Panacea: Chapter Three

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Vincent shut his mouth and looked around frantically. There was no one about in the street, despite the fact that it was still early afternoon and no longer raining. But of course. That’s what the man had been checking for, wasn’t it? Vincent was sure there would be no one within hearing distance if he decided to yell, and even if there was it was likely he’d be dead before anyone could get to him.

He shuffled away from his door and toward the alley. “I take it this means you’re not an apprentice of the Chemical Society?”

“Shut up,” said the man, and jabbed the pistol into Vincent’s back. “Keep moving, don’t look around.”

“So who are you?” Vincent tried to quell the shaking in his voice, but the feel of the cold, very dangerous weapon held very close to several of his vital organs was not doing good things for his constitution.

“That is something you’ll hopefully never need to know,” the not-apprentice hissed.

“This really isn’t necessary, you know.”

“It’s your fault,” said the man. “If you had just come with me the first time and not tried stalling . . .”

Arrod help him, but he was going to have to argue with his would-be assassin. Vincent just couldn’t let a good disagreement go to waste, especially when his general infallibility was being questioned. “My fault? It would have helped had you actually told me what was going on instead of threatening to kill me. I would have listened, believe me. There is absolutely nothing I have or know that I would be anywhere near willing to lose my life over . . .”

“I said, shut up!” Another sharp jab with the pistol. Vincent remained quiet as they entered the alley and the man lead him halfway down it, where the shadows cast from the two-story buildings on either side were the deepest. Only then was Vincent allowed to turn around and look at the man’s face again.

At some point the man had taken the medallion off and slid it into his coat pocket. Vincent could see a bit of the gold chain hanging out. Probably a fake medallion. Or perhaps the man had killed another for it.

Perhaps there had actually been an apprentice on the way to Vincent’s house, and this man had been hired to stop him. But why? Why kill an apprentice? Why impersonate one just to drag Vincent into an alley?

The man was looking up and down the alley, again as if looking for someone, but his grip on the pistol never wavered, and it was still pointed unerringly at Vincent.

“I think I see what’s going on here,” said Vincent slowly. “And really, it is very unnecessary.”

The man glanced sharply at him, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s the Society, isn’t it?” The scenario was gradually becoming clearer in Vincent’s mind. “They want my research. They know I’m close to a breakthrough, and they want it for themselves. That’s why the big show of not letting me into the Society. This has been planned from the beginning!”

“What?” said the man, his puzzled expression making him look more like the nervous apprentice he had pretended to be only moments before. This made Vincent feel better, and a little more bold. This man, assassin or not, still seemed very young. He couldn’t have been at the business for long.

Vincent fought down the niggle of outrage he felt that he apparently didn’t even warrant a proper assassin. “Well, it’s rather obvious, if you don’t mind me saying so. I would have expected better from the Society, of course, but then this is just proof that I was right about them all along, nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing, greedy--”

“Please shut up,” said the man. “I will shoot you, no matter what my employer wants.”

“They want me alive?” This was the best news Vincent had heard all day. “Well, then, why are we standing here? Let’s go meet your employer--”

His words came to an abrupt and startled halt as the man suddenly fired, narrowly missing Vincent’s shoulder. Vincent could feel the heat from the discharged weapon, the dull tang of gunpowder residue, the low whistle from the bullet as it passed just below his left ear. He froze, noting with horror that the man’s grip on the gun was now shaking.

“That was a warning,” the man said, and his voice was shaking now, too. Suddenly he held up his hand for silence, though Vincent hadn’t been about to speak, and in fact was feeling disinclined to speak ever again.

The man appeared to be listening. Vincent listened, too, and heard the distant sound of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, approaching in their direction.

“Damn,” the man muttered, shoving the pistol under his coat jacket. “Someone must have heard that.”

Good, thought Vincent, but he wasn’t yet feeling ready to speak aloud.

“Come on,” said the man, grabbing Vincent’s arm. “We have to get out of here. Don’t even think about trying to run away,” he continued when Vincent pulled away from him. “I have a dagger on me, too, and I can make your death slow and silent.”

“Let’s see this dagger,” said Vincent before he could stop himself. He cowered away as the man turned the full force of his glare on him, and knew he had gone too far. He was going to die here by the hands of the world’s most ineffectual assassin, and no one would know what had happened to him. His work would never be finished, the Society would never recognize the error of their ways, and Danya would have nowhere to go. The townhouse was deeded to Vincent, and Danya technically wasn’t an official member of his household.

I knew I should have made out that will, he thought, watching as the man reached into the front of his coat, probably for his dagger, which Vincent was sure now he was telling the truth about.

Before the man could commence killing him, however, another figure darted into the alley. The man tensed and whirled around, pistol suddenly out again to meet this new threat. But as the figure came closer and resolved itself into a tall, older man in a black cloak and a pock-marked face, the assassin seemed to relax, letting the pistol down so that the muzzle pointed at the ground.

The older man didn’t seem so charitable toward the younger, however. “You stupid fool!” he hissed, coming closer and stopping only inches from the assassin’s face. “What idiot fires his weapon in a residential part of the city in broad daylight?”

“He was being difficult,” said the younger man, waving in Vincent’s direction. Vincent blinked. By all that was good and right, this man who had been about to kill him was whining like an adolescent boy who had been caught bullying his younger siblings. He wondered if the assassin was the oldest in a family of several children.

“I don’t care,” said the older man, and he looked for a moment as if he was going to actually box the younger about the ears. “We have our orders. I wouldn’t have thought you could make a mess of something this simple. All you had to do was get him here, quietly, and wait for me.”

The younger man chewed the bottom of his lip for a moment. “But I did get him here.”

“And alerted the whole city while you were at it!”

The sound of the horses’ hooves was getting closer, and they sounded like they were just around the corner from the alley. Vincent edged in that direction, hoping the two bickering men wouldn’t notice him.

Unfortunately this just wasn’t going to be a good day at all. “Hey!” said the older man, turning to Vincent. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home?” said Vincent hopefully.

“We have to get out of here,” said the younger man. The older nodded and grabbed at Vincent’s wrist. Suddenly the pistol was pointed at him again. Vincent sighed and let the older man lead him toward the opposite end of the alley, away from the approaching horses.

“Good, then,” said the older man. He nodded to the younger, who handed over the pistol and stepped ahead of the other two, peeking out of the alley and looking both ways.

At the younger man’s nod, the older led Vincent out of the shadow of the buildings, into another alley, perpendicular to the first, bordered by townhouses and a tall wooden fence that separated them from another row of townhouses on the other side. Vincent was pulled along the alleyway. The younger man kept the lead, pressing himself up against the fence. Vincent wondered again if he should yell; surely there would be someone home in one of the buildings they were passing. But that pistol was still there, and Vincent really didn’t want to suffer death or maiming. Besides, it definitely seemed now that the plan wasn’t to kill him as long as he went along with what they were doing. And as much as he would rather be back at home right now working on his research, this was preferable to being dead.

My research. Vincent was still clutching his case of notes closely to him, and he wondered if he should throw them away. It was clear that these men wanted him and his research, which told him that the Society was probably behind this whole fiasco. He couldn’t let his life’s work fall into the hands of those scoundrels.

But he didn’t have anywhere to throw the case that wouldn’t be easily retrievable by the other two men. There was nothing but blank brick on one side of him, and the fence on the other. The only feasible option would be to toss the case over the fence, but he doubted the Society, if they wanted his research badly enough, would be stymied by having to walk around a fence to get at it. Plus it might earn him a bullet hole in a place he really didn’t want one. He decided to wait until they were out of the alley, and then see if there was a good place to get rid of the case. Maybe they would take him by the river; the research would be no good to anyone sitting at the bottom of that.

But that brought up the whole getting shot thing again.

He was pulled along for what he estimated was about two blocks. Neither man spoke to him, nor to each other. Finally the younger man stopped, feeling a place on the fence. One of the boards moved aside, leaving a space wide enough for a good-sized man to fit through. The younger man darted through the hole, then looked back at the older man, nodding.

“Come on,” said the older man, shoving Vincent ahead of him. “Through there.”

Vincent went through without argument, though he grimaced as his suit coat caught on a jagged piece of wood and he heard it tear. That was his best coat, damn it, and he couldn’t afford a new one.

The older man slid easily through the hole after him, and Vincent found himself in an identical alley to the one he had just left.

“What was the point of all that?” he said, but the older man just looked at him and yanked him forward, following the younger man, who had started moving along the fence again.

They went another block before the younger man darted into another perpendicular alley between townhouses. Vincent was pulled along after him, and when he rounded the corner he saw a nondescript brown carriage sitting in the alley, hitched to two nondescript brown horses being driven by a nondescript middle-aged man dressed in brown.

“Ah, good,” the older man said under his breath. He shoved Vincent forward. “Into the carriage.”

Well, there went his plans for getting rid of the case, at least for the time being. He wondered if he could throw it out the carriage window, but as he got into the carriage he saw that its windows were tightly covered with leather securely fastened to the sides of the carriage. He climbed into the carriage, and the younger man, who was already inside and in the front bench, directed him to sit on the back bench. The older man then climbed in, giving a grunt as he closed the door, and settled himself next to Vincent, never once pointing the pistol away from him. The younger man rapped on the front wall of the carriage and it gave a lurch as the horses started trotting away from the alley.

“That’s not necessary,” said Vincent, pointing at the gun. He figured that if he was going for a ride, he might as well confirm what he figured was going on. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“He’s right. Put it away,” said the younger man. “He’s not going to try anything heroic. Are you?”

“Absolutely not,” said Vincent. “I value my life far too much for that.”

“That’s good to hear,” said the older man. He turned to look at the younger man. “It seems we’ve gotten away for now, no thanks to you.”

Vincent looked at the younger man, interested in the resumption of the argument. Perhaps one would let something slip that would tell Vincent exactly why he had been forced into a carriage at gunpoint. But the younger man seemed to have argued himself out, and merely glared.

So Vincent thought he would try again. “So why have you kidnapped me?”

The younger man grunted in consternation and turned his face away, but the older seemed more obliging.

“Someone is very interested to get their hands on you,” he said.

“Oh, are they?” Vincent replied with a huff. “Me, or my research?”

“Research,” the younger man repeated in an exasperated voice.

“Well, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? I’ve already figured it all out; I am a very smart man, after all. The Society hired you because they want to steal my research from me. Actually, what happened was that there was a faction in the Society that wanted me to join, and another faction that just wanted to leech off my work. The first faction sent an apprentice to my house to convince me to reconsider, but the second faction was tipped off, perhaps by a double agent they’ve planted in the first faction, so they hired this man,” he pointed to the younger man, “to kill the apprentice and impersonate him so that he could bring me and my research to the second faction, where they’ll keep me long enough to learn what I’ve been doing and then either kill me or keep me chained up in a basement lab somewhere working under threat of death so that they can reap the profits when I invent my cure-all. And everyone I know will think I’m dead because they’ll invent some story about finding my body floating in the river, where I supposedly threw myself to my death in despair after my membership to the Society was turned down.”

He stopped, satisfied with his explanation. Then he thought of something else. “Oh, and they’ll burn down my townhouse so that no one will ever be able to piece together what I was working on.” He nodded, and then noticed that the two men were staring at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“I thought we were kidnapping an apothecary, not a story-teller,” the younger complained to the older.

“I am not an apothecary,” said Vincent, outraged. “I am a research chemist! I wouldn’t expect the likes of you to know the difference, but trust me, there’s a whole lot of difference between a common drug-maker and . . .” He trailed off as the rest of the man’s words processed. “Wait, what?”

“No one wants your stupid research or whatever it is that you’re doing,” said the older man gruffly.

“But . . . my notes?” said Vincent, indicating the case.

The younger man signed. “I only told you to get those because I was trying to convince you to come with me.”

“But what could someone possibly want me for, if not my research?” said Vincent, confused.

“We’re only the hired men,” said the older man. “Now keep quiet, or I may just decide to shoot you after all.”
 

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