Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Read online

  Lauryn backed up half a step, putting her arm in front of Megan to get her moving in the same direction.

  Jasper barked savagely, showing his fangs.

  “Hold him tighter!”

  Megan grasped the leash but too late. The dog bolted toward the man, who was slow to react. Jasper pulled himself up short and stood in front of the stranger, paws planted and snarling.

  “Hey! Call off your damned dog! Jesus!”

  Lauryn hesitated, then rushed forward. “Jasper, no! Jasper, no!” She bent down and picked up his leash and hauled him back to where Megan still stood, her mouth open. “I’m sorry,” Lauryn said, forcing a smile. “Been a rough twenty-four hours.”

  “Yeah, no shit, lady,” the stranger replied, backing away from Jasper, who still strained at his leash and growled. “Never-friggin-mind!” he yelled. “I’ll call a friggin’ tow truck!”

  As he walked away, Jasper continued to bark after him. The man threw a middle finger absently at them over his shoulder. Megan walked up to her mother. She shifted the backpacks on her shoulders so they weren’t pulling so hard. “Can we get to Dad’s, now?”

  Lauryn wrapped the leash around her hand twice. Extra insurance.

  “Yeah. Yeah, let’s get to Dad’s now.” Even if that woman was there, she thought, dealing with her would be better than this Mad Max crap.

  * * *

  “What are you doing here?”

  Mark immediately regretted his tone.

  “Well, our apartment caved in and yours was the closest thing to a place we could go.”

  “What?”

  “Not really, Dad.”

  Lauryn gave Megan a let-me-handle-this stare.

  “Well, it’s not,” her daughter persisted. “The ceiling was kinda caving in, though, Dad. We had to leave.”

  “What?” Mark was still trying to process the fact that his soon-to-be ex-wife and daughter were standing on the front step of his apartment. Even after the events of the previous night, it felt uncomfortable. This was his space. His and Iris’. Part of him wanted to slam the door and lock it with both bolts and the chain.

  “Is she …” Lauryn looked past Mark’s shoulder, then stopped and turned to Megan. “Take Jasper out on the lawn, please. Make him go pee.”

  Megan stared at her. “Mom, he peed on everything all the way here until he didn’t have any more pee. And then he kept trying to pee anyway.”

  “Megan!” Lauryn reined in her fatigue. She rubbed her brow, feeling the grime under her fingertips. “If you ever just do what I ask you, I think I’ll keel over from a heart attack. Please. Just do what I’ve asked you to do.”

  Her daughter looked to her father, the old strategy. But his blank stare just made her roll her eyes. She took the packs off her shoulders with a wince she made sure they couldn’t miss and put them down beside the apartment door. “Fine. Come on, Jasper. The adults want to argue again. Shit.”

  “Language,” Mark said automatically to Megan’s back.

  Lauryn waited a moment till Megan was out of earshot, then rounded on Mark. “First, your daughter’s fine, as you can see. Thanks for asking. Second, is your girlfriend here?” She’d so wanted to use a different word.

  “What? No. She’s at work. Part of the skeleton … why am I answering this question? Why are you here?”

  “Were you not listening a minute ago?”

  His eyes dashed back and forth, his mind cutting through the fatigue and discomfort of having Lauryn standing on his front porch, the entrée to their space.

  “Your apartment caved in?”

  “Not entirely. Not yet, anyway. But I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie when we left. Can we come in?” Lauryn looked past him again, searching for signs of Iris. She wondered bitterly if his whole apartment would smell of their sex.

  “Um, well—”

  “Jesus, Mark. A hurricane just passed over our heads. The shithole of an apartment your daughter and I live in is turning into prefabricated mush. If you want to run in and pick up some panties first, be my guest. But we’re coming in.”

  He shrugged and stood aside.

  “Megan! Bring Jasper.”

  “The dog, too?”

  Could Mark have sounded any more like a five-year-old? she wondered. “Yes, Mark, the dog, too. Do you know a kennel service nearby taking boarders today?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked past him into the apartment.

  Megan said, “Hi Dad,” as she approached with Jasper, her voice sounding like she might’ve just arrived for her court-ordered weekend. She stood in front of him expectantly.

  “Hi, doll,” Mark replied tiredly. He opened his arms and she stepped into them. “I’m glad you’re okay. I’m sorry about your mom and I … I’m just sorry.”

  Megan shrugged. He couldn’t tell if she were uncomfortable with the hug or just accepting the reality of the situation. “It is what it is,” she said. “Sucks.” Extracting herself from her father’s embrace, she passed into the apartment with Jasper.

  Mark reached down and picked up the backpacks from the porch and followed her inside.

  Chapter 6. Friday, afternoon.

  “We’re trying, Doctor!” shouted a nurse. “We’re doing the best we can!”

  Stavros held the straps down on the left side of the gurney as one of the burly guards attempted to tie off the right. Marsten was struggling to lever himself off the table, his broad chest straining against the straps. He roared his rage and shook the entire room.

  “Calm down, Peter!” Stavros shouted again.

  “Fuck you, Doc!” Marsten started to cackle, and spit slung from his mouth. “Fuck you!” His hands were claws, flexing to break free of the leather cuffs restraining them. He arched his back, opened his mouth wide, his eyes never leaving his tormentor’s neck. Every fiber of his being seemed intent on ripping out the scientist’s jugular vein. Stavros ducked down but held on to his side of the gurney’s straps. Marsten thundered his frustration. His voice, strident and desperate, sounded like a man who’d been denied a meal after weeks of starvation.

  At last the guard got the strap in its buckle, tugged down hard. Marsten screamed, jerking back and forth as the bonds cinched tighter.

  Freed from holding the other side, Stavros grabbed a hypodermic. “Grab his head,” he ordered. The guards and nurses looked at him like he’d just asked them to put their own heads inside a lion’s mouth.

  Marsten taunted them, snapping his teeth in a feral smile at each of them in turn. “Yes, grab my head. Bring those ladyfingers right over here!” he leered at the nurse.

  “Grab his goddamned head!”

  The brawny guard moved around to the head of the table. Marsten tracked him, snapping his jaws together.

  “Peter, if you’d just get hold of yourself,” Stavros said quietly, trying to distract him. He brandished the hypodermic, a promise that one way or another, Marsten would calm down.

  “Wait, Doc. Wait till I get hold of you. I’m going to stick a needle in your prefrontal brain—”

  The guard moved in and wrapped his hands around Marsten’s bald head. The prisoner struggled and cursed, his neck muscles bulging as he tried to wriggle free. “The word gets passed in the joint, Doc! And your name’s on the list!”

  “Hold him tighter!”

  The guard bore down with his body weight.

  Stavros moved in, sinking the needle deep into Marsten’s neck. The prisoner screamed, a primitive sound of fear and fury, a promise of vengeance and pain. Stavros pushed the sedative into his vein and winced as the needle broke off under the skin. He withdrew the hypodermic and moved backward.

  “Okay, let him go.”

  The guard leapt backward and away, arms raised.

  Marsten screamed and shouted, shaking the surgical instruments on their trays. The straps seemed ready to break under his madman’s strength.

  “What the hell, Doc?” asked the guard.

  Sweating, Stavros tossed the empty hypodermic on the
cart, which lay in disarray against the wall. “It’s not like in the movies. Give it a minute.”

  Marsten looked right at him. “Coming for you, Herr Stavros. Nazi scientist bastard. Stick this shit in me … stick this … rip your … head off …” He struggled to stay awake, fixing his gaze on Stavros. His eyes blazed a final time, then glazed over. His head thumped the gurney.

  Everyone in the room took a moment. Was Marsten really out? In the absence of his violence, a slight hum seemed to be in the air. Maybe it was the metal of the instruments in the infirmary still resonating with the crazy man’s shouting. Maybe their ears were simply adjusting to the silence.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Wiping the sweat from his brow before it stung his eyes, Stavros turned and faced Parker. The warden stood in the doorway, his granite glare fixed on the scientist.

  “Well, Herr Stavros?”

  The other man’s eyes darted away, landing on Marsten. Even heavily sedated, the inmate twitched. It looked like every muscle in the man’s body was fighting its own battle against the tranquilizer’s effects.

  “I’m not sure. Something has obviously entered his system—”

  “Something? Something? I think we know what the hell has entered his system, Doctor.” Parker strode into the room, the medical staff and guards parting before him.

  “This isn’t Serenity,” insisted Stavros.

  “It damned sure isn’t.”

  Stavros sighed. “What I meant was, it can’t be the Serenity Virus that caused this outburst. It’s designed to replace certain genes in his brain with new ones to explicitly calm his prefrontal medial cortex …” He saw the look of incomprehension on the warden’s face. “His impulse-control center. You’ve seen his behavior change over the past six weeks. How much calmer he’s been, even in interactions with the general population.”

  Parker snorted. “I’ve also seen what I just saw. You talk like your precious virus—your Phase One, work-out-the-kinks version of the virus, just to remind you—can’t possibly be at fault.”

  Stavros looked around at the rest of the people in the room. They were watching the two men like fans around a boxing ring. This wasn’t the place for this debate. He nodded at the head nurse. “Can you put in an IV of the Lorazepam-Haldol cocktail and monitor his vital signs? If he starts to wake up, give him another dose?”

  The nurse nodded vaguely but just glanced from Stavros to Marsten. She held her hands together against her stomach.

  “Nurse,” said Stavros. “Please put in the IV.” He saw Bradford, the guard who’d held Marsten down, nod his head at the woman. He was standing by, just in case. The nurse nodded and picked up the IV bag. Satisfied, Stavros motioned to Parker. “Let’s take this to your office.”

  With his back to him, Stavros didn’t see the warden send the guards an unspoken command by flitting his eye at the psychotic on the gurney. If that happens again, the look said, do whatever it takes. One of them nodded silently.

  * * *

  “It’s not the therapy.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Stavros inhaled to respond, then cut off his words. Slowly he released his breath. “Look, I know we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot—”

  “Save it.” Parker moved into the doctor’s space. “I don’t need your make-up sex, Professor,” he said, their eyes inches apart. “Here’s what I do need. I need you to pull that virus out of every one of my prisoners, right now.”

  Stavros took a half-step back. “That’s … that’s impossible. It’s not going to happen.”

  Parker stepped forward again.

  “What I mean is, it can’t happen!” The scientist calmed himself and sat down to get Parker out of his space. Collapsed, would be a more appropriate description. “Look, this isn’t like a drug we put in their systems to see what happens. We delivered a virus that rewrote their genetic code at the molecular level.”

  “Un-rewrite it!”

  Stavros sighed. “We can’t do that. Not yet anyway. And certainly not right now.” At the look the warden gave him, he clarified, “I mean, we don’t have the technology for that!”

  Parker ran his hand through his hair. He stalked around his office, then threw himself into his own chair, the springs groaning as usual.

  “Besides, like I told you, it can’t be the therapy.”

  The warden sat forward. “If you say that to me one more time, I’m going to beat the crap out of you.” At the scientist’s disbelieving look, Parker cocked his head. “Think I won’t? Try me. And the official story will be that Marsten did it. And after what happened here today, everyone in that room will back me up.”

  Stavros simply stared at him. He knew it was true. God, how he hated leaving the ivory tower of university life, even with its penny-ante, junior-high politics.

  “You’ve handed me a steaming bag of shit, Professor. Let me share with you my own little hypothesis: Marsten’s just the first. Hopefully the worst. But you wanna hear my theory? I have half a dozen maniacs on my hands now, thanks to you. They were first-rate cutters before, every one of them. Solitary confinement, too screwed up for general pop. And now you’ve made them into half a dozen lab rats with beady red eyes!”

  Stavros kept quiet. Best to let the warden rant, get it off his chest. Nothing he said now would placate the man.

  “How could this happen overnight?” The warden’s voice was almost pleading. He needed answers. “Marsten was fine yesterday. Now he’s a stark-raving lunatic?”

  Stavros cast his arms wide. “I don’t know, Warden.” He was wise enough to not try and make the argument again that the virus wasn’t at fault. And, if he were honest with himself behind his own eyes, he had to admit, Parker might be right. He really didn’t understand what was happening with Marsten. He hadn’t said anything about the creepy, threatening feeling he’d gotten from Marsten yesterday. It wasn’t something he could quantify. But his gut had tickled him all night till he’d almost gotten sick. He’d written that off as a reaction to Hurricane Glenn buffeting the paper-thin walls of his hotel room. Until about fifteen minutes ago.

  “Maybe it was the hurricane,” Parker mused. He was moving past his anger and looking for answers on his own.

  “What?”

  “Glenn. Maybe something about the hurricane triggered something in Marsten. Made your virus go nuts.”

  “Something triggered something,” Stavros repeated. His tone carried the same pitying disdain as when he explained the building blocks of life to freshman biology majors.

  A fire lit behind the warden’s eyes as he leaned forward again. “Look, you pompous bastard, I’m not a know-it-all Piled-high and Deep like you are. But even I know something is pretty screwed up inside Marsten right now. And it’s because of your virus, I don’t give a damn what you say. Your ass is uncovered here, Professor. Get past your denial stage and help fix the problem you caused in the first goddamned place.”

  Stavros swallowed. Deep down, he feared Parker might be right. But he had no clue as to how to fix it. “Well, at least they’re in the right place for something to go wrong … right?”

  The warden sat back. “Do you think this is funny, Professor?”

  “Not at all,” said Stavros, his hands up. I think this is my career going down the toilet, he thought. “Just a little black humor.”

  “Well, let’s pretend I’m a proctologist. Shove that snide shit right back up your ass. How’s that for black humor?”

  Outwardly, he maintained an impassive face, but Stavros smiled grimly inside. Pretty good, actually, he thought. “I’ll have my staff here by this evening. We’ll start round-the-clock watches on all six test subjects. We’ll figure out what’s going on.” He expected Parker to at least appreciate that he was confronting the problem directly. Instead, the warden was shaking his head.

  “There’s another one on the way.”

  “What?”

  “Hurricane Helen. It’s due to make landfall at Galveston sometime tonight.�
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  Stavros looked incredulous. He hadn’t kept up with the news lately. He’d been head-down in his data for weeks, hardly remembering to eat and go to the bathroom. He’d only known Glenn was coming when the clouds showed up in the south and he’d asked someone about them.

  “No kidding?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Stavros tried to calculate, but he was missing data. “How far is Galveston from here?”

  “About 120 miles,” said Parker. “And, by the way, you’re not going anywhere. And unless you can get your team here in the next six hours, they’re not coming in either. We locked this place down yesterday because of the weather. Same procedure tonight.”

  Stavros nodded, swallowed. “Okay, then. Do you by chance have an office in the infirmary where I can set up shop?”

  “I have a cell near the infirmary you can use,” said Parker. “It’s small, but it should do.” He wasn’t disappointed by the half-believing look overtaking the scientist’s face. “See, smart guy? You don’t always get black humor if you’re not the one inside your own head.”

  Stavros nodded nervously. “I see what you mean.”

  “I’ll find you an empty office.”

  * * *

  “What’s Helen’s position?”

  “… fifty miles … Galveston.”

  The connection was getting worse. The Internet had come back for a bit, and Mark was able to chat with TranStar for a while earlier in the afternoon. But Helen’s advanced winds and leading-edge showers were enough to undo the repairs local providers had made. It wasn’t long before the streets were running like rivers again, mere hours after Glenn’s waters had begun to recede. Now Mark was back, reliant on the cell phone and its crappy connection.

  “Straight on now?”

  “Ye …”

  Galveston was looking like ground zero. Mark still didn’t understand how two storms in two days could pick the same target.

  “You guys batten down the hatches. You can’t do anything else now. People will just have to shelter in place.”

  “…es, we’re battened … can get.”