Chapter 93 - 94: The Person Who Should Have Died

Chapter 93: Chapter 94: The Person Who Should Have Died

Chapter 94: The Person Who Should Have Died

The apartment fell completely silent after Dr. Seth Brundle finished describing the look on Dr. Evans’s face. Even Lionel Cosgrove stopped lounging against the couch, while Carrie White quietly set aside the cleaning rag she had been holding. Axel Vance said nothing and simply waited, knowing Seth had not finished.

"The air conditioning in his office was turned ridiculously high," Seth continued, his expression growing darker as he remembered the scene. "I was actually cold when I walked in, but Evans was sweating through his shirt. Beads of sweat kept forming across his forehead and running down his temples no matter how often he wiped them away."

Lionel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe he was sick." Seth immediately shook his head and replied, "No. I’ve known Evans for five years, and he’s the kind of workaholic who ignores exhaustion until somebody practically forces him out of the lab."

Seth leaned forward, both hands wrapped around the beer bottle. "He can spend days obsessing over a single result without losing control, and I’ve never seen him visibly panic over anything. That’s why I noticed it."

He paused and tried to reconstruct the rest of the conversation in order. "At the time, I didn’t confront him because I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I just followed normal procedure and asked what assignment I had next, then brought up the funding request for my independent laboratory."

Axel listened quietly.

Seth’s telepod research had already been slowed repeatedly by limited funding and aging equipment. For someone as obsessive as Seth, getting independent laboratory resources approved was almost as important as the New Mexico data itself.

"That’s when things became even stranger," Seth said. "Evans waved me off and told me I’d worked hard enough, that I should forget about research for a while and take a real vacation. Then he said the funding could wait until I came back."

Lionel frowned. "That doesn’t sound particularly evil."

"It does if you know Evans."

Seth let out a humorless laugh. "The last time I asked him for additional funding, he trapped me in a six-hour budget meeting and questioned practically every line item. This is a man who wants to know exactly where every dollar is going, and suddenly he doesn’t want to discuss money at all?"

His fingers tightened around the bottle.

"He wanted me gone."

Axel’s eyes narrowed.

Seth looked directly at him. "He wasn’t happy that I survived the mission. He was shocked."

The frustration in his voice hardened into certainty.

"He looked at me like someone who had just walked into his own funeral."

Lionel’s relaxed expression vanished completely. He sat forward and asked, "You’re saying the person supervising your mission never expected you to come back alive?" After a moment, he added, "Then what was the disk supposed to be, bait?"

Seth dragged both hands through his hair. "That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. The data was real."

He looked toward the floor.

"Not just real—valuable enough that people would risk lives to retrieve it."

Seth shook his head. "Why send me to die for something they genuinely wanted? Unless getting rid of me was part of the mission too."

Axel finally spoke.

"Or they expected both outcomes to benefit them."

Everyone looked toward him.

Axel stood and slowly paced across the small living room. "Think about where we found that data. Papa Jupiter’s operation was tied to the cult, and the abandoned federal facility clearly hadn’t been as abandoned as everyone pretended."

He turned back toward Seth.

"If you came back with the data, they got what they wanted."

Axel continued before anyone could interrupt. "If you died at the site, disappeared in the desert, or ended up in the hands of the people already operating there, then an inconvenient scientist vanished during a dangerous field assignment. Either way, whoever arranged the mission could benefit without making your death look deliberate."

Seth stared at him.

The theory was ugly.

It was also disturbingly plausible.

He slammed one fist against the coffee table, producing a dull thud. "I’m a physicist. I got involved with federal research work because they promised funding and access to equipment, not because I wanted to become disposable."

Axel stopped pacing.

"Maybe that’s exactly the problem."

Seth looked up.

Axel’s expression remained serious. "You’re brilliant, difficult to control, and your research is already moving into territory most people don’t understand. If someone decided you were more dangerous than useful, sending you on a mission where your death could be explained would solve several problems at once."

The room grew quiet again.

Axel glanced toward Lionel. "And if Evans really knew what was waiting in New Mexico, then this isn’t just a handful of cultists hiding in basements anymore. Their influence may reach into government-funded research programs and federal scientific institutions."

Lionel slowly leaned back.

Until now, he had imagined their enemies as a collection of lunatics operating from hidden compounds and forgotten buildings. They had money, supernatural knowledge, and dangerous experiments, but he had never seriously considered that they might have people inside legitimate institutions.

That possibility changed everything.

Seth looked increasingly unsettled. "Then what am I supposed to do? Go back to work and pretend nothing happened?" His eyes hardened as he added, "Because Evans is definitely going to realize sooner or later that I noticed something."

"Don’t go back."

Axel answered immediately.

Seth frowned.

"Evans already told you to take a vacation," Axel continued. "If you suddenly return tomorrow asking questions, all you do is tell him you noticed his reaction."

He gestured toward the room.

"For now, let him believe you accepted the explanation."

Seth stared down at the beer in his hand.

Axel walked toward the window and looked out at the Miami streetlights beginning to glow below. "Chief Woody just put me on extended leave because he wants the cult to think I’m wandering around exposed enough to approach."

He turned around.

"Now Evans conveniently sends you on vacation too."

Lionel understood immediately. "You think somebody might come after Seth while he’s away from the lab."

"I think we should assume it’s possible."

Axel’s voice remained measured.

"If Evans is involved and believes Seth surviving creates a problem, then pushing him outside normal institutional protection gives them room to act."

Seth’s face became even darker.

Axel walked over and patted him on the shoulder. "Don’t look like you’re already dead. Congratulations—you’re now an important witness."

Seth looked at him blankly. "That’s supposed to make me feel better?"

"Absolutely."

Axel pointed toward himself.

Then toward Lionel.

"You now have the highest level of protection available."

Seth stared between them. "You two?"

Lionel raised his beer. "Apparently."

Axel nodded. "You stay with us until we figure out what Evans knows and who he answers to."

Carrie had remained silent throughout the conversation, listening from the side of the room. Less than two days earlier, her greatest problems had been school bullying and surviving another night under Margaret White’s roof, but now she was surrounded by talk of infiltrated institutions, supernatural weapons, and people arranging deaths through federal missions. It was enough to make even Miami seem ordinary.

Still, Seth’s situation touched something familiar inside her.

He had returned expecting praise.

Instead, someone had looked at him as though his survival itself were a problem.

Carrie understood that feeling far too well.

She finally spoke. "Can we really fight people like that?" Her voice was quiet, but everyone in the room heard it. "If they can be inside the police, laboratories, and places like that... doesn’t that mean they could be everywhere?"

Axel looked toward her.

"So what?"

Carrie blinked.

Axel walked over and lowered himself slightly so he could meet her eyes. "Remember that living truck on the highway?"

Carrie nodded slowly.

"It looked unstoppable too," Axel said. "Huge, armored, supernatural, and strong enough to tear our vehicle apart."

He straightened again.

"And now it’s scrap."

Carrie looked at him without speaking.

Axel continued, "A big organization can hide in more places, but it also has more people, more connections, and more chances for somebody to make a mistake. Evans already made one."

Seth’s eyes shifted toward him.

"He showed fear."

Axel tapped the real-estate papers lying on the table. "If they move against Seth, that creates another opening. They want to watch us from the dark, so our job is to keep forcing them to reveal where the darkness ends."

He picked up the property information Steve had given him earlier.

"But first, we need somewhere better than this apartment."

Lionel looked around the cramped room.

Axel continued, "Somewhere bigger, isolated, and private enough that we can prepare without neighbors asking why strange things keep happening at three in the morning. Somewhere we can turn into an actual base."

Seth looked at the papers, then back at Axel.

The fear in his expression slowly changed.

Anger replaced it.

Then something more reckless.

He lifted his beer bottle.

"Fine."

Lionel raised his own.

Axel did the same.

Seth gave a thin smile. "I’d like to see exactly how they plan to kill me."

The three bottles met in the center of the cramped apartment with a sharp clink.

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