Ken Douglas - Death Glitch

“ You can understand why we’re here, can’t you?” Shaffer said.

“ No, Aaron, I can’t. I told you I’d call you and you gave me your word you’d keep quiet about what happened to me.”

“ Too many people saw you in the OR. They knew you weren’t on staff and they’d heard us talking. It was only a matter of time before someone put it together.”

“ Nobody knew me.” Izzy clenched her fists. “I told you I’d be in touch, that we’d figure this thing out. Didn’t you believe me?” She had to gain his trust.

“ Everything that goes on in the OR is recorded. Like I said, it was only a matter of time before somebody figured it out.”

“ You’re in charge of the hospital. If anybody could make those tapes disappear, it’s you.”

“ Water under the bridge,” he said. “We are where we are and we’re running out of time.”

“ Oh my God, what did you do?”

“ I was worried something might happen to you. I wanted to make sure you were protected.”

“ Who did you tell? Besides your gay lapdogs, that is.”

Ackerman slapped the back of her head with an open palm.

“ Ouch.” She really was going to have to watch her mouth.

“ Don’t anger them. It won’t help you.”

“ You didn’t answer my question.” She knew if she kept at him, he’d tell her. He was a weak man. Izzy had been surprised when they’d made him CEO of the hospital. They could have done much better and they couldn’t have done much worse.

“ I had Dr. Romero call somebody he trusts on the Reno PD.”

“ So Romero knows? You told Romero? Christ, why didn’t you just call a press conference?” Romero was a good doctor, but he was a gossip.

“ That may have been a mistake on my part.”

“ Who else knows?” She had to keep at him, keep him talking, until she got a chance to make her move.

“ The young doctor who worked on you in the emergency room, the hospital lawyer.”

“ And the cops, so what you’re saying is everybody knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if the men in black are on their way as we speak.”

“ Which is why we have to get you to the hospital ASAP and run some tests. We need to figure this out before they take over.”

“ I’m not going to the hospital,” Izzy said. “They’ll lock me up, stick needles in me, run tests ad infinitum. They’ll test me to death.”

“ We won’t tell them you’re there,” Shaffer said. “That’s the beauty of it. Everybody will be out looking for you and you’ll be right under their noses. Hiding in plain sight, so to speak. We’ll figure this out and once we do, you can quietly disappear, go to Mexico or South America, someplace where they’ll never find you.”

“ And who’s going to know I’m in the hospital, besides you and tweedledum and tweedledee here?”

“ Watch it!” Ackerman said. “Wouldn’t want another slap.”

“ Aaron is that how you plan on getting me to cooperate, by letting this goon smack me around?” Damn, she wasn’t being smart. She had to think of a way to get the goons behind her to relax, to maybe come round front, so she could see them.

“ Who’s going to test me, Aaron?” Izzy said. “Who’s going to keep quiet about this?”

“ I’ve got someone I can trust.”

“ What about them?” She raised a hand, pointed over her shoulder, back at Ackerman.

“ We can be trusted.” He laughed. “The doc’s gonna take care of us.”

“ What did you promise them, Aaron, immortality?”

“ Something like that,” Ackerman said.

“ What choice did I have?” Shaffer said. “I had to get a jump on this thing.”

“ Because?” Izzy said.

“ Come on,” Shaffer said. “Somehow you’ve stumbled onto the secret of the ages. It’s worth billions. People won’t grow old. Better, old people can become young again. Think of it.”

“ Is that the kind of world you want, one where nobody dies, where everybody stays young forever?” Izzy sighed. “There’ll be a population problem pretty quick, don’t you think? Food shortages. Riots. Perhaps this is a door best not opened.”

“ Don’t be obtuse!” Shaffer said. “This isn’t going to be for everybody.”

“ You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

“ Yes, but sadly not quickly enough.” Shaffer smiled. “That’s why time is so important. We have to move before others can.”

“ And you have the advantage, because you have me.” It wasn’t a question.

“ Exactly.” He started to get up. “We need to go now.”

“ I can give you the secret.” Izzy motioned for Shaffer to sit back down. “You don’t need to run any tests. Let me go and it’s yours.”

“ I’m all ears.” Shaffer plopped back on the sofa.

“ It’s a drug.”

“ I don’t believe that.”

“ It attacks the DNA, makes it reverse itself. It takes about a week.” She didn’t have a clue how DNA worked, much less if it could be reversed, but she had to make him believe. “But you suffer through a few hours of horrible pain just before it kicks in, before the change happens.” She tried to look sincere. “I can only liken it to heroin withdrawal, only much worse.”

“ So you didn’t come up with this drug on your own?”

“ I didn’t come up with it at all.”

“ What do you mean?”

“ I was just the human guinea pig. You know, since I was dying of cancer and all. Nothing to lose and everything to gain, but frankly, after I’d seen the pain it put the monkeys through, I expected the drug to kill me.”

“ So there’s a lab, with scientists?” Shaffer looked doubtful. She hadn’t sold him yet.

“ Of course, you didn’t really think I concocted this up in my kitchen? I’m a doctor, not a scientist.”

“ So where’s the lab?”

“ In El Segundo, but it doesn’t exist anymore. There was an accident. Actually not really an accident, but there was a fire. It was on the news.”

“ I don’t remember that.”

“ The one the PETA people started, because of the animal experiments.”

“ I remember something about that,” Ackerman said. Izzy didn’t know how, because she was making the whole thing up. Power of suggestion maybe.

“ The two principles, Doctors Johnson and Swift were killed. That’s a little tidbit they kept off the news.”

“ Yeah, I didn’t hear about that,” Ackerman said.

“ And you know this how?” Shaffer said.

“ Think about it,” Izzy said.

“ I’m at a loss,” Shaffer said.

“ You were there!” Ackerman said.

“ Maybe you’re not as stupid as you seem,” Izzy said, thinking the direct opposite.

“ You’re crusin’ for another brusin’,” Ackerman said.

“ So with Johnson and Swift dead,” Izzy said, ignoring him. “I’m the only one who can recreate the drug.”

“ How did you get out?” Shaffer said.

“ The fire started in the front, I went out the back.” She sighed. “Then I took off.”

“ Why did you run?” Shaffer said.

“ Because, I’d just taken the drug and I knew word would get out if it worked and I’d be in the same fix I’m in now. You want to lock me away, take my blood, do tests, figure out how to make the Fountain of Youth drug.” She shook her head, feeling her long hair as it swished about her shoulders.

“ So the research is destroyed?” Shaffer said.

“ Not all of it.” She smiled, looked Shaffer straight in the eyes. “I have the formula. It’s complicated and I can’t make heads or tails out of it, but someone could.”

“ And for it you want?”

“ Let me go. That’s all I want. You can have it, but I walk out of here, go far away and you never come looking and you never tell anyone.”