He entered a brightly lit corridor with white walls, floor and ceiling. Matt was temporarily blinded. He squinted while his eyes adjusted. He knew that if the men outside were coming for him, he had roughly half a minute to get away and out of sight.
If they’re as professional as they look, they’ll already know what room I was in. When I’m not there, what then? Matt thought as he struggled down the corridor. They’ll probably check the surrounding rooms and the bathroom. What they won’t do is comb the entire hospital. There are too many night-staff for that to be done discretely. I should head upstairs, as high as I can get with my leg.
He scanned up and down the corridor, quickly finding the stairs sign, and headed straight for it. As the door to the staircase swung shut behind, he heard the doors at the end of the corridor open and the sound of footsteps echo after him.
Matt reached the first step. Using the railing for support and balancing on his injured leg, he raised his foot onto the step. The joint screamed out in pain. He extended his knee and swung his rigid leg in, before repeating the process on the next step.
Hurry, Matt thought, fighting through the pain with gritted teeth. It won’t take them long to get down the corridor.
The more steps he climbed, the easier and quicker the process became and the more he was able to deal with the pain. By the time he’d reached the sixth floor, he’d had enough. Making his way to the door, he entered a similar corridor to below.
After only passing a couple of doors Matt found an unlocked store cupboard and slunk inside. He fumbled for a light switch, eventually finding it and illuminating the room. It wasn’t huge, but there was enough space to lie down. Dropping Lily’s backpack, Matt turned the light off again and carefully lowered himself to the floor. Using Lily’s backpack as a rather uncomfortable pillow, he shut his eyes and passed out from a mixture of pain and exhaustion.
* * * *
09:07, South District Hospital
Matt was awoken by a stifled scream. He opened his eyes to see a panicked nurse glaring down at him.
“What are you doing in here?” the nurse yelled.
“Sleeping. Sorry, bed was uncomfortable.”
“Well… move!”
Matt sat up and tried to stand before remembering his leg. He twisted and scrabbled but to no avail.
“Could you give me a hand?” he asked eventually. The nurse rolled his eyes before extending his hand. Matt took it and slowly got to his feet, making sure to put most of the weight on his good leg.
“Thank you,” Matt replied, leaning over to grab Lily’s backpack.
“Stay in your room next time,” the nurse said as Matt hobbled past.
Let’s avoid the stairs, Matt thought as he looked for an elevator. Eventually he found one, waiting patiently as it took him to the second floor. The doors opened with a bing, accompanied by a female voice announcing “second floor.” Matt stepped out and looked over to his room.
A man dressed in a dark grey suit was stood outside. Although appearing formal to the untrained eye, Matt could see the outline of a bullet proof vest sticking through his clothes.
Damn, Matt thought, pivoting and walking straight back into the lift. The woman stood opposite him gave him a puzzled look.
“Wrong floor,” Matt said as the doors closed.
“We’ve all been there,” the woman replied.
Matt pressed the first-floor button, waiting in silence before the lift doors opened again. He headed straight for the toilets, locating the disabled cubicle once inside. After locking the cubical door, he hobbled to the toilet and swung Lily’s bag on top of the seat. He unzipped the largest pocket and began rifling around inside.
There must be something in here I could wear, Matt thought, hoping to get rid of his give-away light blue pyjamas which screamed, “I’m a patient, don’t let me leave.” After finding several plain blouses and a couple of skirts, Matt eventually located a pair of jeans.
This is going to be interesting, he thought, comparing the size of the legs to his own. Hoping Lily would forgive him, he, with some effort, look off his pyjama bottoms and began the difficult task of pulling the jeans on. He decided to start with the prosthetic leg first. It was still deactivated, and with no knowledge of how to turn it on, it was fated to remain dead straight. Fortunately, the smooth casing made it easy for the jeans to slide over. His thigh, on the other hand, was not so compliant. Once he’d got the leg half way up, he leant against the cubicle door and pushed his other leg into the remaining trouser leg. With the waistline level around the top of his thighs, Matt took a deep breath and tugged the jeans up. It was tight, but they just fit. He pushed the front together to do the button up.
That’s not going to happen, Matt thought. Hopefully no one will notice under a shirt.
With half his disguise sorted, Matt began routing through Lily’s bag once again. None of the tops looked remotely unfeminine; however, buried at the very bottom Matt found a scrunched up green jumper.
It’ll have to do, he decided, pulling it over his pyjama top and tucking the excess sleeve into the jumper’s. After quickly repacking Lily’s things, Matt flushed the toilet and left the cubical. He found a disgruntled man in a wheelchair waiting outside, glaring up at him as he stepped out. Matt reached down and tugged up the bottom of his jeans, flashing his prosthesis before limping to the door. Once outside, he took the elevator down to the ground floor and, as casually as possible, walked out of the hospital.
Matt took a deep breath and relished in the taste of cool, fresh air. The next thing he knew someone had grabbed him and pulled him away from the doors. Matt tried to bat the hand away but it held strong. He looked up to see Damos, looking stern as ever.
“Let go,” Matt said, pulling away.
“We need to get away. There’s a man posted outside your door.”
“I know. Why do you think I’m wearing these ridiculous clothes?” Matt replied. Damos ignored him and continued walking. Around the corner from the hospital stood Lily, waiting with the jet bikes. As soon as she saw Matt a confused look overcame her face.
“Sorry, I didn’t want anyone stopping me as I left,” Matt explained. He turned to Damos. “Where now?”
“We stayed in a hostel overnight, but have no base of operations.”
No sooner had Damos finished his sentence than a ringing sound came from his pocket. He retrieved a phone, identical to Matt’s, and answered the call.
“Speak,” he said.
Silence.
“On our way.”
Damos returned the phone to his pocket.
“Who was that?” Matt asked.
“Vicky. She and Owen have escaped. They want us to meet them.”
“That sounds suspicious. Are you sure it was her?”
“Call her,” Damos said, handing Matt the phone. Matt took it and called the most recent contact.
“What?” Victoria asked.
“Hello Victoria, its Matt. Sorry for sounding paranoid, but some people came for me last night and I wanted to be sure it was you that called.”
“Yes, it’s me. Your dog tag service number is nine-two-eight, seven-four-six-three, but the nine looks more like a ‘g’. Happy?”
“Perfectly. See you soon,” Matt said, ending the call and handing the phone back to Damos.
“Lead the way,” Matt said, hobbling over to one of the bikes. He swung his new leg over and tried to sit, but his foot kept sliding off the right-side pedal.
“One of you two had better drive.”
* * * *
10:05, Blu Vertex Hotel, East District
Lily followed Matt and Damos out of the hotel’s elevator and to the room Victoria had specified. As they reached it Damos knocked. A moment later it swung inwards and the three of them entered.
The room was fairly sizeable and must have cost a considerable amount. The décor was modern and mostly blue, matching the name of the hotel. Everything looked clean and fresh, a welcome change for Lily after the
last couple of days. A bed was positioned in the far corner, beside a door which clearly led to a bathroom. Slightly above and to the side of its headboard floated a large screen, opposite two more beds. One was empty. In the other sat Owen, leaning against the wall with his leg resting on a pillow.
“Owen, what happened?” Matt asked upon seeing Owen’s leg wrapped in bandages.
“I got shot, it’s no big deal. Victoria pulled the bullet out and sewed me up. What happened to your face?”
“My head got cut in the explosion. Damos burned it shut. You do know-”
“Yes, I know,” Owen replied. Lily felt sadness well up in both of them. She knew the sensation well; they’d lost a close friend.
Matt hobbled across the room and fell down onto the bed in the far corner. After a moment’s silence, he looked up and said, “I don’t suppose I can borrow some clothes?”
“For once I wasn’t going to say anything,” Owen said. “All my clothes were in our old flat, but I do have a spare pair of trousers. Victoria bought some this morning to replace mine after some inconsiderate ManaCorp guard ruined my old ones.”
“ManaCorp?” Damos asked.
“Yeah, they’re the ones who ordered the attack on us,” Owen said.
“No they didn’t. The order was sent from a Nexus base on Pike Street. The same one I found Lily in.”
Lily recoiled slightly at the sound of her own name. It was the first time she’d heard Damos use it.
“Nexus? That’s strange. Izzy and I were definitely taken to a ManaCorp facility.”
“I think we need to go through this from the beginning,” Victoria interrupted. “Damos, help Matt with his trousers. Once he’s changed, we can go through events properly and figure out what’s going on.”
Lily averted her gaze as Damos walked over and pulled Matt’s trousers off for him.
“Nice leg. Would you like me to turn it on?” Owen asked. Despite sounding sarcastic, Lily could tell he was being sincere.
“Leave it for now. Even with the post-op drugs, his flesh will still be healing into the joint,” Victoria said. She glanced at Matt. “You do have shark-pain meds, right?”
Matt’s guilty look answered for him.
“Right, we’ll make sure to acquire some later, otherwise that joint is going to hurt like a bitch,” Victoria said, tossing a pair of baggy black trousers to Damos, who in turn helped Matt pull them on.
“Thanks,” Matt said, swinging his legs around to sit up on the bed. He looked at Lily and patted the spot next to him. Lily tentatively walked over and took a seat. Victoria sat on the bed next to Owen, while Damos collapsed onto the carpet, his legs out, leaning back on his arms.
“Right, as I’m basically as much in the dark as the rest of you, Owen, what happened?” Victoria said.
“We were taken, and I woke up in a cell. I was taken for interrogation, blah blah blah, this is boring. It gets interesting at the point where the interrogation was interrupted and I got taken up blindfolded to the server station and put in contact with him.”
“You mean in person?” Matt asked.
“No, unfortunately only over radio. It was definitely him though; I could never forget his voice.”
Who are they talking about? Lily thought. She must have looked confused, because Matt pointed sideways at her and said, “I think you’re going to need to explain.”
“It’s okay,” Lily squealed.
“No, you should know what’s going on. It’s fine with me for you to tell her,” Victoria said.
“Everything?” Owen asked.
“She’s one of us now. She should know.”
“Okay then. Wow, this is going back further than I was expecting. Where should I begin?”
“Several years ago, Victoria and I were in the military,” Matt began for him. As he spoke, Damos stood and began pottering around the room, clearly not caring to hear the story again. Matt continued anyway.
“I was a soldier fresh out of training, and Victoria was my squad leader. This was before…” He paused, clearly considering his words.
“Before I was operated on,” Victoria finished for him. “I’m a couple of years older than Matt, and although it normally takes at least three years to become a squad leader, the higher-ups thought I showed promise.”
“Everything was fine for a while,” Matt continued. “Victoria was a harsh but fair leader, and I grew to respect her immensely. Then one day things changed. Victoria noticed one of the superior officers bullying a young soldier, calling him a Freeloader and whatnot. She spoke up, and the next day we had a new squad leader.”
“This is where I come in,” Owen said, and Lily felt his pang of regret. “After graduating from college, top of my class and from a wealthy family, I felt I could do anything. So when I was contacted by a mysterious employer to work on a top secret military project, what else was I going to say?
“I was whisked away to a military base out in the country, and told about the future of our nation’s military, ‘The Supersoldier Project’. Willing volunteers would agree to be put under the knife and modified with combat enhancing grafts to become the world’s most elite soldiers, capable of virtually anything. Only, as I would later find out, the volunteers weren’t so voluntary.
“Far down the road, once I’d already created the firmware which runs Victoria’s and the other soldiers’ grafts, I was informed of the next phase, a remote control algorithm. Still young and naïve, I believed them when they told me it was for rescue operations where the soldier was unconscious and unable to move themselves.
“There are two reasons remote control of a subject is nigh-on impossible. The first is that, no matter how fast ManaNet can send a signal to a graft, the subject’s brain can always send one faster and overwrite the command, simply as a matter of distance scales. The second is that it’s not enough to just control the graft. The supersoldier grafts are so embedded that they have to work in tandem with the subject’s own body. It’s not enough to control the grafts; you have to control their muscles as well.”
Is that even possible? Lily thought.
“I know what you’re thinking. Yes, it can be done, but don’t ask me how. I worked on the first problem, and someone else dealt with the second. But I’ve seen it, using a direct jack to bypass the first problem.
“Anyway, I set to work and quickly approached on creating a signal which could interrupt the subject’s brain. But testing was always an issue. I’d been provided with a testbed of sorts, but it was remote, and I never got to see the soldier I was connecting to. Without a line of communication, how was I supposed to know if my signals were overriding their brain? I planned to ask to meet the soldier, but my impatience got the better of me. I located the soldier, and decided to go and ask him myself.
“What I found was nothing like I expected. It turns out it wasn’t just one soldier I was connecting to, but one of hundreds. They were all stored in the same room. Rows upon rows of men and woman, all lying on metal beds, at various stages in the conversion process. Some were being operated on there and then. Most remained unconscious, but the screams of the ones who weren’t, the way they struggled and fought, it all still haunts me today.
“I knew I had to do something, but couldn’t do it alone, so I surveyed the regular soldiers for a while, all the time still pretending to work. I noticed Matt’s devotion to his missing squad leader almost immediately. A quick hack of the army’s databases showed me Victoria had been his commanding officer, so I went and found her in the plant. She was already complete, lying restrained in a bed. I knew I couldn’t free her and escape alone, but with Matt’s help, I might be able to manage it. So I reached out and made contact. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but eventually I snuck Matt back to my office and we worked out a way to free the supersoldiers. Unfortunately it didn’t go according to plan. I managed to remotely reboot Victoria, and she, Matt and I escaped, but as for the other soldiers, we couldn’t get them out. So I did the only thing I tho
ught I could. I rebooted them all.
“It was hell on earth. The screams, the blood, the crying.”
“Why didn’t they just flee themselves?” Lily asked.
“Think for a second,” Victoria said. “Can you imagine waking up and seeing your mutilated body for the first time? Most of these people hadn’t awoken since being taken. The majority killed themselves where they stood, their self-loathing enough to activate their holographic arms and slice their own throats. The others went insane, rampaging through the facility. A few made it outside. It took hundreds of soldiers to take them down. So much death. So much life, wasted.”
“That day I made two vows,” Owen said. “The first, that I would never again be so brash, so arrogant, as to think I could do anything without consequences. The second, that I would spend the rest of my life atoning for what I’d done. So we set up this group, to take down the people in charge of the supersoldier program. In just three years, we got them all. All but one. I never found out his name, and I never saw his face. I only heard his voice. He was the project leader, the man in charge of it all. That’s who we were talking about. He’s the man who spoke to me over the radio.”
Chapter 13 - Sympathy
10:17, Blu Vertex Hotel, East District
With Owen’s story finished, Damos returned to his spot on the carpet.
“And you’re sure it was him?” Matt asked.
“Like I said, I could never forget his voice,” Owen replied.
“So what did he want? Why did he take you in the first place?”
“Do you remember what was on that disc we took from Lily?” Owen asked. Matt thought for a moment.
“Your… your code! Please tell me you didn’t finish it.”
“They forced me to. Izzy died because of me. I refused to work, so they killed her.”
“Owen, Izzy’s death was not your fault,” Victoria said. “She had an explosive implanted behind her sternum. They must have used a Gifted to push it in without cutting her skin. When it detonated, my grafts activated to save me, but it knocked me out. It was designed to incapacitate me. They would have killed her whether you worked or not.”
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