Manny began to shake, the tears streaming down the sides of his head.
“How many people have we killed, David?”
“Do you want to see?”
He didn’t. God help him, he didn’t want to see.
“I think I can show you the memories. They’re yours, too. We’re of one mind.”
“Please, don’t.”
The feeling was similar to deja vu, like suddenly remembering something that you’d known all along, but many times stronger. The memories flooded into his head all at once, overpowering him. He saw everything… Dr. Nikos… Dr. Townsend… Dr. Fletcher… please make it stop… Dr. O’Neil… Dr. Myrnowski… no more oh god there’s more… a big man with a gun… and then a smaller man, the ax chopping and chopping…
Manny threw up. He watched David throw up as well.
“How about Theena?”
“She’s in the lab, downstairs. We were going to kill her, too. But we’ve been shot a few times.”
Manny touched his chest and David let him see the shots, relive the experience. The small man, Dr. May, Albert Rothchilde…
“We should be dead.”
David agreed. “But we’re not. We can’t die. Not like before. I won’t die again like before.”
Manny had been in gym class when the assistant principal pulled him aside, gave him the news that his older brother David had killed himself at the juvenile correctional institution. The institution he’d been sent to because Manny tattled on him.
“You’re not really David. David’s dead.”
“His body, yes. But your memories keep him alive. Your guilt made him grow. And the N-Som-well, you know what a bad deal that turned out to be.”
Manny could remember his reaction to David’s death. How he became withdrawn, violent. Almost as if he was filling the void created by his brother’s absence. Manny became the one who got into trouble all the time. Trouble that continued into adulthood with, arrest after arrest.
But never murder.
Manny bitterly laughed, the action causing the pain in his chest to flare.
“I should have killed you when you asked.”
“It’s too late now.”
Manny shook his head. It wasn’t too late. The next chance he got, he was ending it.
“Won’t work, Manny. First of all, we don’t die easily. But mostly, I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it? It’s my body.”
The face reflected in the garbage can changed. At one moment, Manny was looking at David’s reflection. Then there was a shift, and he could sense that it was David who was looking at him.
“I’m in control now, Manny. You follow my will.”
Manny experienced a feeling of isolation, darkness. He tried to cry out, but he kept getting smaller and smaller, his vision dimming. His own mind was trapping him, shielding him from his own senses. He tried to scream, but nothing came out.
A moment later, he was gone.
David sat up. He could feel Manny inside him, struggling to free himself, like a tiny fly in a web.
It was a strange experience, but an understandable one. The mind was a mysterious thing, but science was demystifying it a bit more every day. David knew enough to grasp what was happening to his.
Memory is chemical. He could remember an early lecture from Dr. Nikos, talking about experiments with flatworms. They could be taught simple stimulus/response reactions, and these reactions could be passed on from Group A to Group B by feeding Group B the brains of Group A.
In his free time, of which he had a lot, he’d read about the collective unconscious, and inherited memories known as archetypes. These were common in animals. How could horses walk minutes after birth? How did salmon know to travel upstream to spawn? It was called instinct, a genetic imprint passed on to offspring. A form of inherited memory.
But it was so much more than memory. Every thought was a chemical reaction happening in the brain. Movement, speech, emotion, motor skills; these could all be removed with a scalpel or overridden by an electric probe.
Even the personality was nothing more than a complicated exchange of neurotransmitters. Drugs can alter mood and control behavior. A blow to the head could turn a nice person into a permanent jerk, and a lobotomy could tame even the most savage psychotic.
David was simply a result of complicated chemistry and brain damage. Every time he took N-Som, a residual amount stayed in his brain-a stockpile of other people’s neurotransmitters. It literally took root, changing his chemical structure, allowing Manny’s violent thoughts to grow until they’d taken over the core of his personality.
A maniac is born.
David sat up, ignoring the pain. He no longer needed thoughts of revenge to compel him to kill. The compulsion existed without logic; it was an emotional response. And David’s overriding emotion was hatred. He didn’t question it. He just went with the flow.
David got to his feet, wobbling a bit. A coughing fit brought up quite a lot of blood. He took a few tentative steps until he was sure he could trust his legs.
His ax was waiting for him, near the security desk.
Then he headed for the emergency staircase.
“A hunting we will go.”
He was just opening the front door when he saw someone walk into the lobby.
Jack Kilborn
Disturb
Special Agent Smith didn’t consider himself crooked.
He’d entered the Bureau out of college, young and full of energy. The FBI had been his dream job. The pulse- pounding training he’d gotten at Quantico promised him a career filled with thrills and shoot-outs and manhunts and TV interviews.
But real life conspired against him.
He broke his ankle tripping down a flight of stairs just one week after graduation.
Three operations later, Smith still didn’t have full use of his foot. He was assigned to the Chicago office, riding a desk. Smith had become a bureaucrat, which was a fate he’d been purposely trying to avoid when he joined the Feds in the first place.
So he pushed papers for three long years, secretly jealous of the agents around him who saw action. Agents who actually got to draw their guns on the job. He debated the pros of drinking himself to death versus the cons of eating himself to death. It was during the mayor’s holiday party, while Smith was attempting to do both, that he met Albert Rothchilde.
Smith knew from the start that he was being fleeced. Rothchilde was looking to buy a friend in the Bureau, and Smith was the perfect candidate; pathetic, angry, needy. The president of American Products pushed Smith’s buttons with the skill of a cult guru; asking questions, listening closely, offering praise and reassurance.
Rothchilde sent him Cuban cigars, expensive wine, concert tickets, high priced call girls. He invited him to the country club, took him golfing, let him use his condo in Florida for vacation. Smith was courted by Rothchilde for almost two months before the man asked him for a tiny favor-some information on organized crime that only the FBI was privy to.
Smith provided the info. Not because he felt he owed Rothchilde for his kindness, or because he was under the spell of his Svengali-like manipulation. Smith did it for a single, selfish reason; it was exciting.
Being bribed to steal FBI documents was a thrill, like being a double agent. The extra money was nice, but Smith would have done it for free. The more outrageous Rothchilde’s request, the more fun Smith had figuring out how to pull it off.
What began as simply buying information had become much more dangerous. Smith routinely sent agents out into the field to secretly run Rothchilde’s errands. Only Smith knew the true reasons behind the missions, and he’d
