Omen Operation

by Taylor Brooke

  “I think I know why.” He plucked out a syringe filled with murky charcoal liquid. It looked thick like tar. He turned it into the light, revealing specks of grey and white floating stagnant in the black substance.

  “What is it?” Brooklyn asked.

  “A derivative of the virus that you guys were given as children. All of us had one of these in our bug-out bags in case anything went wrong, in case our identities or operations were at a high enough risk to put our lives on the line. An irreversible alibi.”

  “And what exactly does that do?” Dawson growled.

  “It depends on the person. It’ll either make us like you or make us like the Surrogates.”

  “That’s it?” Brooklyn said as she walked forward to get a better look at the syringe in Porter’s hand. “That’s the virus?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “We should destroy it, then,” Julian said from his place against the wall.

  “We’re not destroying it.”

  “Why not?” Julian scoffed, his voice bouncing off the high walls.

  Porter flicked the glass tube and said, “Because I’m going to use it.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Brooklyn trembled. Anger pulsed in her veins, leaked like fumes out of her pores, and her eyes narrowed. She stared at Porter, and he stared right back as the rest of the room fell into uncomfortable silence.

  “You’re going to use it on yourself?” Brooklyn asked. Her voice was even and controlled. She strained to keep her heartbeat from running away with itself. Her fingers curled into fists, palms slick with sweat, and her stomach squeezed into a tight, tempered ball.

  “That’s the plan,” Porter said.

  She watched him slide the syringe back into the black case and tuck it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  There was a lot that she wanted to say, but all she could come up with was “You can’t.”

  Porter zipped up his jacket and turned to look at Dawson. “Let me see if I can get something out of Savannah. If she’s already showing signs, then we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Brooklyn gritted her teeth. She took another step forward into his space. “Don’t disregard me like that,” she fumed. “You can’t be serious about injecting. You could die, or you could turn into one of those things, and then…”

  “Then you’ll kill me.” Porter cut her off, biting down on the words as they left his mouth.

  The brash impact of his statement felt like a sledgehammer right to Brooklyn’s gut. She didn’t blink or breathe or move.

  “There’s a lot on the line right now, and we don’t have time to argue about this,” Porter said. “Where is she?”

  Dawson waved them over to the wall of boxes where Charlie had just come from and showed him to the other side. The warehouse was nearly empty, but whoever had occupied it before had left a few chairs, a small desk, and stacks upon stacks of pallets and boxes behind. They were built up like a wall, dividing the group from the area where they held Savannah.

  Brooklyn didn’t follow at first. Her feet stayed planted. She tried to hold back the violent urge to throw her fist against the wall. Everything was spiraling out of control, sliding through her fingertips like grains of sand. Her fixed fortitude was dissolving, and she struggled to keep a reign on her fluctuating emotions. Control was all she had left, and she was losing it.

  Brooklyn took a long, deep breath and followed them after she’d hog tied her emotions. She was ice cold and took the time to extinguish any abrupt flare or outburst that piped up inside her. It would be easier that way. It would be easier not to feel.

  Behind the wall of boxes was Savannah, sitting on the ground. Her wrists and ankles were zip tied. Long brown hair was pulled back into a ratty ponytail, and a bitter expression turned her lips into a frown. The girl’s nose was raw as thin trails of black liquid made their way down over her lips. Even her eyes, red from crying, were beginning to look sallow and sickly.

  Savannah grinned. “Look at you, Porter. It’s fairly obvious you’ve jumped ship, huh?”

  “Yeah, seems that way, doesn’t it?”

  “Figures,” she spat. “You never did follow the rules anyways, always had a way out of it.”

  “What’s going on with ECHO? I need to know. I need you to tell me.” He spoke slowly and was strategically calm.

  She boomed with laughter, spit flying from her mouth. “You know I’m not telling you anything. You’re a sick sympathizing traitor. I never…” Savannah paused, licking her cracked lips, eyelids twitching. “I never thought you’d go along with the project, but I didn’t think you’d actually try to sabotage it.”

  “You don’t seem to be in any position of power here. How about you just talk to me so we can be done with this? I need to know about ECHO, I need to know if the other Omens are in Denver, and I need to know right now.”

  “No, no, none of that matters! It doesn’t matter anymore—it’s done! All of you, every single one of you, you’re all accounted for and screened and ready to be processed, so don’t think just because you feel safe that Juneau doesn’t have eyes on you!” Savannah was crazed. Her pupils swallowed any color left in her eyes. She picked at herself, pulling up the skin on the edge of her cuticles.

  “It does matter, Savannah! Please, we used to be friends back at the lab. I just need you to tell me about ECHO. I need you to tell me what I’m getting myself into!”

  “Getting yourself into…?” The mole whispered, leaning forward slightly. Her mouth opened, and her eyebrows pulled down toward her nose. “You think you’re one of them? You’re Porter Malloy, Juneau Malloy’s son! You think you can flip sides? You think you can run? Please…they know your every move. They know where you are, and they know what you’ll do before you do it.”

  “I’m already one of them,” Porter said. “But when I inject, I’ll become a priority to ISO, and my company-wide immunity will be washed. I made my choice a while ago. Now, will you help me or not?”

  Savannah spit at his feet. Her lips pressed into a black-smudged line. “You’ll never be a priority.”

  Dawson tried to step forward, but Brooklyn moved swiftly passed him, kneeling down in front of Savannah. There was no reason to play by the rules. Brooklyn was done trying to find the good in people.

  “You’re Savannah. Is that right?” Brooklyn said.

  Savannah was silent.

  “My name is Brooklyn Harper. I need you to answer every single question I ask you. Do you understand?”

  Silence. Savannah’s jaw slid back and forth. Utter silence.

  Brooklyn gave her one last chance. She scooted forward only to have Savannah recoil further into the corner.

  “I watched my best friend die,” Brooklyn whispered. The words tasted stale and coppery; they branded her tongue like lit matches. “I watched a Surro rip her heart out. If you think I won’t do the same to you, then you’ve underestimated my training.”

  “You can’t do shit to me,” Savannah hissed. Black blood spewed from between her lips when she coughed. “Killing me would be a favor.”

  Brooklyn snatched Savannah’s left hand and grasped the length of her index finger, holding it tight. “Tell me about ECHO.”

  Savannah squirmed but didn’t speak.

  Brooklyn snapped Savannah’s finger to the side until the bone splintered and broke. Savannah shrieked, gasping as Brooklyn clutched the now swollen digit.

  “You have nine more,” Brooklyn said as Savannah choked back a sob. “And when I’m bored with your hands, I will move on to your toes. Do you understand?”

  There was nowhere for Savannah to escape, but she still tried to kick and crawl away. Brooklyn reached up and grasped her cheeks with one hand, squeezing hard until her mouth went slack and trembled.

  “You have fifteen seconds to start giving me answers, or I move on to this one,” Brooklyn pinched the knuckle of Savannah’s middle finger.

  Porter rushed forward, but Dawson held him back with an outstretched ar
m.

  “Let her do this,” Dawson whispered.

  Savannah whimpered and tore her face free from Brooklyn’s grasp. “Porter knows everything about ECHO! It’s exactly what it was in the beginning when Juneau started the project. The only problem was the backlash from certain…compassionate partners.” Her voice was slimy and sarcastic.

  “These are people we’re talking about, Savannah!” Porter shouted.

  Brooklyn continued to bend her finger. “Keep talking.”

  “People? You think that these things are people? They’re weapons, Porter!” she yelled, leaning forward toward him. Brooklyn grabbed her face again and tugged Savannah’s head toward her.

  “You talk to me,” Brooklyn seethed. “What is the ECHO campaign?”

  The whites of Savannah’s eyes were dull and yellow. The skin around them crinkled when Savannah smirked. “Some of the big brains on the board didn’t agree with Juneau’s vision. He knew that when the Omens developed, when you developed, that there was no hope for any breeding to take place.”

  “I’m not a blue-ribbon poodle.” Brooklyn snapped Savannah’s finger to the side.

  “All I’m saying is that you can’t have children!” She squealed.

  Brooklyn wanted to kill her right then and there, but she just moved on to Savannah’s ring finger and bent it backward. “Go on.”

  “And if you can’t have children, then you can’t pass on the gene, which was a good thing, but at the same time, it opened up the discussion of how exactly your organs worked. How they would heal themselves, how we could preserve your shelf life after you’d been deployed. We don’t have the luxury of transplants from typical donors when it comes to the Omens.”

  “What are you trying to say? Is there a fridge in your lab somewhere with a duplicate set of my kidneys?” Brooklyn asked.

  Savannah almost laughed, but she ended up choking on a mouth full of blood. “A fridge? No, we have different sectors for each of you. And we have over one hundred clones of every single Omen that was harvested two years ago.”

  Brooklyn dropped Savannah’s hands and took a step back.

  “An echo,” Savannah sang the word. “The replica of something rippling again and again through time and space.”

  “You have clones of us?” Brooklyn heaved in a deep breath.

  “Juneau decided to go against the board and continue with the project. He received funding from the NSA, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” Savannah bragged.

  Porter looked sick. He stared down between his feet, shoulders hunched up around his neck. Brooklyn didn’t know how to swallow the information. The idea of clones made her skin crawl. She turned back toward Savannah, breathing even, and regained some composure. “Where are they?”

  “The clones? None of us are given that information.”

  “Are they exactly like us?”

  “No,” Savannah said and shrugged. Tears streamed down her cheeks, clouded black, and her nose ran. “You’re the original hosts. No matter how much we tampered with the microbes, we couldn’t get them to do what they’ve done with you. We can program them with basic tasks like we have with the Surros, but all in all, they’re just donors that we keep in a state of neurological sedation. I know some of them have been given the extended dose of the Jakob’s disease to trigger the bleeding, which allowed for more access to disposable Surro activity, but other than that, they’re only used in an emergency.”

  “The bleeding? So…you have a name for what’s happening to you right now? Explain it to me.”

  Savannah stayed quiet until Brooklyn reached for her mangled fingers.

  “Okay!” she yelled, clutching her bound hands against her chest. “The Jakob’s disease attacks the brain. It causes hallucinations, memory loss, and psychotic attacks. When we tried to reprogram the genome, we noticed that the microbes weren’t reacting properly in most of the trials. That was before my time, though. Juneau didn’t bring me on until after I graduated medical school four years ago. He recruited me based on good word from a professor of mine.” Savannah was rambling. The psychosis was clearly taking hold, prevalent in her chattering teeth and quick, darting voice. “We don’t really have an answer for why the blood turns black, but it has something to do with the way the microbes circulate through the bloodstream. Once the disease itself is compromised and reverts back to its primal instinct, we no longer have control of what happens to the mind.”

  “So, the Surros really are just sick people?” Brooklyn asked. She started to shake. “You infected these people with two viruses, and when one didn’t work like you wanted it to, you just…rolled with it?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Savannah said. “When the Jakob’s disease went against our programming, it got stronger, and the symptoms developed more quickly. The Surrogates are like you, strong and adaptable, but they lack depth.”

  “It is astonishing how proud you are of something so cruel.”

  Savannah’s jaw slid from side to side. “Natural selection doesn’t always do its job, honey. We gave things a kick-start when we created you.”

  Brooklyn spun around and walked over to Porter. He looked like a frightened dog, cowering before the one who’d kicked him. He averted his eyes. She reached around and pulled the gun from the back of his pants.

  “Brooklyn! Wait, hold on!” He tried to snatch the gun away from her, but she was already in front of Savannah again. Dawson grabbed Porter, pulling him away for his own safety. The boys waited, listening as Brooklyn pressed the barrel of the gun against Savannah’s forehead.

  Savannah closed her eyes. “Go ahead. It won’t change anything.”

  Brooklyn took a moment and swallowed down the urge to pull the trigger. “How does it feel to know your life is in the hands of one of your little experiments?”

  “It feels like accomplishment,” Savannah said confidently.

  Brooklyn bit down on her lip. “And what’s it like to forget the color your mother was wearing on the day of your high school graduation? Or the song your father used to sing to you before you went to sleep?”

  Savannah’s eyes, muddled with black blood and bulging from her skull began to soften.

  “I’m sure it’s already started, the memory loss, the psychosis. I bet you can’t even remember the last thing you had to eat, can you? Or the last time you blew out candles on your birthday? The last time someone kissed you?”

  The mole chewed on her lip, bare feet shuffling against the concrete, toes curling until they popped.

  “When the voices start eating away at everything you want to remember, I hope you think of me,” Brooklyn said. “And when the last shred of sanity you have disappears, I hope all you do is wish I was here with this gun. I want you to pray for me to come back and end it for you. But I won’t. Do you know where I’ll be, Savannah Kingston?”

  Tears dripped down Savannah’s cheeks, and she clutched her tied hands deeper into her chest.

  Brooklyn tilted her head to the side, twisting the gun brutally against Savannah’s flesh.

  “I’ll be destroying everything you’ve worked for, and I’ll be killing all your colleagues,” Brooklyn said as she pushed the gun hard against Savannah’s head.

  Brooklyn stood and tossed the gun back to Porter, who fumbled to catch it. Dawson and Porter stared at her, shocked by the display. She walked back toward the larger part of the room, where everyone else had been listening.

  The sound of Savannah begging for death bounced off the walls of the warehouse. Brooklyn didn’t feel an ounce of pity.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A few hours passed by, and Brooklyn decided to keep to herself for most of it. She sat against the wall beside Julian and Rayce, who continued to discuss what had gone on while they were apart. Amber brought her a washcloth and some water so that she could wipe off some of the blood from the hotel room and offered up a package of dry noodles to eat.

  Everyone kept their distance, and Brooklyn appreciated that
. She picked noodles out of the plastic wrapping and put together plans in her head. Plan A. Plan B. Plan C. They needed something to hold on to. Even if her plans always seemed to fall apart, at least they would have a direction to go in.

  Charlie was the one who approached her first. She sat down with her legs crossed in front of Brooklyn and took a sip off a canteen filled with water.

  “Clones, huh?” Charlie asked.

  Brooklyn nodded. “I guess so.”

  “You think they know how to talk and all that?”

  “I don’t really want to think about whether or not they’re cognitive. Savannah said they weren’t, but I don’t think anyone knows the truth.”

  “You got any ideas on how we can deal with this?” Charlie pressed her thumb against the base of her jaw and cracked her neck.

  “I have to talk with everyone before we can move forward with anything, but yes. I think I have an idea.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I’m in,” Charlie said through a sigh.

  Brooklyn raised an eyebrow. “And what if it puts your life in danger?”

  Charlie shrugged, playing with the end of one of her locks. “I’m from Detroit. Danger’s not a foreign concept.”

  Dawson and Porter stayed behind the wall of boxes with Savannah. Brooklyn wanted to intrude on their conversation a number of times, but it would have only caused problems. She kept her mind wrapped around the details Savannah had given her and tried to think of some way to escape the inevitable. They’d been on the run for four days, and now that they were in Seattle, it seemed like everything was coming to an undeniable halt.

  Juneau was going to find them. Realistically, he probably already knew where they were.

  Brooklyn chewed anxiously on her fingernails.

  She perked up when Dawson and Porter walked around the boxes, into the room. They were still talking quietly to one another, and despite her anger Brooklyn couldn’t help but smile when she watched Dawson pull Porter into a tight hug.

  Porter made his way over to Brooklyn and took a seat next to her. Charlie glanced between the two of them and then shuffled over toward Amber, who was napping like a cat against Rayce’s legs.