“Moran and Butcher will need more time in the cave. Get the others around. Janney’s over at the house. Tell him we’re going down in half an hour.” Dr. Mansfield gave a slight nod toward the door and Huckley left the barn without comment.
Lauren started at the sound of the sheriff’s name. Like snippets of a bad dream, scenes in the hospital basement pieced themselves together in her mind. The psychiatrist, Scott Moran, he had been there too.
Jesus, who isn’t part of this?
Then she remembered her last meeting with Jack. How she had refused to believe him and had run away just when he needed her most. He hadn’t been crazy, but trying to save their daughter. How horrible he must have felt when she turned on him while he was telling the truth.
It still didn’t explain why this was happening. It didn’t explain that poor girl on the gurney in the elevator. Or what Dr. Mansfield was up to. Lauren shuddered as she pictured the girl’s one open eye staring at her. Confused and in pain.
“Will you tell me what the hell is going on? Why are you doing this?” Lauren asked. “What are you mixed up in?”
Dr. Mansfield sat next to her and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated. I’m just sorry you had to get involved. It wasn’t supposed to work out like this.”
“Whatever it is, you don’t have to go through with it,” Lauren pleaded. “You could let Sarah go. Help us get out of here. We wouldn’t tell anyone. We would—”
“You don’t seem to understand. Your daughter’s here because I ordered it. Huckley found her, but this is my decision,” Dr. Mansfield said. “I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong person for help.”
“This is crazy,” Lauren said, mostly to herself. “This is all insane.”
“I know it must seem that way. But you don’t understand the magnitude of what’s happening here. This is bigger than me or you. Or your little girl. This is something that could change the entire world. It could change everything.”
“What are you talking about? In the hospital I asked if you were conducting human experiments and you didn’t deny it. Did you kill Felicia Rodriguez?”
Dr. Mansfield nodded. “And others like her. But they didn’t die in vain. Some day they will be looked at as heroes. They were sacrifices for the greater good of society.” He stood up and moved closer to her. “It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened. Louis Pasteur used human subjects in his experiments, many who died, but now he’s revered. Would you have blocked the development of vaccines because of risks to the first human recipients?”
“What you’re doing is wrong. No, it’s worse than that. It’s evil. You can’t just rationalize it away.”
“Spare me the ethics lesson. If you only understood what I was—”
“Nothing is worth killing innocent girls. Nothing.”
“Are you so sure of yourself?” Dr. Mansfield stared up at the barn’s ceiling for several seconds before he went on, his eyes never leaving some distant point far beyond the confines of the wooden beams above them.
“Suppose God came down to this barn and sat next to us. He says there’s been enough pain in the world and He wants to put an end to it all. He offers you the ability to cure all disease in the world, all infections, all genetic defects found in the human race. In essence, God gives you the ability to end the suffering of the world. He gives you the gift of immortality to share with the world.
“But the gift comes at a price. To develop this universal vaccine, you have to sacrifice the lives of over a thousand innocent children. One thousand lives to save the suffering of six billion. As horrible as it sounds, who in their right mind would say no to such a proposition? Would you? Would you refuse to deliver to God His thousand deaths so that you might save the world?”
Lauren stared at the doctor, not aware at first that he was waiting for her to answer. The look in the man’s eyes as he spoke had shaken her. It was the glazed, distant look of the fanatic, as if he had already created the world he described and he was looking at it through a window visible to only his eyes. Gone was the reasoned, rational man she thought she knew, replaced by a lunatic with a religion to sell. Lauren decided she was already beyond help and she’d be damned before she gave into his vile logic.
“I think that if God asked for a thousand deaths, it would occur to me that it wasn’t God at all. What you’re talking about is evil. Unjustifiable evil.”
“Saving six billion people is not justification enough?”
“You’re not saving six billion people. This is crazy.”
“Really? Do you want evidence? Would that make you understand?”
Dr. Mansfield produced a knife from his pocket. He held out his exposed forearm and slashed it with the blade. Lauren screamed as blood gushed out of the wound. The doctor grimaced from the pain but did not move his arm.
“It still hurts, but look. Look at what’s happening.”
Lauren didn’t have to be asked. She had already noticed how quickly the blood flow had stopped. Now the skin regenerated at the edges of the wound. Within seconds, the gash was completely healed. Lauren stared open-mouthed. “How is it… what did you…”
“Now you understand what I’m talking about. I’m working on a serum that could give this to the world. And you’re only seeing the surface of it. This same regenerative effect is taking place at the cellular level throughout my body. The serum halts deterioration. My body is immune to all viruses and bacterial infections. And without cellular breakdown, the body doesn’t age.”
“Are you trying to say that you can’t die? Are you saying you believe the same story Jack told me? About the Indians and the cave? That this is all about some sacrificial ritual that gives you immortality?”
“Immortality isn’t technically correct. We’re as close as we can get. There are limits, of course. Massive trauma can kill me if it’s more than my body can regenerate. But without being murdered, or the victim of a terrible accident, I could theoretically live forever.” He lowered his voice, as if aware of how incredulous his next statement would appear. “In fact, I’ve already lived for over two hundred years and have yet to show any sign of physical deterioration.”
Lauren matched Dr. Mansfield’s serious look.
“So you’re saying Jack’s story is true?”
Dr. Mansfield nodded.
“You sacrifice people so you can be immortal and you’re trying to synthesize the effect in a lab so you can cure the world of all disease?”
The doctor nodded again.
“And you’re going to sacrifice my daughter because you think she has some kind of special psychic powers that will help you with your study?”
Slowly, as if fearful of her reaction, he said, “Yes, that’s why she’s here.”
“And you’re 200 years old?” Lauren’s face turned red as she spoke the words. When the doctor nodded this time she erupted into laughter. “Jesus, you’ve gone off the deep end, you know that?”
Her laugh took on a maniacal quality to it, edged with tears and panic.
“What the FUCK is wrong with all of you? I mean, I don’t know how you pulled off the little trick with the knife but that’s magic not medicine. What’s next? Are you…are you…I don’t know, going to put a woman and a box, stick it full of swords and when she pops out unharmed tell me you cured her?”
A dark cloud had come over the doctor’s expression, but she didn’t care. Tears poured down her cheeks. These men were insane. Both she and her daughter were going to die. Given the situation, she decided she might as well speak her mind. “This is the stupidest Goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.”