muscles in the confines of the vehicle.
A truck? Milstone thought, like a refrigerated truck or something like that?
His thoughts were interrupted by a cell phone ringing and the guy hitting the screen with his thumb before the first ring ended.
“Tanaka,” he said abruptly, “yeah … yes … ETA …”—he raised his wrist to look at his watch—“approx. five-zero minutes … okay,” he said and killed the call to slip the cell back into his pants pocket.
“Get comfortable, Doc,” he said as he produced a folding knife, “we’re on the road for a while longer yet.”
Milstone’s eyes grew wide in fear at the sight of the blade which pointed toward his face and rested there.
“Now, I’m willing to take your word,” Tanaka said coolly, “that you’ll behave and won’t try anything stupid. If you do, I’ll put you back under again and waking up will feel about ten times worse. Trust me.”
Milstone watched the tip of the blade as it bounced in front of his eyes with the motion of the road. The smoothness, the dull scream of tires on the tarmac surface, made him automatically think of the freeway. He focused, trying hard to make the world stop spinning in nauseating pain. Looking the man in the face, he nodded slowly. The knife tip moved in a flash as his hands were grabbed roughly. The pressure on his wrists abated, then he felt the same happen to his ankles. Rubbing his hands clumsily together automatically, the man grabbed his jacket by the shoulders and hauled him upright to sit nestled in the corner.
The truck bumped along, each second bringing another hazy level of consciousness back to the doctor, as though he were underwater and nearing the surface with every breath. A distant horn sounded, or at least it sounded distant from inside the artificially lit, windowless interior. Glancing sluggishly around, Milstone looked up at Tanaka and croaked a question.
“Chiller truck?” he managed, his voice thick and syllabic as though he were drunk.
Tanaka nodded. “Keeps the noise down in case you woke up before we’d left the city,” he said in brutal simplicity.
This guy’s done this before, Milstone told himself. The thought offered no reassurance.
He opened his mouth to speak again but found the same numb sensation in his tongue. He coughed but the cough got away from him to run into a series of hacking noises which threatened at each one to make him throw up. Opening his eyes when he had finished, he saw Tanaka was offering him an open bottle of water which he took and drank from messily. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he composed himself and tried to ignore the pain in his head and guts.
“What …” he said before pausing to cough once more, “what did you drug me with?”
“Roofies, Doc, roofies,” Tanaka said with a small smile. He saw Milstone’s look of confusion and explained, “you can get them anywhere from dealers, even easier in the city, and proper tranquilizers need a prescription which leaves a paper trail and needs explaining if you’re caught with them.”
They gave me … Rohypnol? Milstone thought angrily. Hypnotic benzos are fucking dangerous if not administered carefully.
It was true. The unregulated administration of a benzodiazepine was abhorrent to him as a medical practitioner, and the type they had used was even more repulsive to him because of what it was more commonly associated with. Unable, or unwilling to give the facts any response, Milstone leaned back further to try and relax. Tanaka just smiled at him; it was a wolfish smile of arrogant dominance which stirred the kidnapped doctor into a response.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, I think you know that, Doc,” Tanaka responded.
“Because I think it’s immoral to keep that kind of information from everyone? Because I don’t want to be a part of it and leave my family behind? Because the idea of undergoing a highly dangerous, untested procedure isn’t all that appealing to me?” His voice rose as he spoke in anger. “No. Thank you, but no. I just wanted to be left alone and you people—”
“You know that wasn’t an option, Doc,” Tanaka interrupted quietly, “we couldn’t have you running your mouth to everyone, not with six years left. If it was six months it wouldn’t matter a damn,” he finished.
“Why not just kill me then?” Milstone asked displaying a resolve he didn’t truly believe himself. Of course, he was afraid of death, but now he learned that there were things