LN2, LIN and LN are all known abbreviations used for liquid nitrogen. A LIN charge is a supercooled liquid nitrogen blast. It became known as a LIN charge because the military had created liquid nitrogen grenades and explosive charges that could be magnetically attached to structures like doors, walkways, bridges and so on. Their main purpose was to hyper-freeze anything – alloys, metal, plastic, wood – making them extremely vulnerable and easy to breach. The real problem comes when a LIN charge hits human skin.
Liquid nitrogen grenades differ from all other known types of grenade in one simple way. Their charge doesn’t need to break or penetrate the skin of the target in order to kill them.
The premise behind their effectiveness is based on the special chemical properties of the most abundant mineral on earth – water.
Water is the only naturally occurring substance on the planet that expands when cooled. If a human body is struck by a blast of supercooled liquid nitrogen, it will become very cold, very fast. When that happens, blood cells will freeze instantly in what is known as a ‘shock freeze’. The real messy part comes because blood cells are made of approximately 70 percent water, and the water in the blood cells will begin to expand very, very rapidly. The result of all those water molecules in one’s bloodstream expanding so quickly is total body hemorrhage. The subject will bleed from just about everywhere – eyes, ears, mouth, nose, nails, sexual organs and through the skin.
Because of the supercooled charge, the molecules’ expansion doesn’t stop, and in consequence every single blood cell in the human body eventually explodes. It’s an excruciating death, and a totally horrifying sight.
For Taylor’s sake, Lucien briefly explained the entire process.
‘I’ll tell you this,’ Lucien said to Hunter and Taylor. ‘What happened to her body once I blasted it with liquid nitrogen was hell-scary, even for me. It was like everything inside her exploded, and all that blood came pouring out through . . .’ He sighed deeply and scratched his beard, sweeping his eyes over his barren cell. ‘Everywhere, really. I spent four days just cleaning and disinfecting that shack so wild animals wouldn’t take over once I was gone.’ Lucien paused, remembering. ‘My friend back at Yale told me that they were performing this experiment on a live frog in one of the labs. It involved liquid nitrogen. When he told me what had happened, I just tried to imagine how a human body would react. But even my fertile imagination didn’t reach as far as reality.’
If Hunter or Taylor had any doubts that they were sitting before pure evil, those doubts had just vanished in the last few minutes. Neither of them wanted to hear any more details.
‘The location, Lucien?’ Hunter asked. His voice was steady and reasonable. ‘Did you bury her around Lake Saltonstall?’
Lucien ran a finger around the grooves surrounding one of the cinder blocks on the wall to his left. ‘That I did. And I have a surprise for you. I revisited that site four more times after Karen, if you know what I mean.’ He pursed his lips in a ‘What can I do?’ way and followed it with a careless shrug. ‘It was a good site, well hidden.’
‘Are you saying we’ll find five bodies at the site, instead of only one?’ Taylor asked.
Lucien held the suspense up for a moment longer before nodding. ‘Uh-huh. Would you like their names?’
Taylor glared at him.
Lucien laughed. ‘But of course you would.’ He closed his eyes and breathed in as if his memory needed an extra burst of oxygen. When he reopened them again, they looked dead, emotionless. He began.
‘Emily Evans, thirty-three years old, from New York City. Owen Miller, twenty-six years old, from Cleveland, Ohio. Rafaela Gomez, thirty-nine years old, from Lancaster in Pennsylvania. And Leslie Jenkins, twenty-two years old, from Toronto, Canada. She was an international student back at Yale.’
Lucien paused and drew in another deep breath.
‘Would you like me to tell you how they died as well?’ His lips smirked, but his eyes didn’t.
Hunter had no intentions of sitting in that basement and listening to Lucien boost about how he had tortured and killed every one of his victims.
‘The location, Lucien, nothing more,’ Hunter said.
‘Really?’ Lucien pulled a disappointed face. ‘But it was just starting to get fun. Karen was only my second victim. I got better with each new one, believe me.’ He winked at Taylor suggestively. ‘Much better.’
‘You’re a fucking psycho,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself anymore. She felt disgusted just looking at him.
Hunter matter-of-factly turned his head to look at her, silently pleading with Taylor not to engage.
‘You think so?’ Lucien seized the moment.
Taylor disregarded Hunter’s look. ‘I know so.’
Lucien looked like he was considering that statement for a moment. ‘You know, Agent Taylor, you really do have a problem with naivety. If you think I’m unique in the urges I have, then you’re unmistakably in the wrong profession.’ He threw a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Every single day thousands, millions of people out there have murderous thoughts. Some start having them very, very young. Every day there are people out there who in their own way consider killing their spouses, their partners, their neighbors, their bosses, their bank managers, the asshole bullies who torment their lives . . . the list goes on and on.’
Taylor glanced at Lucien as if his argument didn’t have a leg to stand on.
‘What you’re talking about are spur of the moment, heated thoughts,’ she returned calmly, emphasizing the word ‘thoughts’. ‘They are understandable, angry psychological reactions to a particular action. It doesn’t mean that any of it will ever materialize.’
‘The location, Lucien,’ Hunter intervened. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why Taylor was still feeding the fire. ‘Where are Karen’s remains?’
Lucien ignored him. Right then, he was more interested in pushing Taylor a little further.
‘Naive, naive, naive, Agent Taylor,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘With every human thought, spur of the moment or not, there’s always a risk that the thought might one day – fed by anger, hurt, disillusion, jealousy . . . there are a thousand factors that could help it grow – become much more than just a thought. It’s called the law of probability. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Your databases are overflowing with such examples. And it happens because anyone, and I mean anyone, independent of upbringing, gender, class, race, beliefs, status or anything else, could, under the right circumstances, become a killer.’
Let it go, Courtney, Hunter pleaded in his head.
Taylor didn’t. ‘You are delusional,’ she replied without thinking.
Her response only amused Lucien more.
‘I don’t think that I’m the one who’s delusional here, Agent Taylor. You see? It’s very easy for anyone to say that he or she will never cross a certain line, when that line is never presented to them.’
Lucien allowed his words to float in the air, giving Taylor a moment to digest them before moving on.
‘If one day they come face to face with such a line, they’ll sing a very different tune. Trust me on this, Agent Taylor. It was one of my experiments – presenting that line to someone who swore she could never take a life.’ Lucien looked at his nails as if considering if they needed trimming or not. ‘And, boy, did she cross it.’
Taylor choked on her own breath.
Hunter stared at him in disbelief.
‘Are you saying that you forced someone to commit murder as an experiment? To prove a point?’ Taylor asked.
Hunter had no doubt that Lucien was very capable of such an act. He was very capable of much more. But Hunter had heard enough, and despite Taylor being the lead agent in this investigation, he lifted a stop hand at her and took over.