Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One - Four years ago
Chapter Two - Present day
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Acknowledgements
Subject Seven
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2011 James A. Moore All rights reserved
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For Chris and Connie, for their kids, whom I adore, Nicholas and Daniel and Lily. For John McIlveen and his lovely daughters, who never fail to make me smile. For Megan Krezel and Marley Peebles and Chuck Bernath and Phyllis Martin and Larry Oliver and Arthur Cabral. For Victtor, and Monica and Kristen. For Tom and Jose and Graham and Peggy and Kevin. Every last one of you has been with me in person or in spirit as I have moved through one of the hardest journeys in my entire life and I cannot thank you enough. I could list a hundred other names. You know who you are. For Kelli and Bob, thanks a million!
Lastly, for Bonnie, whom I love and miss with every beat of my heart.
Prelude Five years ago
Subject Seven
THE QUIET OF THE compound was almost complete. Three in the morning was always a time of silence. Almost everyone had gone home, and even the few that were still working tended to keep to themselves and whisper when they spoke. There was something about Subject Seven that made them want to be quiet.
Down in his cage, Subject Seven lay curled in a tight ball, his body aching from the latest batch of tests.
His skin was growing back. He’d almost healed, and the pain had become manageable. That was good because he was finished with the compound, whether or not his keepers knew it.
Seven had learned something new, you see, something that changed everything about his world. He had learned about his Other.
He opened his eyes and listened carefully, though there was almost nothing to hear. The steady beeping of his heart monitor was the only constant in his world. They seldom spoke to him.
When they did, it was to ask him if something hurt, or if they were feeling particularly ambitious, they’d ask him to explain the pain. He bared his teeth and heard his pulse rate increase on the monitor. What does it feel like to have your skin peeled back, Seven? Does it hurt when we touch your exposed nerves with these electric probes?
The room was ten feet wide, ten feet long, and seven feet high. Three cameras watched him. He couldn’t even take a piss without someone watching and recording every action.
The Other could, of course. The Other was given everything he wanted. When he was hungry, he ate; when he was bored, he watched television—and he had people to talk to who were nice and gentle and gave him a soft bed to sleep in. Just thinking about the Other made him angry. He hated the Other even more than he hated the ones who tortured him. The Other lived in a wonderful world, far above the compound where Seven was made to live.
That was about to change.
One deep breath to calm himself. He heard his pulse slow down.
He closed his eyes, focused himself, and then pulled the sensor tabs from his flesh. He once heard someone say that his sensors had been inserted “subcutaneously.” He’d asked what that word meant and the tech had pointed to his sensors and explained that meant they’d been implanted under his skin, just as they had been with all of the subjects.
Good to know. He liked learning new things.
He winced as the sensors ripped free and left bleeding wounds on his flesh. The heart monitor went crazy a second later, beeping frantically to let him know that his heart had stopped. He reached up and swatted the closest camera. It shattered and the broken glass from the lens drew still more blood.
The heart monitor stopped beeping when he used the heavy base to shatter the other two cameras. Then the sirens started sounding and ruined whatever rest anyone at the facility might have been getting.
His room was almost indestructible. So instead of trying to punch his way through the solid concrete above his head, he reached up and pulled himself into a corner of the ceiling, his arms and legs straining hard as he braced himself. His muscles shook but held as he stared down at the doorway and waited patiently.
Two minutes and seventeen seconds passed before Dirk opened the door. Dirk was massive. He was six feet, seven inches in height with the physique of a bodybuilder. He was one of the few who could subdue Subject Seven. Seven knew all about Dirk’s combat training and time in the marines. Dirk liked to brag about what he’d accomplished in his life, especially when he was dragging Seven back to his room after the latest batch of experiments, before the sedatives wore off.
Sometimes, just to make sure that Seven knew who was in charge, he’d punch Seven in the stomach or slam his “riot stick” across Seven’s temple and drop him to his knees. He always told Seven why, too. He’d look right at Seven, shake h
is head and smile and say, “That’s just to let you know who the boss is, you little shit.”
Seven waited until Dirk looked around the room and then raised his eyes toward the ceiling before he dropped down on top of him. Dirk was wearing his security outfit and his hand was reaching for the rubber-coated metal club he called his “riot stick” when Seven landed.
“You lost your mind, kid? What the hell are you doing?” Dirk’s voice was not as calm as it usually was. He sounded like he wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but was trying to hide his fear.
Sometimes Seven talked to his captors, but never to Dirk. He didn’t feel any reason to change that agenda now. Instead he opened his mouth and lunged, his teeth tearing into the meat of Dirk’s neck and shoulder.
The guard screamed then, a loud, shrill wail of panic almost as braying as the alarm sirens that were still shrieking away.
Dirk pulled his club free from the holster. Seven reached out, capturing the hand and the club alike. He pulled as hard as he could and Dirk resisted, fought back until Seven bit down again, this time on his face.
The blood was hot, salty and thick as it spilled into his mouth and painted a beard over his lower face. Dirk screamed again and thrashed under him, and for the first time in his life, Seven smiled.
Dirk let go of the club to cover his wounded neck and face with his hands. It was instinct, really, an attempt to stop the pain from getting any worse. Seven snorted past the blood covering his mouth and nose—the closest he’d ever come to laughter—and swung the club around in a brutal arc. His first blow cracked the side of Dirk’s skull like an egg. The second swing spilled out what passed for a yolk in Dirk’s shell.
Dirk stopped moving, stopped screaming, stopped living.
Seven looked at the open doorway and ran, swinging his club, screaming his anger as he charged past the threshold.
There was another guard, one he had seen but who had never actually spoken to him. The man’s eyes flew wide with fear, and Seven smiled for real for the second time as he broke the metal club over the man’s head.
His body hurt, the wounds he’d received earlier in the day were halfway healed, but the flashes of pain were almost impossible to ignore.
Vivisection. That was the word for what they had done to him earlier when they were testing his reflexes and his threshold for pain. He would have to look up the proper definition someday.
First, however, he needed to escape the compound.
They came from all over the place, men in guard outfits, some of them not fully dressed, not even really awake, and others sporting their guns, clubs like the one he had just discarded.
They came for him with only one purpose: to stop him from escaping.
He did not want to be stopped. Would not be stopped. He roared as they came toward him and jumped at the closest of them in the narrow hallway. The man tried to back up, to get away, but not this time. There would be no turning back now. He’d killed some of them and they would never forgive him.
Seven pushed with all of his strength and the man lifted off the ground and bowled into the guards behind him. They fell as one, trying to regain their balance—and failing.
He felt the anger grow in his heart, a white-hot blaze that was as bright as the sun he had only seen in pictures. They tried to get up, to stand, to defend themselves, but he did not allow it. He reached for them, grabbing and pulling and clawing and biting, his hands and fists crashing down again and again.
And his enemies? They bled and they broke and they begged and they died.
When he was done smashing the men who tried to stop him, he looked up and saw that the hallway was empty except for him.
He should have been happy. Instead he found himself wondering how he would leave the building that had been his home for most of his life.
He was not foolish. He knew that the people around him lived outside of the compound. They spoke of places they had been, of houses and apartments and different locations. But knowing that those places existed was like understanding that there were other planets in the solar system. It was a matter of faith in the world beyond what he had seen.
His Other had seen different places, hadn’t he? He thought so but wasn’t sure.
Seven shook his head and pushed the thoughts away. There were doors. One of them would lead him out into the real world. He’d have to keep opening them until he found the right one.
Evelyn Hope
IF ANYONE HAD ASKED Evvy Hope how she felt, she’d have told them that she was in love and happier than she had ever been. She’d come to the Janus Project straight from Haverhill University, when the project was little more than a think tank designed to come up with new concepts, and though she had lived and breathed around the notion of making everything work for the company, she had also managed the impossible when she met and married Tom.
Thomas Hope was tall, dark and handsome. He was also caring, sweet, funny and intelligent. He had everything that she wanted in a man, and they spent years with both of them pretending that the feelings they had toward each other didn’t exist before he finally got the nerve to ask her out on a date.
That had been years ago now, and they’d been married for a decade. Ten wonderful, amazing years.
They worked together, of course. There wasn’t much chance of either of them ever meeting anyone outside of Janus because the work was too involved to let them go out and have real lives.
Especially now. They’d been working for years, but the latest results from their tests seemed positive, wonderfully, almost magically successful. Six months, maybe a year, and they’d know for sure. That was one problem with a life of scientific study: you could never move too quickly or you risked missing something important.
But all she had to do was look at Subject Seven to know that it was worth it. If Tom hadn’t been smart enough to insist on keeping a few of the subjects for additional study, they’d have never realized how close they were to success. Because of Tom’s forethought and brilliance, they had proceeded with similar experiments, and now look at where they were.
A flutter ran through her stomach. There were complications, of course, the most significant of which was bleed over—a beguiling problem that the Janus scientists were working night and day to solve. Subject Four and Subject Nine had both begun to experience memories that didn’t belong to them—recollections that should have been impossible under the circumstances. Subject Four had described the bedroom she stayed in outside of the compound with startling detail and accuracy. The house she’d lived in was just two houses down in the cul-de-sac. Too close to home for comfort.
The compound was a necessity for their experiments, and the subdivision was the perfect disguise. Ten houses with ten families, each one connected to the project. Ten little family units on top hid the facility the houses rested on, like a prison hidden under their homes. There was only one access point into the facility in each house, of course, and that was only used when they were taking subjects from their homes to the laboratories. Her eyes looked toward the concealed entrance to the tunnel. It was at the end of the hallway off their living room, hidden in the back of a coat closet. Sometimes she almost felt like cheating and taking the shortcut to work, but that was a no-no. Bobby might figure something out, and she never wanted that to happen. If Bobby felt the bleed over, he’d have to be removed from her life and she never wanted that. Despite everything, he was like a son to her now. She couldn’t allow him to go away. Not ever.
She sighed and rose from the couch in her living room. Tom was working the graveyard shift. He had a few experiments he needed to take care of, a few more tests on Seven that were necessary to fully understand his recuperative abilities. Seven healed better than they’d expected. Not true regeneration, perhaps, but still a very accelerated rate of recovery and almost no scars to show that he had ever been injured. It was remarkable. And had the potential to be very, very profitable.
She moved toward the kitchen. She needed to brew a l
ittle coffee, and then get ready for work. Tom would be coming home, and she would be taking the car straight back to the compound only a few minutes after that. Before then she wanted to make him a decent breakfast and set herself up with lunch. There was nothing in the cafeteria that appealed to her, and even if there were, none of what they offered would be good for her waistline.
She had just reached the kitchen when her cell phone buzzed. She frowned and looked at the wall clock. Three thirty in the morning. No one would call her at home unless there was something wrong.
“Hello?”
Tom’s voice was tired but cheerful. “Hi, Evvy! I’m on my way home early. I didn’t want to scare you half to death like last time.” His voice carried a note of amusement. He was referring to the time he came home while she was still sleeping and tried to sneak into the room without waking her. Evvy kept a stun gun and a baseball bat on her side of the bed. Luckily for Tom, she’d gone for the stun gun and he’d backed away before she could shock him senseless. They’d both had a laugh about it, but they also understood the risks of living right above the compound.
“So how long until you get home?” She was hoping they could have some time to themselves. That almost never happened when Bobby was around. He was a dear, but he was also almost always underfoot.
“Look out the window.” She turned and stared just as his headlights appeared in the driveway. Her face lit up. She loved Tom with all of her heart. Evvy was about to go outside to greet him when her phone rang again. This was a different ring tone. This was the tone that meant someone from the compound was calling.
The call ruined her chance of spending any time with Tom. She hung up, raced out to the car and took the keys from Tom. She could see his handgun on the passenger’s seat. She nodded to herself, glad of the weapon. If something had gone seriously wrong . . .
“You want me to come with you?” Tom asked hesitantly. He wanted to be with her, of course, but he was deeply tired and had no desire to go back to work.
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