The Seven

by Sean Patrick Little

Andy followed the general into a gymnasium of sorts. A hard concrete floor was polished smooth and a couple of basketball hoops hung from the walls on either side of the building. There were no bleachers or lines on the floor and a set of double-doors on the far side was open to the outdoors. A gentle afternoon breeze blew in the room carrying the smell of mown hay from a nearby field and a square of sunlight slanted in through the door. General Tucker walked over to the door and took a deep breath. He still wouldn't look over his shoulder at Andy. Andy walked across the gym and stopped a few paces behind the general.

  "You presented me with an interesting challenge, Brawn."

  "Andy."

  Tucker continued as though Andy hadn't spoken. "With the success of your genetic engineering, we now have the ability to create a human tank. Now, stopping your average man, that's not a problem. We have many tools that would allow us to stop an average man. A human tank, though---that's a new challenge entirely. Obviously, we wouldn't want to shoot you. That would be a great waste of resources. Bullets won't harm you enough to stop you. Sure, they'll hurt, but they won't stop you. They'll probably just make you angry. So, we need something that will allow us to take down a genetic experiment such as you without harming the experiment."

  A wave of unease washed over Andy. He looked around the room for weapons. Other than the basketball hoops and backboards, there was nothing.

  The general continued. "I was told that the medics that found you when you came out of the woods used a hypodermic needle filled with enough tranquilizers to drop a charging bull elephant. It kept you sedated for about five minutes. You started to come out of it and had to be immediately shot up with more tranquilizers. You have the ability to heal extremely quickly. That makes drugs a very inefficient way to prevent you from destroying whatever you choose to destroy, should you choose to destroy something."

  "What's your point?" Anxiety was building in Andy's chest. He could sense what was coming.

  Tucker turned and faced Andy. "Obviously, your strength poses an interesting problem. Those cables you stretched out in the infirmary have more than five times the strength of steel. Tying you up would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? You could snap the chains like they were licorice."

  "Cut to the chase General, or else I'm going to walk."

  "Precisely!" said Tucker, a smile appearing beneath his mustache. "That's exactly what I want you to do."

  "Say what now?"

  "Go out those doors."

  "Why?"

  "I have a platoon of my most elite soldiers stationed outside. They have a singular objective: Stop you without killing you. Have a good time." Tucker reached into his pocket and took out a flare. He popped the cap on the flare and red sparks began shooting from the top. With a nod to Andy, Tucker tossed the flare out the door and strode back across the gym to the doors where they entered. The doors shut behind Andy with an ominous thud.

  Andy backed away from the open doors. He walked to the door that Tucker had just passed through and tried the knob. With his new, massive hands, the doorknob was hard to grip. The door was, of course, locked. Andy pulled on the knob and it ripped straight off the door leaving a hole surrounded by jagged edges. He slipped his index finger through the hole and pulled. The door tore open like a tuna can. Beyond the door, a thick wall of solid steel was blocking the corridor.

  A speaker in the wall next to the door began to squawk with Tucker's voice. "What you see before you, Brawn, is nearly two feet of tested blast steel. The entire wall is made from it. It's meant to survive a direct hit from a mid-grade missile. If you try to force your way through it, I'm quite certain the skin and muscles on your hands will tear away before you succeed. Your bones would probably survive, but I doubt you're strong enough to keep punching as you bleed to death. The only way out is through the gauntlet beyond the doors. Good luck." The speaker clicked to static and then went silent.

  A strong mixture of anxiety and rage bubbled in Andy's chest. "What if I don't leave the gym, General? I'm just going to take a seat in here and your platoon can go to hell for all I care!" Andy yelled into the speaker. "You hear me? I'm not your guinea pig!"

  As if his rant was a signal, Andy heard two loud pops from outside the door. A pair of black cylinders skittered across the cement floor, clouds of white smoke billowing from them. One whiff of the smoke made Andy heave what little sustenance was in his stomach. His eyes watered and his nose and mouth began burning. Blindly, he stumbled toward the doors, toward clean air.

  Breeching the doors into the lot around the gym, Andy rubbed his eyes furiously and snorted out a long, nasty stream of mucous from his nose, desperate to stop the burn. He was standing outside a pair of buildings, a large, metal warehouse to his right, and the metal-sided square gymnasium. A large, grassy exercise yard lay to his left. There was a wide paved area between the buildings. Two dark gray Humvees and a pair of white pick-up trucks were grouped loosely around the pavement area. Several uniformed soldiers with strange-looking weapons were standing around the vehicles, waiting for Andy to make a move. Andy spit on the ground, his mouth tasted like bile and his sinuses were on fire. Fine. If this is how it has to be, Andy would go along with it. If they wanted a fight, he could certainly give them a fight.

  With a roar that seemed to come from a part of Andy that was more animal than human, Andy lowered his head and charged the nearest pick-up truck. He could hear one of the soldiers shouting commands while other soldiers bustled around, setting up for shots from their weapons. They won't kill me, Andy thought. That will be their biggest mistake.

  Something hit Andy in the back and he felt a massive surge of electricity run through him. He stumbled and fell to his knees. The electrical charge stopped and he was able to regain his senses. He ripped the taser darts from his back. He quickly pushed himself up and lowered his shoulder into the side of the pick-up, nearly bending the truck in half.

  "Double the voltage!" a soldier called.

  Before they could reset their weapons, Andy slipped one hand underneath the truck and the other grabbed the rim of the high side on the truck's bed. Muscles surging with power, Andy lifted the truck over his head and lobbed it at a pair of Humvees, sending soldiers scattering for cover. The truck landed on the hoods of the assault vehicles with a glorious crush of metal.

  A soldier in a red beret with a green-shield patch on the front was screaming into a hand radio. "Bring up the foam!"

  "Foam?" Andy shouted. "You're not even trying now." In the distance, Andy began to hear the bass whut-whut-whut sound of a helicopter.

  A soldier pulled a canvas tarp off the back of one of the Humvees, revealing a silver cannon that glowed with crackling blue light. The cannon began humming loudly. The soldier jumped to the controls of the weapon and charged it, swiveling it to be pointed straight at Andy. "Eat sonic, freak!"

  A blast of sound nearly crippled Andy. The high-pitched whine seemed to bore into his ear drums and press spear points into the sides of his brain. His body became jelly and Andy fell to his knees, clapping his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to stop the noise. The sonic weapon was hitting him with a wavelength of sound that penetrated his skin and made his organs vibrate with a sickening tremolo.

  The helicopter came into view over the gymnasium. Beneath it, a square, metal container dangled from several cables. As the helicopter passed low over Andy's head, the container opened and a pile of cream-colored foam, a fifteen-foot square block, fell from the sky. Andy, incapacitated by the sonic, could only watch as the lump of sticky foam landed on him, engulfing him.

  The foam began to harden immediately. As it solidified, Andy felt his skin becoming colder. Extremely cold. Vapor rose off the foam in wisps of smoke. He needed to fight through the pain of the sonic and break free of the foam or he would be frozen solid! He gritted his teeth and took a sharp inhale of breath. The air around him seemed to be like an arctic storm, it filled his lungs and he felt his body begin to lose strength, to shut down. It was becoming harder to
move in the rapidly drying foam. A taser blast, stronger than the first one, made his body seize. The sonic blast battered him. Soldiers swarmed in with hoses and backpacks of the foam, spraying him down with more.

  In moments, Andy was frozen. His heartbeat dropped quickly, going hypothermic; he became sleepy. He tried to continue to fight, but his eyelids closed on their own volition and Andy ceased his battle.

  From a room in the hospital wing on the second-story of the gymnasium building, General Tucker watched his men immobilize the subject with brutal efficiency. There had been collateral damage. Those Humvees and pick-ups weren't cheap, but it was worth it to personally witness the experiment's display of strength. Tucker turned from the windows and faced a hospital bed.

  Dr. Cormair was sitting in the bed, arms folded in a combination of frustration and anger. "You did not tell me that you had developed the foam already."

  "Of course not, Doctor," said the general. "It wasn't in your need-to-know capacity. I will not turn overpowered teenagers loose on this world without some way to eliminate each one of them. Brawn was probably the trickiest. The others are vulnerable enough to tasers or sonic cannons. A bullet, if need be, will stop them as well. But, how do you stop something like project Brawn? Incredible muscle density, bullets wouldn't get much penetration, even a large caliber. I doubt a bullet would even be able to get to his heart, provided it didn't hit one of his ribs first. Bullets can't hurt his bones. A head shot would be out of the question. It would just stun him momentarily, at best."

  "You are toying with them," Cormair said. He leaned back in bed, casting his eyes to the ceiling. He didn't want to watch the exercise anymore.

  "It's all research, Doctor. I thought you, of all people, could appreciate that."

  "My research was to further the development of man, General. Not to make sure I could control it."

  "Doctor, a horse that cannot be controlled is wild. It's useless to man. It just feeds on resources and causes problems. But a horse that can be controlled was man's greatest boon. Without the horse, how would the Plains Indians have fared? Or how far west could Americans have expanded without horses? Even now, we control horsepower in engines to serve man. Control was necessary to prove usefulness. Doctor, without control, how would a regular, normal man fare against your forced evolution? An average guy trying to stop something like Brawn would be obliterated. Control is what is needed for all things. We need control in order to channel the weapon otherwise the weapon could kill innocents. Without control, releasing Brawn would be no different than dropping a bomb." General Tucker turned back toward the window and watched as his soldiers used a mobile crane to lift the frozen block of foam off the ground and load it onto the back of a flatbed truck. The truck's leaf springs sagged as the weight settled.

  General Tucker turned to Dr. Cormair. "We can't wait for you to recover. Time is too short. We will run the final tests on this subject for you, Doctor. I will apprise you of the results."

  "And then what?"

  "The subject is too dangerous to attempt to confine long-term. Once the data collection is complete, we will terminate the experiment. The same with the other experiments. They have shown that their usefulness is coming to a conclusion." Tucker left the room, the door closing behind him.

  Dr. Cormair closed his eyes slowly. Slowly his lips thinned and his jaw clenched. A tear slipped from his eyelid and cascaded to his cheek.

  "They call themselves 'The Trust'," said Kenny. "Wholly underground, wholly paramilitary. They're a ghost; they can't exist, they shouldn't exist, but yet they do. It's pretty amazing, actually. Even that town they use---Amboy, Ohio it's called---is a front, in case you care. It was a small mining village back in the late nineteenth century, but it turned into a ghost town when the railroads stopped running to it during the Depression. The Trust bought up all the land around that town in the late '70's and early '80's and began using the town as a base of operations. They're preparing for something major, that much is evident from what we all saw last night, and the fact that they created something like us proves it, but exactly what they are preparing for wasn't on the hard-drives."

  "A coup," said John. "It's got to be."

  "They're not in any way associated with the U.S. Government, then?" asked Indigo.

  "Not at all. According to the personnel files I was able to download, they're made up of a contingent of military types from different countries throughout the world, soldiers from different countries who have lost faith in the way their countries do things, the way the world does things. They were recruited through the black market and cryptic ads in soldier of fortune magazines and websites. Some are Americans; there are a lot of Europeans from various countries, a few Middle Easterners, and even a few Asians. They are highly trained and extremely skilled; some are mercenaries, but most are seeking something in which to believe. They're not terrorists...yet. They're financed by private corporations throughout the world. A few eccentric billionaires, and several oil-baron sheiks all have a stake in what goes on as well. They have massive resources, but since they're trying to stay underground, they've had to scrounge for everything from different places. They can't purchase anything in enough volume to alert anyone. It's a lot of black market, no receipt, no paper-trail dealing, followed up by sneaking guns and supplies into the country through unchecked border routes from Canada and Mexico."

  "Amazing," breathed John. "Do any of you know how incredible this is? Do you see the scope of this? It's incredible! They able to move completely unrecognized by the government, by any government!"

  "They're the military equivalent of a ninja," answered Kenny. "Spoken of as if they're myth, but yet they do exist."

  "How do they do it?" asked John. "How is it possible? Why hasn't anyone caught on? Why haven't they discovered this group?"

  Sebbins piped up. "The fallibility of human logic and lack of imagination, John. Remember, prior to nine-eleven, the U.S. government was aware of people inside the United States with connections to terrorist cells, but they never imagined that anything with the scope of the destruction of the World Trade Centers could happen. The same goes with this entity: If you have a few people collecting weapons, you might notice it---The Branch Davidians at Waco, for example. But, who could stretch the imagination to think that you could have a whole town's worth of people collecting weapons and training as a whole, functioning, active military base inside the borders United States? It's almost unthinkable. Plus, the Trust has the money to buy and sell high-ranking officials. I wouldn't doubt it if they had a few politicians in their payroll. Probably more than a few," said Sebbins. "I don't know for sure, though. It's not like they let me know how the operation works."

  "It's like we're something straight out of the G.I. Joe comics---remember? The COBRA organization was hidden in a town called 'Springfield.' They operated unnoticed until they needed to attack. This is the same thing," said Kenny. "Or maybe they're like the Ku Klux Klan---they can go about their day and you might not suspect anything, but they've got a hood and sheet hanging in their closet at home."

  Holly was looking at Sebbins with horror. "And you knew? You knew about this 'Trust' group?"

  Sebbins' cheeks flushed red. "I did. I knew the basics of their organization. Not the specifics. I knew they were paramilitary."

  "So why did you join?" Holly asked. "I used to trust you, Dr. Sebbins. I used to think you were different from the rest of the doctors and teachers."

  Sebbins put her face in her hands. Her voice wavered and cracked as she spoke. "I joined because of the money they offered, and the chance to work the premier geneticist in the world."

  "That's not all, Doc," Kenny said. His eyes were lit up like Christmas. "You want to tell us the real reason?"

  Sebbins sighed. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and swallowed hard. After a few breaths, she seemed composed and she looked at them all. "I was blackballed. I couldn't get a job anywhere else."

  "How? Why?" Holly asked.

&nb
sp; "Because I destroyed a lab," Sebbins said quietly. "I was hired into a laboratory that was conducting unethical experiments, horrible experiments that will haunt me the rest of my life: Psychological warfare testing on homeless people and runaways. You all know that all over the world people go missing every year and are never heard from again---well, some of those missing people ended up in this lab. They were tortured into insanity for the sake of questionable science and live out the rest of their sad, pathetic lives in a mental asylum deep in the backwoods of Georgia, oblivious to who they were and what happened, their brains turned to goo. It was inhuman. When I found out, I wanted to turn them in, get them shut down, but I couldn't prove it without bringing authorities into the lab. However, I couldn't bring them in without proof. It was Catch-22. I got so fed up with the system that I just torched the lab. I tried to make it look like an accident, but the higher-ups knew it was me."

  "How would that get you blackballed?" Holly asked.

  "When the lab is one of the largest in the world, and they start talking---you don't get any respect. I forgot how powerful the dollar can be. It wasn't until I got blackballed did I realize that the cops I went to were already aware of the lab and its activities. Money gets heads turned and records falsified. I was left with nothing. I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's. They put a hammer down on me. This job at the Home was the only one I could get, and I only got that because my grad school mentor and Dr. Cormair were old friends. I wasn't in a position to question anything." Sebbins stopped talking. John could see teardrops beading in the corners of her eyes. She had a glazed look in her eyes, remembering her mistakes.

  "A reject. Figures that's what they'd bring in for us. I mean, if we don't rate enough to be allowed to live after we turn eighteen, might as well not waste money on our doctors," Indigo said.

  "Ease up, Indigo," said John. There was a tone to his voice that hadn't been there before, a sharp edge to his baritone.