Life Sentence: Two Tales of the Living Dead Read Free Page A

problem would you like me to solve first? I know you’d like me to work on both, but my resources here—”
    “You’re not working there anymore. Your study is coming here. I’m clearing my laboratory and putting my specialists under your control.”
    “I’d really rather not—”
    “You will. Or you don’t have a client. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
    “Sir?” Shana cut in. “The . . .” She paused and motioned for the assistant to remove the test subjects. When they were gone, she turned to Boros. “Can they be saved?”
    Boros shook his head. “One will remain in a permanent state of complete paralysis. The other will continue to rapidly decompose.”
    “So they’ll be terminated? Humanely?”
    “Not so fast,” Daniel said. “If there’s still something to be learned from them, keep them.”
    “But—” Shana began.
    “Bring them to the lab. There’s a storage room we can use. We’ll keep them there.”
    He flicked off the screen.

    Within two months, Boros was getting so close to a cure that Daniel started postponing his visits to the doctor. His symptoms all but disappeared, as if driven away by the knowledge that cancer wasn’t going to be a death sentence, not for him. Even if it ravaged his body tomorrow, Boros was far enough along that Daniel could take the temporary cure, then wait out the final one.
    He didn’t know how many subjects they’d gone through. Shana kept him updated every week, when Boros put in his requisition, but he paid no attention. It was during one of those weekly updates that she said, “We can’t keep this up, sir. He’s demanding ten more in the next week. There’s a limit to how many transients can disappear from a city before someone starts investigating—”
    “Then send the team to another city.”
    “We’re doing that. But it’s a slow process. He needs healthy, clean subjects. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find them among that population? We test them, but he still rejects a third of the ones—”
    “Then we need to come up with an alternative.”
    A soft sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir. Now, I’ve done the calculations, and if you were to take his cure in its present form, we could slow the testing, meaning we could cut back the number of subjects significantly and—”
    “I’m not taking a substandard cure unless it’s an absolute last resort.”
    “I understand, sir, but we are reaching that stage—”
    “No, we aren’t. I want you to comb through the employee files. Find anyone with a terminal illness. Offer two years salary to their families in return for their participation. Emphasize the benefits of the procedure and minimize the side-effects.”
    When she didn’t answer, he looked up from his computer golf game. She was staring at him.
    “Employees, sir?”
    “That’s what I said. If we don’t have enough with a terminal illness, make it a general offer and increase it to triple salary.”
    She continued to stare.
    “How’s Lindsey, Shana?”
    She blanched. When Shana came into his employ, her eleven-year-old daughter had been suffering from a rare liver disease, on a transplant list and failing fast. As her signing bonus, Shana got that liver for her daughter, and all the care she’d needed to make a full recovery. And Daniel got the perfect assistant—one indebted to him for life.
    “I-I think we can fill this latest requisition with transients,” she said. “I’ll split the team and send them farther afield.”
    He smiled. “Thank you, Shana.”
    She started to leave. He called her back and handed her a check for ten thousand dollars.
    “A bonus. Buy something special for yourself and Lindsey.”
    She stared at it and, for just a second, he thought she was going to hand it back. After only that brief hesitation, though, she murmured, “Thank you, sir,” pocketed it and left.

    Finally, the day came. And not a moment too soon, as Daniel struggled to get into work every day, ignoring his wife’s