Liquid fear

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Alexis frantically gathered the pills as they rolled across the floor.

She couldn’t believe this was all the Halcyon Briggs had manufactured. She fought an urge to kick his sorry corpse.

“My head’s clearing a little,” Mark said. “But my tooth is killing me.”

“The gas has lower efficacy than the other forms. You’ll make it.”

“Yes, Dr. Morgan.”

“Help me pick up these pills.”

“I have to let the others out first. If they haven’t eaten each other’s livers, that is.”

“That’s not funny.” She glanced at the bloody plow blade.

“How are you doing? Is the Halcyon working?”

“Barely enough.” You fucker. You’ll probably tell CRO everything. And all this could be mine.

“You look okay. I can leave you alone for a minute, huh?”

“Sure.”

As Mark jogged off, she retrieved the plastic bottle and began dropping pills in it-tick tick tick.

She wondered how long the Seethe would run through her system without the Halcyon suppressing it. It could be hours, or it could be days-or maybe the rest of her life. As far as she could tell, she was the only one who’d been injected with the serum form, though God only knew what David Underwood had gone through or how long he’d been imprisoned in the Monkey House.

Briggs probably had a backup hard drive somewhere. And he’d probably been too paranoid to move data off-site, so it would be here somewhere.

She glanced at his face and the blank eyes staring past the world. Then again, secrets to Seethe and Halcyon might be locked in the dead vault of his brain.

Her eyes kept going to the plow blade and she recalled how it had felt driving the tip through Kleingarten’s skull. She’d never felt so alive and powerful. And she could have that feeling a long time, if she cracked the formula.

Fear is its own kind of pleasure. Up there, it all gets cross-wired.

A few of the pills had rolled into the pool of Sebastian Briggs’s blood. She fished them out, wiping them one by one, and slipped them into her pocket. She’d retrieved most of the pills by the time the others returned.

Anita stood between Burchfield and an unsettled Wallace Forsyth. Mark was supporting a pale skeleton she recognized as David.

“You killed Susan,” David said, upon recognizing her.

Alexis glanced at the blade. As the Halcyon eased, she didn’t want this transitional feeling to end-that cliff edge of awareness, the black abyss on one side and the peaceful plateau of forgetfulness on the other.

Two kinds of oblivion.

No choice, really.

“No,” she said. “She died of fright.”

Anita nodded, closing a couple of buttons on her blouse with shaking fingers. “Yuh…yeah. It was a fake experiment, David. It was make-believe.”

Burchfield looked subdued and embarrassed. He cleared his throat and attempted to sound authoritative, but he failed. “This is official property of the U.S. government, Dr. Morgan.”

“Shut up, Senator,” Mark said, pointing to the monitor bank. “The cameras recorded your behavior. Fox News will love it.”

“Are you threatening me, Morgan?”

“Just playing by your rules.”

“Where is it?” Wallace Forsyth said in his tremulous, hoarse voice. He sounded a century old. “Where’s the Seethe?”

It’s mine, you bastard, and you better put the fear of God in you, or I’ll get there first.

She reached for the plow, but there was a green pill beside it. She pinched it and slipped it into her mouth as Mark moved toward her.

“Don’t!” he yelled. “You don’t know if it’s Seethe or Halcyon!”

She swallowed as he jammed his fingers between her lips. She wanted to bite him, but she decided she’d hurt him enough.

Restraint. Must be coming down.

Mark yanked the bottle of pills from her.

She glanced at the blade again.

Ah, shit. I love this man.