by Lee Doty
Sure, he could deal with the ritual—he’d seen the (sweet Moses, betamax) tapes of the shape-shifter that had penetrated the building in ’75—paranoia really was a matter of perspective, after all, but there was absolutely no excuse for the indulgences that Smith gave to the techies. How could anyone take the OSI seriously when they arrived at a building with a computer system that impersonated a mad computer from an old video game that nobody under twenty had ever played? Smith accepted the techies’ argument that the point of camouflage was to convince your enemies not to take you seriously, but Hawkins knew better than to accept that at face value. Smith wanted to be perceived as a lot more den mother than tyrant here, but then again, Hawkins also knew that the den mother façade was also camouflage. All but the hardest people often dropped their guard around Smith, and that was a powerful advantage in the spy business.
Shaking his head with resignation, Hawkins passed through the turnstiles and navigated through several hallways until he came to a security desk that was placed in front of a long narrow metallic hallway. They exchanged casual nods and Hawkins gave the guard his wallet, tablet, and keys. The guard had Hawkins insert his badge through a small ATM-style reader and a small numbered cubby opened in the wall behind the guard, who stowed his gear in the cubby and waved Hawkins through.
Hawkins passed the guard and strode down the claustrophobically narrow glass and metal hallway. At various points in his journey, he heard—and sometimes imagined that he felt—various buzzes and vibrations. After forty feet, the hallway opened up again and Hawkins scanned his palm on the access panel on the desk. After a few seconds, and access card was extruded through a small slot and the guard handed it to him. Hawkins wondered briefly if it was the same card he’d inserted on the other side—he doubted it.
Hawkins slid the access card into its spot in his lapel pocket and turned away from the security gate with another perfunctory nod to the guard. He proceeded down another short hallway and pushed his way through the matte-finished semi-opaque glass door at its end, entering a small waiting room. A handsome man sitting on one of the couches looked up from his tablet, then nodded in greeting and rose. The man was dressed in baggy worn blue jeans with a white lab coat over a weathered dull yellow “Aperture Science” T-shirt. He had the twitchy self-aware movements of the Red Bull crowd and a youthful twinkle in his eye and smile that made him look younger than his forty five years. His salt-and-pepper hair was still cut in a hipster style that a man half his age might have worn twenty two and half years ago. He wore stylish glasses with heavy black plastic frames that always reminded Hawkins of sunglasses, but due to his strong even features and the thick corded muscle below his ‘casual scientist’ costome, the glasses had always cemented a Clark Kent look for Hawkins.
“Dr. Hawkins!” the incognito Superman said, juggling the tablet out of the way and extending his hand.
“Dr. Nelson.” Hawkins extended his hand, which Nelson casually crushed, “Is she still alive?”
“Yes,” Nelson said, voice nearly breaking with excitement, “Yes sir, she is… we’ve got her restrained and sedated in the hard biomechanics lab on B7.”
“Show me.” Hawkins said, glancing toward the door behind Dr. Nelson.
They moved through the interior door and walked down a long, fluorescent-bright, slightly curving hallway.
“We get anything from any of the equipment yet?” Hawkins asked as they walked.
“No sir, most of the hardware is off-the-rack, militarily speaking; high-end, but nothing special or traceable there. We’ve got no data to speak of on them, helmet recorders were empty and of the four tablets on the operators, two were DOA, but we’ve got the crackers working on the encryption for every bit of data we could find.”
“How thoroughly did you sweep everything you brought back?” Hawkins asked as they arrived at a large bank of brushed steel elevators.
Nelson pushed the call button and gave Hawkins a look. “You’re kidding, right?”
Hawkins gave Nelson a harder look… wetworks vs. tech: Hawkins won. Nelson raised his hands in faux surrender. “The wreckage is still in transit, but after we removed all the data we could find, we hit it with the full EMP. No tracker or other electronic nastiness survived that.”
“How about the bodies?”
Nelson started off snarky, but quickly reconsidered, “No, you mean we should have… uh, yes. We gave them the same EMP, also we’ve got them in full biological isolation— we’ll be ready for any hazmat surprises.”
They stepped into a spacious elevator with doors on both sides and Hawkins pushed the button for B7. “We’re not going to get zombied again, are we?” The elevator’s scanner silently challenged the two men’s ID badges and received the expected response, then crosschecked them with the security database before the heavy doors closed.
“Severed the spinal cords of the corpses.”
Hawkins nodded as the elevator began its descent. “And the Iron Dragon? We’re positive on the ID?”
“Yes sir, it’s her.” Nelson reported with an excited nod, “We’ve got a ninety percent match from the video feeds we’ve seen her in before, scars match the two injuries we’ve documented… it’s her.”
“You pulsed her, right?”
Nelson nodded, “Three times. She’s got the standard internal dragon tech, but there’s not going to be any remote kill on her now, no trackers either. We were actually quite worried that the EMP would trigger her kill switch, but we caught a break on that one. We’re following full quarantine protocols as well. Everyone understands how important this is, and how… unexpectedly fortunate. We’re being as careful as possible, Leo.”
Hawkins nodded thoughtfully. The elevator doors slid open to reveal another brightly lit, slightly curving hallway, this one with brilliant white walls, floor and ceiling. “Yeah, this is fishy on an epic scale. We get their top operator alive and with zero effort, something’s got to be up.”
They walked in silence for a few moments, navigating the curving hall then turning into a straight radial hallway toward the lab at the center of this level.
Nelson shook his head, “Maybe we just finally caught a break?” he said without conviction. “These guys have been owning us in the field then fading like ghosts for too long.”
“Human?” Hawkins asked with a sudden smile and narrowed eyes.
“Well, we’re still testing…” Nelson hedged.
“They’re not even cyborgs, are they?”
“Well, they do have some internal devices…”
“I knew it!” Hawkins stopped walking and held out his hand, palm up, “Pay up.”
“We’re still mapping the genome… it’s not as simple as a pregnancy test…” Nelson said, frowning.
“Yeah. Clearly they’re not normal humans. You’re going to find some genetic anomalies, maybe some chemistry… there will be design. That wasn’t the point of the bet. They’re not aliens or monsters or robots or fairies or something, and you are holding twenty of my bucks. Don’t make me start charging you interest.” Hawkins started forward again, with just a hint of strut in his walk.
As they approached the vault-like door to the hardened lab at the center of the level, Nelson half muttered, “Vampires might have human DNA. Frankenstein’s monster, uh… zombies…” Hawkins’ eye rolling dismissal could be sensed even from behind and Nelson lapsed into silence for a few steps, but then he blurted out some late inspiration: “From the future!”
Hawkins stopped and glanced over his shoulder with a look that was half pity and half estimation adjusted lower. Nelson lowered his eyes slightly.
“Nelson, you are going to make me cry.” Hawkins shook his head sadly, as if picturing Nelson’s next misguided purchase from QVC.
They resumed their journey down the clean white hall. At length, the hallway dead-ended into a large vault-like door made of dull metal. At each side of a large door, a guard snapped to attention. The guards wore full black body armor, deep grey fatigu
es, and an alert, serious expression that belied years of focused discipline. Each guard carried a short KSG bullpup shotgun on a single point combat sling. Hawkins nodded to the guards as the heavy door cycled open, then he and Nelson moved through the door and into the antechamber for the central biomechanics lab.
The room shared the hall’s oversaturated white paint job and overbuilt deep subterranean construction, but its fastidious order and the abundance of well-cleaned equipment gave the room the antiseptic feel of a lab in a research hospital, or in the belly of a space ship. Ahead of them was another, heavier vault-like door with a glowing red light above indicating that the lab was hermetically sealed. There were several yellow hazmat suits on racks to the left of the door. To the right of the door was a small shower-like decontamination station surrounded by inch-thick glass walls. The room was currently unoccupied, but the sound of muted voices drifted to them from the stairs to their right.
They turned toward the faint voices and ascended the short flight of stairs to the elevated observation level above the lab. At the top of the stairs, another alert guard who could have been a fraternal twin of the guards outside the lab interrupted his silent, wary vigil enough to give Hawkins a small nod.
The lab’s observation level was less of a room and more like an eight foot wide hallway that wrapped around one side of the round inner lab. The inner wall of the observation level was a contiguous sheet of curved, floor to ceiling glass. Looking down and inward, it was possible to see the entire inner lab from nearly everywhere on the observation level.
Hawkins had been to this lab on a few occasions, but he’d never seen more than eight nerds here at a time. Today, it was packed. The little caffeinated weasels were crowded together around the workstations, in clumps along the glass wall and in little knots as they hunched around tablet computers, comparing notes and arguing quietly.
Hawkins and Nelson stood at the head of the stairs watching the jittery swarm until Dr. Smith noticed them and disengaged herself from a group of four senior scientists and made her way across the room.
“Leo.” Dr. Smith said, extending her hand, “Welcome to the circus.”
“Indeed.” Hawkins shook Smith’s hand, “The Iron Dragon, huh?”
Smith nodded, “Want to see?”
Hawkins nodded and Smith led them to an open spot along the glass wall. They spent a silent moment looking down into the lab.
Below them, at the center of the lab, a woman was secured to a raised examination table, surrounded by the bustle of three hazmat-suited technicians. Her arms were held out from her body and secured to the table at wrist and elbow. She wore only a simple blue hospital gown and a lot of wireless medical sensors. Her inky black hair was cut short and without any discernible style. To Hawkins, it looked like she’d been shorn like a sheep a few weeks back and the hair had grown back unattended since then. She was tall, but not abnormally so, maybe five-ten.
At first glance, she didn’t strike Hawkins as a soldier. Sure, all the major indicators were there: Lithe muscle corded the arms and legs, ugly scars tattooed the exposed skin, mementos of battle more intense than any active duty soldier that Hawkins had ever known. Her wounds looked more like something from the rehab wing of Walter Reed or another military hospital. If she were sleeping maybe he would have confused her with the elite killing machine he knew she had to be, but she was awake, and he could see her face.
Her eyes were half lidded and filled with a dull wonder. She was conscious, but floating on whatever cocktail they were pumping into her through the I.V. in each arm. There was a completely unguarded beatific smile on her face, and it occurred to Hawkins that if he looked only at the face and ignored the scars, that the woman on the table looked more like a high school junior in a spa getting a facial and a mani-pedi, full of a naïve anticipation for her exciting evening at the senior prom.
“That’s weird.” He said absently.
Smith nodded, “Rambo’s body and a Disney Princess’s face.”
Both Hawkins and Nelson snorted out a quick, incredulous laugh. “She looks like she’s about to start singing.” Nelson said, wondering.
“She looks like if she does, the three techs and any nearby animals might join in.” Smith shook her head, then looked sideways to Hawkins. “First impressions?”
Hawkins couldn’t disengage his mind from the woman’s smile, so his first guess was sub-par. “Uh… we change the formulation of the drugs we’re using to keep her docile?”
“Same compounds, same mix, but the amount is different.” Smith checked her tablet, “We’re at the indicated level to incapacitate a four hundred pound man, and she’s still partially lucid.”
Nelson blinked, looking briefly up from his own tablet, then he looked back down, drilling into the scans that had already been taken of the woman on the table, “We’ve already removed four implants… her body’s free of any other mechanisms, so we’re dealing with biological-only resistance…” he prodded his tablet for another moment, “we’re not yet sure if it’s a systemic resistance to the drugs, or just improved filtering in the circulatory system. We should have that one narrowed down in a few hours as we watch the levels in her bloodstream over time…” Nelson cut himself off as he noticed the look of expiring patience that both Smith and Hawkins wore as they regarded him. “I’ll just take that off line, then.” He said and the others nodded.
“That is not the face of a soldier.” Hawkins stated flatly.
“She is on drugs, or she might be conscious and intelligent enough to be running a con on us.” Smith ventured.
“I know it’s early, but my gut tells me we’re seeing something true, and important.” Hawkins wiped a hand down his face, thinking. “You wanted my first impression… that’s it. I’m not yet sure what it might imply, but emotionally, I’m not reading soldier… I’ve seen people with nearly that level of openness in their faces a few times in my life, but it’s usually in children or in church, and almost never in the service, except maybe for chaplains on the first day of basic.”
Nelson gave him a dubious look. “My guess is what you’re seeing is chemical. We’ve never had to put these levels of the pacifying compounds into anyone, let alone anyone who weighs in at maybe a buck fifty. What you’re seeing is the world’s highest junkie.”
Hawkins tore his eyes away from their captive and turned to face Nelson. “I’ve seen combat on three continents, I’ve seen pretty much every kind of war, every kind of warrior. I’ve worked in or with every spec ops team on our side of the political spectrum, I’ve watched friends die… I’ve killed, and seen the things those men were doing that made it necessary to kill them. My conscience is clean, but do you think there’s any drug you could give me to make me look like that?” He inclined his head toward the glass wall. “I’ve seen too much, done too much to ever be that unguarded.”
Hawkins paused, but Nelson said nothing. Hawkins turned back to look down into the lab. “What you are seeing… is wonder.”
“Wonder?” Nelson said dubiously.
“There’s damage on her body, but not yet on her soul. She can still feel wonder… like a toddler with a butterfly, like Christmas Eve… wonder.”
Nelson lost the battle with both wisdom and impulse control, “Are you uh, falling in love there, chief?” he asked with less sarcasm than he’d intended.
Hawkins tensed, his shoulders bunching, arms flexing. Hawkins turned his head fractionally, eyeing Nelson, who actually took a half step backward before Nelson caught himself, straightened his spine and forced an amused look onto his face.
Hawkins smiled, “You okay there?”
Nelson gave him a roll of his eyes, then turned to Smith. “Has she said anything?”
“Not a word. Though she did giggle once. It was adorable.” Smith said, still looking down into the lab, “I’m not sure I see what you do, Leo. But whatever is going on, we need more information to sort it out, and I don’t think that info is going to be coming from the techs…” S
he glanced an inquiry at Nelson, who raised his eyes from his tablet enough to give her a confirming nod, “We’re going to need to talk to her. I’m beginning to feel uncomfortably like the Queen of Troy.”
“You think she’s full of angry Greeks?” Hawkins asked, “Are we going to have to suit up to go in there?”
“Nope.” Nelson said after some further prodding on his tablet, “Inert Green. We’ve got no bio threats, she’s got nothing up her sleeve.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Michael.” Smith favored Nelson with a tight smile, “But it is time to meet the dragon queen.”
***
Ash lay on the angled table, beaming. Everything was beautiful!
Nothing was old, nothing was dirty or disordered, maintained only by a lingering cadre of mechanical Clerics. Everything here screamed purpose, screamed order, screamed life. The efficient, purposeful room was made more beautiful by the enhanced vision her un-palsyed eyes afforded her in the Hallow.
And the torrent of drugs that were coursing through her system also helped a bit.
A brilliant white wall curved (and occasionally rippled) gently around her twenty feet away. The top half of the wall was a curved, inward-leaning mirror, which gave her a distorted funhouse perspective back into her round prison. She was secured to some kind of angled, padded table with a multitude of bands and straps which kept her completely immobile, except for her fingers and toes. Honestly though, it seemed to her that the table was giving her a big padded hug… her bonds made her feel more comforted than claustrophobic.
Around her, shambling marshmallowey hulks of plastic and rubber alternatively bustled and hovered, monitoring both her and the equipment around her. Behind large clear masks their faces were serious, professional, yet sometimes they’d return her smile when they thought no one was watching. The most distracting feature of the room was the lights in the rippling ceiling far above. The lights were a prismatic waterfall, showering the circular room with reverberant light and a faint yet marvelous buzz, which felt like warm sunlight in her ears. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel the light’s buzz in her ears, see it’s red shadow through her eyelids, feel it filling her mind until her eyes again fluttered open to the wonderland of light and sound and the peaceful joy that seemed to fill the air with magic here in this mysterious, white kingdom.