Trouble Bruin (8 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Dr. Atkins was signing paperwork when Dr. Stanhope knocked and ushered Charlie into his office. They’d walked a circuit and were back near the laboratories. The CEO kept scribbling for a few seconds (very busy, very important) before tucking the papers away in a drawer and smiling at Charlie (but never too busy for
you
, my dear).

He didn’t rise to greet her, but instead loosened his tie, gestured at a chair, and said, “Forgive me – it’s been a long day.” There were faint dark shadows under his eyes, and his suit jacket was slung over the back of his chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He seemed weary and a little distracted. It was very cleverly done.

“You look tired,” Charlie said.

He nodded. “I’m very concerned about the increase in berserker attacks,” he said. “Did you know I have a son about Rhys’s age? When I think that it could be him lying there, fighting for his life…”

Charlie hadn’t seen any evidence of an increase in attacks – just one critically injured young man whose condition was, admittedly, heartbreaking – but she probably wasn’t supposed to think about that. A matter of only days ago, she wouldn’t have.

“Poor Rhys,” she agreed. “Do you think he’ll survive, Dr. Atkins?”

He shook his head gravely. “I don’t know, Charlotte. The medical staff are doing all they can.” He pounded his fist gently on the arm of his chair. “It makes me feel so
helpless
.”

Charlie knew exactly the line he was feeding her, and she gave it to him. “I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

Dr. Atkins, on cue, looked surprised. “Oh, but there is,” he assured her. “You’re absolutely crucial to the success of this project. Not only were you intimately involved in creating a herbicide that would kill Starweed but not the other native foliage, you’ve made more flights out into the Badlands than any other pilot. We’re relying on you for intelligence about where there are still growths of wild Starweed.”

He got up, opened a wall safe, and produced a large map, which he unrolled over the desk’s surface. He laid a green marker pen on top of it. Charlie was aware of him watching her carefully.

He already knows where the Starweed is. He wants to see whether you’ll lie.

She uncapped the pen, pulled the map towards her, and started marking the areas where Starweed still grew, as carefully and accurately as she could. Behind her, she thought she heard him give a small, satisfied sigh. She didn’t smile.

Her hand jerked and the marker slipped on the paper, leaving a wiggly green line, when there was a sudden clamor from the direction of the medical wing. An insistent, blaring alarm.

Charlie thought quickly. “Oh no, it must be Rhys. You go, Dr. Atkins. I know how worried you are about him. I’ll be fine here.”

She could see from his hesitation that this interruption wasn’t part of the plan, but she just put her head down and continued to mark the map with the remaining outcroppings of Starweed.

Dr. Atkins made a decision to commit to his role, and hurried off.

Charlie worked quietly for a couple of minutes, then she crept to the open door and checked the corridor in both directions. Empty.

She slipped silently down to Professor Stanhope’s lab, where she stopped, squared her shoulders, composed herself, and strode in as if she owned the place and straight over to Jeremy-Jiminy’s bench. Fortunately he hadn’t been delayed by any last-minute work, and had clocked off. Nobody paid her any attention – they were all too busy with their test tubes and Bunsen burners and petri dishes.

It was only a moment’s work to grab a canister of the new version of the serum she’d seen him working on.

At precisely the wrong moment, a pretty Asian woman, who somehow managed to make the white lab jumpsuit look good, glanced up at her questioningly. Charlie grabbed a bunch of papers to cover her confusion and held them up, grinning, hoping the woman wouldn’t notice the canister tucked under her other arm. “Just grabbing some things for…uh…”
Crap, what was his name?
“…for J,” she finished lamely. “Pretend I’m not here.”

The woman’s attention was drawn by a bleep from her work area, and Charlie took the opportunity to slip out of the lab and back down the corridor to Dr. Atkins’ office.

And just in time, too, because no sooner had she started marking the map again than he returned. He swept his gaze over his desk drawers, his filing cabinets and the wall safe. Nothing had been disturbed. The safe’s dial hadn’t been tampered with. Although the interruption hadn’t been planned, it had confirmed for Dr. Atkins that Charlie wasn’t snooping where she shouldn’t be, and that meant she must still be in the dark.

Ha! How stupid was he?

But then she realized. It wasn’t stupidity – it was arrogance, and skewed priorities. She was sure that wherever the serum was stored for use in trials, it was absolutely bristling with security.

But he didn’t give a damn about the newer version of the serum still being developed in the labs. He wasn’t particularly interested in a version of the serum that didn’t have a thirty-five percent “wastage rate”. He didn’t care if the serum burned out his test subjects’ brains, as long as enough survived to give him his army of super-soldiers.

Dr. Atkins had worried that Charlie might snoop in his office, because he considered the work he did there very important, so he assumed she must too. It had never occurred to him that she could get what she wanted by blending in with the nameless, faceless, disposable lab rats.

He looked over the map and nodded his satisfaction. “This is excellent work,” he said. “I knew we had the right woman for the job.” He pulled up a chair to sit next to her and placed an avuncular hand on hers. Charlie repressed a shudder. “You said you wished there was something you could do to help. This is your opportunity. Your plane has been repaired and refueled, and is ready to be loaded with the herbicide. Will you be the one to dust the Badlands and end the scourge of berserker attacks by Starweed addicts?”

He must have misinterpreted her hesitation, because he said, “It might seem low-tech, but the technique has been used to great effect on the population of locusts in India and East Africa. It’s a proven method of eradicating pests.” He gave a thin smile.

Pests,
she thought.
Pests, not people. Less important to you than insects.

“Of course I will,” she said. “Whatever it takes to stop innocent people being hurt by monsters.”

Chapter Sixteen

The hangar was enormous and housed several aircraft – the chopper that Dr. Atkins, Professor Stanhope, Gary and the engineers had flown in on, still grimy with reddish-gray dust. Dr. Atkins’ private jet – glitzy and top of the line, intended to impress potential investors – and a number of smaller aircraft, including Charlie’s little Cessna. It looked dinky, battered and old next to the glossy, expensive Dynamic Earth equipment. But she was comfortable flying it. It was hers.

The plane had been refueled and the crop-dusting apparatus had been installed and tested – a metal frame below the rear edges of the wings, fitted with dozens of nozzles that would send out a fine mist of the Starweed-specific herbicide. The net effect would be that as she flew her plane over Darwin and out towards Cottonwood, she’d be leaving behind a poisonous cloud that would settle over the Badlands and kill the Starweed – and by extension every bear with the berserker gene. There would be no more Starweed, ever. They would become sick, and weak, and they would die. Art would die – if he wasn’t dead already.

That was Dr. Atkins’ plan, anyway. Charlie had a different plan. The engineers had finished tinkering around with the plane, ticking off pre-flight checklists and completing other last-minute tasks, making sure the Cessna was air-worthy. They left the hangar, laughing among themselves, probably heading for the cafeteria and its famously enormous breakfasts.

The engineers’ departure left just Charlie and Gary in the huge, echoing space. He was dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit again, and she realized he wasn’t just security, but really did know his way around an airplane as well. He gave her a smile – or the nearest thing to a smile for Gary, anyway – and handed her the checklist so she could run through it herself pre-flight. She scanned it quickly but thoroughly, because if everything went according to plan, she wouldn’t have time to double-check anything. And if things didn’t go according to plan…well, in that case, she’d probably be thinking of death by plane crash quite wistfully, given the alternative she’d be slowly and painfully undergoing.

Her palms were damp, and she rubbed them on the thighs of her white jumpsuit to dry them. Her heart was pattering hysterically in her ribcage. It was okay if she looked a bit nervous, she reassured herself – this would be her first time back in the cockpit since her crash. Nobody would think it was weird if she was a little jumpy.

“Everything look good?” she asked Gary.

He nodded at the checklist. “Went over it myself. She’s running as sweet as a nut.”

“Thanks.” She yawned hugely and stretched her arms over her head, hoping it would be catching. “It’s way too early for this.”

Gary yawned too, giving her a good view of his tonsils before covering his mouth. He must have been up for several hours if he’d been part of the team repairing and refueling the Cessna. Good.

Charlie watched carefully as he shouldered a large canister marked with the interlocking circles of the biohazard symbol. He set it down close to the Cessna’s landing gear and hooked it up to deliver herbicide to the Cessna’s tanks. Once the poison had started flowing, he returned to their conversation.

“Why such an early start, anyway?” Gary asked.

“Dr. Atkins briefed me yesterday,” Charlie told him. “It’s all been carefully timed so that by the time the last of the Starweed has worn off and the berserkers are more docile, security and rehab teams will be in place to administer the serum and offer follow-up care. A lot of these people will be left without jobs, or they’re estranged from their families. Dr. Atkins wants enough people on the ground to be sure everyone gets the resources they need.”

It made her feel sick, regurgitating the party line like that. There were no rehab teams. There would be no follow-up care. The “berserkers” were innocent shifters with a rare blood condition, and with the medicine they needed withered by air-dropped poison, they’d die slow, painful deaths. News of the massacre would never reach the outside world – or if it did it would be sanitized and twisted and perverted so Dynamic Earth came out of it looking like the good guys. Dr. Atkins’ money would buy a lot of silence.

Gary yawned again.

“Why don’t you go and get a cup of coffee?” Charlie suggested. “You could bring me one too – I take cream and two sugars.” Coffee was actually the last thing she wanted – she was so jittery she was practically vibrating on the spot. But she needed to get Gary out of the way. She’d seen how he’d hooked up the canister, and she was pretty sure she could dump in the serum, reconnect the herbicide, and look completely innocent by the time he got back. She thought he was one of the good guys, she just couldn’t bet Art’s life on it.

Gary turned to go, tempted by the prospect of hot, sweet, life-giving caffeine…and then he turned back, shaking his head. “No offence, Charlie, but I really should stay here. How about you grab us both a coffee while I finish up?”

He turned back to the herbicide canister and made a tiny adjustment to a valve.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie.

Gary didn’t look up. “Hmm?”

“Really sorry,” she said, and she brought a heavy wrench down on the back of his skull, wincing at the noise it made. She managed to half catch him as he slumped to the floor.

She winced. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she murmured as she moved him into the recovery position. “But you did look like you could use the rest. And at least nobody will think you were helping me.” To her relief, his pulse was strong and steady and he was breathing easily. She didn’t think she’d done him any permanent harm, though he’d probably be pretty pissed with her when he woke up.

It was the work of a few minutes to add the serum to the herbicide already in the tanks. She didn’t know if it would be distributed evenly over the whole area she’d be flying over. She didn’t know whether adding it to the herbicide would stop it from working, or turn it into some horribly dangerous chemical concoction. Even if it worked as intended, she didn’t know whether this batch still had that little problem – a thirty-five percent chance it would drive Art insane, burn out his brain and kill him.

But it was the only chance he had.

She disconnected the valves and climbed into the cockpit. She knew she had no time to do the usual pre-flight checks, and hoped Gary and the engineering team knew their stuff.

As she taxied along the runway, the doors to the hangar slammed wide. Dr. Atkins was standing there, his face almost purple with fury. He looked like thunder. Gary was beside him, clutching his head and looking unsteady on his feet. She breathed a sigh of relief that at least he was alive and upright.

Dr. Atkins was bellowing orders, spittle flying from his mouth, his smooth, calm persona completely gone. This was what was underneath the slick suits and polished manners – a monstrous child, furious at being thwarted.

As the Cessna’s nose angled towards the clouds, he stormed back into the hangar, and she knew he was coming for her.