Page 23 of Forged in Deception

“I understand why you feel that way,” Asher said, choosing his words carefully. “But I never want to hear you call yourself ‘slimy’ again. You want to take care of these patients, and that makes it clear you have a good heart. For the record, that was obvious to me from the beginning. Your courage is why I took the case.”

Karlin’s face went bright red, and for a moment, he thought she was going to interrupt him and argue with his compliments.

“This is about more than Paul, Lily, Cora, and Destiny, though,” he continued. “I need to get the evidence against Senera so that you can protect people for years to come.”

“I know. But I wish there were another way.”

“Me, too. Believe me, I’ve laid awake quite a few nights, contemplating how to handle this case without crossing any moral boundaries.”

Asher paused, turning over his thoughts in his mind. She wasn’t going to agree with what he said next, but he figured he owed it to her to be honest. “You should know that I have serious concerns about the ethics of taking psychedelics at all, letalone actively giving them to vulnerable patients. As a Christian, I don’t think that’s something I could participate in directly, so it’s fortunate I’m here as a fake patient rather than as a fake researcher.”

Karlin’s expression was stoic. “I can understand that. I’ve dedicated years of my career to this area of medicine, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect. And this whole situation has really brought the ethical concerns into focus.”

“I’m here because I know that you’ve run many successful trials in the past where no obvious patient harm has been observed,” Asher said carefully. “And while I may have remaining theological, moral, and ethical concerns about the so-called ‘safe’ use of psychedelics, what Senera is doing is clearly much worse. And if one more trial is what it takes to stop them, I’ve decided that I can accept that. I truly do not see another way. If we tried to go after Senera now, based on what we already have, we’d lose, and they’d continue hurting people. It’s as simple as that.”

“So, basically, I just need to suck it up?” Karlin asked, her voice sounding small. She shivered a little, pulling her arms around herself as she sank deeper into her chair.

“Basically,” Asher said, giving her a quick smile. “Like I said, chances are good that nothing will go wrong. Do the best job that you possibly can to keep everyone safe. I’m going to handle the rest. I promise you that, Karlin. I can do this. Everything is going to be okay.”

Asher felt his heart twisting in his chest as soon as the words escaped him. He had made the same promises to protect the people he cared about before, and he’d utterly failed to keep them.

He offered a silent prayer, begging God to help him keep his promise to Karlin.

He would not fail again. Not this time.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

KARLIN

Karlin bolted upright in bed, her brain taking a couple of seconds to catch up with her body.

It was still dark outside her staff cabin, and somewhere in the distance, she heard a strange sound carried on the wind. She couldn’t quite place what it was, but it had been different enough from the usual sounds of the desert to set her heart racing.

She reached over to her nightstand and glanced at her alarm clock, blinking away sleep. Already, the sound had faded away. Perhaps she had imagined it entirely, stuck somewhere halfway between dream and waking. But in any case, despite her exhaustion from being up so late the night before, it was too late now to bother going back to bed.

As she took a shower and got dressed for the day ahead, she found her mind drifting to thoughts of Axel.

She cringed as she remembered the way she’d reacted when he had touched her shoulder. It was such an innocent, meaningless touch, and yet she had recoiled as if his fingertips had scalded her.

“Why was I such a jerk?” she muttered under her breath as she tossed a few items into her black leather tote, including the wrinkled photo of John.

She had never been the victim of anything that would provoke such a reaction, and yet, she’d always hated being touched. Something about it signaled a level of trust in others that she almost never felt. She was happy to give her brother a big hug when they saw each other, but that was about it.

Not that anyone else wanted to hug her anyway.

As she stepped through the door, she could see that the sun had just begun to rise, painting a slim line of pink along the eastern horizon. She shivered as she made her way in the direction of the on-site office and lab, her racing thoughts momentarily cast aside by the chilly breeze.

By the time she slid her keys into the lock and let herself into the lab, however, the nagging thoughts of her and Axel’s conversation had returned. Clearly, he was uncomfortable with DX8, and she wasn’t surprised. Her brother had developed the same attitude after becoming a Christian. She couldn’t entirely disagree with him, either.

Karlin had taken several different psychedelics in the past in order to aid in her research of DX8. She’d even spent a month in Peru on an extended ayahuasca retreat. And yet, she’d never liked the feeling that the drugs gave her.

Frankly, they scared her.

But unlike John and possibly Axel, she didn’t think that demons were involved. She understood the science of these compounds better than almost anyone else in the world, and it was clear to her that the effects of psychedelics were caused solely by the brain and within the brain.

People might have used the drugs throughout the ages for various religious purposes, even including terrible ones likeritual sex acts and human sacrifice, but at their core, they were a mere tool based on repeatable science.

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