Key to Fear Read online

  He held up his hands as he backed through the Violet Shield that coated every entryway within the MediCenter. “Say no more. I get when I’m not wanted.” He glanced at his cuff. “I’ve gotta go anyway. But I’m always up for a good story, and I’ll be down here for, you know, ever.” He tossed her a sparkling smile before disappearing around the corner.

  Elodie nearly tripped over the bot loading color-coded tubes into their corresponding receptacles as she craned her neck to watch him leave. “That was . . . strange.” She glanced at the bot as if it cared about or was even aware of the encounter she’d just had. “Water baths and mole people. Super weird.” Her cheeks heated as a grin lifted her lips.

  Elodie dug through the crate of glass tubes the bot had attached to its front until she located the bright yellow cylinder labeled Propofol. She stared at the large grid of boxy receptacles and flashing lights until she located the row of tubes for the eleventh floor and the flashing yellow rectangle. She rolled the glass cylinder of medicine between her hands before reaching up and exchanging the empty tube for the full one. A few mechanical clicks and the yellow light ceased flashing.

  Elodie’s heartbeat ticked up a notch as she made her way back to the elevator. Yes, she was nervous about Patient Ninety-Two’s state when she got back to her unit, but tremors of excited anticipation ran beneath the anxiety.

  Maybe she would see the ELU employee and his curly, dark mohawk again. Whoever he was.

  The elevator opened and Elodie requested her floor. She clenched her fists by her sides in an attempt to regain control of her nerves as the metal box carried her back to the unknowns of her own unit and Patient Ninety-two. What would she do if Aubrey was still awake, crying, pleading for her mother?

  The doors opened and Elodie stepped into the LTCU.

  Aubrey’s door was open, her room empty, and the unit ablaze with violet.

  XIII

  Lieutenant Commander Sparkman raced down the fifteenth-

  floor corridor. Her knuckles drained of color as she gripped the gurney’s metal sides and braced herself. Her decades of military training hadn’t prepared her for this, couldn’t have prepared her for this. They had nearly arrived at the lab. Its gleaming metal doors were only two turns ahead. Two hundred paces to the first turn, seventy to the second, and a final one hundred and fifty to the lab. Four hundred and twenty paces until they reached the place where all of this had begun. It was the only place Sparkman could hope to fix what they had done—what the Doctor had done.

  The gurney jerked to the right and then left. Sparkman’s strawberry blond braid slapped her cheek and her fingers cramped as she took the first turn and the gurney careened into the wall.

  Aubrey Masters was waking up. Again.

  Sparkman grunted as she regained control and guided the gurney away from the wall and the small dent and gray streak that would, no doubt, be fixed by the end of the day. Instinctively, Sparkman glanced over her shoulder. No one would come running. The Doctor would make sure of that.

  Sparkman’s nostrils flared as she blew out a breath. Only three hundred paces.

  She stared down at the little girl she’d been tasked to kidnap from the Long Term Care Unit. He had told her that it wasn’t kidnapping. It was taking back what was rightfully his.

  Aubrey’s delicate features twisted and she let out a pained whine as she pulled against the plastic binding her wrists and ankles. Sparkman’s heart surged up her throat. She had seen a lot in her years as a Key Corp military officer. Humans, the depth and breadth of their capacity for cruelty, no longer amazed her. But Patient Ninety-Two was different. Aubrey was innocent. An eight-year-old girl. A child. How could the Doctor do this?

  Aubrey’s whine grew piercing, a clarion call that rattled Sparkman’s bones. The Lieutenant Commander squeezed the metal bars until her hands ached and took inventory of the container of prefilled syringes she’d brought down with her. She’d started with five. There was only one left.

  Aubrey’s high-pitched squeal ended as suddenly as it had begun. Then, nothing. No jerking movements so powerful they sent the gurney careening and Sparkman struggling to keep up. Instead, Aubrey Masters went silent, motionless. Her expression placid and serene.

  Sparkman’s braid slid down her shoulder as she, too, relaxed. She flipped it back behind her and maneuvered the gurney around the second corner. The lab was at the end of the hall. The last door on the right. One hundred and fifty paces ahead.

  Aubrey’s chest lifted and her stomach puffed with air. Her small feet twitched and her tiny hands gripped the bedding as she sucked in ragged breath after ragged breath.

  Adrenaline ripped through Sparkman’s veins and she took off. The one hundred and fifty paces flew beneath her and the gurney in a blur of white tile. She halted just before the entrance to the lab and squeezed her boxy frame between the gurney and the door. As she slid her cuff under the scanner and waited for the door to slide open, the hairs on the back of her neck bristled. Sheets rustled behind Sparkman, and Aubrey’s breathing changed. It now slipped out of her as smooth and easy as the ocean swept against the shore.

  Sparkman pressed her fists together, cracking each of her knuckles, as she turned. Aubrey’s plastic handcuffs hung limply from the bed as she sat at the head of the gurney, knees pulled to her chest and secured by thin arms. The neck of her hospital gown sagged down around her bare shoulders and she shivered as she buried her chin against her legs.

  Sparkman’s jaw slacked and her stomach clenched as Aubrey blinked up at her. A band of violet ringed the girl’s pupils.

  “Tell the Doctor,” Patient Ninety-Two lifted her chin so as not to muffle her words. “Tell the Doctor they’re coming.”

  The door hissed open behind Sparkman as Aubrey Masters collapsed against the gurney.

  XIV

  Preston Darby had gotten to Blair. Strike that. Cath had gotten to Blair. Gotten under Blair’s skin when she said that Council Leader Darby could come after Denny.

  Blair tapped the pointed toe of her pump against the corner of her desk and bit down on her fingernail. A jagged chunk tore free and she clenched it between her teeth.

  Cath had been getting under Blair’s skin for more than a decade. Blair’s adoptive mother would toss out a small idea that stuck to Blair and festered and festered until she could feel it moving and breathing within her.

  He can make your life more difficult. And Denny’s.

  Those two small sentences now had lives of their own.

  Blair bit off another chunk of her nail, wincing when she drew blood. She forced her hands into her lap and put pressure on her pulsing nailbed.

  “Holly.” She cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter. The hologram wasn’t a real person, but Blair didn’t trust that a conversation with Holly would always only be between the two of them.

  “Yes, Ms. Scott?” Holly materialized in front of Blair’s onyx desk, her hair and clothes and smile all perfect where she stood on the plush throw rug.

  A twinge of jealousy clawed at Blair’s chest. Envying a computer’s flawless, human-made image was illogical—Blair knew that—

  but envy reared its green head nonetheless. “Call my brother. When he answers, put the call through to my office comm system.”

  “Right away, Ms. Scott.” Holly’s eyelids fluttered as she contacted Denny.

  It wasn’t that Blair was opposed to using her own personal comlink to reach her brother. Since the update, the tech was more user friendly than it had ever been. She just didn’t particularly like people talking in her head. She had enough to plot and sort through without the extra chatter.

  Blair pressed her palms against the cold onyx slab and stood. Her shadow spilled onto the black surface of the desk, and the vase sitting on the edge, and pooled onto the rug and through Holly’s feet. Through them. Because, no matter how much Blair’s eyes tried to fool her, Holl
y’s being was nothing but ones and zeros. Her “mind,” however, all the secrets Holly held, that’s what Blair should truly envy.

  Holly’s eyelids opened slowly, evenly. “Unfortunately, I’m unable to contact your brother. I’ve attempted to reach him three times and received an error message each time.”

  Blair’s heart skipped and she lowered herself onto the edge of her chair. She stammered and pressed her hand against her chest. “What could cause this type of error message?” She released calm and steady breaths. Preston Darby couldn’t act without cause. Blair’s brother might not be as driven as she was, but he was no troublemaker. He was her sweet little Denny. Everyone who met him loved him. And if they didn’t, Blair Scott would burn them to the ground.

  “The error is most likely a result of an incomplete chip update.” The ends of Holly’s perfectly styled hair brushed her chin as she spoke. “This malfunction has occurred in”—another rapid blink—“approximately four percent of Westfall’s citizens. Would you like me to submit a work order to the IT department on your brother’s behalf?”

  Blair’s free hand slid limply into her lap, leaving the sweaty ghost of a handprint on the desk. She’d gotten herself worked up for no reason at all. Denny was at his job, safe and secure. He couldn’t be reached because technology, no matter how awe-inspiring, always possessed a flaw.

  Blair leaned back in her chair and narrowed her gaze on Holly. “Leave me,” she said with a flick of her wrist.

  Before she’d finished the gesture, Holly was gone.

  “Show off,” she muttered as she turned her attention back to more important things. A gray box formed to one side of her vision before her messaging inbox appeared.

  Maxine—

  She thought, and the characters appeared instantaneously.

  My office, immediately. We’re going to make my brother a Key Corp soldier.

  Blair paused and glanced down at her jagged nails before sending the message.

  Oh, and get me everything you can on Preston Darby.

  XV

  The holoscreen activated, the floating rectangle blinking from sleeping gray to paper white as Dr. Normandy unlocked Patient Ninety-Two’s chart. He stepped back a moment to take it all in.

  What to look at first?

  His weathered hands fell to the printed photos he’d lined up along the edge of the steel exam table under the translucent screen. His fingers blindly traced the edge of one of the photos. He liked the thinness of the printed pages, almost not there at all. It reminded him of his job—his world. Searching cells and sequences for the thinnest chance. A chance so small that anyone else would miss it. But not Normandy. Given enough time, he could find a single hair floating in a river the size of the Columbia. And he had been given all the time in the world.

  Normandy opened Ninety-Two’s most recent lab report before extending his arm to the holoscreen, pinching the digital paperwork that noted the previous day’s test results, and plopping them into the empty space next to it. It had only been three weeks, and already a universe of changes bloomed to life inside of Ninety-Two. Although, he shouldn’t be surprised. Didn’t Christians believe their god created the cosmos in merely six days? Normandy was no god, at least not by those standards, but he was in the process of creating salvation. A completely germ-free, worry-free existence for all.

  Squinting, he pressed his round glasses farther up the bridge of his thin nose.

  Lieutenant Commander Sparkman let out a hiss of frustration as the door to Ninety-Two’s room closed behind her and as she waited for the Violet Shield to complete its pass. “I thought you said the patient was stable.”

  “She is.” Normandy flicked his bony fingers over the holoscreen and brought up the feed from Ninety-Two’s room. “See for yourself.”

  The girl’s slim, unconscious frame lay like a toothpick in the middle of the gurney. Or perhaps now Ninety-Two was no longer a girl. He would further dissect the tests Sparkman had conducted, but Normandy knew better than anyone that gender was more complex than genitalia.

  Ninety-Two twitched, the sweat-soaked sheets rumpled like waves beneath her. The rise and fall of her chest had finally steadied along with the rhythmic beep of the pulse monitor. It had taken six hours and seventeen different combinations of tranquilizers, but Normandy had eventually figured it out. He eventually figured everything out.

  “Then what the hell was all of that?” Sparkman’s lab coat billowed around her waist as she stomped to Normandy’s side. “We were supposed to be able to stick her up in the Long-Term Care Unit for the next three years at least! You said nothing would manifest until puberty.” She gripped the edge of the table, her squared jaw flexing up to her gold-flecked temples. “That process doesn’t start in eight-year-olds! And did you see her eyes? Purple, Doctor. They were purple !” The clean white lights overhead seemed to flicker in fear with each of Sparkman’s shouts.

  Fear.

  It was one of the reasons Normandy had chosen the young Key Corp Lieutenant Commander. Sparkman could accomplish anything regardless of whether or not she possessed proper paperwork. And since Normandy had spent the last two decades on a task that those in charge preferred to leave untraceable, there often were no forms at all. That’s when Sparkman’s . . . talents came into play. She was a soldier, an enforcer, and no matter how many lab coats she donned, she would be nothing more.

  Normandy removed his glasses, wiped them with the corner of his pristine lab coat, and slipped them back on. “We’re dealing with something new, undiscovered, undocumented. I can tell you what I have calculated, but what we hope to achieve has never been attempted before much less seen to fruition, and our previous ninety-one patients were, as you know, failures. I shall explore the missteps in my calculations. You be grateful that Ninety-Two is still alive. Still human.”

  “Wait one second.” Sparkman waggled her finger ferociously. “You’re not holding me responsible for all of the other times you’ve fucked this up.” Her long braid whipped the air as she shook her head. “I wasn’t even here for most of them.”

  Normandy frowned at the smudged fingerprints Sparkman left behind on the photos. “You are here now. You are a witness and a participant in all of this.”

  When Normandy created his own version of Sparkman, a better version of Sparkman, he would remove this penchant for outbursts. Normandy didn’t value Sparkman’s intelligence. He valued her discretion and her effectiveness in getting him what he needed.

  His gaze fell to Sparkman’s battle-worn hands as they again touched the fingerprint-clouded photographs. He would also minimize the oil output of Sparkman’s skin by twenty percent.

  A trench carved itself into the middle of Sparkman’s otherwise smooth forehead. “But it’s different now. What the hell are we dealing with?” Her golden-red brows arched. “All I know is that the patient burned through propofol so quickly that the entire tube was drained within an hour. Ninety-Two metabolized meds that were supposed to last an entire day in a fucking hour.”

  Normandy resumed squinting at the screen. “There’s no reason to be crude. I will review her tests. The answer is in there.”

  “Look, old man, I don’t think you understand. If you did, you’d be as alarmed as I am.”

  Normandy took a breath and peered at Sparkman over the rim of his glasses. “What was to happen in three years took only three weeks. Thus far, Ninety-Two has been a triumph.”

  Sparkman’s eyes hardened, and she brushed her hand across her smooth, freckled cheek, but said nothing.

  “If you’re no longer comfortable with what we’re accomplishing, I can have you sent to Rehabilitation.” The corner of Normandy’s lips twitched with a grin. Before Ninety-Two, Rehabilitation had been his best creation.

  “Fuck you,” Sparkman spat.

  Normandy pressed his hand against his stomach. “Your cursing, Lieutenant Commander. Your cursi
ng. I cannot abide the foulness of your tongue. Perhaps that is something they can address during your Rehabilitation stay.”

  Silence burned through the lab.

  Sparkman’s broad shoulders slumped. “Everything’s fine,” she conceded. “The changes,” she waved at the displayed reports, “they happened a lot faster than I was expecting, or even prepared for, but,” she cleared her throat, “it’s fine.”

  The threat of Rehabilitation guaranteed that Sparkman would never truly step out of bounds. That is, after all, why the Key had commissioned the program.

  “I do have one question, though.” Sparkman tugged on the stiff collar of her costume lab coat.

  Normandy resumed tracing the edge of one of the photos. “You will not learn if you never ask.”

  Sparkman nodded toward the holoscreen and Ninety-Two’s resting frame. “If she’s transformed this much in so little time, what will she be three weeks from now?”

  Normandy considered this as he again removed his glasses, folding them gently before hooking them onto the breast pocket of his coat. “More, Lieutenant Commander. Patient Ninety-Two will be more.” The shrill, prolonged beep of Ninety-Two’s pulse monitor grabbed Normandy’s attention.

  “Dammit, Normandy, she’s flatlining!” Sparkman charged toward the door separating them from Ninety-Two—protecting them from Ninety-Two.

  “Sparkman!” The soldier halted just short of the doorway as Normandy lifted his glasses from his pocket. “Wait.”

  Sparkman’s fists clenched and unclenched by her sides. “She’s dying!”

  With one fluid motion, Normandy slid his finger down the volume control toggle, silencing the piercing electronic screech before motioning to the patient’s brain wave monitor. The lines were flat. “She’s braindead. Of absolutely no use to us.”