“You’re sick, Mark. Seethe did something to you. You don’t see it, but you’re changing.”
He shoved her away and she bounced against the door. As he regained control of the cruiser, he took an exit ramp onto I-40, heading west.
“Why in hell should I believe you?” he said. “You think I don’t know you’ve been in bed with them ever since Briggs revived the experiments? You think I didn’t see the hunger in your eyes when you thought you could steal his work? And the goddamned government had you right in their sights, because they saw it, too. How goddamned hot for it you were.”
Her lungs hurt and she could barely force air into them. Paranoia. He’s cracking apart and he doesn’t even know it.
“You’re not making any sense, honey,” she said. “You said yourself the government was watching us.”
“No, not ‘us.’ Just me. You’re right about one thing. I’m changing, and I can’t think straight anymore.” He pounded the wheel with one fist. “If only I could think straight, I’d figure this out.”
The interstate traffic moved steadily, with consistent spacing. Otherwise, Mark’s erratic driving might have drawn more attention. As it was, the weaving combined with the car’s official appearance kept other motorists both well away and near the speed limit.
“Slow down and pull over,” Alexis coaxed. A neurochemist by profession, she’d had her share of psychology classes. The first step was to calm him and then maybe he’d listen to reason.
If the Seethe exposure had permanently affected him, then he’d become more unstable by the minute, especially if his amygdala was hyperstimulated by anger or fear. And her Halcyon supply was on the middle shelf of the refrigerator back home. If she could get him there in one piece, they might have a chance.
“I have to know what happened,” Mark said.
“The Monkey House is gone,” she said. “The explosion caused a toxic spill and they had to level it.”
“Maybe, but the truth is there somewhere.”
“But we don’t even know how to get there.”
“I do. I remember more than I ever admitted.” His face was dotted with sweat, his jaw tense, eyes wide and lit by a manic gleam.
“How could you remember, Mark? Halcyon wiped most of it away.”
“That’s what they all say.” He cast a demented grin. “But since you’ve been dosing me with Seethe, it’s all coming back to me.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Honey, honey, honey,” she whispered, scared and sad.
Signs of paranoid schizophrenia, manifesting as sociopathic rage. One of Briggs’s suspected outcomes of end-stage exposure.
And not just “suspected.” Desired.
They exited a side road into the Research Triangle Park, and the first of the glass-and-steel research and manufacturing facilities came into view.
“It all makes sense,” Mark said, and his newfound rationality was even more unsettling than his earlier rage. “You and CRO and the feds get rid of Briggs, who was in everybody’s way and uncontrollable. You take over, and Burchfield ties everything up with a nice bow so it looks like Seethe and Halcyon never happened. And the work goes on without a hitch, except now you’ve got all the backing you ever wanted and you’ve got your test monkey where you can keep an eye on him at all times.”
“No, Mark, that’s the Seethe talking-”
“Of course it’s the fucking Seethe talking! That’s what I am. That’s what I do. That’s what you’ve turned me into. You didn’t need a fucking Monkey House, all you needed was a monkey.”
His roar caused her to shrink away, and she considered opening the door and taking her chances on the grassy shoulder. But she was his only chance. She loved him so much, she could never abandon him when he needed her most.
Even if he didn’t know it.
When you loved somebody, you lifted anchor and rode the tsunami with them.
Mark drove with purpose, the route apparently still clear in his mind although she only dimly recognized the scenery. She wondered how many times he might have driven out here, seeking answers as the lesions in his brain pulled apart all the memories and experiences that had shaped his life and made him Mark Morgan.
Alexis risked a glance at his profile, the sheen of his moist forehead, his unkempt hair, his curled upper lip. How much of my husband is still left in there?
He fell silent after his eruption. His mood swings were getting more erratic by the minute. She’d miscalculated terribly. The Halcyon she’d been administering had not been helping him. Instead, it had only masked his deterioration and allowed her the placebo of helpfulness.
He turned off the highway onto a narrow, crumbling access road. Visible through the surrounding pine trees was a chain-link fence running parallel to the road. It was topped with barbed wire. Alexis strained to see beyond it, but the foliage was too thick.
Still, she knew they were approaching the Monkey House.
“I was telling the truth,” she said quietly, trying to sound reasonable.
“We’ll see about that.”
“If I was working for the government, do you think they’d let you kidnap me? Wouldn’t I be far too important to take the risk of your killing me? And would I have told you about the lab raid?”
Mark glanced in the rearview mirror. Then he shook his head. “Here’s the deal. They need you, but they need me, too. Right? You know how the brain processes it, the theory behind it, the molecular structure, but I am living and breathing the shit. I am Seethe.”
They came to a steel cable strung between two poles embedded in concrete. Beyond that was a gate set in the fence, tangled with honeysuckle and poison sumac. It hadn’t been used in a long time.
Not since the cleanup a year ago.
Mark stopped the car, collected the gun, and motioned her out. When they were both standing by the steel cable, Mark said, “In there’s where it all happened.”
“There’s nothing here, Mark.”
“Then you don’t need to worry, do you?” He knelt and rolled up the leg of his athletic pants, revealing a holster strapped inside his ankle. He slid the gun into it and smoothed his clothes.
Alexis followed him through the weed-choked entrance to the gate. Beyond it was a stand of scrub pines, and in a clearing was a blackened circle, a few piles of masonry rubble, and deep gouges in the red clay. A dented “No Trespassing” sign leaned to one side in the center of what had once been the Monkey House. She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“That’s what happened to the people we used to be,” Mark said. “That’s where we died and didn’t know it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Butner was a small town about fifteen miles north of Durham. It had been known as Camp Butner during World War II, an army training facility that later became a home for injured veterans. The town of nearly six thousand people had maintained that institutional identity ever since, housing several prisons, a federal correctional facility, some state agency headquarters, and the largest mental hospital in North Carolina.
Forsyth had driven himself to Butner after leaving Burchfield in Winston-Salem. He could have used Abernethy and the limo, since Burchfield planned to spend the night at home, but Forsyth didn’t want anyone to know of his movements, especially the Secret Service.
He was just exiting I-85 when the cell phone rang and he had to fumble through several jacket pockets to find it. “Forsyth here.”
“Scagnelli.”
“Do you got anything?” Forsyth didn’t bother with correct grammar when he was away from the press.
“No. They headed out to the Research Triangle Park, and I figured they were working with somebody out there. Thought I’d get lucky and they’d lead me right to the secret lab.”
“You might as well expect a wild hog to grub up a truffle and drop it on your dinner plate,” Forsyth said. “You ought to know by now that ‘secret’ means everybody don’t know about it.”