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Alex Scano leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the scars from his trek into the Maya underworld still paining him. Forcing the pain to a corner of his mind, he focused on the task at hand. One success and one... He hesitated to call it a failure, but Maddock and Bonebrake had managed to overcome the effects of the drug.
Not before they almost killed each other, though.
Scano licked his lips as he remembered watching that video. Unlike most of what the two men had seen in the cave, the combat between Maddock and Bonebrake had been real. A true test of the effectiveness of the planting of suggestions via virtual reality, whether it could make two best friends kill each other.
Scano frowned. His mistake may have been in assuming ScanoGen needed that sort of test. For all they knew, killing someone close might trigger areas of the brain not even impacted by the drug. He wasn’t going to market it as creating perfect killers. In fact, he fully expected the primary customers to be groups which were already involved in violent conflicts and just needed to eliminate the problems which arose from sometimes unreliable recruits to their causes.
He had half a dozen groups ready to pay him as soon as the product was ready. The most interesting was ISIL, which had some pretty savvy leaders despite espousing a return to the Dark Ages. They recognized that they couldn’t create much of a caliphate without managing to enlist the support of the existing residents of cities and regions they had targeted for takeover.
So he wasn’t worried about this latest setback. The only concern he had was that once again he had been unable to operate with full independence. That had proved disastrous in the Yucatan, but the only way he could continue to operate ScanoGen openly was to take on a partner with the influence to head off any sort of government attention. This partner required regular reports. He awaited the day when another of the products in the developmental pipeline would be complete and eliminate the need for the partnership.
Scano still hadn’t settled on a final name for the finished product they were testing now. Internally they were calling it Brainwash, but to Scano that word evoked images of hypnosis or someone sticking needles in the brain. His product was much more refined and reliable. Mind Bender was one of the names he was considering. He liked Reality Checker as well, but his marketing people assured him that most customers didn’t do irony.
His mind returned to the tests. As Renfield had noted, the real world test had been wildly successful. They’d gotten a highly ethical bank teller to steal a hundred grand with just a puff of vapor and a few sentences of verbal suggestion. The guy had snapped out of it within five minutes, but that was entirely predictable without the VR component.
That’s what they needed, more real world tests. Once Maddock and Bones arrived and the scientists had analyzed their brains, he’d move on to the next phase. He’d already begun some careful infiltration around the edges of two of the biggest drug gangs in New York. Soon, his staff would be able to deliver to both gangs a dose of Brainwash and the VR along with it. Then they’d step back and see what happened.
In all honesty, he’d be doing the world a service. The rival gangs would almost certainly destroy each other with single-minded purpose, unconcerned with protecting their drug business. If the world were a just place, they’d give him a medal.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come in.”
His assistant walked in. Scano went through assistants like most people changed clothes, but this one had been with him nearly six weeks. Time enough to gain some confidence and not be afraid of saying something wrong with every sentence. This one was dark-haired with mocha skin, as were most of his assistants. He never mixed business with pleasure when it came to his staff, but a man couldn’t be faulted for appreciating a certain type of beauty.
What was this one’s name? Ah, right, Amy.
She was carrying a burlap sack, and she opened it to reveal a bunch of packages of hundred dollar bills. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
Scano stood and gazed down at her. His back still ached from the nerve damage he had suffered from contracting the ancient Mayan plague known as the Shadow. Only massive blood transfusions had kept him alive. “That’s the money from the bank experiment?”
A look of mild distaste crossed his assistant’s face briefly before she banished it. “The bank robbery, yes. Frank just brought it in and told me to give it to you.”
“And you are giving it to me.”
“Yes.”
Scano knew he shouldn’t toy with her, but he couldn’t resist. “I don’t want it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t want that money. Frank shouldn’t have given it to you.”
She pondered that for a second. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Give it back.”
“Give it back to Frank?”
“No, we’re going to give it back to the bank.”
“We’re what? You robbed a bank just to give the money back?”
“We didn’t rob a bank, Amy. We conducted an experiment, and an employee of the bank stole the money and gave some to us.”
She seemed about to question that, but then stopped herself. “But why would you give the money back?”
Scano smiled and extended his hands palms up in front of him.
“Of course we’ll give it back. What kind of a man do you think I am?”