Liquid fear

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Alexis had taken the first pill right away, and an inner voice said to go for the second one, too. But the longer she could hold out, the better.

Even if it means Mark…

Mark what?

She felt along the row of machinery. It was the assembly line where the plows were pieced together, and she could picture the rusting machinery beneath her hands. It hadn’t changed in all those years, as if the junk had been left as a museum to their No. That didn’t happen. And if you think for a second that we really killed Susan, we don’t have a chance.

She heard talking on the far side of the factory, where Briggs had once kept his office. The man who’d turned out the lights was yelling at Briggs. The man was making a big mistake, but he’d find that out soon enough.

There’s something I’m supposed to do.

She reached for her arm and found the throbbing wound.

Pain.

She gouged the wound and remembered Mark, her husband, waiting back there somewhere in the dark, counting on her. He’d been dosed somehow, too, even though he wasn’t part of the original trials.

She felt buoyant and energetic, though she knew it was serotonin and cortisol pumping though her body, kicking adrenaline from her kidneys. The neurochemicals could so easily turn, amplified by the Seethe, but the Halcyon seemed to be suppressing the worst of the impulses. She welcomed the nullifying tug of the cocktail, maintaining an academic awareness as she rode above her own sick impulses.

She ran her hands along the equipment-the connecting pins, bolts, curved edges of blades, swivel joints, and loose steel plates with serrated edges from welding jobs. The tangle of farming equipment was knotted so tightly that she couldn’t extricate any pieces, so she was forced to keep going toward the sound of the voices.

Alexis had no plan, only determination.

How many of us were there?

Mark, Roland, Wendy…

Were there others?

Susan?

“Susan?” she said aloud. “Are you here?”

She bumped into a wobbling wire-framed cage, and something heavy fell, crashing to the floor inches in front of her feet.

She scooped it up. It felt like a plow blade, about eight inches long, with a short metal tube on top where it attached to the frame.

Alexis swung it like a battle ax.

It felt goddamned good.

And familiar.

“All right, Doc, where are the keys?” the man was saying.

“Put that away, Kleingarten,” Briggs said. “You kill me, you don’t get anything.”

“I ain’t killing unless I have to.”

Alexis remembered the man had a gun. Was it last night, or ten years ago? She couldn’t be sure.

All she knew was that Briggs was the boss. Briggs had the pills, and she needed pills.

Pills for what?

Dr. Sebastian Briggs had something she craved. An image flashed through her mind, a memory or a fantasy. A computerized image of the compound’s cellular structure.

It should have been hers. She was there. And if…whatever happened…hadn’t happened, she would have joined the ranks of those who’d made revolutionary leaps in science. Pasteur, Curie, Salk. Except instead of curing diseases of the body, she’d have healed the mind.

The most broken part of the human race.

Alexis crawled under a long conveyor belt, careful not to let the plow piece drag on the concrete and give her away. Her heart thudded and the fine hair on the back of her neck prickled.

Instinct.

Despite all her study, all her research, all her books and papers and experiments, she’d not learned a thing. There was no higher mind. It always came down to kill or be killed.

And Briggs needed to die.

“You need to die,” Kleingarten was saying, not twenty feet from her. “But not right now. Tell me where you keep all your bottles of witch’s brew. Or is it barrels? To get a U.S. senator down here, you must have some major inventory.”

Alexis peered between two oversized tractor tires, the rotted rubber mingling with the chemicals, dust, and petroleum of the factory air. Kleingarten’s bulky form was between her and Briggs, silhouetted by the dim glow of high-tech equipment. When he moved one arm, the barrel of his gun glinted.

The bank of monitors spotlighted Briggs as if he were a stand-up comedian. He stood in his cage, shirt open, hair unkempt, seemingly calm despite the gun pointed at him. Behind him, Wendy was splayed in a chair, naked except for her panties circling one ankle.

The scene brought back memories of another time, but it wasn’t a cage, it was a university office, a sunlit room, when Alexis had swung open the door to report on Halcyon only to find Briggs and Wendy writhing on his desk. She’d slipped out without Wendy noticing, but Briggs had heard the door and had flashed Alexis a smirk as he thrust inside his willing, moaning partner.

This could be you, that smirk had said. And Alexis had been tempted. Because that would have bought her access to his research, and the secrets would be hers.

But her anger at Briggs and disgust at Wendy shifted to something else when she saw what was playing on the monitor behind them.

Wendy and Roland held Susan’s naked, bloody body.

And there was Alexis, on the screen, approaching them, snarling, face twisted, eyes glittering.

In her hand was a jagged piece of curved metal She squeezed the handle of the broken plow blade.

Almost like this one.

But what’s happening? Susan’s here now, so how could she be on TV?

“Turn it off, Doc,” Kleingarten said. “It’s making me want to puke.”

“We learn from the mistakes of the past,” Briggs said. Wendy moaned, stroking one of her breasts.

On the screen, Alexis lifted the weapon.

Under the conveyor belt, she raked the plow blade across her forearm, the searing stripe of pain bringing a moment of clarity.

M ark was right. Pain worked.

On screen, drops of blood fell from her weapon, Roland’s and Wendy’s faces were stretched and bright with anticipation, Susan’s eyes widened as she denied what was about to happen.

It really happened.

Before the jagged metal fell, the screen exploded, and the gunshot boomed throughout the factory. Briggs shouted, and Wendy stirred in the chair but didn’t get up.

I was supposed to do something.

Kill somebody.

Yeah.

She eased out from beneath the conveyor belt, took five silent steps forward as the shot’s echo died away, and swung the plow hard and high. Kleingarten was fixated on Briggs and the shattered monitor, and he was likely deaf from the resonating din. Or else he’d forgotten he was trapped in a mechanical graveyard with a bunch of rampaging monkeys.

Either way, he was vulnerable, and the vulnerable always died first.

The tip of the plow dug deep into the base of his skull, just at the top of his spinal column. He barked an “Urp” and spouted a couple of gushes of blood as he pitched forward.

She hauled the blade out of him and lifted it again, to smash him and smash him “Lex!”

She froze, blinking and trembling. “Mark?”

“You’re Seething, remember?”

Pain. Something I’m supposed to remember about pain…

She looked at the dim outline of the makeshift ax in her hand. A clot of brain and hair clung to its tip.

Then Mark had her, and she struggled to raise the ax-He bit me, the motherfucker! — and then he slapped her hard and she dropped the weapon. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Lex! Where’s the other pill?”

“They killed Susan.”

“You killed her, Alexis,” Briggs said. “You haven’t lost your magic touch.”

Mark slapped her again, and she came around, not all the way, but enough to remember where she was. Mark jammed his hand in her pocket and pulled out the pill bottle, flipping the cap away.

She thought she was supposed to do something, but all she could think about was the lurid home movie Briggs had made, and how they’d all staged a murder scene.

What a weird fucking research project. Pretend to kill somebody so Briggs could measure their neurochemical activity.

Mark shoved the pill in her mouth and ordered her to swallow it.

Mark was right about the pain, so maybe he was right about this.

She swallowed, and he held her as she glanced at the cage. Briggs stood behind Wendy, who looked lost in another world, or in some twisted fantasy Briggs might have planted.

On some of the smaller video monitors, shapes moved and flitted.

More people?

“It’s okay, honey,” Mark whispered, holding her close. “It hurts, but it’s okay. It’s up to you now.”

“Turn on the goddamned lights and open the door,” Roland said. “Nobody else move.”

He held Kleingarten’s gun in his fist, and Alexis wished she’d killed him while she had the chance.