Page 91 of Dark Shaman: Love Found
Navuh leaned forward, studying the monitor more intently. Zhao hadn't moved from the position he'd seen him in earlier. But now, knowing the man was dead, the stillness took on a different quality. Not the slack looseness of sleep, but the rigid finality of death.
"Don't touch anything else," Navuh ordered. "I'm reviewing the security footage."
His fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up the laboratory's surveillance history. He scrolled back through the night in ten times the speed, watching Zhao's final hours in reverse. The scientist was lying down, drinking, working at his computer, drinking more, pacing, drinking again.
Navuh reversed the playback, watching it forward now at an even faster speed. Zhao had woken up around midnight and had gone to his computer and worked for about two hours, fingers flying across the keyboard with desperate energy while sipping on the vodka straight from the bottle.
At 2:06 a.m., Zhao had stopped typing. He'd stared at his screen for a long moment, then saved whatever he was working on. He'd stood, swayed slightly, and walked to his cot with the careful precision of the very drunk. He'd collapsed onto it fully-clothed, the vodka bottle still clutched in his hand.
At 4:15 a.m., Zhao had stirred. He'd sat up, looked around as if confused, then lifted the vodka bottle to his lips. But instead of drinking, he'd set it on the floor and lain back down.
He hadn't moved again.
"Heart attack?" Navuh mused aloud. "Or alcohol poisoning?"
It hadn't looked like suicide, but it was a possibility.
It was also a significant blow to his program. Hopefully, Zhao had maintained good notes of the compounds he'd used and the procedures he'd implemented so another scientist could take over for him.
The problem was finding one of Zhao's caliber and abducting him in time before the enhancement program went up in smoke. They needed constant upkeep and dose adjustments. How the hell was he going to keep them from losing their damn minds until he got someone to replace Zhao?
"Take the body to the clinic," he ordered. "I want the doctors to determine the cause of death, time of death, and any unusual substances in his system."
"Yes, my lord."
As the guards carried Zhao's body out, Navuh's attention turned to the scientist's computer. Whatever Zhao had been working on so desperately in his final hours might provide answers.
He accessed the laboratory's systems remotely, navigating to Zhao's files. Most were encrypted, but Navuh had backdooraccess to everything on the island. No one kept secrets from him. The encryption parted before his master codes like curtains before a king.
What he found made his blood run cold.
File after file of notes about the enhanced soldiers. Not the official reports Zhao had submitted for his review, but private observations, fears, and warnings. The enhanced soldiers were organizing themselves. They'd developed their own communication system. They were showing increasing resistance to authority and growing contempt for their inferior commanders and brothers.
And then, in a file dated just hours before his death, was Zhao's final warning.
They're going to rebel. Not tomorrow, not next week, but soon. I've seen it in their eyes, heard it in their coded messages. They think they're gods, and gods don't serve mortals or immortals. I've created monsters that will devour us all.
I've developed a neurotoxin that might stop them, but I'll never get the chance to deploy it. They know. Somehow, they know what I've been working on. One of them told me yesterday that I would be the first to die when the revolution came. He smiled when he said it.
I won't give them the satisfaction.
Navuh sat back, understanding flooding through him. Zhao hadn't died of natural causes or alcohol poisoning. He'd chosen his own death rather than face what his creations would do to him.
"Coward," Navuh spat, but his mind was already racing ahead.
The scientist had been many things, but he was rarely wrong about his work, and he believed that the enhanced ones were planning a rebellion—ninety-seven of them against his thousands of regular troops. The numbers were overwhelmingly in his favor, but numbers didn't tell the whole story.
He needed to act immediately.
"Hakum," he barked into the comm. "Order the immediate detention of all the enhanced soldiers. I don't want more than three of them in one location."
"My lord?"
"Now, Hakum. Send the order."
"Yes, my lord."
Navuh pulled up the deployment screens, watching his order being followed. The enhanced soldiers were concentrated in three main barracks, but they were integrated with regular units. It had seemed logical at the time to let them train with their inferior brothers and raise the overall combat effectiveness of his forces.
