I check my watch.
Ten minutes to three. Dr. Tanbyrn is running late.
Charlene picks up a magazine that she is almost certainly not interested in.
I do the same.
Honestly, Glenn could not believe his luck.
Here they were, delivered straight to him, and if they were going to meet with the good doctor in his office, that meant that he could deal with all three of them at once.
But what about what you had in mind for the woman? About making the guy watch?
As tempting as all of that was, Glenn had to admit that it would be smarter to let them burn alive with the physicist. Simpler. Easier.
Wound for wound for wound.
A tidy, happy ending after all.
Then move on.
He kept his eyes trained on the magazine he was holding.
Despite himself, he felt his heart beginning to hammer.
Don’t give anything away. Don’t let them guess who you are.
He turned the page of the magazine he was not reading.
Eavesdropping is nice, listening in on people’s secrets, peeking into their lives, but as Glenn had learned over the last couple years, there’s an even deeper thrill you get from eavesdropping on the people you’re about to kill.
There’s something special when they have no clue, when they think that life is just going to keep going on the way it always has. Status quo. Time in a bottle; nothing to worry about.
But when you know that’s not the case, when you know that the person’s death is imminent, only minutes away, the secret knowledge is like a drug. The feeling is rich and sweet and intoxicating, and there’s nothing else like it. That’s probably what drives serial killers to act out their urges so often. The sense of ultimate, godlike power over your helpless little prey.
Even though he wasn’t able to concentrate at all on the words, Glenn dutifully kept pretending to read the magazine.
As soon as the doctor showed up.
As soon as all three of them were in the office.
Then he would act.
He realized that deep in his heart, he really did feel an obligation to something greater than just a paycheck — a calling to do this sort of thing. A duty, so to speak, to death.
His heart raced, his anticipation sharpened.
Yes, there really were moments of pleasure and satisfaction in this job.
Most days it wasn’t like this, but today he had to admit that he could lose himself in this work if he wasn’t careful, could become more than just a guy doing a job, could start to view himself as something he’d never before been able to admit to himself that he was.
An assassin.
The venom took effect.
The roach made no further effort to squirm or get away.
And it would make no further effort to escape. Not ever. Even when it was being burrowed into or eaten from the inside out by the wasp’s young larva.
Sometimes the wasp that has stung the roach will break off one of the roach’s antennae and drink some of its blood, which was what the wasp in Cyrus’s office now chose to do.
Afterward, she waited until the roach had the use of its front legs again, then led it into the corner of the aquarium. She guided it by grabbing its one remaining antenna and directed it to the place where she was about to entomb it with bits of leaves and mud.
The process could take hours, but she would seal the helpless roach in her tomb and then lay her egg on its abdomen.
The roach would remain there, still alive but without trying to escape. After three days, the wasp larva would hatch and, a few days later, burrow into the roach and devour some of its internal organs to make enough room to form a cocoon.
Still it wouldn’t try to crawl away, even as this was happening.
Six weeks after that, the young jewel wasp would emerge from the hollowed-out cockroach carcass, make her way out of the nest, and fly away.
Dr. Cyrus Arlington considered all of this and its symbolic connection with all that he was trying to accomplish with the twins, with how the predator controls the prey. More than simply a matter of national security, as Williamson believed, this project would help usher in the next step in human evolution.
A string of facts, of connections, only he was aware of.
As long as the twins did their job.
Adaptation.
Survival.
Adding twenty healthy years to the average life span of Homo sapiens.
Twenty years or more.
And he would be at the forefront, leading his species’ foray into a bold and uncharted future.
Dr. Tanbyrn arrives, greets Charlene and me, as well as the man who was waiting for him when we came in. “May I help you?” Dr. Tanbyrn asks him.
He stands, shakes Tanbyrn’s hand. “Dr. John Draw. I contacted the center and they told me I’d be able to meet with you at three. I’m doing some research in superstring theory and its connection to the emerging research in M-theory. I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time. I was in the Northwest and hoped that perhaps we could sit down and chat for a few minutes.”
A question mark crosses the doctor’s face. “With whom did you speak? To set up the appointment?”
“Honestly, my office manager made the arrangements. I can come back another time — if that’s better?”
“No, no.” Dr. Tanbyrn taps the screen of his tablet computer, checks the time. “I’ll be glad to meet with you. Can you give us half an hour?”
“That would be perfect.”
Then Tanbyrn addresses me and Charlene and gestures toward his office door. “Let’s take a look at these results.”
Yes, Glenn had been somewhat arrogant, talking so freely in front of them, trusting implicitly that they would not recognize his voice. But it was just another part of the thrill he was tapping into.
He waited until the three of them entered the office before limping to the far end of the hallway to take care of the exit door.
Entombed
Dr. Tanbyrn’s office is a small, paneled cubicle. Overstuffed bookshelves line the walls, and a computer monitor that must be at least ten years old sits on his desk next to a dusty ink-jet printer, all a stark contrast to the cutting-edge technology of the research room.
The office isn’t as small as the Faraday cage, but it’s certainly not one I would want to spend much time in. Windowless, cramped, dominated mostly by the behemoth gray industrial desk. A calendar and a variety of papers with dozens of scribbled equations lie pressed beneath the thick sheet of glass covering the desk.
An overwhelmed inbox sits beside the computer.
Tanbyrn ambles around the desk to have a seat in the chair on the other side. “Forgive the clutter. I’m afraid my cleaning lady is off this week.” I’m not sure if he meant that as a joke or not, but I smile. Two folding chairs are propped against the bookcase, and I set them out for Charlene and myself.
Despite the fact that I want to talk to the doctor, the tiny office distracts me, reminds me of a time when I performed a show in Rome three years ago. A Vatican official who’d attended the performance and had been impressed by my escapes took me and Charlene on a tour — albeit an abbreviated one — of the tunnels and crypts that lie beneath the Vatican.
The guide told us that in medieval times, some monks would use bricks and mortar to seal themselves into small alcoves, leaving out only one brick — just a small opening through which the other monks would deliver food and water, and out of which the entombed monk would pass his waste.
For years that cell would serve as the monk’s home as he prayed and reflected on God in solitude — until he died, and the other monks would slide the final brick into place, making the cell their brother monk’s tomb.