Sharon took a step backward. Her tone, as well as her words, had pierced Sharon’s armor of indignation. She suddenly felt uncertain of herself. What if she were wrong?
As she stood staring at the assistant, trying to judge the sincerity of the woman’s words, the silence that had fallen over the office was broken by a faint scream.
Sharon stiffened.
And then it came again, louder this time.
Like a wild animal howling in the night.
Sharon froze, remembering Kelly’s nightmare and the sound she had heard drifting through the early morning darkness as she’d opened her daughter’s window.
The sound of an animal howling in the night.
She spun around and strode to the door, her mind made up. She knew Mark was here, knew she had to find him. The sound she’d just heard hadn’t come from an animal at all.
It had come from a human being.
Or at least something that had once been a human being.
As she stepped into the corridor, two white-coated attendants appeared on either side of her, seizing her arms.
“No!” She tried to jerk free, but knew she had no chance. Both of them were far larger than she was, and their hands closed tighter, digging into her flesh like bands of iron.
My God, it is a prison, she thought as one of the guards gagged her and both of them hustled her along the corridor. It was a prison, and now she was a prisoner.
She knew now that it had indeed been a mistake to come here.
But she also knew it was too late.
Blake Tanner sat staring at the computer terminal in front of him, but his mind refused to focus on the columns of figures that covered the screen. Finally he leaned back, stretched, stood up and walked to the window. He gazed out at the mountains rising to the north and east, their jagged, forbidding peaks covered with snow. In another couple of weeks the skiing season would begin. It had been years since he’d taken the time to go skiing in California, and he was looking forward to it now. In fact, on the coming weekend he might take Mark shopping and get him outfitted for the winter sports ahead.
Mark.
His son had been on his mind all morning. Indeed, he’d gotten little sleep the night before as he’d lain restlessly on the sofa in the den, his head propped up at an awkward angle by the hard pillow that had never been intended to serve as anything more than an armrest. But it was more than the discomfort of the sofa that kept him awake, for despite the stance he’d taken with Sharon, he was beginning to worry about his son, too.
That morning he’d once again gone over the material waiting for him the morning after Mark had been beaten up, when Jerry Harris had first suggested putting his son under Martin Ames’s care. And this morning all the data he’d reviewed still looked totally innocuous.
There was a lot of theoretical work, speculating on the relationship between vitamins and hormone production within the human body, and even more data—not all of which Blake had understood—that purported to demonstrate the factual basis of the theorizing. All of it, this morning as well as when he’d first studied it, seemed totally harmless.
Too harmless?
He tried to reject the question but found he couldn’t. For if the compounds being administered to Mark were truly as innocuous as the data made them out to be, how could the changes in Mark have taken place so quickly and been so radical?
Nor was it simply a matter of the physical changes—perhaps, if there’d been nothing more, Blake could have accepted them at face value. But the personality changes?
About those Blake wasn’t nearly so comfortable, despite the assurances he’d made over and over to Sharon that their son was merely going through the normal vacillations and inconsistencies of adolescence. Indeed, as the night had worn on, he’d begun to wonder whom he’d truly been trying to convince: his wife or himself.
This morning, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep, he’d tried to study Mark as the boy gulped down his orange juice and gobbled a bowl of cold cereal before departing for school, but he still wasn’t convinced he’d actually seen anything.
Perhaps, after the argument with Sharon, he’d only imagined that Mark’s features looked coarser and his eyes sunken. For a moment he’d thought that Mark’s fingers looked oddly oversized, too, but he decided that was ridiculous and dismissed it from his mind.
And yet …
The intercom buzzed, rousing him from his thoughts. He turned away from the window, returned to his desk and pressed a key beneath a flashing light. “Tanner.”
“It’s Jerry, Blake. Can you come over to my office?”
Though the words were innocent enough, there was something in Jerry Harris’s voice that made Blake frown. “Problem?” he asked.
There was an empty silence for a moment, then the speaker in the intercom crackled to life again. “You might say that,” Harris finally replied. “Just get over here, will you?”
Blake released the switch and saw the light go out. Leaving his computer screen still glowing with the report he’d been staring at all morning, he headed for the door to the corridor, then changed his mind and went toward his secretary’s office instead. As he came out of the inner office, Meg Chandler glanced up at him. “Shall I hold your calls or forward them?”
“Hold them, I guess,” he said. Then: “Anything going on this morning?”
The young woman shrugged. “Nothing that I know of. Why?”
Now it was Blake who shrugged. “Who knows? Harris just called me and he sounds sort of …” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “I don’t know—sort of funny.”
Meg shook her head. “Don’t ask me. One thing that’s not in my job description is to know what’s going on in Jerry Harris’s mind.”
“Remind me to revise your job description, then,” Blake observed darkly as he left the office to go to the suite next door.
Jerry Harris’s secretary waved him directly into the inner office, and when he entered, Harris himself waved him to a chair. His voice dropped as he quickly finished the phone conversation he’d been involved in. When he finally turned to face Blake, his eyes were grave.
“I’m afraid we do have a problem,” he said. His eyes met Blake’s, and suddenly Blake was certain the problem concerned his son.
“It’s Mark, isn’t it?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
Harris nodded. “I’m afraid he got sick at school this morning,” he said. “He’s at the sports center right now, and Marty Ames is taking care of him.”
“Sick?” Blake echoed. “But—But he was fine this morning.” He glanced at his watch. It was barely ten-thirty. “Christ, I only saw him three hours ago! What’s wrong?”
Harris took a deep breath, then stood up and came around his desk. He leaned against it, gazing down at Blake. “I’m afraid something’s gone wrong with his treatment,” he began.
Blake felt a sudden chill. “I—I’m not sure I understand,” he replied.
Harris’s hands spread in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m not sure I can explain it to you precisely,” he said. “As I told you, Ames is doing experimental work and—”
But Blake didn’t let him finish. He was on his feet now, his eyes sparkling angrily. “Now, just a minute, Jerry. You told me that what he was doing was perfectly harmless.”
Harris shook his head doggedly. “No, I didn’t. I said there was an element of risk to it. Slight, yes, but there.”
Blake’s jaw tightened. “All right,” he said, regaining his composure. “Let’s not argue about that right now. What’s wrong with Mark, and why were you told even before I was?”
Harris’s tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. “I guess Ames thought I should be the one to break it to you.”
Blake sank back into his chair, his face ashen. His voice desolate, he whispered, “He—He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Harris took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Not yet,” he said, and saw the tension in Blake ease slightly. “But I
’m not going to tell you it can’t still happen. In fact,” he went on, “you’re going to have to prepare yourself for that possibility.”
Blake stared up at Harris. “No …”he breathed. “You told me—”
Harris’s voice turned cold. “I told you there was an element of risk involved,” he said heavily. “And it was you who signed the releases allowing Ames to treat Mark. Nobody forced you.”
The words struck Blake like a series of blows. So Sharon had been right all along that something was wrong with the sports center, that whatever they were doing out there wasn’t nearly as harmless as Harris had claimed. “Sharon,” he said out loud, “I’ve got to talk to her.”
He started to get to his feet, but Harris stopped him with a gesture. “She’s at the sports center now, Blake.”
For a split-second Blake felt relieved. At least she was there, at least she already knew. Then he realized that Jerry Harris had spoken in the same icy tones he’d used only a moment ago. Before he could say anything else, Harris continued.
“She’s out there trying to make trouble.” His eyes fixed on Blake. “When we talked about this, you told me there’d be no trouble from Sharon. You assured me that she’d go along with what we’re trying to do here!”
Blake’s mind reeled. What the hell was Harris talking about? Was he only worried about the company’s project? And then, with terrible clarity, he realized that that was exactly the case. He’d been used, manipulated into allowing TarrenTech to use his own son as a guinea pig. But it wasn’t possible. The others—
And then he understood.
“Jeff LaConner,” he breathed. “That’s what happened to him, too, isn’t it?”
Harris offered a single nod. “Chuck knew the risks, and he knew the payoff.” As Blake stared mutely at him, his tone softened. “And this doesn’t have to be the end of the world for you, either, Blake. The company is prepared to take care of Mark. If he survives, everything will be done for him. And for you and Sharon, and Kelly, too, life can go on. You’ll be transferred, of course, and there will be a major promotion, with a pay raise in keeping with”—he hesitated, groping for the right word—“well, let’s just say that although your raise can’t possibly compensate for”—he hesitated again, then pushed on—“for your loss, I think you’ll find that it’s surprisingly generous. And, of course, there will be stock options.”
Blake gazed at Jerry Harris, hardly able to recognize him. Was this really the man he’d known for more than a decade and had thought of as a friend? Did he really think that any amount of money, any kind of job, could ever begin to assuage the guilt and loss he would suffer for the rest of his life? It was impossible—incredible! And then he realized that Harris was still speaking.
“… we’ll take care of Sharon, too, of course, in the event you aren’t able to make her listen to reason. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but—”
Take care of Sharon.
Kill her.
That was what the words meant. The translations were battering at his mind now; all the true meanings of the euphemisms he’d heard from Jerry Harris over the past weeks.
“New compound …”
That meant experimental medicine. Hormones? Drugs? Vitamins! How could he have been so stupid! “We can help Mark …”
That one was easy: we can change your son into someone else. We can make him whatever you want him to be. “Of course, there’s always a slight element of risk.” Your son might die. “We’ll take care of him.”
They’d taken care of Ricardo Ramirez, too, but it hadn’t kept the boy alive. And Harris had already told him Mark was going to die.
“We’ll take care of Sharon.”
We’ll kill her. If you can’t make her listen to reason, if you can’t convince her to keep her mouth shut and be happy with a fancy job for you and unlimited money—for he was quite certain the money would indeed be unlimited—then we’ll kill her.
Suddenly it all closed in on Blake, and a cold fury, only made more intense by the knowledge that he was as much responsible for what had happened as anyone else, coursed through him. He rose to his feet, staring at Jerry Harris.
“What the hell do you think I am?” he demanded. “Do you really believe I’ll trade my son for a raise and a promotion? Do you really think I’ll just stand by and let you kill my wife and son? I thought I knew you, Harris, but I don’t know you at all!”
Blake shoved Harris aside, slamming him hard against the desk, then jerked the door open.
In the outer office, waiting for him, were two uniformed guards. Their guns were drawn and trained steadily on him.
“I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to let you go anywhere, Mr. Tanner,” one of them said.
Mark woke up slowly, his mind rising grudgingly from the black depths of unconsciousness. For a few minutes the disorientation was total, then fragments of memory began to come back to him.
The terrible headache he’d suffered during his first class of the day.
Going to see the nurse, with Linda Harris walking beside him, supporting him when the blinding waves of pain threatened to knock him to the floor.
The rage that built in the nurse’s office.
Then the terrible confines of the heavy restraints the three attendants had put him in.
He knew where he was now—they’d brought him to the sports center.
He opened his eyes a crack, and for a second was certain that he must be dreaming, for there was heavy wire mesh all around him, fastened to a framework of iron pipes.
He was in a cage.
His eyes popped wide open then, and he swung himself upright, letting his feet drop to the concrete floor of the small cubicle. He was sitting on a bare iron cot that held no mattress whatsoever, and his muscles felt stiff from the cold of the metal. He was still wearing the clothes he’d put on that morning, but his jeans felt tight, and his shirt, one arm ripped almost completely away from it, had lost most of its buttons.
The upper portion of his left arm felt sore. He rubbed it for a moment before noticing the twin punctures where the two needles had been placed, and the shallow cut where the broken needle had been removed.
His shoes felt too tight, and he bent down, loosened the laces, kicked them off and flexed his toes.
Then he heard a sound.
He glanced around, and for the first time saw the rest of the large room in which he was held captive. There were more cages, lining one entire wall, and in the cage two down from his own he saw a strange creature staring back at him. Its lips, stretched taut over enormous teeth, were working spasmodically, and a strangled sound bubbled ominously from its throat.
Mark frowned. It looked almost like some kind of ape, but it wasn’t like any ape he’d ever seen before. Then, as the sound issuing from its throat began to take form, he felt a chill.
“Maaaarg …” the creature uttered. Then again, a little clearer this time. “Maaarkhh!”
Mark staggered back. It wasn’t possible, and yet as he gazed at the creature and it stood up to reach out to him, its full six-and-a-half feet rising up from the floor where it had been crouching, he realized it was true.
He was staring at what had once been Jeff LaConner.
A scream of horror rose in Mark’s throat, but he stifled it before it managed to escape his lips. His mind was working furiously now, and he was remembering more.
The fits of rage.
Like Jeff had had, before they’d finally taken him away that night.
The strange changes he’d seen in his own face just last night.
His hands rose to his face and he traced his features with his fingers. They felt different now. His brow was jutting forward, and his nose seemed to have changed, too. And his jaw …
He ran his tongue over the suddenly unfamiliar contours of his teeth. They felt large—too large for his mouth. Then he looked at his hands.
His fingers, long and thick, seemed to splay out from his enlarged knuckles, and wh
ere before his skin had been smooth, tufts of hair were now sprouting on the backs of his hands.
His fingernails, thicker than they should have been, were curving downward, almost like claws.
Panic welled up in him, and again he felt the urge to scream. But again he stifled the urge as his eyes flicked wildly around the room, searching for a means of escape.
That was when he saw what had once been Randy Stevens, no longer in the least recognizable as human, huddled in the corner of one of the cages, chewing obsessively at one finger while his eyes darted aimlessly from one place to another.
Then Mark looked up and saw the television monitor suspended from the ceiling, beyond the confines of his cage.
He recognized the image on the screen at once, and this time an enraged scream rose in his throat before he could contain it.
The image on the screen was that of his mother.
She was strapped on a straight-backed chair, a look of abject terror on her face.
As Mark stared at the image, his maniacal howl rose once more, echoing off the tiles that lined the room, bouncing back at him again and again, then becoming lost in the sounds of his next high-pitched shriek of fury.
The door at the end of the long narrow room flew open and three men hurried in. One of them was unreeling a fire hose and another carried a cattle prod. The third man waited nervously by the door, ready to open the valve as soon as the hose was straightened out.
The first attendant jabbed the cattle prod through the wire mesh of the cage, but before he could trigger it, Mark snatched it from his hands, jerking it into the cage, then shattering it against the side of the cot.