Implant

by J. Grace Pennington

  His heart thumped at the sound of three little words, spoken below.

  “What was that?”

  Afraid that even a slight rustle of his shirt would attract attention, he looked down from his perch. He suppressed a shiver as he saw a dark-suited goon standing right below him.

  He closed his eyes and kept very, very still.

  He focused his attention on the silicone rubbing uncomfortably against his skin, and the strips of cloth digging into his back. That glove represented the entire operation, their only hope of success. Feeling it there eased his heartbeat.

  He craned his neck carefully to look down again. The man had not moved on.

  Gordon balanced on the pipes, gritting his teeth until they ground together. One sighting from the goon, and all would be ruined.

  His fingers tightened around the pipe, and he kept his eyes on the man, who was looking from side to side. At last he shrugged and walked to a door on the side of the corridor, vanishing through it.

  Gordon let out the breath he’d been holding. Not losing a moment, he continued inching along the pipe again, looking ahead to the Control Center door. Just a few yards away now.

  A voice below made his heart thump against his ribs again, and he wrapped both arms around the rusty pipe to keep his balance. He jammed his eyes closed as his stomach churned slowly. Severe anemics should never get involved in adventures.

  Footsteps passed beneath him. He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes.

  A door opened and closed, and the footsteps were gone, but his heart didn’t stop its frantic pace.

  He opened his eyes. The pipe stretched out ahead of him.

  Then it quivered and fluttered.

  His arms shook, and his head spun. He couldn’t make it there. It wasn’t possible.

  In his mind’s eye he saw Doc’s pale, dead face and felt the clasp of his fingers again.

  Digging his fingernails into the rust, he threw himself forward.

  The motion loosened his left boot’s grip on the pipe and it slid down, leaving his leg hanging off the perch. His body tried to follow.

  “No!” he cried, his frenzied mind disregarding the fact that someone might hear. He tried to force his arm muscles to go taut; to tighten until his arms were steel rods encircling the pipe. But they felt more like jelly.

  His stomach scraped the pipe as his body slipped down, pressing the silicone tighter against his skin. He’d have to drop now. He didn’t have time to consider it. He needed to let go while he could still control how he fell.

  The world shook like an earthquake, but he focused on the steel slats below and mentally projected his body onto them. He’d have to land on his side, letting his shoulder take the brunt of the fall.

  Using the last bit of strength left in his arms, he flung himself up and let go of the pipe. For an instant he fell, conscious of the relief of tension in his shoulders, then pain cracked into his shoulder, and his teeth scraped against each other in an attempt to stop a scream. His hip hit a grate, and the ache from the marrow biopsy spread through it like fire, crackling over his pelvis and into his back. One knee knocked into a space between the steel mesh, then his head dropped gently onto the slats, and he lay still.

  He breathed. The scent of rust coupled with refuse filled his nostrils for a moment, then the smell faded from his mind as his bones punished him. He just wanted to lie there, no matter how uncomfortable the grate was.

  But he couldn’t. He had to make it into the building before anyone saw and stopped him.

  Arms shaking, he pushed himself up and to his feet. He kept trembling as he darted over the last few yards of the grate and to the door of the Control Center.

  A dozen quick steps brought him to the fateful door, and he stopped, panting, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder and back. He wasn’t fooled by the keypad just to the right of the smooth, metal surface. A wry smile crossed his face as he thrust his shaking arms under his shirt to untie the strips and bring out their hard-earned “key.”

  He tried to steady his hands as he worked the knot. Neil had tied it knowing it would need to be unfastened quickly, and it gave way in a few seconds. Holding the strips tightly with one hand, he moved the other around to grasp the glove before letting the strips go.

  The whir of a car starting nearby made him jump, and his left hand jerked. The strips dropped, and the silicone slipped down down his skin.

  Hurrying his right arm around to catch it, he tried to stop a shudder from running through him. In slow motion, his chest heaved, the front of his shirt moved away from his belly, and the glove slipped away from him, dropping with ease to the grate below.

  No. His hands followed it, also in slow motion, but it moved faster than he could. With surprising weight, it plummeted neatly into a space between the slats.

  No!

  In one second, it was past. The glove had fit into the hole, and disappeared in the slime below.

  Gone. Their only key to the Control Room, the precious handprint they’d begged, stolen, and fought for.

  For an instant he couldn’t move. His thoughts froze. Their last hope, gone. How could he have been so clumsy!

  Think, Gordon, think. You’ve been here before. Isn’t there any other way in? Any way at all?

  Doc had said something— “There are two doors in, but only one door out.”

  He stiffened. Doc hadn’t meant literal doors, had he?

  He understood now what the other door was. But—he couldn’t take that door. He couldn’t. The whole reason they’d brought him was because of the advantage his lack of Implant gave.

  Did that really matter now?

  He closed his eyes for a moment.

  Then, standing up straight, he strode away from the door and into the open corridor. He planted himself in the middle of the pathway, legs far apart, fists on his hips, shaking.

  And he waited.

  After a moment, the squeal of rusty hinges betrayed his nervousness. He jumped, then forced himself to breathe slowly as a black-suited man emerged in front of him.

  “Gordon!” the man exclaimed. He glanced around.

  Tanner.

  Gordon relaxed ever so slightly. This would be easier with someone he knew. “I need to see the Head,” he demanded.

  “Are you insane?” Tanner hissed, hurrying towards him. “How did you get here? I thought you were dead.”

  “That’s what you were supposed to think. Please, just tell the Head I need to speak with him.”

  “But—but…” He lowered his voice. “They’ll…”

  “Tanner, I know what they’ll do to me! Please, please just tell him I need to speak with him!”

  Tanner stared into his eyes, then nodded slowly. “He won’t see you though.”

  “I think he will. Tell him my name.”

  “This way.” Beckoning with his sidearm, Tanner led the way to a dingy intercom on the wall next to the Control Center door. He entered a code, then started to press the transmit button before hesitating and turning to look over his shoulder at Gordon. “Are you sure…”

  “Do it!”

  Tanner pressed the button. “Inner Sanctum, please.”

  “One moment,” came a static-fogged voice. Then, “You’re connected now.”

  Tanner spoke slowly. “This is B-guard Tanner Robinson. Gordon Harding wants to see you.”

  There were several seconds of silence. Then an obviously computer-altered voice spoke back. “Send him up.”

  The sound of a door sliding open a few feet away drew Gordon’s attention. Yes—the door they’d been trying to get open for the past week. He felt in his pocket for the rigged detonator. Yes, it was safely there. He wouldn’t lose that. He tapped the other pocket. The slight bulge of the device reassured him.

  He started towards the open door. Tanner caught the back of his jacket. “Be careful.”

  “Thanks.” Pulling away, Gordon walked to the door. He paused when he reached it, glanced back at Tanner, and stepped
over the threshold.

  The door swished shut instantly.

  Goosebumps tickled over him.

  A green light cast over the metallic hall, which was barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. Wires formed uneven patterns over the walls, disappearing below the floor and up into the shadows.

  “Walk until you reach an elevator,” the computerized voice ordered, echoing through the hallway.

  He obeyed, wanting to walk slowly, but forcing himself to be quick. A bend in the passage brought him to a small elevator without a door, more of a large dumbwaiter.

  “Get in and ride to the seventh floor,” the echoing voice ordered, and he stepped in, found the clean, white button imprinted with a seven, and pressed it. The elevator started upward with a jerk.

  As they approached level seven, he watched the light gradually go from green to white with each floor. When the lift shuddered to a stop, he looked out at the hall that stretched away in both directions in front of him before stepping out.

  These corridors were much larger, bright white, and the walls were plain white metal. They curved slightly, and he realized they went in a large circle. Was the Inner Sanctum in the middle?

  As if in answer to his thoughts, the voice spoke again. “Turn to the right and walk until you come to a door. It will open automatically.”

  He hesitated. He was inside. Shouldn’t he set the firing sequence now? But the voice clearly knew where he was. The Head must be able to see him. He’d be caught.

  Anticipation building in his stomach, he turned to the right and walked down the curved hall. After several feet it dead-ended, and a door opened to his left on the inner wall. As he studied it, it slid upward on its own, like something from an old sci-fi movie.

  Taking a deep, trembling breath, he stepped into an enormous, circular room. The top and part of one side were a transparent dome, looking westward towards the rebel base. The rest of the walls were covered with controls. Buttons, switches, screens, displays, sliders—it overwhelmed him just looking at it all.

  The windowed wall had a wide black panel beneath the glass, also covered with controls. A huge black cushioned chair on a track that went all around the room was turned away from Gordon in the center of the window.

  Just as he had taken all this in, the chair turned. Gordon’s stomach tightened. Who was this mysterious person who no one but Doc and Dagny Dalton were allowed to see? This person who single-handedly controlled the entire planet by means of the tiny Implant?

  As the chair came to face him fully, he sensed a familiar scent, bland but strong.

  He stared. It was a woman.

  She looked to be in her early forties, with blonde hair, untinged with gray, falling over her white lab coat. Her features were delicate, and her figure girlishly slender.

  “Hello, Gordon,” she smiled.

  His breath caught in his throat. His lungs constricted. It couldn’t be. But there was no mistaking that face.

  Allison.

  Chapter Eleven

  “It’s so good to see you again. You look well.” Allison smiled as she spoke.

  Gordon didn’t move. He tried to take in the facts.

  “I’m sorry to hear about—well, your death,” she went on smiling. “Really a sad, sad shame. I’d suspected you for awhile though, and I suppose it’s better this way.”

  He swallowed, then choked out the words, “Allison, what are you doing?”

  “I’m wondering very much how you got here. I suppose it has something to do with that extremely frustrating Dr. Neil Crater. He’s just full of ideas.” She sighed and shook her head.

  “No, no,” he shook his head in rapid, jerking motions. “I mean what are you doing? Have you lost your mind? What—what…”

  He couldn’t even figure out how to ask all that he was wondering. Allison, taking over the world? Never in his wildest dreams had he thought—

  “Oh, you mean this.” She gestured to all the controls and monitors that covered the spectacular room.

  “Yes.” He clenched his jaw and stared her straight in the face.

  Her expression shifted from sweetly taunting to dark bitterness. “You ought to know better than anyone else on the face of the planet, Gordon Harding. You were at school with me. You saw how they all mocked me, all day, every day, year by year, all my life—until an angel or a god would have gone mad! You were there the day they tortured me about my job, and you were punished with me just because you asked them to stop! And they’re all alike. They don’t understand us.”

  “But Allison…”

  “Don’t you even dare ‘but Allison’ me! That’s all you’ve done from the very beginning. ‘But Allison, just try to be patient.’ ‘But Allison, they at least deserve a choice!’ No they don’t. Anyone self-centered enough not to take advantage of what others can only dream of doesn’t deserve anything.”

  “Well, one more time won’t hurt you,” he growled, and for a flash of a second, he was Doc. “But, Allison, don’t you realize you’re just doing the same thing back to them? Only worse?”

  “That’s the whole idea! You think I was going to sit by and see that grinning idiot, Darnell Bixby, become president of the United States of America while I rotted away at a glorified desk job? I don’t think so.”

  Gordon had too many questions to ask. How had she gotten to be the Head of the Academy? Was it because of her father’s position? And when had that thing snapped in her that turned her introspective timidity into controlling tyranny?

  “If you think you’re going to change my mind now, you’ve got quite another thought coming, Doctor Harding,” she barked. “You just…” She stopped herself. “Stop tricking me!” she ordered. “You’re not Doc. You’re just pathetic little Gordon Harding.”

  He stood his ground and stared her in the eye. “Allison Greer, your father would be ashamed of you. He wanted…”

  “Don’t even mention my father to me. He was as bad as the rest. You, my coworkers, everybody.”

  “But I tried to be kind to you, Allison! Your father loved you, and you said yourself…”

  “Some love,” she growled. “None of you would ever touch me. Not so much as a pat on the shoulder. Under it all, you all only pitied me.”

  He was shaken out of his sternness, and the nausea made him tremble again. “But Allison… we all thought you didn’t want to be touched!”

  “That’s not the point!” She gripped the arms of her black chair and leaned forward. “It doesn’t matter how painful it might have been, I needed that! And none of you ever gave it to me. Ever.”

  Gordon closed his eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath. His mission. He couldn’t let his reeling mind distract him from it. Time was running out. How could he distract Allison so he could set the firing sequence?

  “The last straw?” she went on, “The very last straw? It was such a straw as would have broken an elephant’s back.” She leaned further forward and spoke hoarsely. “Through all the innovations and improvements, through all the versions and the tests, there was only one major set of conditions those Implants were never able to cure. Can you guess?”

  Gordon could, but he just shook his head.

  “Neurodevelopmental disorders. Like Down’s syndrome. Like ADD. Like, oh say for example, autism!” She spat the word out and sat back in her chair. “And I won’t rest until it can cure all of us, too. How dare they be so ungrateful? They think they can just bully us and then reject the health that’s free to anyone except us? So no, they don’t deserve a choice. They deserve whatever they get.”

  Pulling himself up to his full height, Gordon took a couple steps towards her. After giving her a glare, he pulled back his hand and slapped her, just hard enough to sting without really hurting her.

  She cried out and turned her face away.

  Not giving himself time to think, he raised his fist to try to knock her out. Even now he didn’t want to do it; he didn’t want to hurt her. But he steeled himself, knowing that h
e had to do it to accomplish his mission.

  But she gripped his wrist with more strength than he’d guessed she had and shoved him to his knees.

  Still holding his arm, she pulled a little green speaker from the console behind her and spoke into it. “Three medics up here, now. I want an Implanting done in the Upper Chamber.”

  Gordon leapt to his feet and reached for her again, but she caught up a long black stick from the arm of her chair and touched him with it. Electricity zapped through his body, and he found his limbs paralyzed. He froze, then dropped to the floor, powerless.

  A blithe laugh rang out above him.

  “I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by coming here, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to accomplish it.”

  A voice came from an intercom on the wall.

  “Sir, we’re ready to deactivate the rebel shield.”

  Gordon shuddered. Pain washed over his still-tingling body with the involuntary movement.

  Allison pressed a button behind her without taking her eyes off Gordon. “Go ahead, Mr. Annex. Alert me when you’re finished.”

  She took her finger off the button, and smiled at Gordon.

  He tried to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Instead he coughed, sending shivers down his back, and managed to suck in a gulp of air.

  “Dr. Harding,” she said in a business tone. “I have a proposal to make to you. You know as well as I do, perhaps better, what this means for your precious rebels.”

  “What do you want?” he gasped out. Life tingled back into his toes, but he still couldn’t move.

  “I want you to leave here, forget your plans. Go back, and I’ll promise to let the rebels keep their pitiful little lives.”

  Gordon shut his eyes.

  “Even that infuriating Neil Crater,” she smiled, as if reading his mind. “It’s a very simple thing, Gordon. Leave, and they live.”