Nine

by Rachelle Dekker

  “What are you doing?” she asked, taking a step back.

  He stopped and raised his hands enough to placate her. “I really am here to help. It’ll be dark soon; we should head for the safe house. I assume Lucy went ahead to make sure it wasn’t a trap?”

  “You think I’m going to just lower my weapon and follow you?”

  “You don’t have to lower the gun if you don’t want. Keep it pointed at me the whole time. But I would suggest you follow me to the safe house.”

  He slowly started moving again, keeping a wide berth but moving past her and over toward the valley where Lucy had gone.

  Zoe watched in disbelief and followed him with her weapon. “Aren’t you at all afraid I’ll shoot you?”

  He looked back at her over his shoulder, a mischievous spark in his eye. “I might be. If you didn’t have the safety on.” He pointed to the gun.

  He continued to descend the hill, and she surveyed the weapon, realizing she wasn’t even sure what a safety looked like. Embarrassed and frustrated, she grabbed the backpack from the boulder, tossed the gun back inside, and followed him at a good distance.

  The safe house was a small wooden cabin in the middle of the valley. Grassy and rocky mountains surrounded it, as if the flat plot of land at their base had been scooped out specifically for the building at its center. Zoe forced herself past the pain in her limbs as she moved carefully through the natural terrain, Agent Seeley a couple feet ahead.

  When they were still yards off, Lucy came rushing from the cabin and stared, looking confused and surprised. Her face assumed its warrior expression, and Zoe could tell she was ready to fight.

  “Stop where you are,” Lucy said to Agent Seeley as he stepped onto the valley floor. He did as he was told.

  “He has a gun,” Zoe yelled, remembering.

  Without having to be told, Agent Seeley removed the pistol from his holster and placed it on the ground, then kicked it away. “I’m here to help.”

  Lucy moved swiftly to the gun, her eyes on Agent Seeley, and scooped it up. She raised it at him as Zoe was nearly to her side.

  “Check him for other weapons,” Lucy said to Zoe.

  Zoe looked at her, and Lucy gave her a confident nod. Zoe crossed the space between them and dropped to check his ankles, both sides, under his jacket, and his waist. She avoided eye contact and was light with her hands, touching him as little as possible. She found nothing, so she gave Lucy a nod and crossed back to her.

  “The cabin?” Zoe asked.

  “Clear, as far as I can tell,” Lucy said.

  “It is. Olivia and I made sure to sweep it before we set anything in motion so we’d always have a place to go,” Agent Seeley said. “We’re safe here.”

  “How do I know you?” Lucy asked.

  “I was your training officer at Xerox, the black site for Grantham.”

  “And we spent a lot of time together?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come I remember you but nothing else?”

  Genuine shock filled his face. “You remember me?”

  She nodded. “Am I not supposed to?”

  He stared, his mind running behind his eyes. “What do you remember about me?”

  “Rain,” Lucy said. Zoe looked at her. She hadn’t mentioned anything specific about the agent, just that she knew his face. “The smell of mud, and trees. I was running, you were behind, trying to stay close. We were chasing something.”

  He took a slight step forward, his eyes bright. “Deer. We were hunting deer. You were tracking them, and I was following. You’d become so good at it.”

  Lucy lowered the weapon. “I killed one.”

  Agent Seeley took another step forward. “Do you remember how?”

  Lucy wasn’t looking at them anymore. She seemed lost in the scene that was filling her head. She thought for a long moment, and then she refocused on Agent Seeley, light spreading through her face. “Throwing knives.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Yes, your favorite.”

  “My favorite,” she repeated.

  Lightning struck across the sky, and soon a crack of thunder followed. Zoe hadn’t even noticed the dark clouds that had rolled in, but suddenly everything felt a shade darker. The air was colder, and the wind whipped through the treetops overhead.

  “We should get inside,” Agent Seeley said, “and I can answer all your questions.”

  Lucy nodded. They shared another long gaze, and Zoe felt like she was on the outside of a glass box, peering in on a scene. She didn’t like the way it made her stomach turn.

  “Come on,” Agent Seeley said as he started toward the cabin.

  Lucy was on his heels, leaving Zoe to fall in at the back. The same troubling sensation she’d had from the moment they’d met this Agent Seeley filled her chest. She wanted to be wrong. For Lucy’s sake she really wanted to be wrong.

  FIFTEEN

  THE LOG CABIN had a vaulted ceiling and a large fireplace on the main wall in the living room, two bedrooms off to the right side, and a small bathroom in between. There was a staircase in the far left corner that led up to a loft only big enough for a single mattress and a table lamp that had been placed on the floor.

  The main room held a leather couch and two matching leather chairs. A large cowhide rug occupied the center of the room, and several taxidermy animals were propped around: a raccoon, a duck, a fox. Zoe didn’t like the way their beady black eyes stared at her. The attached kitchen had a rectangular table that seated six.

  Agent Seeley flicked on the overhead chandelier, then moved to do the same to the lamps placed throughout. “This cabin was donated to the FBI a couple of years ago after the owner, a retired FBI director, passed away. It isn’t currently in rotation, fortunately for us. There isn’t much here, but it’ll do for now.”

  Lucy placed the gun she’d taken from Agent Seeley on the table and walked around the cabin. “Olivia has been here?”

  “A few times,” he said. “It was a safe place to talk. There aren’t many of those.”

  “Is she alive?”

  The agent swallowed and avoided Lucy’s direct stare. He shook his head, and Lucy sank to the leather couch.

  “What happened?”

  “She opened fire on the men pursuing you two the last time you were with her. They fired back.”

  “So I could get away.”

  Thunder echoed outside, and wind slapped the rain that had started falling against the sides of the cabin.

  “I should get a fire started,” Agent Seeley said. He gathered what he needed from the supplies on the hearth and built a stack of logs in the fireplace.

  Lucy appeared lost in thought. A few minutes passed in an uncomfortable silence as Agent Seeley began stoking the fire to life. It crackled and sparked, the smell of burning wood filling the cabin.

  “How many have died for me?” Lucy asked, breaking the silence.

  “Lucy,” Zoe tried.

  “How many?” she insisted.

  Agent Seeley stood, facing the growing fire, his hands on his hips. “They aren’t dying for you,” he said, then turned around and moved to sit across from Lucy in one of the leather chairs. “They are dying to save their own humanity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Are you sure you want to know? It’ll change everything.”

  Lucy glanced from Agent Seeley to Zoe, her eyes pleading for direction. Zoe walked to the couch and sat beside her, grasping her hand and giving her a confident nod.

  Lucy turned her attention back to Agent Seeley. “I’m sure.”

  “You were born and raised at black site CX4-B, fondly referred to as Xerox, a government-run campus dedicated to the development of biological warfare and weaponry.”

  Just as Summer had said.

  “The Grantham Project was Xerox’s largest program and the reason for its creation. It dealt in human germline engineering using CRISPR/Cas9 to edit reproductive cells in order to ensure fetuses developed an affinity toward pa
rticular skills. The edited reproductive cells were incubated and grown at Xerox from conception, being adjusted and mutated to explore outcomes of different external forces on the end results.”

  “End results,” Zoe said. “You mean babies.”

  “There were eighty-nine specimens to begin. Only fifteen made it to viability. And of the fifteen, only nine were born.”

  Zoe already knew where he was headed.

  “You are one of the nine, Lucy. A genetically modified subject with the ability to harness physical skills in a way that has never been seen before. Speed, strength, intelligence, adaptability, reasoning, all heightened by constant training and observation. You and the others were sculpted to perfection.”

  “I was born in a lab?” Lucy asked.

  “Is that even possible?” Zoe asked.

  “You tell me.” Agent Seeley nodded his head toward Lucy. Zoe’s mind traced back through all the strange and unbelievable things she’d seen Lucy do over the last few days. What else could explain such things?

  “I don’t have a mother,” Lucy said.

  “Olivia was your mother,” Agent Seeley said. “She was the head geneticist on the program and oversaw every stage of development from conception to your sixteenth birthday. She named you. She loved you.”

  “And the others? The ones like me?”

  Agent Seeley rubbed the sides of his face with his fingers and exhaled painfully. “There was a problem with the DNA melding as some of you grew. An unforeseen mutation in the brain’s hardwiring made certain patients, which is what we called you, unstable. Olivia tried to warn the director about the early signs of the mutation, but the higher-ups demanded results. The process was clear: create, raise, train, control. Until you were called upon by your country.”

  “Like spies,” Zoe said.

  “Like weapons. Only to leave the black site when needed. But as Olivia suspected, some of the others started to change. Number Three was the first to resist his programming. He killed seventeen Grantham agents before he could be contained. They put him in solitary, but he escaped, managed to recruit Numbers Five and Six, and the three got off campus without being detected. They made their way into a small town north of the black site and shot up a local shopping center. It left six dead and a dozen more injured.”

  “I remember hearing about that,” Zoe said. “It was all over the news.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lucy said, and Zoe turned to see the horror filling her face. “Is that all going to happen to me?”

  “I want to tell you no with confidence,” Agent Seeley said, “but honestly, there is zero data on your current state. After these events, they put the Grantham Project on lockdown and started looking more closely at the mutation Olivia had originally warned about. They hypothesized it was deeply embedded in the original genetic code and couldn’t be resolved. Again, Olivia had a different viewpoint and believed with memory alterations she could return each of you to a former state, before the mutation started presenting itself, and alter your course. But it was too late. The fear of not being able to control you was already present, and the majority believed it would be better to terminate the project and start from scratch.”

  “Terminate,” Lucy said.

  “Erase all evidence of the nine so it would appear you never existed. Keep only what was necessary to further the evolution of the project. Every document, every recording, every video, and all of its subjects.”

  “They wanted to kill us.”

  “They were afraid of you. Of what you could do and expose if you couldn’t be controlled. Not to mention what would happen if the American people ever found out what Grantham had been doing. Genetically engineered babies in a lab . . .”

  Agent Seeley stopped. He didn’t need to finish; his intent was clear. The government would explode if the American people knew their tax money was helping fund something that perverse. Zoe thought about what Summer had said: “The fall of the powers that be. You’re going to be a part of that.” This was what she had meant.

  Suddenly a dozen connections formed in Zoe’s mind. They were after Lucy because she could expose them. Burn it all down.

  “Olivia wouldn’t let that happen to you,” Agent Seeley continued. “She heard about the execution orders, and with the small amount of time she had she wiped your memories, but not before copying the damning evidence and giving it to you.”

  “I have it?” Lucy asked.

  “Stored in your memories is the location of a data chip with enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the country’s most powerful leaders. The plan was never for you to have to recover it. Olivia was always supposed to be with you. You were supposed to head to France, start over. You and Olivia, the information as a shield against those that would always be looking for you. But as smart as she was, she was still fighting against the FBI and all of its resources.” He shook his head. “She never stood a chance.”

  A moment of silence filled the cabin before Agent Seeley returned from the place he’d seemed to go in his mind.

  “But she protected you. She gave you something they need, and that makes keeping you alive necessary,” he said.

  “And a constant target,” Zoe said.

  “It was the best Olivia could do with what time she had.”

  “Why not just release the information herself?” Zoe asked. “Why all this?”

  “Olivia spent the last twenty years working on the Grantham Project. She believed in it and the good it could do. Not to mention all the people connected to the program, good people, whose lives would be ruined if that information ever got out. And Lucy, she’d be seized by the government, and who knows what would have been done to her.” Agent Seeley exhaled and looked right at Lucy. “Look, I don’t know all of Olivia’s motivations, but I know she was only trying to do what she thought was best for you.”

  “They killed her for it,” Lucy said, as if it was all just starting to sink in.

  Zoe fell back against the couch, the weight of it all pressing against her entire body.

  “But I had a memory of you,” Lucy said.

  “You did,” Agent Seeley said with a smile.

  “Will I remember more?”

  “There’s no way to know.” He scooted forward in his chair. “What I do know is that you have access to the most powerful information in the country, and we need to find it before they do or none of us will make it out of this alive.”

  His words bored into Zoe’s mind. Terror and grief washed over Lucy’s face as her entire life was just splayed out in front of her. And suddenly Zoe’s sixth sense about Agent Seeley came roaring back to life. She leaned forward and stopped Lucy as the girl opened her mouth to speak.

  “What’s your role in all of this?” Zoe asked.

  “I was head of tactical training and security. I helped the patients form their advanced skills in weaponry, combat, survival skills, and so on,” he answered.

  “And Olivia came to you with her plan, why?”

  “She needed someone to help her and Lucy get out of Xerox undetected.”

  “But they were followed,” Zoe pressed. “That’s why Olivia is dead.”

  Agent Seeley stood. “You think I don’t know that! I failed her, but I’m doing everything I can to make it right.”

  “By conveniently showing up to help us just when you did?” Zoe said, standing herself.

  “When word came through that they’d connected Lucy to Summer, I knew I needed to be on that tactical team to get to you before they did. I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground so we know what they know, so we can intercept their moves.”

  “And what do you get out of all this? What makes an agent flip sides? Because in my experience that doesn’t happen often.”

  “I get my humanity!” he yelled. “I get to sleep again.”

  Zoe fell silent, her pulse racing in her ears.

  “They were killing kids,” Agent Seeley said. “I didn’t sign up to kill kids.”

 
Lucy disrupted their fiery engagement as she stood from the couch and walked toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Zoe called after her.

  “Outside,” Lucy said.

  “It’s raining.”

  Lucy ignored her, opened the door, and slammed it behind her. Zoe and Agent Seeley just stood there for a long moment, neither looking at the other, neither speaking. Then Zoe exhaled and decided to go after Lucy.

  She heard the agent’s heavy footsteps and whirled around to face him. “Stay here,” she demanded.

  He didn’t object, he just moved quickly to the closet and yanked out a jacket. “At least take this,” he said as he tossed it to her. It was a red raincoat. She didn’t say thank you as she caught the coat and stepped out into the cold night.

  The rain had eased a bit, now just a steady thrum that drenched the earth. Zoe yanked on the jacket and pulled up the hood. She descended the short set of stairs.

  The cabin light gave off soft illumination for a few yards. Beyond, it was pitch-black without even stars to shed some light on the forest.

  “Lucy,” she yelled, hoping for a response. There was none. Zoe yanked the jacket tighter across her chest to shield herself from the chilly wind. She turned in circles, searching through the darkness for signs of life.

  Then she saw her. Standing to the east, staring up at the sky as rain splashed down over her face. Zoe walked to her, and as she approached, Lucy lowered her face so she was staring straight ahead.

  “Lucy,” Zoe said, “let’s go back inside.”

  “I don’t have a mother,” Lucy said, “or a father, or a home. Am I even a human?”

  “Of course you are,” Zoe replied.

  Lucy whipped around, her fiery eyes startling in the darkness. “Are you sure, Zoe? Can you look at me and be sure?”

  Zoe opened her mouth to reassure the girl, but her words fell short. What made someone human? Their body, upbringing, mind, soul? Zoe wasn’t sure she was even human.

  “If I’m not human,” Lucy said, “then what am I?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She stepped back toward the cabin, leaving Zoe standing in the rainy night wondering exactly that.