Page 69 of Heart of Danger
Even nearly comatose, Patient Nine was rebellious, pitting his will against the chemical properties of the drug so strongly the effects were almost always vitiated.
Patient Nine’s EEGs were now so skewed as to be almost worthless.
Lee wanted to discover the hidden tripwire he had sensed watching the bonomo, but it was almost impossible given the fact that Patient Nine still somehow had reserves of willpower he was able to bring to bear.
Amazing, all things considered. But terribly unhelpful.
Lee looked him straight in the eyes, knowing that somewhere inside there was an intelligence listening and understanding, though Nine’s body was beyond his control.
Lee leaned forward, just barely, satisfied to see Nine’s eyes widen slightly. What was about to be said was important and Nine understood that.
Lee held a tablet in his left hand, tapping quickly to input instructions with his right. The Baxter sac moved slightly as the feed valve opened. A flood of 59 was heading toward Nine’s system, enough to overwhelm him.
They were beyond scientific testing now. Nine was going to be sacrificed so there was no use proceeding by increments, following the protocol of the scientific method. What was about to happen was more in the nature of art. A forcing of the situation to give Lee a sense of the power of the drug.
The clear liquid of 59 was making its way down the tiny tube. It was viscous and would take its time. Which was fine. Lee watched Nine carefully, watched his eyes and hands and feet. He could read the monitors without taking his eyes off Nine’s. Heartbeat, slow. ECG, 64 beats a minute with some extrasystolic arrhythmia. EEG showing minimal cognitive function. Hormonal levels consonant with the lack of affect of advanced dementia. So far so good.
The liquid hit the subclavian vein, started moving through Nine’s system. There would be heat, pain, soaring adrenalin levels. Soon it would be moving through the blood-brain barrier, right into the brain itself.
Ah. EEG spiking in ragged waves.
Patient Nine had given Lee endless trouble so he allowed a touch of pleasure in his words. It was useless calling Nine by his real name. Colonel Ward. The good Colonel had left his identity back with his cognitive functions a year ago. He was no longer Colonel Ward of the US military, he was a miserable and diminishedthing, barely more than an animal, only a native but low-level endemic hostility keeping a few cognitive functions alive.
But Lee hoped Nine was getting the message. He hoped it fuckinghurt.
For a second, for just the smallest possible space of time, the scientist in him dropped away and the naked human stood there. Raw and needy, desperate to fulfill his mission, desperate to make it back home to a country he’d last seen when he was seven years old. Desperate to come back a winner, a hero, the man who was going to single-handedly place China at the top of the heap for generations and generations.
And he was going to do it not by weaponry that drew blood, not by megatons of explosives, but by the force of his mind, honed and sharpened by decades of study until it was, in and of itself, the finest of weapons.
His goals were so clear he saw them daily, nightly. He saw the steps to get there, the necessary passages, the hurdles to be overcome not with violence but with knowledge.
And it seemed that what stood between him and his world-changing goal was sitting slumped and beaten in front of him. Lee had been socertainthat a man like Lucius Ward would make the perfect test subject. A man who by training and nature was a perfect soldier would turn intohisperfect soldier by the alchemy of modern biochemistry and yet, and yet…
Nine had blocked him every step of the way. Lee was a year behind schedule. Even that lump of obtuse protoplasm of Clancy was able to excoriate him, a man who to all intents and purposes was barely sentient in Lee’s book.
Colonel Ward. It was all his fault.
Well Colonel Ward was over. Usefulness gone, he was now merely an obstacle to remove. But not before making him suffer. His last thoughts on this earth would be of pain and defeat.
“Your men are here,” he hissed.
Ward—no, Nine!—blinked. The frontal cortex flickered. Nine’s face was impassive—there wasn’t enough cognitive function to fine tune the facial muscles—but the message was getting through.
“Your men have been here all along. Six survived the fire that night at the Cambridge lab. I have them, everyone except McEnroe, Ross and Ryan. You know that. They’re in hiding, on the run, accused of treason. I have no idea how they have evaded every single law enforcement agency in the country, but they can’t last forever. The rest of your team, Romero, Lundquist, Pelton—they’re here. Except they are Patients 27, 28, 29. They don’t remember their own names anyway. They’ve been here all along, right here, underground. And if you think we’ve put you through the wringer, you should see the shape they are in. Your men, the men you failed to protect.”
If this had been an old-time cartoon, Lee reflected, smoke would be coming out of Nine’s ears as his brain melted. The EEG looked like the tracing of an earthquake. It was very possible he was having subdural bleeding.
“I’m going to kill you all tomorrow. Only we don’t call it killing we call it ‘harvesting’. That’s right. As if your brains were tomatoes. Or corn.”
Every sensor showed spiking values. Heartrate 140, BP 190/130, the hypothalamus was sending massive amounts of CRH to the pituitary gland and the cortisol level rose to 1000 nmol/L, high enough to cause instant Cushing’s Syndrome.
The drug was now fully in Nine’s system and he fought wildly against the restraints, so wildly Lee straightened, a whisper of fear in his system.
Nonsense. No one could get through the restraints. Certainly not a man who’d lost half his body weight and was drugged to the gills.
Still…
The chair was bolted to the floor but it seemed to move a fraction of an inch. Nine was shaking wildly, writhing, every muscle standing out in full relief on his emaciated body, pulling, straining at his bonds.
