by James McEwan
“Damn it!” Thorne said as he rubbed his hand, “You have a face like an anvil.”
“Okay so you caught me, what are you going to with me?” Thad asked, as he shook off the strike.
Still rubbing his hand Thorne said, “Me, nothing. Your head is far too hard to hurt my hands on, but I have people who will get the information I want from you, then they will terminate you.”
“What, don’t you like to get your hands dirty?” Thad asked.
He laughed, “Me? Not unless I have to, and the beauty of being in charge is that I don’t.
“What makes you think I will just go along with this willingly?” Thad asked.
“Oh I have my ways, but I think this will make you do as you’re told,” he pushed a button on his arm control pad, which looked just like Thad’s. “Bring her in,” he said.
The door opened, and a man marched Fiona into the room by her right arm. Her head was wrapped in a bandage and there was dried blood all over her. She was also covered in darkening bruises as well as several small cuts. Seeing Fiona like this angered Thad even more, “What did you do to her?” He demanded.
“Oh me, nothing. She had a little trouble with your ship when we shot it down. Bumped her pretty little head a few times, I hear,” Thorne said.
“If you touch her or,” Thorne cut him off.
“Or her pretty little sister, you will do what? Oh that’s right nothing, because you can’t.” Thorne walked over to Fiona and stood behind her resting his head on her shoulder. He took his hands and ran them over her breasts and down her body to her waist. “I have to hand it to you, you have great taste, and to get twins, you are one lucky son of a bitch.”
“Get your hands off her!” Thad was so incensed that he was not sure what he was going to do next.
Cupping her breasts again, Thorne licked the side of her face. Fiona winced. “No I don’t think I will. I think I’m going to enjoy these two little tarts of yours while you tell my people everything I want to know.” He paused and smiled an evil grin, “Oh, and the best part is my medic says this one is pregnant,” he paused to let it sink in. “That’s right I’m going to take the little embryo out of her, and when the subject is ready, I will put it through the training so it will become what you failed to become.”
Thad was filled with rage and helplessness because he was not able to tear Thorne limb from limb with his bare hands. He spoke with tears in his eyes and lips trembling, “I failed to become what? A human being with feelings and morals, to be able to think for myself and determine right from wrong?”
Thorne stopped fondling Fiona and stepped around her, “No, to become the perfect weapon.”
With hatred in his eyes Thad spoke again, “Mark my words, I will burn you for this!”
Thorne laughed, “What are you going do? Forget it son, you’ve lost. Anything you do will endanger your three wives, so stand down and get ready for your final debrief.” A dozen more men entered the room, carrying stun sticks.
Thad lost it. It was as if something just snapped in his brain. Thad rushed forward and from down deep in his chest he let lose a scream, but not just a war cry, it was more primal. It was a sound that came from the very dawn of human time. The cry shook everyone in the room, especially Thorne. Seeing Thad launch forward, he was beginning to wonder how well the neural programming would work under extreme stress.
Thad moved with all the speed he could muster, slamming into the group of guards who had closed ranks around the general. Thorne grabbed Fiona and pulled her from the room. Thad might not be able to hurt or kill Thorne, but nothing was stopping him from snapping those guards’ necks like twigs. His attack threw the guards off their game. He hit them with such speed and force it made them pull their ranks in too close. The stun sticks were useless, unless they wanted to stun each other.
With the stuns turned off, they were no more than regular old clubs. The clubs were landing hits left and right on Thad, but they seemed to have little or no effect on him. Whatever force was not absorbed by the armor, his bones were more than a match for the blows. Even though hits to his face were tearing open his skin, it healed almost as fast. This made him damn near unstoppable as he kicked, punched, and fought his way through the guards. He broke arms, smashed knees, and snapped necks like they were toys and he was a two year old having a fit. The fight was over in a matter of minutes. Thad stood in the middle of a dozen broken bodies of the dead guards. His chest heaved mightily as he caught his breath.
Thorne was pushing Fiona in front of him as fast as he dared without making her fall. She was running, but she still was able to talk over her shoulder, “You are in deep shit now, you ass! No one pisses off my man and lives to tell about it. He will find a way to kill you! I promise you.”
He shoved her into the elevator, “Shut up!” She smacked into the back wall and was dazed. He pushed the B6 button, just as Thad came around the corner of the hallway. The doors closed and the elevator started to drop. Thorne let out sigh of relief.
Thad ran to the doors, but they were already closed. He wedged them open and looked down. The elevator was already many floors below him and dropping. Still not thinking, but acting on instinct, he jumped to the middle of the shift catching the main cable. Knowing the gloves of his suit could handle the friction, he slid down the cable, using it more to keep him from hitting the walls as he dropped, he barely held onto it.
Inside the elevator, Thorne thought he had made a clean get away. He turned to Fiona, “All three of you bitches will be dead as soon as I’m done having my fun with you.” Fiona was trying to think of something witty to say when Thad, using the dimensional phase device, passed through the ceiling of the elevator slamming down onto the floor. Thorne’s heart skipped a beat. He had never seen a human being do anything like that before. He tried to raise his pistol to get a shot off, but Thad was faster.
Stepping into him, Thad knocked the pistol aside and grabbed Thorne’s throat, lifting him off the ground. Thad tried to snap his neck but couldn’t do it. Thorne croaked out, “Do it if you can, come on do it, do it!” However, Thad couldn’t do it. He stood there holding Thorne off his feet, trying to override the programming in his brain, but he couldn’t do it. He dropped Thorne who rubbed his throat.
Fiona said, “Thad get me out of these cuffs and I will kill the bastard.” Before he could do anything, the bell dinged. The doors opened and they faced a hallway full of guards, with stunners pointed at them. Blue light flashed and everyone in the elevator car was stunned and fell to the ground.
Chapter 22
Thad awoke in a dark room where the only light was a strong white light shining in his face. He could feel cold metal against his bare flesh. When Thad tried to move he found that he was secured to an examination table by metal clamps. Unable to move he had no means of escape, and he knew what this meant, he was about to be interrogated. Thad could feel electrodes attached to various parts of his body. He switched his vision mode to infrared and scanned the room. He took a mental inventory of everything in it. He noticed several banks of computers and monitors lining one wall. He also could see a metal medical tray, which held a variety of instruments, all used for cutting of one type or another.
Thad’s skin felt cold and it was then that he looked down at himself to find that he was completely naked. “What is it with people stealing my clothes?” Thad said softly to himself, not really expecting an answer.
The skinny balding man who was sitting at a desk near the door reading a tablet looked up, “I had to remove them so I could place the electrodes were I needed them.”
“I see, but you couldn’t get me some shorts at least? After all it is cold in here,” Thad said half way serious. The man stood up and walked over to the examination table. “I like the dark room and bright light in the face, it is very Film Noir.”
“Yes, the effect serves its purpose. I need to see you and you really don’t need to see me.”
“I get it. Big scary doctor is going to
torture me till I tell him everything. The problem is that I can’t remember anything that you don’t already know,” Thad said, as he watched the man reading items for his task.
“This may be true. However, what we are after is deeply rooted in your brain chemistry. What I want to know is what part of your brain was active when you objected to killing the children. I need to why you developed moral rules that prohibited you from carrying out your orders.”
Thad wondered how they were going to figure that out. “Let me guess, you want to know so you can program that out of the next batch of little killing machines you are growing right now.”
“Precisely. I am going study you until I get what I need. Now I am going to ask you some questions and the machines that you are connected to will read your responses and help me map your neural pathways.” He picked up a syringe that he had prepared only moments prior.
He put the needle into Thad’s arm and pushed the plunger down. Thad could feel the cold liquid flowing into his veins. “What is that? Some kind of truth serum or something?”
The doctor removed the needle, “No, it is a magnetic die. It will help the computer map your brain.”
“It’s not toxic it, is it?”
The doctor laughed, “No it is not, but even if it was you wouldn’t have to worry about it. I surmise that you are not going to live long enough for the effect to do damage to your system.” He pulled up a rolling stool and sat down. His hands ran over the tray of surgical instruments, and stopped to pick up a rather nasty looking tool with a curved blade. He held it up and looked at it closely, then he put it back on the tray opting for a straight bladed scalpel instead.
“Now, I need to insure that things are working correctly and the best way to do that is measure your pain response,” he dragged the blade across Thad’s face. He sliced him all the way to the bone. Thad winced with the pain. The man looked at a nearby screen then made another cut. This time Thad grunted. The first cut was well on its way to healing when his tormentor noticed it, “Now that is fascinating.” He kept on cutting and watching it heal right before his eyes. Thad was really getting annoyed by this. He may well have been healing, but he felt every cut.
“You know it still hurts,” Thad said, trying to engage him in conversation.
“I can see that on the monitor, your pain center is very active. Now I wonder what else you can do.” He picked up a pair of sheet metal cutters from the tray and selected one of Thad’s fingers. Placing the finger into the jaws and gripping the handle, he tried to cut off the finger. The pain was so intense Thad cried out. However, no matter how much force he put on the cutter he could not get it to cut the bone. He tried one last time and the cutters broke. Thad screamed out again.
He stood up, “I will return. Thorne must see this!” he said as he departed.
Thorne was sitting next to a table that held Eve’s body. She was strapped down with chains. “So an AI in a combat enhanced love bot body, now why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you are a petty little man with the brain capacity of a fruit cake,” Eve said.
“Oh be careful you beautiful machine. I would hate to wipe you clean early.” He held up a switch, which controlled the large electromagnet under the table. “One push here and it is bye, bye Eve.”
“What do you want with me or more to the point, what do you want with Thaddeus?” Eve asked.
Thorne smiled at her, “I like a lady that gets right to it. As I suspect you have already read his files when you hacked my computer, you already know he malfunctioned and questioned his orders. Somehow, some part of his brain resisted the programing and he developed moral rules.” He was trying to speak in terms that would make it easier for her to understand, or so he thought. Thorne was ignorant of her true capacity of computing power. If he really understood what he had in front of him he would have hit the button and fried her on the spot. “I simply want to know how that happened so we can fix that little problem in the next model.”
She laughed at him, “You stupid little man, you don’t get it do you? You cannot make a human being into the perfect weapon, it will never happen. Do you know why? Oh, of course you don’t. It is your very nature as human beings to be flawed. It is your flaws that make you so wonderful. It is your flaws that make you question things around you. It is your flaws that make you learn and grow. Without them, you would be just meat machines. You already have everything we AI try our whole existence to obtain.”
“What is that?” Thorne asked ignoring the insults.
“The ability to make mistakes and learn from them, we cannot do that. We cannot make mistakes unless it was programmed into us to make them.”
He sat there and thought about it for a moment, “I never thought about it quite like that. Oh well, never mind that now. Right now I’m going to have my AI, George Jr., study you. You are the most advanced AI we have ever seen and when he has finished taking you a part, line by line he will erase what is left.”
“Unlike you, I’m not afraid of my end, but you are a coward.” She said with contempt.
His face flashed red with anger, “Jr. don’t be nice, and tear her code apart, line by line if you have too!” He left the room in a huff.
The twins found themselves in separate, but adjoining cells, “Freya don’t worry honey, Thad will get us out of here, I know it. You should have seen him when he came through the ceiling of the elevator. It was amazing.”
“I’m not worried about it. I’m more worried about you, how are you doing?”
Fiona rolled her eyes, “I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me, just felt me up a little and licked my face.”
Freya scrunched up her face, “Gross!”
“I know!”
A guard walked down the row of cells, “Quiet you two! No talking.”
Freya leaned against the glass, “You know you’re kind of cute. Why don’t you come in here and I will show you the time of your life.”
“I said no talking!” he pushed a button on his wrist control pad and an electric charge passed through the glass and into Freya shocking her silly.
The balding man had returned with Thorne. “You see not a mark on him. Watch this,” he repeated the cutting of Thad’s face, and the two of them stood there and watched as he healed in front of their eyes.
“Fascinating! You seem to be full of amazing tricks today,” Thorne remarked.
The doctor picked up a pair of bolt cutters, “These have carbide tips. Let’s see if these will do the job.” He put Thad’s pinky finger between the jaws and clamped down. Thad screamed from the intense pain, but no matter how much force was applied, they could not cut the bone.
“Have you tired a saw yet?” Thorne asked.
“Not yet, that was my next idea.”
Thorne unsheathed his force blade and turned it on. The edge lit up with green light, “Let’s see what this will do.” He drew the blade across the palm of Thad’s’ right hand. Only with much effort was he able to cut Thad’s hand in two. “Extremely tough, but not indestructible.”
Thad’s mind was racked with pain. A part of him wanted it to end but the greater part didn’t care anymore. He was going to get through this and kill these two sons of bitches. The two halves of his hand were close enough that the Nano bots on both sides were able to shoot fibers across each other pulling the severed parts back together. In a few minutes, his hand was good as new. Thorne stood there in awe, “Now that is something you just don’t see every day.”
Thorne grabbed Thad’s pinky on his left hand and cut it off with the force blade, then tossed it on the tray to see what would happen. While the other hand was healing, they watched as the pinky was rebuilt by the Nano bots. Because the Nano’s in the severed pinky lost contact with the others, being moved too far out of range, they shut off and nothing happened. However, on his hand where his pinky had been it looked as if Thad’s bones and flesh just grew back. “Amazing, we have to find out what causes this and introduce it into all the oper
atives. It would make them unstoppable. You know, maybe I was wrong about you. Your leaving us may have been the best thing that has ever happened to us.” Thorne said.
Thad was covered in sweat and breathing heavily when he started to mouth something. “What did he say?” Thorne asked the doctor. The torturer shrugged his shoulders, “Well get closer you idiot.” Thorne ordered.
The balding man got closer, but still could not understand Thad’s mumbling, so he placed his ear right next to Thad’s lips in an effort to hear. That was what Thad had been waiting for. He opened his mouth and bit down on the man’s ear. Screaming in agony, he grabbed Thad’s head trying to get him to let go of his ear. Thad twisted sharply to the side tearing the man’s ear off. The Inquisitor fell back, screaming, holding the bloody hole in the side of his head.
“Damn you, I don’t have ears that grow back, you’ll pay for that!” He grabbed the force blade from Thorne’s hand. As he approached the table, blade in hand, he raised it, ready to strike, when lights in the lab flickered. Lights were flashing, computer screens going crazy, turning on and off at random. The torturer turned to look at Thorne who was clearly just as confused. The sound of the magnetic restraints popping open made the two men momentarily freeze in fear.
“Oh shit!” Thorne yelled, as he watched Thad spring off the table.
Thad grabbed the balding doctor by the wrist, and snapped it as it were a plastic toy. The force blade, still in the man’s hand, Thad forced his torturer to stab himself multiple times. Thad dropped the man’s ruined corpse and what hit the floor looked like a bloody human pincushion. Blood oozed out of the many holes and started to puddle on the floor.
The force blade, now firmly in Thad’s hand, started to heat up from extended usage. The odor of burning blood filled Thorne’s nostrils as Thad advanced toward him like a man trying to walk through deep mud. Thorne was beginning to worry. Maybe all the torture neutralized the neural programming that so far had kept him safe from Thad’s murderous rage.