A Poisoned Mind Page 3

  Half an hour passed as he continued to fondle the gun, running his fingers over the cool steel repeatedly as if to soothe a nervous habit.

  "It's time," he said calmly after noticing the clock read a quarter until four. He jumped from the seat and stood on his tiptoes to look over the cubicle wall at the desks in his same row. "Your two coworkers are here and you never even said hello. How rude!"

  Leave right now!

  "Yes, of course, let's get out of here."

  He saw his legs leave the cubicle behind and head down the row to his coworker, Raymond, stopping in the entryway to his cube. Raymond had his back to Jonathon as he banged away on his keyboard with a pair of headphones wrapped over his head.

  "Ray-Ray, how are you today?" Jonathon asked in an elevated tone to get his attention. Raymond spun around and raised his eyebrows at the sight of Jonathon.

  "Jonny? I'm good. Colonel said you were out today." Raymond was old, pushing 65, and his rough voice cracked from years of smoking.

  "Well I was feeling sick, but am much better now. Healthy as a horse."

  "That's great to hear you're better. But I was just about to wrap up for the day. Got an extended weekend coming up. The wife is out of town, so I'll get some peace and quiet." Raymond cracked a gentle smile.

  "I'm afraid you won't," Jonathon said, turning Raymond's smile into a look of confusion. He reached underneath his shirt and grabbed hold of the pistol he had stuffed into his waistband, whipping it out with surprising ease.

  Raymond's eyes focused on the barrel of the gun, welling up with tears and trembling as it pointed to his face.

  NOOOOOO!

  His finger pulled back on the trigger and blasted a hole into Raymond's forehead, causing those sad, blue eyes to roll back into his head as his body tumbled off the chair with a hard thud that reminded Jonathon of someone dropping a hammer on the floor. Shards of skull stuck into the cubicle wall, and a splatter of blood decorated the desk like abstract art.

  Screams came from the other side of the office and feet trampled around in directions he couldn't be sure of.

  You motherfucker! What did Ray ever do to you?

  "You all have done something to me and my kind. It's time we put an end to it."

  "Jonathon?" a shaky voice called from the other side of Raymond's cubicle wall. "Are you alright?"

  A bald head poked up from the top of the wall belonging to Jonathon's other coworker, Donny McCutchen. Just as his weary, brown eyes appeared over the wall, Jonathon pulled the trigger again, turning the shiny reflection on Donny's head into an instant splatter of red before disappearing from sight.

  What the fuck! Why couldn't you have just changed the coding and left? They're going to kill me.

  "Oh, Jonny Boy. So naive. Can't you see we're at war? You were never getting out of this alive. But thanks for playing!"

  He wanted to cry but couldn't, left stranded in his own mind as if watching a horror movie. He saw Raymond, limp on the ground where a pool of blood formed around his head, looking like a spilled bottle of wine had soaked into the fibers of the carpet.

  An explosion echoed throughout the office and smoke filled the space instantly.

  "They're here," Jonathon giggled.

  You better try and get us out of here, you sick bastard.

  "Me? My work is done. I'll give you your body back so you can enjoy the ending of the show. Thanks again, friend!"

  Jonathon felt all control rush back to his senses like the opening of flood gates. He started to pant, sweat, and finally cry as he had wanted. He knew the military personnel had burst into the office, throwing smoke bombs, and had every intent on shooting him dead on the spot. That was the protocol if there were ever an internal situation. No questions, no second guessing. Just shoot the perpetrator caught on camera.

  He turned away from the sight of Raymond and looked up to the camera on the wall, watching him like a hawk on its perch.

  "Please help me!" he shouted to it. "I didn't do this! They made me do it!"

  "This way!" a booming voice barked, and heavy footfall sprinted towards the back row.

  "Guys, please! I am Jonathon Browne. An Exall took control of my body and shot Donny and Ray. I swear I had no control! My hands are above my head, and I have no gun, please don't shoot!" He stepped out into the hallway to find five men in Marine combat uniforms, each with an assault rifle pointed at him.

  "PLEEEASE! DON'T SH--"

  They all fired a shot in unison, as they had practiced thousands of times, creating a booming that sounded more like a bomb than a gunshot. Jonathon's head exploded in a burst of red fireworks as bullets tore apart his skull from every direction. His body stood for a couple of seconds, headless, before collapsing into a limp pile of flesh.

  One of the Marines stepped forward and kicked Jonathon's arm to confirm the body had no more life. "Let's move out!" he shouted after turning away. In these scenarios, everyone had their roles and duties to fulfill. For the military personnel, their sole job was killing any threat. Doctors and a coroner would arrive to examine the body in its original state before hauling it into a laboratory where scientists and Colonel Griffins would meet for further examination.

  Colonel Griffins learned of the situation and returned to the office immediately, having left after lunchtime to finish off-site business. Doctors were called in to tend to the three bodies, and a quarantine would be authorized shortly after the colonel's arrival.

  The doctors found nothing of value upon their initial examinations of the bodies, picking and poking at them like curious toddlers. Everything appeared normal aside from the gun shot wounds on all three victims, so they were all wheeled back into the science department and placed on the stainless steel examination tables within their laboratories.

  Colonel Griffins arrived as flustered as anyone had ever seen. He demanded the forensics team look into the security footage to see what the tapes showed once Jonathon entered the building, and asked to be left alone for a few minutes with the bodies before the doctors could start their follow up examination.

  "Dammit, Jonny. What happened?" he questioned the headless body of his former hire. The colonel raised the limbs on the corpse, looking for signs of anything, but came up short.

  "Son of a bitch," he whispered, turning his attention to Donny and Raymond, resting peacefully on the tables, cleaned of the blood from their head wounds. He looked over Jonathon one more time before exiting the laboratory and telling the doctors to continue their work, and returned to his office to start his own investigation of the video footage.

  "I need you to look into the last three days of all of Jonathon's activity both here and outside of the office," Colonel Griffins told the forensic's team leader over the phone. "Look especially for any trips to the doctor's office or any sort of physical activity where he may have cut himself. Follow up with a full report in the next hour."

  He slammed the phone on the hook and thought about Jonathon's wife, likely waiting at home for his return, oblivious to what had just occurred. He pulled up the master ETD tracker on his computer and focused on the D.C. area to find nothing but green dots. A lone, green dot at Jonathon's home in Alexandria flashed on the screen; he'd have to call Gianna to inform her of the horrifying news.

  "At least she's okay," he said, unaware that if he had zoomed out of the map he wouldn't find one Exall.

  His phone rang and he snapped it off the hook with authority. "What is it?"

  "Sir, we found what Jonathon came in to do today. It looks like he went into the Tracking coding and removed all red markers for Exalls. We're currently working on getting that turned back on."

  "Jesus Christ, okay. Anything else?"

  "No, sir. We'll follow up as soon as the Tracking is turned back on. Until then, stay alert and safe."

  He hung up and returned to the ETD on his computer, confirming the lack of any red dots all over the country. He focused on Denver, knowing there were a handful of Exalls that had arrived there, and
found no trace of them. Susan Wells, who headed the operation in Denver, would need notification of the matter, considering she was in the midst of planning an attack.

  The phone rang.

  "Sir, we believe we know when it happened," the voice said. "It appears Mr. Browne visited a blood bank yesterday to donate on his lunch break. Aside from that everything about his days were as usual."

  "God dammit. Okay." Colonel Griffins hung up the phone and looked at the empty chair across his desk, remembering his interview with Jonathon, and how eager and hungry he was to get started on the job. He followed through, too, with a complete overhaul of their tracking software, making it stronger than ever. "Bless your soul, Jonny, wherever it went."

  An Exall could have taken control of a volunteer at the blood bank with ease, and insert their own blood into Jonathon without him ever knowing.

  Dr. Mitchell Travers, one of The Crew's head scientists, rapped on the colonel's open door, startling him from his wandering thoughts.

  "Good afternoon, sir," Dr. Travers said. "I have some findings I'd like to share with you."

  "Please, sit down," Colonel Griffins gestured to the empty chair and watched as the old doctor sat, joints popping with every movement. He hadn't seen Dr. Travers in person for several months, and noticed his once gray hair had nearly completed its transformation into a full, snowy white comb over. The doctor watched Colonel Griffins from behind his rounded glasses.

  "Over the past few months, we've made some disturbing discoveries, as you know. The Exalls have grown advanced well beyond our own capabilities. It used to be if they were close enough, they could jump into your mind and influence what you were doing. But now, it's become so much worse."

  "How so?" Colonel Griffins perched up in his seat, not hiding the anxiety smacked across his face.

  "We found Exall blood in Jonathon's system. About a 15% amount to be exact. I know he went to the blood bank yesterday, so it's safe to assume an Exall found a way to trick the workers or swap out the needles somehow, but they definitely put a lot of their blood into him."

  "Correct, I had the same suspicions as well."

  "The scary part from the studies I've been conducting, is that if their blood is injected, they can now fully control human beings. All their actions. Now, we still don't know what happens with the human, so we can't say if it was painful for Jonathon, or if he sort of fell asleep within himself. But I can say with complete confidence that the person who shot your team and hacked the system was not Jonathon Browne."

  Colonel Griffins' face lost its minimal color as he turned pale. "We shot him. They knew we would shoot him. They took his body... his mind, to hack our system, and made sure he was hung out to dry."

  Dr. Travers looked down to his twiddling thumbs. "I'm afraid that's the case, sir."

  Colonel Griffins rubbed his temple and let his face rest in an open palm. "Thank you, doctor. Your attention to detail is always appreciated. Just curious, are there any symptoms he may have shown that would have alert us of such a thing? He called in sick this morning."

  "Yes. There could be a wide range of side effects as the body tries to rid itself of the foreign blood. Could be anything as severe as vomiting or diarrhea, or something small like the chills or a cough. We haven't found any consistencies in the symptoms from the handful of case studies we've conducted so far."

  Colonel Griffins felt chills of his own, thinking of the innocent people that had gone through this and became lab rats for The Crew to examine.

  "Okay, thanks again, doctor. I need to follow up with some others about your findings. Please write up a report ASAP."

  "Of course." Dr. Travers nodded his head before standing to leave for his laboratory.

  Colonel Griffins remained in silence for several minutes, thinking back to the horrific video footage of "Jonathon" shooting his two colleagues. His phone rang and the caller ID showed it was the security department; he answered in a panicked tone.

  "Colonel, we have a situation," a stern voice said. "The ETD is back up and running correctly, and we found two Exalls in the office. They have been detained and are each in solitary right now. They got two of our own, sir. Mack Jeffries and Ricardo Estevan. The doctors have been notified and are on their way down here."

  "Thank you, let them know I'm on my way." Colonel Griffins hung up the phone, jumped from his desk, and bolted his way down the hallway towards the stairs that would take him to the holding cells two floors below. He rarely visited "the basement" that the security team occupied.

  He ran down the stairs, feeling his joints pop and beg for mercy at his sudden burst of energy. Fluorescent lights flickered above, creating a ghastly atmosphere for what essentially served as The Crew's rarely used prison and mental asylum. The security officer that had called him sat at the main desk in the lobby of the basement.

  Officer Trainor sprung up from his desk, fumbling a file of paperwork. "Colonel Griffins, this is for you." He handed over the file and the colonel flipped through it to skim the profiles for the two detained Crew members. Officer Trainor was new to the team, only in his third week on the job, and seeing two of his colleagues carried into solitary confinement, strapped in straight jackets, stressed him to a level he'd never felt.

  "Thank you, officer." Colonel Griffins noticed the doctors in their long, swaying white lab coats, huddled outside one of the solitary confinement rooms and headed straight for them. Dr. Travers stood in the circle along with two other doctors he recognized as Dr. Reed and Dr. McMillan, both long tenured specialists with The Crew.

  "Gentlemen, what do we have here?" Colonel Griffins asked as he approached.

  "Two completely different scenarios it appears," Dr. McMillan said, scribbling some notes on his clipboard as the lighting reflected off his bald head.

  "Different indeed," Dr. Reed said. "It appears both men are infected with Exall blood, but are having different reactions. Mr. Estevan seems normal and unaware of why we arrested him. This could be a ploy, but we need to be sure. On the other hand, Mr. Jeffries isn't responsive and is just sitting there with a smirk."

  "We've drawn blood from both men and it's being examined right now to try and get some conclusive results on what we're dealing with," Dr. Travers said.

  "Well, I'm glad we're in a quarantine," Colonel Griffins said.

  "Certainly. These men could've gotten out of the Pentagon later today and who knows what they would've done," Dr. Travers replied.

  All three of the doctors' phones chimed a two-tone beep, reminding the Colonel of a high pitched doorbell.

  "The results are in!" Dr. McMillan was already scrolling down his phone screen to read the blood test results. "Oh, wow."

  "Wow is right," Dr. Reed said. "Mr. Jeffries is fully infected. 100 percent contamination of Exall blood...which doesn't really make sense, how can it be 100 percent?"

  "You're forgetting, Dr. Reed, Exalls will consume human blood and use that to essentially shape shift into the person whose blood they consumed." Dr. Travers always had the difficult answers, and came through again. "Gentlemen, I believe this is a first in Crew history. We have a real, live Exall in our custody behind this door." He tapped the door and cracked a smile.

  Colonel Griffins' eyes widened at the news. "And what about Estevan, what's his deal?"

  Dr. Reed looked back to his phone. "Mr. Estevan appears to be telling the truth, in my opinion. His blood is only contaminated at two percent. I would assume an attempt gone wrong by one of our gray friends. That amount would have minimal effect on him. Worst case is he'd hear some voices in his head for a few minutes. Best to keep him strapped down until we can get him fully back to normal."

  "That amount will work its way out within four hours," Dr. McMillan chimed in. "Mr. Estevan will be fine, let's focus on Mr. Jeffries for a minute."

  "One problem, though," Colonel Griffins said. "If the Exall drank Jeffries' blood and transformed to look like him, then that is not the real Mack Jeffries behind this door. Where i
s his body?"

  The doctors glared at each other, upset they hadn't made that realization themselves.

  "I'll work on finding Jeffries, you guys study the Exall. I'd like to take a look myself first," Colonel Griffins said. "Is it clear for me to enter?"

  "Yes, sir," Dr. Reed said. "He is confined by a straight jacket and strapped into a chair. There's no threat as long as you don't get right in his face."

  Colonel Griffins nodded and pushed open the large, steel door to the solitary unit. The room had nothing but a bed pushed into the back corner, surrounded by white padded walls all around. A light fixture dangled from the ceiling, showering light on their imprisoned colleague, sitting stiffly in an old, wooden chair in the opposite corner of the room.

  Mack Jeffries, or "MJ", as he was known around the office, stared into the Colonel's eyes with a cold, lifeless daze. His pale skin nearly matched the off white shade of the straight jacket that held him constrained. Messy, black hair hung down to his eyes that held their position on the colonel. An evil smirk that appeared content and destructive at the same time remained stuck on his face, and a cold rush of air came from the room as soon as Colonel Griffins opened the door, causing his skin to break into gooseflesh.

  "Holy shit," he said, retreating and closing the door, still feeling that stare burn through the wall. "That's a bad man in there."

  "Not a man by any means, but yes," Dr. McMillan said matter-of-factly. "I for one am excited to start studying him. We're going to break some ground on a whole new line of research on them. I know you're just as ecstatic as I am, Dr. Travers."

  Dr. Travers smiled and nodded. "Absolutely. Let's take a break, grab some dinner, and discuss our game plan. It's going to be a long night gentlemen. Who knows when we'll be leaving the building. We need to refresh our brains before taking this on."

  "Sounds like a brilliant plan," Colonel Griffins said. "I'll start an email thread for the four of us. Let's keep constant updates with our findings as the night progresses. We all have plenty to do. I'll work on finding the real Jeffries and make sure we continue questioning on Estevan."