Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (25 page)

“I just grabbed a handful, maybe six or seven,” Jenkins said before realizing his mistake.  He hadn’t bothered to think about the dosage.  Roberts' head sagged as his neck became too weak to hold up his head.

“Damn…. that’s not…..”

-

Jenkins couldn’t think straight once he realized that he had overdosed his fellow soldier.  He had checked the boy’s pulse and found it was still beating, but that didn’t mean the boy wasn’t in trouble.  Jenkins tried to think of what he could do and continued to come up with nothing.  He couldn’t carry the boy soldier to medical because they would have to explain where Roberts had gotten the drugs.  Jenkins despaired and thought about any and all the people who could get him out of this mess; he couldn’t help the boy alone.  After a moment Jenkins remembered the one person who could help him; the one person who had something to lose if the boy died in that room.

The young Crow ran through the barracks at a speed which he hadn’t thought he was capable.  He encountered no one on his way, which was a good thing.  If anybody had seen Jenkins fly through the hallways there would have been some awkward questions.  He hoped that Goldstein would be able to sweep this under the rug somehow.

He rounded the corner to the East Hallway to find a few of the soldiers walking back from the mess hall.  Luckily they were all facing the other way and Jenkins did what he could to slow down to a normal speed.  His heart was racing and he was breathing heavily but he tried to make everything look like just another day.  Jenkins spotted the middle-aged merchant walking ahead of him and increased his pace to catch up with him.  Soon enough he was side by side with the man and tapped the veteran’s shoulder.  Goldstein turned his head and raised an eyebrow before twisting his face into a crooked smile.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?  You need something?”  Jenkins breathed out deeply and motioned that they go to the merchant’s room.  Goldstein chuckled and went along with the young soldier’s antics.  The door wasn’t closed for five seconds before Jenkins broke down and started gasping for air; which caused Goldstein to become wary.  Jenkins looked back up after a few heaving breaths and prayed that Goldstein might know what to do.

“I need that favor.”  Goldstein tilted his head slightly and glared at the new soldier.

“What?”

“I need you to help me with Roberts.”  That caught Goldstein’s attention.  His weary face flashed with anger and annoyance.

“What did he do?  Tell me anything and everything.”  Jenkins picked himself up and rubbed at his eyes.

“He’s overdosed in his room.  I don’t know if he’ll make it,” Jenkins said before placing his hands at his hips.  The young Crow didn’t know what to do and it spread throughout his body language.  Goldstein ran both of his hands through the black fuzz that was his hair before rubbing his lips.

“How much did he take?” he asked with a sense of urgency.  It seemed he was on the same page, finally.

“I don’t know for certain.  At least seven, most likely more.  He had this pain spasm going on and…” Jenkins said before trailing off.  The guilt for helping the boy overdose himself was starting to set in and he hadn’t prepared himself for it.

“Goddamnit… fucking Hawkins,” Goldstein said before walking to his desk and rummaging through its contents.  He found a transmitter beside other paraphernalia and started keying in a contact number.  He looked at Jenkins and sighed heavily.  “Thanks for letting me know instead of taking him to Medical; saves me heaps of trouble.  I’m going to need your help here.”  Jenkins looked at him warily but accepted that it was something he had to do.  He owed Roberts that much.

“What do I need to do?”  Goldstein sighed and looked at the new soldier.

“Well,
we
are going to haul his body out of the barracks and Hawkins is going to fix him.”

-

Jenkins felt very uncomfortable sitting out in the open.  The only times he had been outside of the barracks were the painful walks back from the clinic or during the games; the mental link was not a pleasant one.  It also didn’t help that they were doing something that was certainly illegal.  That’s why they couldn’t just take Roberts to the clinic; the cameras were everywhere.

They were about two hundred meters from the barracks and it was just after Moonrise.  The reflected light washed over the three of them on the concrete slab, clearly illuminating the boy soldier suffering from a contraband overdose.  Jenkins wondered if they could be any more obvious.  The young Crow didn’t know the specifics between Goldstein and Hawkins, but Jenkins guessed that the scientist was responsible for a good deal of Goldstein’s wares.  It only made sense if Goldstein could get the scientist to come out at a moment’s notice. 

The merchant was constantly checking the watch on his wrist.  Maybe Goldstein thought he could will time to move faster and bring Hawkins closer to save the boy soldier.  He didn’t want the boy to die just because the scientist was a little late.

Jenkins watched as the rover left the clinic and bounced along the landscape surrounding the Crow’s barracks.  The soldier could see from the rover’s random antics that it wasn’t on an automated path.  It had to be Hawkins.  The vehicle screamed down the hillside and then started to drift towards the little outpost they had created for themselves.  Jenkins looked at Roberts lying there and felt a blow against his conscience.  He could have easily prevented all of this.

Hawkins threw open the door and jumped out of the rover with his portable med kit.  The weasel-faced and balding scientist was clearly not happy to be outside of the medical building for this house call.  The pudgy man walked up to Goldstein and set down the bag in front of him.

“Why the
fuck
couldn’t you ration him portions that couldn’t kill him, Zachary?”  Hawkins was clearly very familiar with the soldier in front of him and seemed to hold some power in their relationship.  At least, that was until Goldstein started yelling back.

“I’m not the one who screwed up here.  This is your fault, Frankenstein,” Goldstein said with gravel in his voice.  Hawkins huffed and picked up his bag.  The small man scrambled onto the concrete, set the bag down near Roberts’ unconscious body and started removing instruments from the kit.  He brought out a vitals meter and tapped it into Roberts’ system.  He sighed with disgust as the meter told him exactly what he had predicted.

“This could have been prevented, Zachary, and I wouldn’t have had to come out here.  This is your fuck-up, and why, may I ask, is
he
here?” Hawkins asked before turning to glare at Jenkins.  The young Crow glared right back and suddenly felt very confrontational.  He didn’t let Goldstein say a thing before responding for himself.

“Maybe you should just help your patient, doctor,” he said with a note of derision.  Jenkins had never liked the man, but something about this situation was enough to push him over the edge.  Hawkins’ eyes narrowed a bit behind his glasses but he kept his anger to himself.

“I’m a scientist, you child,” he said under his breath as he went about filling syringes with different medications to counter the effects of the medicine coursing through Roberts’ body.  Jenkins noticed that there were a lot more than he would have expected for this kind of procedure.  Goldstein walked closer and looked on as Hawkins hurried along.

“You need to stop this kind of shit, Hawkins.  The kid’s already fragile enough and he doesn’t deserve it.  And this, right here, is something that we can’t afford,” Goldstein said before looking at his feet.  Jenkins could tell there was something deeper at work and he didn’t like it.  Hawkins responded as he started to tap an IV for Roberts and set the boy up for recovery.

“Zachary, you know he’s part of my experiment,” the scientist said before Goldstein grabbed at his arm and looked Hawkins in the eye.

“I’m saying you should stop it.”  Hawkins was alarmed at first but then started laughing at the merchant’s audacity.

“You know that’s not going to happen.  Now get your hands off me, Zachary, I have work to do.”  Hawkins shrugged off Goldstein’s hand and started pumping Roberts full of drugs.  Goldstein sighed and walked a few meters from the doctor and his patient.  Jenkins suddenly wanted to know what this experiment was all about.  He followed Goldstein and sidled up to him as the middle-aged soldier was looking off into the distance.

“What’s all this about an experiment?” Jenkins asked as he looked back at Hawkins.  He knew the scientist was up to no good and this was just proof.  Goldstein looked him over and sighed.

“You don’t want to know,” he said before Jenkins took hold of his arm and squeezed.

“I want to know, Zach.  Tell me,” Jenkins said assertively.  He wanted to know the depths of Hawkins’ evil.  Goldstein looked back at the pair and then scratched his arm absent-mindedly.

“Hawkins uses Roberts and others for mental experiments.  Those poor saps like Corrigan and Haywick that just sit there and stare while the rest of us talk?  Hawkins broke them already.  Roberts’ version is all about pain.  Roberts thinks it’s just some synchronization error they force on him.  Hawkins,” Goldstein sighed as he thought about the poor soul lying there on the concrete.

“Hawkins wants to know how long until Roberts’ mind cracks.  He wants to know how much pain us soldiers can take before we go nutty.  Sometimes I think he just enjoys it.”  Goldstein looked down at his feet and then back to his side.  He expected Jenkins to be standing right there but all he saw was empty air.  The merchant turned in time to see Jenkins launch his fist into the side of Hawkins’ face.  The older man rushed over to stop Jenkins from going further and tried to hold the furious soldier.

Hawkins shuffled away from the two soldiers in a panic and took a second before realizing that he was the one who was supposed to be in charge in this situation.  He forced himself to his feet and took on an indignant air as he set his glasses back on straight.

“What are you doing, you imbecile?!  I’m trying to fix the boy here!”  He couldn’t remember the soldier’s name in the moment, but it didn’t matter.  Every one of them was the same to Hawkins unless he recognized his own work.  Jenkins was practically foaming at the mouth.

“You caused it in the first place!  I’m going to cause you pain like you cause him, then I’m going to get your ass fired for malpractice, or whatever they call it now!”  Goldstein was doing his best to hold the soldier back, but found that the young soldier was dragging them both along.  The merchant was suddenly afraid of what the soldier might be able to do.  Hawkins just looked at the pair of them and laughed.

“That’s rich, action figure.  You’re not going to get me fired.  The Commission encourages my….extra-curricular activities.  They gave me the funds.  And something to think about, soldier,” he said before walking forward to look the man in the eye.  Jenkins saw the pale green of them behind the thin glasses and suddenly felt ill at ease.  “If I can do this to Roberts, what makes you think that I can’t do it to you?  I have the power here, boy.  Besides,” he said as he backed off and went back to Roberts, who had a pile of vomit lying by his mouth, “I’m fixing him right now.  His pain levels will be back down and he won’t try to overdose himself again.  In fact, I’m already done,” he said before withdrawing the needle and packing up his things. 

Jenkins’ fury left him as he contemplated what Hawkins had said.  He knew the Commission wasn’t the most moral association, but he thought that this might have been beyond them.  The young Crow stopped fighting against Goldstein and sank to the concrete.  Meanwhile, Hawkins stood up and walked to the rover.  He looked at Goldstein as he left and motioned towards the car.

“Follow me, Zachary.  Your friend can stay here with the action figure,” he said before continuing on to the rover.  Goldstein looked down at Jenkins and saw that the man wasn’t going to do anything stupid as he kneeled on the ground.  The merchant followed over to the rover and leaned against the machine as Hawkins threw in his supplies.

“So…what?  What did you want to say?” Goldstein asked.  He was getting impatient with the scientist.  Hawkins sneered at him from the front of the vehicle and shook his head.

“Don’t let this happen again.  I mean it.  I don’t have to engage in this black market thing with you.  I can do without.”  Goldstein’s eyes narrowed and he looked back at Roberts’ body.  He hoped the boy would get over this.

“Tell me this, Hawkins,” he said before turning his eyes back to the scientist.  Hawkins looked back expectantly at him.  “You told me way back that the pain treatments were permanent for the clone.  How’d you fix him?”  Hawkins shrugged as he leapt into the driver seat of the rover.

“I didn’t.  He’s going to have to suffer until he dies tomorrow.”  Goldstein pushed himself off the side of the rover and walked up to the driver’s entrance.

“You’re an
asshole
.  And how do you know he’s going to die tomorrow?  He could have to live with this treatment for a while,” Goldstein said before he heard the cruel scientist laughing down at him.

“Pretty sure he won’t.  I was trying to find the extreme end of the spectrum with this body.  This might have been an accident, I’ll give you that,” he said before starting the vehicle.

“But tomorrow if he doesn’t die from all the explosions and bullets I’m willing to bet he’s going to finish the job.”

-

Jenkins was flying through the air and couldn’t be bothered by it.  He’d jumped out of the transports so many times now that it was becoming second nature.  The wind whipping past his helmet did nothing to his nerves and all the anxiety he had felt from the act in past games was now completely gone.  As he opened his parachute he wasn’t worried about falling.

He just hoped Roberts wouldn’t be too much of a burden.

The young Crow released the tethers of his parachute and landed on the asteroid with a perfectly executed roll.  He checked his display to see the others on the ground, doing what he could to understand their situation.  Jenkins could hear Roberts land behind him with a thump and looked back to see the boy soldier brushing himself off.  They had been towards the back of the aircraft, but Jenkins could see the last few soldiers dropping out of the transport over Roberts’ shoulder.  Jenkins looked back down to see the boy soldier’s helmet pointed to face him and he could tell the boy was breathing heavily.  Jenkins hoped that it was just exertion and not the pain returning.