Chapter Two


Darien entered the Keep, staring at his tattoo. It had been three days since his little incident in the Chinese restaurant and the snake hadn't changed. In fact, he was supposed to be getting a shot this morning... but if the monitor was right...

Claire looked up from her desk and smiled. "Morning, Darien. I have just one thing to do and we'll get right to your shot..."

Darien dropped into the chair. "I don't think I need it, Keepy."

"Come on, Darien. It's been five days since your last shot. You need a refill."

He shook his head. "I don't think I do. Check it out." He pulled down his watch and held his arm up.

"That's impossible. This is where it was two days ago."

"Three days, actually. It stopped."

"What do you mean it stopped? It can't stop. It's impossible to stop."

"It stopped. What can I say?"

Claire chewed her lower lip. "I have to run some tests."

---

AJ sat on the closed toilet lid in the bathroom of the casino. His foot nervously shook against the tile. It had been three days. Only three days...

Three days ago, they had been rich. $200,782 profit. Why, WHY hadn't they cut their losses and headed home? Why couldn't they have been happy with what they had?

72 measly hours had passed. And now they were dead broke. All of the two hundred thou... all of their savings... he had even lost the station wagon. If he had the money for a bullet he would have put it in his skull.

Finally he stood, deciding he would have to face real life eventually. He exited the stall and turned on the faucet at the sink, running his hands underneath the warm water.

The door to the bathroom opened and a tall, light-skinned black man entered. His hair was long and light brown, standing up on it's end like he'd just received a shock. His eyes were ice-water blue, standing out against the darkened hue of his skin. He was wearing a dark jacket over a darker T-shirt. He had an ID tag on the collar, but AJ couldn't make it out. He walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. He turned and glanced at AJ. "How's it goin', man?"

AJ swallowed and nodded. "Good." He splashed a handful of water on his face, then tried to look at the man's ID again.

The man saw it and saved him the trouble. "Warrick Brown. I'm a criminalist." He ran a handful of water over his own face. He had been called on a case involving a gambler found shot to death in a glass elevator.

He had determined it to be a mob killing based on the wounds (five gunshots to the torso, all around the ten-ring) as well as the single gunshot wound right between the eyes. The forehead wound was the worst, for the hit man had stuck a quarter inside of it as a message. The message was "Call someone who cares." Warrick had discovered that the man owed money to the mob. A lot of money. It was a problem Warrick was familiar with; he'd fought - and was still fighting - a gambling problem of his own.

AJ sighed and looked in the mirror. "How does it get this bad? Why does gambling do this to you?"

Warrick smiled humorlessly. "I don't know, man. If I had an answer, I'd be on the talk show circuits making millions."

AJ sighed, "Two hundred thousand... in my hands and I let it go." He shook his head and left the bathroom.

---

The book hovered in mid-air, about chest high. As the Keeper and Hobbes watched through the glass partition, the book paced from one end of the room to the other, then turned. Every once in a while, a page turned. Hobbes frowned. "What's he readin'?"

Claire looked at the cover. "Pop Goes The Weasel. James Patterson."

"Hmm. Good author." He paused, then asked, "How long's it been?"

"Well... twenty-eight minutes in the padded room, plus the five days since his last shot. If the madness is in his system, he'll be a raving madman in a few minutes."

"How could he get over it? I mean, just like that?"

"I'm not sure. We haven't had any problems with him since Arnaud administered the Stage five counteragent. Perhaps it had a..."

The door opened, admitting Eberts. "The Official would like to know the progress of the experiment."

The door opened again and the Official entered. "I want to know the progress of the experiment."

Claire sighed. "One more minute and we'll pass the half-hour mark."

Hobbes shook his head. "Seems kinda weird, boss, you know? I don't like this. I'm getting bad karma from this one."

The Official nodded but said nothing, watching the book as it paced. Claire finally hit the button of the stopwatch. "Darien has now been quicksilvered for thirty minutes, twenty seconds. Plus, the five days before this." She spoke into a microphone so Darien could hear her. "You can unquicksilver now."

Darien flaked and appeared in the room, marking his place in the book and tossing it onto the bed. He held his arms out in an "I-told-you-so" gesture. He walked up to the mirror and opened his eyes as wide as possible, putting his face close to the mirror. "See any red?"

Claire checked her instruments. "Quicksilver is still in his system. It's there it's just not... affecting him in any way. I don't understand it."

Hobbes asked, "What about the, uh... Arnaud thing?"

Claire sighed. "The last time Darien went quicksilver mad, he reached all the way to Level 5 madness. Arnaud administered a new kind of counteragent which was more potent than ours. I'm thinking it may have extended the time frame."

The Official grimaced. "Or eliminated it."

Hobbes looked at his boss. "I don't like that look, chief. This is a good thing... right?"

"No, Hobbes... without the madness, he has no reason for counteragent. And we just lost our ace in the hole. We'll have to find another way to keep him from running."

With that, the fat man and Eberts turned and walked from the room. Claire and Hobbes looked at each other, then looked at Darien through the glass. Darien, oblivious as to what had just happened, was once again reading his Patterson novel.

---

AJ turned off the lights in the bathroom, sighing deeply. Shannon was curled in a ball on her side of the bed, gently sobbing. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his mind reeling. He gently placed a hand on Shannon's shoulder. "Shh... it'll be all right, hon..."

She continued to quietly sob.

AJ groaned and rubbed his neck. His headache from a few days ago had returned with a vengeance. In the bathroom, he had noticed his eyes were bloodshot. 'Great,' he thought. 'Now I'm getting sick when we're broke.'

Shannon coughed, then wiped away a tear. AJ turned sideway so that he could see her. "Shannon, stop crying. Please?"

She ignored him.

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Shannon. Did you hear me? I said to stop. I told you to shut up." He grit his teeth as she continued to cry. "Shannon... Shut. UP!" He flipped her onto her back so that he could see her face. He punched her - hard - causing her head to flop to the side. Her crying ceased, only to return in a moment with a vengeance.

"You... you hit me!"

AJ pulled her across the bed and straddled her, pinning her against the mattress. He was grinding his teeth together now. "I told you to SHUT UP! STOP CRYING!" He punched her in the face twice, then began to pepper her torso with blows. She was screaming at him between sobs, asking him to stop. "You didn't stop when I said to! Why should I listen to YOU!"

She noticed his eyes. They were completely red.

"SHUT UP!" He punched her in the stomach, knocking the air out of her. He reached onto the night stand and brought his hand back with an alarm clock he had brought from home. Taking it with both hands, he raised it above his head. "SHUT..." he brought it down with the force of a PCP junkie. "...UP!!!"

The alarm clock shattered Shannon Cross's skull, but AJ was far from finished....

---

AJ stepped into the casino bathroom nearly two hours later, his adrenaline racing and his brow covered with a thick sheen of sweat. He walked to the mirror, gazing at the reflection her saw there. His face had become that of a madman; sweaty, red and bug-eyed. The eyes scared him most of all. Bloodshot, bugged out... the eyes of a psychopathic killer.

His gaze lowered to his blood-soaked pajamas. He stepped back, examining his hands and pants. Had he walked through the casino like this? Had people seen him? His heart began to race at the thought of being found out. They would know what he had become and they would stop him. Most definitely they would stop him.

A toilet flushed and he turned. One of the stall doors opened and a man stepped out, buckling his belt. He looked up in time to see the shape of AJ Cross flying towards him, his face contorted in a primal yell.

---

Darien entered the Keep. "What's up, Doctor Keepy?"

Without looking up, she said, "We need to give you a phsyical."

"Again? I just had one..."

"Precisely. That was before the Stage 5 counteragent was administered."

Darien sat in his chair. "You think this has something to do with the stuff Arnaud injected me with?"

"Possibly."

Darien sighed and pulled off his shirt. "Okay... poke and prod your heart out."

Claire cleared her throat. "A complete, physical, Darien."

"What do you... oh..."

"Yeah."

As Claire went to lock the door to the Keep, she could have sworn she saw Darien blush.

---

Warrick Brown snapped off another photo and lowered the camera. "How many people d'ya think were involved?"

His question was directed to Sara Sidle, the petite brunette standing on the opposite side of the room. She was kneeling next to the closet, examining a piece of electronic that may have been a murder weapon. She stood and said, "Judging from the front desk, there were two people registered here. This woman and her husband."

"So where's the hubby," Warrick asked, retorically.

Sara smirked. "Answer that, we have a suspect."

Warrick sighed and snapped a picture of the corpse. It was a brutal killing. The woman's head had been bashed completely in; all that was left was a grotesque stain on the pillow. Warrick stood next to the bed and looked down at the body. "She was stabbed... I count five times."

"With what? Have we seen anything the killer could've used?"

Warrick glanced around the room. "That." He pointed. On the wall, Sara saw the round frame where a mirror had once been. One shard still remained in the frame. Warrick looked at the floor. "Shards imbedded in the carpet. Guy broke the mirror and stabbed this woman with the pieces."

"What makes you think it was a guy?"

"Hunch."

"Care to make a wager? You have fifty-fifty odds."

Warrick ignored her. The gambling jokes were getting old; he had HAD a problem with gambling. Had being the operative word in this situation. The bathroom opened and a dark-haired man exited, holding a cotton swab. The tip was bright red. "Found blood in the bathtub drain."

Sara took the swab and said, "Thanks, Nick..."

Nick Stokes had only recently been promoted to the rank of CS3, but he was quickly earning his keep. He looked at the body, then said, "I talked to the guy at the front desk and a couple of pit bosses. Want to hear my theory?"

Warrick sighed. "Go ahead." Nick and his theories....

"Okay, according to the casino, this guy and his wife were rolling in it four days ago. Seems the husband went on a winning streak through the casino and ended up winning over two hundred thou."

Warrick let loose a low whistle.

"Exactly. Last night... they blow it all when the wife decides she'll try her hand at the casinos. She tries blackjack, roulette, slots... everything you can think of and looses every time. Pretty soon, she goes through their entire savings in one night."

Sara's eyes widened. "That's impossible."

Warrick shook his head slowly. "Believe me, Sara. Unless you've sat down at that table and felt what the rush does to you... you don't know what a gambling binge is like."

Nick nodded. "Exactly. This lady didn't know how much they were down until she reached into the coffer to find nothing but sand. The hubby tried to help her, win back some cash... made a bad move. He put the station wagon up in a high-stakes poker game."

Warrick closed his eyes. "Don't tell me, do NOT tell me..."

"Everything. These people were stranded here." Nick looked at the blue corpse on the bed. "You need to hear the rest of my theory?"

He didn't have to. Warrick said, "Husband blamed his wife for their situation, lost control, brained her with something."

Sara held up a digital clock face. "Alarm. Probably brought from home."

Warrick shrugged. "Picks up the alarm clock and takes his rage out on her skull."

Sara shook her head. "I don't know. I mean, the rage would account for it... but after he got all that aggression out by pounding her head into mulch, why did he break the mirror, grab a shard and begin stabbing her? The adrenaline must've slowed by that time. He had to have realized what he was doing."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he didn't lose control in the first place. Maybe it was premeditated."

Warrick's face contorted in confusion. "A man sits up in bed, watching his wife sleep, and plans to beat her to death? What kind of person does that?"

Nick shrugged and said, bluntly, "A sociopath."

Warrick groaned. "Aw, man. I'm sick of sociopaths... why can't we get a regular accidental shooting?"

Sara smirked. "Come on... Those aren't any fun."

Warrick chuckled. "The only thing YOU find fun are bones."

Sara winked. "You got that right."

Warrick almost blushed.