Authors: Quincy J. Allen
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction, #Dystopian
Chemical Burn (28 page)
Xen blushed and looked at the sand between his legs. “Yeah, I guess,” he said quietly.
“Trust me,” I injected, “Xen took to fighting like a fish takes to water,” I said to Rachel. “And that cleanup was pretty tight.”
“Who knew?” he added in disbelief.
“It surprised me, I’ll tell you that for nothing,” I said, chuckling.
Rachel slapped my leg, admonishing me, but we were all laughing. We sat in the sun, simply enjoying the day after the tension of the previous night at VeniCorp.
“So what happened next?” Rachel asked.
O O O
The morning after the attack, Xen jolted out of bed at the sound of the man’s neck breaking. His dream was a replay of the previous evening. He sat there shaking for a minute, and then he threw back the covers and got out of bed. He jumped in the shower, took a quick rinse and brushed his teeth.
As he put the toothbrush away, something popped into his head—body bag and a shovel. He closed his eyes and remembered opening the trunk of the Riviera. There had been a body bag and a shovel in there. Then he ran the whole thing through his head. The thought dawned on him that it wasn’t a random mugging. For starters, there was no reason in the world for someone to drive all the way up there, in the industrial sector of the city, just to mug a guy. And then, why mug Xen? If the guy was waiting for someone, why not wait for a small woman? Xen realized the guy never had any intention of leaving him alive.
There were only three possibilities. One, the guy was there to kill Xen. Two, the guy wanted Xen’s work. Three, both one and two together. He hadn’t recognize the man, and it was unlikely he worked for SolCon, at least not at the offices. A sick feeling clutched at Xen’s guts, and he turned pale at the realization. Someone wanted him dead. An even worse thought crossed his mind. What if Natalia was in on it? She was the only person at SolCon he’d ever talked to about the project.
He had to disappear, at least for a while, until he could figure everything out. He’d go to Justin as soon as he felt certain that no one could find him, but if they knew Xen well, they’d know about Justin, too. He wanted to disappear off the face of the Earth for a week in hopes they’d lose track of him. Then he could see about trying to figure out who wanted him dead.
But how?
he asked his reflection. The answer was right there behind him in the reflection. On a shelf across from the mirror he saw a three-inch green tin. He turned around and grabbed it. It rattled as he picked it up, sounding as if it was full of pebbles. He had gotten implants three years earlier while on a sabbatical to England. A bicycle accident had knocked several out. His real teeth had been somewhat irregular to begin with, and he’d always wanted them straight. The orthodontist had told him how long it would take to repair and then suggested another option—full implants.
Xen smiled at the memory, opened the tin and looked down at a mouth full of teeth, fillings and all. A plan was forming. He spent the next hour running through his house, grabbing things he thought he might need. He’d never been on the run before, but it wasn’t all that different than when he’d come to America. When he had everything, he got in his car and drove off. Next, he had to get some cash. He’d need a pretty good chunk to stay afloat.
He did business with three banks and spent the next two hours going to each of them, withdrawing five-thousand dollars from each. He figured that fifteen-thousand would be enough. Each teller had asked him the same question: why the withdrawal. “Going on a trip,” was all he said. He stopped at a department store next. He went in and bought a few items from the sporting goods and women’s departments. He hit a Wal-Mart on the way out and bought a few other items, including a half-gallon of orange juice and a box of protein bars. He chain ate the protein bars on the way to the university, chasing them with orange juice. On Saturday most of the place would be empty.
Fortunately, he’d been teaching classes for three of his old professors and even gave talks on bio-chem when the university hosted conferences. They had given him a set of keys to the department so he could come and go as he pleased. He parked his car and threw the bars and orange juice into his backpack. He then got out, locked up the car, and walked a short distance across campus with the backpack over his shoulder, entering one of the science buildings. The halls were empty save for one student on the way out who Xen didn’t recognize.
He made a few turns in the halls and stopped at a door marked
Medical Sciences—H7
. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a thick key ring full of brass keys, sifted through them, and found the one he wanted. Inserting the key, he opened the door quickly and stepped in. The main area looked like several hospital operating rooms all put together into one. Equipment lay everywhere. A hallway with rooms jutting off to the left and right at regular intervals stretched beyond the main area, each room separated by curtains hanging in the doorways for privacy. They were for students and patients during classes.
He went to one of the near cabinets, unlocked it, and pulled out several empty blood bags, some surgical tubing, a bottle of alcohol, cotton balls, and tape. Then he locked it back up. From another cabinet, he grabbed several hypodermic needles and a stack of heart needles with the largest syringes he could find.
Throwing everything into his backpack, he headed to the last patient room on the left. He pulled the curtain closed as he went through, stepped around the gurney and turned on the small light over a desk inside. Setting everything down on the desk, he opened a cabinet to his left and pulled out a blood extraction needle and a bottle of saline.
He’d done it many times before in class, just never on himself. He stripped down to his boxers, washed and disinfected his hands, and then sat down at the desk. He quickly set up the saline drip and inserted the needle into his left arm. Raising the stand to its highest position, well over his head, he grabbed another needle. Hooking it up to one of the blood-bags, he laid the bag on the floor and stuck the needle into his right arm. Wincing slightly, it only took him two tries to get the needle into a vein. “Now for the hard part,” he said, looking at the stack of large syringes and heart needles. He stood up, closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a while, trying to focus.
This is going to hurt like a motherfucker, he thought.
He unwrapped one of the syringes and attached a big heart needle. Holding the needle in his right hand, he grabbed his right pectoral muscle, squeezed slightly and then pressed the big needle sideways into the flesh, through it and down into the fatty tissue he knew lay just under the skin. He groaned with the pain but kept going.
The thought of another killer coming for him drove his motions without mercy or hesitation. He spent ten minutes probing tissue and slowly extracting a mixture of blood and cellulite, filling the syringe with a cloudy, reddish liquid with gelatinous blobs suspended within. Once he filled it, he set it down carefully on the desk and put a cotton ball over the wound, taping it down. He switched to his left pectoral, and this one seemed to hurt a little less, but it took longer to fill the syringe. Looking down, he saw that the bag was full, so he set the second, fatty syringe next to the first, disconnected himself, sealed the bag up and carefully placed it in his backpack.
He repeated the process with big needles going into his abdomen, which almost made him scream in pain. Both butt cheeks, then both thighs, gave him a total of eight. He grabbed another blood bag, unsealed it, and emptied the syringes into the bag, quickly sealing it up and slipping it into the backpack.
He looked up and saw that the saline was empty. Disconnecting it, he laid it on the desk, grabbed a gallon ziplock he’d brought and put the saline drip and the blood extraction tubing into it. The empty syringes followed, and the whole thing went into his backpack. There wasn’t anything left, so he slowly stood up, feeling only slightly dizzy but hurting like hell in each place where a needle had gone in.
He put everything he needed back into his pack, except for the orange juice and two protein bars. Looking around the room to make sure that he hadn’t left anything, he headed out to his car. A light rain had rolled in, the day cool for a change. By the time he got to his car, both protein bars were gone and the orange juice container empty. His head felt like it was full of helium. He got in, opened the cooler he’d bought, and scooped the ice out of the way, putting the two full blood bags inside. Feeling more and more light-headed with each passing second, he figured he’d just close his eyes and rest for a few minutes to regain his strength.
He woke to the dark of night, and the rain had stopped.
***
Breasts and Drumsticks
My phone rang just as Xen started the rest of his story. I held up a finger to stop him, picked up the phone and looked at the number. It was O’Neil.
“Hang on, Xen. I gotta take this one.” I answered brightly, “Hi, O’Neil!”
“Don’t ‘hi’ me, Case. Let’s have the rest of that conversation now that I’m awake and your four bodies are on ice in the morgue. They all check out by the way. Goombahs. All federal rap sheets, three with warrants, and one who just got out of the lock-up. What would you have done if they’d been rent-a-cops … or
real
cops?”
“Knocked them out, tied them up, and run like hell.”
“That would be a first,” O’Neil said snidely.
I thought about it for a minute. “You may be right. So where’d we leave off last night? I’m kinda drunk.”
“Drunk? And what is that I hear in the background?”
“Monkeys,” I said, implying it was the most natural response in the world.
“Why the fuck would there be … Never mind,” he said curtly. “I don’t want to know. You said something about dry cleaning last night. What were you talking about?”
“That’s how they’re shipping, delivering, and distributing … at least I’m pretty sure of it. My guy’s already working on it.”
“Xen?”
“Yeah, but leave him dead for the time being. He faked his own death to avoid a second attempt on his life. As long as the world thinks he’s dead, there’s no heat. And I think you’ll find another body in the parking lot at SolCon.”
“Green Riviera?”
“That’s the one.”
“We already found it. Someone smelled the guy the other day and called LAPD rather than Oakland. Our homicide’s got it. Turns out the guy was a local douche-bag hitter, barely above amateur.”
I nodded. “It was self-defense, O’Neil, plain and simple. Xen ran because he panicked. From what I heard, it should be a clean scene. Nothing to connect him to it. Can you turn an eye?”
“I can. Homicide said they’re going to try and find someone, but they won’t be trying very hard. I wouldn’t worry about it. Even homicide doesn’t give two shits for dirty little fuckers like that. But if they tie Xen to it, I gotta go through procedure. Sorry.” O’Neil paused thoughtfully. “Xen did that?”
“Yeah,” I said proudly. I was also grateful O’Neil didn’t have a problem keeping Xen out of it … at least for now. I’d have to find a way to make it up to him.
“I’m impressed,” he added, sounding like he meant it.
“So was I,” I agreed. “Look, about T-Rex, I had an idea.”
“Me too, and I wasn’t going to give you a choice on this one.”
“You’re going to track the tankers and mark the dry-cleaners, right?” I deduced.
“You got it. We can get set up while you work your end. Easy peasy.”
“Great minds think alike. Thanks, O’Neil.”
“It’s my job, remember? Now about these other two—the shooters who managed to snap off three headshots in the dead of night in downtown L.A … I’m kind of interested in them.”
“So am I. The truth is I mostly don’t know who they are.”
“What do you mean,
mostly
?” He sounded exasperated.
“Well, I have an idea of who one of them is, but the other is a wild card.”
“Can you at least give me a name?” O’Neil didn’t sound hopeful.
“I’d rather not.”
“That’s obstruction, you know,”
Captain
O’Neil pointed out in his official voice.
“No it’s not, neither of us has any proof, so it’s circumstantial.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Yeah, but look, O’Neil,” I implored, “I’ve got a good feeling on this one, okay?”
“Your call. I have my hands full with everything else. I can look the other way for a while, but if you end up with a round through that shaved head of yours in the middle of the night in downtown L.A., don’t come crying to me.”
“I won’t, I promise. And it’s not shaved. I came into the world this way.”
O’Neil clearly didn’t want to get into hairstyles. He was too grumpy. “Are you close to moving on DiMarco?”
“Getting there. I’m putting the pieces together, but I need a week or two. Can you wait that long?”
“It’ll probably take that long to wrap my hands around the dry cleaners, so it should work out. You’ve got your two weeks if you need them. But now that this is in motion with the department, I won’t be able to hold things up. Internal Affairs would be all over my ass. I love you, man, but I’m not going to jail for you.”
“Wouldn’t want you to. I’ll be ready when you are. Keep me posted if anything comes up, and I’ll do the same from my end.”
“Case?”
“You hate me, right?”
“I do, but that’s not what I was going to say. Guess you’re not so smart after all.” I could hear O’Neil smiling through the phone.
“What then?”
“You’re forgetting something,” O’Neil prompted.
“I am?” I couldn’t figure out what, but I did have a pretty good buzz off of sugar-spiked OJ and a half-dozen beer chasers.
“The
data
,” he said, over-articulating each syllable.
I slapped my head. “Shit! I forgot. Sorry. I’ll have that to you this afternoon. We’re heading back to my place in a while.”
“You better. I promised the lab I’d have it to them today. Is there any way I could treat it as admissible?”
“Not a chance,” I admitted. “It’s as stolen as stolen gets. But have your warrants ready on go-day and just raid the place. It’ll be in a computer in Jackie’s un-connected PC in the lab area. The password is gold fever zero nine, all caps one word, or at least it was last night. If it changes, I can get into it for you then, okay?”
“Deal. I have to get back to things here. I’ll catch you later.”
“See ya.” I hung up. “So, Xen … you were saying?”
O O O
Xen shook his head to try and wake up, blinking his eyes several times as he made every effort to focus on the dashboard. His head still felt like a helium balloon, and every spot where a needle had gone in ached with dull pain.
This plan had better work
, he thought,
or all the suffering would be in vain
.
His next order of business, considering how he felt and where he planned to go, required that he eat something immediately. The clock on the dash showed nine p.m. He’d slept for six hours, and it occurred to him that the excitement of the previous night, a short night’s sleep, and spending the afternoon literally sucking the life out of himself might have been a tad bit overtaxing. His stomach growled like a rabid dog. Scratching his head and yawning, he started the car, pulled out of the lot, and headed to his favorite Chinese buffet restaurant.
Halfway across town, paranoia gripped him by the short-and-curlies. What if whoever wanted him dead knew him well enough to know where he liked to eat? He couldn’t risk it. He pulled into the next Chinese buffet he saw, parked, and went inside. It turned into a feeding frenzy. Xen ate like there was no tomorrow, which, it occurred to him, there sort of wouldn’t be. He’d be dead tomorrow. A nervous smile crossed his face as he shoveled in another load of lo mein. The manager shook his head in disbelief as Xen got up for another trip to the buffet. Five heaping plates of nearly everything they had disappeared down his neck. He was rather impressed with himself, and in spite of a distended abdomen, he felt much better.
He pulled out his phone and realized it was eleven p.m.
Time for a motel and as much sleep as he can get
, he thought. He paid his tab, smiling at the manager, who gave him a polite bow of thanks. The look on the manager’s face said,
Please don’t come here again.
Xen got in his car and headed down the road, looking for the first motel he could find. Ten minutes later he spotted a Motel 6 and pulled in. He went in, requested a room, paid cash, and went next door to a liquor store to get a small bottle of brandy and a bag of ice. He went to his car, dumped the ice on top of the blood bags and then went to his room. One hot shower later, he sat on the bed and taking swigs from the brandy. It burned a little going down, but what little drinking he’d done in the past usually involved brandy or cognac. It didn’t take long for the alcohol to hit his system, even with a belly full of Chinese food. Crawling under the covers, he fell asleep before he could turn off the light.
O O O
A car crash in front of the motel woke him at nine a.m. Checkout was in an hour, so he had to move quickly. He got up, threw on his clothes, went out to the car, and brought in everything he would need for the day’s exercise. He’d bought an oversized backpack large enough to hold everything but not large enough to draw too much attention when he went to SolCon.
On a Sunday he probably wouldn’t run into anyone, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He had the pack stuffed and bulging by 9:45. He went out to the car, put everything away, and checked out of his room. Back at the car, he stuffed his remaining belongings into a large rolling suitcase he’d picked up.
Forty-five minutes later he parked his car on the ground level of the parking garage at SolCon. He thought about the green Riviera on the top level … and its grisly contents. The thought made him shudder and forced him to focus on the task at hand. The ground level lay empty, with only three vehicles in the corner of the lot nearest the building. He parked at the opposite corner, closest to the street.
Grabbing the backpack, he looked into the rearview mirror. “You ready for this?” His worried eyes told him that he wasn’t, but he didn’t have a choice. He took a deep breath, stepped out of the car and headed into SolCon. He only had to slide his card-key twice on the long walk to his work area, and he didn’t see a soul the entire way in. A few security guards patrolled the facility, but they were focused around the areas where more restricted products were researched or produced, like explosives. What he worked on didn’t even rate as risky, let alone dangerous.
He looked around his cubicle one last time to see if he wanted to take anything with him. He kept his work area tidy, so nothing seemed worth grabbing. He walked out of his area and down a little further into the facility to another project lab. He’d talked with the chemist a few times over the past few months. The guy was also a contractor, an anti-social sort, but proud of his work. He was working on mass-producing a tetrachloroethylene variant being designed for abatement services. The guy claimed that it worked wonders with biological material.
It met Xen’s needs perfectly.
Xen walked into the guy’s much larger lab. It had room for his work-area, a cleanup station, a bank of computers, and three large storage tanks along the wall. Two of the tanks were open with two-foot-wide ports swung outwards. Xen laid his backpack on a table and checked the closed tank, finding it full. “Perfect,” he said out loud. He went back to the table and pulled everything out.
The backpack empty, he stripped down to skin and threw his clothes into one of the open tanks. His glasses followed. He went back to the table, put on a pair of bikini underwear and grabbed the two blood bags. He emptied the bags into the vat next, first the blood then the cellulite, making a sickening splattering sound as the fluids and fat hit the stainless steel bottom of the tank. The two empty blood bags went into a gallon ziplock that he sealed up carefully. He then grabbed the green tin from the table and dumped his teeth into the vat.
He went back to the table and pulled out electric clippers and a black trash bag. He found an outlet and proceeded to shave his head, spilling the long black hair directly into the waiting bag. With his head completely bald except for low, coarse stubble, he turned his attention to his arms and legs, removing all of the sparse hair he had on his limbs.
Using a washbasin in the corner of the lab, he pulled his razor off the table and proceeded to carefully shave every surface of his exposed skin save his eyebrows, rinsing the razor as he went. Once finished, he put the razor back in the pack and emptied the bag of hair into the vat. Xen paused for a moment, taking in what he’d done. A nervous laughter bubbled out of him as he stared down at the scattered mess in the bottom of the vat.
“That’s just nasty,” he said and tried to get hold of his laughing.
He closed the swinging door and twisted down the sealing lever. It was time to put together his disguise. Panty hose went on first. He’d never worn them before and had no idea what to expect. They tingled as they went on, and he stood there looking at his legs for a minute. He realized that he actually had nice legs.
Pushing the rather bizarre thought away, he grabbed the padded bra he’d picked up and spent the next five minutes trying to put the thing on, straining his arms behind his back.
“How the hell do women do this?” he asked the bra.
Finally, he pulled it back off, hooked the clasps and pulled it over his head, adjusting it into place with a frustrated sigh of accomplishment. The dress went over his head next—a blue, high-collared affair with short sleeves and a skirt that went down to his knees. He buttoned up the collar and adjusted it in a few places.
He grabbed a tube of light red lipstick and a small mirror. Working clumsily, he put it on and pinched his lips together the way he’d seen so many women do. Even to his untrained eye, it looked pretty bad. He went to the sink again, grabbed some paper towel and rubbed it off, carefully avoiding spreading it around. He put some more on, using less this time, and went through the lip motion again. This time it didn’t make him look like a bald, hooker, so he gave it a rest.
He pulled out a long, curly black wig and slipped that over his head, adjusting it carefully in the mirror. Shoes went on next, blue pumps with the lowest, widest heels he could find. He folded and compressed the first backpack then slipped it into a smaller one. The trash, razor, clippers, and everything else went inside, and he spent the next ten minutes walking around the area making sure that he hadn’t left anything.
Grabbing more paper towels and using bleach, he thoroughly wiped down every surface he’d touched and every other surface even remotely nearby. When the area was as spotless as he could make it, he went over to the tank control panel and, using more paper towel to touch the controls, flipped the pump power switch. When the light above it went green, he selected the tank with the mess inside as the receiver and the full tank as the sender. He pressed the transfer button and heard the satisfying sound of fluid pouring into the vat.
