Will processed the information. He wondered how someone with a job like Mr. Redd's could sleep at night, or even sit quietly with his own thoughts. "What if I refuse to sign everything over?"
"I don't know what they'll do, but we'll still get it," Redd answered. "Now, do you have any other assets besides those I just mentioned?"
If he didn't survive the program, Will thought, it didn't matter what assets he had. And if he did survive, he'd have to start completely over with life, which he'd already accepted. What did he want from his former life anyway? Even if they released him immediately, there was nothing to salvage. "I have assets in the house: a computer, entertainment system—big screen TV, etc., some metal and wood-working tools in the garage, and some-"
"Anything very valuable?" Redd cut in.
"Not really."
"Then that's good enough, we don't care about the small stuff," Redd said. "Those items will be auctioned off later, and we'll have an itemized total for you during your exit interview in a year—if there is one. Another question: are you in line to inherit any money or property—are you in anyone's will?" Redd turned and made eye contact with Will for the first time.
Will thought for a moment and figured he probably was in line for some inheritance—but that would be years down the road. "I'll be in my parents' will—along with my sister—but I wouldn't expect to have to worry about that anytime soon."
Redd nodded and then responded, "If anything else comes up, you'll find out in the exit interview. Now, we need to complete the transfers and close out all of your accounts." He tapped on his keyboard for a minute. "What's the password for your ElectroTrade account?"
Will was silent. The shock of his new reality was setting in—he stared in a daze for a few seconds.
"Mr. Thompson ... " Redd prodded.
The words just wouldn't come out—it took Will thirty more seconds to override the mental safety switch before he responded. Slowly, he began to list the password characters, "w, m, *, 3, s, 7, j, 5, T." It was complex, and he was surprised he remembered it after more than a year.
Redd nodded to the dark haired woman, who had been writing down the characters as Will recited them, and she went to work on her computer.
After surrendering all of his usernames and passwords, the red-haired woman pulled up a chair next to him and sat down. She opened a manila envelope, removing some papers and placing them on a clip board. "This one is a Transfer of Title document for your car, and this one's for the house," she said, handing him a pen. She pointed out multiple places to sign and initial.
Will signed and initialed.
From her desk behind him, the olive-skinned woman reported, "The transfers have been authorized, and the requests for account closures have been submitted."
Mr. Redd nodded and tapped on his keyboard with more vigor, as if he was completing a big assignment. " ... and ... Enter," he said with a final tap of the button. "Okay, that's it for the financial part. Now we need some identity info." He opened a cabinet behind him and lifted out an apparatus that resembled a microscope. He plugged the cable from the device into the computer on his desk, turning it on. Next, he retrieved a flexible pad with the outlines of two hands on it, plugging this into the computer as well. He nodded and turned to face Will. "Look into the eyepieces and place your chin on the bar—don't blink."
Will did as instructed. He heard Redd tap a button, and observed as a thin vertical line scanned across his field of vision. This was followed by a flash of white light, which quickly faded to black. The process had finished.
Redd clicked his computer mouse a few times, then looked again to Will. "That looks good. Now place both palms on the pad, inside the hand outlines."
Will pressed lightly into the spongy surface of the device.
Redd pushed a button, which produced a short beeping sound.
"Good enough for government work," he said, motioning in the direction of the women. "Bring in the DNA kit."
The red-haired woman walked over to Will carrying a gun-like device with a hypodermic needle protruding from the barrel. She latched a narrow, cartridge-like piece into the bottom of the handle, as a clip would be inserted on a pistol. Four clear vials shined in the light.
Before Will knew what was happening, the woman plunged the needle into his arm.
He flinched, hissing at the pain.
The woman pulled the trigger on the device. It hummed softly, and he watched the vials fill with blood, each having a capacity of a few cubic centimeters. They were filled less than a minute later, and she extracted the needle.
The women left with the blood, paperwork, and an electronic storage device that carried his handprint and iris pattern information. Mr. Redd pulled a form out of a printer on a small table behind him, handing it to Will along with a felt-tipped pen. "This is a nondisclosure form. It states that you'll be prosecuted for treason if you reveal anything that you see while you're at the Red Box. Sign and date it."
Will did it, even though he was certain he'd reveal everything when he got out.
If he got out.
Mr. Redd rattled and clicked on the computer for a couple more minutes, before turning his attention back to Will. He glanced at his watch, then said, "This is what we've done: we have all of your belongings and your identity—basically, you are now government property."
Will felt as if he had just jumped off of a cliff—there was no going back. Still, he thought, forfeiting all of this—his identity, his money, his possessions-had to be better than spending twenty-five years in prison. He had to constantly remind himself of that.
"Do you have any questions?" Redd asked.
"No." He had a million questions.
"Okay," he said and looked at Will's itinerary, "hmmm ... off to medical next. We're running a little late." He picked up the phone and summoned the handlers, then stood up from his chair, motioning for Will to do the same.
Will heard the orderlies knock, and they were soon on their way.
*
The morning sun brightened Richard's office to the point of obscuring his view of the computer monitor. He knew it would only last for a few minutes, so he took a break from the work on his upcoming presentation.
He swiveled his chair over to small table at his right, opened a thick envelope and removed its contents. It was a binder containing the weekly Red Box patient reports. He looked at the summary: the first thing he noticed was that two patients had died in the past week. It was not out of the ordinary. The summary also had a section for "Number of Incidents' but it was empty.
Richard paged through the individual patient reports, NTR on the top line of every one: Nothing to Report. Although they were probably correct, he was skeptical about the quality of the personnel running each experimental room. Each treatment was conducted by two controllers, one technical, and one medical. The techs had engineering degrees of some sort, and the meds had either gone to medical school, dental school, or had psychology degrees, depending on what the specific treatment entailed. The problem was that people who held those degrees could make a lot more money in their respective fields, so the CP facilities had to settle for the bottom of the barrel. Richard wondered if they had been missing some of the more subtle signs.
Other than a few misdiagnoses that had been quickly corrected, it had been only NTR's on the reports since the project had begun. For a scientist who had no moral issue with the project, the constant flow of negative reports would certainly be disheartening. But Richard did have moral qualms with the project. His change of heart had started two years prior, when the Red Box began treating subjects—real people. Up to that point, it had only been a bioengineering project for him.
He speculated it had been the same way for the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. That had been quite a scientific feat, rivaled only by the moon landing, in his opinion. But after they had succeeded, and their breakthrough had transformed into a devastating military tool, many of them had moral objections to its u
se. Too late. Richard felt it might be too late for him, as well. But still, he would try to redeem himself.
He noticed the sun was off of his monitor, and he put the report binder back in its envelope. There were no incidents, so it would be easy to work up the weekly summary for Bergman. The presentation, however, presented a challenge: no positive results, again. He turned his chair back to the computer desk, and went to work.
*
The orderlies directed Will into an elevator, which moved them up a floor. They stepped out into a large hall, similar to one they had just left, and shuffled to a door that read: B-Level: Rm. 1 Medical.
The larger orderly knocked loudly and stepped back as the door opened. A woman stepped out, rolling up the sleeves of her red scrubs. She was in her mid-thirties and she wore her dark, curly hair in a long ponytail. Her black-rimmed glasses contrasted sharply with the bright red lipstick that glistened on her full lips; it was the recent application of the latter that made Will uneasy—it seemed out of place.
"I'm Dr. Johnson," she said as she guided Will into the room, closing the door behind the exiting orderlies. "Step over there, and remove your clothes." She pointed to a medical table.
Will looked around as he walked to the table. The large size of the room surprised him, as did the number of people in it—nearly ten, all dressed in red medical scrubs, and scurrying about. Some moved carts and hooked up electronic devices, while others sat at tables and typed on computers.
Will squinted due to the bright, fluorescent light that reflected from the numerous stainless steel tables. The place was illuminated like an operating room, and each table had an apparatus next to it with accompanying electronic gadgets. His eyes were drawn to two red, illuminated signs at the far end of the facility: one read Strong Magnetic Fields, and the other, Danger: X-rays.
"Number 523, this is Dr. Poliakov and Dr. Noh," Dr. Johnson said, gesturing to each. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Now, am I going to have to call the orderlies back here to undress you?"
Will found it strange the orderlies weren't constantly present to assist with some of the physical situations that could develop. Although he was smart enough to understand his chances of escape were negligible, he was sure they'd dealt with less astute patients before. He untied his hospital gown and disrobed.
"Good, now lie down," Johnson said, pointing to a stainless steel table covered with a large sheet of wax paper.
As his back made contact with the table, he felt the cold steel through the thin sheet, and goose pimples broke out all over his arms and legs. His testicles felt as if they'd moved all the way up to his throat. He noticed now, too, that the air in the room was too cold to be comfortable without clothes.
To Will's left, Dr. Noh rolled up a cart with a stack of tubes, bunches of hypodermic needles, and electronic components. Poliakov rolled a similar collection of medical gear to the other side. Both wetted gauze pads with alcohol, filling the air with the aroma of discomfort, and rubbed down parts of his body; Noh his left bicep, and Poliakov his right inner thigh. Next, each produced a needle-terminated tube, patting around on Will's skin with their free hands. Noh started first, and Will felt the cold steel penetrate his flesh, probing around. Poliakov followed with the same on his inner thigh—which was much more sensitive—and Will gasped.
Dr. Johnson pulled out a small syringe, filling it with pale-blue fluid from a small, glass bottle. She flicked it a few times, then squirted a little into the air before injecting the concoction into Will's shoulder."This will take a few minutes to take hold."
"What is it?" Will asked. He didn't much like being injected with unknown substances.
"A paralyzing agent; we don't want you moving around too much," she replied. "But you'll still feel everything."
Just like the first woman he met, Dr. Smith, Will detected an underlying loathing in Dr. Johnson's countenance—something he might not have noticed, if it hadn't tinged her voice as well.
Poliakov's needle must have struck a vein, as he taped the device to Will's thigh and then proceeded to push a button on his cart.
A moment later a motor hummed, and Will felt a pain—like a collapsing cavity—reach as high as his stomach. He watched his blood move through the clear tube toward the apparatus. When it reached the machine's input, lights flickered on the display monitor, and Poliakov turned a knob on the needle end of the tube, stopping the flow. He then removed the device from Will's leg.
"That's it," Poliakov said, rolling the cart away.
Will had lost track of what Dr. Noh was doing on his other side, and when he turned to look he saw more than a pint of his blood in a clear container—he'd never seen so much of his own blood. He felt light-headed, and colder.
Dr. Johnson walked in from a back room—Will hadn't even noticed that she'd left. She carried a large syringe with a thick needle on one end—four or five inches long. A long, flexible wire with a plastic ring on the end stuck out the backside of the device, and a trigger protruded from the underside.
"Time for deep tissue samples for genetic tests," she said. "Let's see how that paralyzing agent is working." She grabbed Will's right arm with two hands and lifted.
Will felt her latex-covered fingers grip his forearm and biceps, then lift, but he could produce no muscular response. She dropped his arm from a height of about six inches, and it thudded lifelessly on the table. Will tried to speak, but was only able to muster a hissing gurgle. He was paralyzed. A sense of panic began to overtake him, but this did not register in his features; his eyes and facial expression seemingly dull and lifeless.
"We'll start with the muscle samples, but we'll have to get marrow, lung, and bone samples, too. At the end, we'll take some spinal fluid," Johnson directed to the other doctors, but looked at Will as she spoke. Her red lipstick accented a smile she no longer felt obligated to hide. "Time for the straps."
Will heard Poliakov open a drawer at the bottom of the table, but he couldn't see what they were doing until the first nylon strap was wrapped across his shoulders, followed by identical bands placed across his chest, hips, and knees. Next were Velcro cuffs—a pair for each wrist and ankle—which Noh threaded through steel eyelets on the table.
After everything was tightened up, Johnson said to Poliakov, "Let's get the quadriceps samples first."
Poliakov nodded, placed one hand above and the other below Will's right knee, and firmly secured his leg. Johnson then plunged the needle a full two inches into his upper thigh. The muscle twitched involuntarily, despite the induced paralysis, and the pain intensified.
As Johnson pulled the trigger on the syringe, Will felt something bite him deep inside. She pulled the wire out slowly, causing a sinewy tear that Will thought he actually heard. A second later the wire was fully extracted, and she examined the bloody lump dangling from the end of it, twisting it as if she were observing the oil level on a dipstick. She released the meaty nugget into a plastic sample tube, sealing it up. "Now, the other quadriceps," she ordered as she grabbed a new extractor from the cart, walking over to the other side of the table.
Will hadn't even noticed Dr. Noh had removed the needle from his arm until he saw the little man rolling a different cart over to his side. This one had an assortment of "extractors" on it, each resembling the one just used to get the deep tissue. Will felt sick.
Johnson plunged the steel shaft into his left thigh, and Will heard her yelling orders as he felt his vision dimming: "Get a damp cloth on his face—he's passing out," she said.
Poliakov squeezed a wet washcloth over Will's chest and lower abdomen, and then placed it on his forehead. It was enough to keep him conscious, but now he was very cold—the blood loss certainly didn't help matters. He felt Johnson's probe nip out another piece of his flesh, which she then retrieved and stored. Nausea crept up in him—from what he was currently experiencing, and from the anticipation of what was coming next.
The team of doctors continued methodically with the program. Each
extraction had its own unique pain characteristics—and Will lost all concept of time. He'd learned quickly that it only took seconds to exact the worst pain he'd ever felt in his life—and it was a violating pain. If he recalled correctly from the orientation meeting with Dr. Smith, the "medical exams" were scheduled for two hours. Two hours would be an eternity.
The lung tissue extraction felt like a ton of weight crushing his chest; the pain dull and deep. The bone and marrow extractions were screamers—grown man screamers—though screaming was impossible under the paralytic. Finally, there was the spinal fluid extraction: shots of white-hot electricity shot down Will's legs like super-sciatica, and with such horrible head-pain he thought they were sucking his brain out through his spinal cord.
At the end, the effect of the paralyzing agent had waned, and he vomited and dry-heaved for five straight minutes. It felt like a combination of motion sickness and a migraine headache. The symptoms diminished slowly, and by the time he had gone in for the MRI and X-ray scans they were mostly gone. Will shuddered at the thought of what else might happen to him before the end of the day, and couldn't bear the thought of what might happen when the sun came up on the next. He wondered whether he'd ever see the sun again.
*
Although he'd only read a fraction of the Thompson files, Jonathan was already frustrated—he hadn't found anything to help him devise a strategy of attack. He turned to Denise, who was sitting at the large table in his office, and asked, "Find anything strange in the evidence log?"
"Not yet," she replied, "there's a lot to read—but so far it's all irrelevant: many character references—seems like quite a few friends of the fiancee were interviewed by the prosecution, and many of the defendant's friends and colleagues by the defense. Two lengthy, contradicting psychologist reviews, but no physical evidence."
EXOSKELETON - A Novel Page 5