Confabulation (21 page)

CHAPTER 57

A shrill cry echoed through the abandoned tomb of a building. It carried with it more fear than could be accounted for by the horror of a bullet piercing the air near someone’s head. No, the gunshot served merely as the catalyst for the scream, which was then magnified by the weeks of anxiety that were stored within her bruised psyche.

She had pleaded with the gunman to listen to reason, but her words seemed to only further agitate the man. What she had done to him, she had no idea. Carolyn had decided that he was most likely just a lunatic who had her confused with someone else, a person who may not even truly exist. None of that mattered.

The gun in his hands was quite real.

Realizing she could do nothing to reason with him, she turned her attention to the man who had strolled into the room.

“Please stop.”

He ignored her.

“He’ll shoot. I can feel it.”

She begged him time and again to listen to the madman, to pay attention to the gun that shook in his unsteady hands. She pleaded, but he just looked at her and smiled. She wanted to race across the room and beat some sense into the cocky bastard, but she dared not move and upset the gunman.

She turned her attention again to the sweaty man, and that was when she screamed. The bullet raced past her head, and she was sure that she would no longer have to deal with either her fear of being controlled or being shot. She could see the end of her life and her suffering, and though she had wished for it all to end many times, her drive to survive took over in the stressful instant. She dropped to the ground and screamed. She poured out her fear and her desire to live in one piercing yell.

Through her mind, streamed emotions she couldn’t control. Hope, fear, anger, self-loathing, and confusion cascaded over her thoughts and echoed in her wail.

More shots rang out.

Screams were added to her own.

She poured herself out through her lungs until she no longer had the strength to continue. Exhausted, she rolled onto her back and felt for blood. She ran her hands around her head and over her chest, but felt nothing. She had no pain in her legs, but she sat up to see if they had been wounded. Nothing, No blood. No pain. She hadn’t been shot.

She looked up from her tired, though unmarked self, to see what had happened. She looked first to the gunman. His face was level with hers near the ground. He clutched his hand, which oozed dark red. She looked to his face, which was racked with pain, and tears streamed down with sweat. He was miserable, and though he had fired at her, she couldn’t help but pity the poor man. His confusion and madness reminded her of the cage that fear had placed her in, and she wondered what horrible events could have driven this man to believe he needed to kill at least one stranger.

Behind him, she could see the other man. Jackson. He sat on the floor, slumped against the wall. His arms hung limp at his sides, and his head rested on his shoulder and his face was slack. His face. The red from the spot on his forehead covered most of it. The thick liquid blacked out his left eye, and his shirt absorbed more of the blood as it continued to pour out of him. She didn’t know Jackson other than as a person responsible for what had been done to her. She hated all that he stood for, yet his lifeless, battered form brought her no joy.

She looked away from him and her eye drifted down to the box. It sat there, next to the bleeding gunman, untouched and waiting. She pulled herself closer. She had to know what was so important in there. Important enough to kill for.

She reached out and grabbed the box.

She saw a pistol.

"Please remove your hand from my box."

CHAPTER 58

Danton stared as Simon fired his weapon. He couldn’t allow the scene to play out as Jackson intended. A public disaster like the one that could soon play out would cast dispersion on the entire project. He couldn’t let the perception be that continued use of the technology led to homicidal behavior. If that happened he would never gain the authority to use it on domestic enemies, no matter how much it would help.

He shoved the door aside, intending to kill Simon. He wanted all of the subjects alive, but he had become a menace to the entire plan. Before he could fire, Simon dropped to the ground, holding his hand. Danton looked down and could see that he no longer held the gun, and that he was rendered a crying heap from the pain.

Without hesitation, he turned to Jackson Gray. Jackson’s mind was distracted. Danton could see he was trying to orchestrate the events. He reached out with his mind, wondered if Jackson was distracted enough.

The blowback blurred his vision and gave him a headache that threatened to knock him to the floor. He aimed his sidearm. Danton had surprise on his side. He fired twice before Jackson could respond. The first shot pinned Jackson’s shoulder to the wall. The second did the same with his head.

To his left, he heard a painful wailing. He looked over to Carolyn Hansford, who bellowed out in pain and fear, but bore no signs of being wounded. Beyond her was another woman. Whoever she was, she sat against the back wall, with a pistol on the ground beside her. Her hand covered a bleeding wound in her stomach, and she coughed up blood as she tried to move. Danton was grateful that she had removed a major threat to his plan, as she had obviously shot Simon, and was even more thankful that she had the decency to be shot herself to remove a witness. He nodded slightly to her.

Danton knew he had to leave. Soon. He couldn’t let the targets see him, though that seemed unlikely at this point. Simon could do nothing but cry on the floor. Carolyn rolled on the ground screaming to whatever power she hoped could save her. Henry might notice him, but he would remember precious little about this meeting, Danton had made sure of that. Confident that his escape was assured, he focused on Jackson’s slumping corpse.

His body eased down the wall, and Danton’s smile broadened with every inch. When Jackson’s body came to rest on the floor, he would have been able to see the joy and satisfaction as clear as the sun, if there had been life left in those eyes. But there was none. Jackson Gray was gone, and the whole of the project was now in the hands of Danton. He took a deep breath, no longer minding the residual smell of feces, urine, and rot.

He had won.

Time was on his side. The subjects would come to their senses. Leave this place and rid themselves of whatever lies Jackson told them. They’d find their lives again.

Then Danton’s sniffers would find them.

Do it right the next time.

Create the confusion that would lead to his master plan.

CHAPTER 59

"The box. Please remove your hand."

Henry stared at the woman on the floor. Her hand rested on the edge of the box, and her sweat-soaked hair on her hand. She didn’t appear threatening, and he felt for her considering the loss of her friend and the trial she had endured. However, he needed what was held in the box, and he had no intention of allowing a period of sympathy to wreck his last best hope for salvation.

There was a time when he would have forgotten his goal and helped her. There was another more recent time that he would have killed her without consideration. Now, however, he was happy enough that his plan had worked, and he simply would have the box.

"Though I don’t want to, I’ll shoot you. Trust me."

Henry arched his eyebrows and exhaled as she started crying. She tried to squeeze a few words through the tears, and at first he couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her voice was hoarse, and the shrill quality to her ranting made her words sound like static, but she continued to repeat herself, and in time Henry could understand the pleading.

She needed the box.

He had no idea why, but she seemed to need it as much as he did. No matter, though, his life, his chance to get Kelly back, was in that box. He would have it. He may not have had the hate he believed he would feel when facing one of the ones who treated him like a marionette, but he also felt little desire to help one of them achieve her goal.

"Listen, I don’t care how much this means to your damned job. I want my life back, and I don’t intend to let you stop me from getting it. This is my one chance to make things right. Don’t try to stop me." He reached down for the box and yanked it from her grip.

She wiped her sleeve across her eyes and took several seconds to climb up onto her shaky legs. "What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with my job. I just need to know if this has something to do with what’s been happening to me." She blinked several times and Henry continued to stare at her. "I don’t know what game you’re playing, or what you think this will accomplish, but if you won’t let me have my life back, you might as well kill me now."

Henry stepped back as the woman lunged at him, grasping for the box. "Settle down. I don’t have any control over your life. I just need this so I can get my wife back. Because of you, she thinks I’m some kind of lunatic. Hell, I pulled a gun on a friend of hers. I need for her to know what happened."

"Why do you think I could make you pull a gun? I’m not making you hold the one you have now."

He looked at the weapon in his hand and laughed at the irony. The previous gun was a solid embodiment of the forced insanity. This one was the key to his return.

"No. This time I need it. Then, it had nothing to do with me."

Henry could feel the assured calm of the past few days begin to fade. He was certain he had done all the right things, and his ultimate success was close at hand. He wouldn’t back down now because of this woman.

"You put that voice in my head. You made me want to kill. You told me she would die. I won’t let you wreck my life again." He aimed the gun at her.

"Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what this shit is. If it has something to do with the people who put those thoughts in my head, I want it gone." The woman pressed a finger to her head and closed her eyes.

Henry clinched his hand around the gun. He couldn’t believe the gall of the woman. He almost laughed as she tried to convince him that he was the villain and she the victim. Clearly, she had overestimated the power of the device they used on him.

"What in the hell are you talking about? You’re one of the people who use these things. You try to screw with people’s heads. You’re here with the box."

"I most certainly am not. I came here because I had to stop him.” She pointed to a dead man in the corner.

Henry had forgotten anyone else was there.

“I had to stop all this. Had to stop them. Stop them all. I hoped that woman…" she turned her head to the back of the room.

Henry looked over and saw the woman against the wall in a blood-soaked shirt. He turned back and saw the woman before him heaving, as the tears wouldn’t come from her expended ducts.

"No. No, please, no. Why?" She continued to cry.

Henry looked back and forth.

Was this woman telling the truth?

Did she really have nothing to do with the people who afflicted him?

Was she also a victim?

He looked at her shoulders, bobbing up and down with the dry tears.

Could this be a trap?

Why would they need to resort to this?

Her hands covered her eyes, and Henry could see no sign that she was acting her emotions or that her actions hid any other scheme. He stepped closer and put his arm around her. She continued to cry, and Henry held her. He didn’t know what to say. Someone she cared for was dead. He was sure that he would react the same if someone in his life were killed before his eyes. He also knew that no words would be able to console him—especially not the words from a stranger with a gun. He just held her.

After a time, her shoulders slowed, and she stood up. She turned her red, swollen eyes to him. In them, he could see her despair and her fear. He let his hands down, and held the pistol at his side. "I’m sorry. She must have meant a lot to you."

"I don’t even know. I never even knew if I could trust her, but she protected me. When I felt they would track me down and kill me to keep their secret, she took me in. And now she’s dead." There were no more tears, just sighs.

"It seems we have something in common." Henry wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t feel that the emotion and the fear from this woman could be fake. She had been through what she said, and her presence here meant that they shared a common past, and a common enemy.

"Who did this?" She asked her question through thick swallows.

"I’m not sure. Someone here must have been involved; otherwise the box couldn’t be here. If you didn’t bring it, then maybe he did." Henry pointed at the man who seemed to ignore their conversation. He just rolled on the ground, holding his hand and cursing.

"I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him before, and I don’t guess you have either." Henry shook his head. "But he acted as if he recognized us and blamed us for messing with his life. I think he’s probably a victim, just like us."

"I’m nothing like you."

Henry looked down and saw the sweaty man prop himself on his good hand and struggle to his feet.

"You bastards think that you’ve won, but you haven’t. I know about you, and I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. Sure, you could just kill me now, but then at least the suffering would end. I had one chance to get back at you, and your friend ruined it. She tried to use that damned thing on me, but I made sure that wouldn’t happen. Now I don’t have a gun anymore, but unless you want me to hunt you down, you’d better kill me now."

"I have no intention of killing anyone. And I have never tried to screw with your life." He pointed at the woman. "Me and…" he paused.

"Carolyn."

"Carolyn and I are victims, like you."

"Bullshit. She came with that bitch over there, and she tried to get inside my head."

"What are you talking about?" Carolyn said.

"I’ll show you. I’ll get answers." The angry man stomped across the floor.  “Where the hell is she?”

She was gone. Henry looked around, but there was no sign of her.

The other man was in Carolyn’s face. “You brought her here. She was with you. She was here to get that machine and use it on me again.”

Carolyn stepped toward them. "No. I don’t know what that machine is. That man over there. He’s the one who did this. These people are psychic or something. They get inside your head. Make you think things.”

“No. Not Jackson. He told me the truth.”

Henry cleared his throat. “Jackson Gray?”

“Yeah.”

“He told me to come here. Told me he’d tell me what was happening to me.”

“No. He told me you were doing this. Both of you.”

Henry stared at the man, as he appeared to be navigating through a thick fog. It was as if something that had been coloring his perception of everything, but that something was now gone. The man searched the room, startled by some of the things he saw, including the death he caused. He seemed to be waking from a dream.

Carolyn looked up from the ground. "Us? I’ve spent weeks trying to find out what was going on with me. Trying to find someone I could trust to help me out of this.”

"I’m sorry." The man walked over to Carolyn and touched her head. "I was sure that you were the ones. He told me it was you. He had pictures. Every day I looked at them and swore revenge. Why would he do that? Why?"

The man looked at Jackson’s dead body. "Oh, shit. You too." He ran across the floor and kicked the body, his shoe planting in the fractured skull. "You bastard. You wanted me to do your dirty work. These were the people like me. It was you all along. I trusted you. I helped you. What kind of monster are you. You’re lucky you’re dead, because I would rip your head off otherwise." He continued to punish the limp form.

Henry looked at them both, and knew that they shared more than an experience. They shared the violation. Their lives were wrecked and they were played as puppets even after they believed they were free. He knew now, though, that their freedom was at hand. That knowledge kept his hopes alive, and he knew it would do the same for them. He shot the pistol into the ceiling.

"What the hell?" Their reactions were in unison.

"Listen," Henry said. "What they did doesn’t matter. We’ve all been through the same shit, and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. To any of us. Or anyone else.”He stood up and extended his hand to the man. "My name is Henry."

He looked at Henry’s hand and then took it. "Simon."

"Hello, Simon. This is Carolyn." They shook hands and hugged. More tears but few words flowed in the ensuing minutes. They huddle together, sharing their pain, and thinking of their future.

When the mood settled, Henry stood up and looked them each in the eye. "Now, let’s get our lives back."