The Devil's Assassin Read online

  “Ready?” asks Sahar.

  June looks at Huggins, who nods. “Okay,” she says. “Unstrap him.”

  Sahar does so and the other two scientists pick up the animal carrying it quickly to the cage. Huggins takes over once in the cage and places the animal down as gently as possible. He comes out, relieved. “Well, that went okay.”

  “He’ll probably have a headache when he wakes up,” say June.

  Huggins closes the cage and locks it. “He’ll get over it. Anybody up for Pizza Hut?” He pulls off his mask and cap showing his gray-streaked black beard and hair. June and Sahar do the same.

  “I’ll go,” says June. “I’m famished.”

  “I’ll get something later,” says Sahar. “I’m going to stay and make sure he wakes up all right. I can get started on the blood work.”

  “That can wait until we get back, Sahar,” says June.

  Sahar is firm. “I’ll stay. Thanks for the invite though.”

  “We’ll bring you something,” says Huggins.

  Sahar smiles her thanks and watches as June and Huggins leave. She wanders closer to the cage. Looking at the sleeping creature, she regards him with quiet wonder. He is the most amazing animal discovery in two hundred years and they have pumped him with enough ketamine to put a horse to sleep for a week. They had no idea even how the tranquilizer would affect the animal before they used it.

  After a few moments she walks over to a lab bench, puts on a clean pair of surgical gloves, and pulls a vial of the creature’s blood for testing.

  ›

  An hour later, Sahar stands up from her lab work, stretches and yawns. She lets her long, black hair free from the hair clip she’d had it in now that she was done with her work. She looks at the lab clock on the wall and sees the time. Suddenly, she looks over at the animal and becomes worried. She walks over to his cage.

  “I hope they haven’t overdosed you, little guy. You may be asleep for days with the amount of ketamine in you.” She notices that his water bottle in the cage is low. “Let me get some water and some food for you while you’re still asleep.”

  Sahar goes to the cage, unlocks it and opens it. She walks in to get his food dish and water bottle, pausing to look at his face. He’s sleeping. When she turns her back, the creature’s eyes suddenly open wide and he watches her leave the cage. He is not the least bit sleepy.

  As she walks away from the cage, she not only leaves it unlocked, but wide open. The creature doesn’t waste a moment seizing this opportunity to gain his freedom.

  He leaps up quietly, but quickly, and runs after her as she heads to fill the food dish and water bottle. As he gets very near her back he extends his needle. Sahar turns around partway to the left as she hears something behind her. She sees the needle extended from the moving creature and stumbles in surprise at seeing the animal up and out of his cage. The stumble is away from the creature and she falls backward. As she falls, she drops the dish and plastic bottle and the dish lands with a metallic clatter. Sahar hits her head on a lab bench on the way to the ground, losing consciousness.

  The creature moves in on her as she lays there. He reaches down and feels for a heartbeat with his right hand on her neck. He finds a pulse and quickly injects his drawn needle into her lung. He then draws the needle out and cleans the blood from it with a ritual lick.

  Satisfied that she is dead, he moves to the door, opens it slowly and peeks outside to the hallway. It’s clear. He sees a dark window at one end of the hallway and moves toward that. The creature moves unsteadily through the hallway, weaving a little from the effects of the drugs. When he gets to the window, he sees that he is one story up from the ground. To his left are a door and a staircase. He pushes open the door, goes down the stairs and ends up near a door at the bottom of the stairs. He pushes that door open, peeks out, and runs away from the lab, disappearing into the New Jersey night.

  ›

  Mike Huggins and June Dituro are returning to the lab from dinner. An ambulance and four police cars are in the parking lot outside the Princeton Primate Research Lab as they drive up. They look at each other with concern.

  “Was there anybody else in the lab when we left?” asks June.

  Huggins wants to be positive. “There were people in other labs in the building.” But he speeds his car toward the front door, parking as near to it as he can. The two of them jump out and run through the building door, sprinting up the stairs toward their lab. As they round the top of the stairs they see medical technicians and police officers.

  June lets out a horrified squeak. “Oh my God, Mike.”

  They arrive at the door and are intercepted by a detective. “Hooolllld it there. What’s the rush?”

  Detective Randy Maas is in his fifties, balding and carries some weight around his midsection. The bifocals he wears sit on the end of his nose, and he often takes them off completely, unless he is inspecting something closely. Now he peers at them through the glasses.

  “This is our lab,” says Huggins. “What’s happened, Officer?”

  “I am Detective Maas. May I have your names please?” He pulls a small notebook out of his jacket’s breast pocket.

  “Yes. This is June Dituro, the chief scientist here, and I’m Mike Huggins, also a scientist here.”

  Detective Maas takes off his glasses when he finishes writing down their names and positions. “I’m sorry to say this, but according to Security this young woman worked here. He’s ID’d her as Sahar Franklin.”

  June’s knees buckle and she nearly faints, but Huggins is quick to catch and support her. When she gets some of her steadiness back she speaks weakly. “Sahar…ah, God. Where’s the animal?”

  “No animal,” says Detective Maas. “Your security guy told us you had some kind of ape in there. It’s gone.”

  June and Huggins respond as one. “Gone?!”

  June’s knees start to give way again. Detective Maas nods.

  “How?” asks Huggins.

  Maas shrugs. “His cage was open.”

  He goes into the lab to show them. They follow, and though June is devastated, she waves off Mike’s help and tries to regain some control.

  “It should have been locked,” she said. “Mike locked it when we left.”

  “What it looks like is, Miss Franklin was feeding the animal and it got out. She appears to have hit her head pretty hard, though at this point we don’t know the cause of death. She may have been frightened by the animal and fallen. We won’t know for sure until the medical examiner gets a close look at her. I have Green checking over the surveillance camera tapes now.”

  June wanders closer to the gurney which holds a covered body. “Can I see her please?”

  Detective Maas hesitates due to this woman’s earlier weakness and looks to Huggins who reassures him with a nod. Then Maas shoves his glasses into place and pulls the sheet back for June to see. Huggins also moves in. June grabs onto Huggin’s arm as if to steady herself but she remains in control. A tear rolls down her cheek and onto the sheet.

  Mike puts a reassuring arm around June; it is as much for himself as for her.

  “She was scared,” says June. “It must have attacked her.”

  Detective Maas shrugs again. “Well, let’s wait until we see your surveillance video. She doesn’t show any evidence of mauling.”

  June turns toward the door and moves out into the hallway. She leans against the wall and slides down to the ground, sitting with her head in her knees. Huggins goes over and sits down against the wall close to her.

  “Why?” she asks. “Sahar…Why?”

  ›

  In the security office of the Princeton Primate Research Lab are Detective Maas, another detective, Mike Huggins, June Dituro, Dr. Van Houten, and Jasper Green, a fit, older man in his mid-fifties who is head of security.

  “Okay. If you’ll all watch the center screen here I can show you some shit—Excuse me Dr. Dituro. You won’t believe your eyes. Well, maybe you scientist types�
�ll believe it, but I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Just get on with it,” Detective Maas says impatiently.

  “Right,” says Green. The security guard hits a switch and an image of one of the labs appears on one of the security screens in front of the group. In it Sahar stretches and yawns, then lets her hair down. She looks over at the animal in the cage and then walks over to it. After a moment she opens the cage door. She goes in and comes out with the food dish and the water bottle.

  As she is walking away from the cage she suddenly turns and surprise and fear grip her face. She stumbles, falls, and hits her head on the hard lab table. She crumples to the linoleum and is quickly approached by the creature. He looks for a pulse in her neck. The creature’s left hand suddenly has a bone-white needle sticking out from it. He wastes no time in sticking it into Sahar’s chest. June gasps. The creature licks the needle and then leaves the body, heading for the door. The hall cameras watch as he finally makes his escape out the building door.

  Detective Maas is stunned, as are the other people in the room. “What the hell was that?”

  “That,” says Dr. Van Houten, “is one hell of a problem.”

  “Mmhmm. Maybe you can be a little more specific than that.”

  No one speaks for a moment as Jasper Green rewinds the video.

  “We’re digesting this too, Detective. It’s a shock and a tragedy for us,” says Van Houten.

  “All right, take a moment. But I need answers.”

  Van Houten takes a few seconds to absorb what he’s seen and then speaks in a measured way, careful of what he says, “Jasper, freeze the camera on the animal. Yes. Detective, this animal is a new species which was being studied here. It was only discovered this week. We had no idea or indication that it was dangerous. I never would have guessed it could be so ruthless from our contact with it until now. Clearly, however, Miss Franklin should never have left the cage open, or even opened it while in the lab alone.”

  “Does this lab often work on undiscovered species?” asks Maas.

  “Not of this magnitude. Once in a while we’ll study some newly discovered monkey from the depths of the Amazon, or Congo, but they’re usually small creatures, and only minimally different from the animals that we already know about. This particular creature is a revolutionary discovery, and when our funder’s at the DOD found out about it, we received a call from the NSA telling us to keep it secret and to send them the DNA results as soon as we have them.”

  Mike Huggins addresses Jasper, “Can you rewind it back to where the needle comes out? And then advance it frame by frame.”

  “Sure.”

  Green rewinds the tape and starts it from where the creature is feeling Sahar’s neck, frame by frame. June, seeing this animal feeling Sahar’s neck for a pulse lets out a mournful sigh. “Is he doing what we think he’s doing, Doctor? Could he be that intelligent?”

  “Let’s not jump the gun, Doctor Dituro,” says Van Houten. “Despite what our eyes see. There may be another explanation. It certainly has the appearance of intelligence.”

  The film continues to advance frame by frame, though on this system, which records at one frame per two seconds, they are not able to see enough detail. One moment the needle is not there, the next moment it is.

  “Can’t you get more of the needle than that?” asks Mike Huggins. “We can’t see where it came from.”

  “This isn’t the movies, Doc.” says Jasper. “We have to record at a low frame rate because we have a lot of labs and limited storage capacity. Some stuff that happens you won’t see. The idea with security video is to get an idea of what is happening, generally, and maybe catch a glimpse or two of the perp. We have that, I’d say.”

  The film is already to the point where the creature is licking off the needle. Then it’s gone and he’s moving toward the door again.

  “Well,” says Detective Maas. It would seem that we have an unfortunate situation with that animal, Doctor Van Houten. One that concerns the safety of the public.”

  Van Houten is uneasy. “I agree that we have a problem. However, that animal is at the moment a top government secret, Detective Maas.”

  “That animal is clearly dangerous,” says an angry Maas. “I hope the next words out of your mouth are something more constructive.”

  Van Houten becomes more confident, after all, he has the highest levels of the government behind him. “Of course we’ll do everything we can to find it, you can rest assured. But it will, in the short term at least, be a federal operation.”

  Detective Maas knows a bureaucratic wall when he sees one and that’s what he’s sensing now. “I strongly suggest you let me put out an APB on him. It’s the quickest way to find him – casts the biggest net.”

  “That’s exactly the opposite of what we can do. He wouldn’t remain a secret very long that way, Detective.”

  “To hell with your secret, Doctor! What’s so important about this animal that it has to remain top secret, even when we know now that it’s a danger to the public?”

  Van Houten doesn’t want to discuss it, but he feels that if he doesn’t tell the detective something he will only cause trouble. “This is an unusual animal. Very unusual, as you can see yourself. It is unusual in this day and age to find an absolutely new species as large as he is, and a hominid! New species are found quite often, but they are generally very small, ranging from insects and worms to small rodents and small monkeys. This is an unprecedented find! But believe it or not, the government has protocols for discovery of an animal like this … One as seemingly intelligent as this one is.”

  Van Houten hopes this is enough to placate the detective, but sees that it isn’t by the confused look on the detective’s face. “Detective, we must establish his terrestrial lineage before we can release news of his discovery to the public. It’s a government mandate that I cannot do anything about.”

  Van Houten emphasized “terrestrial” by saying it more slowly. Detective Maas thinks this over. He is just as surprised as he can be when he puts two and two together. “You mean to tell me that that thing might be an alien?”

  Van Houten shrugs and bobs his head noncommittally. “It just needs to be ruled out as part of the protocol. Once the DNA tests are done and the results are shared with the NSA, we should get the go ahead to go public.”

  There is silence while Maas digests this. “Detective Smith and I already know about this, so we’ll be an integral part of the government effort to find the . . . animal. Unless you want to go with the all-points bulletin.”

  Van Houten shows a small smile of relief. “Not yet. Thank you, Detective.”

  ›

  June gets up and leaves the security office. The others watch her leave but seem to have more talking to do. She walks down the long hallway from the security office to her office which is separate from the lab but adjacent to it. She closes the door and sits down at her desk to think. Closing her eyes she finds that she is haunted by frightening images of Sahar and the beast that killed her. She opens her eyes again and shakes the images away.

  She picks up the phone and dials it. “Is this Linus Hather?”

  Linus answers the phone but doesn’t recognize who it is. “Yep.”

  “Hi, um, this is June Dituro. I was one of the scientists who came to your house to take the animal off your hands.”

  “I remember you. What’s up?”

  June pauses and takes a deep breath, steeling herself to say what she has to say. “The animal… it’s killed Sahar – one of our scientists, and escaped from the Primate facility.”

  Linus is dumbfounded for a moment. “Good God, June . . . I’m sorry.”

  “I wanted to let you know because . . . I said some things that . . .”

  “June, please, don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned with how you’re holding up.”

  “It was gruesome, Linus. We watched the surveillance video just now. He licked his needle clean when he was done ins—“

  Her
emotions are too heavy for her to say what the animal did to Sahar, but she continued speaking to Linus because she needed to talk, to stay in control of her emotions. “The needle looks like a bone appendage. I’ve only had the one quick look at the videotape, so I can’t be certain.”

  Linus is surprised, “A hidden appendage? That explains why I couldn’t find anything after having seen it on my security tape. Are the police looking for him?”

  “Van Houten is planning a search right now. The two detectives who are investigating insist on being part of the search, but Van Houten says it’s going to be a government operation; that the creature must remain a secret.”

  “Why? Why should any new species remain a secret? Especially a dangerous one.”

  June lowers her voice a little. “I’ll tell you something if you don’t repeat it.”

  She waits for his assurance and Linus considers saying he won’t make any assurances, but he finally gives in because of what this woman has gone through this evening. “Okay. I won’t repeat it.”

  “The higher-ups at NSA want to be sure that this is an animal of terrestrial origin before going public.”

  There is silence again as Linus thinks about it, but just for a moment. “Wait, you think it’s an alien?!”

  “I don’t,” says June. “NSA wants to rule it out. And I agree with the principle, at least.”

  “And while we’re waiting, more people might be killed.”

  “I know,” says June somberly. “But it’s not like we’re not doing anything, Linus. And once the DNA tests are in and we establish his lineage, we can rule out that issue and go public.”

  June pauses as her mind is accosted again by what she’d seen on the video. “I’ll never forget the image of him licking his weapon, or casually jabbing it into Sahar. I failed her, Linus. She was just out of grad school and I already loved her like a sister. We used to go out all the time. The fact that she is gone isn’t even real to me yet.”

  He knows he may come across as uncaring, but in the interest of moving forward, he tries to steer her away from her pain. “June? I’ve been searching for all the information I can about references to any similar animal. Something close has come up a couple of times. One legend is of a smallish, man-like creature that hunts and kills only one prey—man—and when he is at his most vulnerable, at night. It’s something of a ghost story in that culture, passed down by storytellers. The description is striking. The Europeans have a similar story, but the description’s a little different and the weapon it uses is a short rapier or sword.”