Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

“Look, I was just a young researcher fascinated by the potential. I didn’t know what was going on. It all appeared so…legitimate.”

“Since you’re the only one who remembers Seethe, what exactly does this shit do and how can I get it out of my head?”

Alexis rubbed her mouth, face twisted in concentration as she struggled to remember. “He had an injected form back then, but it needed an amplifier. That’s why the trials were set up to shock us, to see how far over the edge we would go.”

“And then he’d give us Halcyon to float us back from la-la land without remembering a thing?”

Alexis nodded. She bit her thumbnail, tearing off a ragged piece. She spat it out and said, “Halcyon is temporary, but Seethe is permanent.”

Roland thought of all his drunken blackouts and wondered what acts he might have committed. He could have been Seething all along and never even known it. “You mean this shit’s been sleeping in our brains for ten years?”

“Briggs has probably been planning this for a long time, and he finally found the backers to help him pull it off.”

“Who are these ‘backers’?”

“I don’t know, but they must have deep resources if they can move us around like chess pieces.”

Roland picked up the closest vial and read: “D. Underwood.”

“What if I got the wrong pills?” Roland said.

What if I killed that woman in Cincinnati? I know I’m capable. Because I helped do it to Susan.

“You need to take it now, Roland,” Alexis said.

“Or else I’ll remember?” he asked.

“Yeah. It could get ugly. And we don’t know what we’ll turn into, what we might become…”

Or what we already are. Like maybe both of us are murderers and we don’t know it.

“We better tell Wendy,” he said.

“And then we find Anita.”

“No. Goddamn it, can’t you see that’s just what he wants? All his little monkeys back in their cages?”

“We have to stop him.”

“Yeah.” Roland glanced at the door as if expecting arrest just for thinking about it. “The cops are out of it, because we all have normal, happy lives now. Well, except me. And there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“I need to call Mark.”

“Mark?”

“My husband.”

“Damn. I forgot.”

“He’s with CRO Pharmaceuticals and they have connections. Maybe we can-”

“What did you say?” The red rage was simmering at the edges of his vision again, like sheets of rain building to a hurricane.

“Mark can help us.”

“CRO,” he said, half to himself. “Those initials were in Cincinnati.”

“Cincinnati? What’s in Cincinnati?”

“The last person I killed.”

She came at him then, her fingernails raised like the talons of a wildcat. “We’re not killers, goddamn it. Shut up.”

Wendy’s muffled voice grunted from the bedroom doorway, and she awkwardly ran toward them, hands bound behind her. Her shin hit the coffee table, knocking over the remaining two bottles, and she lowered her head and charged toward Roland like a missile. He fought an urge to drive his knee up into her face.

Instead, he stepped to the side and gave a small shove to her shoulder that sent her sprawling on the carpet. As she rolled over, Alexis jumped him, clinging to his back.

“Get off,” he yelled, bucking and flinging her toward the couch. She fell a little short and slammed into the armrest. She spat out a whoof and rolled away, curling into a ball.

Roland backed into a corner and crouched. Now he knew how a caged tiger felt when those maniacs with their whips and chairs closed in.

But he wasn’t going down without taking a piece of He looked down at the orange bottle, which he’d gripped so tightly that the plastic was cracked.

Take one every 4 hrs. or else.

“It’s the Seethe,” he whispered.

Then, aloud, so the two women could hear him. “It’s the Seethe!”

A neighbor banged on the wall, the urban demand for “Quiet, goddamn it,” and Roland focused on the throbbing spot where Alexis had banged the back of his head.

The pain helped him calm down. He was clammy, sweating, and hyperventilating, but he’d beaten the Seethe this time.

This time.

He gobbled down his pill and went to untie Wendy.

Sebastian Briggs was annoyed at the unwanted complication, and he was beginning to resent the hefty henchman CRO had hired for him. Kleingarten had been innovative in dosing and then inducing emotional trauma in the four subjects. But now Kleingarten had outlived his usefulness. The murder of the intruder had been the turning point.

Kleingarten stood outside over the intruder’s body as if it were a bag of garbage waiting for disposal. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“The creek,” Briggs said. “There’s a concrete drain on the far end of the property. Stuff him in there and make some crows and raccoons happy.”

“He might be a Fed. And somebody’s going to notice when he doesn’t check in.”

“That’s not your concern, Mr. Drummond,” Briggs said, maintaining the pretense of the false identity.

“Sure, it is. Your bosses hired me to protect their interests, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“My guests will be arriving soon, and we can’t afford any unwanted attention.”

Kleingarten nudged the corpse with his foot. “That’s why I’m taking care of business.”

Briggs gave an absent nod. He might as well have been talking to the brick wall of the Monkey House. He surveyed the forest that surrounded the facility. The pines had grown taller and thicker since the original trials, and tangles of vines gave the property a wild, unkempt appearance.

And just as the vegetation had run its natural course, Seethe had slowly infiltrated his subjects, twisting and growing.

Of course, the human brain was a complicated organ, and he hadn’t been as skilled and experienced ten years ago when he’d planted the chemical time bombs. Each subject could present a unique set of symptoms. But that was part of the fun, too.

Even experimental failure added to the canon of knowledge, so failure was a different type of success. Not that he expected either CRO or Senator Burchfield to be happy with that explanation, nor the increasing cast of characters that were sniffing around at the rumors.

“Okay,” Briggs said. “Once you dispose of the body, we’re done for a while.”

“I don’t know. You can manage the two women, probably, but this Roland guy seems a little unhinged.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have your final payment, and CRO will send your bonus once Halcyon is approved.”

“You’re forgetting something.”

Briggs was growing impatient. “What’s that?”

“I know where this place is,” Kleingarten said, eyes narrowing. “I’m not sure what’s going on in there, except you’re fucking with some people’s heads, and I don’t really care. But I don’t think the major players are just going to let me walk away.”

“Ah, so you need some sort of insurance policy.”

“Yeah.”

Briggs pondered the possibility of keeping Kleingarten around. It was a little after four in the afternoon, and if he’d calculated correctly, then Roland, Wendy, and Alexis should be able to find the Monkey House by dusk, about the same time they would deplete their Halcyon.

He preferred to work alone, but David Underwood had already gone wild once, and the one reliable clinical outcome of Seethe was that it achieved unexpected results. Anything might happen.

“How about this, Mr. Drummond? I have a nice payoff coming from my employers. You stay on as my personal bodyguard and I will pay you double.”