The Ares Decision

63

Sarie van Keuren could feel Omidi’s eyes on her as she walked to the back of the plane holding a cup of water.

“Thomas? Are you thirsty? Would you like something to drink?”

The white-haired doctor was belted tightly into his seat, further restrained by a straitjacket and ankle shackles. It was an incredibly dissonant image — the frail, elderly man trussed up like some kind of psychopath or mass murderer.

Despite everything she’d seen in her years researching parasites, all this still seemed impossible. Intellectually, she knew that humans weren’t special in the animal kingdom, but somewhere deeper she had always harbored a belief in the soul. To see it so easily stolen, to be forced to watch this gentle man turn into a monster, was terrifying.

“Thomas?”

He was staring blankly at the seat in front of him, and she was ashamed at the fear she felt when his head finally turned toward her. There seemed to be no recognition in his eyes at all, no acknowledgment of the fact that another human was close.

As it always did when she was depressed or lonely or scared, Sarie’s mind retreated into science. How did the parasite work? What places in the brain did it target? How fast did it multiply? Was the detachment she was seeing the first step in creating a creature with no compassion or mercy?

“We’re nearly there,” Omidi said. “Sit.”

She glared back at him but his face remained a mask — not much different from poor Thomas’s. Some men didn’t need a parasite. They became monsters all on their own.

The landing strip was well camouflaged and they were probably less than a hundred meters from the ground when two dim strips of light appeared to mark its boundary. Beyond that, all she could make out was a few rocky outcrops and a distant wall of cliffs outlined by moonlight.

“Your new home,” Omidi responded. “The place where you will make the parasite transportable and more virulent.”

“What? Why in God’s name would you want to do that? Bahame’s insane, but you’re not. How could someone who understands what this does to people — innocent people — want to use it as a weapon?”

The Iranian smiled easily. “The West has created a moral framework for the world that is unwaveringly in their favor, Dr. van Keuren. If an American missile hits a primary school or market in an effort to kill a single man whose ideology they don’t agree with, the casualties are considered collateral damage — an unfortunate by-product of a war that doesn’t exist. If, on the other hand, a plane flies into an American office building, it’s an earth-shattering act of terrorism. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“The West tells the world that it is right and just to kill only if you use the weapons they consider honorable. And then they do everything they can to prevent others from acquiring those weapons. They can stockpile thousands of nuclear weapons and threaten my country with them, but we cannot do the same. They can kill countless women and children with sophisticated bombs built by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, but it would be unthinkable for a Muslim to do the same with an explosive built in his basement. The Americans have brainwashed the world — constantly changing the rules of the game in their favor. But that time is over. Their time is over. The order of things is about to change.”