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“Start talking.”
Bones towered above the only two men who remained both alive and conscious. Unlike the other three, these men were unarmed and cowering in their seats. One had his hair tied up in a man-bun and the other had the requisite freckles to accompany his red hair. Both faces were chubby enough to suggest they were unaccustomed to any kind of physical effort.
The redhead answered first. “Um, um, we just work here!”
Bones flicked his palm at the back of the speaker’s head. “He did NOT say ‘just following orders,’ did he Maddock?”
Maddock shrugged. “Sounded like it to me.”
Bones cracked his knuckles with a glint in his eyes directed at the man. “You want to try again, or do I get to have some fun?”
The redhead swallowed. “Okay, okay. Just don’t hit me again.”
“That was a love-tap. If I’d hit you, you’d be unconscious like your friends. Final chance. What is this place?”
“It’s our lab. We’re scientists and this is where we run clinical trials for our new drug.”
“If you’re running clinical trials, where are your subjects?”
The redhead looked around with nervous eyes, then settled them on Maddock. “Well...you are.”
Maddock clenched his fists. “So all this was a medical experiment?”
Both men nodded and Man-bun spoke eagerly. “That’s right!”
“What kind of medical experiment has its researchers kidnap their test subjects?”
Man-bun blinked and looked at his colleague for help. When none was forthcoming, he adopted an expression of surprise. “Kidnapped? I had no idea—”
Bones backhanded him in the face. “That’s bullcrap.”
Redhead started to blubber, tears dripping out of his eyes. Bones shook his head. “Pathetic.”
Man-bun slumped down in his seat. “What do you want from us? Okay, of course we knew the subjects weren’t doing this willingly. And we never asked what happened to them afterwards. The guys with the guns didn’t seem too keen on questions. Neither did Mr. Scano.”
Maddock’s ears perked up. “Alex Scano? He’s dead.”
Man-bun shook his head. “He just talked to us earlier today.”
Bones said. “Like a bad penny, Maddock.”
Maddock considered this development, and as he did, a few fragments of memory bubbled to the surface.
Angel had been kidnapped... Or had she? It didn’t matter. It had all been part of an elaborate ruse to draw him and Bones into Scano’s web. Now he remembered something else. An electronically distorted voice telling him to find... Something about chaos or discord... A golden apple... No, the Golden Apple that had once belonged to the goddess Eris....
It didn’t matter. That had all been part of the ruse... An idea planted like a post-hypnotic suggestion, designed to make them more receptive to the crazy hallucinations caused by Scano’s drug.
He took a step forward and both scientists flinched. “Let’s get back on track here. What does this new drug do? If Scano’s involved, it must either kill billions of people or control them.”
Man-bun gulped again. “Well, you could certainly use it to control people. B-but that’s not what Mr. Scano said. This is going to be used to help mentally ill people.”
“How exactly does putting two former soldiers in a cave with hologram animals test a drug designed for that?”
“They weren’t holograms. All of that was in your minds.”
Bones blinked. “No way. We both saw exactly the same crap.”
Now that he was talking about science, man-bun no longer sounded terrified. “That’s because the drug works along with virtual reality technology. It’s kind of like the old subliminal messages except a thousand times more effective. Something about how the drug targets the part of the brain that connects to the optic nerves.”
“And ScanoGen developed this drug? What’s it called?”
“It’s called Brainwash. Actually, the drug occurs naturally in a plant that grows only in a remote region in Africa. It’s actually found in the spores of a fungus that grows on the plant, but nowhere else. It is extremely difficult to reproduce. Without the VR, it’s just like a weaker version of peyote. The VR is what we developed.”
This time Maddock was the one delivering the slap, terminating the smug expression on man-bun’s face. Bones gave a golf clap.
“Nice, Maddock, but you need to put more wrist into it.”
Maddock lowered his face closer to man-bun. “The name of the drug says it all. It’s hard to believe you’re stupid enough to believe that something like this will be used to help people. But maybe you are. In which case I know you’re not in charge at this facility. Who is?”
Man-bun pointed to the man whom Bones had choked into submission. Maddock and Bones had found duct tape in a cabinet in the room and bound the hands, wrists and ankles of the two incapacitated gunman.
Maddock gestured to Bones. “I think naptime is over.”
Bones went over to the supine figure and jerked him up by the front of his shirt. The man’s eyes were closed and his head lolled forward. Bones put his mouth close to the guy’s ear and started doing an abysmal imitation of the trumpet notes in Reveille. The volume of his warbling probably could have woken the gunman Maddock had shot in the head.
The man’s head jerked up and his eyes opened in panic. He twisted his head to the side and the first thing he saw was Bones’ angry face. Maddock watched him take a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened. A look of calculation appeared, which Maddock wanted to eliminate as quickly as possible.
“Bones, don’t you think this guy would be more comfortable on the floor with your knee in his back?”
“I know my knee would be more comfortable.”
Bones tossed the man on the floor and dropped to a knee. He turned the man’s head sideways and pinned it in place with one huge paw.
“We’ll start with an easy one. What’s your name?”
Maddock interjected. “Before you think about lying, consider that I’m watching your buddies over here and I have a feeling they won’t be able to avoid giving it away if you lie.”
The man on the ground grumbled. “Steve Renfield.”
Maddock said, “Good. We really only have two more questions.”
Bones looked at Maddock. “We do?”
“Well maybe three. First question is, where is Angel Bonebrake?”
“I’m having trouble talking with my face squashed into the floor.”
Maddock snarled. “Deal with it. I’m having trouble coming up with a reason not to pull the trigger on your partner’s gun.”
Renfield gritted his teeth. “Fine. We didn’t touch your precious girlfriend.”
Bones increased the pressure in the hand on Renfield’s neck. “You’re talking about my sister too, jerkoff.”
“Right, right. All we did was spoof her phone and get creative with Photoshop. I swear we never laid a hand on her.”
Renfield’s words carried the ring of truth. Maddock felt a lump forming in his throat as he realized that Angel had most likely been safe this whole time. He ruthlessly forced those feelings aside. “For your sake we better never find out any different. Next question is how do we get out of here?”
“You can get out the same way you came in. That door over next to the stairs opens to the ladder that goes up to the park.”
Maddock saw something in Renfield’s eyes. “How long is the climb?”
“About two hundred feet.”
“You expect us to believe that you guys come to work every day by hiking to a stone formation, opening a secret door, and descending a ladder in a tunnel barely big enough to fit a single person? Try again. Quickly.”
“Okay, okay.” Renfield protested. “Walk around behind the monitors and the door is there. There are half a dozen golf carts and you drive about five miles before you get to an elevator which takes you up to the surface.”
“That sounds more like it. Are we going to come out facing a bunch of guys with guns?”
“Just a single guy behind a desk. Um, he does have a gun, though.”
Bones looked at Maddock. “We can handle that.”
Maddock nodded. “Yes we can. Okay, you’re doing well. Here’s the final question. Where can I find Alex Scano?”
Renfield furiously tried to move his head, but Bones held firm. Finally he stopped struggling. “If he finds out I told you, he won’t just kill me, he’ll kill my family.”
Maddock felt a small twinge of compassion, but he didn’t have much difficulty pushing it aside when he recalled Renfield aiming a gun at them just a few minutes earlier. “I really don’t care. Bones, do you care?”
“I’ve never given less of a crap.”
“Right. So, Renfield, I guess I need to admit something to you. We don’t really like to kill people. Especially not Bones. Bones much prefers torture. In fact, the Cherokees were well-known for the creative ways they inflicted suffering.”
Maddock knew this was not entirely true, but he figured Renfield would have heard of scalping at least. Bones was nodding his head.
“This is true. In fact, I’m not sure I want you to talk right away. There’s something I’ve been wanting to try for a while now. Maddock, we’ll need to expose some of the wires in that outlet over there. Renfield, did you know that it’s possible to complete an electrical circuit through the human body? Sure you do. You work with scientists. Well, I’ve got an idea for an experiment. I’ll put the positive wire goes in one of your nostrils. The negative wire goes right on the tip of your—”
“You guys aren’t going to give up, are you?”
Maddock bent down and looked him in the eye. “I’m sure you were given information about our backgrounds. I doubt there was a single word in there about us ever giving up.”
“Fine. You win. Scano spends most of his time at the building in—”
“Hey Maddock, you gotta look at this right now.” Bones interjected. He was still holding Renfield down, but his attention had shifted fully to a video monitor off to their left.
Maddock followed Bones’ gaze. He did a double-take, not believing his eyes. Then he rushed over to the monitor for a closer look.
The image showed the rock formation where Bones had disappeared and Maddock had slid down the tunnel. The sun was bright and the picture was of high resolution. Two people were walking slowly around the formation.
One was some sort of law enforcement officer. Maddock figured probably a sheriff based on the hat. The identity of the other figure was what had made him rush to the monitor and now made his heart soar.
Angel!