leonard sounded tired, but defiant. “You don’t find me hot?” His chest rose and fell with a little more labor than it should.
Rivers was unfazed. “We’re talking about that power inside you. The power that landed you here in our company today. Where did it come from?”
Leonard’s eyes drooped a little. “Who’s the blonde? She’s a little too hot to be a federal agent.”
Pel rolled her eyes, but blushed in spite of herself. “They’ve changed the requirements at the academy.”
“I have a thing for women with ponytails,” Leonard said.
Garrett watched the exchange and understood it for what it was; suspect and interrogators feeling each other out to see their boundaries and how far they could go before they had to get down to business. The only difference was that Leonard had been through this already. He’d answered questions for the last year or so from dozens of different people. He’d spilled as much as he wanted and knew his story forward and back. Rivers was new to this particular party. He was asking the same questions everyone else had.
“We don’t care about your criminal history. Don’t want to know everyone you’ve robbed, smacked around, bludgeoned or looked at cross-eyed. We just want to understand what’s going on inside your body,” Garrett said.
Leonard laughed. “What’s going on inside my body? Is this a high school Sex-Ed class? Are you going to tell me why I’m growing hair in my special place?”
“We were really hoping you could tell us all about those things,” Rice entered the room with a tablet and crossed to hand it to Rivers. “How did this happen to you? How did you get this power?”
“Fuck you. I want special consideration.” Leonard pulled at the straps holding his hands in place.
“Do you even know what you’re saying? You have a decent list of pretty nasty crimes on your sheet and you want us to treat you with kid gloves? I don’t think so,” Rice said. “You’ll get the same as everyone else.”
“We hear how you normally treat our people.”
“Our people?” Rivers asked.
“Inks. You don’t think we know what you call us? Word gets around. People with shadows running through their veins don’t do well in your hands.” He tugged at the restraints harder. “They tend to disappear.”
“Doesn’t let you off for your crimes.” Rivers looked indifferent.
“When you call us Inks, are you talking about the thing inside us? Or are you talking about us?” Leonard squirmed a little, getting comfortable.
Rivers’ expression didn’t change. He looked bored. “You just got here. Maybe we should talk in a few days, when you’re less bitchy.”
“I’m always this bitchy. A few more days of drugs and shock treatments aren’t going to change that. You need me. You need me intact and cooperative if you want this whole thing to go well for you. How long did it take you to catch me? How long has this girl you’re after been on the run?” Leonard was taking deep breaths. It was obvious that something, probably the drugs, was making him work harder just to talk. He wasn’t pulling against his restraints like he had been. “I can help you. We find each other easily. Keep me happy and we can round the rest of them up.”
“You’re going to help us. Don’t worry,” Rivers said. “We’re not making any deals though.” He got up and walked towards the door.
Garrett had been taking it all in. He’d assumed that the FEI was a super-secret organization since he hadn’t heard of it, but it was beginning to look like he was wrong. If the agency was already known by the very people it was tracking, they must not have a lid on it. He leaned close to Rice. “He’s right, though, isn’t he? I don’t want to coddle a vicious criminal, but he has some sort of insight that we don’t. He could be an asset.”
“These people have never been straight with us. They say whatever they think will get them lenient treatment and never produce results. We’ve tried to be reasonable,” Rice said. “We won’t negotiate again.”
It was quiet except for the hum of the machines pumping Leonard full of various liquids.
“I volunteered.”
Garrett turned to the prisoner. “What?”
“I volunteered to have this put into me. In the army. Back in 1975.”
Garrett watched Pel finally step into the conversation. “That was forty years ago. You look about thirty years old to me. How’s that possible?”
“How the hell would I know? I was thirty and I volunteered for an experiment. Every time I used this damn power, it took years off my life—not shortening it, no. It was like a rewind button. Making me temporarily younger when I used my powers. I steadily used them and managed to pretty much feel, think and look the same age for quite a long time. Others had different consequences, but I got to keep my boyish good looks.”
Garrett looked the man up and down again. Leonard seemed like a fugitive from a bodybuilding contest where steroid use was encouraged. The veins in the man’s arm were as thick as Garrett’s thumbs. “What experiment?” Garrett asked. “Who did it?”
“It was some military thing. They wanted better soldiers.”
“Military thing? What division? What branch? Name some doctors. We’ve heard this shit from a number of Inks now, but no one can give us specifics,” Rivers said. “Give us something we don’t already know.”
Garrett was taken aback. There was nothing in the files or any of their conversations that mentioned a military experiment. “You already knew this stuff? Why didn’t you say something? We are working on the same side, right?”
“We’ve heard this stuff before, but no one can prove it. There’s no record of it in any of the research we’ve done. No other agencies have any info on it. It’s hearsay,” Rice said.
“Hearsay that you’ve heard from a number of your subjects now?” Pel was thinking along the same lines as Garrett. “Come on.”
“If we’re going to work together, we need to be able to trust you, and believe that you’re being completely open with what’s going on. I don’t like surprises.” Garrett understood the old “need to know” information dodge. He’d had superiors that withheld important details of an investigation on him before. But this was crazy.
“The federal government would never hide information on something like this,” Rice said.
It was silent for a couple of beats before Leonard started laughing. “Whatever.”
Garrett leaned close to Leonard. “So give us something new. Tell us something that makes you valuable to this investigation and not the smug crap everyone else has put out there. You’re worried about not making it out of here? Hand us something.”
“How the hell do I know what they’ve told you?”
“Start talking and we’ll tell you when you hit new territory,” Rivers said.
Leonard’s lip curled as he stared at Rivers. “We know who you are. We
all
know who you are.” He mumbled it, but Garrett was close enough to hear it.
“What’s that?” Rivers said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I was watching the Discovery Channel or some shit, and there was this show about parasites. Turns out there are all kinds of… bugs, I guess. They grab on to other insects and animals and kind of hijack them. And make them do things they normally wouldn’t.” Leonard took a second to think. “What the hell were those things called? Fuck, I don’t know. But those parasites took over and made their hosts do whatever the parasites wanted.”
“I saw an article on Reddit about those. They make their hosts do all kinds of crazy things that aren’t in the host’s best interest. It was pretty gross. Sometimes they lay eggs in the host to keep their offspring safe until they hatch. Nasty,” Pel said.
“Something like that. Only here it messes with your mind and your better judgment. The first time that black shit bursts through your skin, you’re done. You’re not yourself anymore. The first person you see when it bursts out for the first time is suddenly your favorite person in the world. You’ll do whatever that person says. Like those bugs? Those fucking bugs? You’re totally in their power. You’re basically at their whim. You’ll do whatever they tell you to.”
“They put an actual parasite inside you? It’s a bug or something?” Garrett asked.
“I don’t know, how would I know? I’m not a doctor. When the darkness burst out of my hands the first time? I was in the process of punching my commanding officer in the face. After this thing burst through my skin and it came out? I wanted to do everything the man said,” Leonard’s eyes narrowed. “Every little thing—no matter how much I didn’t want to. It was like he had a remote control to my brain. Shoot someone? Yes, sir. Tear that guy’s arm off and beat the ever-loving shit out of him with it? Yes, sir.”
“And where is your C.O. now?” Rivers asked.
“Dead.”
“You kill him?” Rivers followed up casually.
“Nope.”
“You wanted to follow his orders so bad, what happened when he died?”
Leonard thought about it for a second and it looked like he might try to rip out his restraints again, but he didn’t. “When that happened, I pretty much wanted to destroy everyone and everything. If someone wanted to pay me to get freaky, that was great, but no one ever had the same control over me again. No one.” He took a couple of labored breaths. “And no one ever will.”
“And what happened to this program you volunteered for?” Rivers asked.
“When they saw the terrible things that we were doing, they shut it down. Burned the program to the ground,” Leonard swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “The higher-ups weren’t too keen on the whole mind control, out-of-control aggression thing.”
“But we have people running around right now with these things inside them. How did that happen?” Garrett was sure that Deena Riordan did not receive a super warrior injection from the army in the seventies.
Leonard didn’t open his eyes. “No idea. Someone must’ve taken over the project.”
Garrett motioned for Pel to join him outside the large interrogation room. “Well? What’s your take on this?”
“We might be working for the wrong people,” Pel said. She began leading the way down the hall, keeping her voice down.
“How so?”
“I’m worried about what might be happening to these people in our custody. I mean, I get what happened in the past. The military and the government didn’t know what they had on their hands. But now they do.” Pel stopped a good distance from the room. “These Incubators that we’re tracking down? It’s not really their fault someone tampered with their wiring.”
“So we don’t bring the girl in? We let her stay out there and kill whoever she wants?” Garrett said. “She’s dangerous and unpredictable. It doesn’t matter what’s making her that way.” Garrett considered the things Leonard had said about imprinting and focusing on the first person nearby when the power emerged and what that might mean for Deena. “Who do you suppose might have been the first person that Deena saw when these powers broke for her? Who do you think controlled her?”
They didn’t have time to finish their conversation, as Rice interrupted. “We’ve got a possible sighting. We need you two to go check it out.”
31
From a nearby hill, Morgan and Wallace stared down at the stopped train. They weren’t alone. The hill was just off of a secondary highway and a dozen or so curious people had stopped to look down at the scene. What they saw was a common, everyday passenger train with several large rips across the roof and sides. Various law enforcement agencies surrounded the affected car; FBI, local police and sheriff’s officers, and others were rapidly multiplying in number. Two deputies stood near the onlookers from the hilltop vantage point.
“Think they got her?” Wallace asked.
“You mean caught her? Nope.”
“Killed her, then?”
Morgan squinted as the sun glanced off of another car pulling off the road. “Doubtful.”
Brandt stepped through the crowd and approached Morgan. “Why are you just standing here?”
Morgan looked back at their SUV. “We should get going. We aren’t going to learn anything standing up here. We might as well assume she’s on the run and start looking for her.”
“How far could she get on foot?” Wallace asked. “It’s only been, what? An hour?”
“This jackass is slowing you down. You work best alone, and there’s no reason to change that now,” Brandt leaned in through the open window of the vehicle. Morgan sat down and slammed the door. “Get rid of him.” Morgan looked over at Wallace.
From the back seat, Mr. Hector’s voice chimed in. “No! The more the merrier. Let’s all go look for the pretty girl.”
Wallace pulled back onto the road as the monkey’s cymbals began.
CLANG!
“Morgan? Hello? Where are we going? What’s the plan?” Wallace asked.
Shutting his eyes and taking calming breaths, Morgan held his hand out the window to feel the wind blow across his fingers as they sped north into the mountains.
Wallace’s baritone voice broke Morgan’s calm. “Can we talk about what happened back at the coffee shop? Was that necessary? I mean seriously? We’re trying to keep somewhat of a low profile here,” Wallace asked. “That kid was cool with letting it go after you slipped him the cash.”
Morgan had always been little intimidated by Harper’s handler. Probably for the same reason many people made him nervous, the proximity. He loved to be miles away from people, loved the silence when it was allowed. Here, in the confines of the vehicle he could see the man’s thick muscles straining against his tight jacket and in the dark skin of his hands gripping the wheel. He could picture the man getting angry and reaching over and strangling him easily.
“Exactly. He seemed a little too cool about things. It had to be done, he’d seen our faces and if anything went bad, he could’ve pointed us out to the police or whoever came looking into the whole thing with Deena.” Morgan felt it was as good a reason as any and would stick long enough for him to get back out on his own.
“Look…” Wallace began.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s done. We move on.” He folded his arms in what he hoped looked like a gesture of finality, but he was actually calming himself by feeling the guns strapped under his arms. It was relaxing, assuring.
Let him try to strangle me with those fat hands,
he said to himself.
“Marsh is going to shit monkeys when he hears about it.”
Morgan looked over at the man behind the wheel and stared at him hard. “You gonna tell him?”
“Even if I don’t, do you think he won’t find out? You don’t think two dead people in a burning coffee shop won’t make the news?” Wallace shook his head.
“Local news, maybe. We’re pretty far away from home. No reason he should care about it, unless someone makes him care about it.” His fingers tensed on the guns under his jacket.
“Anything in the bag?” It was obvious to Morgan that Wallace was uncomfortable with the conversation.
Morgan took his hands out of his jacket and opened Deena’s backpack at his feet. He shuffled through what little there was; just trinkets, candy wrappers and paper. “Nothing. Not a fucking thing. Except of course for your useless tracking device that I’m assuming is woven into this thing somewhere.” He stared at the faded tag inside that said where to return it, if someone found it.
Wallace slammed on the brakes and brought the vehicle over to the side of the winding road. “Listen. If it weren’t for my “useless” trackers we wouldn’t be this far and we’d have no idea where the girl has been at this point.” He stuck his finger in Morgan’s face. “What the hell have you done? Let’s see, killed a couple of people that have nothing to do with this, and burned down a coffee house.” He put his hands back on the wheel and sighed. “I say we call Marsh, tell him we found the bag, but no girl and we drive a straight line from here to L.A. and hope we find her before the law does, or some other interested party.” He grabbed the gearshift and started to put it back in drive.
“Does this address mean anything to you?” Morgan held up the tag for him to see.
Wallace thought about it. “Tallmadge, California? That’s where the girls are from originally.”
“Are you listening to this?” Morgan’s mentor growled from the back seat. “This incompetent asshole is deliberately trying to ruin this for you.”
“And you didn’t think to mention that? How far away is it?”
“No idea,” Wallace said. He reached into his jacket. “Let me map it on my phone.”
Mr. Hector yelled from the back seat. “He’s got a gun. He’s going to shoot you.”
Morgan put his hand on Wallace’s arm. “Just a sec.”
“What?”
“You know their home town pretty readily.”
“I have their files memorized.”
“Their hometown would’ve been a good place to start looking for Deena. Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”
“Fuck you. This should’ve been easy. Meet Ramirez at the train station and it’s all over. There wasn’t any reason to suggest other options. We
knew
where she was.”
“Ly-ing…” Morgan’s mom said from the back. Morgan turned to see her wedged in the seat with Brandt on one side and the monkey and Mr. Hector on the other. “What?” She said. “I can’t have an opinion? I should just sit here and be silent?”
“Yes. All of you, shut up,” Morgan said.
“Who are you talking to?” Wallace asked.
“
You
shut up.” Morgan pulled one of his pistols and leveled it at Wallace. “You know that’s where she is, don’t you?” A thrill came over Morgan as he said that. Like a door had been opened to him that was locked before.
“No.”
His ex-girlfriend joined in. “He does, you know he does.”
“Why do you know about their home town?” He picked up the bag again and read the address. “4468 Southmoore Lane? You have everything at your fingertips up there in your mind. Ring any bells? Tell me.” He felt a smile coming on.
Wallace shook his head no.
Morgan lowered the gun a bit and pulled the trigger. A bullet ripped through Wallace’s right leg and lodged in the door.
Wallace cried out and leaned forward to clutch at the wound. A dark spot of blood quickly formed on his pants around the wound. Wallace continued yelling as Morgan got closer and leveled the gun at the man’s head this time.
“There’s a reason you know that stuff, isn’t there?”
Wallace nodded his head before he cleared his throat. “We thought Avi and Deena had a thing going on. I planted trackers on both of them.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah. They were meeting at the home where the girls grew up.”
“In Tallmadge,” Morgan said.
“Yes.”
“Everyone but you knew it all along,” Mr. Hector said. “Morgie was the last to know!”
It made sense to him suddenly. There was no reason for them to go. “So Marsh knew this. And, what, he already sent a crew there?”
“You and I can’t be everywhere at once. He was just covering all his bases.”
It felt good to shove the barrel of his pistol harder against Wallace’s head. “I should’ve been able to make that decision. I have this gigantic brain in my head that I use to do my work. I make choices.
Not
you.
Not
Marsh.”
“All right. What do we do now?” Wallace choked out.
“We? What we?” Morgan looked around the SUV. “Do you see anyone else here but me?” Morgan asked. He pulled the trigger, killing Wallace instantly in a brief cloud of crimson and gray matter. Morgan breathed a deep sigh of relief at once again working alone. It felt like a crowded room had just been cleared. He wiped his arm off where some of the blood had blown back on him. It took him a moment to recover his composure and once he did, he calmly and efficiently moved around to the other side of the vehicle, yanked Wallace out and tossed the man over the nearby guardrail. He watched for a moment while the body tumbled through the brush and the trees, before disappearing beneath the cover of the leaves.
Morgan sat in the driver’s seat and rolled his head back and forth trying to work out a cramp in his neck. It began when he tensed up; waiting to make his move on Wallace was stressful, and it was bothering him to no end.
Mr. Hector looked up at him from the passenger seat. “Can’t you just stop this? Walk away now before more innocent people get killed.”
Morgan looked down at the little teddy bear now sitting in the passenger seat, with the buckle latched around him. “You think Wallace was an innocent bystander in this? He was just as guilty as anyone else. More so, if he was actually planning on killing me.”
“You don’t know that. You gave him the answers you wanted to hear and he fed them back to you. He had no choice.” Mr. Hector looked as disapproving as a plush animal could.
“Don’t listen to him,” Brandt said from the back seat. “You did the right thing. Between this and the coffee shop, I think you’re really starting to take charge here. You’re going places now. You know exactly what the girl is going to do and where she’ll be.”
Morgan smiled. He did finally feel in charge of shit for once. Usually he took orders happily, that’s how he made his living; he got a job, found the subject and killed them in the manner suggested by the client. Today he’d killed who he wanted, how he wanted and got the job done.
Still, the girl hadn’t always done what was expected of her.
“Marsh is going to be very appreciative. He’ll turn to you now,” Morgan could see Brandt’s face in his rearview mirror. “Better still, he’ll trust you.”
Morgan nodded again and activated the car’s communication system. The small screen revealed itself on the dash. “Dial Mr. Marsh,” he said. As the sound of the phone ringing began to emit from the speakers, he felt a smile of pride force the corners of his mouth open wide. He struggled to make his voice a little more somber before someone picked up on the other end.