“Let’s find Anita and get out of here,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel.
They walked arm in arm from the car to where Alexis was waiting near the single metal door. She pointed to a dark wet spot on the pavement. “Blood,” she said.
“I wonder whether it was somebody trying to get out or somebody trying to get in,” Roland said, leading the way to the door.
He wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe a booby trap, maybe an ambush, maybe an avalanche of confetti and circus music and fat clowns.
The door was unlocked, more proof that Briggs was ready for them. He peeked inside the opening.
And ten years fell away in a heartbeat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Alexis glanced around the dim, cavernous interior and its clutter of broken machinery. The high fluorescent lights cast an alien glow over the chaos, accenting the shadows beneath metal armatures, shelving, and grid work.
“It’s almost exactly the same,” she said as they navigated the main corridor. “But I don’t remember the ceiling being so high.”
Wendy dug in a pile of tractor parts and brought out a jagged length of steel pipe. She swung it in an arc before her, grunting.
“Hey, hey,” Roland said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“She’s due,” Alexis said. “She needs to take her next dose now.”
Wendy growled as if threatened, and she backed away from them, her free hand upturned in a claw. The deterioration was sudden: one moment Wendy had been twitchy and distant, and the next she was feral.
“Here, Wendy,” Roland said. “Put down the pipe and you can feel better.”
Alexis was riding the Halcyon herself, now accustomed to its dulling effect. But the Seethe still stirred restlessly beneath it, as if waiting for its chance to erupt. She wondered if the two compounds were playing a Jekyll-and-Hyde tug-of-war inside their heads.
Maybe the effect was like that suffered by a cancer-ridden Alzheimer’s patient who might emerge into awareness only long enough to realize how much pain he was in.
She kept to the shadows while Roland closed in on Wendy. “Come on, hon,” he said, in a smooth imitation of lovey-dovey talk. “Who’s my good girl?”
“Careful,” Alexis said. “I think the building has triggered some memories.”
“Thanks for the tip, Einstein,” he said. “Like we come back here and suddenly it turns into a giant game of Candyland?”
“Don’t be an asshole, Roland. I liked you better when you were flattened on Halcyon.”
Alexis knew her anger was chemically induced, but as a neurochemist, she understood that all moods were the result of fluctuations in serotonin, glutamates, and dopamine. But where all the other brain researchers were still stabbing in the dark, Sebastian Briggs must have stumbled onto something so primal and obvious that she had no room to fight it.
After all, the awareness that fear existed didn’t make it any less scary when the scalpel swept toward your eyeball or the shark fin appeared beside you in the ocean.
“You were the first one to hit her,” Wendy said to Roland, the words squeezing out between clenched teeth.
“No, no, you’re remembering it wrong,” he said. He stood in place, repeating the shout he’d uttered when they’d first entered the building. “Briggs! Anita! Is anybody here?”
Under his breath, he emitted a “Goddamn it” and turned away from Wendy. Alexis wasn’t sure whether he did it as a show of trust, but Wendy saw it as an opportunity and leapt for him.
Alexis opened her mouth to warn him, but he must have sensed Wendy’s movement-Holy hell, we’re being reduced to animals-and he spun to the side just in time to miss her downward swing of the pipe.
The momentum carried her arm forward and the pipe struck the concrete floor with a muted thunk. Wendy dropped the pipe and shook the shock from her elbow. Roland grabbed her and overpowered her, wrestling her to the floor.
“Hurry, the pill!” he said.
Alexis broke from her paralysis and yanked the vial from Wendy’s pocket, removing the last pill. She pushed it into Wendy’s mouth.
Wendy nearly bit her hand, but Alexis kept her palm pressed against her friend’s lips until Wendy chewed and swallowed. Within seconds, her body relaxed.
Alexis kept her hand in place while she glanced at the bottle. “Roland?”
“Yeah?”
“This was yours. D. Underwood.”
“A pill’s a pill,” he said, keeping his weight on Wendy. “They’re all green.”
“Briggs might have engineered specific dosage levels for each of us. That’s why we each had our own labels.”
“Who gives a shit? I’m not that interested in protocol at this point.”
“Roland,” Wendy said with a whimper.
He looked down at her. “What, babe?”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Sorry.” He helped her sit up. “You were freaking out.”
Wendy leaned forward and dry heaved, then spat. Chewed bits of medicine scattered across the floor.
Alexis glanced at the pipe, which lay about six feet to her left. Then she studied the pale angle of Roland’s neck above his collar. She could have the pipe before Roland noticed.
But the bitch Wendy deserved to die, too. She’d risked them all by not taking her medicine.
Before Alexis could make a decision, a loud clapping erupted. Sebastian Briggs stepped from behind a giant stamping machine, approaching them with the same arrogance he’d always displayed. He finished his applause and said with a smile, “My volunteers have returned.”
He’d changed little, physically. The only difference was the first hint of gray at his temples. He was dressed in chinos and a blue shirt with the top button undone, looking more like a day trader than a researcher.
“Roland and Wendy,” he said. “The happy couple reunited.”
“Where’s Anita?” Roland said.
Briggs ignored him, gazing at Alexis as if to hypnotize her. “Alexis. My star pupil. I’m hearing great things about you.”
“It should have been mine,” she said, spit flying from her lips. “It was my fucking formula and you stole it!”
“There would have been enough glory to go around, Alexis. But you had to commit that horrible, horrible atrocity.”
A warbling wail arose from somewhere in the bowels of the old factory. It resembled singing, but the sound was so forlorn and tormented that Alexis couldn’t place it at first. All her attention was on Briggs and that smirk she’d always found insufferable.
Every time he’d corrected one of her mistakes, every time he’d chided her for a theory he found outlandish, every time he leaned over her shoulder and pressed against her when he was studying her cellular images “‘Home on the Range,’” Roland said. “It’s his song. You’ve got David here, too, don’t you, you psycho son of a bitch?”
Roland tensed as if to launch himself at Briggs, but he was stopped by the researcher’s chilling words. “You need me, Roland. I have the Halcyon. The real Halcyon, not that watered-down junk you’ve been taking. Without me, you turn into psychotic animals, and we all know how that ends, right?”
Roland didn’t look convinced. Something clattered atop the assembly-line sorter to the left of them and a curved acrylic hood toppled to the concrete and cracked. A man crouched at op the machinery, his face obscured in the shadows.
