NEXUS POINTS : Chapter 31-32

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Chapter 31

Yong Liu felt calm and lucid. The sleep aid was finally working, and he’d caught up on some much needed rest. The physician had wanted to keep him under observation following his panic attack, and so he had spent the last two days at the infirmary. 

The door to his room clicked open presently. Through half-open eyes, Yong saw a nurse standing outside with a small tray in her hand. She looked familiar. Her short, light brown hair had a shimmer in it that seemed to make her glow under the ceiling light. 

The nurse lingered at the door for the next few moments, then entered the room and walked towards Yong’s bed. She looked at the chart on the holo display at the end of his bed, then gave him an injection in his IV. She moved about the room, tidying things up, occasionally checking her watch. Then she was gone.

Yong closed his eyes, slowly drifting back to sleep. He began to feel restless for some reason, and his pulse quickened. He could hear his heart thumping loudly in his chest.

Yong broke into a cold sweat. His eyes shot open as he tried to catch his breath. He was terrified by what he saw in front of him. 

Annie was bleeding out of her eyes, nose, and ears. When she opened her mouth, blood began to spill out of her. Soon it was pouring... 

“Why can’t you help our daughter?” Yong turned to see his wife Lisa standing to his right, bleeding out of her eye sockets. The blisters on her face had broken open. Pus tainted with blood oozed out of them. 

Yong screamed at the top of his lungs. He jumped out of his bed, frantically pulling the IV off his wrist. When he looked up, Lisa was standing in front of him. “Go away! Please go away!” he yelled and begged. 

Yong turned around, only to see Annie right behind him. He screamed again, “Go away! Just go away!” 

Something in him snapped. Yong collapsed on the floor, leaning against the wall. He banged the side of his head against the concrete. 

This isn’t real. If I bang my head hard enough, they’ll go away, he told himself. 

The pain and the wobbling sensation in his head felt good to him. So he turned towards the wall and banged his head harder. 

The wall cracked. Shards of concrete dug into his forehead. He could taste his own blood. There was a strange ringing in his ears. Soon after, he could no longer feel his body other than that wobbly, numbing sensation in his head. 

A voice called to him, “Everything is going to be all right. It’s time for us to leave now.” 

Yong looked up. A swirling white light appeared overhead. He could see the faces of his wife and daughter. They smiled at him, looking beautiful and healthy. In that instant he let go, and his heart was filled with peace.

Chapter 32

Beck Hollen walked into the medical examiner’s office to find Dan Malick going over Yong Liu’s autopsy results with Dr. Singh, the lead medical examiner at SSA. 

Beck examined the report on the one-meter-square hologram above Dr. Singh’s workstation. There were reports, surveillance footage and photos of the treatment room where Yong Liu had committed suicide earlier this morning.

“Do we have the official cause of death?” Beck asked.

“Blunt force trauma to the head. It’s pretty straightforward.” Singh waved his index finger to enlarge a report on the holo display.

Beck looked at the images in front of him, recalling the gruesome scene he’d seen this morning. Liu had apparently rammed his head into the wall repeatedly until his brain turned into scrambled eggs. 

He remembered the levelheaded, intelligent man he’d first arrested. Men like that wouldn’t kill themselves this way. Something had happened to Liu.

“Can you pull up the footage around the time of his death?” Beck asked.

“There was a malfunction with the equipment. We lost the footage and risk assessment from the AI right before Liu killed himself,” Malick said.

Beck’s eyes widened. “Right before he killed himself?”

Malick shook his head. “I know. Something’s not right.”

“Can the AI run a simulation of Yong Liu’s death based on the evidence?” Beck asked.

“Yes.” Dr. Singh pointed at an evidence file. The AI pulled the file to the middle of the screen, then enlarged it. “Run simulation,” he said. 

“Rendering.” The AI began to create a video simulation of Yong Liu’s death based on the physical evidence at the scene as well as the autopsy report. 

The simulation showed Yong Liu being in a highly agitated and irrational state as he slammed his head repeatedly into the wall until he lost consciousness.

“Is there any chance we can recover some of the original surveillance footage?”

“I’ll ask the tech department to take a look at it, but don’t get your hopes up. The AI chip is pretty fried.”

Beck frowned. That was convenient. “What about the toxicology report?”

Singh moved the images on the holo display around. “I couldn’t find any drugs in his system that would suggest foul play, but there is something...” He paused. “Look at this. His adrenaline level was extremely high at the time of death. At this level, I’m surprised his heart didn’t fail. It almost looks like...”

“What?” Malick asked.

“It looks like he was having an extreme fear response at the time of his death. In other words, something scared him into killing himself.”

Beck suddenly remembered what Kora Amelli had told him about her aunt and her brain condition. Could Yong Liu have had a psychotic episode that prompted his suicide? If so, how did the psychosis come about? There was only one way to find out.

*

Beck was not a big fan of hospitals. The only time he stepped foot in one was after something had gone terribly wrong. Best case scenario, he was there to interview a surviving victim. Worst case scenario, he was there to help someone identify a loved one’s body. 

He was not looking forward to telling Amelli about Yong Liu’s death. But under the circumstances, a video call just didn’t seem the right thing to do. Plus, he needed Amelli’s help to examine Yong Liu’s brain tissue, which was en route from the medical examiner’s office to Amelli’s lab.

Beck made his way to the microbiology lab on the 56th floor. He heard a low bark and almost tripped over something walking in the door. Beck looked down to see a robotic dog in the doorway.

“Spot! Don’t stand in the doorway,” Amelli commanded. 

Beck watched as the small canine trotted to the corner of the room. “Dr. Amelli, I didn’t take you as a dog person.” 

“Come in, Mr. Hollen. Well, technically the dog isn’t mine.” Amelli got up from behind a lab bench. “And...call me Kora.”

“Tell you what, I’ll call you Kora if you call me Beck.”

Kora smiled. Two dimples appeared on her cheeks. Her lab coat was unbuttoned, showing her blue jeans and white sweater underneath. Her hair was tied into her usual low ponytail. 

This was the first time Beck had gotten to see her smile. She seemed to be in a good mood. He hated that he was about to change that.

“I was going to call you later today,” Kora said.

Surprised, Beck asked, “What about?”

“It’s a long story. You first.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news...”

The smile disappeared from Kora’s face. She crossed her arms in front of her chest nervously. “Did… did something happen?”

Beck paused for a moment. What the hell! I might as well just tell her… “Dr. Liu committed suicide earlier this morning. I’m sorry.”

Kora’s face changed. Her eyes widened in shock. She sank into her chair. “How... how did it happen?”

“He…banged his head repeatedly into a wall.” 

Kora covered her face with her hands. Her whole body began to shake. “No! That’s not possible! That’s not possible...”

Beck put a hand on her shoulder tentatively. “I’m very sorry.”

“How did this happen? You knew he was unstable! Don’t you have surveillance in his room?” Kora’s voice was full of anger.

“There was a problem with the surveillance equipment. By the time we got there it was too late,” Beck said calmly. 

“What?” Kora asked incredulously. Beck could tell the wheels in her head were turning. “Are you sure it was suicide?”

“We know he killed himself. We just don’t know why. That’s why I’m here. We need your help. We…took the liberty of transferring his brain tissue here to your lab. It should be here any minute now.”

Kora wiped the tears off her face. She looked up at Beck. “Yong… he thought he was being drugged.”

“Our medical examiner couldn’t find anything suspicious in his system. Did he tell you what he might have been drugged with?” 

“No, but if he’s been dosed with synthetic DNA, you wouldn’t be able to detect it using the usual tox screen. I... I might be able to find out. You said Yong’s brain is... is on its way...” Kora’s voice choked. She broke into tears.

Beck reached over and hugged Kora gently. She felt like a small, hurt animal in his arms.

Kora gradually calmed down. She pulled away from Beck, seemingly embarrassed. “I’m sorry...”

“It’s all right. I know you two were close. I came here to tell you what happened before Dr. Liu’s brain tissue gets here.”

“Thank you... I’ll start running tests on it right away and let you know if I find anything.” 

“I know this may not be the best time, but you said you wanted to talk to me about something.”

“Yes...” Kora started to tell Beck about the sample group of patients at SCH infected with a synthetic DNA cascade known as LYN120. His blood chilled at the thought that a large portion of the population could have a brain condition that was causing them to slowly lose their mind.

“I suspect Yong had been infected with the same cascade. The question is what caused it to manifest physical symptoms all of a sudden,” Kora said. “Also, the cascade was introduced by someone on purpose. The people who did this must have had access to the FS Project files.”

Beck listened closely to Kora’s speculation that NID Biotech and Derin Serpius were somehow involved in everything that had happened. He came to the conclusion that she might be right, that Liu was indeed set up. 

Beck was angry at the people who had deceived him, but he was even more angry at himself. An innocent man had died today, and he was partly responsible. 

“I want you to know I believe everything you just said,” he said when Kora had finished.

“There’s...something else.” Kora hesitated. “I have reason to believe there’s some kind of plot against Assembly Woman Divya Verma and Majority Leader Danny Wilcox.” 

“Where did you get that information?”

“I...” Kora bit her lower lip. “I can’t say.”

Beck raised his eyebrows. 

Kora pleaded with her eyes. “I would tell you if I could, but I can’t.”

“I see. Can you tell me more about this...plot?”

Kora fell silent. 

“Are you afraid for your own safety? If that’s the case, I can arrange for your protection,” Beck tried to reassure her. After Yong Liu’s death, he was beginning to think there was a lot more to this case than met the eye.

“No, I’m not afraid for my safety. It’s just that —” Kora's voice trailed off. She seemed to come to a decision. “I know this sounds preposterous… but I think someone is planning to kill Danny Wilcox in a State Assembly session.”

- End of Chapter 32 -

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