Freedom Incorporated (72 page)

“
Tell me the
code for your floor,” Dan demanded. He wasn’t about to let Adrian
place his mittens anywhere near the control panel.

“
Internal
65.”

Dan began pressing the
buttons. “Same drill as before. Don’t dare do anything to piss me
off.”

Adrian had no intention
of worsening his predicament. The last thing he wanted was an elite
bounty hunter tracking him for the remainder of his – likely short
– life. He was going to be careful with his disappearance, but Dan
made a living out of hunting people who’d tried to vanish, and
Adrian didn’t flatter himself into believing he could outwit a
professional.

He vanished with a pop
and Dan quickly followed, again prepared for anything. Going
through the portal was the most dangerous part. For all he knew,
Adrian could’ve been waiting to crush his skull with a fire
extinguisher. But he wasn’t. He was waiting patiently again, doing
nothing to startle his captor.

“
It’s this
way.” He waved Dan on and wound through the corridors to his
office.

Dan entered and closed
the door behind them. “Make it quick.”

“
Hang on.”
Adrian eased himself into a black-leather, executive chair and
pulled it close enough to reach his keyboard. His office was
elegant, dominated by an enormous semicircular hardwood table that
sported dozens of executive toys. He even had the obligatory set of
perpetual motion gadgets. The biggest was still moving, its spoked
metal wheels spinning due to a pair of strong magnets and clever
engineering. It’d been going since he’d started it, three months
earlier, but Dan found it offensive and knocked the wheel to the
floor.

He was in a destructive
mood.

“
I have to log
in yet.” Ten seconds felt like a terrible burden to endure. How
long would it take the damn computer to boot? And Adrian mistyped
his password on the first attempt. When he finally had access, he
launched a custom PortaNet application and entered the data
warehouse.
Not that this’ll do him any
good,
he thought smugly.
He’s screwed in the noggin if he thinks he can get in with
the SAT.

“
Here.” He
pointed at his 21-inch fractal-bacteria screen. “That’s what you
wanted.”

“
Can you add
me to the authorisation list for that portal?” Dan asked while
reading the plethora of other fields to check for anything
unexpected. He was still suspicious that Adrian might be showing
him a phoney SAT.

Adrian shook his head.
“No, not even the security team can do that – they can only reset
the entire list. The clients are the only ones with access to
maintain security records. And, to be blunt, I don’t have a fucking
clue who that would be. It’d be one of the founding members I
suppose, or someone computer-savvy in the inner sanctum, but I’m
not privy to that kind of information.”

Dan had no inkling what
he was jabbering about. “What do you mean – founding members, inner
sanctum? What kind of place is it?”

“
It’s a club.”
Adrian blew his nose and it began bleeding again. He sounded nasal
behind his handkerchief. “…after a fashion. It’s called the
Guild.”

“
And that’s
where you keep women against their will?”

Adrian nodded,
embarrassed when his stomach gurgled. He’d skipped lunch because he
was so busy preparing for his new life.

“
How many
members does this club have?” Dan pressed, wondering whether he’d
need more firepower. He already knew he’d need Simon’s help.
But maybe that’s not enough…

“
It varies.”
Adrian shrugged. “It’s busier on weekends. There are usually a
dozen or so, but I doubt there’d be more than twenty.”

Twenty?
Dan’s hopes faded; he’d relied
on there being a maximum of seven or eight. He jotted the SAT on
the same piece of paper that held Esteban’s mobile number.
Now what’m I gonna do?
he
wondered, referring to Adrian. It was a difficult question with no
simple answer. He’d already been deliberating for an hour without
progress. Two days ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. Two hours ago,
he wouldn’t have flinched.
And now? This
is a person, someone with a conscience if I’m to believe his
intention to save Jen.
But he couldn’t just
forgive and forget, and he couldn’t let him go without
punishment.
So what will I do with you,
Adrian Miller?

Adrian caught Dan’s
pensive expression and incorrectly guessed what he was thinking.
“The SAT won’t get you in. You need my help… I’m the only one with
access.”

“
No.” Dan
shook his head. “You don’t have access, your chip does.”

That sent a chill through
Adrian’s bones and he became acutely aware of the very valuable
silicon wafer wedged next to his spine.

Seeing
Adrian’s complexion pale didn’t quench Dan’s thirst for torment, it
only whetted his appetite for more. He was tempted to scare Adrian
to the point where he’d loose control of his bowels and defecate in
his pants.
But there’s time for that
later.
“I don’t need your filthy chip. You
don’t know as much as you think about portal travel.” He held up a
finger to silence Adrian’s rebuke. “But neither do I need you. So
perhaps you could tell me in 50 words or less why I shouldn’t blow
your brains out.”

Adrian stumbled over his
seemingly swollen tongue and uttered nothing more intelligent than
a slurred grunt. His second attempt was more effective: “Because
I’m an ally.”

It was true – he seemed
keen to help.

“
And I want
Jen to get out unscathed. I’m not a bad person…”

But that can
never make amends for killing Katherine.
He
wondered what his wife would think if he let one of her killers go
free.
Yes, but what would she think if I
kill him in retribution?
At these moments,
he didn’t want to believe in an afterlife, a judgemental God, or
the possibility of blackening his soul. If these things existed,
then by killing Adrian he’d go to the furnace of hell and never see
Katherine again. On the other hand, if he wanted justice he’d have
to dole it out himself. He had no evidence with which to prosecute
him, and even if he had, he knew a man of Adrian Miller’s stature
would never see the inside of a prison. He had people ready to pull
strings for him. He was
connected.

“
Do you
believe in God?”

Adrian recoiled from the
odd question. “Never gave it much thought.”

“
So think
now.” Dan sat on a corner of Adrian’s wrap-around desk and balanced
his Colt in a two-hand grip, bracing himself to pull the trigger if
the man said anything to warrant it.

But Adrian didn’t believe
Dan would actually kill him. He believed his gesture of goodwill
toward Jen had automatically transformed him into one of the ‘good
guys’. He believed his single act of humanity, which any
half-decent person would have done long ago, would act as a buffer
from Dan’s wrath. “Then no, I don’t think there’s a God.” He was
the same as everybody else, too busy to think about it and too lazy
to commit energy to finding his spirituality. The rise of Xantex
didn’t coincide with religion’s death rattle by coincidence. People
in western society were abandoning religion in droves, adding to
the flocks of listless sheep that called themselves ‘spiritual’ or,
more honestly, heathens and atheists. But without religion to
anesthetise them, people were discovering how meaningless life
could be – unless they were lucky enough to find their true calling
as Jen, Samantha and Cookie had. Antidepressants had filled the
void. But nobody – not even radical brain-chemistry professors –
had imagined the craze, which had started in the 1950s with
Imipramine, would mutate into the current trend. It was rare to
find someone that didn’t need a cocktail of prescription medication
to placate his or her brain into accepting another day of socially
inflicted hardship and struggle. Of course, it didn’t help that
people were destroying their pituitary glands by overexposure to a
deluge of harmful chemicals and electromagnetic radiation, or that
corporate-funded nutritionists had brainwashed them into believing
corporate-driven rhetoric that left them starved for nutrients. It
all added up to one conclusion – western society was doomed. It was
like a ticking bomb that every mathematical simulation said should
have detonated over a decade ago.

Dan snarled his reply,
“Then you shouldn’t fear death. You won’t have to explain to a
deity how you’re such a good person when you did something so evil
to my wife.”

The black hatred
penetrating Dan’s gaze and the tiny tremble in his hands were the
first clues Adrian recognised. His foolish notion that he wasn’t in
danger back-flipped and he faced the prospect that Dan might
actually shoot him.

It changed
everything.

He quivered in his chair
and felt overwhelmed by regret for his crimes, though not due to
any perceptible compassion for his victims or remorse for his
actions. He was sorry his actions had landed him in trouble.
“Please… don’t.”

“
Is that what
my wife said before you glued her eyes shut? Is that what she was
saying when you raped her?”

The tension quickly
eroded any sense of decorum that Adrian’s upbringing had instilled
in him and he started to sob. Tears leaked from his red-rimmed eyes
and a river of snot oozed from his hairy cavernous nostrils.
“Please don’t kill me.”

Dan watched
him cowering down the barrel of his gun, weighing his own emotions.
If he’d held any faith in the justice system, circumstances
wouldn’t have forced him to make this decision. But he knew the
system was corrupt.
So…

What to
do?

*

Saturday, September 18,
2066

17
:
34
Baltimore, USA

Jen’s headache
was only getting worse and an abdominal cramp had begun singing a
solo in the general chorus of pain rippling through her body. Two
doses of Esteban’s ‘party juice’ – as the other women called it –
and she had tremors. She wished a pharmacologist would explain to
her what sort of nightmare she should expect.
It’s not going to be pretty…
She
gritted her teeth through the next wave of gut wrenching and
pounded clenched fists against her thighs for distraction. It felt
like a hot knife was slicing through her innards. She couldn’t
remember ever experiencing more agony and was pleading for
unconsciousness. Devils with pitchforks were dancing at the edge of
her vision, snickering in delight at her torment.

Then the wave passed and
she felt euphoric from lack of pain. But, with sinking heart, she
knew it would begin again in quarter of an hour. That’d been the
recent pattern and the spasms were growing worse. Her mouth felt
parched despite the water she’d guzzled, and the nausea had
returned.

Jen was unsure which was
worse, the nightmares in her sleep or the nightmare reality had
become.

She checked
her watch.
He’s not
coming.
It was something else to add to her
growing list of reasons for being depressed.
It was just a cruel psychological game,
she realised, scolding herself for falling for their
tricks.
Why did I believe
him?
It seemed silly in hindsight.
What possible reason could he have for helping
me?
She drew a blank.
All that shit about his past…
It made
her angry.
I can’t believe I was so
trusting, so naïve!
Given the opportunity,
she’d wind the clock back and do her best to slaughter him and
escape using his microchip. Now things looked impossible. Her
muddled mind made thinking hard. When the tremors began again, she
wouldn’t even be able to hold an icepick. Even between waves her
hands were unsteady; she held them tightly in her lap to deny the
proof of her addiction. And her blood disorder threw another
variable into the mixture. Her stress hormones were far above safe
levels and had been for several days. Every additional day of
stress added to the probability that she wouldn’t live to see the
sky again.
Or the ocean.

She retreated into her
mind where she felt safe. They couldn’t touch her there.

But a furore outside
distracted her from the light meditation. She hadn’t heard any
commotion since her arrival and it seemed out of character for the
Guild so she stood and wobbled to the door.

The
disturbance came from the far end of the compound, about 50 metres
from Jen’s room. A man was shouting and a woman shrieked. Then the
man yelled at the woman to shut up and Jen heard the slap that
landed her on the floor. Jen’s face smarted in sympathy as she
staggered down the hall. It had to be something important to gather
everyone’s attention.
A
fire?
It was the first explanation her foggy
mind offered.
What will happen to the
captives? Will we burn alive?
There were no
sprinklers on the barren ceiling, only recessed down-lights.
I guess we turn to charcoal…