by Kal Spriggs
***
Jonathan Halving felt no surprise to find Colonel Givens in his office. He smiled, “Good evening, Colonel, pour you a drink?”
“Something seems to interfere with their abilities,” Her voice was cold.
The program director shrugged, “It’s a little early to tell for certain, but it appears that way, yes.” He stepped past her to take up his seat. “I’m noticing a substantial blockage with the male, I’m not certain what it is. The female has not developed to the level we thought she might, either, though nothing as pronounced as this.”
The ESPSec Colonel nodded, “You accept responsibility, at least then.” She turned to look through the glass windows of his office and out on the facility grounds beyond. “How do you intend to proceed?”
“I thought I might continue the classes until something breaks free,” Halving allowed some of the frustration he felt to reach his voice. She would take that as some confirmation of the effort he had already put into this. “Working him hard for a time might get past this mental block he’s developed.” Within the labs, they had confirmed synapse integration with the desired proteins. At this point, it was about getting their subjects to utilize those abilities at a conscious level. Perhaps, he wondered, a conscious mind which retained memories might provide better final integration.
“What if that doesn’t work?” Colonel Givens tapped on the armored glass of the window. Whether that was to reassure her of their security or if she were considering the what caliber of projectile necessary to use against it to kill him remotely, Halving didn’t know.
He ground his teeth in order to avoid giving her the response he would prefer. That would be a mistake on his part, she might deem him disloyal and try to eliminate him as a result. Colonel Givens had no concept of how difficult this final part had become. Even if she had, she wasn’t the type to accept such excuses. As he gained control of his temper, he said, “Then I’ll find another way. I’ve invested too much of my own time to give up on this. I promised weapons, controllable, powerful weapons, and that is what I will produce.”
What he wanted out of Project Archon was far more personal a goal than she realized. He wanted this to succeed and therefore he would make Project Archon succeed. If he had to, he would take both subjects back to the labs and push them until he got a result.
***
“This,” Janecek smirked, “is what I’m talking about!”
Shaden restrained a sigh at his teacher’s attitude. He looked over at where Doctor Halving signed paperwork from the guard behind the bars. Shaden still didn’t know why they were here. The underground firing range felt empty, silent, and cold.
Doctor Halving turned, “Mark, if you would, help Sergeant Bailey here with the weapons.”
The man behind the bars hesitated. “Sir, no one else is allowed back here…”
“It will be fine,” Doctor Halving said. “Colonel Givens authorized us to be here.” Shaden noticed a particular emphasis on the name of the officer. Apparently that name carried a great deal of weight, for Sergeant Bailey moved with speed to open the side door and let Janecek into the armory.
Doctor Halving turned to Shaden. “Now then, you’ve received military training before so this is mostly a refresher. After the incident you may find some of your reflexes are off, so Janecek will help you to get back into the routine. You’ll spend an hour a day at the range and you’ll start martial arts classes with Angel as a part of your workout routine tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Shaden said and gave Janecek a glance. He looked over just in time to see the man slip a M17 pistol into his pocket. Janecek saw him looking and gave him a wink. Just what his teacher might want with an integrally suppressed, ceramic and polymer pistol, Shaden didn’t know.
His knowledge startled him though. How would I know that much about a weapon, he wondered, when I can’t remember so much else? He couldn’t remember the town he grew up in, but he knew the M17 had an eight round standard magazine and that it had an accurate range of fifty meters in optimal conditions.
“Shaden,” Doctor Halving said, his voice slightly impatient. Shaden’s gaze went back to the Doctor, who held up a rifle. “Your attention. This is a…”
“M12 Carbine,” Shaden said automatically. He stared at the weapon, “It has a bullpup design for close quarters combat, a threaded barrel to take a suppressor or other attachment, a rail system for mounting weapon auxiliaries, and there are subsonic or standard rounds depending on mission set.”
Doctor Halving gave him a nod, “Good, glad to see your memory is so sharp.”
Shaden smiled at the praise… though he felt odd. He took the weapon as Doctor Halving passed it to him, but he couldn’t think of any time he had held one before. All the same, his hands seemed to know where to go on their own.
In fact, as he stared down at the weapon, he realized that knew how to strip one down, clean it, reassemble it and perform a functions check. He also knew how to bypass biometric locks, if the weapon had those. Looking over at the counter where Janecek and Sergeant Bailey continued to lay out weapons, Shaden felt unnerved that he knew how to do that for all the weapons they had laid out. I’ve been well trained, he told himself, yet he couldn’t help the uncertain shift in his stomach. Something wasn’t right, here.
“Okay, kid,” Janecek said with a smirk, “go ahead and take up a good firing position. Sergeant Bailey here has some Colonial targets for you to practice on. Just picture the face of some terrorist slimebag on them and let’s get some shooting in!”
***
“Staff Sergeant,” Sergeant Bailey said.
Staff Sergeant Tommy King looked up from his hand of cards. “What’s up, Bailey?” he asked, even as he nodded at Carter. “It’s to you, Specialist.” He raised an eyebrow as Specialist Carter raised the pot.
Sergeant Bailey was new to his team, still fresh from his last assignment as a trainer at Centauri Commando Qualification Course. If they were out in the field or dealing with Colonials, Tommy would have already knocked the rough edges off. As it was, he just didn’t care enough about the current assignment to tear into the man.
“After the mercs did their weapons training this morning, I did a full inventory: came up missing one item,” Sergeant Bailey paused, clearly expecting some kind of explosion. When Tommy didn’t look up from his cards, he went on hesitantly, “It’s a M17 pistol, the one assigned to Captain Schultz.”
Tommy looked over at Private Santiago, who scowled and folded. “Bet to me, I call,” Tommy pushed his chips in. “Three aces.” As Carter threw his cards down in disgust, Tommy raked in the chips.
Sergeant Bailey sighed, “Staff Sergeant…”
“I heard,” Tommy said. He looked up, “One of the mercs stole an M17.” He rolled his eyes, “Oh me, oh my,” he waved his hands in the air. “Sergeant, do you know why we’re here?”
Sergeant Bailey’s face went hard, “Staff Sergeant, our mission is to provide security to this compound and extend support to Bureau of ESP Security personnel and their contractors.”
“Bingo,” Tommy pointed a finger and nodded. “Let me tell you what that means in regards to that missing M17.” He crooked a finger and Sergeant Bailey came over. “That means,” Tommy said in a conversational voice, “that we do not look into this kind of happy horse shit. We do not look into what they’re doing inside our security perimeter. We don’t ask questions because if we do…” he shrugged, “a crap assignment to some Colonial hell-hole will seem like a vacation compared to what will happen to us.”
“Staff Sergeant, that pistol is a controlled item!” He looked around at the rest of the squad, clearly looking for support. “Staff Sergeant, they might do something bad with it!”
Tommy stood up and his face went cold, “Bailey, are you really that stupid? If one of their contractors took that pistol, then I have no doubt he’s going to do something bad with it,” he shook his head. “You know what? The less I know, the better. We’re here, all of us, becaus
e we pissed someone off. All of us – everyone here – has seen prisoners brought in and body bags roll out. They could be torturing people. They could be experimenting. They could be running some kind of sick murder fantasy thing for VIP’s, and you know what?” Tommy shook his head, “It’s a horrible job. I wish to God that I could do something about it, but all I can manage is to keep my guys, my squad, from doing something that will get them disappeared or dead. Do you understand?”
Sergeant Bailey stepped back, his face pasty as Tommy said what they all already knew. In any decent world, they wouldn’t have a thing to do with a place like this. But they all knew the drill. The Amalgamated Worlds Military answered to the Command Council. The Command Council made the calls. Short of desertion, they had no recourse. Some outfits were better than others, mostly because they had leaders who stood out above the rest. Tommy had served under a variety of commanders, right up until the last asshole had pushed him over the line.
He was lucky that it hadn’t gone to trial.
“Bailey,” Tommy said, far more gently, “I don’t know what you did. I don’t know who you pissed off…”
“A basic training company commander,” Sergeant Bailey said softly. “I was on loan because they were short personnel. I found out he was running a prostitution ring with some of his trainees…”
Tommy looked away, “So you got a shit transfer for stepping forward, I got it.” He gave a wave at the door, “These animals, here? They won’t hesitate to kill you if you get in their way. Bureau of ESP Security or Bureau of Internal Security, these types are all the same. If you’re a problem, they don’t ship you off... they bury you.”
He looked around and saw that his squad had gone quiet. “Look, guys, none of us want to be here, but we keep our heads down; we do the job; and then we get to go on to better things, okay?”
He saw them nod in response and he felt some of his tension ease. Not that he really hoped to move onto much better himself. He had refused lawful orders, at best he had a black mark in his record that would never go away. At worst... his old commander could decide to press charges and he would end up on the inside of one of the military prisons. Or worse, he thought, since I know so much.
In truth, he knew more than he wanted to about the operations here. He knew that some of the contractors were psychics. He knew that ESPSec was doing some kind of experiments. That was enough to get him killed if they thought he would talk.
His biggest concern was that if Bailey dug into that missing pistol, he might well turn up uglier things… things that ESPSec wouldn’t hesitate to bury them all over… just to keep their secrets.
Just keep them quiet and keep their heads down, Tommy thought to himself, and maybe I can get my guys out of this. The best way he knew to do that was training.
“Sergeant Bailey,” Tommy said, “I want you to put together a training schedule for the squad, full rehearsal, all our primary skill sets. We’ll use some of the abandoned buildings.” There were several buildings that the contractors didn’t use. While a set of utility tunnels tied in all the buildings on the old campus, Tommy doubted they would even notice his team conducting training in their down-time.
“I’ll talk it over with Staff Sergeant Shade,” Tommy said, “we’ll conduct some force on force training after we complete rehearsals to my standards, now get busy!”
***
“We start with Krav Maga classes today,” Angel said, her normally clipped voice sounded even less warm and friendly than usual.
Shaden glanced around the gym for any sign of protective pads. He looked back at his instructor just in time to duck a kick at his face. Shaden brought his hands up to protect his head and caught a pair of punches to his midriff. His hands dropped and she caught him on the chin with a blow that exploded his world into stars.
Shaden shook his head, and stared up at Angel from his back.
“You’ve got good instincts and clearly have some skills,” she said. “I can build on that. We’ll begin with basics, Doctor Halving said you’ve already had some training, but I want to work you up from the beginning,” she reached out and gave Shaden a hand up. “You may have need of those with your Psychokinetics instructor.”
Shaden shook his head and let her help him to his feet. Since he first met Janecek, he never again saw the other man and Angel in the same vicinity. He also noticed she never once mentioned Janecek by name. He wondered if her sudden anger lay in the fact that Janecek had taken over the classroom next door. Even as he thought that, he heard muffled coarse laughter through the wall.
“This is the horse-back stance,” Angel said, setting her feet widely spaced and squatting slightly. “It’s a very good position to practice blocks and punches from. Your body is centered, and—”
The wall behind her exploded.
Angel tumbled forward, buried under a tangle of boards and debris. An instant later Janecek hurtled through the hole to slam into the wall behind Shaden.
Shaden knelt next to the unconscious man, just as the air in the room crackled and a woman stepped through the hole. “Fucking rapists!” She shouted.
“What?” Shaden asked.
The blonde woman’s wide eyes seemed wrong, her dilated pupils looked huge. Her golden hair stirred in a halo around her head. A wind ripped through the room and pelted Shaden with debris.
“They raped me... they raped you!” The woman shouted. A sudden blow slammed Shaden back against the wall. Shaden gasped for air. He watched with confusion as the woman stepped over Angel’s prone body to stand over Janecek. “They raped us!”
Her lips drew back into an animalistic snarl, “I’ll kill them all.” The air seemed to condense at her words. At her feet, Janecek moaned slightly.
The world seemed to withdraw and elongate. Shaden felt his breath come more rapidly and every beat of his heart seemed to hammer at his ribcage. She was about to kill Janecek. Then she would kill Angel.
Then she would kill him.
He had to stop her.
Shaden watched as Janecek’s body rose into the air. He watched as the woman stretched out one claw-like hand.
His mind flashed back to Janecek’s lesson. He focused all his determination, all his stubborn will to prevent the murder and pushed.
The woman flew backwards and slammed into the opposite wall. She sagged to her knees, stunned, and Shaden and Janecek both dropped to the ground.
Shaden stood. He watched the blonde woman shake her head in stunned shock. She stared at him with wide eyes, brown eyes that seemed full of horror, “They raped us. They raped us.” She repeated.
He recognized her face, somehow. The circumstances, too, seemed oddly familiar. “What…” Shaden asked.
The doors slammed open and Halving rushed into the room. He waved his hand in a slight gesture and the woman’s eyes rolled up into her head. She sagged bonelessly to the floor.
Halving hurried over to look down at her, a look of concentration on his face. Other men rushed into the room and went to Janecek and Angel. Uncertain what else to do, Shaden walked over to stand next to Doctor Halving.
He stared down at the woman who’d nearly killed him. Unconscious, she looked young, barely an adult. None of the horror he had seen in her face remained. She wore a similar set of sweats to those he wore. That stood out to him, suddenly, for they were remarkably like a prison jumpsuit. They stood out, separate from what everyone else here wore.
She had sharp, aquiline features. A cut over one eye had leaked blood down the side of her face. Shaden wondered if he did that or if Janecek had or if the woman had injured herself.
“Who is she?” Shaden asked.
Halving started beside him and spun to stare at him. A look of conflict passed across his face so quickly that Shaden instantly wondered if he’d really seen it. It seemed silly, he realized, to be suspicious of the man who had helped him so much. The thought reassured him, somehow. Doctor Halving would not lie to him.
“She’s another student,” Do
ctor Halving said. “A, uh... troubled one. I think her past got the better of her.” Despite his words, Shaden heard excitement in his voice.
“Her past?” Shaden asked, puzzled. She seemed too young to have some kind of troubled past. We are the same, Shaden thought, students... but she said they raped us.
Halving looked away, “She suffered some severe trauma in the awakening of her abilities. Cyrus, how are the others?”
Shaden turned, surprised to see the old man had entered unnoticed.
“Angel took a blow to the head, but I’ve prevented any serious damage. She’ll have a headache, nothing more.” The old man toed a groaning Janecek, “Your wonder boy has a couple broken ribs and a lot of bruising. I’d recommend some bed-rest.”
“Heal him as well, Cyrus. I need him functional,” Doctor Halving said, his voice cold. “Feel free not to dull his pain when you do it though, maybe he’ll learn some discretion.”
“What’s going on?” Shaden asked. The cold, hard man who gave those commands seemed totally at odds with the genial one who had offered his help to Shaden from the beginning.
Halving stared at Shaden for a long moment in silence. “I think you’ve had a bit of excitement. I noticed you manifested your PK abilities, quite successfully, too. You look tired. Do you need some rest?”
Shaden shook his head, he felt fine.
A wave of exhaustion rolled over him so suddenly that he swayed on his feet. He shook his head again and pushed it away. He absently noticed that Doctor Halving frowned at something. “No, is there anything I can do to help?”
Cyrus moved up and rested his hand on Shaden’s shoulder, “You look tired, boy. You really should go back to your room and get some rest.”
The exhaustion rolled over him again hard enough that his legs quivered and he had to lock his knees so he wouldn't fall. Shaden nodded. He could not understand how he had exhausted himself so suddenly. He yawned and his mind seemed suddenly distant and dislocated from the recent activity. “Okay, I’ll see you all later.”