18. Chapter 18

18

Q uinn rubbed his temples and took a deep breath. His head pounded. Painkillers didn't help, and he resorted to breathing techniques. He was on the final straight of the study but had hit a massive roadblock.

The MRI scan was vital, but getting a hospital to allow four dangerous inmates in through their doors was anything but easy. After much grovelling, Quinn had managed to convince a hospital to test his participants. The word trust had been said to him over and over, and only after he hung up the phone, did the weight of the word hit him.

He was relying on the inmates of Greenwood not to fight or try to escape.

They had to be on their best behaviour, but all of them were on life sentences.

For some of them, this would be their only chance of freedom.

Quinn looked at Mars curled up on his lap. "No pressure then…"

"You look nervous," Cleo said, nudging him with her elbow.

Quinn was beyond nervous. He stood beside the prison van, waiting for Harris and Richard. They were taking two prisoners to the hospital at a time over two consecutive days, and three prison officers, including Cleo, had been assigned to escort duty. A police car waited beside the van as back-up.

The sun beat down on them. Quinn had swapped his normal long-sleeved shirt to a short-sleeved one, and Cleo had popped open the top two buttons on her blouse. The breeze offered no relief and licked the sweat on Quinn's brow.

Harris came out first. His wrists were cuffed in front of him, and prison officers Simon and Clint each had hold of one of Harris's biceps as they walked him over. Quinn smiled at Harris, who bowed his head in response.

He climbed into the van, and Clint secured him in one of the small cubicles inside.

"Richard," Simon announced, walking away with Clint hot on his heels.

"What if something goes wrong?" Quinn asked Cleo out of earshot of the van.

"Nothing's going to go wrong."

"People could get hurt."

"This is your study, Quinn."

"I know that." He squeezed the bridge of his nose. "I just…"

"It's okay to be nervous. I'm nervous, but you can't let them see. I'm there. Clint and Simon too, not to mention them." She tipped her head in the direction of the police car.

Simon and Clint returned with Richard between them. Richard raised his cuffed hands in a wave as he passed Cleo and Quinn to get to the van.

"You good?" Cleo asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

Quinn nodded.

"Go on then," she said, shoving him towards the door for the back. Simon and Clint got in the front of the van, leaving Cleo to jump in the back. There were four cubicles for prisoners with only two of the doors locked with Harris and Richard inside.

Cleo knocked on the window to the front of the van. "We're good to go."

The van started, and Quinn sat down, praying everything would go smoothly.

Harris, a top-scoring psychopath, was a serial killer. He didn't feel empathy for those he had killed. He felt no guilt, remorse, or sadness. And in his mind, the women he'd murdered deserved it for under-valuing themselves. He had already been classed as a psychopath, and Quinn's study and all the work they'd done together over the past six months supported that. He was expecting validation from his MRI scan. He prayed for validation. Without it, the last six months of his life would be meaningless.

Clint waited in the van with Richard while Harris went first. Their police escort accompanied them but kept a few metres back, surveying the area, trying to spot potential escape routes or suspicious characters.

The prisoners were not told in advance what day they'd go to the hospital, limiting the chance they could plan an escape. Harris didn't whip his head around like he was considering running, he stared straight ahead as he walked, cuffed hands hanging down.

A nurse greeted them at the reception, snapping blue gloves off her hands. She didn't look at Quinn, but her horror at being faced with Harris was obvious. It was midday on a Tuesday, and the security guards at the hospital had led them through a back door to avoid the majority of patients.

They couldn't avoid everyone, though, and a red-headed man snapped a photograph of Harris on his phone, gawping at the picture.

"We're not in the zoo," Quinn hissed.

"Careful, Quinn." Harris snorted. "It almost sounds like you give a shit about me," he murmured.

Quinn didn't respond.

The nurse lifted her chin and flashed a nervous look at Harris. "You're here for the MRI?"

Harris didn't answer. His gaze pierced her brown eyes, and she looked away.

"Yes," Quinn said quickly. "We're here for the MRI."

"I'm Gemma."

She was tall. Her brown hair was fixed into a bun at the back of her head, but a few wispy strands had escaped.

"Quinn."

"It's only natural the patients are curious about him," she mumbled, glancing in the direction the red-headed man had disappeared.

"It's understandable."

"What's he in prison for?"

"Erm—armed robbery—"

"I killed four women whom I deemed unworthy."

Quinn closed his eyes in an extended blink. If there was ever a time for Harris to be his studious self, it had been that moment, but of course, he relished in her reaction, smiling wider than Quinn had ever seen.

"Don't worry, you're a nurse, you contribute to society. I have no desire to see you die."

"Behave," Quinn growled through his teeth.

"Follow me," Gemma said, leading them down a darkened corridor.

Quinn went after her, and Harris followed, sandwiched between Cleo and Simon. They found themselves in a blindingly white room. A man in blue scrubs glanced down at his clipboard, then up at Quinn.

"Ah, you've brought your first guinea pig."

Nurses waited behind him, fidgeting as they looked at Harris.

"Participant," Quinn corrected.

"Well, I'm Doctor Harp, and the MRI scanner is prepped and ready to go, but I do ask that all metal is removed, belts, buttons, loose change, keys, phones—"

"Harris doesn't have any."

"Handcuffs."

Quinn cocked his jaw. "Right."

"We've some non-metal restraints. We can strap him to the board, make sure he can't move."

"Strap him? You can't be serious."

"He's a dangerous criminal. We need to ensure the safety of our other patients and our staff."

"He doesn't need strapping down."

The doctor smiled grimly. "It's a precaution."

"I've got two prison staff and police officers with me and your security."

"Still, we'd all feel safer if he was immobile."

"Quinn," Harris whispered. "It's fine. I understand their worry."

The doctor kept his distance and gestured to the bed by the scanner. "If you could just lie down. We'll secure your legs, thighs, and middle, then remove the cuffs."

Harris nodded and climbed onto the bed. As soon as he was down, the nurses swooped in and began securing him with black strips. Quinn shook his head while he watched their eagerness to immobilise Harris.

"Officers," Doctor Hart said. "Remove any metal items you have on your person, whether that be change, a belt buckle, mobile phone—"

Cleo gestured to Quinn. "He already told us. We left our metals in the van."

"Brilliant."

Doctor Hart scribbled on his clipboard and made his way over to Quinn.

He gestured to the door. "Right, we're in that room."

"You okay, Harris?" Quinn asked.

"This is ten times more comfortable than those prison beds."

Quinn snorted and followed the doctor and two of the nurses into another room. Cleo and Simon stayed with Harris and Gemma, who still eyed Harris warily.

"Here we are," the doctor said, gesturing Quinn towards a chair in the adjacent room. There was a long desk full of monitors and other machinery. It was dark compared to the room Harris was in, full of blinking lights and noisy fans.

"You should be able to talk to Harris through that microphone," he pointed to it, "and you'll be able to see him on this screen once he's in the scanner."

Doctor Hart pressed on his own microphone. "Gemma is going to put a cannula in your arm and inject a small amount of contrast media."

"Contrast media?" Quinn asked.

"It's like dye. It helps us see any abnormalities in brain function."

Quinn lifted his laptop onto the desk and opened it up, then attached a wire from his laptop to the one on the table. "I'll be ready in a few minutes," he told Harris.

"Take your time," Harris replied.

There were four parts of the brain Quinn was interested in. The Amygdala, Prefrontal cortex, Paralimbic structures and the Ventral striatum. They were the areas of the brain that often set apart the ‘psychopaths' from the norm.

Quinn nodded to Doctor Hart once he was ready to begin, then spoke into the microphone. "This will take around an hour. There are a few experiments for you to do. Image and sound based and word association."

"Understood, Doctor Quinn."

Quinn watched through the window as Gemma finished up, then Doctor Hart shot him a wary smile. Harris's bed began to move into the white cylinder, and Harris whistled the Star Trek theme beneath his breath.

"I'm ready when you are," Doctor Hart said.

Quinn took a deep breath. "Let's do this."

Firstly, they recorded Harris's brain activity while he lay still, unstimulated by any outside source. Areas of his brain lit up, and immediately, Doctor Hart drew his cursor over the frontal lobes.

"What is it?" Quinn asked.

"I can already see an abnormality here. It's active, but not as much as we'd expect. We usually see this kind of low output in patients who have had some kind of blunt force trauma."

Quinn nodded. "Are we ready to begin the experiments?"

"Whenever you're ready."

Quinn pressed down on the microphone. "You good, Harris?"

"I'm good."

"On the screen in front of you, I'm going to flash up some images. You don't need to say anything, just watch."

"Understood."

Quinn clicked play on the slideshow. The images started off mundane enough but became violent, triggering. Doctor Hart frowned as he watched the brain activity. He shuddered when he glanced at Quinn's laptop and the disturbing images that popped up one by one.

"There's no substantial difference," he said. "He didn't react how we might expect. It's as if the activity is muted, unaffected."

Quinn wasn't surprised. Harris had never reacted to anything he'd been shown during their interviews, no matter the disturbing nature.

He brought up another programme on his laptop and spoke to Harris again. "Next, I'm going to play you some sounds. You don't have to react verbally."

Harris yawned in the scanner. "Got it."

The sounds, like the images, started off tame and progressively got more disturbing. Screaming babies, gunfire, aggressive shouts, Harris didn't react to anything. The nurses and Doctor Hart all pulled pained expressions at the more torturous sounds. One of the nurses even put her hands over her ears at a woman screaming in pain.

A few times, Harris rolled his eyes.

"He's numb to all of it," Doctor Hart said. "It doesn't affect him at all. He's desensitised to the good and the bad. How fascinating…"

Quinn agreed, but he didn't have time to dwell on any of their findings, not when he was aware Richard was waiting outside in the van on one of the hottest days of the year. He pushed on, completing the word association tasks with Harris. It didn't take long to finish, and then the scanner whirled again.

Gemma was quick to unstrap Harris, and Cleo cuffed him as soon as his arms were free.

Harris stretched as he sat up and slipped from the bed onto the floor. He blinked at Quinn, and Quinn tensed, expecting him to ask about what he'd seen, but he didn't.

"Richard's turn," he said.

"Richard's turn." Quinn agreed.

Richard's scans didn't reveal any obvious abnormalities. The frontal lobes lit up, flashing brightly compared to Harris's, whose brain had only brightened with a flitter.

He, like Harris, didn't respond to the images, but unlike Harris, Richard gave a running commentary, which gave an insight into his mind. When presented with an image of a woman cowering in the corner, scared, Richard frowned and muttered, "What's her problem?"

He scoffed at the photograph of a crying man and called him pathetic, and he quirked his eyebrow at bruises and blood. His biggest response came from a picture of a woman's bruised and battered ankles bound in rope. His brain activity spiked in his Amygdala, indicating an emotional response and he groaned out, "Now we're talking."

Doctor Hart shook his head. One of the nurses in the room with Quinn walked out to take a minute in the corridor.

"I'm now going to play you some sounds," Quinn said, clicking the file. It began with ocean waves lapping at the beach.

"You trying to send me to sleep?" Richard asked.

"Not at all."

Richard smirked, then fell silent. Unlike Harris, he reacted to some of the harsh sounds, and he winced at barking dogs and shouting voices, but the biggest response came from the screaming baby. His face tightened with a snarl. He looked savage in a way Quinn hadn't seen before and stared right at the camera, directly at Quinn.

"Change it," he demanded.

Quinn did so immediately, and Richard sighed. His furrowed brow relaxed, and he closed his eyes.

"Thank you."

Richard continued without having to skip another track and completed the word association task.

Quinn gathered his things, including print-offs of Harris's and Richard's brain activity, tucked them in a folder, and neatly slipped them into his laptop bag. He shook Doctor Hart's hand, thanked all the nurses and followed behind Richard as Cleo and Simon led him back to the waiting prison van.

"See?" Cleo said when Quinn took his seat inside the van and slumped. "I told you it would be fine."

He shot her a weak smile as he picked open the top button of his shirt. Cleo reached into the bag she'd left in the van and threw him a bottle of water.

"Thanks."

"No problem." She smiled.

"Did you see what you expected?" she asked.

Quinn nodded and let his eyes slide shut. "Just Zane and Virgil to go."

Cleo squeezed his hand. "Then it's all over."

Quinn didn't know how he felt about that.