The End Came With a Kiss (22 page)

"Well, getting the body functioning again is pretty simple. We can lower the acidity, and the compound will begin to heal the flesh that was poisoned. Once the flesh is restored we should be able to get the heart pumping with a simple shock to the chest. Right now the compound is having free course in your wife's body, and the cells of her heart are probably negatively charged, specifically her sinoatrial node, which is essentially the pacemaker for the heart. All she needs is a jump start."

"Can you do the same thing with Luci's brain?" asks James, looking over at Luci who is sitting silently on her bedding.

"If the tissue of her brain is dead, then no. But if it is alive, maybe. The problem is, I don't have a way to scan her brain and see which areas are active with electricity and which ones are not."

James lifts his brows. "Well obviously they have motor skills. They must be using the cerebrum."

"The cerebrum controls a lot more than motor skills. That's the area of the brain that is responsible for problem solving, judgement, reasoning, learning and emotions. Loopers definitely aren't using the entire cerebrum."

"So finding which pieces are on and which are off is like a network of roads, but we don't have the roadmap."

"Actually," says Ashlyn pensively, "we do."

All eyes turn to her.

"The second compound was fabricated to do this to the brain. The original compound doesn't work this way. In fact," she says, crossing her hand over her chest to rub her neck, "the first is stronger than the second. That looper that attacked me outside the truck, it bit me. I thought for sure it would turn me into one of them. But the compound that was already in my system neutralized the new one."

Frustration boils in my gut. "Hold on. You said you didn't know the location of the original compound."

"No. I said both of them cause death."

"You know where the first compound is?" I say shifting in my chair. "You have a way to bring my wife and Betty and the others out of this comotosed madness and you've been sitting on it?"

"It's not like that..."

"Where is it?"

"Here," she says. "It’s been here the whole time."

"But your mother took it with her."

"Not all of it."

Reflexively my eyes scan the room in a long circuit. Why would she leave a portion of it here? Why would she give us access to a cure?

Ashlyn reads my expression. "She didn't do it on purpose. My mother thought she got all of the original compound, but when she made a count, she realized one was missing. Then she remembered seeing Betty slide one of the vials into her lab coat pocket. One of my missions was to retrieve that vial."

"It's been on Betty this whole time?"

"Assuming it’s still there."

I'm on my feet.

"Try the breast pocket first," says Ashlyn, in my wake.

Harry calls out too. "Do you need help?"

I don't respond as I grab the tranquilizer gun, climb through the decon chamber and through the outer room where Katherine sleeps. With a twist, I open the cardboard covered door between chambers and peek in.

A waft of decay stings my nostrils and tightens my stomach. Though Lau was able to clean Betty's blood off the walls and floor, it still continues to decompose on her lab coat and clothing. Fortunately, loopers don't produce blood, all they have is what's left in their veins and capillaries. Still, it's enough to create a rotting smell strong enough to cover the faint odor from the piles her dog Titan has been leaving on the newspapers in the corner.

Betty is moving about the room in some kind of work loop. She looks like a mime as she pretends to pour liquid between two beakers. I hope this is a low level process and not her main loop.

I slide in and close the door. She pays no attention to me, which is what she used to do to anyone coming or going while she worked. She was prone to engrossing herself. What will she do if I attempt to look in her coat pockets? Does she have a process for someone entering her personal space, or will she lash out?

I could shoot her with a dart and pad her down, but that might cause a significant disturbance in her loop. I'll leave that course as a last resort.

When she comes around her work table, I inch up next to her. She gives me a cursory glance and then reaches out to pick up a styrofoam cup on her other side. It was her habit to eat while she worked. Her lunch item of choice was usually a fruit cup. Lau still puts fruit in the cup, but most of the time other things. Right now she stabs black olives and pokes them in her mouth as if they are wedges of fruit while she stares at the table, pretending to read, as if there were lab notes there.

Through the spider web of cracks in the glass, I see the whole crew watching. Lau is making a motion with his hand. I assume he is trying to tell me to pull her pocket open and peek inside, like I hadn't already considered that.

I am taller than Betty by several inches. From this angle, I can see into her breast pocket. There is definitely something in there, pushing the fabric out. Will she allow me to look? I reach out slowly to test the waters. She stops moving and her eyes flit up to stare straight ahead.

My finger hooks the pocket and gently pulls outward. This prods Betty into a flutter of shallow breathing. I tilt my head and look. Stuffed, on its side at the bottom of her pocket, is a vial with a red label.

A low growl has begun. It’s been a while since I’ve heard Betty's growl. I forgot how creepy it sounds coming from her high pitched vocal chords. My hand recoils and I study her body language cautiously. Her fight-or-flight instinct is on high alert. Anything I do now could send her into full-blown attack mode.

I squeeze the dart gun in my hand and begin to lift, but a curious thought causes me to halt. "Betty," I say loudly, my voice filling the room. "Give me what you have in your breast pocket." I was her boss for five years. Does she have a process for obeying me? I've seen stranger things.

She turns rigid, and the growl fades.

"Betty," I say again. "This is Mr. Carter. Give me what you have in your breast pocket."

I flinch as she turns on me. Her hand shoots up and digs into her pocket. She lifts the vial out and hands it to me with a smile that would be breath-taking, if it were not stained in blood.

"Thank you," I say, plucking it from her fingertips. "You can get back to work."

She swivels, sets her fruit cup down, sheepishly looks over her shoulder at me, and begins to pantomime work again.

My muscles loosen, and I quietly gasp for air as I back away and make my exit. In the middle room Katherine is moving again, so I get one of the last three needles on the tray by the door and administer another dose before heading out to join the others.

Lau's hand is in my face before I can get the door to the decon chamber closed. I pull the vial from my dress shirt pocket and hand it to him.

"Is this it?" I ask.

He beams as he plucks it from my hand. "Yes. That’s P227." He scurries like a happy squirrel toward his work bench.

"Lau," I say, chasing him. "The experimental pills aren't keeping Katherine under. I need you to make something from that compound."

He comes to a stop and twists around. "How long between intervals?"

"I think we're at fifteen minutes now. The shots you gave me are almost gone."

"Almost gone? That's bad. The sedative alone should knock her out for half an hour. That means she’s building a resistance to both. I mean, that makes sense. One of the properties of this restorative compound is that it destroys foreign bodies." He walks past me and looks at Katherine sleeping in her glass prison. "At this rate, she’ll be resistant to everything I might throw at her in less than forty-eight hours. You won't even be able to put her out with the tranquilizer gun."

"That's no problem. We have the original compound."

"That compound, in its natural form, will take over forty days, and we don't even know if it will restore your wife's cognitive functioning."

"It will," says Ashlyn, climbing from her seat and coming around James. "P227 is stronger than the new compound. It will cure your wife."

Lau scowls. "You can't possibly know that."

"That looper that jumped us bit me."

"And when was that? Twenty-four hours ago? You won't start having numbness of brain for weeks."

"No. You don't understand. I could taste the venom in my skin on my lips. That is part of the alteration. P227 doesn't have a taste. So after I was bitten, I knew it was in me. But the taste is gone now."

"Gone?" The sarcasm rolls off my tongue. "In under twenty-four hours?"

Her body straightens, in defiance. "Yeah. It's gone."

How can I believe her? After she has kept the original compound hidden from us all this time? It’s clear that she is conflicted about her situation, but is she really on our side?

"You don't believe me?"

I shake my head. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," she squeaks. She looks at James. "Tell me you believe me."

"I believe you, Ashlyn," he says softly.

Her hands grip him by the neck and she draws him down into a kiss. Harry moves faster than I have ever seen him move, skirting the table and pulling James from Ashlyn’s embrace. "What are you doing?!"

Ashlyn looks like a predator as her neck stretches and her eyes zero in on mine. "How long before he tastes it in his mouth?"

"Instantly," I say, bouncing my eyes back and forth between them.

"Do you taste it, James?"

He lifts his chest, regaining his composure. "No. There's no taste."

"It's like a sweet battery acid," she says, touching her lips as if remembering. "I could feel it in the liquid of my skin. I scrubbed in the shower, I scrubbed my face and lips, but it wouldn't come off. I knew he had poisoned me. But my body fought it off. I'm telling you Ben, P227 will restore your wife."

"But we're still talking about weeks," says Lau. "Katherine has hours before she is awake permanently."

"Maybe we can bring her back to your house," says James.

"Not with that mob of angry loopers at the door."

"Maybe it will work faster because she’s already infected with the second one," offers Harry.

Lau looks annoyed by the entire conversation. "It doesn't work that way. It's not like the first compound made a little nest in there. We're talking about the resequencing of DNA. She‘s been transformed into something else. When we give her the original compound, we have to wait and hope that it will turn her into what Ashlyn is. But that isn't going to be fast."

"What if you give her a bigger dose?"

"If I give her too much, she’ll die. Unless," he says, cocking his head.

"Unless what?"

"Unless the reason large doses of P227 kills is because of an imbalance of pH in the host body. If that’s the case, I have a mixture that might work. It's still very dangerous, and it may kill her anyway."

Katherine's confused moans begin to emanate from the two-way. She's waking again.

24

I enter the chamber and pick up one of the needles, but I don't administer it. There is no telling how many chances I have left to put her to sleep. I need to buy time so Lau can come up with something. I need to see if there is any hope of getting Kate to loop here inside the isolation chamber.

She struggles against the duct tape wrapped around her chest and legs. If I'm going to have any success, I need to cut her free first. I tuck the needle into my shirt pocket and take my jackknife out of my pants pocket.

Katherine is beginning to growl now. The drugs are almost completely worn off. I cut the bindings on her ankles first. Her legs begin to kick. Then I cut through the tape binding her arms. She rips it away and starts to undulate.

For my protection, I close the knife and put it away.

With a spasm, Kate wiggles off the table and slams onto the floor. Her hands find a foundation, and her head snaps up. In her eyes I see confusion and fear. She doesn't know this place, and the unknown frightens her.

I drop to my hands and knees and start to crawl away from her, toward a metal cabinet that rests against the glass wall of the chamber. Will she adapt? Will she think I am crawling to the couch in our living room? Can she overcome what her eyes see? She has done it before, pretending to see people who aren't there, or pretending to walk in the dark. There is an element of fantasy to her processes. Can she be fooled?

Her head starts shaking and her breathing is a rapid pant. I don't think she's buying it. Not yet. I need to find something she can connect to. Something familiar. But what?

She is crawling toward me now. Still agitated. Still confused. Her movements are like those of a lioness stalking her prey. I stand on my knees and prepare myself in case she attacks. Closer she crawls, until there is a mere two feet between us. Her violent breaths set my senses on fire. A loud groan pushes out from her belly, and her frightened eyes seem to take in her surroundings. Then she lunges.