Kingdom Page 9

  “Whatever you’ve done, Michael,” Campbell said, “you’ve done. I don’t want any part of it. I’ve got a different life now.”

  “I certainly can’t argue with that point,” Morrison said, a smile creeping back across his face. “I’m going to reach into my coat now but don’t be alarmed—there is something I need to show you, and then, if you still want, I’ll leave. And please take your finger off that trigger: Your hand is shaking.”

  Campbell looked down at his trembling hand and smiled.

  “You’re going to have to give me a better reason than that Michael.”

  Morrison nodded, pulling an ordinary manila envelope—the kind used in a million offices thousands of times every day—out of his overcoat, extending it toward Campbell.

  “I think this should suffice,” Morrison said.

  After hesitating for a moment, Campbell—the gun still trained on Morrison, the trembling in his fingers intensifying—took the envelope, some part of him still needing to know what Morrison had done because, whatever was inside that envelope, Campbell knew there was a damn good possibility his own research had made it possible.

  Placing the gun on the desk, Campbell unsealed the envelope and reached inside. His index finger and thumb closed around several documents, which, after a deep breath, he pulled into the light, the envelope floating to the floor.

  At first glance, Campbell failed to note anything unusual. The papers were lab reports documenting a human karyotype: the complete set of chromosomes in the cells of an organism, easily obtained by staining a cell and then taking a picture of it just before cell division; mildly retarded kids in high school chemistry classes were capable of producing similar reports.

  “Cut the bullshit, Michael. After everything that’s gone down between us I know you didn’t come all this way to show me a karyotype report.”

  “Actually Jonathan, that’s exactly what I did. But as was so often the case when we worked together, you’re just not seeing the big picture. Look a little closer.”

  Holding the report up in the direction of the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, Campbell studied the document, searching each chromosome for any distinguishing characteristic, any marking that would explain Morrison’s appearance.

  Then he saw it. Despite the dull ache radiating from his joints, from behind his eyes, Campbell laughed, a sound like steel scraping across steel limping out from the back of his throat.

  “Twenty-four,” Campbell said. “You’re showing me a karyotype report with 24 pairs of chromosomes.”

  What Campbell didn’t need to say, what both men knew, was that the number of chromosomes the report showed was impossible: Human karyotypes are comprised of 23 pairs of chromosomes, allowing for 46 chromosomes total. The adult male, for example, had the same 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes along with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. Swap out the Y chromosome for another X, you’ve got a female. Although occasional genetic mutations resulted in 47 total chromosomes, a human being with 48 was simply not possible.

  “You expect me to believe this bullshit?” Campbell spat, crumbling the report and tossing it at Morrison. “I don’t know what your end game here is, but you and I both know how easy it is to forge a report like this. Just tell me why you’re here. It’s been two fucking decades, Michael. Why now?”

  “Trust me, friend,” Morrison said, a hint of menace creeping into his voice, “these reports are no forgery. In fact, they are the very reason I never ordered my men to hunt you down like a dog. It would have been so easy, whereas letting you live—that is, if you call this living—was a risk,” Morrison continued gesturing at the water-stained ceiling, the crumbling brick walls, “but I knew this day would come.”

  “And what day is that?” Campbell said.

  “The day when you return with me to Morrison Biotech, to the desert. The day that you and I, together, take the final step toward realizing Project Exodus’ full potential.”

  Exodus. Campbell’s world wobbled, but held steady.

  “That’s right, Jonathan. Exodus is alive and well. But it’s not like I’m telling you anything you didn’t at least suspect,” Morrison continued, pointing at the clippings on the wall.

  Campbell leaned against the desk and exhaled, his eyes locked on Morrison.

  “Not a chance in hell I’ll ever come back. You can send your men—there’s no need to hunt, you know exactly where I am,” Campbell said, his eyes turning back toward the gun.

  “You and I both know it won’t come to that,” Morrison replied. “Look at this black market garbage you’ve been relying on: You’ve made a mockery of the Treatment. You’re not going to last much longer and when the end comes, the agony will be unforgiving. And you’ll die in this hellhole, with no legacy, working as an errand boy for these monks…this Order. The only redemption you’ll ever find is waiting back in the desert, back in the Exodus laboratories.”

  Campbell felt his heart skip a beat; of course Morrison knew about the Order—Campbell never doubted that. But there was a part of Campbell that hoped that somehow, Morrison would ignore the Order; that they would somehow slide under his radar.

  “So why now, Michael? If I’m so fucked, why not just let me go?”

  “Because there is a flaw in the final Exodus design. Fortunately for you,” Morrison continued, “you—or any of this—probably wouldn’t be around if my version of Exodus was perfect. In fact, I can guarantee that. Unfortunately for me, here you are.”

  “What kind of flaw Michael? What have you done?”

  “What I’m saying,” Morrison said, ignoring the question as he moved closer to Campbell, “is 24 pairs of chromosomes. Think of the possibilities. I’m here to offer you redemption. To erase the last 20 years. To bring you home to finish what we started.” He paused. “What you started.”

  Campbell lunged for the gun on the desk but Morrison was too quick, slamming his fist into Campbell’s chest. The blow drove Campbell to his knees, and left him struggling for breath.

  “What I started,” Campbell gasped, looking up at Morrison, his voice little more than a low growl. “And whatever it is you’re trying to finish… those two things have never been the same. And if I see you again, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  “The father of Project Exodus deserves better than this,” Morrison said evenly, gesturing to the warped wooden walls and tattered bed sheets before turning and slipping out through the doorway, leaving Campbell alone with the demons from his past.

  Campbell watched as Sweeney ran his damp rag over the chipped surface of the half- century-old bar a few more times than normally necessary, his fat pale fingers, very much resembling uncooked sausages, working from behind the bar to extricate a particularly tenacious piece of grime trapped in an knifed carving. The engraving was just one of many littering the old oak: The entire history of Sweeney’s joint could be traced by reading the various messages tattooed onto the top of the bar. Drunken, mad prophets and end of the line Romeo and Juliets—the ones who couldn’t quite pony up enough for 30–second television spots or high-traffic Web banners—used the surface as their easels, scratching out their midnight messages—desperate attempts to connect to someone, something, anything—when they thought the bartender’s back was turned.

  “So Morrison finally paid you a visit,” Sweeney asked, finally looking up from the bar.

  Campbell nodded, his fingers wrapped tight around the glass sitting in front of him. The crumbled report Morrison had left with him was on the bar stool next to him; he couldn’t bring himself to read the rest of it, not yet.

  Sweeney laughed and reached behind the bar for a bottle of Jameson, which he used to refill Campbell’s glass, the ice cubes cracking in response to the splash of brown liquor.

  “Been a long time,” Sweeney said as he put the bottle away. “A very long time. Safe to assume this wasn’t just a friendly visit.”

  “He wants me to come back to Exodus,” Campbell said, shaking his head in disbelief. “And
he knows about the Order.”

  Sweeney raised an eyebrow. “Can’t say I’m surprised about either. He gonna be back? Maybe next time, we have a little surprise waiting for him.”

  Campbell picked the report off the stool and laid it down on the bar. He took a gulp of the whiskey, squinting his eyes against the burn of the booze. He could still feel the Treatment grinding its way through his system, although the booze helped with some of the pain. He shook his head at the bartender.

  “I don’t know Sweeney. I just don’t know.”

  But staring down into the murky liquor melting the ice cubs, Campbell knew that was bullshit. Morrison would be back—whether he intended on letting Campbell live was the only question left.

  Chapter 9

  Tiber City

  Aug. 27, 2015

  3:43 p.m.

  Dylan was dreaming of giant reptiles—dinosaurs whose names as a child he could rattle off on command, names he had now forgotten—attacking great cities of the West, a blur of leathery wings, scales, and fire, atonal screeching ricocheting off steel skyscrapers as terrible Behemoths descended out of the nothingness, plunging toward the hearts of these cities, rendering cathedrals and skyscrapers an indistinguishable rubble. The nightmare was unfolding in an alineal clusterfuck: images bombarding Dylan’s subconscious without bothering to assemble any sort of cohesive narrative. There was only confusion—men and women abandoning their children as monsters swooped down on rotting cities, cars left in the streets, infants strapped in car seats as their parents fled into the flame. A plasma television in a storefront window broadcast the carnage in real time to the empty, blood-soaked streets, the eyes plastered across the PROGRESS poster the only witness to these terrible events.

  The images grew disjointed, dissolving into a series of catastrophes—volcanoes, jungles, mountaintops, vast deserts—until a great earthquake rendered the surface of the earth, and man, building, and beast alike tumbled into the abyss.

  Dylan awoke, seconds later, the toneless cry of long-extinct monsters still ringing in his ears.

  Soaked in sweat, he checked the time on his cell phone: 3:43 in the afternoon. Groaning, Dylan swung his legs over the bed and onto the hardwood floor. The room was dark, courtesy of the blackout shades pulled tight over the three eight-foot windows lining his bedroom wall. When the shades were up, Dylan had a stunning view of Capital Bank Park, which had been known as Garden Park but, as a result of the city going bankrupt several times in the last decade, was now under corporate sponsorship; “product information booths” competed with century-old statues and botanical gardens for visitors’ attention. On rare occasions the shroud of smog covering the city lifted and Dylan could see beyond the Jungle district and out toward the lights of oil tankers twinkling on the ocean. Most of the time, however, the sprawl of the Jungle seemed endless, pressing up into the horizon until the two were indistinguishable.

  But right now the heavy window shades eclipsed everything, leaving only tiny slivers of sunlight spilling between the side of the shade and the edge of the window, tiny spaces that, no matter how hard Dylan tried to block them out, persisted. Short of nailing the shade to the wall, he had long since accepted that some small amount of light would spill through the cracks, disturbing the darkness he coveted.

  Just because he accepted this fact didn’t mean that he was happy about it, especially on days such as this—when he woke up hung over, his nose, throat, body wracked with pain, tidal wave after tidal wave of anxiety washing over him, threatening to drown him as he ground his teeth and involuntarily dug his toes into one another until the big one began to bleed, when he couldn’t stand being awake, his mind spinning and spinning and spinning but he was so terrified of his own subconscious that he didn’t want to fall back asleep.

  Dylan was naked and alone, the black 600-thread-count sheets rolled up in a sweat-soaked ball on the other side of the California king. The balled up sheets weren’t a surprise—his nightmares were getting worse—but the alone part was a little confusing. He remembered the girls from the club, from the bathroom; he could still smell one or maybe both of them on his face, his fingers. He was grateful neither of them were in bed next to him but he was confused because he didn’t remember how the night had ended, how much coke had been done, who decided when it was time to go home, if everyone had a good time, if anyone’s feelings had been hurt, if anyone fell in love: Any time he closed his eyes, all he could see was those eyes from the PROGRESS poster watching as a city slowly consumed itself.

  He checked his phone again, hoping that maybe he had been mistaken but the digital numbers confirmed that it was indeed almost 4 in the afternoon—which was a problem because he had somewhere important he needed to be. With trembling fingers, he began groping the metal nightstand next to his bed, knocking over a glass of water before his fingers closed around a bottle of pills. Screwing off the lid, Dylan dumped the contents of the bottle into his mouth—two, three, four, eventually five 15-milligram pills of Ativan tumbled over the sickly orange plastic and down his throat. Once upon a time, that was enough to knock him out until well after sunset. Now, it was the bare minimum required to ward off the worst of the nightmares and subsequent crippling anxiety that gripped him in those hours after the party was over, when everyone had gone home and his kidneys began flushing the alcohol from his system, the narcotics relinquishing their grip on his brain stem but not without first leaving him the lovely parting gift of ravaged serotonin levels and a nameless, nebulous dread.

  Rolling out of bed, his entire body was in a state of revolt, the chill from the air conditioner doing little to stem the tide of sweat pouring from his arms, legs, back, forehead. He trudged forward with his head down, using the consistency of the hardwood floor to fight the nausea as he stumbled, still nude, from the bedroom to the bathroom down the hall. He had forgotten to close the blinds in the bathroom and light was streaming in, sending sharp jolts of pain through his skull. Dylan moved to pull the shade shut but before he could he caught a glimpse of the city skyline and for a moment the panic he felt so acutely in his dream returned and he swore he could see those terrible beasts gathering along the horizon, their scales a mosaic of metallic gray. He closed his eyes for a moment, the low hum of the AC the only sound in the world, and when he opened them his vision had cleared and there was nothing but a solitary jetliner cutting across a static pre-dusk sky.

  He turned away from the window, pulling down the shade before sliding open the glass shower door and twisting the faucet. Hot water blasted out of the nozzle as Dylan took a step back and turned around, his head still pounding as he flipped open the mirrored medicine cabinet mounted above a marble sink on the opposite wall. A dozen or so different off-yellow prescriptions lined the tiny shelves but the Ativan was already working its way through Dylan’s system, some of the post-coke binge edge dissolving, and now he just needed something for the throbbing pain in his head. After considering a plastic bag filled with Vicodin, he grabbed a bottle of some over-the-counter painkillers, twisting off the cap and dumping two, three, five in his palm then catapulting the green and white capsules down his throat. His throat was too dry, however, and he started to gag but before he could throw everything up he managed to stick his mouth under the sink’s faucet, water rushing past his lips, pushing the painkillers into his system.

  Dylan swallowed hard, pulling his head away from the sink and, after closing the door to the medicine cabinet, found himself staring at this reflection in the mirror: three days worth of stubble framed by longish-brown hair, strong jaw line and normally bright blue eyes that were, at this moment, dull and bloodshot. He stood in front of the mirror for a moment, inspecting his body, the shower still running, hot water pounding the glass enclosure, filling the room with steam. The reflection staring back at Dylan began to dissolve, eclipsed by the condensation clouding the mirror. Suddenly very cold, he turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower, the hot water burning his skin, reassuring him he was still there
.

  Stepping out of the shower, Dylan dried himself, slapped on some deodorant, and dressed quickly—jeans, T-shirt, and a pair of old Chucks. His apartment was a mess and someone was sleeping on one of the couches that formed a perimeter around the massive television hung against the exposed brick wall—bottles and cut straws and DVDs were scattered all over the floor and the bundle of blankets piled on the couch in the shape of a human began to groan.

  “Chase, that you, man?” Dylan asked.

  There was a muffled response, some incoherent grumblings, cursing, and an admonition not to be a dick and turn off the lights, even though the television was still on, the sound muted—it was Chase.

  Dylan grabbed a half-empty capped bottle off the floor filled with what might have been lime-green Gatorade but just as easily could have been piss and flung it in the direction of the pile of blankets, smiling in spite of his splitting headache at the sound of the plastic hitting the sliver of exposed scalp peaking out.

  “The fuck man,” Chase called out from under the blankets. “I’m trying to get some sleep. Why are you awake so early? We didn’t get in until what? Like 6? Go back to bed.”

  “It’s like, almost 5 in the afternoon,” Dylan said.

  “Like I said, why so early?”

  “I got some shit I gotta take care of.”

  “More coke,” came the voice, this time with increased hope.

  “Not exactly, dude. It’s just some shit I gotta do.”

  “Fine man. Get all secretive on me. Just text me whenever you’re done doing whatever. We’ll grab a bite.”

  “Might not be back till late man.”

  “No worries–I’m good. These couches are comfortable as all fuck. Besides, isn’t that Godfather box set around here somewhere? I might just chill, watch part one and two, probably avoid three…I think I got some oxy last night, too…Need to check my pockets.”