Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

“The prescription’s changed since then,” he said, fishing the vial from one of the pouches on his belt. “What have you taken tonight?”

“Nothing much,” she said, and her words were slurring now. “Six Valium and a couple of oxies. Couple glasses of wine.”

“We’ll fix you right up,” Scagnelli said.

“Will I forget everything again?”

“You betcha.” He twisted the lid from the vial and knelt beside the tub.

“Good, because I was starting to remember more stuff. That senator, the one who wants to run for president-”

“Burchfield.” She’d already forgotten. These Monkey House people were a mess.

Her glazed eyes were staring at the window, where a moth was thumping against the steamy glass. “I don’t know. Maybe I was in a movie with him or something.”

Bedtime for Bonzo. Every Republican president needs a monkey as a sidekick. It’s a wonder Clint Eastwood hasn’t run for the Oval Office yet. With a fucking orange monkey as VP.

“I’ll bet you two made a cute couple,” he said, shaking some pills into his hand. “A real Brangelina.”

“They said we’d forget everything,” Anita Molkesky said. “That it would all go away.”

“These will help,” he said, pushing a couple of the pills against her lips. She opened automatically and he shoved the rough leather finger of the glove in her mouth, forcing the pills against the back of her throat. Her eyes widened, and she had no choice but to swallow.

She raised a lethargic arm, smearing soap bubbles against his cheek. He fished a couple more tablets from the vial. The barbiturates contained a gram each, and one could be fatal. Even with the toxins already swirling in her bloodstream, she probably had built up quite a tolerance over the years. But someone of her weight, which he judged to be around 110, would never metabolize four grams.

She coughed and he was afraid she’d vomit, which would definitely taint her charisma. He pushed the pills against her mouth and this time she took them willingly, although her tongue acted numb and uncoordinated.

“Halcyon,” he said, squirreling the name away in his memory.

Sounds like something I should know more about, if I want to do my job right.

She was already on the ropes, sliding lower into the water, her head lolling. He was doing her a favor. The blade would have been messy and probably hurt a lot, even with all the painkillers coursing through her bloodstream. This way, she’d just drift off to a land where it was okay to kiss the guys.

He sat through two more songs by Fleetwood Mac, and he decided he didn’t like the band. Anita was right. Stevie Nicks was depressing as hell. Made you want to slash your wrists.

Anita snorted, and her breathing was uneven and shallow. Scagnelli carefully placed his gloved hand on top of her head and lowered her into the water. A few bubbles rose, creating more froth that veiled her angelic body. She gave a couple of spasms but didn’t splash him this time.

When they were done with one another, Scagnelli stood and picked up his clipboard. “We’ll have your phone working by tomorrow, Miss Molkesky,” he said. “You have yourself a good evening, and don’t hesitate to call if we can ever be of service.”

A quick search of the cottage revealed nothing significant, and her bedroom was disappointingly clean, without even a dildo under the bed. He’d been instructed to look for any strange pills or medications, but all she had were plenty of prescription meds. He took her cell phone just in case she’d stored any numbers or messages, but otherwise he left the place as he’d found it.

He let himself out and retraced his trek across the lawn. The moon was up, a curved scythe of white against the endless night. It looked sharp enough to slice a hole in the never-ending darkness and reveal whatever lay behind.

The other half of the story.

Scagnelli headed for his rental sedan and the next assignment. Unfortunately, the boss wanted Dr. Alexis Morgan alive. But a job was a job.

Alexis fired up her home computer and scrolled through the data she’d compiled on her husband.

She’d induced Mark into intermittent brain scans to “test her equipment,” joking that she couldn’t have found a cuter guinea pig, and then buried the files in a different research project.

Of course, the vector machines had multiple backups of all images, logging time and subject as well as the operator of record. She’d carefully constructed fake records so that, on the books, Mark was listed as “Donnie Davis,” a student volunteer who was one of hundreds being examined for a benign analysis of brain-wave patterns before and after exposure to certain kinds of images.

The theory was that the stimulation would trigger heavier frontal-lobe activity than usual, although Alexis was pretty sure the effects of recreational drugs, collegiate hanky-panky, and the latest trending Twitter topic offered far more stimulation. But the experiment was the perfect smokescreen for her analysis of her husband’s head.

The only question now was whether someone else had cracked into his head.

The MRI revealed hundreds of slices, a series of images that tracked across the entire brain. In “Donnie’s” images, tiny lesions were identifiable as deposits of iron left by leaking blood. Such lesions were fairly common in older people and were associated with stroke, Alzheimer’s, or certain types of risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking. His anterior cingulate cortex, an area that processed rewards and punishments, displayed minimal activity, while his amygdala, the primal emotional center of the brain, appeared overstimulated.

Scans of her own brain, conducted by her graduate assistant Haleema, revealed no such damage. However, Alexis was convinced the lesions were caused by Mark’s exposure to Seethe, the designer rage drug developed by Sebastian Briggs. The brain was such a highly individualized and unknown organ that reactions would vary widely, and until she could compare images from David, Anita, Wendy, and Roland, the other Monkey House survivors, she was shooting in the dark.

The irony was that Mark had the least exposure of all of them, yet he’d suffered the most intense long-term effects. She suspected he’d built up no tolerance, the way the original subjects had. Which made him ripe territory for unlocking both Seethe and Halcyon and finally using them for good instead of evil.

Damn, Lex. There you go with that “evil” thing. Briggs wasn’t Satan. He was just another mad scientist trying to save the world.

Might be a cautionary tale in there for you. Maybe the world doesn’t need saving.

The real records and notes wouldn’t be safe in the lab. Burchfield would never let it go. And his holy-roller sidekick Wallace Forsyth, her old nemesis from the president’s bioethics council, wouldn’t abandon a divine mission once he’d heard the trumpet sound.

Her home office didn’t have fancy equipment, but it was relatively easy to keep secure. Unlike the neurosciences labs, no one else had access. Mark didn’t even have a key, though she let him nose around in it every once in a while to avoid arousing suspicion. Ever since he’d caught her hiding the Halcyon she’d stolen from the Monkey House, she’d made an effort to stay transparent.

Not that his mistrust had eased.

Outwardly, the room had all the trappings of the after-hours home office: a desk, computer, bookshelves, filing cabinet, and a bulletin board feathered with notes. It would withstand a search by Mark, the police, and possibly even national intelligence agencies. The biggest lesson she’d learned from Briggs was you stored as much of your information in your head as you could.