FUSED: iSEAL OMNIBUS EDITION (A Military Technothriller)

by Jude Hardin

  “We’ve come a long way since then,” Admiral Lacy said. “The device we’re testing is about the size of a pea. It will be surgically inserted and turned on for the duration of the study, and then it will be permanently deactivated.”

  “Surgically inserted where? In my brain?”

  “Of course. But it’s a minor procedure. Local anesthesia. You’ll be awake the whole time. I know it sounds scary, but it’s actually very safe.”

  “And what conclusions are the researchers trying to draw from this study?”

  “We want to see if the device is suitable for military applications. If so, we’ll see about funding a second study, and a third. Eventually, we would like for at least one operator in each SEAL team to be outfitted with the device. We’re calling the program iSEAL, and if everything works out, it’s going to revolutionize covert warfare. Of course we’re a long way from our ultimate goal, but we have to start somewhere.”

  “And that somewhere is me,” Brennan said.

  He didn’t like the idea of being a lab rat, but the USS Gridley didn’t sound so great either. Apparently, volunteering for this iSEAL thing was the only way back to where he wanted to be. But at what cost? And even if he did manage to get reassigned to the jump school at Fort Benning, would he be able to make the freefall there?

  Or, would he freeze up again, and maybe draw an even worse duty assignment than the Gridley?

  “I know it’s a big decision,” Admiral Lacy said, looking at his wristwatch. “So I’ll give you some time to think about it. You have sixty seconds.”

  Brennan felt his pulse in his eyeballs. If he wanted another chance to become a United States Navy SEAL, then this was the price. A hole drilled in his skull, and a foreign object implanted into his brain. Four weeks of being poked and prodded and examined like some sort of specimen in a Petri dish.

  “Can I sleep on it, sir?” Brennan said.

  Admiral Lacy’s eyes were still on the watch. “Twenty seconds, sailor. There’s a duty driver standing outside the door at parade rest, and there’s a van at the curb with the motor running. My plane back to Memphis is refueling as we speak. If you’re coming with me, I need to know now.”

  Brennan took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  21 hours and 23 minutes before the blast…

  During the flight, Admiral Lacy talked about his distinguished military career, and about his current assignment as the Chief of Naval Personnel. His responsibilities included oversight of all the training and education resources for the Navy, with an annual budget close to thirty billion dollars.

  The iSEAL program was only one of several new military initiatives utilizing state-of-the-art technologies that melded the human brain with computer circuitry, but it was the one Admiral Lacy had the most faith in. Or so he said. By the time the airplane landed at the Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tennessee, Brennan had started thinking of Admiral Lacy as an overpaid salesman in a fancy suit.

  And he’d started having second thoughts about going through with the surgical procedure. The installation, as Admiral Lacy coldly referred to it.

  The plane taxied to a pre-designated spot on the tarmac, where Admiral Lacy’s driver waited with a limousine. The young airman climbed out of the car and quickly loaded Brennan’s and Lacy’s luggage into the trunk. He drove them away from the airstrip, and then through the main gate of the base. The lights of Millington—motels and bars, fast food joints and tattoo parlors—rushed by, and soon they were surrounded by an unnerving silence and blackness.

  Rural Tennessee at two o’clock in the morning, Brennan thought. He’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and he was exhausted. All he wanted was a few hours of sleep, and then he would tell Admiral Lacy that he’d decided not to volunteer for the research study after all. Maybe. He still wasn’t sure. Everything had happened so fast, and he’d been mentally drained to start with. He needed to come at it with a clear mind. He needed rest.

  The driver slowed and then turned onto a narrow strip of asphalt that snaked through a heavily-wooded area. Brennan could smell the foliage through the car’s ventilation system. It reminded him of home, of hot summer nights riding around with a carload of friends. Not going anywhere, just riding around. He missed that life, sometimes, although he knew it was behind him now, that he could never go back to it, that he’d outgrown it in a way. You can never go home, some great writer had once said, and Brennan supposed it was true. You can go there, but it’s never the same.

  The driver braked to a stop in front of a mechanical six-foot chain link gate on wheels, a formidable barrier topped with three strands of barbed wire and shimmering loops of razor ribbon. Brennan assumed that the fence surrounding the perimeter had been similarly fortified.

  A red sign attached to the gate said UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR. NO TRESPASSING.

  Admiral Lacy lowered his window, swiped his ID card and pressed his thumb against a fingerprint scanner. The gate rolled open.

  “Same procedure to exit the facility,” Admiral Lacy said. “Nobody comes or goes without proper identification.”

  “Impressive,” Brennan said.

  “And just to remind you, as of right now, you are to remain anonymous. You’re not to mention your name or anything about your personal history to anyone here at the facility—except for Dr. Aggerson, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The gate clanked shut metallically and definitively as the car proceeded onto the property.

  “This used to be a farm,” Admiral Lacy said. “Soybeans and corn, I think. Dr. Aggerson bought the land with his own money, and then he secured a string of grants to build and operate the research facility. You’re really lucky to be part of this, Petty Officer Brennan. This is groundbreaking stuff.”

  Brennan didn’t feel so lucky, for some reason. He felt like a loser. If only he’d made the jump yesterday, he wouldn’t be here right now. Lacy would have chosen someone else to be Dr. Aggerson’s guinea pig.

  The driver steered into a paved lot and parked in front of a sprawling one story building. Concrete façade, flat roof, no windows. Brennan had never seen anything quite like it. To him, it looked like some kind of prison.

  There were a dozen or so cars in the parking lot, all makes and models, some of them with government tags and some private.

  “How many people work here?” Brennan said.

  “CereCirc has thirty-four fulltime civilian employees, and on any given day there might be that many government people on site for one reason or another. It’s a busy place sometimes, but everyone who walks into the building has top secret security clearance. The cars you see here now belong to the folks working the night shift. In a few hours, the lot will start to fill up.”

  “Are they going to feed us?” Brennan said. “I’m starving.”

  “You’re going in for surgery. You know that, right? That’s why I haven’t offered you anything to eat.”

  “The surgery’s going to be today?”

  “Absolutely. Right now, as a matter of fact. As soon as we walk through that door. You’re not getting cold feet, are you? This is your one and only chance at getting back into the SEAL program, Brennan. And if bringing you here was a waste of my time—”

  “I’m not getting cold feet, sir. I just didn’t know the surgery was going to be today. I’m on board a hundred percent.”

  It was a lie, but one that Brennan delivered convincingly. During the drive from the gate to the building, he’d decided that being a lab specimen for the next four weeks was preferable to being a swabbo for the next three years. So he would play the Navy’s little game, do whatever song and dance was necessary to get through it, and then get back on the path to becoming a SEAL. It had been his goal for a long time, and he wasn’t ready to give up on it. For now, he would do whatever it took to placate those who could help make it happen, those who could help him get reinstated in the program.

  “Great,” A
dmiral Lacy said. “That’s what I needed to hear. Now let’s go inside and meet Dr. Aggerson. Don’t worry about your gear. It’ll be waiting for you when the experiment is over. CereCirc will provide you with everything you need while you’re here.”

  They climbed out of the car and followed a concrete sidewalk to a single steel door. Once again, Admiral Lacy swiped his ID card and pressed his thumb against a laser scanner. The deadbolt clicked open and they walked inside.

  A woman wearing white scrubs pushed a wheelchair toward them as they entered. Petite, long blond hair, very beautiful. She was young, but there was a certain wisdom behind those clear blue eyes, something true and perhaps painful. Something. She gave the admiral a smile and a nod, and then she turned to Brennan.

  “My name is Nika,” she said. “I’m an RN, and I’m going to be taking care of you before and after the procedure. If you’ll have a seat here, I’ll wheel you over to the pre-op area. We’ll get some paperwork started, and we’ll get some baseline vital signs and EEG readings. They’re almost ready in the OR, so—”

  “I can walk,” Brennan said. “I don’t need a wheelchair.”

  “I know you can walk, but Dr. Aggerson wants you to ride in the chair. And he’s the boss. Okay?”

  Brennan shrugged. He turned around and eased himself down into the vinyl seat.

  “I’m going to leave you in the good hands of the people here at CereCirc,” Admiral Lacy said. “It was good to meet you.”

  “You’re leaving?” Brennan said.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I’ll check in on you later today. If not in person, at least by phone.”

  “Okay, well, thanks for the opportunity, Admiral. I appreciate it, sir.”

  “And thank you for volunteering for our study. The United States Navy appreciates you, sailor.”

  Admiral Lacy turned and exited the building, and suddenly Petty Officer Third Class Nathan Brennan felt very much alone. He was concerned that nobody in his family—or anyone else, really, besides Lacy and the people here at CereCirc—knew where he was or what he was doing. Lacy had generated the proper paperwork to put him on temporary additional duty at the Naval Support Activity Mid-South, but there was no mention of the research study or the facility out here in the middle of nowhere. So, as far as Brennan’s family knew, he was still going through jump school in San Diego, and as far as the Navy knew, he was stripping and waxing floors in Millington.

  The whole thing made him nervous, but maybe it would turn out to be good experience for his future career as a Special Forces warrior. After all, once he made it through training and received an assignment to an actual SEAL team, he would be required to go on secret missions all the time. His family would just have to get used to it.

  Nika wheeled him down a long corridor, past a uniformed guard sitting at the center of a circular security station. The rubber wheels on the chair squeaked against the glossy white tiles as Nika turned and backed through a set of swinging doors marked PRE-OP/POST-OP.

  The suite reminded Brennan of an examination room in a doctor’s office, only much larger. It had been built to accommodate an array of electronic equipment, some of which Brennan recognized and much of which he didn’t. The air was cold, thick with the smell of antiseptic, and the room was eerily quiet. Brennan figured Nika could hear his stomach growling. He’d never been so hungry in his life.

  “I’ll be glad when this is over, so I can eat something,” he said.

  Nika opened a cabinet and pulled out a fresh hospital gown. “Take all your clothes off and put this on,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Brennan did as instructed. When Nika returned, she took his blood pressure and temperature and then told him to lie flat on the examination table. She started an IV in his arm and drew several vials of blood, and then she hooked some wires and electrodes from one machine to his chest, and more wires and electrodes from another machine to his scalp. Her voice was calm and reassuring, her touch warm and gentle.

  “Will you have to shave my head for the surgery?” Brennan said.

  “Just one little strip on top. And the incision itself will be tiny.”

  “How tiny?”

  “Six millimeters. A quarter of an inch. Don’t worry. You have plenty of hair on top of your head. You’ll be able to comb it to the side and hide the wound when we’re finished. You won’t even know it’s there.”

  Nika finished with the machines, peeled off all the electrodes, handed Brennan a clipboard with some papers to fill out and sign. His eyes were bleary from fatigue, and he could barely read the small print at the bottom of the consent form.

  “A virus?” he said. “You’re going to inject a virus into my brain?”

  “Dr. Aggerson will answer any questions you might have. He should—”

  Before Nika could finish her sentence, a man wearing green scrubs walked into the room and said, “Hello. I’m Dr. Clive Aggerson, and I’ll be performing your surgery this morning. How are you?”

  “Fine,” Brennan said. “A little tired, but okay.”

  Brennan guessed Aggerson to be in his mid-fifties. Crow’s feet, laugh lines, gray around the temples. The doctor pressed the cold bell of a stethoscope against Brennan’s chest, told him to take some deep breaths. After that he aimed a penlight into Brennan’s eyes, tested his reflexes with a little rubber hammer, and poked around on the bottom of his feet with a pointy steel pick.

  “Have you had a chance to review the consent form?” Aggerson said.

  “Yes, and I do have a couple of questions. The part about a virus—”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not any sort of virus that can make you sick. It’s from a certain type of algae that’s particularly efficient with photosynthesis. The DNA from the virus will replicate inside your brain cells closest to the incision, making them sensitive to light, just like the algae, and there’s a microscopic voice recognition module in the device we’re installing that will convert a narrow spectrum of sound frequencies to pulses of light, allowing the device to respond to certain verbal commands from certain individuals. In short, I’ll be able to switch the device on and off whenever I want to. It’s a safety feature. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong, we wouldn’t want to have to cut you open again to disable the device. And, it enables us to leave the device in place once the study is complete, so that you don’t have to go through the risks of a second surgery.”

  “So the thing you’re installing in my brain is going to stay there for the rest of my life?”

  “Yes, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s completely compatible with your natural tissues. In that regard, it’s not any different than installing an artificial heart valve, or an artificial knee or hip or something. It’s totally safe. And once we disable the device at the end of the study, it will be inert from then on. Like it never happened.”

  “Like it never happened,” Brennan repeated, doubtfully. “And what’s this stuff about total amnesia?”

  “Well, for the purposes of the study, we want to start with a blank slate, so to speak. In order to conduct the—”

  “You’re going to erase my memory?”

  Aggerson paused for a beat. “I’ll try to put it in layman’s terms for you. All of your memories will still be there, but they won’t be accessible while the MK-2 is in its active state. Once the study is over and we turn the device off, everything will return to normal in a couple of days, similar to the progression we see with concussion patients sometimes.”

  Brennan tried to absorb the implications of completely losing his memory, even for a short time. It was a frightening proposition no matter how you sliced it.

  “Since I’m the first person you’ve tried this on, how do you know the condition will be temporary? I just don’t want to come out of this like some kind of stroke victim, you know?”

  “We’ve been doing this for a long time,” Dr. Aggerson said. “You’re the first human test subject for the MK-2, but we’ve done ext
ensive human research on previous devices. We haven’t lost a patient yet, and nobody has been left with any permanent memory loss or any other neurological deficits. We have a lot at stake here. We wouldn’t be doing this if we thought it might harm you in any way.”

  Brennan nodded. “So how does this thing work? Is there a battery in it, or what? It’s not going to start leaking poison into my bloodstream ten years from now, is it?”

  “You’re a very smart young man. You’re asking all the right questions. Actually, there’s no battery. That’s one of the beautiful things about the MK-2. It’s powered solely by the electrical activity in your brain. There are no moving parts to wear out, so theoretically it could go on working forever. Several lifetimes, at least. But to answer your question, no, there’s no danger of the device ever releasing any toxins into your system.”

  Brennan still didn’t like the idea of his memory being blanked for four weeks, but if that’s what it took to get back on track to becoming a SEAL, then so be it.

  He signed the bottom of the consent form and handed the clipboard to Dr. Aggerson.

  18 hours and 26 minutes before the blast…

  After watching the first few minutes of the test subject’s surgical procedure from the observation balcony, Cara Skellar walked to the security desk and signed out to take a short break.

  Cara Skellar wasn’t her real name, but it was the name she’d gone by for the past six years. She had a driver’s license and a passport and a well-documented history, and nobody at CereCirc Solutions even remotely suspected her of being a spy.

  “I’m just going to walk out to my car to smoke a cigarette,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  The officer glanced up and nodded. He took a sip from a can of Diet Coke and then turned his attention back to the bank of video monitors at his station.