The basement was dark, save for the dim exit signs. They walked down the long hallway and into the lab. The large room was cast in shadow, only a small, shielded light over the tank in the corner was lit. In its narrow cone of light, Sarah was kneeling by the hyper-womb. Kenny's body bobbed in the neon-orange syrup. He was in silhouette, a scarecrow dangling in space. Sarah looked over her shoulder when they entered. She didn't get up.
Andy paused. Sarah was the type who would run over and throw her arms around them. She celebrated the smallest achievements with hugs. He used to tease her about it. Andy cocked an eyebrow at Sarah. She flicked her eyes toward the dark corner of the room. Andy spun toward that direction and stopped short. A man sat in the corner in a plush office chair. Andy immediately wanted to charge him and smash his face.
"Don't do anything rash," General Tucker said in a cold, monotone voice. His thumb shifted slightly on the remote and suddenly Andy felt paralyzed as electricity coursed through his body. He dropped to his knees. Holly tumbled out of his arms to the ground in front of him. The shock was severe on his thick, insulated body. Indigo, John, and Sarah were on the ground, writhing in agony. Even Holly awoke from unconsciousness and moaned.
"For those of you who have not met me yet, I am General Tucker," he said. His thumb shifted again. The electrical surge stopped and the agony ceased. "I am the overseer of the project that created you. I must admit, I had hoped that you wouldn't be quite so predictable, that perhaps you would have realized Psiber was beyond healing and given up a lost cause, but I suppose if you had done that, I wouldn't be able to see this project through to its end."
John rolled to his feet and faced the general. The shock of the electricity hit them all again and they were forced fetal by the pain.
"Don't do anything stupid, Elite," said Tucker. "Didn't you ever wonder why this room was made mostly of metal? We had it built to be a shock-cage. There are electrical conduits under every inch of the main floor. Over here, on the rubber mats by the computers, I'm protected. However, you all are standing on a lightning bolt, if I so choose to make it feel like that. If we were going to deal with over-powered adolescents, we needed a way to take them down if they got out of hand during experiments. Electricity works. It's faster than Blink, stronger than Brawn, and can neutralize everyone in between. Granted, it hurts Brawn a little less than it hurts, say Anomaly there, what with all the metal in its brain and down its spine; I could only imagine how much that hurts when I hit this button." For good measure, the general jolted them all once more. "The only one of you who gave me concern was Psiber. That subject might have been able to tap into the electrical workings of the shock-cage and reroute the streams or shut it down, so I was lucky enough to be able to neutralize it earlier." Tucker lifted a large caliber handgun from his lap and gave it a small shake for emphasis. "We'll lose some data because of that, but one out of seven isn't too bad."
"Six," said Indigo. "Posey's gone."
"Ah, yes. Nightingale. The experiment will turn up eventually. A bird-girl cannot hide forever. When it makes a mistake and shows up somewhere, we shall bring it in." Tucker's smugness made Andy want tear off the man's left arm and beat him to death with it.
Tucker continued, "I give you all credit; you all are more impressive than we thought you would be. However, it's time to end this little jaunt and finalize the experiment so that we can move on to the second phase."
"Second phase?" grunted John. "What do you mean, 'second phase?'"
"The next generation, Elite. Our second group. Since Psiber accessed our computer system, I'm sure you know about the second group. They are the real subjects. You were all only the rough draft. We never intended this experiment to make it to full completion. All those implants and tests we gave you over the years were vital to your growth as a project. However, we need to examine the damage and changes all our meddling caused your bodies over the past ten years. To do that, we need to see our implants again."
"Kill us, you mean," said Andy. "Cut us open and dissect us."
"Unfortunately, yes," said Tucker. "That was always in the cards, even if Cormair didn't know it. We had hoped to be able to run a full battery of tests after your abilities fully manifested, but you have all proven too dangerous for that to happen. We were able to pull some basic data on Brawn while it was in stasis, but for the most part, we will be unable to get the full data we need from your living bodies without your full cooperation. Thus, your corpses will have to yield the final data."
John chuckled lowly. "You don't have any data anymore, Tucker." There was a blast of electricity that made Andy's brain feel as if it was starting on fire.
"That's General Tucker to you, experiment."
"Your data is gone, General," John spit out the word with venom in his voice. "Kenny hacked your system. It's done. He blitzed all your data. Your whole town is shut down. Kenny nuked your compound from the inside."
Tucker smiled. It was a wide, knowing smile that made Andy's stomach yaw. "Are you so naïve as to think this was our only compound? Did you honestly think we only had the one base? True, Psiber did put a bit of a bug in our plans, perhaps set us back a whole year, maybe two depending on the extent of the damage, but rest assured, we have been storing all data in several locations. We would not be so short-sighted to put all our eggs in one basket; no, no...as a matter of fact, the reach of the Trust is far longer than you could even begin to expect."
Andy's stomach finished its acrobatics, settling somewhere between his feet. He didn't feel defeated when they caught Sarah. He didn't feel defeated when they froze him in Jell-O. He didn't even feel defeated when he was certain he was making his final stand in the center of the compound, but Tucker's admission was the final nail. It was over.
"How are you going to do it?" asked John. "Bullet in the chest like you did Kenny?"
"Far too messy," said Tucker. "Electricity will eventually stop your hearts."
"So do it already," said Andy. "I'm sick of waiting for it."
"I need a team in here, first," said Tucker. "Doctors, scientists---I don't want your bodies to begin to decompose and chance losing that data."
"So when do they arrive?"
"Soon, Brawn. Very soon."
"Then the plan is to just keep us shocked and immobile until they get here?"
"Correct."
General Tucker flicked the switch once more and Andy felt the crackling inferno of power fire through his body once more.
The curtains along the windows stirred slightly with the breeze from the broken window. The room smelled of smoke. When the fuel tank exploded, the winds pushed tendrils of smoke into the room. No nurse came to check on him. He hadn't even seen a nurse since the alarms had sounded. He had sat there, breathing the acrid smoke, crying silently as his children battled the soldiers in the compound.
He had been such a bloody fool! All those years he spent silently relishing their achievements, watching from afar as they grew into adults, eavesdropping on their conversations to find out more about them as people and not just guinea pigs as he was supposed to regard them. Now it was too late; he'd kept them at arm's length for a decade because of his stupid, stupid fanaticism about his work and now Dr. H. Bromwell Cormair was going to die alone, a bitter old man, without family, without friends, and without anything to show for his lifetime of research. He closed his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling. It was all over. Everything was over.
Cormair reached over and pulled the IV from his left arm. He slipped the pulse oximeter from his index finger and let it fall to the ground. The plastic clattered loudly on the tile floor. One by one, he peeled the sensors from his chest and let them flutter to the floor. The power was out. None of the machines were working anyhow. It was pointless to keep them on. Finally, he pulled the oxygen tube from his nose and exhaled slowly. His body hurt. He had internal injuries from the shot Indigo gave him. He felt broken inside. A pair of doctors had patched him up as best they could, but they were little more th
an field medics. Their skills and medical resources were grossly limited. Cormair knew it would only be a matter of time before he died.
He exhaled again slowly until his lungs felt empty. He resisted inhaling as long as he could. He began to feel light-headed. He felt as if he was receding into himself. The pain in his chest and stomach lessened and ebbed into the ether. He could no longer feel the uncomfortably firm mattress beneath him or the scratchy hospital linens. He concentrated on the darkness so long that he began to feel as if he was spinning in crawling, lazy arcs. He separated from time and space and began to drift into oblivion.
Was this death? Was this how life came to its conclusion? What was that line from Hamlet?
But that the dread of something after death...
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns...
Thoughts and images raced through his mind. Time ceased and for a moment he thought days had passed. Perhaps years. The logical voice in the back of his brain told him it was only minutes, but then the irrational, illogical voice would counter, asking if he knew how many minutes. One? A thousand? A billion? He saw his research, the kids---his kids---the fog of old age seemed to clear and he began to remember his childhood with stunning clarity: His mother standing in front of the old stove, baking something for the Sunday meal. His father, austere and proud---a true English gentleman---wearing a waistcoat for each meal with that old, tarnished watch fob dangling across his thin belly. There was no watch at the end of it. He had sold it in England to get the money to come to America, but he kept the fob as a reminder of his York origins. Cormair felt his skin begin to crepitate with sensations of unease. Somewhere, in the tiny part of his brain that was keeping an eye on reality and the present began to sound a mental alarm. Cormair began to escape from the darkness flooding his mind. He left the images and the sensations behind, spiraling back up into the light from the depths. In seconds, he was in his hospital bed, scratchy linens and all. He opened his eyes. The room was still dim; the power in the building was still off. The curtain by the broken window stirred again. The room was empty. Cormair closed his eyes. He exhaled again and waited for the darkness to return. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he opened his eyes again. Behind the curtains, he could make out a shadow, a human form crouched like a gargoyle on the windowsill. The shadow didn't move. Cormair could feel eyes watching him from behind the gauzy drape. He pushed himself up in bed further and reached a shaky hand to the bedside table for his glasses. "I know you're there," he said.
The figure didn't move.
"I know you're there...and I'm sorry, Posey."
The figure behind the curtain cocked her head. Cormair watched the silhouette. She didn't move.
"I imagine you came to exact some form of revenge? You're bitter about what you've become and I believe you probably wanted to make me pay somehow? Perhaps you were going to steal me from my bed here and fly me into the stratosphere and then drop me so that I had time to think about what I'd done as I plummeted to my death? Or maybe even higher than that? Maybe the mesosphere? Can you fly that high, Posey? Could you breathe up there? Will your wings still provide lift in air that thin? Please, dear girl, come out from behind that curtain and let me see you. Let an old, dying man apologize to your face."
Slowly, with a careful, graceful movement, the silhouette reached forward and gently pulled back the curtain. She stepped off the windowsill and crept forward in short, awkward steps. Posey stood before her creator, a feathered, winged girl, Cormair's greatest achievement in gene therapies and biological enhancement. She was the very pinnacle of a half century of work. Cormair's breath caught in his throat. He leaned forward in the bed, squinting. He scanned the curve of her folded wings, the smooth feathers that framed her face and curved out of her collarbones and gently sloped over her shoulders. He looked down at her feet, the toes curled and sharp like an eagle's talons.
Posey stepped closer. In her eyes, Cormair saw no remnant of the gawky, awkward teenager he had known, only a hard, bitter woman filled with anger. Her voice was low and cold, "You were right. I came here to kill you. I was going to fly you out over the mountains, then drop you, but I wasn't going to do it from the stratosphere. I was going to drop you just high enough to break your legs, but not kill you. Then, I was planning on sitting in a tree and see what sort of carnivore found you first. I was going to watch while a bear or a wolf tore you apart."
Cormair could feel the hatred in Posey's voice. She truly despised him. His heart broke further.
"Do you see what you did to me? You had no right! Do you hear me, Doctor? No right to turn me into a freak of nature, an abomination! There's no way to reverse this! Even if I cut off these stupid wings, my feet will always be gross, horrible claws and I will continually grow these stupid feathers! I was always homely, and I accepted that. I knew no one was ever going to fall in love with me because of my face, but now I am beyond homely! I am truly ugly!"
Cormair shook his head fervently. "No! No! Posey, you are beautiful. You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
Posey's golden eyes flashed with flame and ire and her face became a twisted snarl of disgust. "Look at me, Doctor! I am ugly! Ugly, ugly, ugly!" Posey crossed to his bedside and moved her face in front of his. "Look at me! Do you see what you've done to me?"
"I had no way to predict the results of what I was doing in an aesthetic sense, Posey. If I could, I would have made certain that you would have enjoyed the results. I was creating something new, something beyond human limits! Can you not see that? Can you not look in a mirror and realize that you are something---someone who is greater than everyone around them? You are better than beautiful! You are glorious! You are a miracle! You are truly one-of-a-kind creature. True, perhaps by human standards, you might consider yourself ugly, but you limit your thinking! You have to see yourself by new standards, standards of beauty that have never existed. Posey, you are a prototype, the first of your species. You are a new creation with unique DNA, Homo Aves. And far as that species goes, you are, by far, the most beautiful."
Posey grabbed the front of Cormair's hospital gown and yanked him forward. Her strength surprised him. She shook him so hard that his jaw bounced and his teeth clanked together.
"Do you honestly expect me to buy that crap? I am the only member of my so-called species, Doctor! I don't want to be glorious or unusual! I want to be a regular eighteen-year-old girl who dates and gets her heart broken and has a first kiss and marries and enjoys life! Now I will never get that chance! No one will ever love me! I will never have a normal life!"
Cormair slumped over. It was useless to argue. He had nothing he could say to her. For the first time in fifty years, he saw himself as a true monster. What rights did he have to play god? "I know."
"You condemned me to this living hell!"
"I know," he repeated.
"Why? What sort of sick man does this to a child?"
"A man who was so blinded by his work that he forgot to see you as children."
Posey released his gown and Cormair fell back against the bed. "I was going to kill you, Doctor. But I'm not going to do that now."
"Why?"
Posey turned her back to him and looked out the window. When she spoke, her voice had a faraway, hollow quality about it. "Because I want you to kill me."
"What? Posey, don't be ridiculous! You may not be able to live this idealized, magical, movie-version 'normal' life that you think you have to have, but you can still have a life, a long, fulfilled, and interesting life. Think about the possibilities! If you escape this compound, if you get out of here right now, you have the ability to go anywhere you want to go! You are almost immune to cold---you could go live in the Yukon. You can use your wings to ride thermals to almost any destination! You have the ability to get to get to any mountain peak in the world! You could be the greatest explorer the world has ever known!"
Posey turned back to Cormair. Her cheeks were wet wi
th tears. "But I will have to do it alone."
"You have the others, your brothers and sisters."
"They look normal. They can blend into a crowd. They can hide in plain sight. I might be the greatest explorer in the world, but what good would that do if I can't even go to the mall and buy a shirt off the rack? I don't want to live life being stared at, being singled out and humiliated. I want to die."
"You do not need me for that, then. If you want to die, go die."
"I want you to kill me because watching your research die off will hurt you more than bears tearing your limbs from your body."
"To hell with the research!" Cormair shouted. "The research is already terminated! Kenny erased the computers in the Home and there is a standing order to kill all of you! My research is over. I do not want to see you die because it would be like...No, it will be watching my own daughter die before my eyes and I will not stand for that." Cormair felt a pain shoot through his chest. The fingers on his left hand began to tingle. His breath became short.
"Now listen to me," he said, attempting not to show the pain. "Go back to the Home. In my room near the labs, my bedroom not my office, there is a hidden panel behind the dresser. Behind that panel is a metal box. That box has a key in it and a letter from my lawyer. Take the key and the letter to First National Bank of Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania." His entire left arm went numb and a wave of agony rippled through his body stopping his breath. Cormair drew in another short, hard breath. "The key is for my safety deposit box. In it you will find seven hundred thousand dollars and an envelope. The envelope is very important to me; it was my most treasured possession. Get the money and divide it amongst yourselves. It is money that I funneled away from the project for years. It is why you all had to endure gruel and small portions for dinner some weeks. It is why sometimes there was only oatmeal for breakfast. I often lied to the Trust to get more money for your meals and clothing and stocked it away for you should this day ever come. Consider it the best I could do for an apology." The pain was apoplectic.
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