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Sheldon Stern sits in the van’s dark cargo area listening to the low hum of the engines. The others are with him. He can smell their sweat and he can hear their prayers. They say no words of encouragement or give any further orders. There is no need; He knows them by heart.
As the van slows to a halt, he reaches up and feels the small glass vials that are concealed in his breast pockets. The fluid is tainted blue and to the uninitiated it could pass for perfume or perhaps Kool-Aid. Of course, he knows it’s something far more lethal.
The door slides open bathing his compartment in the harsh yellow light of a street-lamp and he immediately turns to exit. His feet fall on the pavement and he hears his first words in an hour; “Make them rot.” He doesn’t reply. He listens to the door click shut and the van pull away. It is his time to act.
Sheldon glances at the building across the street and notes that none of the lights are turned on. He pats his pockets, then dashes across the road and crashes shoulder-first into the door. With a grunt for emphasis, he crashes shoulder first into the front door which gives way instantly. He stands, and draws a silenced 9mm from beneath his coat.
He advances through the front hallway at breakneck speed, time being of the essence. Even though they are on the top floor, he figures they will react with frightening speed once they become aware of his presence. As he reaches the stairwell, he notices a thin band of light coming from under a door across the hall. “Almost had me flanked,” he mutters. The silenced shots are rendered useless by the sound of three 9mm caseless rounds hammering through the solid oak door. He grunts in satisfaction as he hears a muffled scream from the room beyond. “Better luck next year!” He shouts. Stealth was never part of his plan – only surprise. He cautiously checks all the corners as he heads up the stairwell.
Upon reaching the top floor, he is confronted by angry looking young men holding flechette-throwers. The taller one stares at Sheldon and speaks in a loud baritone: “We know why you’re here, and we’re not going to let you through. Drop the gun and come with us.”
“I honestly -” Sheldon aims at the taller man’s forehead.
“Don’t know -” Pulls the trigger.
“What the hell -” Aims at the other man’s left eyeball.
“You’re thinking…” Pulls the trigger again.
“Asking me to drop my piece!” He grimaces and heads for the room at the end of the hallway, stepping over the bodies.
Conscious of the vials in his pockets, he kicks down the door to apartment sixty nine. “Surprise, sinners! Sheldon the exterminator is here!” His eyes light up as he notices the number of people in the room. Each one of them sits upright, back to a wall. Their faces are blank; lifeless. The reason for this is not immediately apparent, although Sheldon has seen many similar rooms with nearly identical layouts. Each person has a thin golden wire protruding from one nostril, which runs behind their ear and into a special socket set flush with the wall. The Wire provides their nervous system with a special current, forcing their minds into a feedback loop which is supposedly euphoric – nearly Godlike. “Like shooting fish in a goddamn barrell!” A tired grin spreads across his face as he reaches for his breast pocket to take out a vial. As his fingers work at the buttoned flap, he feels a sudden rush of air behind him and a sharp pain in the back of his neck. His vision blurs, and he slumps to the floor.
Sheldon comes to, and knows the situation immediately. He is strapped to a chair and a powerful light is directed into his eyes. He feigns continued unconsciousness, as he hears voices coming from the other side of the room.
“Can you believe this spook? He just charged right in here like he was some kind of hero. Don’t these fanatics know that they’re only chipping at the iceberg, every time they hit one of our safehouses? You think they’d learn the lesson after a while.” Speaks an unfamilliar voice, with a high-pitched nasal quality to it. Sheldon slowly flexes his arms to test the restraints. He is solidly anchored to the chair. His head is throbbing madly, where the unseen blow landed.
“This one is different, Vit. He was carrying a batch of the new neurotoxin from Rivermore in his breast pocket! Nobody is that stupid… ‘Cuz if they are, we are in some serious trouble. He probably intended to wipe the whole joint clean with that crap – not to mention what it would do to the rest of the block! Do you know how many customers we would’ve lost if he had gotten even one of those vials open? I saw him reaching for it just before I sapped him in the noggin.” This in a throaty whisper. Somehow familiar to Sheldon, although he cannot recall why.
“Get him awake, and get him on the intravenous. We need some answers, and fast. The sooner we find out who is behind these brainwashed maniacs, the better we’ll be able to defend ourselves. He may not have much in that little stirfry brain of his, but we’ll get it out soon enough.”
“I’m on it, Vit.”
Footsteps, drawing closer – circling around him. Also footsteps leaving, down a carpeted hallway. He wasn’t in the same building anymore.
After being rudely slapped a few times, Sheldon opens his eyes and blinks rapidly. The light is easy to ignore, but the rough hands pulling his shirt open and jabbing a thick needle into his breast are not. He begins to exhale a scream of protest, but a hand is quickly clamped over his mouth from behind.
The hand is released, and he feels the pain subside only to be replaced by a dull ache. “Now the faster you answer our questions, the faster we can finish this. Got it?” The familiar voice breathes into his ear.
“Fu… Wait. Nawwwh. I’ll answer your questions. Go ahead, ask me anything you want.” Sheldon keeps a tight grip on his emotions, lest laughter come rushing out. The fools have given him everything he needs to know. Had he known they would tie him up like this, he would have left the neurotoxin in the van.
“Question the first… What is your name?”
“Sheldon Stern.”
“Great. And what outfit are you with?”
“Thirty-Second Division, Upper Echelon. Branch Davidian Mercenaries.”
“What’s a pillbox like you doing here? Don’t they send the Cho… Heh, I mean the ‘brainwashed’ kids to do jobs like this?”
“Usually.”
“What’s different about this time?”
“Intelligence reports came back saying that there was a high concentration of Flux matter in the apartment block, especially on the upper floors. The brass figured that if we got enough Cyclozine NSFT in there, we wouldn’t need to send in the usual cleanup crew. Things would sort themselves out.”
“This smells like a setup. How many Davidians are in the area right now?”
“None.”
“Bullshit. How many?”
“I told you! None. ‘Cept me…” Sheldon grins cruelly. The intravenous is beginning to throb, sticking out of his chest.
“Where’s the remote?”
“Implanted in my jaw. I bite down and wherever you’re keeping the Cyclozine gets a little blue surprise.”
“Too bad. We’ve already disposed of it. Can’t have that stuff hanging around, you know. It’s a real bitch to get out of the carpets.”
Sheldon hears the tremor in his captor’s voice -- A sure sign that they haven’t disposed of the Cyclozine. “It’s not the carpets you ought to be worried about. You can’t get a warning out fast enough… There’s just one thing I want to know before I ..” He clicks his front teeth together, loudly. “Bite the bullet, as it were. Why do you people do it? Why do you sell Hell to innocent souls? Everyone knows that the Wire is eventually fatal.”
“We do it because people need hope. They need something to keep them from slipping into a humdrum existence. We sell dreams, and we know the effects. I know it hardly matters now, but every one of the people in that apartment was a contributing member of society during the day. It’s like the Arcades of the 20th Century; only we give them all the rapture they can handle without the need to pump quarters into a bottomless and unforgiving machine.”
And so Sheldon Stern silenced the sinners.
------
For once as I, in Heaven climbed
Too high for truth to truly see
My sunken mind, drunken and blind
Saw the lie: The fool was me...
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