The guard stepped back into the hallway, allowing Cade to leave my room. But it was more than that.
No matter what happened to him now, he’d left my life, not because they’d forced him to but because he chose to.
He had a choice.
And he didn’t choose me.
“Drake,” Parker said. “Your heart rate is elevated. If you’re afraid of the pain from the terminal, we can give you some morphine.”
I swallowed and blinked back at the blinking monitor facing me. “It won’t help.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“You never bothered trying anything at the Project,” I pointed out. “You knew it was torturing me, and you didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”
“I’ve told you before,” he said with that sickeningly patronizing voice, “that you need to be awake in order for the diagnostics to run properly. I have some concerns that any kind of substance that can alter your brain’s normal functions will impair the program’s ability to test your coding.”
A breathy laugh escaped my lips. “My coding,” I repeated. “That’s all I am, isn’t it? A series of 1s and 0s?”
“You’re far more complicated than binary coding,” Parker answered, like I’d been serious in the first place.
He pressed the port to my arm and I felt the magnets snap into place. And that’s when the tears finally formed. After all I’d done, after allowing myself to hope I’d secured my freedom, he’d brought me straight back to his control with one simple procedure. I was just a machine again.
Because, really, I’d never been anything else.
I blinked the tears away and Parker pretended not to notice. He sat in front of the computer and began clicking at the keys. I clenched my jaw, waiting for the searing pain that would travel through every nerve in my body as his program used them to communicate with the computer inside my head.
I didn’t have to wait long.
My fingers curled into fists and I strained against the straps that kept me tethered, but these bars wouldn’t break. Something else trickled down my forehead… sweat, I slowly realized. Parker’s voice became muffled as I drowned beneath that sea of pain. I tried to hold onto it, like a buoy amongst the rough waves, because I wanted to know what he’d find, how he’d reprogram me. As usual, I could only catch pieces.
“Override… cognitive… patch…”
I couldn’t even guess what those words had in common. I gave up. I surrendered to the pain and just focused on it, knowing it would eventually end but it would seem endless all the same.
Gradually, the searing pain in my body lessened and Parker’s voice began to trickle into my consciousness again with greater clarity. I understood words then phrases, and finally, complete sentences. And he was speaking to me.
“I need to write a new program, Drake. It will take about a week then we’ll upload it and confirm it’s working. If so, we should be able to return home in a couple of weeks.”
Home? I didn’t have a home. The only home I’d ever had was with Saige, and in a week, I could forget her. Every memory I’d made with her would be wiped from existence. I’d become his tabula rasa once again, only this time, he’d make damn sure I couldn’t override his program.
I slowly uncurled my fingers and sighed. “What am I supposed to do while you’re writing this program?” I asked. “Stay confined to a bed for an entire week?”
“We’re moving you to a different room where you can be monitored, but you’ll be allowed out of bed.” Parker pulled the cable off my arm and rolled it into a small circle like he was packing his cellphone charger for an overnight trip.
“So you’re sticking me in a jail cell,” I clarified.
“Not a jail,” Parker corrected. “But it’s similar to a cell. It’s where this hospital keeps dangerous patients. They don’t have a proper psychiatric ward… but it’s close enough.”
“So now I’m crazy, too?”
“Drake, you couldn’t be crazy,” he insisted. “You can have glitches, errors in coding, bugs in the system. But you can’t be crazy.”
Parker switched off the computer and motioned to the man he’d been speaking to while running his diagnostics. It was the same man who’d injected something into my IV and had put the mask on me to knock me out so Parker could put a new port in my arm.
I was no longer proud of that scar.
Now, it served as the constant reminder of my permanent servitude, of my complete otherness.
The man in the white lab coat gave me a hard look and warned, “Don’t get stupid and fight me, Drake. We still have Cade here.”
I took a deep breath and eyed the scar beneath the new port. “I’m not going to fight you. What would be the point?”
I was so tired.
If he wanted my mind and body back, he could have it.
Truthfully, he’d never really lost either.
The “room” Parker had me confined in really was more like a jail cell than a hospital room. The metal door had one small window for the guards outside to peek in and that was the only window in the entire room. A small, narrow cot had been bolted to one wall and a metal toilet and sink had been installed in the opposite corner.
That was it. I had nothing else to look at, no other way of marking the passage of time other than counting the number of meals the guards brought me. I had nothing to do—not even a book to read because Parker apparently thought I could kill a man with paper cuts.
I was fairly certain they were putting something in my food to keep me drowsy, but I ate it anyway. Sleep provided a cure for my boredom and a reprieve from the knowledge that soon, I would forget about the only two people I cared about. I would lose everything that mattered to me.
Days and nights were meaningless in this room so even when I didn’t sleep, I did little besides lying on that cot and remembering the moments I’d been fortunate to share with Saige. Maybe it was better to forget her anyway. I had no reason to think she’d survive. For all I knew, they’d already found her. I supposed I really was just a selfish asshole because if I were really a man like I’d once allowed myself to believe, I’d want to remember her just to punish myself for her death.
I counted sixteen meals in that room before Parker himself came for me. I’d dozed off again and the squeaking of the hinges on the door startled me. He held up his hands and quickly asked me, “Are you ready to get out of here?”
“Was this some sort of punishment?” I shot back.
“Not at all,” he promised. “I just had to make sure you and my employees were safe.”
Several guards entered the cramped room with us. There wasn’t enough space for anyone else, even standing.
This cell had offered its own kind of torture, the sensory deprivation that comes from confinement in a room no larger than eighty square feet with nothing to see as the hours passed but the same filthy beige walls. No sounds passed through here. I’d been mostly alone with my mind for five days.
I groaned as I sat up, just as much for dramatic effect as for the genuine fear of what my future would hold.
“This part is easy, Drake,” Parker assured me. “You don’t need to be awake while I upload the new program. It should only take about fifteen minutes.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes at him. “Do you really think that’s what I’m worried about?”
Parker actually had the balls to smile at me when he said, “When you wake up, none of that will matter.”
He stepped back into the hallway and told the guards to get me on the gurney. They gripped their tranquilizer guns tightly as they approached me, but I saved them the trouble and climbed on.
I’d already been beaten.
I was more alien than man. I was utterly, uniquely alone.
I was Frankenstein’s monster and like my namesake, I’d only killed innocent men in my attempt to run from my own pain. But there was no running from the truth. I am not a man. I am not human.
I had been revealed.
&
nbsp; Chapter 4
The man sitting across from me who called himself Dr. Parker slid another photograph across the table and tapped the corner with his pencil. “What about her? Do you recognize her?”
I lifted the picture and studied the beautiful woman with chestnut hair and light, scattered freckles across her cheeks. I wanted to know her. I wanted to know everything about her.
“Do you know her?” I asked him.
“No,” he answered. “Just wondering if she looked familiar to you. We have many enemies, Drake.”
I lowered my eyes to study the photograph again. A sexy smile played at her lips, both innocent and mischievous. How could she possibly be anyone’s enemy?
Dr. Parker had been asking me to look at pictures for almost an hour now, although I still didn’t understand why. He’d already explained that I’d only been awake for a few days. I held onto the picture of the beautiful woman because I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want Dr. Parker to take this one from me.
He pointed to it with his pencil and asked again, “Are you sure you’ve never seen her?”
“How could I? You just woke me up three days ago.”
“True, but like I told you: I’m concerned someone might have tampered with your programming and created false memories. You’re far too important to take any chances.”
“False memories,” I repeated. “Is she even real then?”
Dr. Parker reached across the table and snatched the photograph from my hand, which startled me. “Of course she’s real. And she’s incredibly dangerous, which is why you’re going to kill her.”
I stared stupidly at the photograph that disappeared into the same manila envelope as the others. Kill her? I couldn’t imagine hurting her, let alone killing her. Dr. Parker glanced up at me over the rim of his glasses and slid another picture across the table.
“And him?” he asked. “Do you recognize him?”
My mind was still stuck on the woman who’d vanished inside his envelope of death, but I looked at the picture anyway and shook my head. “You’ve already shown me this guy. I still don’t know him.”
Dr. Parker grunted and pulled the photo back toward his envelope. “He’s likely with the woman. He was in our custody and he escaped. You should consider him extremely dangerous, and if he runs into you, he will try to kill you. Make sure you take him out first.”
“Why? Why does he want me dead so badly?”
Dr. Parker shrugged and dug through his envelope. “Because he knows what you are.”
“And what am I?”
Dr. Parker sighed and put the envelope down again. “You’re the perfect soldier, Drake. The perfect assassin. You’re going to revolutionize warfare for our country. That’s what you are.”
I swallowed and my eyes trailed back down to the collection of photos I knew were hiding inside those tan folds of paper. Out of the two dozen faces he’d shown me, Dr. Parker had only mentioned the murder of three of them. But for some reason, two of those faces were the only two people I wanted to protect.
“We’re going to return to the U.S. soon,” Dr. Parker told me. “The Department of Defense just contracted a couple of buildings for the Project to use.”
I glanced up at him then reordered the chess pieces as he directed using the tablet in his hands. I still didn’t really understand how I’d gotten to Somalia in the first place or why we’d come so far. He’d explained the original Project’s headquarters had been destroyed and only I had survived, but how had he gotten me here? I didn’t ask him though. I didn’t want him to know I had questions.
He tapped at his tablet again then showed me the screen.
“Louisiana,” I read aloud. “There’s a naval base there?”
“No,” Dr. Parker answered. “And that’s exactly why we’ve decided to set up in Lake Charles. Easy access to the Gulf, but it’s not an area that anyone will think to look for us.”
Since he’d stopped sending orders to those chips in my brain, I left the chess pieces alone and slid my hands beneath the table. I hoped we were finished with this ridiculous exercise. It was boring and repetitive and receiving those directives filled my mind with a terribly annoying buzzing sensation.
Dr. Parker set the tablet on the table and put the chess pieces back in the box. “Did you have any dreams last night?” he asked.
He’d been asking me about my dreams everyday, too. He still seemed convinced someone had tampered with my programming.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Am I supposed to be dreaming?”
He shrugged and put the lid on the box. “Dreams are certainly possible.”
“I thought I was a computer.”
Dr. Parker sighed as if I were trying his patience. “Your body is entirely organic, isn’t it?”
It was my turn to shrug. I had no idea what I was or wasn’t. I knew that I had scars that baffled me just as I knew that no one else I’d met in this hospital could be controlled with a few clicks on one man’s computer.
“Come on,” Dr. Parker offered. “I’ll show you what you are.”
He’d already told me there were no other survivors, no one else like me in the world, so I assumed he was just going to bring me to his control room and show me a computer screen running some sophisticated program that I could translate as easily as Latin.
I hadn’t been programmed to know any Latin.
But he brought me to another hospital room where a patient lay unconscious on a bed, plastic tubes running through his mouth and veins. I looked between the unconscious man and Dr. Parker.
“I’m… in a coma?” I asked. Actually, my existence would be far more believable as a product of some patient’s subconscious.
Dr. Parker shook his head and sighed sadly. “Go look at his left arm, Drake.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want to be in this room. I didn’t want to confirm what he was telling me.
“No,” I breathed. “You said…”
“I said no one else survived,” Dr. Parker interrupted. He gestured toward the bed and demanded, “Look at him. He’s only alive because we’re keeping him alive. Turn off those machines that are breathing for him, and he’ll be dead in minutes. We’ve registered no brain activity since the explosions in Virginia.”
“Why keep him like this?” I asked weakly.
Dr. Parker lifted a shoulder at me. “I wasn’t ready to let him go.”
I took a deep breath and slowly approached the bed. The steady shush-pffft of the respirator and rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor were oddly horrifying as I stared down at this artificial man, a brother of sorts.
I envied him.
I gently touched his left arm then turned it toward me so that the one-inch black rectangle dissected by blue lines stared back up at me. I ran my fingers over it, but unlike mine, there was no scar beneath his.
“How does it work?” I asked.
“Tiny microfibers in the port connect to the chip below the deep fascia,” he explained. “It’s extremely delicate work to get it just right, which is why I had to replace yours.”
I moved my hand away from the man’s arm and studied his face. Even though he was in a coma, he didn’t grow a beard. Like me, those genes must have been deemed unimportant. Perhaps they’d been removed to make room for impeccable sharpshooting skills or an ability to heal unnaturally fast.
“What are you thinking, Drake?” Dr. Parker asked.
I swallowed and lifted my eyes to the ventilator. “I think you should turn this off.”
“And why do you think that?”
“He’s already dead.”
It was more than that though. I worried he might eventually wake up.
“Then turn it off,” Dr. Parker responded.
His permission to turn off this man’s life support startled me, and I flashed him a surprised and angry glare. Why did he want me to do it?
Dr. Parker pointed to the box that controlled the ventilator. “I’ll show you how if you’d like.”
<
br /> “Why? He’s your… patient.”
Dr. Parker lifted an eyebrow at me. “So you’re reluctant to withdraw life support. Tell me why that is.”
“You’re asking me to kill him!” I exclaimed.
“Exactly,” Dr. Parker replied. “And now you know why he’s here and why I’ve worked so hard to save you. You aren’t just a computer, Drake. There’s no one else like you. There was no one else like him.”
I studied the man’s face one last time and quietly asked, “What’s his name?”
“I was going to call him Joseph.”
“Joseph,” I repeated. I bit my lip and briefly closed my eyes. This man’s life had been created so he could be some bastardized version of humanity, just like me. If Dr. Parker could figure out how to repair this brain damage and wake him up, he’d be caught between worlds, a computer that wanted to be human. I could think of only one thing to do for him, one thing that could save him.
I opened my eyes and reached across the bed then flipped the switches that powered his respirator.
“You’re welcome,” I whispered then walked around a stunned Dr. Parker so I could escape that room.
I never looked back.
Chapter 5
Louisiana weather immediately reminded me of being in Mogadishu even though it was early November by the time we arrived in the U.S. I was still unclear exactly why I’d been brought to a hospital in the Somali capital, but Dr. Parker insisted that after the disaster in Virginia, the need for secrecy had prompted him to move his Project overseas to a location where no one would think to look for him or me. It seemed like he could have found a lot of places where the food didn’t make me gag though. He’d finally grown tired of watching me pick at my meals and brought me a bottle of ketchup.
I assumed it must be a universally loved condiment for him to know it would get me to eat.
As soon as our plane landed at Fort Polk, a colonel led us to a convoy of armored vehicles. He tried to keep his aloofness in place but kept stealing nervous glances in my direction. I pretended not to notice.
“You sure you want him off base?” the colonel, whom Dr. Parker had introduced as Colonel Fabre, asked.
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