The Burning Man (27 page)

Mad chaos, flailing limbs, and flying furniture filled the lounge and the skinny girl just smirked and cocked her chin toward their destination.

“Let’s go,” she said.

* * *

Annie led Olivia’s white knight out through the airlock and over to the entrance to the lab wing.

“Gimme that key,” she said.

“I got it,” the knight said with a suspicious squint.

Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.

She looked back over her shoulder toward the ward as the knight slipped the pilfered card through the lock. The door clicked open, and he motioned for her to come with him.

“Hurry,” he said.

She slipped through, and then paused with one hand on the door to Doctor Lansen’s office.

“Give me sixty seconds,” she said. “And then go through that door and get your girl.”

He nodded, so earnest and clueless. He seemed like a sweet guy, but honestly, if this was Olivia’s hero, she’d better hope for a miracle.

Annie slipped into Doctor Lansen’s office and pulled the door closed behind her. His warm, bookish smell made her feel a little dizzy, and she found herself tempted to roll around in his possessions like a cat. But she had more important things to do. Like get rid of that Olivia, once and for all.

As soon as Doctor Lansen saw how far she was willing to go for him, he’d have to realize that she was the one and only subject he would ever need. That they were meant to be together... forever.

She counted another handful of heartbeats and then smiled. An excited giggle welled up as she stretched her arms up over her head. Going up on her toes, she reached her fingers toward the highest shelf, and tipped several books down until they fell with a loud, rustling thump.

* * *

“What is this?” Olivia demanded, craning her neck around the lab. Her voice was a little slushy, a side effect of the psychic inhibitor. “What are you doing to me, you pervert?”

“Nothing perverse, I assure you,” he replied as he prepped the dosage of the genetic plasticity serum. “I’m a scientist.”

“Then why are my underpants off?” she asked. She struggled weakly against her bindings.

“Please try to remain calm,” he said. “The procedure should be over in approximately twenty minutes.”

“Procedure?” She twisted her head, and her eyes were wide. “What procedure?”

It was times like this when he really wished his research could be conducted using animal models. He was already keyed up, and the last thing he needed was a lot of irrelevant chit-chat to distract him from the process. There was so much riding on the outcome. If it failed, then all of his work up to this point would be wasted.

He took a deep breath and steadied his hands, then gripped the IV bag and injected the serum through the port. The dark, viscous, and intensely concentrated serum swirled into the lactated Ringer’s solution, and started sending tendrils down the tube.

Toward Olivia’s arm.

From somewhere he heard a stifled giggle, and then a crash coming from inside his office.

What the hell...?
No one was allowed in there—not when he wasn’t present. There were things no one else should ever see.

But he couldn’t interrupt the procedure—not at this critical juncture. So he stepped over to the door and cocked his head, then used his elbow to hit the panic button, keeping his sterile hands up and away from his body.

No response.

He hit the button again, and then stalked over to the door to the hallway, seething. He expected to hear the sound of running orderlies, or security guards coming to deal with whatever was happening in his office. But there was nothing.

He didn’t want to touch the knob, so he just banged on the door with his knee. He miscalculated, and a shot of pain ran up his leg, causing him to curse under his breath.

“Security?” he called. “Hello? Does anybody besides me actually work in this place? I’m scrubbed in here!”

More thumps and giggles from his office.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, stripping off his gloves and throwing them way too hard at the flip-top trash can. One went in, but the other bounced out and landed on the floor near his feet.

Jerking open the door, he stormed into his office, furious at this ill-timed interruption. He wasn’t all that surprised to find Annie there, sitting cross-legged on his desk in a pile of books.

Her head clearing a bit, Olivia systematically tested and retested the straps that held her down. She tried repeatedly to close her legs, but found that it was impossible.

There was less than a fraction of an inch of wiggle room in every direction. She’d never felt so infuriatingly helpless, but the thick, narcotic strangeness from the drug she’d been given made her anger feel slippery and difficult to grasp. The thick, inky substance that Doctor Lansen had injected into her IV bag was working its way down the clear coil of tubing toward the needle in her arm.

She had no idea what it was but she knew she didn’t want it in her body.

When she heard the door open behind her she felt a spike of nausea, and hollow dread.

“Liv?”

It was Kieran. He was wearing an ill-fitting, bright red jacket. The sight of him made it feel like someone was squeezing her heart inside her chest.

He ran to stand next to her.

“Get...” Her throat felt raspy and dry, her voice unwieldy. “Get this needle out of my arm.
Quick...”

He looked up at the tube, frowning. The dark liquid was less than an inch from the butterfly needle tenting the skin of her inner arm.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Now!”
Olivia hissed. “Hurry...”

“Okay, okay,” he said, wincing a little as he ripped the tube from the coupler that connected it to the needle.

It hurt like hell, causing the needle to twist beneath her skin. Once the tube was disconnected, blood started shooting out of her arm in a thin stream, while a mix of saline and that black chemical compound from the IV bag sprayed all over the floor.

“Whoa!” he said. “Here, let me just...”

He peeled off the white medical tape holding the needle down and pulled it out of her vein. Blood continued to trickle from the puncture in her skin, but at a much slower rate.

Then he swiftly unbuckled the straps that held her down, pulling her up and into his arms.

“Jesus, Liv,” he said, crushing her in a breathless embrace and then taking her face between his hands. “Are you okay? What the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They gave me some kind of drug. I think Doctor Lansen was trying to test some sort of weird serum on me.” She shuddered, and pressed her face into his neck, smelling his safe, familiar, clean-laundry smell as if it were all she had to hold on to.

“Kieran, get me out of here.”

“See, I told you,” Annie’s voice spoke from the doorway. “She brought that boy here because she doesn’t want to be with you. She doesn’t love you like I do.”

Doctor Lansen pushed her aside roughly and came charging through the door.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked Kieran.

Annie caught up and clung to Doctor Lansen’s arm, staring up at him.

“Please,” she said. “Listen to me.”

He ripped his arm out of her grip and shoved her back.

“Get away from me, you stupid girl,” he said. Then he turned back to Kieran. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“But,” Annie said, regaining her balance, “I
love
you.” Oblivious to Olivia and Kieran, she threw her arms around Doctor Lansen, trying to kiss him. He backed up into a table full of lab glassware that tumbled to the ground and shattered around their feet while the two of them struggled.

“Let’s go!” Kieran said, gripping Olivia’s arm and pulling her toward the open doorway that led to Doctor Lansen’s office.

“God
dammit!”
Lansen said, hauling off and letting Annie have it in the face.

She crumpled into a sobbing heap as Kieran shoved Olivia through the door ahead of him. From behind them in the lab, her sobs became a wail, and they heard a disturbing series of crashes. Suddenly Lansen was crying out in pain, the sound growing until it overwhelmed Annie’s wail, but Olivia didn’t look back to see what was happening.

* * *

Once they were inside Lansen’s office, Kieran slammed the door, and then put his shoulder to the bookcase beside them, motioning for Olivia to help him. Together they were able to shove it in front of the entrance to the lab.

But once they’d moved the one bookcase, it revealed the edge of a sliding panel, set into the wall.

“Is that a door?” Kieran asked.

“I have no idea,” Olivia said. “I never noticed it before.”

He pried the panel open, and behind it was a dark elevator shaft. Meanwhile, Olivia could hear pounding on the door to the lab, and thundering footsteps in the hallway. She grabbed a steel paperweight from the desk, ran over to the entrance to the hallway, and used the paperweight to smash the keypad. She hoped that would seize up the electronic lock.

Now the only way out of Doctor Lansen’s office was that dubious elevator shaft.

Olivia went over to stand beside Kieran, and together they peered into the shaft. She could barely make out the roof of an elevator car, all the way at the bottom. Harsh light leaked through a ventilation grate. To the left of the door, there was a rickety metal maintenance ladder and some kind of panel.

“Think you can climb down that ladder with your broken arm?” Kieran asked.

“I don’t exactly have a choice, do I,” Olivia replied.

“Let me go first,” he suggested. “I think I can disable the elevator from that panel there.” He cast an anxious glance at the shuddering bookshelf that was blocking the lab door. “We don’t want the car coming up under us, and then squashing us against the top of the shaft.”

“Right,” she said, hoping to sound more confident than she felt.

She watched with her heart in her throat as Kieran leaned into the yawning shaft and grabbed the top rung of the ladder. He swung his long legs onto a rung below and hung on with one hand while yanking at the wires that sprouted from the maintenance panel. Sparks shot out, making him cover his face with his forearm.

Down below, the light in the elevator car went out.

“Come on,” he said, holding a hand out for Olivia to grasp.

With only one good arm, she was unable to hold onto the edge of the door while reaching for that top rung. She just had to go for it, and hope she didn’t miss and tumble to her death.

Kieran gripped her shoulder, steadying her. She was able to grab the top rung, but then her center of balance shifted and she had no choice but to follow-up with her legs.

She crashed into him, her feet slipping so that she dangled for a brief, terrifying moment by her one hand. Kieran hooked his arm under her armpits and squeezed her broken ribs so tightly she had to bite back a scream.

“I got you!” he said, his breath coming fast. “Hang on, Liv.”

She peddled her bare feet in the air before her toes found a lower rung on the ladder. For nearly a minute, all she could do was hang on and try to get her panicked heartbeat under control.

“Are you sure you can make it?” Kieran asked, still clinging to her.

“Sure I’m sure,” Olivia rasped, gripping that rusty rung with white knuckles and trying not to look down. She didn’t want him to know how scared and wobbly she felt.

“Here,” he said, climbing down until he was holding onto the rung at her waist level. That placed his arms around her on either side. “Go down one, and then I’ll go down one, like this. That way, if you slip, I’ll catch you.”

Olivia smiled and shook her head. If she slipped again, they were probably both going to plunge to their deaths, but it was sweet of him to offer.

They’d worked their way down two floors, and it actually seemed like they were going to make it, when armed security guards appeared in the open doorway. They shouted, then started shooting at them.

“Jesus!” Kieran said, flinching and burying his face in the small of her back.

She cringed, tucking her face down and involuntarily trying to move her broken arm to cover her head as a bullet ricocheted off the concrete just inches from her cheek. She only succeeded in banging the cast against a metal rung, sending a shooting pain up to her shoulder.

They were easy targets.

Olivia’s entire body was clenched and ready for a bullet when she heard Doctor Lansen’s voice echo down the shaft.

“Are you
insane?”
he asked. “Stop! I need her alive, you idiots!”

The shots stopped. The shouting ended, and almost immediately the voices were gone altogether.

Kieran and Olivia had to get to the bottom of this shaft and fast.

“Go,” she hissed.

After what seemed like forever on the spindly ladder, they finally reached the roof of the elevator car. The only light came from high above, so Olivia and Kieran had to get down on their hands and knees and feel around the filthy, grease-caked roof before they found the maintenance hatch.

More precious time passed before they could find the pull ring and get their grubby fingers under the edges of the hatch to lift it open. Kieran sat on the lip of the opening with his legs dangling into the car, and then lowered himself down.

“Come on!” he said, his disembodied voice rising from the pitch-black interior of the car. “I’ll catch you.”

Olivia had no idea where he was, but she sat down on the edge of the opening just like he had, lowering her legs into the darkness. She felt his hands gripping her calves as she slid forward. It wasn’t until his hands slid up to grip her bare hips beneath her hospital gown that she remembered she didn’t have on any underwear.

She’d never been so happy it was dark.

She slid down into his arms until her feet touched the elevator floor. There was a thin sliver of light coming from the crack in the elevator doors, and Olivia could just barely make out the silhouette of Kieran’s shaggy head, just inches from hers. He held on for a moment, and she could feel her heart racing.