Vox(86)

Morgan does.

He has an edge with twenty cc’s of poison and one hell of a sharp needle.

And he’s presently holding it to Lorenzo’s neck, in that soft spot an inch behind the ear.

“Get out,” someone says. I can’t tell whether this is Lorenzo or Morgan yelling in the bright white room with one gurney and a table on wheels. It’s only a voice. Only two words that have no other purpose than to terrify me.

“Morgan—,” I start.

He doesn’t allow me to finish.

“You fucking bitch. Fucking cunt.”

Lorenzo’s jaw tightens, but the words don’t bother me. The syringe, yes, but everything else Morgan has to push is nothing more than jumbled fricatives and velars. I can divorce myself from those.

But that goddamned syringe. That’s real.

I take a step forward, very slowly, a sort of time-warp step from an old sci-fi movie.

“Gianna. No.” Lorenzo sounds as rock steady as his body looks.

“Gianna? Who the fuck is Gianna?” And as he says my name—my other name—Morgan’s eyes flicker. “Oh. I get it. You two have a little something going on. Man, talk about two birds with one stone.” He’s bordering on giddy now. “Oh man, this is too sweet. The poor, star-crossed, moon-eyed lovers. Tell me, Lorenzo, is she good? Looks kind of old from where I stand. But maybe you like your bitches run hard and put away wet.”

The muscles in Lorenzo’s left arm tense, and his hand curls into a fist.

“Ah, ah, ah, Dr. Rossi.” Morgan pushes the needle’s point harder against flesh.

A pinprick of a red spot appears at the contact point, and a single drop of clear fluid rolls down the side of Lorenzo’s neck. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s sweat or serum.

“You know,” Morgan says, his voice syrup sweet but still menacing, “I’m not much of a scientist. All that poring over data and running the same fucking experiments over and over again. I hate that shit. But I’m a good reader. A good people reader. And I can read other things. Like that little bottle over there that says ‘Local injection only.’” He knocks his chin toward the spilled contents of the surgical tray without moving his eyes off me. “I saw that, and I had to ask, why? Why local only? What would happen if I pushed this needle in like so—” The needle buries itself a millimeter or two into Lorenzo’s neck, far too close to the jugular vein. “What would happen if I just started pushing down on the plunger? Any ideas?”

“Go ahead, Morgan,” Lorenzo says. “Gianna, get the hell out of here. There’s a spare key under my car’s fender. Take it and go.”

“Don’t be so fucking brave.” Morgan’s eyes—those nasty rat eyes—bore into mine. “You move, bitch, and I’ll start pushing the stuff into him.” The eyes shift slightly to the left, over my shoulder. “Go back into the lab.”

It takes a moment before I realize he’s not talking to me. A firm grip, not as strong as a man’s, but strong enough, tightens on my elbow, turning me slightly.

Jackie.

Her head moves in one sharp, defined jerk. Let’s go, it says. In her free hand are Petroski’s keys. They sound like tiny metallic bells in the still of a room where everyone seems to be holding his or her breath.

“Get Petroski,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.” It takes every part of my human brain to ward off the reptilian instinct to flee.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Jean,” Morgan threatens.

“Listen. If you have a human bone left in you, Morgan, you’ll do this right. Have Petroski shoot him. Make it clean. You can always call it an accident later on.”

There’s a pause while Morgan considers this.

“Self-defense?” I suggest. “The serum’s going to be harder to explain. We’re talking about a reputable biochemist here, not some schmuck you recruited from grad school. Think about it. Think what you’re going to say when Lorenzo Rossi walks out of this building speaking in tongues. Then think about what the Italian embassy’s going to say.”

Morgan’s thinking takes an eternity. I spend half of it thinking about guns.

Like any mechanism, they have parts. The part you put a bullet in, the part the bullet comes out of, and the part that makes the bullet go from one place to another. Easy. Simple. Unchanged for centuries. Lock, stock, and barrel. In one order or another.

During the other half of Morgan’s thinking time, I consider Sergeant Petroski, the philosophy major turned soldier. Husband. Father. A man whose hand shakes when he draws his service pistol. A man who knows where the safety is and how to disengage it.

Jackie yanks on my arm again, and I turn to her.

“What would you do to be free, Jacko? Because right now, I’d do just about anything.”

She doesn’t say a word, but she does smile.

“Petroski!” Morgan yells.

Heavy boots echo through the lab. Under them, paper rustles. A sharp crack marks the end of a wayward pair of glasses. The entire world slows as Sergeant Petroski approaches the open door behind me.

“Sir!” Petroski barks.

It all happens in the blink of an eye, but I know my mind is recording each image, each still frame of the movie. Maybe one day I’ll be able to slow these images down, replay them in real time. Right now, the sequence is haphazard and choppy, the soundtrack garbled.