CHAPTER 31

Lucien and his men were poised at the entrance to the underground laboratory where the Committee scientists had set up their surveillance monitors and computers. Right as Lucien signaled for the men to burst through the door, the final vibrations shook the building, knocking them into one another, pushing them off balance. The massive explosion followed, throwing the rogue scientist and his group of mercenaries to the floor. The power again failed and the underground hallway turned black. When the light returned, Lucien, struggling to get off the floor, scanned the group of armed men, checking to see if they were ready to proceed.

They were.

Hector was the first to hop off the floor, his AK-47 firmly in hand. He looked to his side and Lucien nodded his approval. The explosive echoes were deafening. The bullets tore apart the door, knocking it off its hinges. Hector kicked the door aside and entered the lab, followed by the rest of the men. Lucien was the last to enter. Casually stepping over the debris, Lucien strolled through the opening where the door had once been and acted as if he were there for an afternoon meeting.

The panicked scientists had cowered at the first sounds of the gunfire. They scrambled around the fallen equipment, hiding behind tables and desks, trying to shield themselves from the spray of bullets. Incredulous, Professor Whitehead looked to his colleagues.

“What is going on?”

“It’s obvious that we are under attack,” said Professor Means.

Professor Thomas rushed to the phone and lifted it. He tapped the cradle button several times. “The phone lines are out.”

Whitehead looked at the door. “Where the hell is security?”

Professor Thomas screamed when the door exploded inward, and Hector entered, brandishing his AK-47. The rest of the gang, and then Hamid, followed him into the room.

Lucien’s entrance was a performance staged for the benefit of his former colleagues. Before he stepped through, he had holstered his weapon. His hands were clasped behind his back, giving him the appearance of a curious academic as he entered the room.

The scientists were in shock.

“Professor Gray!” one said.

Lucien was confident and calm. He slowly scanned the debris and the men in lab coats, most of them cowering at the far end of the room. Hamid, Hector, and the rest of his thugs lined the wall behind him, brandishing their weapons at the Committee scientists.

“We meet again,” said Lucien.

He walked over to a conference table in the center of the room, stepping over several fallen computer monitors, surveying a pile of documents. Filled with documents and notepads, shuffled by the earlier vibrations and the explosion, the table held the Committee’s secrets. Lucien ran his fingers across the documents and lightly touched several papers until he found what he was looking for. Without handling the document, he smiled at the scientists.

“It seems that you gentlemen are working on Ms. Einstein’s treatise.” He again smiled. “She is an Einstein, is she not?”

No one replied.

Lucien picked up the bound paper document and spent several minutes thumbing through it as the crowded room kept silent.

He looked up from the document. “It appears that you have made a few revisions to her work; perhaps not for the better.” He pointed, gesturing where the remote lab once stood. “From the sound of that massive explosion, it would appear that someone in this room has made a serious miscalculation.”

He laughed.

And his face turned cold.

“You always were a bunch of fools.”

He glared at the scientists, pointing the document at them. “Notwithstanding your incompetence, I think I’ll take this copy and compare it with my own analysis.”

He tossed the treatise back onto the table.

“Thank you for your efforts, gentlemen.”

Lucien continued to stroll around the room, picking through documents, surveying the Committee’s work.

Professor Thomas was the first to speak. “What is it you want with us?”

Lucien ignored him and focused on the others.

“Where are Blackstone and the girl?”

The scientists looked at one another. Professor Means looked at Professor Thomas and several others around the table. He wrinkled his eyebrows, signaling they should not say a word.

No one answered. But their nervous glances at one another gave away their secret.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Professor Thomas, his voice tempered by his nervousness.

Lucien smiled and nodded to Hector, who pointed his weapon at Professor Thomas.

“No, don’t!” said Thomas, his eyes fixed on the thug’s weapon.

“Yes,” said Lucien, his voice calm.

Another nod and Hector’s gun exploded.

Professor Thomas flew into the wall. The scientist tried to cover the gaping hole in his chest, writhing in pain as he slowly slid downward, his eyes desperate as his bloodied hands pushed against his chest. A wide streak of blood on the wall marked his path to the floor.

Professor Means screamed. “NO!”

“Yes,” said Lucien, smiling.

Lucien nodded to a second thug, who responded by removing a large bowie knife from his belt. Lucien scanned the room with his eyes until he rested them on Professor Whitehead.

The thug pushed through to Whitehead and grabbed the hand of the now screaming scientist.

“No, please,” said Professor Whitehead.

Lucien looked directly at Professor Means, the calmest face in the frantic room of scientists.

“Would you like me to begin removing appendages?”

Professor Means, exasperated by the violence, opened his palms and directed his outstretched hands at Lucien.

“Why are you doing this?”

Lucien smiled. “Why?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because I can, Professor Means, because I can.” His face turned dark. “AND I WANT HER. WHERE IS SHE?”

Lucien again signaled to the thug gripping the raving Professor Whitehead’s hand.

Whitehead screamed, struggling to move his hand.

“No, No, No!”

The thug held the hand flat on the table and lowered the knife. Oblivious to the thrashing scientist, the muscular thug easily held him in place and went to work. The knife drew a red line across the scientist’s index finger.

“STOP!”

Professor Means lifted his hands in surrender.

Lucien signaled to the knife-wielding thug, who lifted his knife from the scientist’s hand.

“She is gone,” said Professor Means. His voice reflected his resignation and surrender.

“Gone? Where?” said Lucien.

“Please. No more violence.”

“I am not interested in hurting anyone,” said Lucien, his voice soft and reassuring. He lifted the copy of Claudia’s treatise off the table. “All I wanted was this …and young Miss Einstein.”

His face turned red.

“Where is the girl?”

Professor Means fell into a chair, exhausted. He folded his hands in front of him and kept his head down as he spoke.

“Claudia and Professor Blackstone went up to the remote lab.” He looked up from the table at Lucien. “She went up the hill with Professor Blackstone to try and stop the chain reaction; the graduate students were pinned, unable to reach the emergency switch. Claudia and Professor Blackstone wanted to trigger the onsite-grounding switch – to kill the runaway reaction. …We were unable to do it from here.”

His voice was quiet, subdued. “Please, Lucien; …that is all we know.” Professor Means shook his head. “They may have been harmed – or maybe even killed - in that explosion.”

Lucien ignored the scientist. He casually picked up the treatise and thumbed through it, lost in thought, nodding at the sections that had been updated by the Committee’s work. He smiled, shaking his head in agreement several times. He finally closed the treatise and looked at Professor Means.

“I think you are telling the truth,” said Lucien. “For your sake, I hope she is alive.”

Professor Means was relieved that the rogue scientist believed him. He pointed at the destroyed entrance door. “They only left a few minutes ago. The explosion occurred right after they left. They probably weren’t close enough to the remote lab to be harmed. …Please, leave us.”

Lucien thought about what the scared scientist was saying, and slipped the treatise into the small of his back. He looked at Hamid, who had been watching him in silence. He pointed to the papers on the table.

“Take the computers and the rest of these documents.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The Committee scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief as Hamid and the group of thugs gathered up the computers and papers. They carted them out of the demolished laboratory. Hector and another man remained on either side of Lucien and the doorway, holding their AK-47 rifles in an upright position against their chests.

When all the computers and documents were removed, Lucien turned toward the exit, not saying a word. As he reached the doorway, Hector and the second man remained in place on either side of him.

Lucien turned to the beaten group of scientists and shook his head in disgust.

“You really are a bunch of underachievers. Let me guess, Miss Einstein was against today’s experiment, wasn’t she?”

The scientists looked at one another.

“Yes,” said Professor Whitehead, his voice shaking.

“She was concerned that the antimatter containment device was unstable, correct?”

“Yes,” said Professor Means.

“An entirely logical assumption,” said Lucien. “And you overrode this brilliant young woman’s fears in a rush to succeed.”

Lucien again shook his head in disgust and turned towards the doorway.

“Idiots.”

Lucien was almost through the door when he stopped. He did not turn, but casually tapped Hector’s shoulder and spoke.

“Kill them.”

He stepped out the doorway.

Hector and the second thug pointed their AK-47s at the group of scientists. The first blast was muted as it entered the leg of the closest scientist, Professor Means. The scientists screamed as they scrambled in circles. Professor Whitehead, struck by a bullet in the shoulder, begged “NO!” as he tripped over the still body of Professor Thomas. The two thugs punctured the room with a flurry of rapid explosions. A second bullet caught Professor Means in the stomach as he stumbled for cover. Whitehead rushed behind a desk, but the bullets penetrated the wood. His left arm exploded and separated from his body. Frantic to stop the blood from his severed arm, the panicked scientist kept screaming “PLEASE! NO!” as he covered the arterial wound with his remaining hand. A final bullet entered his head and erupted, spraying a crimson-gray pattern on the wall behind him.

Red dot patterns of blood covered all four walls.

In a last futile effort, a dying Professor Means tried to catch the portrait of Einstein as it fell to the floor and shattered the glass cover. The dying scientist lifted the portrait off the floor, his red handprint branding the exposed smile of the Nobel Prize winner right before he lost consciousness.

The remaining Committee members collapsed one by one, as they crawled in muted pain across the floor, their white lab coats turned red, soaked in blood. They struggled along, desperate, each fighting to stay their final moments of consciousness.

As the moans became silence, and satisfied that his work was complete, Hector secured the safety on his AK-47 rifle and held it in a port arms position, nodding to the man beside him.

Neither man said a word as they passed over the bloodied debris, stepping through the demolished doorway and into the hallway.