The Terminals

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  “Is he on camera?”

  “Nope. He’s inside the alcove.”

  They circled, crouching low. When they faced the front entrance the guard was visible. He lounged in a cheap plastic lawn chair, cigarette hanging from his lips. It was difficult to tell if he had a cell phone or radio, but his gun was visible. AR-15. Wally pointed to the camera mounted above the alcove.

  Cam turned to Zara. “Can you get close enough to disarm him?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I can wander up like I was just strolling by and ask him for a cigarette, and then karate chop him like on TV.”

  Cam rolled his eyes. “Okay, I get it. Not a good plan. Can you hit him from here, Wally?”

  “Easy,” Wally said. He checked the magazine and flipped off the safety. “Where do you want it?”

  “Trigger hand?”

  “He’ll run inside.”

  “Leg first then?”

  “Sure. Then I’ll do his trigger hand.”

  “Really? You think you can do that?”

  Zara lowered herself next to Wally. “Let me point out that if you hit him in the head, he will neither go for help nor shoot back,” she said. “And if he has a cell phone…”

  Cam frowned. She was right. “Any sign of a cell phone, Wally, and you do what you need to do,” he said.

  “Done,” Wally said, and raised the butt of the AR-15 to his shoulder.

  Cam thought that his teammate would have to take his time, but Wally swung the gun up and fired in one smooth motion, his hands strong and steady. There was a loud pop, but no echoing crack or pow that might be heard for miles around. The noise was not a high risk. Security cameras were not typically designed to pick up sound. Cam saw the man’s leg jerk sideways, and a dark splotch appeared on the wall behind him—blood in a Rorschach pattern. It looked like a sea gull to Cam. Wally squeezed off two more shots before Cam could stop him. The first took off a finger on his right hand. The second punched a hole dead center in his left palm. The guard went over in his chair and curled into a ball. There was no brave teeth-gritting or courageous return fire, no Herculean effort to crawl for the door. Just an awkward and painful-looking tuck into the fetal position.

  Zara and Donnie were on him in seconds. There was some risk—they had to cross the camera’s field of view. However, with an exterior guard on duty, there was less chance eyes would be on the camera—it would likely be recording, not monitoring. Cam arrived at the alcove as his teammates were checking the door and frisking the guard for keys.

  “He’s bleeding,” Cam observed.

  “That happens when you shoot someone,” Wally said.

  “He’s bleeding a lot.”

  Wally examined his handiwork. “He’s just lucky I aimed to the left of his weenie.”

  “He’s bleeding too much,” Cam persisted.

  “You must have clipped the femoral artery,” Zara said.

  “Meaning what?” Wally asked.

  “He’ll bleed out quickly and die.”

  “We didn’t want him killed,” Cam said, exasperated. “We just wanted you to shoot him in the leg.”

  “I did shoot him in the leg.”

  “To incapacitate him.”

  “I am not familiar with the incapacitation region of the leg. You said ‘leg,’ so I hit a leg.”

  The man moaned and pawed at the air, confused. He hardly registered their presence.

  “First aid,” Cam ordered.

  “What do you want us to do, put a tourniquet on his thigh?” Donnie said.

  “Can’t be done.” It was Zara. “You can’t cut off blood flow to the entire leg.”

  “We decided to shoot him to disable him,” Donnie said. “The fact that he might die is the risk we took.”

  Cam knelt beside the man. “We took the risk for him. That’s not fair.”

  “Are you hearing yourself?” Zara said. “How fair have they been to us? What sort of risks have they been treating us to, eh?”

  The guard was sweating like a pig, but he had a kind face that reminded Cam a bit of his favorite professor. The loss of blood had clouded his eyes, and he stared past them into the distance. His skin was cold and clammy. Ari had explained the symptoms of circulatory shock once during training, and the man had all of them.

  “I feel responsible,” Cam said. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Siena held up a key ring. “He needs a doctor.”

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  37. LACE UP

  by Game Day

  38. LET YOU GO

  by Raven Dark

  39. ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN

  by Calli

  “Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Goaaaaaal!”

  Donnie kicked open the door to the gli club, where a little man in a lab coat with large round glasses whirled to stare at them. He stood across the room with a coffeepot and cup, frozen mid-pour. He glanced at the guard dripping blood and gasped.

  Wally leveled the AR-15 at him. “Are you a doctor?”

  They dragged the guard up onto the pool table. The doctor was one of a skeleton crew in the facility. There was a supervisor and two lab docs. This one was not in charge. Zara kept the knife at his back, and he didn’t try anything. He was familiar with her reaction time. He had an accent. European, though Cam wasn’t sure what it was exactly. Russian, maybe, or some neighboring region thereof. The man didn’t ask why they’d shot the guard or what the team wanted, which told Cam that he understood they were on the run. He did seem confused about why they wanted to help the guard.

  “How do we save him?” Cam asked.

  “There’s massive blood loss. First we stop it, then a transfusion.”

  “You have blood?”

  “No. We must have a donor. Fly him out, maybe.”

  “You’re not calling in a helicopter. Work on stopping the bleeding for now.”

  Cam sent Donnie and Wally to secure the other staff. “Search them and lock them in a room with no communications gear. Don’t shoot them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donnie said.

  “Please don’t call me ‘sir,’” Cam replied.

  Wally gave him a faux salute. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  They took the rifle and the doctor’s keys and left the room.

  “Face it,” Siena said. “You’re their ‘sir.’”

  “I’m not calling you ‘sir,’” Zara said, and she gave him a sly grin. “Unless you can make me.”

  The doctor was finishing up the sutures. It was a rushed job—ugly hamburger work meant to save a life, not a leg. The man’s finger could not be saved, and the damage from the hole in his hand would have to wait for assessment. The doctor only cleaned it and wrapped it.

  “I have done what I can,” he said. “Without blood he still dies.”

  “Then he dies,” Zara said.

  “No. That’s unacceptable.” Cam took a deep breath. “Doctor, do you know who I am?”

  The doctor stared at him through his thick glasses. “9K. The soccer player.”

  9K? Cam thought. It was the name on the survey forms he’d filled out, not Cam or even Cameron. That’s who I am to these scientists. Subject 9K.

  “Then I’ll bet you know my blood type too, right?”

  The transfusion was done in an exam room. Wally came back to check in during the procedure and confirmed that the other doctor and lab technician had been secured. Donnie was guarding them. Wally swore when Cam told him about the transfusion, calling it “idiotic,” among other things. But as the blood began to flow, Cam felt certain they were doing the right thing.

  Zara lay on the table next to the man, her muscular arm extended and pierced with a sizable needle. Cam was the wrong blood type, the doctor had said. Zara was type O, compatible with anyone, a “universal donor,” the doc called it. She’d debated, but Cam told her that it was always right to save a life, when it was in your power.

  “That’s what I thought when I joined,” she said.

  The process would take one to four
hours, according to the doc. Enough time to investigate the facility. Wally and his gun stayed to keep tabs on Zara, while Cam and Siena went to poke around. The doctor had not been helpful regarding transportation. They used the helicopter exclusively, he said, and Pilot flew them, which wouldn’t do at all. The nearest village was forty miles south. Too far to walk through the jungle, and much of the land in between was flooded swamp—a caiman haven, among other problems.

  Cam headed straight to the observation room behind the one-way mirror, where he’d seen the lab techs working with his team’s blood. The gurney was gone. There was a refrigerator with vials neatly labeled 9A through 9K. There were more samples of some subjects than others. 9C had only one. Peter, Cam thought. On the next shelf were the 8s, A through J. The 7s were also A through J. The 6s were A through I. The 5s A through J again.

  “They have a team every year,” Cam said.

  Siena wrinkled her nose. “Unless…”

  “What?”

  “Unless not every team lasts an entire year. They told us they were working on extending the life of the TS, and we were supposed to have a full year. But if we were the longest-lasting batches, that means previous teams got less time.”

  Cam could see Siena thinking. Then her lip curled into a snarl. “I didn’t feel sick at all before I was diagnosed by their specialist. It was only after they began ‘treating’ me that I started having glioblastoma symptoms.”

  Cam put a hand on her shoulder, and she allowed it to stay.

  “It was all a lie, Cam. They made me feel sick. They induced the symptoms to match their phony diagnosis. Then they offered me the bait, and I snatched it out of desperation.”

  When Cam didn’t disagree she squeezed her eyes shut so hard that she looked like a child wishing away monsters in the night. In a way, she was.

  “I was a good girl. I was smart and responsible and nice. I did everything I was asked to do. Why me? Why us?”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Cam said. “We’re not sick. We’re pure subjects. I’ll bet they already tested this drug on diseased and third-world subjects long ago.”

  There was a heavy door with a huge lever handle. Cam went to it and listened. There was no sound, but it was cold to the touch. He pulled, and it opened into a refrigerated locker room with rows of large drawers. Cam could see his breath. The gurney he recognized was parked at the end of the room.

  Siena was already drifting through the rows. She selected the nearest drawer handle.

  “Don’t,” Cam said.

  “There are unpleasant truths that we came here to uncover, Cam. We gain nothing by ignoring them.” With that, she drew open the drawer.

  Cam almost threw up. Calliope’s face was even whiter than it had been in life. She wore a rubber cap, and her long red hair was gone. But it was clearly her. She lay still with her eyes disturbingly wide open. Death was supposed to be peaceful, but her permanent stare didn’t make her seem at peace to Cam. In fact, she looked a lot like the door guard in shock.

  “They had her body sent here,” Cam said, tracing a finger up to the label above the drawer. It read 9E. He glanced about. The other drawers were also labeled—9A, 9B, 9C, 9D … all the way through 9K. He gasped. “It’s us!”

  Siena shut Calliope’s drawer and walked down the row. “8F. That’s me.” She yanked it open. Thankfully, it was vacant.

  Cam couldn’t do it, so Siena opened the next two, 9I and 9J.

  “That’s my friend Ari, and this one is Gwen,” Cam said, tight-lipped. Then she reached drawer 9K. She slid it open and Cam stuck his head into the empty space. He wondered if the dead felt claustrophobia. “I’m looking into my own tomb,” he said.

  “Cam…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need you to see something here. I don’t want you to, but you need to.”

  Cam turned. Siena had drawer 9H slightly open. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and she pulled it wider so that he could see inside.

  Cam staggered backward. “No. Nuh-nuh-no! That’s not fair!”

  Jules was more recognizable than Calliope without her hair. Her oversized eyes and smallish chin were distinctive. She too wore a cap over her shaved head. Worse, there was a clear incision where they’d removed a portion of her skull, presumably to study the effects of TS on her brain.

  Cam didn’t even realize Siena was hugging him until she caressed his hair. She pulled him gently away and pushed all the drawers shut with her foot, seemingly out of respect for the privacy of the dead. Then they stood together, and she shared her warmth in the cold room.

  After a while, she whispered to him, “Your teammate Owen isn’t here yet. Even if they’re not looking for us here, they’ll be bringing his body soon. They won’t want him to rot. We should prepare for company.”

  “I need to sit for a minute,” Cam said, and he hoisted himself up onto the gurney. She nodded and stepped away.

  The rows of drawers didn’t end with the 9 series. Just like the vials of blood, there were 8s and 7s and 6s too. It’s a morgue, Cam thought. We’re all in the morgue. We’re just too naïve to know we’re already dead.

  The scream was faint through two heavy doors and around two corners, but they heard it.

  “That’s Wally,” Cam said, jumping up. “Something’s wrong.”

  CAM’S PLAYLIST

  38. LET YOU GO

  by Raven Dark

  39. ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN

  by Calli

  40. ME ON STEROIDS

  by Addictionopolis

  “Let me let you go.”

  Cam knew it was bad, because Donnie was in the room and had the doctor pinned against the wall by the neck. Wally paced, unable to say anything comprehensible through his profanity and the blows he dealt his own head with his open hand.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “He’s killing her, Cam,” Donnie said.

  “I didn’t know!” Wally yelled.

  “Wally killed who…?”

  “No. The doc! This doc. He took three pints of blood out of her.”

  “What?!”

  “I didn’t know how much was too much!” Wally wailed.

  The doctor gargled through Donnie’s choke hold.

  “No!” Donnie growled. “Don’t even try to speak. I will rip your throat out.”

  Cam turned to Zara. She was as pale as Calliope. He leaped to her side, grabbing her arm. She was barely able to turn her head.

  Donnie rammed the man against the wall by the neck, so strong that the doctor’s entire body rattled with the impact.

  “Wait! I need to talk to that man,” Cam said.

  “Cam, it’s too late to talk,” Zara whispered. “Just do…” She couldn’t finish. She was fading.

  “We might save her,” Cam said. But the look in the doctor’s eyes told him he was wrong. “What happened?”

  “A bad reaction to the procedure,” the man said. “Allergic reaction maybe.”

  “You took three pints?”

  “A medically safe amount if—”

  “Put it back!” Cam said ridiculously.

  “I cannot do that. They would both die.”

  “I don’t give a shit about him! Save her!”

  Cam glanced at the guard. His tongue lolled from his mouth. He didn’t look any better than Zara. Cam shot an accusing glare back at the doc. But he only stared at his own feet. It was clear he wouldn’t be saving anybody.

  Cam knelt beside her. Her chest stopped moving up and down. No breath whooshed from her lips. An absence of life. Her year was over. No more extreme experiences. No more kicking ass. She lay still. Except for her slightly open eyes, she might have simply been asleep. A normal girl dreaming of getting married and picking out dishes, Cam thought. A girl who wanted to kiss me. But there would be no more kissing. She was dead. Cam kissed her anyway, lightly on the mouth, like a gentleman, but long enough to mean something—a wedding kiss. Nobody protested. Indeed, nobody said a word. Afterward, he reached out and shut her e
yes for her, and she looked peaceful.

  Someone was kneeling beside him. Siena. “Cam, he killed her on purpose.”

  “I did not,” the doctor insisted.

  “He did, Cam. You know he did.”

  Cam hesitated. “I need to think about this.” But he couldn’t think. The idea that Zara was gone was scrambling his thoughts.

  “I need time. I just need to…”

  “That’s right,” the doctor said. “We need to talk this through. I can explain. You see, the procedure was compromised when…”

  Cam felt the anger rising inside him, like bile about to erupt from his throat. “It’s too late to talk,” he growled. He motioned to Donnie.

  Donnie’s arm lashed out quicker than Cam could follow, and when it recoiled it held a pink, bleeding object. The man’s tongue. Siena quickly stuck him with a dart to cut off his horrible gargling scream.

  Cam turned in place, lost. “We were saving a life. Why would a doctor do that?” It was an absent question perhaps directed at his teammates, perhaps himself, or at the god he’d abandoned, or at nobody.

  Donnie wiped his bloody hands on a towel. “We try to do something good and a doctor screws us over? Sound familiar?”

  “And I recommended she do it,” Cam groaned. “I served her up.”

  “I didn’t see this one coming either, Cam,” Siena said, looking through the man’s pockets. “None of us did.”

  “I had the gun on him the whole time,” Wally groaned.

  “If you didn’t, he would have killed you too and then ambushed the rest of us.” She held up four syringes the doctor had filled with inky fluid. “Look familiar?”

  “He knew we were trained not to kill,” Donnie growled. “But that’s going to change.”

  “I’ve failed you all as leader,” Cam said, remembering something that Ari had told him. “I need to be brilliant before half the team is dead.” He might have slumped onto the floor then in despair, but Donnie grabbed him by the arms.

  “We’re still onboard, Cam.”

  Wally nodded. “You got us all the way to here. Otherwise, we’d all be dead on the beach with Owen.”

  Cam turned to Siena for support.

  “You need to stay sharp,” she said. “Don’t puss out on me.”