Michael Crichton - Drug of Choice

It was quite light when he reached the black sign by the road; he drove a quarter mile beyond, then pulled the car off the road and into the woods. He walked back to the road and tried to hide the tire tracks, but it was difficult, and he abandoned the attempt after a few minutes.

He returned to the car, got out his material, and crept through the woods toward Advance. It was fifteen minutes before he came to the rise in the hill, and was able to look down over the glass building and the parking lot. There were two police cars in the lot, next to the limousine. The cops were standing around, talking to a short man whom he recognized as Harvey Blood.

They seemed to be having an argument; Blood was waving his hands and speaking earnestly, while the cops stood around frowning.

He looked from the parking lot toward the building itself, his eyes going along the ground floor windows to those of his own lab. He usually left one window open, though he was not supposed to. He hated stuffy labs in the morning.

He saw the window: he was in luck. It was open.

Back at the parking lot, Blood seemed to be winning his argument. The cops shrugged and climbed into their cars, and drove off. One, however, remained behind, standing at the entrance to the building.

As the police cars left, Harvey Blood went into the building. The cop remained outside. He took his gun from his holster, checked it, and put it back, leaving the flap loose.

In the early morning light, he practiced a quick draw, then nodded to himself, apparently satisfied, and sat down on the steps.

Clark waited.

A light went on in Harvey Blood’s office.

Clark moved down the hillside.

He had planned to move stealthily; he envisioned himself sliding like a silent shadow down the hill. Instead, he stumbled and fell, rolling over and over, the heavy oxygen cylinder clanging on the rocks.

At the foot of the hill, winded, ribs aching, he paused. The sound had seemed unbearably loud: the cop at the front of the building must have heard.

He scrambled forward to his open window, pushed it wide, and looked into the lab. The lights were out and the lab was empty. He pushed his equipment through the window, easing it gently to the floor. Then he climbed up and through, dropping down and waiting.

Two minutes passed, and then the cop appeared. He was walking along the rear of the building, gun out, eyes up to the hillside.

Clark could see the track he had left coming down the hill. The long grass was trampled in an unmistakable path. He held his breath and waited.

The cop didn’t notice. He moved on.

Clark continued to wait, huddled down on the floor, his face pressed up against the cool oxygen bottle. Another three minutes passed, and the cop returned, walking back around to the front.

When he was finally gone, Clark stood. He walked around the benches of the lab, searching for something that would do the trick. He needed something that would work slowly…

The hot plate.

He paused. Perfect!

It was a simple hot plate, a single burner of the kind used by little old ladies in retirement apartments. In the lab, it was employed to heat reagents and bottles of liquid. It had a single coil which glowed red-hot in a matter of minutes.

Perfect.

He spent the next few moments cutting the wires to the coil, and hooking them into the anesthesia timer. He wasn’t sure about the connections, but there was no time to make them more secure. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was already six-fifteen.

No time.

He collected all his gear and looked around him. He needed an airtight room, now, a perfectly airtight room. His own lab would never do.

But he knew someplace that would.

Fortunately, he had kept the keychain from Sam, the night guard, so he had keys to open any room in the building. It was the work of a few moments to slip down the hallway and into George K. Washington’s lab.

He hesitated as he entered. Directly ahead was the chair, the tracks, and the door leading to the soundproofed room. He felt a kind of deep revulsion, and for an instant he thought he could not make himself enter the room. Then he heard footsteps outside, and Harvey Blood’s voice saying “…be back, I know he will…”

Clark smiled grimly.

He opened the door to the soundproofed room, and set the hot plate on the ground, resting it on the baffles. He plugged it into a socket, and twisted the timer to fifteen minutes. It began ticking softly.

Then, he set the oxygen cylinder on the floor nearby, and opened the valve a half turn. He heard a hissing and felt me coolness of the gas.

Finally, he took the small cylinders of ether, pulled the corks, and sprinkled the liquid around the room. The burning, acrid odor of ether stung his nostrils and made his eyes water; after two cans, he was not sure he could go on, it was making him dizzy, but he forced himself.

He managed to empty six cylinders, and threw in a seventh for good measure.

Then, coughing, he went back, and slammed the door shut. It closed heavily.

He checked his watch: fourteen minutes left.

It was not, he thought, the best explosive in the world, but it would do. Ether and air was reasonably powerful; ether and oxygen, pure oxygen, would be extremely potent. The enclosed space of the room would do the rest.

When that room exploded, it would really go. Smiling, he went back to his lab.

As he took the pink vial off the shelf and mixed two grams in water, a part of him was horrified. The deliberate cruelty of it shocked him. But another part of him was pleased and excited by what he was about to do.

In a way, he thought, it was fitting. He mixed the solution, and filled a syringe. Then he slipped on a labcoat, dropped the syringe in his pocket, and went to pay a final visit on Harvey Blood.

There were eleven minutes left.

“Hello, Roger,” Harvey Blood said calmly, looking up from his desk. “I see you’re back.”

“Yes,” Clark said. “I’m back.”

“You led the police a merry chase, Roger.”

“Yes. I did.”

“But I knew you’d come back,” Blood said. “I knew it all along. You see, Roger, we arranged everything so that you would have to come back.”

“Yes,” Clark said. “That’s true.”

“The effects of our treatment wore off,” Blood said. “We knew it was happening. We watched you change for the last few weeks. We knew that eventually you would do this, and we were prepared for it.”

“Prepared?”

“Yes. In fact, we’ve been counting on you to make your escape, and to act in a bizarre fashion. Which, naturally, you did. We needed that for legal reasons.”

“What reasons?”

Blood sighed. “Poor Roger. You never will understand, will you? We needed this final evidence in order to certify you insane.”

Harvey Blood sat back in his chair and looked steadily at Clark… “The corporation is overextended,” he said. “Now do you understand?”

Clark sat down. “No.”

“We had very good initial success, with some viruses which we sold to the government. Then we developed the drug, and put it to use in the resort. Another success. We grew bolder—began branching out, working on a wide variety of projects. We accepted contracts from a number of companies. Contracts, Roger, which we have been unable to fill.”

Clark frowned.

“In fact,” Blood said, “we began to find ourselves in great financial trouble. So much trouble, that our good projects—the ones that were panning out, the ones that promised success, the ones like Glow Girl—couldn’t be properly funded. Glow Girl was initially planned for a million. Yesterday, we found that we had only eighty thousand available for it. It’s embarrassing, Roger. Very embarrassing. Half our projects aren’t working out, and the others we can’t finance.” Clark glanced at his watch. “How much time?” Harvey Blood asked mildly. Clark said nothing.