The chain clanked and the shackle tugged at his ankle.
Dr. Bradley Harmon cursed aloud. Without missing a step, he reversed course and paced in the opposite direction. At this rate, he thought bitterly, it was only a matter of a few centuries before he wore grooves in the stone floor.
He knew he never should have succumbed to Jackson’s insistence that he take a vacation! Not after successfully putting it off for twenty-five years, and especially not when he was so close to solving the Three-Two-Three problem. But Jackson had made a good argument for Bradley to use the week in Tahiti to relax and cleanse his mind, if only to examine the problem from a fresh angle when he returned. Against his better judgement, Harmon had agreed…and just look what it had gotten him into!
Snatched from a beach, trussed up, and bundled into a small plane like the helpless ingenue from some 1930s movie serial and, now, chained up in an uncomfortably dank dungeon by a madman wearing black leather.
And a mask.
He certainly couldn’t forget that grotesque mask. At night when he was huddled under the thin blanket, when his exhaustion finally triumphed over the unforgiving metal shelf that served as a bed, he had nightmares about the thing. As bad as the dreams were, there was something even creepier about coming face-to-face with Thanatos when he delivered Brad’s meals. Even worse was the way the fiend stood silently and ominously by the door, his mere presence urging Brad to work faster.
But a process like this could not be rushed. Though Thanatos was clearly no geneticist, he’d evidently taken the time to familiarize himself with the fundamentals of the science. Worse, he had a frightening, if incomplete, understanding of how the Three-Two-Three variant worked, and he was abundantly aware of what it could do.
When Thanatos informed Brad that he would be working on a more effective distribution system for the virus, the scientist had initially refused. Thanatos had accepted Bradley’s decision with surprising equanimity. He’d simply attached the chains and left him to shiver and weep in the dark chamber. Within a few hours, the shaking started, followed by feverish sweating, a terrible headache, and increasing weakness. A quick examination of his own blood under the microscope that Thanatos had thoughtfully included with the rest of the lab equipment was enough to reveal the cause. He’d been poisoned!
The compound was a fairly simple one, easily neutralized had Bradley been able to get his hands on the requisite drugs. But the chafing of the iron band around his ankle served as a constant reminder that anything he could use to ease his plight was stored in the steel cabinet at the far end of his prison. Not only was it beyond the reach of his chains, but his captor kept it securely locked whenever Harmon was left alone to work. Late at night, after he was securely bolted to his cot in the corner of the room, he dreamed about its contents. It might even contain chemicals he could use to concoct something to eat through these damnable chains and escape.
Harmon would have liked to have put up a fierce resistance. He imagined himself a hero who would laugh in the monster’s face or dash a glass beaker to smithereens at his feet with an air of defiance. But courage was not one of his virtues. With the toxins painfully eating away at him from the inside out, he’d collapsed into a pathetic heap on the floor, begging for the antidote through a mask of tears and snot. In return, he promised to do whatever Thanatos wanted.
Later, after Thanatos had allowed him to administer the serum, Brad toyed with the idea of delaying things. There were always subtle ways of botching experiments or contriving to adulterate essential elements. But Thanatos had anticipated that course of action as well. He made it quite clear to Dr. Harmon that the relief was only temporary; the poisons in his system had merely been slowed, not eliminated. Should Harmon seek to sabotage his own work, Thanatos would merely refuse to provide the medicine and allow the poisons to run their painful and ultimately deadly course.
In the meantime, Bradley resigned himself to working, eating, and sleeping in a prison that looked like the set of a Hammer horror film. Deep underground, the stone blocks sweated rank moisture and not even the overhead florescent lighting could fully dispel the gloom that crept into the corners. Though the large space heaters were working overtime to raise the temperature to comfortable levels, a persistent chill lingered in the air. And while Bradley appreciated how the lower temperature was beneficial for the cultures, the cold and the damp were playing hell with his joints.
Thanatos. The ancient Greek personification of death. How appropriate.
There was no irony in the thought, only a deep foreboding.
The original Feed the World virus had been designed to augment mundane crops to heretofore unimaginable levels. Once it was introduced into a host species of flora, the yield from a single plant, both in volume and nutritional value, was sufficient to maintain a small family for days at a time. Even better, the modified plants were self-seeding, and could produce edible fruit and vegetables even in poor soil and under harsh environmental conditions. Thanks to Jackson Greene’s vision and Bradley Harmon’s scientific genius, hunger was very close to becoming a curable condition.
Until the Three-Two-Three variant showed up.
Somehow, the genetic coding of Three-Two-Three had worked itself deeply into the Feed the World virus genotype and taken root. As a practical matter, the results were deadly. Put simply, Three-Two-Three stimulated the virus to go haywire, replicating madly within the host organism. After a few days of mild flu-like symptoms, any higher life form that consumed fruits, vegetables, or grains infected with Three-Two-Three would find itself altered on a fundamental genetic level. No longer would the host organism be able to extract or absorb nutrition from mundane crops. The host’s body would begin to cannibalize itself at an accelerated rate, desperate to leach needed nutrients from its own tissues and cells.
The only way to stop the process and avoid starvation was to continue ingesting Three-Two-Three tainted foods.
Harmon had worked for years to develop a work-around to the Three-Two-Three variant. Just when he thought he’d made a break-through, this madman in the disturbing mask had shown up to ruin everything. Worse, Thanatos had forced him to pollute his beloved Feed the World virus even more. Knowing that the antidote was his reward did not lessen the self-loathing that overtook him for what he had to do to get it.
The steel door scraped against the stone floor, sharp and discordant. Dr. Harmon cringed at the sound. Thanatos’ heels clicked briskly as he strode down the stairs and halted at the chamber’s threshold. He stood, with arms folded across his chest, and Bradley was fairly sure the fiend was conscious of the symbolism inherent in his blocking the only exit.
“You have news for me?”
There was an odd echo in the deep voice; Bradley had noticed it right away. It was an unusual enough phenomenon to pique his curiosity in spite of his fear. In the wake of their first meeting, the scientist had tried and failed to duplicate the effect with his own voice and had concluded that there was a distortion mechanism hidden within the ebony cowl that covered Thanatos’ face from forehead to upper lip.
His captor was not tall, but the skin-tight ebony costume suggested an imposing physique, one that Bradley, conscious of his own pear-shaped body, enviously ascribed to body armor, even though he was half-convinced it was natural. The cape, floor length and glistening, looked as if it was made of velvet saturated in crude oil and Brad suspected that Thanatos was well aware of the dramatic effect it had when it flared behind him. Finally, there was the grotesque mask. Of deepest obsidian, it was sculpted into the visage of a horrible monster, halfway between a skinless skull and the face of a demon from Hell.
The costume covered the fiend’s body entirely from head to toe except for a small ring of skin left bare around the eyes, doubtless so as not to obscure his vision. Even then, the flesh was covered with heavy black make-up which so distorted the color of Thanatos’ eyes that, in the unlikely event that Bradley ever escaped, he would be unable to tell the police whether they were green or blue.
Thanatos took a step toward him. Harmon tried not to cringe at his captor’s approach and failed miserably.
“Where is it?”
Wordlessly, Harmon pointed to a corked beaker resting in the cooling unit next to the microscope. Thanatos reached for it eagerly. Artificial talons decorated the end of each gloved fingertip. Though they looked sharp enough to slice open skin, Thanatos wielded them gingerly enough to handle the glass container smoothly and without the slightest scratch. He held it up to the light and admired the swirls of golden liquid sloshing against the sides.
“Excellent. Most excellent. I assume this is everything I asked for? Any attempt to deceive me would make me very unhappy. You wouldn’t want me to be unhappy, would you Doctor Harmon?”
“Please,” Bradley begged. It was a little early for his usual dose but the mere knowledge of the contaminant’s presence in his body threatened to push him over the edge into panic. “I need the antidote.”
Thanatos laughed. It was a low baritone emanating from deep within his chest, not at all the evil cackle the doctor always expected. He crossed to the steel cabinet, unlocked it, and selected a vial. To his credit, he did not taunt the doctor with it but simply handed it over. Harmon quickly prepared a syringe and sighed with relief as he depressed the plunger. In his mind’s eye, the toxins in his bloodstream fled before its potency.
“Trust is a marvelous thing, is it not? I trust you to do exactly as I say. In return, you trust me to continue letting you live. But if the new formula does not work as I expect it too…”
Those horrid, wickedly sharp talons adroitly plucked the empty needle from Brad’s fingers and dropped it on the floor. Thanatos lifted his heavy black boot and poised it over the syringe. His heel descended and crushed the glass tube to powder. It emphasized the masked man’s point in a way that no words could have done.
“I can’t…” Bradley managed to croak past a throat gone suddenly dry. “I can’t guarantee how long the virus will remain virulent outside of a host. You understand that, right?” Sweat gleamed on the doctor’s forehead; had the room been warmer, his glasses might have fogged with it.
Thanatos affected dismay. “Are you accusing me of being unfair, Doctor Harmon? You hurt my feelings!”
“I won’t be blamed…”
“Of course not.” A note of sly malice crept into his voice, belying his next words. “Besides, I believe I owe you an apology.”
“An…apology?” Whatever Harmon may have expected, this was not it.
Thanatos nodded. “I confess to having misled you. I’ve made some minor alterations to my initial plans that I thought I should keep to myself. Until now.”
“Alterations?” Bradley snapped.
That Thanatos might have dared tamper with his creation offended Bradley’s ego just enough to overcome his fear and piss him off. Feed the World had been his personal pet project for a very long time and he found it intolerable that anyone would make changes to it without telling him first.
“What kind of alterations? This is my project and I will not stand for it being tinkered with by some skull-faced flying monkey who…”
His words ceased abruptly when he realized how dangerous it was to let his anger get the better of him. Instead of being angry, the man in black seemed amused.
“You can relax, Dr. Harmon. I haven’t touched your virus itself. The changes I made were to the delivery system.”
“Nonsense,” Harmon retorted sharply. “It’s already the ideal system. Messing with it is, quite frankly, stupid. All Feed the World plants self-propagate. Introducing the virus to the original seeds is not only the best way to distribute it, it’s the only way. I may have no choice about being your prisoner but I’ll be damned if I stay quiet and listen to you insult…”
Thanatos held up his hands in mock surrender.
“Doctor, doctor…please, calm yourself. It seems I owe you another apology for giving you the wrong impression yet again.”
“I should hope so!”
“You’re quite correct. The existing delivery system is already perfect…if I intended to infect plants.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
Against his better judgement, Harmon felt his temper rise even more. Though he was a fairly weak-willed man in areas of his life, anyone who questioned his judgement in scientific matters risked a tongue lashing at the very least. Many a graduate student or lab tech had been unpleasantly surprised at the discovery that the mild-mannered, if slightly haughty, scientist was capable of throwing a tantrum like the worst opera diva if he felt his work had been compromised.
“What the hell else would you use it on? Rocks? Animals? That’s the damned problem with Three-Two-Three in the first place. The deleterious effects it has on non-vegetative…”
He stopped, thunderstruck when the reason for the work Thanatos had demanded of him finally sunk in.
“Only a madman would consider…” he whispered. Then, his eyes widened as the full impact hit him. “My God! People will die!”
“Only a few. To get what I want, I need to be able to show that I can make good on my threats.”
“With only a few centiliters of the stuff?” Harmon scoffed. “You can’t possibly hope to manufacture more.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I can. I have your notes, your formulas. You may be surprised to find out how I’ve used your own paranoia against you.”
“I am not paranoid!”
“No? How often does your staff complain about your refusal to share the bigger picture? Your eccentric secrecy has not endeared you to your colleagues, I can tell you that.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “I hate to destroy your illusions about yourself, Dr. Harmon. But I understand that, quite some time ago, someone mounted a laminated picture of you inside of one of the men’s room urinals. I’m surprised you never noticed. Then again, you’d never stoop to using the staff washroom, would you?”
“That is outrageous!”
While Harmon would be the first to agree that he was not particularly chummy with his co-workers, he was furious to hear that they mocked him behind his back. His outrage at the effrontery battled his shock and horror at the rest of what Thanatos had to say.
“It was a simple matter to arrange for one of the smaller labs at Greene Genes to unknowingly start working for me. Production labs are used to doing things in piecework. The elements I need, by themselves, are fairly harmless. It’s a case of blind men touching only one small part of the elephant and assuming they know what the entire creature looks like. As a result, I should have a nice little stockpile of the Three-Two-Three variant in my hands by sometime tomorrow.”
“Then what? You’ll just release it?”
“I’m surprised at you, Doctor Harmon. You’re not thinking things through. What good would that do? A man like me needs to prove he’s sincere before he issues his demands to the authorities. I have a small demonstration in mind. By coincidence, there are some unrelated experiments scheduled to take place on an abandoned farm a few miles outside of the city. Greene Genes believes it will be testing a new environmentally sound pesticide…”
“Jackson will stop you! You’ll never be able to trick him into it. That man would die before allowing…”
Thanatos shook his head with mock sadness.
“Since you brought the subject up, I’m afraid there’s more bad news. While you were on vacation, Jackson Greene received some sad news from his doctors.” He held up one gloved hand to forestall interruptions. “I had nothing to do with it. He’s simply ignored his health for too long and things are finally taking their toll.”
“I’ll bet you’re just thrilled with that!”
“To be honest,” Thanatos said, “I’m not. I have a great deal of admiration for that man and I will deeply regret his loss. He was, no, he is a visionary.”
“You bet your ass, he is.”
Thanatos continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Sadly, his days are numbered in, well, days. Weeks at most.”
“You think you’re so smart. But when I failed to return from Tahiti, someone would have noticed and said something.”
“Very probably,” the man in black agreed. “Unless, of course, no one realizes that you never came back.”
“Of course they’ll realize it,” Harmon said. Then he added, because he was still miffed about his photo in the urinal. “I’m sure they don’t dislike me that much.”
Thanatos affected surprise. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen the news!” He cast his eyes about the dungeon-like chamber, making a production of searching for something. “Honestly, Doctor! I know what they say about television numbing the brain, but it does have its uses. You really should get one. Some of the news programs can be quite informative.”
Without warning, he abandoned all pretense and loomed forward. Bradley Harmon quailed before him.
“The fifth-floor labs at the Greene Genes Special Projects Building were destroyed in an explosion this morning. Your senior staff isn’t fit for much except fertilizer.”
“My God…”
Bradley’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Every time he came up with a new straw to grab at, Thanatos seemed to have already wrenched it away. Unwilling to reveal to his captor how close he was to despair, the scientist straightened his back, summoned what little emotional strength he had left, and flung his next words with admirable defiance.
“What about Peter Camry? Jackson’s protégée. If no one else finds a way to stop you, he will. Unless you’ve killed him too.”
Thanatos’ laughter was even heartier than before. For an instant, Bradley thought the fiend was about to lift the mask to wipe tears from his eyes. He caught his mistake in time to avoid revealing his face.
“No, Doctor. Peter Camry is quite safe. It may surprise you to learn that he fits into my plans very nicely.”
“Bullshit! I know Peter. He’s the very soul of integrity and he shares Jackson’s vision as much as I do. If you think for one minute you can corrupt him…”
“Corrupt him? Why would I want to do that?”
Thanatos’ grin became a veritable leer.
“Rest assured, I can handle young Camry. You just let me worry about him.”