Fallen Angels, Part seven - See Daniel Run. See Daniel Kill
#7 of Fallen Angels
Chapter Six
Desmond Crane was an impressive looking man in his late forties. His hair was gray around the temples, same color as his eyes. He wore expensive shoes and a cheap shirt two sizes too small. He lives alone, I realized. _Same as me. _
"Terror!" he said, and handed me a cup of coffee, "is not rational. You don't have the time to stop and consider your options when you're seconds away from being mauled by a predator. That's when the fastest thinking, the most primitive part of your brain takes over and decides whether to stay and fight - or to run like hell."
Crane kept his lab facilities in a rented office building by the harbor, and he was giving me the grand tour like some kid showing off his toys. For a government funded project, the lab was surprisingly small.
"I don't need much," he said as we put on our lab coats. "Standard equipment for protein purification, mass spectrometry for reading the protein sequence and this here baby..." he stroked a machine holding twenty transparent vials, "-a Bioneer system for protein synthesis."
"About Dr. Gill..." I tried to steer the conversation towards Gill's involvement in the experiments. "He supplied you with sample material?"
"Material?" Crane eyed me with some suspicion. He was eager to share his ideas with someone and he was fiercely proud of his progress, but he didn't trust me enough to go into details.
"Human Brains," I replied.
The word felt foreign in my mouth. The brain was the part of my anatomy that had caused me the most grief for the past seven years. It conjures up voices, delusions, illusions and then grows confused because my mind doesn't even trust itself. But my brain has never been a physical thing to me. You can massage a sore muscle or have your dentist fix a chipped molar, but the brain stays safely locked away in its cranium. But to Crane and Gill, the brain was a physical object, something you could cut open and slice into chunks.
"He supplied you with brains."
I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth. It felt funny, as if I had scalded it on the hot coffee.
Dr. Crane stopped the lab tour and rubbed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "Ever heard of Urbach-Wiethe?"
"Sounds like a brand of expensive ice-cream."
"It's a disease that effects the amygdala. The Patients don't feel any fear.
"I could use a touch of that," I admitted.
Crane laughed. "Couldn't we all? We all have our private terrors; darkness, dentists, death! Just imagine soldiers going into battle without ever knowing fear."
"They wouldn't stop fighting until they die?" I guessed.
"Exactly!" grinned Crane. "They don't give a shit about getting wounded or killed. They laugh in the face of torture."
"Is_Urbach-Wiethe_ related to the ARF-1 in your papers?"
"You've done your homework," said Crane. "I'm impressed. We all produce the ARF-1 regulating factor in the amygdala. That's the part of our brain that makes you fight like hell, or shit your drawers. Urbach-Wiethe patients don't degrade ARF-1, so the hormone is always in their system. If the amygdala tries to raise any fear or unease, the ARF-I stops it right in its tracks. It's like a_Whack-a-mole_ game. Fear is the mole, and ARF-I is the hammer."
Crane shook a small, corked test tube that contained a few grains of white powder. "Synthetic ARF-I can replicate that effect, you know."
The _Bioneer_made a series of clicking sounds, and a pipette tip sucked up fifty microliters of liquid from a vial. A robotic arm reached across the fumehood to deliver those accurately measured droplets into another test tube.
"Notice how the fumehood is sealed closed?" Craine pointed out. "Some of the reagents I use for synthesizing ARF-1 are quite toxic. So toxic, I couldn't find any lab technicians willing to work on this project -and I have a big budget. You're looking at the only help I could get." He pointed at the metallic arm that quietly moved forwards and backwards, dutifully delivering some unspeakable reagent in a toxic environment.
"Because robots don't fear for their lives?"
"I know the sequence of ARF-I in my sleep," Crane beamed. "MGTPGQDVVCNCN..." He held up a glass vial containing a speck of white powder. "One hundred and eighty one amino acid residues - that's what it takes to kill fear dead."
"Speaking of death," I said. I'm looking into some irregularities in connection with the Gill suicide."
If Crane was surprised about me knowing of Gill's death, he sure didn't show it. Instead he gave me a friendly smile.
"It's hardly a secret that Gill provided me with sample material."
"Well," I said. "That source died out five days ago."
Crane shrugged. "I don't need human samples anymore. I've gone fully synthetic now." He waved an excited hand at the Bioneer system.
"Half a microgram of synthetic peptide and the enemy WILL know what hit them."
"ARF-I," I said and tried to sound sarcastic. "-your modern day Vera Lynn."
"Vera Lynn, huh?" Crane gave me a curious look. The reference had slipped off my tongue without a thought, and I could have kicked myself for bringing it up. I didn't want him to know Irene was helping with the investigation.
"You seem to have two vials going at the same time," I noted.
Crane flashed a proud smile.
"The Bioneer can synthesize two proteins at the same time. The other one is ARF-II."
"Wait! You mean, there's TWO of them?"
"ARF-II stimulates the amygdala reward centre," said Crane proudly. "It was MY idea to combine the two."
"So, for each kill?"
"- with each kill, the brain gets an instant reward boost. Every kill is like winning the jackpot. Every neck you snap is pure empowerment. Every headshot is an orgasm. It makes good sense to reward your men, when you think about it."
"You're creating human killing machines?"
"I prefer to call my volunteers DuraFighters - like the batteries, you know. They just keep going."
"You're insane!" I cried.
"Maybe so," smiled Crane "But I have a Ph.D diploma on my wall. Plus I'm highly paid. Can you say the same, Mr. Kent?"
The clicking noises from the Bioneer system seemed to grow louder and increasingly annoying.
"You and Gill prey on the homeless and the weak for your experiments!"
I wanted to shout at Dr. Crane, but I couldn't seem to find the energy, and my words poured out, muffled and thick like molasses.
"The weak?" Laughed Crane, "Quite the contrary." He pointed to his stomach where two shirt buttons struggled to keep a bulging belly inside. A few strands of graying hair poked out from gaps where his shirt was too tight.
"How long do you think someone like me would survive on the street? A week maybe? Two at most. Those people are homeless, not because they're weak. They survive because they're strong. They produce ARF1 like no one else, and it keeps them going. They sleep in stairwells, on the park benches, under the bridge on seventh. You wouldn't believe the amounts of active ARF-I I can isolate from the amygdala of a fifty year old hobo."
"Toldeo?" I asked.
Crane nodded. "Toledo Ike, Boxcar Jim, Rusty Weathers.... And a whole bunch of nameless donors. Gill took over the delivery at some point. He loved money, you see."
For some reason, the noises from the Bioneer didn't bother me anymore. In fact, I thought they made an interesting rhythm.
"How would you like to see my new HPLC system?" asked Crane.
I shrugged, "Sure, why not?" I followed him sluggishly through the lab, to a piece of equipment with two pumps connected to a short metallic column. I blinked at an annoying disturbance in my field of vision that looked like a small cluster of broken glass noodles stuck together. Crane kept talking about his machine and I pretended to listen, but my focus was on the strange visual disturbance. The growing clusters of tiny, broken rods began to leak oily patches that expanded into C-shapes surrounded by iridiscent, pulsating lines. I couldn't see very well.
I'm going blind?
The outer ridges of the disturbance collapsed into a pattern of multicoloured zig-zag lines the bellows of an accordion. There are two words to zig and zag, I mused as the patterns constantly changed their color.
It's fascinating.
Suddenly, my legs buckled under me, and I dropped to my knees. What little vision I had left saved me from slamming my head on the floor, but my muscles had turned to fudge. In my mind, I laughed at the irony of the situation. Every paranoid shares the same fear; the one fear that had now come true:
Desmond Crane had slipped something into my coffee.
I woke up with an annoying stinging sensation in my leg. I was outside, on the ground somewhere, dazed and sick to my stomach. I struggled to get up on all fours and felt moist grass under my palms.If I couldn't stand or fight, by God I'd crawl to a safe place on my hands and knees. The sky was dark and cloudy, but a waning full moon cast a cool glow over the grassy field.
How long had I been unconscious?
It was night, but happy people laughed somewhere off in the distance, and as my vision gradually returned I made out a series of flashing lights coming from the same direction.
I would be safe in a crowd
I crawled a few feet before I doubled over and puked. I finally recognized the place around me as the Oakfort fairground. The sound of laughing people poured from the annual spring faire.
How did I get here? I wondered, and pulled down my jeans to examine my leg. I discovered an angry red mark on my right thigh, where something had stung me. A terrible thought rushed through my mind.
I'd been injected with something.
"Have no fear, Mr. Kent," a familiar voice called out. I looked around and saw Dr Crane sitting in a car by the curb no more than twenty feet away.
"Literally." he grinned.
"What have you done to me?" I shouted at him. I was still woozy, and I struggled to stay upright while zipping my pants back up.
"I'm treating you to a rare cocktail of ARF-I and ARF-II," said Crane and snapped his fingers. "In a few minutes, all your worries will disappear like that."
"SonofaBITCH!" I took two unsteady steps towards the car.
"Go kill something for me." said Crane. "I'm sure you'll find it a rewarding experience." He started the engine and drove off, leaving me to curse at his tail lights.
Three minutes later, I conceded that Crane had been right all along. As the cloud of sedation evaporated from my mind, so did all my worries.
How am I going to pay my bills? What if I have an episode in public and make an ass out of myself? What if something bad happens to my sister Kat?
None of those everyday concerns mattered any more. I was free and without a trace of the constant worrying sensation in my stomach. I could do anything and not give a damn. Normally I am uncomfortable around crowds and in loud places, unless I can find a dark corner where I can compose myself and have s smoke every ten minutes. But here I walked with newfound confidence through the balloon arch that marked the entrance to the spring faire, where happy Oakforters with pink candy-floss lips threw tennis balls at stuffed toys.
"Three balls for a buck!" shouted a carnival barker with a scrawny beard. "Tip the tower of tins and win!" He waved at me with a pasty hand that clutched a worn Mr. Babache juggling ball. I slipped him a dollar bill and took the ball. I immediately felt the ball was loaded. It would fly in a curved arc so there was no way to hit those tins with any precision.
"Tip over that tower and the prize is all yours." The carny pointed at a large plushie that vaguely resembled Winnie the Pooh. It was a cheap and poorly made toy. Like something you find online for a fiver. Definitely neither licensed nor approved by Disney.
I turned the ball over in my hand. It was too light for a precise throw, and the stuffing was uneven and lumpy.
Did that creep think I was some easy mark, a chalk-sucker, a local gazoonie?
A tidal of fury emerged from the void in my stomach where fear had once nested, and I loathed the sight of the carny.
Someone needed to teach him and his rigged-up alibi store a lesson.
I closed my eyes and tapped into the dark void within me. It was like breathing pure energy to fuel my rage. My arms bulged under my shirt and I knew I was about to become.
"Don't shift!" The voice of the General suddenly boomed out. "In your current state of mind, you might hurt someone."
"We're not here to hurt humans," Karen added. "We are allowed to kill, ONLY in self-defense."
"I'm not shifting," I growled. "I just need a teeny little breath from the abyss."
"If you shift now, you might not want to shift back," cried Karen and the General in unison.
"I'm not afraid!" I roared. "Not any more. I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of the abyss. And I'm DONE being scared of myself."
I launched the juggling ball with all my strength, and Winnie the Pooh exploded in a cloud of pink stuffing.
I slammed the two remaining balls on the counter. "Have a pair on me," I snarled. "You need them."
The carny stared at me, stupidly with his mouth open, and a warm wave of satisfaction shot through me. Hating on that guy had felt good. No, better than good; it had given me a primal, predatorial rush of intense reward, and I wanted more. A new but irresistible urge rose within me as I walked towards the Big Eli and its sugarcoated patrons;
the urge to destroy,
the urge to kill.