Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (39 page)

He took a syringe off the steel table beside him and filled it with the serum from the vial he was holding. When he was done, he said, "And here we go."

Without hesitation, he stuck the needle into the old woman's neck and injected every drop of the serum into her system, then he stood back, his blue eyes intensely focused as he waited on a reaction.

Seconds after the formula was administered, the old woman arched her back and gave out a long wheezing breath as if it was her last. Then her body began to jerk and convulse like she was having some kind of epileptic fit.

Reaction is the same
.

Mason didn't know if that was good or bad.

He continued to watch and wait. "Vitals?"

"Heart rate is elevated," the female assistant said. "Temperature is also rising considerably."

The old woman's skin was very nearly glowing a reddish orange colour now, as she stopped convulsing and strained against the straps holding her down.

Come on, come on…

"Temperature continuing to rise," said the female assistant. "Levels are dangerous."

Mason clenched his jaw as the old woman's skin turned a darker shade. Her entire body was oozing moisture like it was trying to excrete every drop in her.

Then the EKG machine began to beep. "Subject is crashing!" said the male assistant.

"Don't do anything!" Mason ordered. "Wait!"

He didn't want to administer shock treatment, or do anything else that would interfere with the serum.

"Subject is about to die!" the male assistant pressed.

"I said wait!" Mason barked.

A second later, the old woman stopped moving completely, and she let out a long, sighing breath, like air being slowly released from a tire. The female assistant looked at the machines.

"Is she dead?" asked Mason.

The female assistant shook her head. "No, she's stabilising."

Mason's heart missed a beat. "Stabilising?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take a blood sample. Now."

The male assistant took a syringe, stuck the needle into the old woman's arm and extracted a vial of her blood. Then he handed it to Mason, who took the blood over to a microscope on the table that ran along the back wall. He put a small drop of the subject's blood on a glass slide before putting it under the microscope. After staring into the viewer of the microscope for a moment, he lifted his head up, hardly able to believe what he had just seen. "Her cells are regenerating," he said quietly. He turned to his assistants. "It worked."

The two assistants stared back at him, no sign of any emotion on their faces. Not that Mason expected his them to be full of jubilance. He didn't program them for that. They were programmed to be worker bees, nothing more.

Mason walked back to the table and looked down at his test subject. The once flabby skin was beginning to tighten up around the bones underneath, and muscle tissue seemed to be knitting around the bones themselves, seemingly from nothing. "I didn't expect it to work this quick," he said. "Truly remarkable."

"What would you like us to do now, Professor?" the male assistant asked.

"Run tests," Mason said. "Have the results sent up to me. I want every single thing documented and recorded."

"Yes, sir."

Mason left the lab and went straight back to his living quarters. He went to the leather armchair by the fireplace and sat down, looked up at the portrait of his father. "It would seem we have succeeded,
Hauptsturmführer.
I can hardly believe it. After all these years."

A single tear fell from Mason's eye. He wiped it away, sniffed and then took a syringe containing the serum. He stared at the syringe a moment before placing it on the arm of the chair. Then he took of his white lab coat and rolled up the shirt sleeve on his right arm.

This might kill me
.
Or it might make me immortal.

He stuck the needle in his arm and injected himself with the serum.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Edger and Black said very little to each other on the drive from Lisburn to Armagh, which took them about forty minutes, and brought them through the preceding towns of Lurgan and Portadown. Black drove the red Audi A3 while Edger sat in the front passenger seat, mostly staring out the window as he tried to focus himself for the mission ahead. Normally, he had no trouble getting his head in the game. In places like Iraq or Haiti, or any of the other places he did CPO work, his mind would automatically snap into gear, and his only concern would be doing the job and doing it right.

On the journey from Lisburn however, Edger spent most of the time trying to sort out his conflicting emotions. Before, when he laid his life on the line in the various war zones in which he worked, he didn't have a daughter to think about. It was just him. If he died, there was no one to leave behind, no one to mourn his loss or despair that he wasn't around any longer. Even though he knew Kaitlin existed, she wasn't a part of his life until he came back to Belfast. Up until then, it was easy for him to forget that he had a daughter at all. Before he got to know Kaitlin, she was just someone in the background who barely made it on to his radar most days. The missions were always his primary focus.

Now that was no longer the case. His circumstances had irrevocably changed. Now Kaitlin was not only a big part of his life, he was all she had left in terms of family, her ageing grandparents aside. She needed him and he needed her. If he got killed, to all intents and purposes, Kaitlin would be left alone. That made going to the Red Falcon Country Club to walk into a possible death trap much harder than it normally would have been for him. As a soldier, he had always reconciled to himself the fact that he could die at any time during the course of his duties. Death was a fact of life when you were a soldier, one which you got used to carrying around with you after a while. Death was always there in the background of every mission, and very often, right in your face. So close in fact, that you sometimes felt death's icy fingers brush your face, or in the case of his last mission in Iraq, ride on his shoulders just waiting for the bullet to hit that would finally end his life.

As Black drove the car out of Portadown and on towards Armagh however, Edger made a concerted effort to find the steely focus he knew he would need if he was to have any hope of surviving what he was heading into. The only way he could do that was to tell himself that if the worst did happen, and he was killed, then Kaitlin would find a way to go on without him. She would survive in his absence, having already proven herself to be strong and resilient in the face of horribly adverse circumstances. She was stronger than he ever was at her age, and that gave him some comfort at least.

"Almost there," Black said, as he drove the car up the main Armagh Road. "You alright Edger? Thinking about your daughter, are you?"

Edger nodded. "I'm fine, Black."

"Can't get my mind of my own daughters either. Fuck, I'm going to miss them."

"You're talking like you're going to die, for fucks sake."

Black took a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and stuffed it in the corner of his mouth. "I'm under no illusions, Edger. I'm dying anyway. That tends to make you a little fatalistic." He lit the cigarette with the car's cigarette lighter. "You're welcome to remain optimistic, of course. This is your thing anyway, isn't it, shooting the fuck out of bad guys?" He smiled.

Edger shook his head and smiled back. "Not exactly. You watch too many fucking films. You ever had to kill anyone, Black?"

"Never. Rankin was the first person I ever had to shoot. I know you were away for the most of the Troubles over here, but it wasn't like the Wild West, you know. The soldiers did most of the shooting anyway. Those guys loved it. Did you?"

"Did I love killing people?" Edger shook his head and started to roll his own cigarette. "No, I didn't. I
don't
."

"But you don't have a problem with it either."

"Sometimes you don't have a choice. Like now."

Black nodded. "Well, if anyone deserves to die, it's the cunts we're about to meet."

"Agreed," Edger said, lighting his cigarette.

"Any advice for me?"

"Advice?"

"Yeah."

Edger wasn't sure what he meant, so he just said, "Shoot to kill."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

They said nothing more until they arrived at their destination.

Mason's estate where the Red Falcon Country Club was apparently situated, stood on the outskirts of Armagh City, about three miles outside of the small city itself. The main entrance to the estate was just off the main Armagh Road. As Black slowed the car, they saw the road leading towards the estate, but they couldn't see the main gates or the estate itself. The tall trees at either side of the road leading up to the estate meant they couldn't see anything beyond. Black idled the car in the lay-by of the main road for a moment, just down from the turn off. As they sat, a black stretched limo came up behind them and turned to the right towards the estate.

"The guests are arriving it seems," Black said.

"At least Rankin was telling the truth about tonight," Edger said, as he watched the tail lights of the limo disappear around a bend in the narrow road.

"We obviously can't just drive up to the main gates. Something tells me we wouldn't be warmly welcomed."

"No. We can't sit here either." Edger took out the map he had had a chance to study while at Donna's house earlier. "The whole estate is surrounded by forest." He pointed to a location on the map. "I was thinking we make our entry here, at the edge of the forest. It's a bit more discreet than shooting our way through the front gate. I want to stay covert for as long as possible."

"You're the soldier, Edger. Whatever you think is best."

"First though, I want to get a look at what we're heading into." He motioned for Black to drive the car on up the road for another mile, until they came to a narrow road to the right. Edger told Black to take the turn off. On the right side of the road, there was a ten foot stone wall that closed in the forest within it. The wall represented the edge of the Mason estate. Black drove the car slowly for another quarter mile until Edger told him to stop. "Pull over."

Black pulled the car over next to the stone wall and they both got out. "You intend to climb over that wall?" Black asked. "I don't think men with terminal cancer should be climbing high walls."

Edger shook his head, unsure if the ex-cop was serious or not. "But its okay for men with terminal cancer to go on a black ops kill mission?"

"As long as it's not too taxing."

"Fuck off, Black," Edger said, smiling. "I'll give you a boost."

"A fucking boost. What are we, kids again?"

Edger went to the boot of the car and popped the lid. From inside the large green military bag he took out a pair of night vision binoculars. He also took out a Beretta 92 and a suppressor. He screwed the silencer into the barrel of the Beretta and holstered the gun beneath his jacket, then he went to the wall and linked both his hands together for Black to put his foot on. "Up you go."

Shaking his head, Black put his considerable weight onto Edger's linked hands while Edger pushed him up so Black could get a grip on the top of the wall. After much huffing and struggling, the ex-cop finally got himself up. He sat there, out of breath, looking down at Edger. "I hope you don't expect me to pull
you
up."

Edger tossed the binoculars up for Black to catch. Then he found a foothold in the stone wall and used it to boost himself up so he could grab the top edge. A few seconds later he was on top of the wall with Black, and then they both jumped down to the soft forest floor below. While Black remained crouched against the wall, holding his chest like he was in pain, Edger took the night vision binoculars and began to scan the forest around them, looking for any security guards that might be around. After a few moments of looking, he was satisfied they were alone, for the time being at least.

"Let's go," he told Black, and they both moved off into the forest, making their way through the tall pine trees, their feet crunching the twigs and pine needles beneath their feet.

A noise to his left startled Edger, and he spun around pointing the Beretta in the direction of the noise. Beside him, Black froze. A second later, a black and white head protruded out of a tangle of briars. A badger.

Edger lowered the gun and looked at Black, who shook his head.

As they went to carry on walking again, the dark figure up ahead seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was a man, dressed in black, standing half behind a tree while he appeared to be relieving himself.

Beretta already half raised, Edger saw the guard freeze for a moment in surprise. Then the guard stepped out from the tree and went to grab the gun that was strapped over his chest.

Edger didn't hesitate. He brought the Beretta the rest of the way up and fired off two shots in quick succession, the silencer suppressing most of the noise, but the shots still gave a crack that echoed of the trees around them. The figure up ahead dropped silently to the forest floor as a cloud of gunpowder smoke billowed up around Edger.