Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (27 page)

“That was for Kristin,” whispered Cestus into Kiesling’s ear before turning and moving for the exit of the helicopter, now spinning completely out of control and headed straight for the seventy-fifth floor of the US Bank Tower.

Cestus stared at the drop-off below him and leaped out into space, chuckling as he remembered this was the second time he’d jumped off of this particular building. He was in mid-fall when the Project: Hardwired helicopter smashed into the side of the world’s tenth tallest building, rotor blades shattering and shearing off as they struck its outer skin. A heartbeat filled with breaking glass and warping steel passed before the chopper’s gas tanks exploded into a fireball, destroying the four floors surrounding it in the resulting inferno. Flames eradicated all traces of the master Abraxas-Array computer and the core of Project: Hardwired.

The nightmare was over for the man known as Designate Cestus.

Nose-diving for the ground, Malcolm Weir smiled to himself and hoped the landing wouldn’t hurt quite as much this time around.

CHAPTER 22

The blistering Southern Californian sun was already heading below the horizon before Mal made it back to the Encino Hospital Medical Center to check on Zuz. His internal computer system had already supplied him with the good news on his friend’s prognosis—the surgery had gone fine and, aside from a few broken bones, a transfusion to restore two pints of blood loss, and a whole lot of sutures, Zuz was well on the road to recovery. A quick scan of the attending physician’s charts revealed the wounded man could be out of the hospital in as little as a week.

If he behaved himself, that is.

Getting more than a few strange looks at his unusual dress: he had liberated a bulky jacket and pair of latex gloves from an ambulance parked in the rear lot of the facility while its owners grabbed dinner inside—Mal strode right up to the front desk and asked to see David Zuzelo, admitting he was the patient’s younger, better looking brother when interrogated by the receptionist as to his reason for the visit.

Mal was glad when, after an intercom exchange with the nurse’s station inside, he was allowed back to see his friend. In spite of how easy it would be for him to break into Zuz’s room without being seen, Mal preferred the lower stress level of being invited in through the front door. A lot less risk of police being called and a brand new mess starting up.

He had just finished cleaning up the last mess, after all. Well, his version of “cleaning” it up, that is.

Surrounded by the smell of ammonia and powerful chemical cleaners, Mal pushed open the pale green and off-white door leading to Zuz’s bedside.

Striding over to the his prone friend, Mal marveled to himself over the incredible efficiency, and near paranoia, of his computer systems. In the matter of seconds, he was given a full run down on defensible areas of the room, diagrams of the wiring in its walls, the number of patients and their guests in the connecting room (there were only three, all with vital signs operating in the approved “safe” range), and even two possible escape routes. The first floor window facing the hospital’s large, off-street parking lot was the one designated as best for both solo or two-man egress should Zuz need quick evacuation.

Mal paused for a moment to take a good look at Zuz. The last time he’d seen his friend, when Mal left the man in the emergency room, David had been in dire shape and was losing a lot of blood.

What a difference twenty-four hours had made, even if Zuz still looked like he’d been chewed up and shat out again.

Bandages covered Zuz everywhere not hidden by the thin hospital blankets, tightly tucked under the mattress he was laying on. A cast covered the man’s right forearm and, beneath the covers, two more covered each of his shins. Miles of pale wires and fluid-filled tubes ran out of Zuz in a number of fairly uncomfortable places, including a catheter Mal wished his electronic know-it-all hadn’t so readily identified.

First thing tomorrow, thought the cyborg super-soldier, I’m going to teach my computer when to shut up.

The most interesting thing for Mal was that Zuz’s eyes were clamped shut and he was snoring at just over ninety decibels, just shy of a jackhammer pounding away. Mal was impressed by the sheer volume of the noise coming out of the single untaped nostril on Zuz’s face, and even more impressed by the fact that it was all an act and his friend, injured as he really was, was putting on a show for his benefit.

Zuz’s attempted deception was betrayed by two things: first, the passenger in the back of Mal’s brain informed him Zuz’s vital signs were normal but in an elevated state most often attributed to excitement; and, second, by the nineteen-inch television mounted on the wall opposite to the bed and showing off a live feed from the aftermath of the carnage at the US Bank Building.

“I know you’re awake, Dave,” chastised Mal, hiding his growing smile behind his disguised hand.

Lids sliding slowly over eyes more than slightly hazy from painkillers, Zuz oozed, “Oh, hey, Mal…didn’t know you were here.”

“I had to bring your car back,” Mal replied. “I got it detailed and had the valets park it for me.”

“Really?!”

“No, that piece of shit is toast,” Mal tried his best to summon a look of sincere sadness to his face, but failed miserable. “Gauss threw it at me.”

“What!!”

“I know! I was surprised there was enough metal in there for him to grab!” the faux sadness was replaced by an equally poor attempt at shock. “It was flatter than your sister’s chest the last time I saw it.”

“You’re such a dick. Do you have any idea what that will do to my insurance rates?” grumbled Zuz. “You know, if I paid them.”

A pregnant pause filled the room as the two friends stared at one another, both unsure of what to say next. So much had happened between them in less than 72 hours.

Zuz broke the silence, “You going to tell me what happened up there?”

“What do you think of my work?” Mal answered by tipping his head towards the crappy Vizio TV just past Zuz’s feet.

“It’s nuts! The government puppets in broadcast news are claiming it was the second terrorist attack on the US Bank Building this month. They’re showing the clean-up now,” Zuz’s eyes went wide at the sight of a smashed chunk of fiberglass being removed from the lobby of the building on screen. “No mention of you or Project: Hardwired. Hey, look! There’s my car!”

The two men sat and watched the wretched remains of Zuz’s old Nissan, pieces dropping off the entire time a crane carried it from the ruined front of the site of the car’s final demise.

The passenger’s side door and front tire plummeting to the scorched pavement below caused Mal to wince, but Zuz gave a more thoughtful look.

“I’m pretty sure I can buff that right out,” said Zuz from under the stark white bandages wrapped around more than a third of his skull. “Once I put in a new door, four new tires, some body work, a new paint job,” he paused, considering. “New windshield, transmission and headlights…we’ll be back to running away from mind-controlled robot assassins in no time!”

A dark cloud filtered over Mal’s face, halting his friend’s ribbing.

“Kristin is dead, Zuz. They killed her.”

“She’s dead? How? Why?”

Dropping down to his haunches, head resting on arms laying crossed on the bed at Zuz’s feet, everything came rushing out of Mal all at once. Everything that had happened to him since Zuz’s injury the day before. It all spilled out, emptying the cyborg’s heart and soul, leaving him drained.

Over the course of three days he’d lost a year of his life, the woman he loved, and his humanity. He was on the run from the United States government, who wanted nothing less than to remove his head and take back the secrets it held. Needless to say, he was an exhausted wreck.

All David Zuzelo could manage to say to comfort and reassure his friend was, “Wow. Rough day, huh?”

“You have an amazing way with words, my friend. I’m not sure Shakespeare himself could have said it better.”

“I did minor in English Lit for one semester at college, remember?” grinned Zuz, proud of himself.

Mal dragged the hard wood-framed chair beside the hydraulic recovery bed Zuz rested on and plopped down heavily into it.

“With Project: Hardwired and Gordon Kiesling down for the count, what are you going to do now that the government isn’t out looking for Designate Cestus anymore?” Zuz asked after a few seconds.

A thin line formed between Mal’s eyes as he pondered the question for a long time.

“As long as they leave me alone, I’ll just keep a low profile, maybe travel the country a bit and see what I’ve missed in the past year.”

“You could always hit the professional arm-wrestling circuit,” mused Zuz.

“That’s a bit too ‘over the top’ for me,” Mal quipped back, enjoying the badinage. It was nice not to have to worry about swarms of bionic executioners bursting into the room, armed to the teeth and with a hard on to murder him in the most excruciating of fashions.

Events of the past few days replayed themselves through Mal’s head, sobering him up.

“And if they don’t, I’ve got enough running around up here,” Mal tapped his forehead, “to find whoever “they” are and make them regret it.”

Fingers, morphed into razor-sharped talons and, faster than a human eye could register, lashed out to shred a saline bag hanging unused from the back of Zuz’s IV stand.

“I’ll show those bastards exactly what sort of killing-machine they created.”

Zuz’s eyes bulged at his friend’s matter-of-fact statement and actions, “Mal, man, you need to switch to decaf ay-sap. If you don’t, they’re going to have to replace your head when it explodes.”

“Like the dude from ‘Scanners?’ Mal smiled, trying to lighten things back up.

“Precisely!” Zuz’s enthusiastic declaration was loud enough to cause the duty nurse to peek her head in to make sure everything was OK in his room.

“Is everything OK in here, Mister Zuzelo,” Nurse Jensen asked, giving Mal the once over at least twice.

“He’s fine, just a bit over-stimulated at the moment,” Mal gave her his most charming smile. To no one’s surprise, it had little effect on the rather up-tight member of the nighttime hospital staff.

Glaring at Mal for another few seconds just so he knew she was watching him, Nurse Jensen’s head disappeared back through the door.

Continuing as if there had been no interruption, Zuz philosophized with the utmost of sincerity, “You know, I’ve always thought the Scanners series was highly underrated.”

Shaking his head and settling back in the less-than-comfortable gray-corduroy padded hospital chair, Mal smirked, “Well, except for that ‘Scanner Cop’ crap. Those movies sucked balls.”

Zuz sat straight up in his bed, nearly tearing loose the numerous wires and tubes attached to his injured body, a huge grin splitting his face.

“You know, I’ve never loved another man as much as I love you right now, Mal.”

“I’m hard not to love,” Mal chuckled.

Leaning forward, Zuz reached out to touch the top of Mal’s metal arm, reassuringly, and whispered in a conspiratorial manner, “In the back of my head, I’ve always thought ‘Scanners,’ ‘Firestarter,’ and ‘Dreamscape’ were all connected. There are numerous connections between the writers of those movies and the Stargate Project. The films were all used to help desensitize the American populace.”

“Desensitize? To what?” asked Mal, goading Zuz into a frenzy and amazed at the level to which the man seemed to speak with his hands.

“To the existence of a psychic division of the FBI. One with the federally mandated mission of keeping tabs on the thoughts and minds of US citizens,” Zuz finished with a robust, “Duh.”

“Hey, what about ‘Carrie?’ Mal yanked a pillow out from beneath the patient’s bed, jamming it down behind his head. With full knowledge of what would come next, Mal then tossed out a seemingly innocent comment, “They were both written by Stephen King and both about girls who discovered they had psychic abilities they couldn’t control?”

“Oh Em Gee!” a shriek more suited to a teen-aged ‘Twilight’ fangirl meeting Robert Pattinson than a grown man in his forties sprang from somewhere deep inside David Zuzelo. “You’re like Criss Angel, Mal…you just freaked my mind! That totally matches up with my research. Get me a laptop, I need to blog!”

Mal stretched out as much as he could in his seat and let his best friend, his only friend, ramble on long into the night. Tomorrow he’d have to deal with the consequences of his actions and whatever future he had. Tonight, though…tonight was about friendship.

*****

When Nurse Jensen woke Zuz in the morning to take blood and change his bedpan, Mal had vanished.

“Where did he go?” Zuz asked groggily, rolling over onto his side to allow Jensen to do her job.

“Who? Your strange friend?”

Zuz nodded, wincing a little as his catheter moved in a way that wasn’t agreeable to his more delicate parts.

“He left about an hour ago. Said he had to get ready for work,” her face scrunched up in distaste. “No offense, Mister Zuzelo, but that guy creeped me out. Seemed on edge, like he was hiding from something.”

Locking gazes with the medical worker, Zuz said, “He’s had a tough time. His fiancée just passed away.”

“This woman has the bedside manner of Doctor Doom,” Zuz thought to himself.

The nurse almost dropped the filled bedpan in embarrassment. “Oh.”

She avoided her patient’s blistering glare and wrapped up her work as quickly as humanly possible. Nurse Jensen was making a beeline for the door and freedom when she stopped and fumbled for something in the pocket of her scrubs.

“Before he left, your friend asked me to give this to you when you woke up this morning. It seemed important.”

Scuttling back over to Zuz in the center of the room, the nurse handed Zuz a folded scrap of paper before disappearing into the hall once more.

Zuz quickly unfolded the note. Torn from a piece of paper from a medical chart, Zuz read the clean half-cursive script Malcolm Weir had written on the back. It contained a phone number and the words: