The Black Devil's Cave, page 3
“See, you are in California for only three days, and you are already open to different lifestyles,” Sonia responded with a devious smile.
“Next time, I want to be taken to dinner first. I’m not that easy.”
The house had a guest bedroom, but the previous night, both women were too exhausted to set it up. Instead, they decided to share a king-size bed and put the boy on a sofa next to them, in case he’d have an idea to leave the house again.
“Is he still asleep?” Sonia asked.
Jenny responded with a nod. “Yes, and he looks peaceful. I saw the needle marks on his arm, and it made me sick. Poor kid... Can you imagine being a little boy separated from your family and treated like a lab animal? I’m glad we took him away from those monsters.”
“So, where do you think he’s from?” Sonia put her mug on the countertop.
“Wherever he’s from, I’m sure it’s nowhere near the ocean. I watched him last night, and he acted like someone who’d never seen a beach or a shoreline.”
“All right, that’s a start. What about his race? Does he look Caucasian to you? I don’t think he’s Hispanic.”
“Me neither,” Jenny agreed. “I would say Caucasian, if not for the dark skin. He may be Middle Eastern. But what about those unbelievable blue eyes?”
“One would not necessarily negate the other,” Sonia pointed out. “Have you heard of the Yazidis in Iran or the Kalash people in Pakistan? Many of them have olive skin and blue eyes.”
“I thought exactly the same thing. Although Yazidis and Kalash have very European features and his face is different. It is hard to place. Reminds me of the Australian aborigines. Maybe he’s Melanesian? Some of them have dark skin, blue eyes, and naturally blond hair.”
“You may be on to something,” Sonia slowly nodded in agreement. “I haven’t thought about it, but you are right. Although how many people living on those islands have never seen a beach or an ocean?”
For a while, both women were quiet. Then, finally, Jenny was the one who broke the silence.
“He is definitely not deaf. Last night, I saw him react to the sound of you opening the door, although it was behind his back.”
“Correct, there is nothing wrong with his hearing,” Sonia agreed.
“Let’s talk about his disability if he really has one, which I doubt,” Jenny said. “I agree that he doesn’t act like a kid with autism. He looks straight into your eyes, and I have a weird feeling that he can see through my soul. Do you know what I mean?
“Yes, I had the same feeling. It’s as if he could read my mind.”
“At the same time,” Jenny continued, “he was unable to hold a spoon the right way. Instead, he grasped it the way toddlers do. It’s called clenched transverse digital grip.”
“How, the hell, do you know what it’s called?” Sonia gave Jenny a surprised look.
“Googled it,” Jenny smiled. “I looked it up when you were taking a shower.”
“Okey, smartass. He is not autistic, and I don’t think he has a developmental delay or an intellectual disability. I don’t see a medical explanation for him being mute.”
“Oh, I’ve also called Ximena,” Jenny said. “She swore he’s not one of them and said she had no idea where he might come from.”
“I’m confident that we’ll somehow figure it out.”
***
The boy woke up late and fuzzed in the bathroom when they turned on hot water. He calmed down when the water was cold and, instead of washing his hands and face, shoved his entire head under the faucet. Jenny inspected his pants and t-shirt, hoping that the tags would provide some clue to the boy’s country of origin, but it was another dead end. Evidently, while in the shelter, he was given cheap Walmart clothes.
The boy looked at Sonia with contempt when she tried to scramble eggs for him for breakfast. Instead, he grabbed a raw egg, skillfully made holes on each side with a knife, and drank from the egg before Jenny and Sonia could stop him. He frowned, evidently not satisfied with the quality of the California dairy products, but grabbed another egg and drank it the same way. He sniffed Sonia’s coffee, frowned some more, went to the faucet, drank cold water, and spit it out. Jenny gave him an Evian bottle from the fridge, and the boy drank half of it.
The women watched the kid, mesmerized, and puzzled.
“Do you think that maybe he is a young Tarzan?” Sonia finally whispered.
“Perhaps Mowgli, from The Jungle Book.”
Both women were grateful that the kid knew how to use a bathroom.
The rest of the afternoon was spent playing YouTube videos in various languages. The women tried Kurmanji, Kalasha, Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, Papuan, Austronesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and many other languages and dialects, closely watching the kid’s reaction. There were none.
“All right, I’m done,” Sonia finally said. “I’m going shopping because the boy needs shoes, and I’ll get dinner for all of us. You’re a teacher; you work with him.”
“I’m not a teacher. I’m a university professor. My students are older and speak English.”
“A teacher is a teacher.” Sonia pointed out philosophically, grabbed her car keys, and left.
“Oh, Peter Pan, what are we going to do with you?” Jenny whispered and stroked the boy’s hair.
She decided to try a different approach. Using her laptop, she started showing the boy pictures from other countries hoping that something would draw his attention. He wasn’t interested. She moved to images of different ethnic groups and, finally, different animals. The boy looked but, once again, showed no emotions.
Sonia returned forty-five minutes later with a large pizza and a bottle of Coca-Cola.
“Turn on the TV,” she told Jenny. “Maybe they’ll say something about what happened at PharGen last night. I don’t think so, but who knows.”
“Do you think they have Pizza Hut wherever he came from?” Jenny looked at Sonia’s dinner with disapproval.
“Of course, they do. Pizza Hut is everywhere. As to Coke, they even have it in the North Pole. Haven’t you seen commercials showing polar bears drinking this stuff?”
Jenny rolled her eyes.
The boy took a careful bite of pizza and spit it out. He didn’t even try the Coke – just sniffed it and frowned. Instead, he went to the refrigerator, grabbed two eggs, and, once again, drank them raw. He then checked the fridge’s contents, found an onion, and started eating it the way people eat apples, without even peeling it first.
“We have to figure out what to feed him,” Jenny said, looking at the boy with concern.
Suddenly, the boy dropped the onion and quickly approached the TV, his large eyes growing even bigger.
“Turn it up!” Jenny said, but Sonia was already increasing the volume.
… fourth young child kidnapped in El Paso in less than a month, the anchorwoman announced. While the motives are unknown, authorities believe that the cases may be connected. Local police have reached out to the FBI for assistance. When asked by reporters if there were ransom demands, a spokesperson for the El Paso PD refused to comment on the ongoing investigation.
The boy stared at the screen, then gently touched it with his fingers.
“Didn’t you tell me that he was detained after crossing the border in or near El Paso?” Jenny asked.
Sonia nodded. “He must remember the place. I guess that’s good. It’s another proof that he is not disabled. He reacts when he sees something familiar. We have to keep showing him different locations.”
The anchorwoman moved on to the next story, and the boy lost interest. He went back to his onion.
“So, what are we going to do?” Jenny asked. “We haven’t made much progress.”
“You must take him with you to Wisconsin,” Sonia said.
“Are you out of your freaking mind? Without papers, he can’t even get on the plane!”
“Who said you’ll be taking the plane? You must drive. I don’t think PharGen will be happy about losing their guinea pig. They’ll start looking for him if they haven’t already, and staying here is too dangerous.”
“That was never a part of the deal!” Jenny protested. “What am I supposed to do with a kid, especially the one I cannot even communicate with?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Jenny just looked at her friend and then at the kid. The boy finished eating the onion and seemed content.
“I can’t go with you right away because if PharGen is watching, it might look suspicious,” Sonia said. “But I’ll join you as soon as I can. That’s a promise. You should leave in the morning.”
“I’m not looking forward to driving two-thousand miles. If you want me to keep going across the country, we should move to Monaco or Liechtenstein. I could even settle for Luxembourg.”
“According to MapQuest, it’s only 1,993 miles,” Sonia corrected her from behind the laptop. “And be grateful that we don’t live in Russia.”
“Thank you for that clarification. Makes me feel a whole lot better.”
Chapter 5
The test subject’s disappearance was not noticed until early morning when a lab assistant came to draw the subject’s blood. The bed was empty. At first, security was not alarmed. The subject managed to leave his room before and wandered around the facility, looking for a place to hide. The cleaning crew was already reprimanded for forgetting to lock the door.
There was no doubt that the subject would be found. Despite the abundance of labs, there were not many places to hide. The building was secure. CX-5, as they called the subject, could not escape.
By late morning, they finally called Robert Krill, the chief of security. He came from another PharGen location in a record time. Krill, a former police detective, was in his late forties but looked fit like a much younger man. He oozed authority and confidence. They gave him the bad news—they searched every corner, but CX-5 was nowhere to be found. They had to face the grim reality that the subject had left the building.
“If he left, he didn’t do it by himself,” Krill barked to his team. “Watch the surveillance tapes. Somebody must’ve taken him.”
The tapes were meticulously analyzed. The only thing that raised suspicions was a white Elantra parked by one of the back doors and a cleaning woman putting something inside. The car didn’t belong to any of the employees.
“That must be it,” Krill said after he watched the tape. “Find out who is the cleaning woman and check the plates of that car.”
The cleaning lady was Hispanic, but they all were. She kept her head down, wore large glasses, and part of her face was covered by a mask. They didn’t have enough to establish her identity.
Their contact at LAPD ran the plates, and it was another dead end. No Hyundai Elantra with those license plates was registered in the state of California. After a closer inspection, they figured out that the car was a rental. They contacted all rental places in greater Los Angeles, but nobody had an Elantra with matching plates.
“At least now we know we’re dealing with professionals,” Krill said more to himself than to his team and reached for a cell phone to alert the PharGen management. That unpleasant duty couldn’t be postponed anymore. People in charge had to be notified that CX-5 was gone.
They called an emergency management meeting. One of the staff members invited to participate was Lisa Van Berg, a PharGen rising star and a brilliant biochemist. Lisa was in charge of the CX-5 research. She coordinated and supervised the work of several teams, analyzing the subject’s unique properties.
Lisa graduated from UC Berkeley Master’s program with the highest honors, and her specialty was biochemistry and molecular biology. She was young, ambitious, and good-looking. Despite her demanding schedule, Lisa always found time to go to the gym. She had short, blond hair, a narrow, aristocratic face, and hazel eyes. She also knew how to dress. When she walked down the PharGen hallways, Liza could feel jealous stares of the females and a hungry gaze of the guys.
Lisa was the person who spent the most time with the subject, and at some point, she had to admit to herself that she felt sorry for him. They were warned not to see the subject as a human being, but it was impossible. Lisa couldn’t completely dehumanize the boy, especially since she was not only a scientist but also a mother. Her daughter, Olivia, was a few years younger than the subject.
After learning that CX-5 disappeared, Lisa’s very first reaction was a relief. However, that moment was brief, and reason and logic soon extinguished her initial feelings. The subject was an illegal immigrant, and they were unable to establish where he came from. Nobody knew that PharGen had him, and it was unlikely that a relative or a friend would come to his rescue. He was probably kidnapped by one of PharGen’s powerful competitors. All PharGen employees were required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but everyone had a price, and it was safe to assume that somebody talked. And if that was the case, the subject’s circumstances would not improve. At least at PharGen, Lisa could keep him alive.
The meeting with management was somber, although all in attendance were true professionals who would not allow emotions to interfere with their performance. They agreed that the subject was probably taken by the competition. PharGen couldn’t alert the authorities and claim proprietary ownership of CX-5 because the subject was a human being. If—God forbids—information about the experiments leaked to the press, the public outcry could destroy PharGen’s reputation, which was something their stockholders wouldn’t like. It was decided that PharGen had to immediately launch an aggressive search. However, it had to be discreet. They were on their own.
After the meeting ended, Lisa was asked to stay. Eric Hunter, the manager of PharGen’s powerful Research and Development Department, wanted to talk to her alone. Or almost alone because the only other person in Hunter’s spacious office was Krill, the chief of security. Lisa knew him, but they never socialized outside of work. While admitting that she was a little bit of an elitist, Lisa considered security personnel to be beneath the ranks of the researchers.
“I want you to join the search,” Hunter went straight to the point addressing Lisa after Krill closed the door. “You know that we think highly of you. You’re intelligent, level-headed, and capable of making quick decisions. You’re not afraid to take risks. Plus, you know the subject better than anyone. What do you think?
“Of course. I won’t disappoint you, Mr. Hunter,” Lisa said.
“I know you won’t. You have my full confidence. If your mission is successful, we can discuss your promotion to senior researcher. First, however, you have to be fully aware of the demands tied to this assignment.”
Lisa nodded and opened her mouth, but before she was able to say anything, Hunter continued.
“If you wanted to tell me that you know what’s involved, trust me, you don’t. We were attacked by our competitors before. We fight back; we fight hard, and we always win. We don’t take prisoners. Industrial espionage is ugly, and sometimes people get hurt or even die. I want you to be prepared. We need you available 24/7 and ready to travel on short notice, even if it’s to Antarctica. We don’t know where they hid the subject. Please, make appropriate arrangements with your family. You’ll be working hand-in-hand with Mr. Krill. He’ll lead a small team of security experts. He’ll listen to your advice, but he doesn’t have to take your orders. And don’t forget that there are potentially billions of dollars at stake, not to mention important scientific data.”
The meeting was over, and Lisa was told to await further instruction.
***
For the first time since she could remember, Lisa enjoyed her long drive home in a stop-and-go LA traffic. It gave her a chance to clear her head and think about the events of the day.
“Are you sure this is something you want to do?” Lisa’s husband, Mike, asked in the evening after she told him what had happened.
PharGen employees were not supposed to share sensitive information about their work, even with family members. But Lisa trusted her husband, discussed everything with him, and valued his advice. The mere existence of a strange child with no name, CX-5, was considered a top-secret, but Mike knew everything. Lisa had no doubt that he’d be discreet. Mike was also telling Lisa about his job. However, being an electrical engineer for Los Angeles County was hardly as exciting as working for a pharmaceutical giant. Their combined salaries allowed them a comfortable lifestyle, but not everything related to their jobs was to their liking.
“It’s not like I have a choice,” Lisa shrugged.
“You always have a choice. You can say No. I don’t think they’d fire you. You know that I hate this business of experimenting on a little boy. I’ve hated it since the day you first told me about the kid. It’s unethical and immoral. Think about our child.”
“I AM thinking about our child!” Lisa raised her voice, irritated. “I think about her all the time! That’s what’s giving me the strength to continue, even if it means experimenting on a human subject. How do you know that CX-5 doesn’t hold a secret that would help Olivia?”
A couple of years ago, their five-year-old daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Since that moment, Lisa’s new lifetime goal and a promise she made to herself was to find a cure that would help Olivia.
Chapter 6
When Jenny crossed California’s state line into Nevada, she breathed easier. By no means were they out of danger, but for some irrational reason, leaving California behind made her feel safe. It was still early—they left the house long before sunrise—and the boy was asleep on the back seat.
Jenny took an exit to a gas station and pulled over to a nearby Walmart. She had an idea that could help establish the boy’s identity.
“Come on, Peter Pan. We’re going shopping.” She woke up the kid and gestured to follow her inside and towards the food section. “Tell me what you want.” Jenny picked a product, showed it to the boy, and put it inside the cart. She picked another one, pointed to the boy, frowned, and put it back on the shelf. The boy seemed to understand her intentions.
