Chromatophobia Read online

Brainiac raised a brow. “Who’s in charge?”

  “I’ll take you to him.” The concrete corridors echoed with our footsteps as I led them to the conference room. The doors on our left were labeled pantry, kitchen, and mess hall. Guest quarters lined the right wall. Those rooms were numbered starting with 12 (my room, nearest the security office and the elevator) and ending with 1 (Doc’s room, nearest the infirmary). Each guest room had a clear plastic mail bin screwed onto the door. The bins were empty, but only fools believed the adage that no news is good news.

  ***

  The newcomers sat on one side of an oblong conference table in a windowless room decorated only with a U.S. flag, a photo of the current president, and a large flat-screen monitor. Kingpin sat across from them, looking the part of a forty-something, white, mid-level manager wearing an off-the-rack suit and a business-casual smile, with his body stiff as a department store mannequin. His eyes alone showed signs of life, with pupils that intermittently narrowed as he took in the details of each person.

  I stood with my back against the door, feeling edgy, maybe because no matter how sharp my vision was, he would always see things I couldn’t. Or maybe because Doc was alone with Choirboy. Doc was harmless, but the patient locked inside the vault spelled trouble. Fortunately, not for me. Not with my Colt 1911 .45, Taser, Mace, and handcuffs on my belt, plus a wickedly sharp Ka-Bar knife in a leg sheath. No, Choirboy didn’t worry me at all.

  Kingpin stood. “My name is Gordon Maxwell.” He spoke louder than necessary, like a drill instructor addressing a squad of raw recruits. “I’m in charge of the team. Before I explain why you’re here, I think introductions are in order.”

  “Excuse me,” Brainiac said. “I understood this to be a military facility, but the sergeant implied this isn’t a military operation. The place is practically deserted, and you certainly don’t look military. What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain in a moment.” His gaze swept the room then returned to her. “Each of you has a unique specialty. Dr. Sonja Kapoor has a PhD in applied physics, specializing in quantum optics. She’s worked on other DoD projects including stealth technology. She represents the scientific arm of this team.”

  He turned to Steampunk. “Ms. Zita Ferrari is an artist and puzzle solver, with a savant-like ability to see and interpret patterns. She’ll be the code-breaker member of—”

  “No!” Steampunk said. “I refuse to break the code on whatever doomsday weapon you found, so you can just unlock the freaking elevator and let me go. Nothing is worse than contributing to a project that might claim the lives of innocent people. I am not a Mata Hari espionagist or an autonomic Enigma machine. I’m a peace-loving, tree-hugging human being who wants to be left alone to design puzzles for fun and enlightenment, so good-bye.”

  The girl talked too much. By the time she stood, I was behind her, pushing down on her shoulders and shoving the chair into the back of her knees. She plopped down with a yelp of surprise. Her chest looked pretty good from this angle.

  Steampunk’s hands rose to grip my left hand, ten fingers intertwining my five, and she gave some kind of quarter-twist that set my wrist on fire. My free hand retaliated with a hard pinch to her trapezius, which made her gasp. I could subdue men three times her size with a bit of leverage at key pressure points.

  Her hands gave another quarter-turn and my left arm went numb. I squeezed harder.

  “Tell your pet gorilla to take his hands off me,” she said. “Bad enough he’s been undressing me with his eyes, but this touchy-feely crosses the line in the sand that marks my personal space where I’m going to defend my castle.”

  Kingpin frowned at me. I released my grip, and Steampunk lowered her hands to the table. I refrained from massaging life back into my arm. In a world of predators, it’s unwise to show weakness.

  “No one is leaving,” Kingpin said. “The team is sequestered for the duration of the mission. No contact with the outside world other than view-only access to the internet for research.”

  “Totally unacceptable,” said Slick, smoothing his silk lapels. “I have over a million followers expecting daily tweets.”

  Kingpin ignored him. “The sergeant will deliver your luggage as soon as it’s sent down. Each of you were issued a key card with your room number, and a custom cell phone which works only within this facility. It’s been programmed with each of our names.” Kingpin turned to Steampunk. “Ms. Ferrari, I can’t force you to cooperate, but I can confine you to quarters. I’d rather not. Code-breaking was a poor word choice on my part. The anomaly seems to have a pattern, which makes it more of a puzzle than anything else. We don’t know if it’s dangerous. You could be saving millions of lives.”

  Steampunk shifted her shoulders, probably checking for broken bones. “You can’t keep us locked up like we’re criminals or something, because we’re U.S. citizens and we have rights guaranteed by the Constitution which are enforced through federal, state, and local laws. Bad enough we’re underground but this could go on for days or weeks or years, buried alive, until people don’t even know we’re here anymore and what’s so damn important anyway? Nobody said there’d be a team. I don’t do teams. This whole thing isn’t fair.”

  I admired the spit-and-vinegar attitude and wondered where she’d learned her ten-finger trick. It didn’t really matter, though. A Taser would put her down if necessary.

  Mopes seemed to rouse from her stupor and covered Steampunk’s hand with her own. “I’m afraid, too, Zita. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff. But isn’t it curious that they’ve assembled such an unusual team? Don’t you want to find out why? It’s a real-life puzzle and a chance to feel alive and useful.” Mopes gave an existential Charlie Brown smile.

  Steampunk sat very still, tense as a startled deer about to bolt. I waited for her to give Mopes a “no trespassing” lecture about touching. She slowly exhaled and said, “Yes.”

  The single word surprised me. I didn’t think her capable of talking in less than thirty-second sound bites.

  Kingpin cleared his throat. “Everything will be explained. Trust me.” His generic smile returned. “Back to introductions.” He nodded toward Mopes. “Dr. Laura Dubov is a psychiatrist specializing in hypnosis, delusions, and hallucinations.”

  Steampunk snatched her hand away from the shrink. No wonder. Shrinks are like cockroaches crawling inside our heads looking for subconscious crumbs.

  Slick regarded Mopes with interest. “You’re the reason we had to fill out the MMPI test and have an EEG taken.”

  I knew an EEG measured brain activity, but the other term was new to me. I kept my ignorance to myself.

  “Yes,” Mopes said. “If we’re studying some kind of mind-altering chemical or device, we need to have a preexposure baseline for objective comparison.”

  The team members’ faces showed puzzlement. Steampunk inhaled as if to interject another tirade, but Kingpin cut her off as he introduced Slick. “Nathan Lee is a renowned magician and paranormal investigator.”

  Slick stood and winked at Brainiac. “Like you, I’m a scientist, a seeker of Truth. With a capital T.” He sounded like a performer, and I congratulated myself on picking a good label.

  Brainiac’s smile turned brittle. “Yes, well, I didn’t pick the team.”

  Slick turned his brilliant smile on Steampunk before addressing Kingpin. “Right. And if the military isn’t running the show, who is? CIA?”

  “Sit down, Lee. This team represents an inter-agency collaboration under the overall direction of the National Security Agency. I’m a branch manager from the NSA assigned exclusively to this case. The president ordered this facility turned over to my control, and I cleared out all nonessential personnel.”

  He paused, probably allowing time for everyone to be duly impressed. His smile faded as no one showed signs of adulation. “The other member of our team is Dr. Thomas Harrison. He’s with the patient now, but we’ll meet him shortly.”

  “Patient?” Steampunk said. “Trauma or
contagion? Why is he here instead of a hospital, or is it a she? I’ll bet he/she is the one you want us to study, because you said ‘the patient’ not ‘a patient’ so it’s not just a staff member like a cook or maid or someone like that who caught the flu or got hurt in an accident. You wouldn’t waste our time over a mundane incident, so the patient must be important to national security and since I’m a puzzle solver the patient must be the puzzle or a piece of the puzzle and my guess is that he or she has been tattooed with code like the ancient Greeks did with messenger slaves.”

  Kingpin blinked. “I was just coming to that.”

  Slick cocked his head in my direction. “What about him?”

  “Sergeant Miles Reardon. U.S. Marines. He’s our one-man security force.”

  Please let it go at that. I knew he wouldn’t.

  “Like each of you, he has a special talent.” Kingpin’s mouth twisted into a smirk.

  I mentally cringed while outwardly upping my tough-guy posture.

  “He’s color-blind. Not just red and green. He sees only in gray tones.”

  Steampunk smiled. “So that’s why you didn’t admire my blue hair.”

  Slick sneered. “Whole new meaning to fifty shades of gray.”

  Five pairs of eyes stared at me, and behind each stare lurked the thought, Hey, everyone, look at the freak. Heat rose to my face. “Tell ’em about the mission, Mr. Maxwell,” I said. The asshole smiled at my discomfort. Kingpin would never rate a “sir” from me.

  “Yes,” he said. “Our mission is to discover the nature of a phenomenon affecting a young man—the patient—being treated in this facility.”

  Steampunk’s face scrunched in a look of suspicion and perplexity. “Patient. Phenomenon. Diverse team members. What does that have to do with code breaking?”

  Slick looked amused. “Codes? I’m here to debunk a paranormal manifestation.”

  “Research a major breakthrough in optics and quantum physics,” Brainiac said.

  “How peculiar,” Mopes said. “I’m here to study a hypnotically induced mass hallucination.”

  Kingpin’s smile broadened. “As you see, you are an extremely diverse team of experts. It has to be, since we have no idea what the phenomenon is. We tailored your, um, invitations to address the most likely explanations for the observable effects. Don’t worry, it will all become clear when you meet the patient.”

  The expressions on their faces were diverse as well. Humor, suspicion, disdain, and irritation topped the list. Mopes’s gaze settled on me. “You haven’t turned in your MMPI. I want it tonight. As for your EEG, I need to check with the doctor to see if he has the equipment here.”

  “What’s so important about the MMPI?” I’d thrown the test in my trash can. Guess I’d have to dig it out.

  “The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory can provide an indicator of behavior. It’s been used by psychologists and psychiatrists for decades.”

  Steampunk said, “You’ll probably make us take it again later on to determine if our enforced captivity here has affected our personality.”

  Mopes ignored the comment and turned to Kingpin. “The same for you. No one is exempt from taking the test.”

  Kingpin’s smile faltered and then broadened into something approaching genuine. “Fine. Now, before we meet the patient, there’s a video clip you’ll find most fascinating.”

  I’d seen it before, so I moved back to the door where I could watch the watchers without being stared at myself.

  “Home movies,” Slick said. “Got any popcorn?”

  Kingpin leaned forward, hands flat on the table, smile gone. “Everything we say or do from this point forward is Top Secret. The penalty for unauthorized disclosure is harsh.”

  Kind of like saying a cobra bite can be dangerous. He either didn’t want to scare them off or didn’t know just how harsh Uncle Sam could be. My money was on the latter. I didn’t think Colonel Hauser told him about the failsafe protocol.

  Chapter 5

  After the video, Kingpin led the way to the vault. I watched the team’s reactions to the size and arrangement of the observation room, the number of television monitors, and the medical monitoring equipment. They showed less shock and awe than I expected, but plenty of curiosity. I wondered if anyone noted the oxymoronic aspect of having the object of observation being surrounded by an opaque barrier.

  Gordon said, “The chamber and the observation room meet Biohazard Safety Level Four protocols, which means we can safely study Ebola, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and pretty much any other disease. Additional modifications to the room allow us to safely study poisons, radiation, and our patient.”

  The words “safely study” didn’t mean treat and cure. This wasn’t a hospital with doctors and nurses sworn to do no harm. The vault was a cage to let people on the outside watch the final moments of the poor bastard locked inside.

  “The vault seems to be made of glass, but it’s painted black,” Brainiac said.

  Kingpin nodded. “External observation now depends solely on audio-video surveillance provided by banks of cameras and monitors.” He gathered the team around a bank of six monitors. Five screens provided interior views of the vault from the left, right, front, back, and ceiling. All showed the patient lying on the bed, staring up. The sixth monitor showed Doc inside the vault’s airlock, holding something in his left hand while his right punched in the code to open the outer door.

  The airlock included two full-body protective suits with their own air supply, but Doc used neither. He wore only a white cotton coverall, hood, and sunglasses. The airlock’s automatic antiseptic shower and ultraviolet decon routine had been disconnected at Doc’s insistence. His personal experience and repeated tests convinced the brass that the patient’s rash wasn’t contagious. The decoloration process, however, remained a mystery.

  Kingpin gestured toward open cabinets stacked with spotless white clothing, black boots, and black sunglasses. “Find your size and suit up. One of each. Coveralls, hoods, gloves, boots, and sunglasses. No exposed skin or clothing is allowed.”

  Steampunk balked. “Is there radioactive contamination inside? My grandfather worked at Three Mile Island and he said they had to wear protective gear to keep contamination off their skin and clothes and if it didn’t work, alarms went off and they had to take special showers and get scrubbed and monitored, so I’ll just wait out here.”

  “There’s no radiation hazard,” Kingpin said. “Geiger counters show normal background. And whatever the patient has isn’t contagious.”

  Doc approached, covered totally in white except for black boots and dark, wraparound sunglasses similar to my Oakleys. “That’s right,” he said, the words slightly muffled by the surgical mask. He held a transparent plastic cage with a rat inside. Far as I could tell, the rat looked healthy and the cage appeared to be airtight. The group gave the doctor and rat plenty of space.

  Kingpin made brief introductions. “Dr. Thomas Harrison is a medical doctor, although he also holds a PhD in virology and microbiology.” He turned to Doc. “Status report?”

  “Hold your horses.” Doc walked past the boss to the mini-airlock in the wall that opened into the “hot” biolab, where samples could be studied without fear of spreading contamination. He pushed the cage inside and then moved to the undressing area.

  “Barely any increase,” Doc said to Kingpin. “Still a hair under sixty percent.”

  Slick asked, “If Barry is neither contagious nor radioactive, why the protection?”

  “Because you don’t want to end up like me.” Doc tossed the sunglasses in a bin marked “used glasses.” He pulled off the mask, hood, and the rest of the outer clothing, tossing them into the appropriate barrels for used clothing. He hadn’t worn a name tag. It didn’t matter before, but from now on I’d need to know who’s who.

  The team, other than Kingpin, stared at Doc. Gawked is a better word. Knowing Doc appeared different to others than he did to me sent a tingle up my spine, on
e vertebra at a time, as if a bead of sweat could flow uphill.

  Protocol required me to be inside the airlock, ready to respond to any emergency that arose inside the vault. Kingpin could relax the protocol, as he’d done with Doc, but the four newbies created a situation that could head south fast. Kingpin wisely refrained from giving them the code. I grabbed a set of coveralls and unbuckled my gun belt, setting it aside to put on over the coveralls.

  The shrink stared at Doc. “Is this some kind of a trick?”

  Kingpin said, “It’s part of the phenomenon under study.”

  Doc grimaced. Guess he didn’t like being part of the show either. “Call it what it is,” he said. “An infection. An alien infection. If it were up to me, none of you would go inside until we know more about it.”

  Kingpin said, “To be clear, we don’t know what it is. Until you or another team member provides a compelling explanation and supporting evidence, I’m keeping an open mind.”

  Steampunk approached the doctor. “Does it only affect your skin?”

  He looked ready to bite her head off, but a pretty face can work wonders on a bad attitude. The guy actually smiled. “No, it bleaches color from every exposed surface. The clothes that protected the rest of my body are in the lab if you want to see them. Gray as a cloudy day, but they aren’t contagious.”

  “The rat?” Kingpin asked.

  Doc’s irritation reappeared. “Gray nose, gray tail. No pink left at all. Took less than a minute. I’ll be in the lab examining it further.”

  Steampunk edged closer to Doc, almost close enough to touch. “Your clothes aren’t contagious, you aren’t contagious, but Barry somehow bleaches color away. How? The glasses and other coverings—they’re to prevent the bleach from getting on you? The samples—I bet you’re working on a cure, a vaccine. How serious is this thing? Is Barry dying? What symptoms should we watch out for? Does it affect your insides, too? Like, making your poop gray?”

  Doc’s face took on the same bewildered look Kingpin had shown earlier. Steampunk could use a throttle valve between mouth and brain.