Story code: ST-001911
Part 3: The Biomass
Tyler kept his foot pinned to the accelerator, weaving his heavy truck through the afternoon traffic. The cracked passenger mirror whistled a high-pitched, metallic scream against the wind.
“Where are you?” Tyler barked into the speakerphone. His spine felt like a bundle of exposed electrical wires, sparking with every pothole he hit.
“Unit 7, Westside Industrial Storage,” Dr. Vance’s voice crackled, frantic and breathless. “Get here now, Tyler. Do not go to your house. They have your address. They have everything.”
Tyler didn’t ask who “they” were. He took a hard right onto an access road, his heavy tires screeching against the asphalt. He navigated a labyrinth of chain-link fences and rusted corrugated metal buildings until he found the sprawling grid of orange roll-up doors.
He parked the truck behind a rusting dumpster, cutting the engine. He grabbed his heavy steel pipe wrench from the passenger floorboard and limped toward Unit 7. The roll-up door was half-open, propped up by a cinder block to let in the humid air.
Inside, the atmosphere was thick with stale dust and the smell of mildewed paper. Dr. Vance, still wearing his clinic scrubs, was frantically sweeping manila folders from a metal folding table into a canvas duffel bag. He looked up, his eyes wide and bloodshot behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“You shouldn’t have gone to the clinic,” Vance said, his hands shaking as he jammed a stack of medical imaging films into the bag. “I tried to call you sooner, but I had to ditch my primary phone. They tapped the network the second I voided the script.”
“You voided it?” Tyler asked, gripping the wrench tightly to ground himself against the mounting agony in his lower back. “The guy in the suit said *he* did it.”
“Carter,” Vance spat the name like a curse. “He forced me to execute the override, then tried to lock me in the server room. I got out through the fire escape.” Vance stopped packing and looked at Tyler, his face pale and slick with sweat. “Tyler, the pills aren’t painkillers.”
A sharp spasm ripped through Tyler’s lower lumbar, dropping him to one knee on the concrete floor. He gritted his teeth, leaning heavily on the wrench. “What did you put in my back, Doc?”
“Ten years ago, your spine was crushed. You would have been paralyzed for life,” Vance said, his voice dropping to a rapid, desperate whisper. “The scaffolding collapse… it was the perfect cover. I was contracted by Vanguard Bio. We didn’t use titanium rods, Tyler. We used an experimental synthetic bio-weave. The pills are a highly classified immunosuppressant. They keep your body from rejecting the graft.”
Tyler stared at him, the dull hum of the distant highway fading into a harsh ringing in his ears. “I’m a… I’m a test subject?”
“You were a success,” Vance pleaded, taking a step toward him. “But Vanguard is being acquired tomorrow. A multi-billion-dollar merger. They can’t have off-the-books human trials wandering around during due diligence. Carter is an aggressive asset liquidator. He’s here to scrub the trial. All of it.”
A long, unnerving shadow stretched across the concrete floor, slicing through the dusty light of the doorway.
“Not all of it,” a flat voice echoed. “Just the undocumented liabilities.”
Tyler spun around, forcing himself upright despite the blinding pain in his back.
Carter stood in the narrow opening between the cinder block and the half-raised metal door. He looked identical to how he had at the clinic, save for a neat white bandage above his right eyebrow where the brass door had struck him. He held the suppressed pistol at his side, his pale gray eyes fixed coldly on Vance.
“Step aside, Tyler,” Carter said. His voice was bored, lacking any trace of adrenaline. “You’re dead anyway. Without the medication, your immune system will liquefy that graft in seventy-two hours. But Dr. Vance comes with me.”
Tyler didn’t move. He planted his work boots on the concrete, blocking the narrow aisle between the stacks of cardboard boxes, shielding the doctor. “You’re not taking him anywhere.”
Carter sighed, a short, breathy sound of pure annoyance. “I don’t have time to shoot you and drag your two-hundred-pound carcass out of the doorway.”
Carter lunged forward. He moved with sudden, startling speed, reaching out with his free hand to grab Tyler by the collar of his heavy canvas work jacket, intending to violently pivot him out into the alleyway.
But Tyler was solid muscle, anchored by a decade of hauling heavy timber. He didn’t budge. As Carter gripped the jacket and shoved, his pristine charcoal sleeve ground heavily against Tyler’s chest. The canvas jacket was thickly caked in fresh concrete dust, dried drywall mud, and industrial grease from the morning’s job site.
A thick, white cloud of pulverized concrete exploded off Tyler’s coat, billowing directly into Carter’s face and settling deep into the weave of his bespoke suit.
Carter staggered backward, coughing violently. The cold, detached assassin instantly vanished. He looked down at his ruined sleeve, his eyes bulging in absolute horror. The front of his thousand-dollar jacket was smeared with a thick, chalky paste of sweat and drywall.
“Look at me!” Carter shrieked, his voice cracking into a high, reedy pitch. The suppressed pistol waved erratically in the air as he desperately tried to brush the stubborn concrete dust from his lapel, only smearing it deeper into the fine wool. “Do you know what this is? This is Super 180s wool! It’s ruined! You filthy, fucking animal!”
Tyler stared, bewildered, as the man’s terrifying facade completely collapsed.
“You’re nothing!” Carter screamed, his face flushing a violent, mottled purple as he scrubbed frantically at his chest. Saliva flew from his lips. “You’re unregistered biomass! You’re dirt! You dig holes and you sweat and you die when we tell you to! You’re just a disposable piece of trash we put a patent inside of, and you dare put your filthy, disgusting hands on me?”
Carter wasn’t looking at Vance anymore. He wasn’t checking his perimeter. He was staring at the drywall mud on his cuffs with genuine, unhinged revulsion, his breath coming in ragged, hyperventilating gasps.
The slick corporate executioner was entirely gone. In his place stood a fragile, elitist narcissist, consumed by the dirt on his clothes, leaving the barrel of his suppressed pistol pointed harmlessly at the concrete floor.