BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (13 page)

“Hold it!” Tony shouted. “Is that Bronson in there?”

The wide-eyed kid just nodded.

“Pull him out and give me some space.”

The kid regained his composure. “Who the hell are you?”

Tony walked over to the other side of the furnace door and growled in a voice that made the kid take a step backward. “I’m family. Open it up. Don’t make me ask again.”

 The young technician opened the thick door and pulled out the rolling platform. “My boss is not going to be happy about this.” 

“Out,” Tony snarled.

The kid hurried out of the room.

In spite of how many times he’d dealt with dead bodies, Tony still hated it. Jake’s body was charred beyond recognition. In some ways, that made it easier. Sort of. 

He pulled on latex gloves from a dispenser on the wall and dabbed a small amount of scented petroleum jelly on his upper lip. Leaning over the body, he began the morbid task of peeling away the layers of burnt skin around Jake’s neck, hopeful that he’d find the necklace in the crispy folds. 

It wasn’t there. 

He expanded his search to the chest and shoulder area. 

Nothing. 

Frustrated, the insides of his stomach turning cartwheels, he stepped back for a moment, disgusted that these grizzly remains used to be his best friend. 

Glancing at the corpse’s feet, Tony noticed something odd. The fourth and fifth toes on the right foot were missing. They must have been blown off during the explosion. But when he took a closer look, he wasn’t so sure. Other than the burnt skin, there was no sign of other trauma to the foot. Where the two toes should have been, there were two small nubs. 

Tony wasn’t a doctor, but he knew a congenital defect when he saw one. This body never had those two toes.

A flood of emotions washed over him, but the one that took control was rage. He snapped off the gloves, and pushed through the doors into the lobby. The tech was walking toward him with his manager in tow. 

Tony stopped them cold. He flashed his LAPD badge. “Don’t go into that room or touch that body until the police arrive. This is now a homicide investigation.”

He stormed out of the building, punching numbers into his cell phone. 

Where the hell was Jake?

Venice, Italy

J
ake groaned. He felt like he had a bad hangover. Again. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep in the dorm room with the children after having spent most of the day learning Dari with Ahmed.

He woke up to a pair of dark eyes staring at him. They reminded him of a king cobra ready to strike.

Flinching, he found that his ankles and wrists were held fast by fleece-lined leather buckles. He lay stripped from the waist up on a wooden exam table that was tilted up to a near vertical position. 

Just like Frankenstein’s monster. 

An IV was taped to the inside of his left elbow, and a number of electrodes were stuck in an elliptical pattern across his chest. When he turned his head, he had a sensation of similar attachments to his head. The wires led to monitoring equipment on a wire rack beside him. 

The guy standing in front of him had a cultured look about him, with a perfectly trimmed Vandyke and slicked-back dark hair. He wore a white lab coat over an expensive-looking silk shirt and tie, with pleated wool pants and a pair of alligator shoes that looked like something you would expect to see in a window on Rodeo Drive. His self-satisfied smile left no doubt that he was the man in charge. Jake hated him immediately. 

Carlo stood next to him. The memory of the confrontation in Jake’s home ripped through him. “You bastard.” 

Carlo grinned. He walked to the far corner of the room, sat down on a small hardback chair, and crossed his legs.

The small windowless room smelled of chemicals and cleaning solutions. There was a drain in the center of the tiled floor. A short hose hung under a wide stainless steel sink off to one side. Two banks of fluorescent lights hummed on the ceiling above him. A tripod-mounted video camera stood to one side, pointed at Jake’s face.

Jake strained at the straps binding his wrists. The veins in his arms bulged with the effort, but it was no use.  He wasn’t going anywhere. He studied the man in front of him. Hoping the anger in his voice would hide the fear is his gut, he said, “Who the hell are you?”

“Calm down, Mr. Bronson. You’re going to be just fine. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Luciano Battista, your host.”

Motioning to his strapped hands, Jake said, “Nice party, you freak.”

“I’m sorry for the restraints. Had you accepted Ms. Fellini’s invitation to help us willingly, I’m sure they would not have been necessary. In any case, I think we’ll have to get to know each other a little better before I’m willing to loosen your bindings. Besides, you’re an American, and unlike us Italians, you don’t really need your hands in order to carry on a conversation, do you?”  He laughed at his own joke.

So the guy wanted to talk. Fine. That was probably better than the alternative. “Yes, your pretty messenger was a tasty bit of bait, wasn’t she? Quite impressive. I never suspected that she was a conniving underworld spy until her boyfriend over there started sticking needles in me.”

“Our Francesca is something special,” Battista said. “She is certainly an indispensable part of the team. But let’s talk about you, Mr. Bronson, and your new talents. What’s happened to you is really quite incredible. It’s as though your brain has been rewired. And we should know, because we spent the past forty-eight hours examining it.”

A wave of dread rolled over Jake. While he was asleep, had they opened up his skull like they did to Ahmed? Was he “fixed” now? He rolled the back of his head from side to side against the table. There was just a small twitch of pain there from the previous small puncture wound. Nothing worse than that. 

Battista picked up a chart from the monitor rack and flipped through the pages. “Whatever happened to you by accident during your MRI is something we’ve been trying to duplicate artificially for quite a while now. And while we’ve been somewhat successful in our experiments, unlocking remarkable genius in average subjects, we still had a few bugs to work out. Until now.”

Battista’s excitement showed on his face as he continued, “You, my friend, seem to have avoided any debilitating side effects from your accident.”

Except that I’m dying, Jake thought. With all their tests they haven’t figured that out yet?

“Mr. Bronson, your brain has gone through an incredible metamorphosis. It’s as if you’ve leaped ahead a thousand years on the evolutionary scale. No, make that ten, or even a hundred thousand years. It has provided us with the missing ingredient in our research. Already our scientists are making the final modifications to our implants based on what we learned during your exam last night. You should be proud. You are the harbinger of a new super race that will quite literally change the world.”

Super race? Change the world? I’m in some deep shit.

“Okay,” Jake said. “Then I guess you don’t need me anymore, right? Why don’t you just undo these straps and let me go home. No harm, no foul.”

Battista shook his head. “Home? But this is your home now, Mr. Bronson. We have so much more to learn from you. Your old life is over. Your home is up in smoke along with your burnt body. Your friends and family think you are dead. In fact, the funeral service should have occurred this morning.”

Jake’s face went cold. This last bit of information struck him hard, making this whole nightmare way too real. The thought of his mother hearing for the second time in her life that one of her sons had died brought forth a rush of painful memories: a family summer vacation long ago when his brother died in a motorcycle accident, the look of anguish on Mom’s face when Dad hung up the pay phone at the campgrounds and said, “He’s gone.” Mom collapsing in grief, his little sister clinging to her skirt, his own desperate flight deep into the forest, running blindly until he couldn’t breathe anymore, knowing nothing would ever be the same. 

He steadied himself, lifting his head to stare at the two men in front of him. His family thought he was dead, his friends thought he was dead, and in less than a few months he really would be dead. These guys had destroyed his home and his family, and they had stolen what little time he had left in the world.

Jake buried his despair beneath an angry resolve that gripped him far more tightly than the leather cinched around his limbs. He didn’t know how yet, but he was going to make them pay. Dearly.

With his eyes closed, Jake reflected on what he had learned from POW training camp. Stay calm. Feign cooperation. Find an escape within your mind when the pain becomes unbearable. Be patient. Wait for the right opportunity.

 “Mr. Bronson, or I suppose I should call you Jake now that we’ve become acquainted, it’s time for the next stage of your examination.” Battista’s smile was Machiavellian. “I’m particularly interested in the amazing reflexes you exhibited in your neighborhood bar.” 

With a knowing glance at Carlo, Battista added, “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of my associate. And knowing his methods, I do suggest that you cooperate, if only for your own sake.”   He hesitated before leaving. “This is a soundproof room. Shout if you like. No one will hear you.” He gave a short bow and left the room.

Carlo didn’t get up from his chair right away. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag, his eyes relaxed with the influx of nicotine. He placed the cigarette within the small indentation of a square crystal ashtray on the table next to him. Reaching into the pocket of his pants, he pulled out a sleek titanium knife handle, slowly turning it over in his hand, caressing its ridged grip. A slight movement of his thumb and a wicked five-inch blade snapped into place. 

With a speed that was startling, he flicked his wrist and flung the blade at Jake’s face.

The knife turned end over end, a black shadow streaking toward Jake’s face.

Jake tucked his head and felt the brush of the blade wisp through the crown of his hair. It embedded itself deep in the table with a solid thunk.

With a satisfied grunt, Carlo unbuttoned the long sleeves of his shirt, rolling each of them up to his elbows to reveal thick forearms covered with a random zigzag pattern of scars. By the looks of it, this guy had been in more than a few knife fights. Carlo rubbed his arms against each other as if they itched. He moved to stand directly in front of Jake, his empty eyes searching, so close that Jake could smell the lingering odor of onions on his breath. He reached over and turned the camera off.

Without warning, Carlo whipped a vicious backhand across Jake’s face, the force of the blow twisting Jake’s head violently to one side. “Any smart remarks, Mr. Bronson?”

Jake tasted blood on his lips. He had barely opened his mouth to respond when another backhand flew from the opposite direction. Carlo’s ring cut into his right cheekbone, and he felt a tiny rivulet of blood running down his cheek. Carlo put the weight of his thick shoulders behind a follow-up blow to Jake’s solar plexus. Jake gasped for breath. His body instinctively tried to double over but the restraints held him tight.

Standing back to measure his work, Carlo said, “You don’t seem so fast to me. Certainly with your remarkable brain, you saw that coming, yes?”

Jake’s head buzzed. The helplessness of his situation was overwhelming. To survive this ordeal he had to ignore the pain, to draw within himself, to leave his body behind. Heaving for breath, he stared through moist eyes at the still-burning cigarette in the far corner of the room.

Carlo’s next strike went deep into Jake’s side. He groaned against the pain, but he kept his attention focused on the thin trail of smoke snaking into the air. 

In that instant of pure concentration, while the pain signals from the blow were still traveling to Jake’s brain, something happened. He felt a tingling sensation behind his forehead and the smoke from the cigarette scattered as if a blast of wind had rushed past it. The glass ashtray twisted a quarter-turn.

Jake questioned what his eyes had just seen. Had his thoughts actually moved an object from across the room? Carlo hit him again, but the pain belonged to someone else. Jake kept his mind on the ashtray, pushing at it, consciously trying to make it move again. The tingling sensation in his forehead returned, and the ashtray slid off the table and clattered to the tiled floor. Amazingly, the thick Italian crystal didn’t shatter.

Carlo stopped mid-swing and looked back at the ashtray lying upside down on the floor, the burning cigarette rolling to a stop nearby. He glanced quickly back at Jake, confused. He moved across the room and replaced the ashtray on the table. Then he picked up the smoking cigarette, appraising Jake with his black eyes while he took a hit, and let the smoke linger in his open mouth before drawing it into his lungs. He crushed the butt into the crystal with a smoke-stained finger.

When he returned, he yanked the knife out of the table over Jake’s head, holding the blade in front of Jake’s face, slowly moving it in front of one eye and then the other, the tip only a flinch away from blinding Jake forever. It was a symmetrical, tactical fighting knife; its twin stainless steel edges shimmered in stark contrast to the black-anodized meat of the blade. The edges appeared scalpel-sharp.