The Immortalist (44 page)

Hank had heard the alarm and came running from the office. “What is it? What's wrong?” he shouted.

Cricket staggered forward and threw herself against the window, pressing her face against it, tipping a warm flood of tears down her cheeks.

Hank's eyes were wild. His panicked shouts rumbled through the double sheets of eight-ply polycarbonate and glass.

“Cricket! What's happening? Your helmet! Is . . .
is this it?
”

Cricket wiped her eyes with the back of her glove. “It's over, Hank!” she mumbled. “Th-the worst . . .”

She needed Hank more than she had ever needed him. She needed to fall into his arms.

But the cold glass was between them. She had thrown away her headset. She could barely hear the pounding of his fists. How could he make out what she was trying to say? So she gathered all the air she could into her lungs. One enormous breath.

“The worst is over!” she shouted, her lower jaw still quivering.

One more enormous breath. A pause for strength. Then the words she herself could scarcely believe were true.

“
Our baby is going to live!”

Fourteen

GIFFORD SWAYED IMPATIENTLY
ON HIS FEET
as the dented gray door of the service elevator opened. Silently, Loscalzo led him down a long, musty corridor, lit by a row of auxiliary lights. They stopped at a storeroom door, where Gifford scanned his ID badge and heard the lock click. Pushing his way inside, he flicked on the fluorescent light. In the back, behind several ranks of shelving units, he saw what he had come for—a metal box about the height of a refrigerator. A dry-ice machine.

“That's where you think he put it?” he asked, working hard to restrain his excitement.

“Yeah. But it looks like somebody's padlocked it. If you wait a sec, I could look for a crowbar—”

“Never mind.” Gifford grabbed the padlock and gave it a sharp twist with his bare hand, shattering it as if it were plastic.

“Yeah. Or we could do that,” said Loscalzo, his mouth agape.

Gifford flung open the lid, releasing a cloud of carbon dioxide vapor. Putting on a padded thermal mitten, he reached inside and rummaged through a trough of dry-ice pellets. After a moment, he fished out a Ziploc bag sealed with duct tape. Inside was a seven-inch-long conical tube with an orange cap. On the frosted label, three neat lines were inscribed:

VECTOR aet791homosapiens

Batches 28–31, 33–38, 46 5 ng/ml

STERILE/CERTIFIED PURITY

Gifford almost wept. Eleven batches. There had to be at least fifty nanograms of Vector—enough to carry on the Lottery as planned.

“So are we cool, Doc?”

“Yes, Dom. You have no idea what you've accomplished. Mankind itself is in your debt.”

“And my ma?”

“She'll be the very first.”

Too excited to say more, Gifford rushed back to the elevator with Loscalzo at his heels. A moment later, they were in Gifford's lab. He hastily peeled away the duct tape from the bag and drew out a fraction of a drop to check the DNA concentration in an ultraviolet spectrophotometer. After satisfying himself with a few calculations, he pulled up a stool in front of the biological safety cabinet, rolled up his sleeves, and began transfering the contents of the big orange-capped tube into smaller plastic tubes. He held a pistol-grip micropipetter in his left hand, with a thumb-operated trigger on top. Over and over, he repeated the same movements, with unvarying, almost robotic precision. He would depress the trigger, then release it
to draw a bit of clear liquid from the big tube. Then he'd pop open the flap-top of one of the little tubes and push the trigger up and down to mix it well with some more clear liquid already inside it. Finally, he'd pop the flap-top shut and stick the tube for safekeeping in an orange Styrofoam tray.

“Whatcha doin', Doc?” asked Loscalzo as he paced back and forth across the black and white tiles, trying to work out the pain in his knee.

“Dividing it up into single injections.”

“That's it, huh? That's the Methuselah Vector? It sure doesn't look like much.”

“It's the future of the world, Dom,” said Gifford without altering his rhythm. “Cricket came close to ruining it all. But you've saved it. By lowering the dose to five hundred picograms instead of a full nanogram, I can stretch out the reserve to one hundred and one injections—exactly enough for tomorrow's Lottery, plus one for your mother.”

“Isn't that bad—cuttin' it down like that?”

“Not at all. The Vector will replenish itself to full strength within a few hours after it's injected. It's almost a living thing. The result might not be perfect. There could be some minor uniformity problems. But the end result should be almost exactly the same.”

Gifford asked Loscalzo to fill a small ice chest with dry ice from a box in back of the lab. “Doc, what do you wanna do about Jack and that Cricket dame?” Loscalzo asked, when he returned with the ice chest and set it on a stool. “They're in cahoots, you know. Jack bailed her out at the sheriff's. That's what got my blood boiling against him back on the highway.”

“Leave Acadia Springs to them.” Gifford began planting the little plastic tubes in the dry ice. “They don't realize it, but it's already too late. Almost midnight, Dom. Almost Lottery Day. We've won.”

“S'that a fact?”

“In a few hours we'll have a hundred and one new Subject Adams. Each one a miracle. The media and the politicians will go into a collective orgasm. Everyone will want in. Doubting will seem like a crime against humanity.” Gifford finished with the last of the tubes and slid the top of the ice chest shut. “There—a hundred and one samples. All we need.”

“That's swell, Doc.”

Gifford stood up, rolled down his sleeves, and pulled the bib of his necktie out from under his shirt. He was just about to pick up the ice chest when the elevator dinged. There were footsteps—hard Italian leather slapping against the floor tiles. Then Jack Niedermann came into view.

“You son of a bitch!” shouted Niedermann at his first glimpse of Loscalzo.

“What are you doing here, Jack?” asked Gifford calmly.

“I've come to escort you to the BSL-4 lab. You're under quarantine.”

“I don't think so.”

“I talked to Phillip Eden. The Lottery's off. There'll be an official announcement first thing in the morning. They're shutting down work on the Methuselah Vector—period—pending an investigation.”

“So you've talked to Eden, have you? Too late. I don't need him or you or anyone else. Have you seen the evening news? Over ten thousand people are already camped out at Rockefeller Center. By dawn, another twenty thousand will join them. By noon . . . who knows? Do you think these people will just turn around and go home? Because Phillip Eden said so? Because you say so?”

“You've got nothing, Charles. No Vector. Adam's locked up in the BSL-4 lab.”

Gifford laughed and pointed toward the ice chest on the stool. “There's the Vector, Jack. The stuff you stole from me. It's all I need. And as for Subject Adam—
I
am the real Subject Adam. Cricket was right. I injected myself with it. Everything Adam is,
I
am—and more. Stronger. More virile. More intelligent.
I
am the one who will lead mankind down the road to immortality.
I
am the herald of the coming race of gods.”

“I can't let you go, Charles,” Niedermann said.

“You're going to stop me?
You?
”

A bulge in Niedermann's pants pocket showed the source of his courage. “He's got a gun!” Loscalzo shouted.

Out it came—small, dull gray, and square looking. When Niedermann pointed it, the muzzle barely extended beyond his fingers.

Gifford hardly gave it a glance. “That's your little Sig Sauer, isn't it, Jack? The same gun you killed Hannibal with?”

Niedermann waved the gun back and forth. “Dom, move back. Keep your hands where I can see 'em.”

Loscalzo gladly slunk back to the rear of the lab. Gifford, however, stood his ground.

“Charles, you're coming with me,” Niedermann declared.

“No.”

“You look like shit, you know. You're whiter than chalk. The blood's gone to your eyes or something. Fucking red eyes. You're sick, Charles. Really, really sick.”

“Jack, have you ever shot a man? Not just a dog?”

“Don't make me.”

“Do you have the courage to use that?” Gifford sneered. Then he turned toward the sink beside him. Tentatively, almost voluptuously, he ran his fingers up and down the main water pipe that came down from the ceiling. Suddenly he clenched the pipe. A bell-like clang sounded as a huge section was ripped away from its socket joints. A geyser began spraying over the bench and floor. Gifford moved toward Niedermann, slapping the pipe against his palm.

“Stay back!” Niedermann gasped. “Please, Charles—”

“
Please?
You've got a pistol in your hand, and you're begging? Give it up, Jack. You're out of your league. Put the gun on the counter and get out.”

Niedermann's hand was shaking. He seemed on the point of dropping the gun.

Loscalzo ducked for cover.
Bang!
Glass rained down as a bottle exploded inches above his head. Gifford lunged forward, slashing downward with the pipe. A second shot rang out, the bullet piercing Gifford's side like a red-hot poker. His arm continued its downward swing.
Thunk!
The gun went flying, leaving a white piece of wristbone jutting out from Niedermann's starched white cuff.

Gifford erupted in a frenzy. Again and again he swung the pipe. There was a
pflinckkk!
as it mowed through Niedermann's fingers. A
ggrrrck!
as it snapped his collarbone. A
whoompff!
as it smashed his rib cage. Niedermann dropped to the floor, screaming and sobbing.

“Kill him!” shouted Loscalzo. “Smash his fuckin' brains in!”

Niedermann writhed on the floor, groping for his gun. Gifford kicked it away, then threw the pipe after it. Bending down, he clutched Niedermann's throat. With one hand, he lifted him, gurgling and kicking, into the air.

“You'll stop me, will you?” Gifford shouted. “With your mean little gun?”

With a burst of power, Gifford hurled Niedermann across a countertop, scattering steel racks, water baths, and centrifuges like bowling pins. Niedermann screamed. He made a few weak kicks with his pointed and polished, brown Bruno Magli shoes, but as Gifford's shadow closed again over him, he contracted into a fetal position, shielding his face with his forearms. “Please . . . please . . . ,” he whimpered.

Gifford took him again by the throat—this time with both hands—and lifted him into the air. “You of all people, Jack . . . You should have known. Nothing . . .
nothing
on this earth will stand in the way of the Methuselah Vector.”

Niedermann's face was purple, his eyes red. Gifford's arm trembled as he squeezed so hard that the flesh of Niedermann's neck bulged between his fingers. Niedermann's head swelled. It seemed about to pop like a grape.

But instead—a snap. Neck bones abruptly gave way, severing the spinal cord. Niedermann's body went limp. His eyes remained wide-open, still caught in terror, but they were as lifeless as a photograph.

Loscalzo looked on in shock.

For a moment, Gifford held the body at arm's length, as if stunned by what he had done. Then, with a groan of revulsion, he threw it aside. His knees buckled and he slumped against the the bench, clutching the right side of his stomach.

Loscalzo came running. “Doc, are you okay?”

“I'll be all right.” With shaking hands, Gifford pulled up his shirt and looked. He saw a small hole in the skin of his right flank, about six inches from his navel. A rivulet of blood ran over his trousers belt.

Loscalzo's eyes opened wide. “That little bastard shot you.”

Gifford showed his back. “Can you see anything?”

“Exit hole. Like the size of a dime.”

“Clean wound, then. Went through the transversus abdominis and the obliques. No internal damage.”

“You wanna see a doctor?”

“No. I'll just stanch the bleeding and we can be on our way.”

“Holy moly!” said Loscalzo, shaking his head. “I've never seen anything like that. The way you thrashed that motherfucker. Just like a rag doll.”

Gifford said nothing. Sloshing through the puddle made by the geyser of water, he picked up Niedermann's gun. “Two rounds spent, six left,” he muttered. Pocketing it, he turned back and fished a cell phone from Niedermann's pocket. “Bring that ice chest, Dom.”

Crossing the lab, Gifford stopped outside his office door, where he stripped off his bloody shirt and threw it into a sink. Then he grabbed a white towel hanging over the sink and daubed his front and back with it. The wounds bled as fast as he could wipe the blood away.