“Perhaps you better understand the seriousness of the
position you’re in, Doctor Phadley,” he said, pausing to turn and close the
door to the small attic room behind him. He flipped the light switch near the
doorframe, illuminating the cluttered laboratory prison.
“You’re
valuable to us while you’re alive, working on the project at hand. When that’s done, you can see your daughter.
If you’re simply going to make trouble, then that value diminishes greatly.”
The
thug pulled a thin cheroot from his suit’s breast pocket, and stuck it between
his wormy lips. “As for your daughter…” he added coolly, lips wriggling around
the cigar, “…her value is appraised in tandem with yours.”
The
smarmy crook lit the thin cigar with a match and took a draw. He then plucked
it like a feather from mouth and exhaled a great ball of crawling smoke, which
flooded the scientist’s face, tickling his nose with its pungent odor and
triggering his asthma.
“Get
the picture?”
“The
picture was clear some time ago, Mr. Mason,” Phadley snapped between coughs.
“But perhaps it’s time we take another look at it. From a different angle, that
is!” The diminutive scientist reached into a pocket of his lab coat and
produced a bizarre gadget, a sort of pistol with an antenna where the barrel
should be.
“Whatcha
got there, doc? Some kind of fancy soldering iron?”
The scientist’s wrinkled fingers
bunched tightly around the handle, his knuckles bleeding white with strain.
“No, not a soldering iron, Mason. Something worse!”
Mason cracked a crooked grin.
Whether the reaction was one of nerves or amusement, Phadley couldn’t tell. But
then, he didn’t care, either. Mason was a crook. A killer. A blackmailer. A
gangster.
“I gotta hand it to ya, doc, I
never’d have thought you’d have the stones to try and stand up to me. I guess I
underestimate you egghead types. ‘Specially one of your age.
“Now,” Mason said, stepping slowly
towards Phadley, eyes locked on his the entire time, as if trying to hypnotize
him, to influence his will! “Let’s have the doodad, doc!”
Phadley held steady, one arthritic
finger curling into the trigger guard of the bright blue plastic weapon.
“Doc…” Mason sneered, taking
another step, “don’t be foolish. Don’t make me take that away from you! Your
daughter–“
Phadley squeezed the trigger, and
the antenna nose of the small pistol crackled with a flash of energy. A thin
beam shot from the end, and caught Mason square in the sternum.
The criminal stopped dead in his
tracks. His chin dropped, his eyes went to his chest. His hands started to
furiously slap at the small burn at his breastbone. At first it was a little
hole, like a tear in the fabric of his shirt. Then, like a tarantula waking
from slumber and stretching its legs, it started to spread out in every direction
from around the point of contact.
“What…what did you do?” Mason
shouted. “You shot me?!”
“Yes!” Phadley snarled. “I shot
you. Not with a gun—with bullets!—but with this device that I’ve been working
on since you’ve locked me away in this god forbidden place! This atomizer!”
There was no blood. The small blast
from the atomizer had simply started a reaction upon contact. The physical
being known as Nick Mason was being eradicated, eaten away from existence as
the very atoms that composed his body were being dissolved and deleted.
“I’ve removed one ugly mark from
that picture you were talking about, Mason,” the doctor sneered. “And there’ll
need to be many more such marks erased before the picture of the future is
worth looking at again.”
Phadley stepped around the
evaporating Mason. He walked out the door that had secured his prison cell for
the last seven months, and stepped into the stairwell that would take him down
into the isolated farmhouse. The others would be down there, waiting for Mason
to return. He’d need to be quiet and quick. And unflinching.
It was gruesome work, but
necessary. If not for his sake, then for Cathy’s. He heard the noise of the
radio from below. It would give him some cover. Quietly, trying to mute the
squeaks of the hinges and the creaks of the floorboards, Doctor Phadley pulled
the attic room door shut. On the other side of the door, now, was simply a
collection of still lab equipment, a tidy cot he’d slept on, a few changes of clothing,
and one small, still-smoking cheroot cigar, slowly fizzling from both ends.
