Then Dalton stepped into the room, smiling, like a shark.
Did he know? Had they detected his attempted hack?
The ex-SEAL had some kind of protein shake in one hand.
“What are you doing here?” Bloodshot demanded.
“Aww. Am I interrupting nap time?” Dalton asked.
Not the for the first time Bloodshot found himself wondering just what Dalton’s problem was. He acted like a child but it felt personal as well, longstanding, but that was it. He’d had enough. He was out of here.
“Why don’t you give it a—?” Bloodshot started. He was about to get up and then he twitched and went very still. He couldn’t move. Panic. He felt imprisoned behind his eyes, staring up at a grinning Dalton as the ex-SEAL took a noisy slurp of his shake. Bloodshot had lost all awareness of the nanites, as though he’d been cut off. He was locked down in his own flesh. Again.
“That’s right, you can’t talk,” Dalton started. “The truth is you aren’t at the wheel of your own body. We just shoved you aside to watch as we shut down your motor functions.”
Bloodshot strained, fury and terror raging through him. He felt muscles twitch and spasm, but they didn’t respond, he didn’t move. The last time he had felt like this had been back in the slaughterhouse, tied to the chair. Just before they had brought in his wife and Axe had taught him the true meaning of helplessness.
“Look at you,” Dalton continued. “So angry. So driven.” He used air quotes as he said “driven.” “You think you’re the good guy? That’s a goddamn joke.” Dalton was talking to him like he knew him. “You’re an exhausting dickhead with a revenge button we keep pushing.” Dalton was grinning at him now, gloating.
Bloodshot was reaching for what Dalton was saying, trying to connect it with what KT had said about remembering her. It didn’t make sense. He’d killed Axe because Axe had killed Gina.
“Much as I hate babysitting you, cleaning up after you,” Dalton told him, leaving Bloodshot wondering if this was part of some kind of deranged jealousy, “this little part, this small moment right here, makes it all worthwhile.” Dalton leaned in close, intimate. “Gina. Sweet Gina. You really believe she’s dead, every, god, damn, time.”
Bloodshot’s eyes went wide. That was when he got it. That was when he realized. Gina was still alive! They had waited until he was imprisoned in his own body to tell him.
Dalton must have registered the look of realization in Bloodshot’s eyes.
“There it is, that look. The dumbass catches on too late. I may be an asshole, but you’re the toy soldier. We wind you up, point you at the next victim, put you back here and push this button. Ready to forget?”
Bloodshot wanted to kill Dalton with his bare hands, get them wet and red up to the elbows. Then stalk through the corridors looking for Harting. He wanted to burn it all down, tear down the tower. And he couldn’t move.
Dalton had walked over to the console, his finger hovering over a button as he took another slurp of his shake.
Bloodshot wanted to scream at him not to do it, beg him to be allowed to remember even as he wanted to kill the man. It was clear just how much Dalton enjoyed this.
“Back in the fridge you go,” Dalton told him and pressed the button.
Bloodshot heard metallic, insectile clicks and felt apertures opening in the steel beneath him. Blades rose above the table all round him. It was an unholy convergence of a medieval torture device and the age of automation. The blades cut through all his major arteries with machine precision and the blood began to flow free and easy, almost too fast, as though pushed by the billions of nanites still contained in his system.
He felt the precious fluid leak out of him. Felt death rising up to claim him like freezing water. He had gone beyond fear, and was now all impotent rage. He was a howling berserker locked in the silent, unmoving cage of his own flesh as the robotic arm uncoiled itself from the ceiling. The arm ended in two dozen tightly packed needles. It looked like the sting of some lethal robot insect. The sting lowered itself toward him. The needles hung over the scar on Bloodshot’s chest, their arrangement perfectly aligned with the shape and size of the red circle.
Bloodshot’s jaw muscles twitched as he tried and failed to scream.
The needles sank into his flesh.
His eyes fluttered as though in deep REM sleep.
His scar burned, glowing red, lighting up the room.
Then Ray Garrison died again.
CHAPTER 18
Harting watched the feed from the resurrection room on the medical hub’s central monitor. On the main screen the robot arm curled itself back up toward the ceiling as Dalton finished his protein shake. Harting did wonder why Dalton derived such pleasure from this moment in the Bloodshot cycle, but on the other hand he had read the ex-SEAL’s psych report. He suspected that the mental trauma had happened to Dalton a long time before he had lost his legs.
The medical command hub shared the same poured-concrete subdued industrial look as much of the rest of the RST facility. A number of technicians monitored Bloodshot’s now mostly flatlined vitals, as well as the nanites and, eventually, the memory reconstruction.
Harting glanced down through the strip of glass flooring that ran along the center of the medical hub, and through the one-way mirrors of the resurrection room’s ceiling to where Bloodshot lay on the cold steel table. From his vantage point he could make out the banks of sophisticated vampiric machinery, which had just sucked the nanite-rich blood from Bloodshot.
Harting was aware of KT consciously avoiding looking down through the transparent floor. He could almost feel her trying to suppress her response to this most recent of Bloodshot’s inevitable deaths.
“Initiate sequence,” Harting told the four med techs at their workstations.
KT turned to leave the hub but Harting grabbed her arm with his mechanical hand. He was aware of Tibbs, or rather his lenses, watching it all as the ex-sniper stood perfectly stationary by the door. Harting didn’t even turn to face KT.
“‘Remember me’?” he asked, making it sound casual, only allowing a little of his exasperation to creep into his tone. “What exactly are you trying to accomplish?” Not for the first time he wished this process was entirely automated. That he could take total control of not only the flesh, but the minds of those who worked for him. The whole human aspect of the operation, like Bloodshot having to be manipulated into doing his masters’ bidding, was just so tedious.
“What does it matter anyway? You’re wiping his memory,” she said, and then after a moment’s hesitation: “Again.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s you,” he told KT before turning in his seat to face her. Giving her his full attention now, he kept hold of her arm. “Everything we do here serves a purpose.”
“I know the script,” KT told him. He could hear the resentment.
“Then stick to it. The training, the nightmare, the alcohol... you know it doesn’t work if we don’t check every box.” After all, it wasn’t as if he’d created the whole carefully designed program of psychological manipulation for the sheer hell of it.
“It’s not right what you’re doing to him,” KT told him.
Harting blinked. He tried to imagine what she thought a concept as abstract as “right” possibly had to do with what they were doing here. He let some of his displeasure be known by exerting more pressure on her arm through the grip of his mechanical hand. She must have felt it but she gave nothing away.
“If you don’t like it you’re welcome to leave anytime you want,” he told her.
She looked down at his hand gripping her arm. Harting let go. He’d made his point.
“You know you have complete control over me,” she started. She was right, of course. He did have complete control over her, but despite KT saying the words, she either did not seem to have fully accepted this was the case or, worse, no longer cared. If she had she wouldn’t behave as she did. He wondered to what extent he would have
to go to make the reality of the situation clear to her. “The moment I walk out that door, I stop breathing.”
“That’s the deal you agreed to!” He was starting to lose his temper. Why didn’t people just do as they were told? “You made your choice.”
Now KT looked down at Bloodshot’s exsanguinated corpse, though his biometrics still showed some brain function. There was some residual blood in the tubes being sucked into the modified transfusion machines. It glistened red and metallic in the light.
“Well, he deserves to make his,” KT said quietly.
“This is the part where you clean out his bunk.” Harting wasn’t even looking at her. He had returned to the nanite diagnostics, he was checking to see just how hard Bloodshot had pushed them this time. He was tired of what amounted to human resources distractions. The tech was what mattered. Military applications now, then medical, fabrication – the possibilities were endless. Nanotech could be used to uplift their entire species, to take the next evolutionary step, to become more than human, post-human, and KT wanted to whine about her feelings. Sometimes Harting felt the human race should fail, not because of its manifold evils, though it had more than enough of those, but because of its sheer lack of vision. It was like trying to do science with one hand tied behind your back. Thinking of his prosthetic this last made him smile, though there was little actual humor in it.
KT hesitated for a moment or two before leaving the hub. That was when Harting turned to watch her. He did not need this right now. Not with the meeting in Mexico City on the horizon. It was an ambitious proposal, but if it succeeded then it would open a lot of doors. It did, however, mean that every part of the machine had to be functioning properly. That included KT. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to force his hand, make him deal with her. Once, if you had made the crippled walk and the blind see, they would have called you the Son of God. Do it with technology and they treat you like a monster. With a snap of his fingers he could take Dalton’s legs out from underneath him, he could make Tibbs blind again. If he was KT he would think long and hard about what he could take from her if he so chose. Verbal defiance and cold hard reality were two very different things. After all, it would be hard to be defiant when you couldn’t breathe.
CHAPTER 19
Harting wouldn’t have said that he was nervous but there was rather a lot riding on this meeting, and his masters were keen for him to get the account. It was a long way from KL to Mexico City but even then he didn’t get much sleep. He had mostly been going over the proposal, making a few last-minute tweaks. He was pleased to have Tibbs and Dalton with him as security, as well as effective advertisements for RST’s wares. Though Dalton had been warned to keep his mouth shut at all times.
The embassy had arranged for him to have diplomatic status at Mexico City International Airport. He was rushed through security and customs much to the disgruntlement of the airport officials. An armored SUV was waiting to take him to Palmas 555, in the Lomas de Chapultepec district. Harting had always found something soothing about New Brutalist architecture but Palmas 555 was a step too far for him. It looked like a haphazard stack of concrete books, more like a sculpture than a building. There was far too much artistic expression and not enough solid practicality in his opinion.
Tibbs and Dalton flanked him as he was let in the rear door and guided to an elevator, which took them up to the tenth floor. Harting’s heart dropped when he saw the head of the Mexico City station. Mustache, cowboy hat, sunglasses: he looked as though he had overdosed on Burt Reynolds films growing up. The CIA station chief looked like a cowboy gone to seed, an outdated idea of American masculinity, and most worrying of all, a throwback. The cowboy stood and shook Harting’s hand. He had a firm grip. Harting was tempted to demonstrate just how firm grips could be. The head of station gestured to the seat opposite him. The only furniture in the room was a trestle table, the chair the station chief was sitting in and the chair he was offering to Dr. Harting.
“Interesting building,” Harting said.
The other man looked around at the room.
“Know why I like New Brutalism?” the head of station asked. Harting had expected a southern states of America accent, instead it sounded more Midwest, one of America’s flyover states.
“It speaks to the crushing of the human soul as a result of the alienation born of modern urban existence?” Harting suggested as he sat in the proffered chair. The station chief was just looking at him. Straight away Harting knew that he’d made a mistake. That he’d come off as a smart-ass.
“Plain concrete makes it more difficult to plant listening devices,” the station chief finally told him.
“What should I call you?” Harting asked.
Dalton and Tibbs were leaning against opposite walls, casually alert. The head of station glanced between the pair of them, and then he looked at Dalton a bit harder, and, unusually, not at the ex-SEAL’s mechanical legs.
“Hell, son,” the head of station said. Son? Harting wondered. Christ, this man’s a walking cliché. “You can just go ahead and call me Jameson.”
Harting sighed internally. “I don’t know how much you know about what RST—” Harting started.
“I know who you are, and what you do,” Jameson told him.
Harting pulled his briefcase onto his lap, took out the proposal and put it on the table between them. He looked up to see himself as two tiny reflections in Jameson’s sunglasses. It may have been textbook CIA powerplay bullshit but it was also just rude and Harting was starting to get annoyed.
The mirrored lenses glanced down at the proposal.
“What’s that?” Jameson asked. By the tone of his voice he might as well have been talking about a turd that Harting had put on the table.
“It’s a feasibility study,” Harting told him.
Jameson looked back up at him.
“You put down what we’re going to talk about on paper and brought it here?” he asked. He didn’t need to add the: Are you stupid? It was implicit.
Harting actually felt himself blush.
“It’s read and destroy,” Harting told him.
“I don’t care if it’s a tap-dancing cow that’ll sing your proposal to me, we’re talking about conducting paramilitary operations in a neighboring country and you wrote it down? Son, are you sure you’re cut out for this sort of thing?”
“Look this is a formality—” Harting started. He found it much easier dealing with Jameson’s superiors in Langley but they had insisted that the “man on the ground” have the final say. In the doctor’s opinion this was a mistake.
“No, this is a courtesy. I was asked to give you my time, so far you have not impressed.”
“Because you won’t look at—”
“Son, I know it looks like the kids are in charge in Washington at the moment but there are still some adults behind the scenes and you do not live in the land of do-as-you-please, comprende?”
“Please stop calling me ‘son’,” Harting managed through gritted teeth. Jameson just stared at him through his mirrored lenses.
“That’s your problem?” he finally asked.
This time Harting’s sigh was audible.
“Look if you just—” Harting tried again.
“Your pet dog doesn’t stop staring at me I’m going to tear off his robot leg and lodge it in his ass.”
It took a moment for Harting to work out what Jameson was talking about. It was only when he noticed that the head of Mexico City station was pointing at Dalton that he understood. The ex-SEAL was glaring at Jameson. Dalton had his uses but sometimes he was just a little too protective.
“Dalton,” Harting said. The ex-SEAL turned to look at him and the doctor just shook his head.
“I feel we’ve got off on the wrong foot—” Harting started.
“Budapest, your mess?” Jameson asked.
This time Harting was stunned.
“Mess?” he stammered. Budapest had been a resoundingly successf
ul test of the Bloodshot platform.
“Dozens dead before dawn?” Jameson asked. “Yeah, I’d call that a mess, and Silicon Valley, the debacle in San Francisco, Frankfurt and all the rest, and why? All because you had a little internal security problem? You chose to deal with the wrong sub-contractors?”
“Let’s be honest, what we’re dealing with is the future here. This will take someone with vision, with—”
“Not a broken-down old redneck from Wyoming?” Jameson asked.
Apparently not, Harting decided not to say out loud.
“Look just tell me what you’re offering,” Jameson said, crossing his arms. It was clear to Harting that he wasn’t the only one running out of patience.
“We’re offering consolidation. You pick a cartel, one that you can control, and we remove the rest of the competition for you in a fully deniable way. Not only that but the Bloodshot platform can have his ethnicity reprogrammed to make this look local – given the superstitious nature of the populace they might even ascribe Bloodshot’s actions to super-nature. Media analysis shows that the revenge story is perennially popular and the domestic angle will play well with the racist rhetoric peddled by your masters. In effect it’s exactly what the voters expect.” Despite how unreasonably hostile Jameson was being, Harting was quite pleased with his concise explanation.
“So a simple solution for a complex problem?” Jameson asked.
“It’s called thinking outside of the box,” Harting all but growled.
“I’m not sure it’s the thinking that’s out of the box.”
Harting stared at Jameson.
“Look, we can trade witticisms all day or you can read the feasibility study and we can start putting together a plan of—”
“Whoa! Slow down. What is my problem?” Jameson asked.
Being a nineteenth-century throwback in the twenty-first century? Harting wondered.
“The Mexican drug war spilling over into America.”
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