Chaingang

“When are you planning to do the surgery?'

“Very soon. One more test with the Alpha Group II drug, and we'll bring in the brain implant team from Walter Reed.'

“Umm.'

“The new drug has been remarkable so far. In fact—” he couldn't help but smile—'there's a curious side effect on the subject. It almost renders him—dare I say it—normal for brief periods following the IVs!'

“Outstanding.'

“Yes,” the doctor agreed.

They'd come to him nearly a quarter century ago, when he'd been a young doctor with a brilliant future, and they'd challenged him to give them unstoppable killers. He'd put his career on the line for the mysterious agency USMACVSAUCOG, working with his phenomenal find—a subject unlike any other. Everything he'd worked for, every program he'd managed to put in place, had brought them to this point.

He countered a few more flimsy objections, helping another witless bureaucrat to rationalize the impossible and think the unthinkable: they were building a school for covert executions, and the central program would be the study of a mass murderer unchained and allowed to kill or—perhaps—be killed.

For all the man's unknowledgeable questions, he'd learned nothing of the doctor's real agenda, nor had he learned of the secret that would, in fact, control the subject when all else failed. These components would remain as guarded as the equipment that carried and secured their conversation: the OMEGASTAR mobile tracker, which was the electrolink between the COMSEC and NEWTON SECURE systems. These were Norman's trump cards.

“We're good to go,” the man finally said, into the ultracomplex guts of the Omni DF MEGAplex Secure Tranceiver Auto-lock locator Relay unit and movement-detection monitor. Diode detectors buzzed, freq-counters purred, high-gain preamped scanners searched, mag-field finders countersurveilled, feedback loops engaged, timesharing codes interfaced, spectrum analyzers pulsed, servomechanisms clicked, microcircuitry fed, diffused, flattened, bled into parallel bug-jammers that probed and pried and silently shrieked through subaudible white-noise generators and whose battery would not die!

He inserted a patient history form into his typewriter and typed up the brief notes on a subject always near and dear to his heart:

CONFIDENTIAL AND PRIVILEGED INFORMATION

NOT FOR DISCLOSURE TO INMATE

FACILITY: Marion

PATIENT'S D.O.B.: estimate 1950

PATIENT'S NAME: Bunkowski, Daniel Edward Flowers

REGISTER NUMBER: none/see rider

RACE: Cauc.

SEX: M

HEIGHT: 6 feet 7 1/2 inches

WEIGHT: 475

HAIR COLOR: Brn

FACIAL SCARS OR DEFORMITIES: wounds. see GSW diagram for adult head

BODILY SCARS OR DEFORMITIES: see childhood burns, wounds

HISTORY OF ALLERGIC REACTIONS: none

HEMOPHILIA CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM DRUG ABUSE DETAILS: psychotrophic drugs incl Haldol, Thorazine, Sinequan et al. Have been ineffective in trtmnt of antisocial, aggressive acts. Drugs such as sod. Pent., Amytal, the paradyzines et al ineffective (hypnosis therapy: See notes re Alpha Group II.)

FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT: nonapplicable/morbid obesity

MENTAL DYSFUNCTION: schizophrenia, paranoia

EMOTIONAL DISORDER: psychoses not resp. to med. trtmnt.

DETAILS: see rider note that patient is graded Level 7/Violent

CURRENT PROBLEM UNDER EVALUATION: require brain implant of loc. device

SERVICE: Neurosurgery—Walter Reed

CLINICAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND FINDINGS: require implant be undetectable by patient

NOT FOR DISCLOSURE TO INMATE

CHIEF MEDICAL

ADMINISTRATOR AUTHORIZATION: Norman

PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN: same

RECOMMENDED PATIENT STATUS (CHECK)

OUTPATIENT X INPATIENT

NATIONAL SECURITY RIDER

The following is SECRET AND SENSITIVE and is not to be disclosed, divulged, copied, or disseminated:

A prefrontal lobotomy is not indicated although patient cannot be controlled by drugs, due to field requirements. Patient is rendered submissive and potentially nonaggressive by IV admin. of ALPHA GROUP II. A locator implant (laser) is needed.

See attached X RAYS, LAB WORK, CULTURES, CHILDHOOD PATIENT HISTORY, SPECIAL EQUIPMENT REPORT (on implant device)

DISCLOSURE OF ANY OR ALL PARTS OF THIS DOCUMENT IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

5

WATERWORKS HILL

All afternoon it had looked like it was going to rain, and Royce Hawthorne was not about to sit in his tiny, cramped cabin like some victim, hung and blasted and hurting. He was lurching out the door, still half-ripped, but the shock waves of reality had him moving up the hill paths in the direction of The Rockhouse, as soon as he remembered the impending deal.

He'd slept until nearly 1:00 P.M., coming awake, in search of Darvon. His head was a swamp. There were too many gators and snakes loose in there. He downed two Darvon capsules, washing them down with warmish Olympia Light. By the time he popped the top on his fourth Oly, the Darvon had kicked in and he thought he might live after all.

The stash was empty. There was nothing in the pantry. He put on the shirt he'd worn the night before and extracted a small vial, which was nearly empty. He tapped coke out, straightened it into a line, and did it, rubbing his gums with residue and licking his finger.

That's when he suddenly remembered the deal, and the pressure of it snapped him into action. He had fourteen dollars in his greasy blue jeans. He found a crisp hundred in the dictionary (i-MUR-jen-see: Noun. An unforeseen set of circumstances. A pressing need). When he realized that in the entire world he owned the cabin, a