NEUROMODULATION (CONTINUED)

PART II – DANGEROUS GAMES

SOMETIMES WHEN YOU´RE IN A DARK PLACE, YOU THINK YOU´VE BEEN BURIED; BUT ACTUALLY, YOU’VE BEEN PLANTED.

Tattersall had warned him that Mishimotta would pull the plug on the centre and Kado knew that would seriously jeopardise all his research into the virus. He needed the centre, it brought the people in off the streets and allowed screening for any infection, as well as testing drug combinations.

The bastards had hit him with a double whammy, the club and the centre. Why the fuck couldn't Henry pull a few strings? That was the question playing in his head. Henry financed the club, it was his loss as well as Kado's. There was nothing to do now though, what's done and all that.

“Mark!” Kado shouted. “Get your arse out here now. We're leaving.”

“I'm waiting for Steven. He's not ready.”

“Fuck you two. Get out here now or I'm leaving without you.”

Mark turned to his brother, “Forget that shit Steve, we gotta go.”

His voice betrayed the sense of uneasiness he had about the whole situation. They were opposites, a weird reality, twins you could hardly tell apart, but who had totally different characters.

“Just cool it a minute. I ain't leaving stuff behind.”

“This is your last fucking chance!” Kado's voice bellowed down the empty corridor.

Mark grabbed his brother's arm and yanked hard.

“Okay, okay, ease up. I got it.”

Steve threw one bag over his shoulder and carried the other as they hurried down the corridor to join Kado. He was already in the car and looked pretty pissed at being kept waiting. Mark jumped in, followed by Steve and the bags, which he virtually launched after Mark across the back seat. The door closed and the car elevated off the ground.

Kado was anxiously watching the garage door slowly open to give them an exit out of there.

“I ought to smack your fucking heads together,” he told them angrily, but not moving to look back.

“You’re both gonna pay for this delay... if we get outta here!”

Mark looked across the seat at Steve, who just smirked and raised his eye brows, as much as to say he couldn't care less because he knew exactly what Kado meant.

Suddenly, the street was there in front of them. The car lurched forward and veered out of the garage and around the corner into the side street. The speed and force was enough to throw the two boys back across the seat, the bags sliding with them. They held onto the seat as the car turned again sharply into the main street and sped off.

Kado was satisfied they'd made it before X-Corp or the police showed up. He span around and leaned forward to confront the boys. Despite the jolting departure Steven was still grinning, Mark looked much more serious. Kado reached out and pulled Steve towards him, taking hold of a large handful of the material of his sweat shirt.

“Take it easy!”

But before he could react or say anything more Kado's right palm swung through the space between them and landed with a loud smack on Steve's left cheek.

He didn't feel the pain immediately, but all at once it stung like hell. His right arm almost involuntarily went up to touch and protect his face, at the same time his head recoiled from being hit.

“Next time you pull a stunt like that I’ll beat the shit out of you. You got that arsehole?”

Steve wasn't looking at Kado. His head was now bowed down.

Kado grabbed hold of a chunk of hair and pulled his head backwards. Even in the dim light of the car interior he could see the mark on Steve's face.

“I asked you som'in?” Kado looked directly at him.

He raised his arm a second time, but Steve wasn't going to get hit again.

“Yes. I got it.”

Kado released him and sat back, relaxing.

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“I ought to tan your hide like your daddy would have done,” Kado told him, pretending seriousness, but he was now only playing with the boy.

He glanced over at Mark and took note of the expression of apprehension on the other boy's face. Satisfied he'd made his point and released the tension Steven had caused by delaying their departure, he let it drop.

“Sorry,” Steve murmured, still holding the side of his face.

He didn't know Kado was playing with him, all he knew was that what he had said was right. Their dad would have tanned his arse. So the wise move here was to apologise.

□□□□□

They didn't know it, but less than ten minutes after they left, X-Corp showed up at the club, followed by the police. Kado wasn't stupid though, he knew it was close, but everything was prepared. What they needed to do now was to follow Joel, Jack, and Grif to the house and then find Madison. Henry was playing a dangerous game with X-Corp, and whilst Kado felt that he could trust him, he wasn't happy about things.

The only real angle he had on Henry was the length of time he'd known him and his sexual desires. But that wasn't much, all in all Henry was a dark horse, a man of mystery, who played games for very high stakes. Kado couldn't do much now, as they say, he was in it up to his neck. He had to follow it through, but he was worried about the drugs. Not the virus, but the HNO4 they had administered to boys like Joel, and recently Griffin.

□□□□□

Howard and Emret didn't have much time to look around before the police would show up. The important thing was not to look for information on the link with the centre, the virus, and drug programme, but to get a trace on where they were going. Knowing that would be a huge clue about what they had planned.

Henry had said that they should look for Marek's computer, because he had reprogrammed the vehicles and that could give them the information they needed. Howard wasn't convinced, but if they came across it, well of course they'd take a look. As far as he was concerned any data from the computer would only give half the story. It might show he had bypassed the city limit constraint on the vehicles, but he doubted that anyone would hard code in a destination.

“There is a whole mountain of video files here,” Emret was keying through the screen display in front of him.

Howard came across and peered over his shoulder. “Take one at random.”

So he did. They watched a couple of minutes of what was no surprise at all to either of them. Two teenage boys were being led into a room by a man dressed in a mask, but otherwise completely naked. Well, that is except for some kind of cock ring that was easily visible, because you couldn’t help but be drawn towards his massive erection.

“Skip it,” Howard commanded, and the screen went blank until the next video came on.

This time they could see someone naked lying on top of another boy and quite obviously fucking him.

“Turn it off,” Howard said, somewhat exasperated. “You’re not going to find anything but sex tapes.”

“Maybe we could do better if we find the guy's room?”

“Okay, let’s split up and see what we can discover. But get back here in ten minutes.”

Howard thought this was a waste of time. Realistically they were never going to find anything, or if they did, well it can only have been left there for them to find. To throw them off the scent.

The place was dark and gloomy, corridors, stairs, and lots of doors. The only thing Howard discovered was a room full of sex toys and a two way mirror running floor to ceiling. He could only imagine what kind of voyeuristic pleasures went on there.

Apparently, Emret had done much better, because when they met up, he had a laptop under his arm.

“What you got there? Looks like something that belongs in a museum.”

“Precisely, it's just the kind of ancient tech that could get you in to reprogram a vehicle.”

“How do you know that?”

“An ill spent youth geeking about with ancient computer stuff.”

“Lets get going then. We'll take that with us. Who knows, we may just get lucky.”

□□□□□

Howard was telling Eve that it was just too much of a coincidence to be anything other than a plant.

“People don't just leave stuff like this lying around for someone to pick up. Not even ancient computers that belong in a museum, and not with usable information on.”

“But they were in a hurry to leave.”

“Look if you’re going to put any credence in that machine,” he gestured to the old laptop they had brought back from the club. “Well all it tells us is that two of the vehicles were programmed to leave the city limits. I should say reprogrammed, Marek bypassed the failsafe. But that isn't so difficult. They never designed much security into public vehicles.

Anyway, two cars could leave the city. We already know about Professor Madison’s house, so another vehicle going there doesn't provide any more information.

The third vehicle was programmed for Mount Columbus and the intercity freeway going West. That could be interesting, if I didn't think it was a wild goose chase.”

“Well,” Eve took a deep breath. She didn't want to ruffle his feathers, but she did want Howard to take the information seriously. In fact she wanted him to follow them out west to Mount Columbus. “Henry tells me that a scientific facility at Mount Columbus was used at one time as part of Project Weatherman. A sort of monitoring station.”

Howard still wasn't in any way convinced, it was all too easy.

“You trust what Henry Gibson says?” He threw the question at her. “We are talking about the same Henry?”

“Yes of course we are.” Eve was getting a little peeved at this point in the conversation, but she managed to control herself.

“The same Henry, who bought that club just to indulge his voyeuristic penchant for adolescent sex shows!”

“Let’s leave that aside shall we? You may not like the man, but in the twenty third century there is nothing unusual, unlawful, or in any other way odd, about that. People are generally free to have sex of any sort with anybody, and certainly Henry just liked to watch.”

“Your point then is what?” Howard posed the question, but he knew before she replied, that she wanted him to follow this up. What the hell, it's all the same to me, even if it wouldn't be what I would do.

“Just follow it through please Howard,” Eve smiled.

Not very long after that Howard and Emret were sitting in a car heading towards Mount Columbus. They were soon out of the city on the only freeway that went west, a sort of passage from coast to coast, not much frequented, except by government vehicles and very occasionally public cars whose occupants would be heading in the opposite direction, going east.