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“Oh, I see,” I said. “You just did the one, but you didn’t have enough real brains, so you tried to use Sofia’s fake brains,” I said. “But something went wrong. That’s why Zeke looked so old and why he died when he fell.”
She let out a soft sigh as she repeated the blood-drawing routine on Philip. “That’s right. It mutated the parasite to where it couldn’t survive. The subject would have died soon even if he hadn’t fallen. But I’ve since modified the brain substitute formula to remove the chance of that sort of mutation happening again.”
“Zeke was trying to escape, wasn’t he?”
Her lips pressed together in annoyance. “Yes, which is why I’ve completely changed the protocols.”
Ha! I was right! Not that it made any difference at this point. But, still, Ha! I was right! “And what happened to the real Norman Kearny?”
She gave me a blank look. “Who…? Oh, right, the janitor. Quite dead and disposed of. Unfortunately for him he was the one person in our personnel files who was the right age to take the fall, so to speak, for the dead zombie, and who likely wouldn’t be missed.” She shrugged. “We didn’t have time to make up a whole new personnel record. Easiest to simply do a bit of identity-switching.”
Well, that explained why the guy at the lab had said there was an opening in the custodial department when I’d pretended to apply for a job. Poor Norman. The really shitty part was that he died for no reason since we figured it out anyway because of the wristwatch.
“At any rate,” she continued, “despite the problems, the regrowth of the zombie was enough to prove that the program had potential.”
“You used Ed,” I said. “You convinced him his parents had been killed by zombies so that he would start hunting them. You didn’t want to get your hands dirty hunting down zombies on your own.” I curled my lip in my best contemptuous sneer.
“Angel, I’m not much bigger than you. I don’t have the brawn, so I had to use the brains.” She tapped the side of her head. “Besides,” she said with a shrug, “it wasn’t a total lie. His dad was killed by a zombie.”
“Yeah yeah, I know,” I retorted. “Pietro was banging Ed’s mom, his dad found out, shot her, and then Pietro killed his dad. Then, since you worked with his mom, you had access to her notes and research.”
Dr. Charish sat back and regarded me with something that almost—almost—looked like respect. “My goodness. Marcus said you were clever. Perhaps I was wrong about why he wanted a relationship with you.”
Right then I silently vowed that at some point I would slug this bitch in the face, hard.
She spread her hands. “Anyway, yes, I approached Pietro and told him what I knew, convinced him that I wanted to continue Dr. Quinn’s research. I could see the greater potential even if he could not.” Her smile was chock-full of self-satisfaction. “Then I bided my time, waiting for the breakthrough that would make my plan possible.”
“Sofia’s artificial brains,” I said.
“Did you know Pietro paid for her entire education?” Dr. Charish asked. “Sofia had an interest in medicine, but he convinced her to go into neurobiology. Supported her the whole way, while making sure she specialized in fields that would benefit him.”
Okay, that was more than a little manipulative, but I already knew that about Pietro. “And you hired her to make sure you could keep an eye on her and what she was doing.”
“Of course,” she said. “And with Pietro’s blessing as well, since it kept her close.” She chuckled. “That made things much easier all around, since it can be unwise to cross that man.”
“I can’t wait to see what Pietro’s going to do to you,” I said.
She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Do to me? For what?”
“For crossing him,” I said. “He told me he’d never allow any of the zombies under his protection to be harmed in any sort of research.”
“Angel, I didn’t cross him.” She leaned in close and smirked. “He simply made an exception in your case.”
She chuckled at the stunned look on my face. “Can you blame him?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “He’s been grooming Marcus for bigger and better things for a long time now, and it didn’t take much persuasion on my part to convince him that the last thing he wanted was to see Marcus hooked up with barely literate trash.”
I felt as if a fist had closed around my chest. She stood and raked her gaze over me. “Let’s get you cleaned up and fed, shall we?” she said with a bright smile. “We need you at your best!”
With that she left the room, leaving me to stew in my hate and fear.
Chapter 26
Food was brought in for Philip and me, once again on plastic cafeteria trays. Cheeseburgers and fries this time, and, of course, a side of brains.
The amount of brains they were giving me was generous—which either meant they didn’t know how much I needed, or they expected me to burn them off. Considering how much Dr. Charish clearly knew about zombies, I had a bad feeling it was the second reason.>“He’s fine!” I insisted, curling my lip. “They can check him out right here.”
His eyes hardened. “That’s not going to happen.” He tried again to pull Philip’s limp body from me, and I let out a growl—a deep throbbing sound I had no idea I could make.
The guard dropped Philip’s hand and jumped back, but then his mouth tightened into a thin line and he pulled a Taser from his belt. Ah, shit, this is gonna suck. Marcus had once described being tasered—which he’d had to experience in order to carry one on duty. His words: “That shit fucking hurts. If anyone ever tells you to comply or be tasered, you’d better fucking comply!”
