The Bloodless (7 page)

“Weapons,” she said, her tone inferring the word “duh.” She then added, “Weapons and their role in the preservation of global peace,” in a very proper and formal voice.

“Wow,” he said, his face flushed, “hot topic.”

“Yeah, well, it was written for Vladimir but he wasn’t able to make it here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, one of the biggest weapons conventions of the year and he has other plans. And,” she continued, trying hard to keep her tone light and playful, though her eyes gave her away, “the unveiling of our most anticipated weapon in the last decade and a half.”

“Dang.”

Crist laughed, “Oh who am I kidding. He was actually summoned by Stanislavski. Whaddya think they’re gonna talk about?”

“Weapons,” Justice said sarcastically.

“Weapons,” she echoed, not sarcastically. “Guess what, though? We’re not the only ones in possession of laser based weapons.” Crist looked down at her watch, “Shit. Sorry, I gotta cut this short. It was nice seeing you,” she said, and she shook his hand again, this time holding it a little longer than necessary. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Justice,” she smiled and before he could say anything, she walked away.

Justice couldn’t quite explain the feeling he felt as she walked away. He was definitely taken with her and he had a sinking suspicion that she might be interested in him, on some level. It was a crazy thought, though, he knew that. Plus he didn’t really feel like it would be in his best interest to pursue the wife of the largest arms dealer on the planet. There was just something about her that he just found attractive; maybe it was her intelligence or maybe it was her dedication to her craft, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

He lingered for a little bit admiring the laser gun and thought about the last snippet of information that Crist had divulged to him. Whether she did it on purpose or not, he wasn’t sure, but it was interesting to know they weren’t the only ones in the laser weapon market. It just struck him as so odd that there were people out there who were contracted to make a device that’s sole purpose was to destroy. He only could assume that his purpose was to balance out all the death and destruction.

There had to be some semblance of balance in the universe, right? He had to pose the question to himself because if it was just destruction for the sake of chaos, Justice wasn’t sure he’d be able to continue doing what he did, or at least what he had done up to that point in his life. Fighting a dual fronted battle against man and nature to slow the decimation of the human species was a tough battle, one he felt compelled to fight. The balance needed to be maintained. He wasn’t sure why, but since his accident the thought of universal balance was ever present in his mind.

He tried his best to push those thoughts into the inner recesses of his mind and continued to wander about the convention. Throughout the next three days he tried to see as many different weapons as he could manage. After a while, however, all the weapons seemed to blur into one repetitive killing contraption, the only differences being the efficiency with which they ended lives. He even made a point to visit one of the many firing ranges and shoot a few different kinds of weapons.

His favorite, if he had to pick one, that proved to be the most fun to fire was a Desert Eagle. The first time he pulled the trigger his wrist nearly snapped in half. It was a good experience, he felt, something that he should learn about. The best part of being a scientist, at least for Justice, was the never ending thirst for knowledge. It was a dangerous passion, knowledge, one that had already led him down some shady paths and into some sticky situations. He was glad he got to learn more about weapons, but he doubted he would ever run into a situation where he’d have to use one.

CHAPTER 5

On That Day…
 

It was a quiet day, just like any other. Justice was on a small vacation over the summer. He and his family were at their home just outside Abiyah about ready to have dinner. They were going to barbecue. As Justice prepared the meat, he was also on the phone with Jack.

“That’s terrible,” he said into his headset. “So they were just plucked right from their homes?”

“Yeah, no prelude, no courtesy notification, nothing,” he sounded scared, but who could blame him in that situation. These scientists knew what angry moral objectors were capable of, and it wasn’t very nice.

“Well maybe they just got the hell out of there in a hurry,” he said hopefully.

“Doubtful. There are many signs of forced entry and struggles throughout each house.”

“Are they the only ones being abducted?”

“So far it seems like it.” He could hear some ruckus in the background on Jack’s side but just assumed it was Jack’s family getting things ready to go.

“Who could be doing this?” Justice asked. “Do you think it’s some activist group that managed to breach our security again?”

“I wondered that too and it’s certainly within the realm of plausibility. It all seems to be done fairly quickly and sloppily.” He sounded slightly annoyed, as though these people deserved a more well thought out abduction.

“So what’s the plan? Are you leaving?” Justice’s wife Victoria was in the kitchen at this point and when she looked at him, he motioned for her to come over.

“There is no official plan,” Jack emphasized official, “but I think the situation speaks for itself. We’re getting out of here as soon as we can. I suggest you guys do the same thing.”

“Yeah, I was already thinking the same thing. Where are you going?”

“We have a safe haven near-,” a resounding crash boomed in the background. “Katherine! Get the kids! Go!”

“Jack?! JACK!” There was a short but agonizing pause where all he could hear was banging sounds in the background.

“Justice! Get out of there! They’re here!”

“Who? Who’s there??”

“No. It can’t be. How-,” then the line cut off. Dead silence.

“Get Adam ready, we’re leaving. Now!” Justice took the head set out of his ear and turned to Victoria. “Someone is rounding up GoD employees, we have to go. Grab only what we need and meet me in the car.” She took off right away. The problem is that Jack didn’t live too far from them, so it was only a matter of minutes before they got there. He got the keys off the hook and went into his office. Justice unlocked the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a gun he never thought he’d ever have to use. It was just a small revolver that was issued to him by the company’s security team.

He slipped the gun in the waistline of his pants, like he had seen numerous times in the movies, and headed to the garage. He unlocked his brand new jet black Cadillac and got things ready for the rest of his family. As he opened the trunk he heard a bang and a scream from inside his house. His heart plummeted like a lead weight in a vacuum chamber.

Justice ran through the garage access door back into his house to a horrifying sight: two men, one fat, one skinny, were in the front doorway and Victoria had Adam clutched to her chest and was backing away towards the kitchen. They saw Justice enter the room and immediately advanced on his family. He started firing shot after shot from the revolver, unloading the barrel evenly between the men. It slowed them down but didn’t drop them.

“Let’s go, now!” Victoria ran to Justice with Adam and all three burst into the garage and got into the car. He started it and didn’t even bother to open the garage door. He threw the shifter into reverse and blasted through the door. Victoria was clutching Adam even tighter as he bawled, scared and confused.

The tires squealed on the pavement as he put some real stress on that car trying to get out of there as fast as he could. It wasn’t long before he saw a blacked out SUV pull out on to the road behind them. It looked strikingly similar to the company vehicle in Justice’s garage, but whether it was exactly the same he didn’t know for sure. His heart sank a little when he realized it because he knew the capabilities of those vehicles. The SUV sped up and got right behind them and started tapping his car’s bumper.

In the back of his mind he knew he couldn’t win, but for the sake of his family, he was not going to give up. He only had one advantage: he was in the suburbs and he was driving a nimble sedan and could get around corners faster than they could. He had the agility advantage. Justice started darting down roads and making as many quick turns as he could in order to put some distance between himself and his stalkers. It seemed to be working and after several quick turns he was able to shake them.

He stopped the car for a moment and hugged his family, his wife and son still crying. He knew it would be a mistake to stay put so he quickly put the car back into drive and moved slowly through the neighborhood, always keeping an eye out for that black SUV.

“LOOK OUT!!”

Next thing came a crushing blow that impacted the passenger side of the car. Glass shattered and flew all around the inside of the cabin and slashed at their faces. They were tossed around the cabin as the car rolled violently down the street. The car bounced and slid across the concrete road before Justice blacked-out from the blows to his head.

When Justice finally came to, there was a cold chill running up his spine and a whirring noise above him. He struggled to open his eyes to a blinding fluorescent glare. The side of his face felt sticky, as if copious amounts of blood had issued from his head at some point. He did not immediately know where he was but as things came into focus he found himself in a barren warehouse, the old world kind with crumbling concrete floors and walls. It was damp and musky with an overdose of humidity coming from the rotting walls.

Nobody else was in the building with Justice, he knew that much as he could feel the void crushing in around him. “Hello?” he called out hopelessly. No response. He wasn’t surprised. It’s unclear how long he sat there by himself. He tried to get up and to his astonishment he found he was able to and quite easily. In fact, he noticed that he wasn’t in any pain at all. Had they healed his injuries? If they wanted him dead, why wouldn’t they just allow him to bleed out? The next thing he noticed was that in his absence, his family was nowhere to be seen.

Justice had to wonder where his family was but since he was ostensibly alone, his brain automatically assumed the worst. Whether they survived the crash or not, he did not know, all he knew was that they weren’t where they were supposed to be. That was one of the worst feelings in his life, if not THE worst. Knowing his family might be dead was one thing, but not being able to figure that out and at the same time knowing that he would probably never be able to see their faces again made him sicker than any super antigen could.

Life suddenly carried very little value for him. There was no reason for him to go on, he didn’t even care he was captured. Basically, every fiber inside of Justice was screaming out for death to come and lay him in the cocoon of eternal rest so the pain would ebb. He sat back down on the cold, pulverized concrete and cried until he passed out. His dreams were filled with the faces of his family, laughing and happy. His wife actually came to him in one of his dreams.

“I can see the despair in your heart,” she said to him as she caressed his face. Her voice was ethereal and far away but transmitted every emotion possible. “We are gone from your world, but you of all people know that we are not truly gone from the universe.  We exist out there somewhere. Our pain, fears, and worries all gone now. I regret that we have left you in such turmoil but that is why I am here now, to remind you that you can’t give up. You have to keep fighting, for the sake of everyone who is left and the world that will suffer terribly if the balance is thrown off.”

He was not able to respond. Any speech ability he may have held in the dream realm was incapacitated by the sight and presence of his wife.

“You cannot give up Justice, the world is depending on you.”

At this, he somehow found his voice, “Me? Why me?”

“You are the only one. You must not give up.”

“I-I, I have no reason to go on. I have no reason to live. Giving up is all I have left.”

She looked deep into his eyes, the way she did on their wedding day as they lovingly spoke their vows. Justice was transfixed by her gaze and he could feel her lifting him up to his feet without touching him. His heart felt lighter, his soul brighter. “We’re still here. If you fight for no one, fight for me. Fight for Adam.” She kissed his forehead and he felt a white hot searing pain where her “lips” touched his skin. He jerked awake.

Suddenly, realization came flooding over him like a tidal wave. He could bring them back, he could retrieve them from that other plane. All he had to do was get into that laboratory. The plan was simple enough, but executing it was going to be a big challenge and probably a series of challenges. Escaping from bondage being the first. He was definitely going to need some help.

That’s when they came back in, the same men from earlier. “Get up,” the skinny one said to Justice as they stalked towards him. Justice didn’t immediately respond or move. Instead he stared up at the men, calculating, scheming. When he continued to remain seated, the larger man grabbed him around his armpit and hoisted him to his feet.  The man then dragged Justice towards the entrance they used and outside. Next thing he knew he was being forced into a utility van.

“Boy you’re a lucky one tonight,” the skinny one said as he climbed into the passenger’s seat.

“Yeah? Why’s that?” he wasn’t normally cheeky like that but he figured he was about to die anyway, fuck it.

“This location has been compromised and there are extraction teams coming after you,” he said with a little chuckle.

“So, you can dish it out but you can’t handle it, huh? You fuckin’ hippies are all the same.”

“Look,” The skinny man said as he turned around in his seat at the front of the van. Justice noticed a gun dangling down by the man’s side. “I’d kill you right here and now if it were up to me, however…”

“Let me guess, you’re just following orders. Like a good little bitch. I mean activist.” Why he was talking to them in a way that was very unlike himself, not even Justice knew. Maybe it was his resolute acceptance of death or maybe it was the visual of his wife lifting him to his feet, but there was no fear in his body.  The skinny man just looked at Justice, flashed him a contemptuous smirk, and turned back around in his seat.

They drove for quite some time that day. There were no windows in the van so he could not see where they were going, but judging by the terrain, they definitely were travelling to a remote location. When the truck stopped it was on the verge of day, the sun yawning sheepishly on the horizon. The two men exited the van and opened the sliding door. Justice was yanked out by the larger man, clearly the heavy lifter, and thrown to the ground.

Once the pain subsided and he regained his sight, he was able to see where he had been taken. It was a remote trailer park/RV camping ground. Basically, it was a kind of hippie commune. It had clearly been long abandoned as all the campers and trailers were showing early stages of dilapidation. Large pine trees infested every opening that wasn’t being used by homes and towered into the sky.

They had stopped at a particularly run down trailer. The screen door was nearly off, it hung by a single hinge and was one sneeze away from coming all the way off. The windows were busted, some of them had blood on the broken panes, signs that desperate junkies had been there to loot anything they could to feed their addictions. It was not a very pleasant place to be. An appropriate place to die, sure, but resoundingly uninhabitable. Justice was ushered unceremoniously into the trailer. He was then shoved to the ground and fell with a crash that rocked the entire trailer.

The inside was dark despite the early morning time of day. The sky had been strangely blacked out by what Justice assumed to be storm clouds. They were unlike any storm clouds he had seen before, however, and there was not a single crack in them which cast their ominous shadows all across the earth. As he lay face down he heard the men’s footsteps move back towards the trailer’s door. “Thanks a lot assholes,” he shouted at them.

“Justice??”

Well THAT voice sounded familiar. “Jack?” Justice said as he rolled over and turned towards the voice. It was Jack, just Jack. He was barely visible through the darkness but Justice could never mistake that wild hair for anyone else. Jack’s hands were bound and he sat on the ground, ostensibly alone. They got him too and his family probably met the same fate as Justice’s.

“Damnit! Not you!” Jack was bloody from head to toe, his left eye swollen shut. He had obviously been beaten severely by those pricks. 

“It’s okay Jack. Everything’s going to be okay.” That’s what people say in situations like that, right? It’s all he could think to say to him. Justice didn’t exactly have a plan, but he did not want Jack to be completely devoid of hope.

Their captors walked back over to them, “Well, you two just keep getting luckier,” the skinny one, who at this point appeared to be the brains of this duo, said. “Seems as though you are worthy enough of a special visit from Mendel himself.”