Vital Secrets Vol 1-3

CHAPTER TWO-2

Mikel needed a break. The coolness of a desert night was providing little comfort for his aching muscles. He was disposing of his test subjects.

The serum was a complex mix and was designed to insert itself into the subject’s brain tissue and nerve fibers and remain dormant until activated. He had tried several delivery methods but found two that worked the best – injection as a direct approach and suspended in liquid as a subtle one. Activating the serum was childishly simple – a press of a button. Once activated, the serum would essentially function as a mind control agent that could be operated via electronic signal. Nanotechnology was a wonderful thing.

And it had worked like it was supposed to, in the rats and the monkeys he had begun the trials with.

In late September he had decided to make the move to human subjects. He had taken the first of four trips across the border into Nevada. Each time he found, befriended, drugged and brought back a transient no one would miss. Three men, ranging in age from forty-five to seventy, and one old p********e in her mid-fifties.

But this first batch of human specimens had been a complete disaster. Instead of allowing for remote control of the individual’s brain activity, the serum had attacked the host when activated, causing seizures, psychotic rages, and massive aneurysms.

He had buried three of them already and was digging the hole for the fourth.

Should’ve started with the big one first, he grumbled to himself. That one will take twice as big a hole to cover him properly.

Finally, the hole was finished. He grabbed the last body by the legs and strained to pull the man out of the bed of the truck.

You’d think a homeless degenerate would be skinnier, he thought disgustedly.

Dragging the stocky man by the feet like a sack of garbage, he stepped around the edge of the hole. Gravity assisted him in placing the body.

He rested for a moment, then picked up the shovel and filled in the last hole. Grabbing the small leafy branch that he had pruned from a tree at the Institute, he swept it back and forth over the graves to minimize obvious signs of digging. Then he carefully walked backward toward his truck, erasing his tracks as he went. He drove slowly back to the main road, then turned right for the twenty-mile drive back to Phoenix.

Mikel had taken great care to strip his subjects of any personal possessions. These items had been locked in the workroom safe. Now he might have to burn them. He saw no reason why the bodies would ever be discovered, and even if they were, no one would be able to link them to him. Still, it might be better to get rid of it all.

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