Free The Blueprint (The Upgrade Book 1) by Wesley Cross Page B

Fighting the urge to look back, he dug his nails deep into the arms of the chair and said out loud, trying to sound casual, “Hi, Martin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
    “The pleasure is all mine, Jeremy,” said the voice, sounding flat, almost mechanical.
    Something in this voice overcame Sykes’ habit to follow orders, and he started to turn his head to look at Martin, protocols be damned, but right before his peripheral vision was able to catch a glimpse of the person behind him, a cold steel cord wrapped around his neck, biting deep. Jeremy wheezed with pain, trying to pry the garrote from his throat as hot trickles of blood started to run down his chest, but it was all in vain.
    Desperate, he kicked hard, trying to ram the back of the chair into his assailant, but it was as if he were trying to fight a bulldozer. At last, his knees buckled as he slumped in the chair. The pain, mercifully, let the darkness take over.

CHAPTER 12
    Jason was pacing back and forth. Rachel’s first conversation with Steve Poznyak left him lightheaded with hope. While her immediate boss was nervous about the whole idea, he was also sympathetic, and said he was confident that Mr. Engel would authorize the procedure. Now all they could do was sit and wait for him to call back to deliver the news.
    “Pal, please sit down.” said Max to Jason. “You’re making me dizzy with all this back and forth.”
    “Sorry.” Jason stopped pacing and sat down. “I hate waiting. How are you feeling, babe?”
    “I’m fine,” she said, looking at her cell phone. “All this just doesn’t seem very real to me right now. I just want to get it over with, one way or another.”
    Her phone started buzzing.
    “Hello?” she said, putting it on speaker.
    “Rachel?” said a pleasant voice. “Steve here. Um. I spoke to Mr. Engel,” he said and paused as if looking for the right words.
    “Yeah?”
    “He said…” Steve cleared his throat. “Um, he said we can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
    “What? Why?” She sat up straight. “We’d be starting human trials in just a couple of months anyway.”
    “I know.” Steve sounded pained. “But the subjects assigned for human trials are all soldiers at the peak of their physical abilities. In Mr. Engel’s opinion, using one of the prototypes on a terminally ill person could compromise the odds of survival rates and therefore the subsequent approval process.”
    Steve was saying something else, but Jason was no longer listening. He got up and started walking toward the door. He carefully closed it, ignoring Max and Rachel, who were trying to tell him something, then he took the elevator to the ground floor. As the doors opened, he broke into a run. As he stormed through the front doors of the hospital he almost tackled an overweight man and had to slow down for a second.
    “Easy there, pal,” said the man, catching him in a surprisingly strong grip. “Might hurt someone running like that.”
    Another man with a two-day stubble and a black eye walked up to them, looking Jason up and down suspiciously.
    “Any problems here?”
    “Sorry,” Jason said, untangling himself from the chubby man’s clutches. “No problem, just in a rush.” He broke into a run once more.
    He ran south a block and a half, then turned west on East 97 th Street heading toward 5 th Avenue. Once on Fifth, he almost got run over by a yellow cab, trying to stop it.
    “Are you crazy?” the cabbie yelled at him, once he got into the car.
    “Get me to the corner of East 59 th and Fifth under ten minutes and I’ll pay you ten times as much as the meter says,” said Jason, trying to get his breathing under control, and the taxi took off, tires screeching.
    It took them twelve minutes, but Jason threw a few hundred dollar bills at the driver and got out. The gray rectangle of the 50-story building of the Guardian Manufacturing headquarters loomed over him like some prehistoric monster, glistening in the winter sun. Jason stood