Panacea Read Free Page A

Where’d you guys come from? The Dark Ages? You’re crazy. Totally bug-fuck nuts! What’s it gonna be? Thumbscrews? Got an iron maiden waiting outside?”
    â€œDon’t be melodramatic. We have injections now.”
    â€œRight,” Bradsher adds. “You’ll tell us everything. Even stuff you don’t know you know.”
    â€œAnd then you kill me?”
    â€œIt doesn’t have to be that way.”
    â€œNow a death threat? Jesus, Fife. You’re heading off the reservation at ninety miles an hour.”
    â€œJust a little theater,” Nelson lied.
    Nelson speaks softly to Hanrahan. “Tell us the ingredient and I’ll let you go.”
    The sudden tears in the man’s eyes startle him.
    â€œI can’t do that. I’m pledged to the All-Mother.”
    â€œStop that!” Nelson shouts, causing even Bradsher to jump. His face contorts. “There is no All-Mother! You are pledged to a fiction!”
    â€œNo,” Hanrahan says, sobbing. “You are. And now … I’ve gotta go.”
    â€œYou’re not going anywhere,” Bradsher says.
    â€œGood-bye.”
    So saying, Hanrahan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. As he lets it out, his head drops forward and his body slumps to the floor.
    Bradsher looks from Nelson to Hanrahan, then back again. “What’s he doing?”
    â€œPassed out. But that’s not going to change anything. Wake him up.”
    Bradsher kneels by Hanrahan and lifts his head. Dull, lifeless blue eyes stare ceilingward.
    â€œWhat the—?”
    Jabbing two fingers against the side of the man’s throat, Bradsher waits, then says, “No pulse! He’s dead!”
    â€œHe’s what ?” Pickens said. “What did you do to him?”
    Nelson had intended the recording to capture every nuance of the interrogation. But now it exonerated him from doing any violence to the man—the main reason he wanted Pickens to see it.
    â€œAbsolutely nothing. As you’ve seen, neither of us touched him. He simply keeled over dead.”
    â€œHow?”
    Bradsher says, “He must have had some cyanide—”
    â€œNo,” Nelson says. “Not cyanide, but check his mouth anyway.”
    He’s seen people die of cyanide poisoning and it’s anything but a peaceful death.
    Bradsher finishes his inspection and lets the head drop. “No sign of a hollow tooth or the like.” He shakes his head. “He said ‘good-bye’ and then…”
    Nelson turned back to Pickens. “Almost as if he willed himself to die.”
    â€œIs that possible?”
    â€œI’ve never heard of it, but I think we just witnessed it.”
    Nelson steps around the plant trays and checks for a pulse himself. Not that he doesn’t trust Bradsher, but this is too uncanny. He finds the carotid artery lying still beneath the already cooling flesh of the man’s throat.
    Damn him! They were so close!
    Nelson motions to Bradsher. “Bring the camera over here. I want this on record.”
    The image wobbles and blurs, and then refocuses on Hanrahan’s back, revealing a black-ink tattoo.

    Nelson owns photos and drawings of similar tattoos, but this is the first time he’s seen one on a human body. It looks much like all the others: the shooting star behind the staff and snake of Asclepius, all bisected by a straight line. The only variation has been the angle of the line. Nelson assumes that’s a way to individualize the tattoo.
    A foot comes into frame and turns the body over onto its back. The chest area is unmarred and—
    Suddenly the image flares white and the screen goes dark.
    Nelson tugged the thumb drive from its slot as Pickens said, “What just happened? Where’s the rest of it?”
    â€œThat’s all we have. The place burst into flame. We barely got out with our lives.”
    He walked to the window and twisted the wand on the blinds,