Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) (38 page)

He managed to repress the loss of his
daughter for so long through a decadent cocktail of alcohol,
therapy, and meaningless sex—but he regretted turning to Syllax.
Now he couldn’t break his addiction to the drug. It allowed him to
hear and see Emily, even if she only existed as a figment of his
imagination.

Those hallucinations were almost more
precious than the genuine memories.

If his drug abuse came to light, his
judgment would be called into question regarding every case he put
together. His career as a homicide detective would go down in
flames. Convicts would appeal for release on the grounds of his
dubious testimony, and serial killers and rapists would be walking
the streets again. Any evidence linking Syllax to hallucinations,
tumors, scopolamine, and mental defects had to be eliminated. That
included patient records, Dr. Cervenka’s notes about Viktor, the
cassette tape in the house, everything. And now he had to eliminate
the final liability: Viktor.

And Vivian.

How could he have expected Syllax to
lie at the crux of the grisly abductions? He looked down at his
findings from the last murder. The diagnosis of Renata Ruzicka,
burned to a cinder by R-Butylliuthium.

Syllax Pharmaceuticals was the only
clinic to have purchased massive quantities of R-Butyllithium in
the past. It seemed he had no choice but to return to the point of
origin, where the horrors first began.

TWENTY

Something squirmed inside Vivian as
she stood in the shadow of Syllax Pharmaceuticals. Its battered
exterior was enough to deflect most wayward youths from marauding
inside.

Vivian had no choice but to enter in
search of an antidote. The side effects from Syllax were steadily
worsening, heightening every sense until her imaginings spilled
over into reality.

She jumped as she felt a hand on her
shoulder.

“
Sorry, I didn’t mean to
startle you,” Camilla said sheepishly.

“
No, it’s fine.” They had
barely spoken to each other since they met up in the forest last
night. She would hardly call their reunion pleasant. Vivian was
running from Prague as if hell was nipping at her heels. The only
reason she stopped was because she physically ran into
Camilla.

The look that passed between them was
spine-tingling. Camilla opened her mouth to demand where Vivian had
gone, but no words came out.

With empty stomachs and only a few
hours of sleep, they departed. The soil shifted and oozed with
every step to the north. Autumn’s presence became more acute as
they closed in on the facility. The forest gave way to a
ginger-brown landscape dotted with the skeletons of trees. Rolling
fields of blood-soaked grass bent and creaked in the
wind.

Vivian could smell the poison in the
air, in the soil, and deep in the water. It was a world devoid of
color that extended as far as the eye could see. The thrushes
ceased to sing their attractive songs. Life shriveled as soon as it
crossed an invisible line into this realm.

“
What’s wrong?” Camilla
asked.

Vivian shivered.

“
I feel the same way as I
did when you left me in the forest. My head is swimming with so
many unpleasant thoughts right now. I keep seeing the disgusting
things I’ve done… or might have done.”

Camilla inched closer but Vivian
pulled away.

“
When I was alone in the
forest, I experienced another vision. You know the woman I’m
accused of murdering? I saw her kneeling before me, and I was
clutching a gun in my hand. I saw the tears in her eyes as she
pleaded for her life. I could
feel
her blood running down my fingers. I still can’t
get the damn smell off my hands, even though I know it isn’t
real!”

“
Vivian, you didn’t kill
her—”

“
You don’t know what I’m
capable of! Maybe I did murder her—just as I almost killed Viktor!
Whatever the case, I couldn’t stay put after what I saw. I had to
go back to see my parents… and… and Nikolai found me.”

“
How could you go back
there?! Are you trying to die?!”

“
I needed you here,
Camilla! You don’t understand what the Syllax was doing to me—the
sick things I was thinking!” She shook her head in smug defeat. “I
needed to go somewhere safe.”

“
Safety is the last thing
you should expect to find at home! You should have known the police
would stake out your house!”

A small part of Vivian blamed herself
for ignoring the obvious. It was true, she should have known
better. In spite of that, she wanted to see her mother and father
before it was too late.

“
Camilla, there’s something
else you should know.” Vivian didn’t avoid looking at her this
time. “Vesely Manor is gone. Nikolai razed it to the
ground.”

“
What…?”

“
After I escaped my house,
I saw the fire on the horizon. Nikolai must have known I would run
there.”

Camilla clenched her trembling
fists.

“
He just erased my family
history? Like that?”

“
I’m sorry, Camilla. I
didn’t think he would—” The journalist turned away, staring across
the fields of desolation. She didn’t move or speak for what seemed
like ages.

“
Camilla, I’m
sorry!”

When Camilla spun around, tears
streamed down her face.

“
I don’t blame you, Vivian.
I’ve been meaning to tell you I’m sorry, too. It must feel like I’m
always missing when you need me. You needed me by your side when I
was in the city.”

Vivian’s anger melted and she quietly
pulled her into a hug.

“
It’s okay, Camilla. I’m
glad you’re here on the last leg of the journey. This is how it all
ends, isn’t it?”

“
I certainly hope so. Have
you given any thought to what you’ll do after you find the antidote
to Syllax? What’s left for us?”

“
We’re both refugees with a
bleak future. I won’t drag you into another mess. We should
probably go our separate ways once this is over. I don’t know what
I’ll do now, but I’ll have to forge a new life somewhere
else.”

Just as one chapter in her life
closed, she felt a fresh chapter begin—starting with the moment she
opened the door to Syllax Pharmaceuticals.

The front lobby was rotting into the
earth. The walls were once bright and inviting, but now the paint
peeled away to expose the delicate innards.

Damaged furniture had been stacked in
the far corners or against shattered windows. Vivian could imagine
the unsuspecting men and women waiting in the lounge as they combed
through magazines, enticed with promises of a drug that would
change countless lives. She wondered how much they were paid to
participate in the clinical trials. At what cost did they sacrifice
their humanity?

A deathly cold seeped into her toes,
and she looked down. Rancid, black chemicals flowed outward from a
corridor.

Vivian plodded down the hall, sending
ripples into the dark. The air was thick and reeked of
deterioration. Beneath the intoxicating smells, she caught the
scent of something artificial. Unnatural.

A hard pressure took root in her chest
as she approached the stairwell.

“
I can’t breathe…” she
whispered. She almost took a dive down the stairs as dizziness set
in.

“
Here, we need these.”
Camilla pulled something off the wall and handed it to Vivian. A
gas mask. She shuddered with instinctive revulsion. Looking into
the empty sockets reminded her so much of… him. “Put it on. This
facility was abandoned due to chemical spills and poisonous
fumes.”

“
I suppose I have no
choice.”

They waded through the waterlogged
facility until they came upon a laboratory. Though it had escaped
the flooding, the state of decay was omnipresent, like a foul deity
that claimed this place as its temple. The walls were frosted with
the hue of rusted iron, an unsettling backdrop for large cages with
metal tethers.

“
What the heck is
this?”

“
I did some digging on
Syllax Pharmaceuticals before we headed over here,” Camilla said.
“They repeatedly tested the drug on animals, especially primates.
The restraint chairs were used to immobilize the monkeys while
scientists intravenously injected them with Syllax.”

Vivian eyed a set of clamps and rails
perfectly suited for restraining a small-sized head.

“
Scientists isolated the
monkeys from each other and subjected them to hourly injections.
Sometimes the researchers would bang on their cages to intimidate
them into being quiet.”

Vivian couldn’t find words to express
her disgust.

Somewhere, a door squealed in the
shadows, resounding like a primate begging to be left alone. Crying
out for mercy.

“
I don’t want to be here
anymore,” Camilla said, thought her voice was barely audible
through the respirator.

“
I’m not leaving without
the goddamned antidote.” Vivian squeezed her wrist, where the vein
was hardening like rope under her skin.

“
Let’s find it quick
then.”

They crept into another laboratory
lost to the annals of time. Vivian saw the tomb-like freezers and
immediately threw them open. She scattered the vials and ampules on
the shelves.

“
I can’t fucking tell what
it is,” she said, holding the faded labels up to her
eyes.

“
Let me see.” Camilla
squinted at the container but she couldn’t see clearly. After a
pause, she undid the straps on her gas mask. Vivian followed her
example, anxious to rid herself of the device.

“
What does it
say?”

“
Tetramethyl… tetra… I have
no idea how to pronounce this.”

“
What does it do? Will it
counteract the Syllax?”

“
I don’t know, but it
smells disgusting. I wouldn’t recommend it. We need to find where
they stored the records. Maybe that will tell us how to reverse the
effects.”

The most crucial detail of all escaped
their attention as they ransacked the freezers. Not once did they
notice the noxious fumes hissing through the vents
above.

The vapors soaked into their lungs and
pores, leaving no trace until they fell pitifully under its spell.
Vivian thought nothing of it at first when her fingers felt numb to
the bone. The lab was cold enough to rob her of any sensation. Even
when her vision blurred, she pinned it on a brutal night’s lack of
sleep. It wasn’t until she saw Camilla convulsing on the floor did
she feel a pang of terror. By then, she blacked out in a delicious
wave of pain.

When Vivian reopened her eyes, she
felt wet and feverish. She was still trapped in Syllax
Pharmaceuticals, but she didn’t recognize her immediate
surroundings. More importantly, she was alone.

“
Camilla?
Camilla?
” A chill pulsed
through the halls. In that moment she knew Camilla’s absence could
only portend one outcome. The last heartbeats were likely pouring
out of her right now in a sea of red.

“
Oh God... Fuck!” she
screamed. “Camilla!” Vivian staggered down the hall, where scraps
of paper ripped from a reporter’s notebook were strewn across the
floor. She followed the trail of destruction down the stairs,
picking up several scraps. Each one was marred with a different
word: THE. HURT. ME. STAIRS. THROUGH.

She began to arrange them on the
floor, trying to make sense of them. Maybe there was a hidden
message.

“
Come on,” she begged,
clawing at the notes. Suddenly, she understood. She furiously
arranged them.

down the stairs and through the door,
you cannot hurt me anymore.

She regarded the murky stairs
wallowing in the shadows. Did they lead to a realm even more
perverse than hell? She swallowed her fear. She had no choice but
to plunge waist deep into it.

As she descended the stairs, a single
scrap fluttered on a nail on the wall: MOMMY, LOVE ME

* * *

Jezebel walked into her office with a
bundle of mail tucked under her arm. Her desk was already buried
under a growing wave of subpoenas and inquiries. What difference
would it make if she added a little more to the mix?

“
What is this?” Jezebel
said, holding up a parcel. “From Camilla Vesely?” The name
resounded with familiarity, but from where? She was accustomed to
receiving all sorts of requests from families concerned about
wrongful deaths, but rarely did she recognize the names. With a
shrug, she tore open the package.

Hollow point bullets and syringes
deluged onto her desk.

At first, she could only stare in awe
of the chaos that invaded her quiet office.

“
Shit!”

She sprang into action before someone
happened across the unwholesome scene. Jezebel began to stuff the
drug paraphernalia into a drawer, anything to remove it from
existence. She stopped when a peculiar sight caught her eye. She
daintily picked up one of the syringes, mesmerized by its contents.
It contained the same substance she used on the lab
rats.