Chapter 4
621 Words
The guard returned, and the transmission cut off there. But Harris was a sharp man. He would understand at once that something had happened to me.
I could only hope he moved fast, before the NSB and Evelyn's side got to it first.
As for the third part, it was hidden in my thumbprint.
They hadn't bothered to dress my wounds. By the next day my hands were swollen like overripe plums, and the lightest touch sent pain spiking through my chest.
Victor came in dressed sharply in a suit, a folder in his hand and a flicker of excitement in his eyes.
"Alan, look what I've brought you."
I didn't speak. I had no strength to.
"I've gotten you the deal of a lifetime. Just sign, admit you leaked the data, hand over the cipher key, and I can get you five years off your sentence." He bent closer. "Do you understand what that means? It means you'll walk out of here alive. Even if you can't do research anymore, you can still live a normal life."
'A normal life. The thought was almost funny.'
I forced my mutilated finger up. Fresh blood welled out of the wound, mixed with yellow-green pus.
"Modern medicine has come a long way. You can be fitted with prosthetic fingers."
"Victor." I smiled at him. "You stole my research, you took my position, you slept with my woman, and you turned me into a cripple. Who exactly is this little act of charity for?"
Victor straightened up, the smile gone from his face.
"Alan, in this world there is only winning and losing. I'm the one who won. Since you can't recognize kindness, I'll stop being kind."
I watched him close the door behind him, my chest burning. I had to get the cipher key out, and quickly.
*****
To make sure I survived long enough for them to get the key, Evelyn and Victor had brought in Frank Bennett to treat me. What they did not know was that Frank's wife had once been my student.
While he leaned in close to examine my wounds, I murmured in his ear, "Frank, do me a favor. Get the backup chip to Dr. Harris at the Institute."
A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes. "If I help you, they'll kill me."
"Victor is a ruthless man, and he has the NSB behind him. If he gets away with this, the Institute will be his to run. Do you really think Vivian will be left untouched?" Vivian was his wife, the woman he loved most in the world.
He took the chip, no bigger than a grain of rice, and hid it away.
"What's on it?"
"The cipher key. And recordings."
No one knew that, given the nature of my work, I had spent years quietly using the subdermal implant in my body to make recordings. Every word Victor had spoken, every word Evelyn had said, everything inside the NSB... even if I never walked out of this place, the truth would still come out.
*****
That evening Martin and Winnie came back.
They started with the bones in my legs, then tore the nails from my toes. I let myself cry out, as if at last the pain had broken me. "The cipher key... I gave it to Victor!"
The torture paused. They were waiting for me to go on.
"It needs three layers of verification. The first is an eight-digit code. The second is my fingerprint. The third..."
"The third is what?" They had taken the bait.
My voice was paper-thin. "My heartbeat frequency."
"What does that mean?" Martin's brow furrowed.
"It means if I die, all the data wipes itself. You get nothing."
- Writer
