Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [28]
Beside my laptop I kept a pad of paper, and in a drawer underneath the desk I store enough pens and pencils to last an innercity school for months, but it took me a couple of minutes to find a functional writing implement. Everything was broken or dried up, and I don’t own a pencil sharpener, which is ludicrous, I know. You’d think I could throw some of that old junk away, but perhaps by now you’ve realized that I’m a bit of a hoarder at heart.
So. I found a pen that didn’t tear up the paper with its spinster-dryness, and I made a little list:
1. Ian escaped from base; he must know where it is. Find out.
2. How did he escape?
3. What does he remember from the procedures?
That was all I could think of for the moment. I took the paper and working pen with me into the bedroom and left them on the nightstand while I washed my face and stripped for bed.
Finally I slipped in between the sheets and pulled my (sadly, not red silk) duvet up across my chest. I leaned over and turned on the electric blanket because I don’t care that I’m not technically so much alive anymore—that’s no excuse to be cold all the time. Then I turned on the tiny bedside lamp, put my pen in my mouth, and began to read between the black bars.
It was an eyelid-punishing task. Every time the content was about to get good, some asshole would black it out with a Sharpie and I’d spend a few ridiculous seconds squinting madly at the black boxes, trying to make them tell me something.
No such luck.
But this is the condensed version of what I was able to ascertain about Ian Stott’s mysterious capture and incarceration:
In the mid-nineties, the army instituted Project Bloodshot. At least four subjects (and maybe as many as seven) were acquired and relocated to a base that was so small and so secret that there was, in effect, no record of it at all. One of the subjects died within the first week; another one died some months later, both of unspecified causes. Of the remaining two subjects, one ceased to be mentioned in the documentation—but whether he (or she) had died or gone missing, the black lines refused to divulge. And as for the final subject—Ian, I assumed—he broke out of the facility and disappeared, doing some damage on the way out. After his flight, the documentation abruptly ended and there was a final note saying that the program had been scrapped by the higher-ups.
I picked up my pad of paper again and added more questioning notes:
4. Were the other subjects vampires?
5. What other experiments were being performed? If Ian only went blind but a couple of the subjects died, something else must’ve been going on, too.
6. What did Ian do to the compound when he left?
Inside the folder I only had one more stapled clump of papers to read, and even though the sun was fully up outside—gold and runny like a frying egg—I was still riding high from my first meal in ages so I kept on reading. This last batch of paperwork had fewer strokes of the obfuscating marker.
It was a letter from one blacked-out name to another, discussing Project Bloodshot as an expensive failure and a potential PR nightmare. This letter urged discretion. It suggested in no uncertain wording that the recipient of the missive should shut up about the project, already, and turn his (her?) attention to a different line of scientific inquiry, because Uncle Sam wasn’t going to pony up the bill for any more of this nonsense—especially not after what happened at Jordan Roe. Furthermore, the note’s author made abundantly clear that he (she?) expected all paperwork on the matter to be shipped to the facility at St. Paul.
Cal’s exquisitely bad handwriting coiled sharply in the margin. If I read it right, his addendum said, “Stored at Holtzer Point, St. Paul. Mr. Stott’s serial number: 63-6-44-895.”
“Okay,” I said out loud.
Tomorrow