by A. G. Taylor
Sarah looked at Colonel Moss. Once more, she found him impossible to read. However, she knew they had a responsibility to help in any way they could. She’d work out the colonel and HIDRA later.
“We’ll help any way we can. Right, Robert?”
Her brother looked round from the casket. She saw tears glistening in his eyes.
“For Daniel,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
The colonel smiled approvingly. “You’re doing a very brave thing. I just want you to promise me one thing: tell us about anything strange that happens to you. The virus can have…unpredictable effects. Any information could be useful – anything at all. No matter how trivial it seems. Okay?”
Sarah met his eyes and nodded. But once again, her instincts told her that revealing everything to the man before they knew what was really going on would be a mistake. She had the feeling Colonel Moss wasn’t telling her the whole truth.
“Sure,” she said. “We’ll let you know everything, but I can’t think of anything unusual at the moment.”
Colonel Moss nodded and gestured to the soldiers waiting at the door. “My men will take you back to your rooms.”
A few minutes later, Colonel Moss strode from the casket room to another building. Two black-and-gold-uniformed Special Forces soldiers guarded the entrance. The colonel saluted his elite soldiers and carried on into the building.
Inside, he entered a smaller room in which a two-way mirror looked into an adjoining cell. At a metal table inside the cell sat Daniel Williams. There was a bruise forming around his eye and his lower lip was split, but his face was defiant.
By the window, Colonel Moss’s second-in-command, Major Bright, looked round. Although he was almost twenty years younger, Major Bright was an identical make of soldier to the colonel: hard, experienced and determined to achieve his goal at any cost. One of his most striking characteristics was a scar that ran down the side of his face from his right ear to the tip of his chin. Colonel Moss was one of the few people at HIDRA who knew how Major Bright got the scar. The rest were just too afraid to ask.
“Did the children buy the story, Colonel?” he asked.
Colonel Moss nodded. “I told them their father went into a coma – they had no reason to disbelieve me. What happened to his face?”
“He didn’t take kindly to some of our questions, sir,” Major Bright said, eyes flashing. He ran his forefinger along the groove of his facial scar, as was his habit from time to time. “He’s strong, this one.”
“Like his daughter,” Colonel Moss replied, showing no sign of disapproval at the injuries inflicted. “The girl claims to have experienced no side effects so far.”
“Do you believe her, sir?” the major asked. “Perhaps they haven’t started developing like the others. We have more persuasive methods to bring on the change than the scientist-run tests…”
“Patience, Major,” Colonel Moss answered, smiling at his second-in-command’s eagerness. Bright was aggressive, a trait that Moss found useful sometimes but which needed close supervision. “You’ll get your chance with them. For now, we’ll use kid gloves. Dr. Andersen is already asking too many questions about the special abilities programme.”
Major Bright nodded and indicated Daniel. “What about him, sir? He’s demanding to see the children.”
Colonel Moss scratched the stubble forming on his chin. “I was hoping the virus would’ve taken hold by now, but he seems unusually resilient.”
“Keeping their father around is an unnecessary complication,” Major Bright said, moving closer to his superior. “We can’t hide him here for ever without the scientists on the base getting wind of something. It might be days before the virus kicks in.”
Colonel Moss nodded. “He could get in the way of our plans for the children.”
On the other side of the glass, Daniel looked directly at Moss. Again there was that defiance.
“Just give the word, sir,” Major Bright said quietly.
Colonel Moss considered a moment before finally deciding, “Let’s relocate Daniel Williams. I take it you can select the best men for the job?”
“The Special Forces team is loyal only to you, Colonel.”
Moss nodded. “Drug and hide him in one of the sleeper caskets for now. Then I want him dumped in the desert. Dehydration will do the job if the virus doesn’t first. And put the diamonds on him – I don’t want anything tying back to us.”
“And the children…”
“Will give us what we want eventually, just like the others,” Colonel Moss replied coldly. “Thirty years of soldiering has taught me one thing…orphans make the best recruits.”
14
The tests began the next afternoon. Or at least, Sarah assumed it was afternoon. She found it almost impossible to measure the passage of time accurately in her windowless room. When the scientists wanted her to sleep they dimmed the lights. When they wanted her awake they raised them again.
Food was bland meat and vegetables brought in on metal trays three times a day. Most of the time, she wasn’t hungry enough to eat more than a few mouthfuls of these boring concoctions. The pills they gave her made her feel sick whenever she ate, anyway. She was given a stack of magazines and books to keep her occupied, but no music or television. Mandy encouraged her to keep a diary in a ruled exercise book brought by one of the suited men. Despite the flood of thoughts rushing through her brain, Sarah only wrote a few lines. The feeling that she should keep her new powers a secret for as long as possible hadn’t gone away. HIDRA just wanted a cure, didn’t they? She’d tell them about her new ability when she knew what was going on herself.
At regular intervals, men or women in protective suits entered to take blood samples or run various tests. Sometimes they got her to exercise while they monitored her heart-rate. Sometimes sensors were attached to her head that she had to wear while she slept.
Other tests were stranger.
On one occasion Sarah was taken to another room, identical to her own, except without a bed. She was left alone for ten minutes before the sound began. It started as a low hum, barely noticeable, and grew in intensity until it was an annoying ringing in her ears. Sarah shouted at the mirror, where the noise seemed to be coming from, but there was no response. The sound grew…and grew…and grew…
Until it seemed to be splitting her skull.
Finally, she’d curled up in the corner, trying to block the noise with her hands over her ears. At some point she passed out…
Sarah awoke some time later in her own room again.
“What happened?” she asked the mirror as aspirin and water were provided through the slot in the wall.
“I know some of our procedures are difficult to understand, Sarah,” Mandy’s voice in the mirror reassured. “But you said you’d help us. Thousands and maybe millions of people can be saved by the tests we’re carrying out.”
“I don’t understand how…”
The reply was curt. “Sarah, we’re scientists. Trust us.”
“I want to see Robert. And I want to speak to Colonel Moss.”
“That’s not possible right now. Please, Sarah. Be patient.”
So she was. For the time being.
Sarah could sense Robert close by and the feeling got stronger hour by hour. Often she would lie on the bed and close her eyes, focusing on the part of her mind where she could sense his presence. His room was only a hundred metres away, she could tell. Concentrating harder, she began to pick up his emotions: happiness, boredom, anger, fear. Very occasionally a thought of his would snap into her brain, like a voice shouting in her head, before it disappeared again.
She couldn’t fully control the power yet, but it was coming.
Again and again in her sleep she dreamed of Robert speaking to her and woke up shouting an answer to him.
“Is everything okay?” Mandy would ask from the other side of the mirror.
“Just a bad dream,” Sarah answered, turning over in the bed.
&n
bsp; Sometimes she’d cry in the night, thinking about how she would have given anything to see Mum again for just a few seconds. Mum would’ve known what to do and would have been strong for both her and Robert. Very much to her surprise, she also found herself wishing that Daniel was there – but he was gone too, lost to the virus. Sarah knew that she was the one who was going to have to be strong for her brother now. She buried her tears in the pillow.
She wouldn’t let them see her cry.
* * *
“How much further?” the Special Forces soldier in the driver’s seat of the truck grumbled as it bumped along the desert track.
Beside him, his commander tapped the odometer and replied, “Another couple of klicks.”
Major Bright had been precise with his instructions: the prisoner was to be dropped in the desert one hundred kilometres to the west of the base – no more, no less. Right now he was lying sedated in a sleeper casket in the back of the truck.
A few moments later, the commander signalled for the truck to stop at the top of a dune.
“Okay, helmet on,” he ordered and both men fitted on their mirror-masks before moving into the back of the cab. They stepped into the airlock and closed the hatch. The cab of the truck was completely sealed and took in air from the outside only once it was thoroughly filtered. The air outside was still contaminated with the airborne virus and would be for at least three more days according to the HIDRA scientists.
Checking the internal door was thoroughly sealed, they opened the external door and stepped out into the forty-five degree heat of the desert. Their combat-model HAZMAT suits were fitted with cooling units, but they could still feel the intense sun beating down.
“Let’s get this over with quick,” the commander said as they walked to the back of the truck. He pulled down the back door and they both grabbed the end of the sleeper casket, hauling it out. The unit slipped unexpectedly from their gloved hands, rolling down the side of the dune all the way to the bottom.
“Ouch, that’s gotta hurt,” the younger soldier said, thinking of the drugged prisoner inside the casket.
The commander shook his head. “Well, we’re the ones who have to drag the casket back up to the truck. Major Bright said leave no evidence.”
The other man groaned and they started down the dune, kicking up arcs of sand as they went. “Just what did this guy do to get on the wrong side of Major Bright so bad?”
“Maybe he asked too many questions,” the commander said pointedly as they reached the casket. He pulled a lightweight dart-gun from his belt, as did his companion. They’d been ordered to use non-lethal force to avoid suspicions being aroused if the body was ever found.
The commander grabbed the release handle of the casket and threw it open. What they saw inside made them both step back…
It was empty.
The commander crouched by the casket and examined the interior. There were signs of damage to the frame, as if someone had been kicking at the lid from the inside. Clearly, the prisoner hadn’t been given enough sedative to last the journey. Which led to the question, where was he now?
Both soldiers looked back up the dune to the open back of the truck and then at one another.
“Okay, let’s take it slowly,” the commander said.
The other soldier nodded and they started back up the dune, dart-guns raised…
They spotted him crouching near the back of the cab – no doubt trying to get in through the airlock. They’d been sure to lock the door, of course. Sensing their approach, the prisoner made a break for it, running wildly into the dunes. The young soldier raised his dart-gun, but the commander placed a hand on his arm.
“Don’t waste your darts,” he said, watching the prisoner fleeing into the distance. “There’s nowhere for him to go – he’ll die out here within a day.”
The other soldier lowered his gun and nodded, a little disappointed to miss the chance to shoot someone.
“All right, let’s get the casket and get back to the base,” the commander ordered. “I’m starving.”
Five minutes later they had the evidence of their presence back in the truck. The prisoner was nowhere to be seen, so they went back through the airlock. Job done – they both agreed there was no need to tell Major Bright the details of how the prisoner had escaped…
Hidden amid the dunes, Daniel watched the truck circle round and depart in the direction from which it had come. As it disappeared into the distance, he stood up and dropped the air filtration unit he’d removed from the back of the cab onto the sand. If his understanding of the cab system was correct from his quick analysis, the soldiers in the truck were now breathing unfiltered desert air – completely virus-contaminated.
Daniel started to follow the tracks of the truck back towards the HIDRA base. The sun began to beat down feverishly on his back and his mouth already felt parched. He hadn’t had a drink in what seemed like days and now he faced the prospect of a walk through the desert. Daniel knew it wouldn’t be long before his body gave up to the effects of dehydration.
He just hoped that the soldiers succumbed to the virus and that he found the truck before then…
Inside the dome, Major Bright knocked briskly on the door of his superior’s office. Colonel Moss looked up from a stack of paperwork, his face dark.
“Problem, sir?” Major Bright asked.
Moss held up one of the papers – a printout of a lengthy email. “Sent by our chief scientist to General Wellman. She doesn’t know anything about our real plans yet, but she’s a potential problem.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her, sir,” Major Bright replied.
“Very good.” The colonel put the printout in his desk and slammed the drawer shut.
“The matter in the desert has been taken care of,” Major Bright continued. “Our men just radioed it through. We’re ready to proceed.”
Colonel Moss smiled coldly. “Excellent. Have you briefed the men?”
Major Bright nodded. “Special Forces have been informed we’re stepping up the programme, sir. They’re ready to institute a full lockdown of the base if necessary. But I don’t anticipate problems: these scientists have no stomach for a fight.”
“Good work, Major,” Colonel Moss replied. “It’s time we got some real results. Prep the tank for the experiment. I want Sarah Williams to be the first test subject. Project Superhuman is a go.”
15
Robert screamed.
Sarah! Sarah! Help!
She’d been dozing, half asleep although the lights were fully up. They’d taken almost a pint of blood earlier and given her some new pill. It made her feel so tired, she could barely keep her eyes open. She’d been having the strangest dream – something about Daniel and an endless desert. They’d been running through the sand together, desperately looking for something they’d lost…
Sarah!
Robert’s voice rang through her brain as clearly as if he was in the same room. She almost fell out of bed.
Robert, it’s okay! she sent back. Can you hear me? What’s happening?
There was no response.
Sarah ran to the mirror and placed her hands on the glass.
“Is there anything wrong, Sarah?” Mandy asked. Something in her voice suggested she’d been expecting some kind of reaction from Sarah right at that moment.
“I want to see Robert,” Sarah demanded. “He needs me!”
“And what makes you say that?” Mandy asked, a note of triumph in her voice, as if she had backed Sarah into some kind of corner. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
Sarah lowered her hands and stepped away from the mirror. Her instinct cried out in her mind once more: that she should keep it a secret from Mandy. But now Robert needed her. Sarah stood motionless, torn between keeping her secret and revealing all in the hope it would get her to see her brother sooner. In the end, it was decided for her.
The door beside her slid open without warning. A stranger stepped into the room. He wore
a protective suit and helmet, although one bearing the black and gold of the Special Forces. Sarah judged that he was in his mid-thirties – there was a hardness to his face that she immediately disliked. A nameplate on the chest read Major Bright.
“You promised to tell us everything, Sarah,” he said, fixing her with piercing eyes as she shrank back on the bed. “But I don’t think you’ve been one hundred per cent honest with us, and neither has your brother.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah cried out as a soldier in a similar uniform and mask stepped into the room.
“Take her to the tank,” Major Bright commanded.
The soldier grabbed her arm roughly and dragged her towards the exit.
Moments later she was in a bubble and being half led, half pushed towards a building she’d never been inside before. It was larger than the others and stood slightly apart from the rest. Two armed guards on the door stepped aside as they approached. Sarah stumbled on the bottom of the ramp, but one of the suits gave the bubble a push, rolling her forwards in the most undignified way possible. She cried out in protest, but the suit gave no sign of having heard.
Then she was inside the building.
Sarah struggled to her feet in the bubble as a door was closed behind her. She stood at the edge of a tank of water the size of a swimming pool. On the opposite side, two suited soldiers stared back at her in silence. They carried dart-rifles like they’d used at the refinery. Sarah moved the bubble to the edge and looked down at the water’s surface, half a metre below. The tank looked as if it was at least four metres deep, the water still but threatening.
Somebody approached from behind. She looked round to see Major Bright standing close to her bubble and flinched away. Up close, he was one of the most imposing people Sarah had ever met. Her eyes were uncontrollably drawn to the long scar running along the right side of his face. It made him look dangerous. Colonel Moss might pretend to be friendly, but this man could never get away with it. Major Bright grinned, as if sensing her fear and repulsion.
“Okay, Sarah,” he said. “Let’s see what you can really do.”