‘His victim selection criteria,’ Hunter explained. ‘It cannot only be the fact that they are loners. If that was the case, in a city like LA…’ He pointed at the window. ‘He just needed to hit Skid Row and he’d be like a kid in a candy shop. Homeless and lonely people of all ages. People with no one in their lives who would miss them. No one who would’ve reported them missing either. That wasn’t the case with either of the two victims we have here.’ Hunter indicated the board. ‘So yes, being a loner is probably part of this killer’s victim selection criteria, but that’s not why he chooses them. There’s got to be something else. We just need to find out what that is.’
Twenty-Eight
The man who called himself Russell sat quietly at the corner of the room. His left leg was crossed over his right one and his hands were resting gently against his thigh, fingers interlaced, thumbs touching at their tips. His beard was gone. Shaved clean to show a squared and strong jawline. His dark brown eyes seemed full of mystery and anguish. He’d been sitting in that same exact position for several minutes… his breathing controlled… his gaze locked onto Jennifer, who was lying on the floor in a fetus position, just a few feet in front of him.
It had been around twelve hours since the cocktail of sedatives that he had poured into her coffee while she had gone into the bathroom had taken effect, and Jennifer still hadn’t come to yet. But the man wasn’t worried. In fact, he’d been expecting it. According to his calculations, the dosage that he had used would be wearing off at any minute now. That was why he was sitting in the room with her. He wanted to be there when Jennifer woke up, just like he had been there when all of them had woken up.
The man casually checked his watch before his eyes returned to his subject on the floor. He liked observing them. He liked watching as their chests rose and fell at odd rhythms and at different intensities. He liked watching their erratic breathing go from deep, to shallow, to almost no breathing at all, before repeating the whole cycle in its own randomized way. He liked watchingtheir rapid eye movement pick up speed behind their heavy eyelids for almost a minute, only to slow down to total stillness in the space of a second. All of those symptoms – the odd chest movement, the erratic breathing, the crazy REM – they were all side effects of the drugs combo he had used.
He scratched the underside of his chin and, right at that moment, Jennifer jerked on the floor, as if she’d been kicked hard in her stomach.
The man had seen that before as well. His cocktail of sedatives were known to trigger a barrage of bad dreams. Nightmares so real that the subjects would sometimes jump, shake, twist, turn and scream in their sleep, but no matter how terrifying a nightmare they were having right then, it would all be a dream of angels when compared to what they would endure once they’d woken up.
On the floor, Jennifer jerked again, but this time the jerk came accompanied by a couple of short moans. Not the type associated with pleasure and the release of oxytocin. No, these were a sign of distress and an indication that Jennifer was about to regain consciousness.
The man calmly waited.
Jennifer jerked yet again – three times in rapid succession, as if three quick surges of electricity had just passed through her body. Each one followed by a new moan, gaining intensity as they progressed.
Here it comes,the man thought.The Neo Burst.
The ‘Neo Burst’ was what he had come to call the explosive waking-up process that all of his subjects inevitably went through. It reminded him of how Neo, in the filmThe Matrix, woke up in his pod after taking the red pill – just an explosive burst out of the dream world, back into the real one.
The man uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. His hands were still together… his fingers still interlaced. His eyes settled back onto Jennifer’s face. Despiteeverything that she had gone through in her life, she had somehow managed to keep at least some of her attractiveness from her younger days.
‘What a waste,’ Russell said under his breath.
Jennifer’s rapid eye movement came back, but it was now somewhat different – a little slower perhaps – with her head moving from left to right in snatches.
The ‘Neo Burst’ was mere seconds away.
Russell didn’t move an inch. He simply observed.
Three…
Two…
One…
‘Argh!’
Jennifer jolted awake with a gasp for air so desperate it sounded like a horror scream.
Russell said nothing.
As she finally broke free from her deep, twelve-hour-long sleep, Jennifer’s lungs gulped oxygen as if they could drink it… as if she’d been submerged in water until a millisecond away from drowning.
They all had reacted in a very similar way when they woke up – seemingly starving of oxygen. Russell began to wonder if, for some reason, they all had similar dreams as the drugs were just wearing off.
He had also dimmed the lights in the room they were in down to a comfortable level. He might’ve not known if his drugs induced his subjects to have the same dream, but he certainly knew that they would have caused Jennifer’s pupils to dilate to about double their normal size. That effect would only wear off a few minutes after a subject had woken up. Not that he wanted her to be comfortable. Far from it, actually, but he already had quite a lot in store for Jennifer and, in all honesty, the dimming of the lights wasn’t exactly for her benefit.
Russell watched as Jennifer’s eyes blinked awake, but he could easily tell that her eyelids still felt heavy, as if they were telling her that they weren’t done with sleep just yet. Still, Jennifer somehow found the strength to force them open.
She’s a fighter,he thought.No doubt about that.
Another drug side effect that Russell knew for sure that Jennifer would experience was the brain numbing, leading to a slow understanding of what had happened to her.
First – the typical wooziness of waking up from a long slumber that had been chemically induced. For the first several seconds, maybe even minutes, nothing would make sense.
