Page 77 of Forged in Deception

Once again, she found herself looking to Axel for comfort, only to find him sitting with his back pressed to Cora’s, his eyes pressed shut. Cora was shouting something incomprehensible at the hut’s wall. A few feet away, Lily was rubbing a weeping Paul’s back. What a disaster.

Bajwa, too, noticed the deteriorating situation, and decided to change tack.

“I can’t leave now,” he begged. “This is an active medical trial. I have four participants currently under the influence of a powerful psychedelic. They could hurt themselves. Please.”

The dark-skinned officer nodded to the huge man by the door, who called the two K9s away from the cooler of empty DX8 vials that they were currently investigating.

“We already spoke to another scientist at Senera,” the officer in charge explained, turning back to a defeated-looking Bajwa. “Unless you have immediate proof of your serious accusations about Miss McKenna, I have been assured that she is perfectly capable of monitoring the group on her own for the rest of the night. Am I correct?”

Karlin couldn’t decide if she had gotten extremely lucky or extremely unlucky.

Senera’s offices would be even more empty by now. If the cops had only spoken to the young scientist she and Axel had run into, he would have had no idea that Bajwa wasn’t even part of the company at the time of Amira’s death.

“Yes, sir,” Karlin said quickly, deciding to roll with the situation for now. “Once you guys clear out, I should be able to calm everyone down.”

The officer nodded, and with the help of the other men, began shoving Bajwa in the direction of the door.

“I’m cooperating! I’m cooperating! Get your hands off of me, you beasts! Don’t you know who I am?” Bajwa shouted, nearly stumbling as they finally maneuvered him out of the door and into the night.

For several long seconds, Karlin stood where she was, staring after them as Bajwa continued to ramble.

Though she knew that she’d had no other choice but to let them go, every instinct was screaming at her to follow them and to tell the truth.

The whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

She rubbed at her temples. Now that she thought about it, that one was definitely for the courtroom, not talking to the cops.

Not that it mattered now.

The truth was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

KARLIN

To Karlin’s relief, the other patients did calm down, though she struggled to get her own heart to stop racing.

She spent the next little while checking vitals, monitoring each patient individually, and trying to talk to those who could do so, which at the moment seemed to be only Paul, and presumably Axel, though he was acting like he couldn’t even hear her.

As the minutes ticked past, she found herself actually missing Bajwa. At this moment, despite everything, she wished that she could share his rock-solid faith in DX8–even if just to get through the night and figure out what on earth was going on.

Once again, her anger at Senera flared. Trip killers should have been synthesized specifically for use with DX8. If the company had funded this basic precaution, she would have been able to get everyone sober within an hour or so. Now, she was trapped here until morning, left with no choice but to hope that no medical complications or even bad trip experiences would arise.

No, that wasn’t strictly true.

She could also pray that God would protect her patients, and she took a moment to do so as she waited for the blood pressure cuff to inflate on Paul’s upper arm.

The more that the idea of faith had intruded into her life, the more her life’s work felt like a sham. Even if DX8 was safe, or could somehow be tested ethically–neither of which she could agree with any more–could she ever be okay with working with psychedelics again?

Could she ever be okay with helping other people to leave their rational minds behind?

She shook her head, attempting to clear her thoughts as she slipped the cuff off of Paul’s bicep. His blood pressure was a little high, but not enough to be truly worrisome, considering what he’d just witnessed.

Her existential moral crisis would have to wait. Even though everyone was medically fine at the moment, she knew that the current situation was untenable. Senera may have thought she was capable of handling the rest of this trip by herself, but she knew the FDA would not agree.

She had to call in another scientist for backup. If there was any chance at all that she would be able to work in the medical research field again, she had to be able to say that in an emergency, she’d done the right thing and sought help.

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