Brain Storm (US Edition)

by Nicola Lawson

  Seeing that Carla wasn't going to acknowledge him the man continued, "I wouldn't expect you to remember, you were taken from us when you were so young. I know that you probably won't believe me but this is your home. This is where you were born, where you would have been raised if you hadn't been stolen from us."

  Carla looked around her at her surroundings. This was no place to raise a child. She stared at the man with an even gaze. "I never knew where I came from. The people who raised me couldn't tell me." She had another look around her. "But I don't believe I came from this."

  The man met her gaze. "But this is where you came from Carla. This place is your birth place." He paused. "And we are your family."

  Carla shook her head. "I was not born in some laboratory."

  The man relented and nodded. "Technically no, you were not. You were grown. Your actual conception took place in a different laboratory, one more specialized for that sort of thing. After a short time there, only a matter of months, you were brought here and transplanted from your initial artificial womb into one of these larger growing chambers," He waved his hand at the vats around the room. "You should have spent the next few years in that chamber until you were ready for your education. Unfortunately that was not to be. One of the men working on the project managed to falsify readings and reports to indicate that you had died when you had reached a mature enough stage to be able to survive outside the growing chamber. We had no reason to question his veracity at the time, the death rate at that time was rather high, and in fact it still is. He smuggled you out of here, away from us, and hid you away." The man appeared contemplative. "We have only recently delivered punishment to him for that and his other treacherous acts."

  He fell silent. Carla's head swam. The room seemed to be spinning around her. None of this made sense. It couldn't be true, it just could not. She was a person. She was Carla Swift, she wasn't some sort of experiment.

  Carla stumbled back, her brain was too busy trying to make sense of what she had just heard to help her maintain her equilibrium. The security chief caught hold of her arm before she could fall. In a dream state Carla managed to control her feet and her body enough to balance.

  She blinked her eyes and looked around her. Everything looked the same but somehow different. Nothing outside her had changed but inside Carla was shattered. She looked back at the man and the woman who was still silently at his side.

  "Then I'm a thing," Carla said, equal parts disbelief and disgust.

  The man shook his head. "You aren't a thing." There was no compassion in his voice.

  "I'm not a person. I have no parents."

  "You are more than a person. You are special."

  Special, that was what Karl Grosset had called her. This was what he had meant about her, this was what he was sorry for being a part of.

  "You do have parents, Carla." The woman stepped forwards speaking for the first time. "I was the donor of the eggs for the project. I am your mother."

  Carla felt herself starting to swoon. This was too much, it was just too much. This was all insane. None of it could be true. But Carla couldn't lie to herself, she knew what they were saying was the truth.

  Carla caught herself before she could fall and gave herself a mental slapping. This meant nothing. She had always known that the people who raised her weren't the people who had given her her genes but they had given her more than that. She was more than the sum of her DNA. It didn't matter where she had come from. She knew who she was. She was Carla Swift and nothing these people told her could change that.

  Carla straightened up. She wouldn't give these people the satisfaction of getting to her. "Why was I made? What is my purpose?"

  The woman, Carla refused to think of her as her mother, stepped back to allow the man to answer.

  "I told you that you were special. You could still be of use to us which is why you aren't locked up in a cell right now being interrogated. I hope that when I tell you why you were created you will opt to join us, you will tell us all you know freely. You can come back into our family, the family you were never given the chance to know."

  "Just get on with it," Carla interrupted him.

  The man's face curled up in anger and his hands involuntarily went into fists. He regained his composure and continued, "The average person uses only a small portion of their brain. Certain individuals like Christine here, are able to use areas of the brain the rest of us have no access to. You are part of a program designed to create a group of people who can access even more areas of their brain giving them access to latent psychic powers. You were taken from us before you could be trained but you may have noticed that about certain things you have an intuition or that you are uncommonly lucky."

  Carla had indeed felt that way, most recently Sara had called her up on it. Then Carla had had no real explanation but now she knew. She didn't let any of this come through in her expression. "I haven't felt very lucky recently."

  The man nodded solemnly. "It is regrettable that we had to go after you in that way but I will not apologize for it. We could not risk having you fall into the wrong hands. Knowledge of your existence, of you abilities and where you come from could put all our work here in jeopardy."

  "That makes me feel so much better," Carla said sarcastically. She was about to ask him to go into more detail about what abilities she was supposed to have when another question came into her mind as though from an external source. "What is project Brainstorm?"

  The man blinked but that was the only indication of surprise. "I would have thought you could have guessed that by now," he said. "You are project Brainstorm."

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The shaft started heading horizontally and then started to slope down as well. There was no sign of the elevator or whatever was supposed to transport people through it and Sara would have been reluctant to trust it even if there was. Instead she ran down the shaft hoping that wherever the transport was it didn't come back or she would be splattered like a bug on a windscreen.

  It took her several minutes at a good speed to reach the end of the shaft where the transport elevator blocked her way. She must be a good distance underground and well past the boundary of the Omnitech building. Rather than put her off this provided Sara with more encouragement. Secret hideouts for people doing things that they shouldn't were always hidden away underground.

  Gaining entry to the unoccupied elevator was simplicity itself. Sara moved through and listened at the door on the other side. There was no noise but she was pretty sure by now that she knew what to expect. Sure enough when she opened the door to come out of the elevator a pair of security men were standing in the antechamber waiting for her.

  Sara struck out at the closest man to her knocking him down with an elbow to the side of his head. The other man brought his rifle up into line with her. Sara stepped forwards and grabbed hold of the top of the weapon. She used both hands to pull the weapon away from the security man before he even knew what was happening. He looked to his empty hands in shock and Sara cracked the butt of the weapon up under his chin. His teeth clacked angrily together and his eyes took on a glassy, vacant look before he lost consciousness.

  Sara flipped the weapon around as she turned around to target the other man. With the rifle facing the right way in her arms she lunged forwards and rammed the barrel into the man's mouth. Her finger was about to twitch on the trigger when she noticed the keypad on the wall.

  "I could kill you right now. I'm going to remove the weapon from your mouth so that you can speak but one wrong move and I'll take your head clean off. Do you understand me?"

  The barrel moved up and down as the security man nodded. Sara slowly pulled the weapon out of his bloodied mouth so that he could speak but kept only millimeters from his face.

  "What is the access code?"

  The man shook his head. "I don't know it."

  Sara shrugged. "Then you aren't any use to me."

  She made sure that the man could watch her
finger slowly start to apply pressure to the trigger.

  "All right, all right."

  The man gave her the code so Sara stood and whipped the rifle around once more. She cracked the man on the side of his head and he went down unconscious with his partner.

  Sara took another moment to listen at the door before she entered the code. She still didn't expect to hear anything but if there was something to hear and she didn't try it would likely get her killed. She was impatient to get on after Carla, this had to be where they were taking her. She didn't want to waste any more time, once the people who were after her had Carla where they wanted her there was no telling what they would do. Whatever they wanted with her it certainly wasn't going to be pleasant.

  As expected there was nothing to hear. Sara stepped back, got her hand on one of the machine pistols and entered the code she had been given. The door came open. Sara was down in a crouch ready to act. Past experience had told her to expect at least a pair of armed security men on the other side of the door. But there was nobody there.

  Sara crouch-walked through the door way. This was the largest room she had come to so far. It was filled with banks of electronic equipment and computers so that her view of the room was very restricted. She could see that the walls were lined with vats similar to those they had found in the burnt out room during their escape from the prison facility. Pipes trailed upwards from each vat and curled around the ceiling.

  There was nobody in the room that Sara could see but much of the room was hidden from her by the equipment. She crouch walked up close to a bank of computers. Everything looked to be shut down but there was no layer of dust or any other indication that the place had been permanently abandoned.

  Sara rested with her back up against the equipment. She concentrated on keeping her breathing quite and even and she opened her mouth a little to aid in her hearing. There were voices in the room that she could make out over her own heartbeat. There was a male voice, educated and well spoken, and someone who sounded very much like Carla. Sara was happy that she had chosen correctly and that Carla was here apparently with the person responsible for the mess that had taken over both women's lives.

  Sara listened dumbfounded as the man explained why they were after Carla. Sara found it difficult to hear and didn't know whether Carla would be strong enough to take it. At first it didn't seem as though the younger would be able to.

  Keep it together, you're strong enough to handle this. Sara willed silently.

  After a brief silence Carla spoke again and her voice was surer than it had been before. The man started to explain how Carla had enhanced psychic abilities and suddenly Sara realized that what she had once taken as evidence of Carla's treachery was actually evidence of her true potential.

  The man had answered many of the questions Sara had had over the last few days but there was still one matter that he hadn't touched on. Sara listened intently and willed him to explain what project Brainstorm was. Brainstorm seemed to have initiated much of the recent events and it was one of the major links between the departed Dr Grosset and Omnitech, which had led them here.

  Carla asked the question, "What is project Brainstorm?"

  The male speaker hesitated only a moment before answering. "I would have thought you could have guessed that by now," he said. "You are project Brainstorm.

  "You, and those others like you who we have trained up and put out in the field."

  Whether Carla was getting used to shocks or whether she had indeed already guessed Sara didn't know, but, whichever it was, the younger woman coped better with this revelation than Sara would have guessed.

  "And what are we supposed to do for you that is so important? That is worth all this, worth killing for."

  Maybe it was her anger that gave her the strength. Sara kept listening as she slowly lowered herself down onto her stomach and crawled around trying to get a look at Carla and whoever she was speaking with.

  "Project Brainstorm will give me control of every government and every major government agency in the Confederation. As we speak dozens of others like you are in place amongst the trusted staff of the heads of state of every member nation of the Confederation. They are at work on the leading members of the Confederation's Parliament and on the directors of all of the major law enforcement agencies, official or otherwise. You see, using their abilities they are able to control some very influential people, and since I am in control of them, I am in control of some very influential people."

  Sara had heard enough. She had enough information now to initiate an investigation that would clear Carla and herself and get whoever the speaker was locked away for a very long time.

  Sara pushed herself to her feet getting a tactical machine pistol in each hand and stepped out of cover. She held both her weapons on the man who had been speaking and the woman, Christine, who was with him. The two guards behind the pair and the security chief with Carla went for their weapons instinctively and then froze with their hands still not on them.

  "Very good," Sara told them. "I'm sure you all know the drill. Make any further move towards your guns and I fill these two with holes."

  "Sara!" Carla's relief at seeing her there was tangible.

  "I said I'd come after you," Sara told the younger woman. "Now leave that guy and come over to me where it's safer."

  Carla walked away from the security chief to stand behind Sara. "That man, he told me . . ."

  Carla faltered off but Sara nodded. "I heard," she said as softly and comfortingly as she could. Then, speaking louder, she said, "I heard enough to know that this guy is guilty of some pretty major crimes, unlawful human experimentations, murder, conspiracy, coercion the list goes on but I don't want to bore everyone here with it since you all already know about them. Suffice to say Carla and I have enough to go to the authorities and get ourselves cleared and send you down in our places."

  The man didn't flinch, gave no sign that he was the least bit intimidated by Sara's threats. "Do you know who I am?"

  Sara looked him over again, he did seem familiar. Then she got it. "You're Josh Barret. You founded Omnitech."

  Barret nodded. "Very good. But that was an easy one, try this. Who are you?"

  Sara blinked, that was a stupid question. "That's a stupid question."

  "I don't think so, you see whoever you think you are, you are not."

  Barret started to pace in a small circle as though he was lecturing her. One of the guards started to move his hand slowly closer to his weapon and Sara waved her pistol to warn him off.

  Barret continued, "You heard what I told Carla about where she came from?"

  Sara nodded. "You aren't about to tell me that I'm the same as her?" she said incredulously.

  Barret shook his head. "No, I'm not, you are something different. Carla and the others we created for project Brainstorm were something I was working on for myself. You were a fully sanctioned projected initiated at the request of the Confederation."

  "Of course I was. And what special powers did they want to give me? Am I bullet proof, of perhaps I can fly?"

  "Sarcasm is seldom an endearing quality my dear. I don't expect you to believe me any more than I expected Carla to do so but it doesn't make what I tell you any less true. You, Sara, are the only surviving prototype of our 'super soldier'. Your attachment to ECSIS was supposed to be the crowning achievement of your field testing. None of what you remember before a few years ago is real. They are memories that we gave you."

  "I don't believe you."

  "As I said I didn't expect that you would. But you will."

  Barret nodded to Christine. The woman who claimed to be Carla's genetic mother focused her eyes on Sara. Sara tried to look away but she could not. Her eyes remained locked on the older woman's as mental claws scraped away a curtain in Sara's mind.

  She remembered it all. The pain, the fear. The experiments and training. She remembered it all and it threatened to overwhelm her. Her vision blurred as her sense of self wa
s torn from her.

  "You met all of our expectations for your physical skills. We will have to do a little work on behavior modification before we are ready to go into mass production, but not as much as you might think. As we did with you we will install a back-up control fail-safe that our Brainstorm agents will be able to activate. Since you were the first prototype your fail-safe is controlled by Christine here. You can feel it, can't you? Your will is being stripped away as she works her way through your mind."

  Sara heard him through a rush of blood as she struggled impotently to defend herself. This was an attack against which she could mount no defense. It took a huge effort of will that Sara didn't feel she could maintain just to keep herself on her feet and her arms raised.

  "Fight it." The voice was closer and louder but no clearer to Sara's ears.

  "She can't fight this. She was designed for physical strength and agility not for a battle like this."

  Sara's vision darkened at the edges and her arms started to droop.

  "But I was." Carla quietly intoned.

  Like someone had snapped on a light in a dark room Sara's mind became clear. She brought her arms back up. Beside her Carla had her eyes closed deep in concentration. Beads of sweat formed on her lined forehead. Across the room Christine similarly had closed her eyes and was concentrating. Beside her Carla started to shake.

  "I can't keep her out," Carla's words came as little more than a strangled gasp.

  "Stop this," Sara told Barret.

  The founder and owner of Omnitech just looked at her.

  "Stop this, or I will."

  Still Barret made no move.

  Carla started to shake more violently and cried out.

  Sara fired a short burst that took Christine down in the centre mass.

  Carla collapsed.

  Sara had no time to check on the younger woman. Now that Sara had already started shooting the security men in the room had nothing to lose by going for their weapons. Sara threw herself forwards, away from Carla so that the younger woman wouldn't take an errant shot that was meant for her. Barret took care of himself, scuttling away to cower in the shadow of a large horizontal bed.