by James Morcan
As he climbed into bed, Nine wondered why Kentbridge had looked directly at him before departing.
If you want to tell me something, just say it, Tommy.
He hated how Kentbridge always kept his cards close to his chest.
In the bed next to Nine, Number Ten grinned at him. Also a Caucasian boy and the orphanage’s resident joker, Ten mimicked Kentbridge in a low, authoritative whisper so quiet only Nine could hear. “We have a big day tomorrow, people.” Ten winked at Nine mischievously. “Tomorrow we’re off to Montana!”
Nine couldn’t help but laugh. He stopped when he saw Nurse Hilda observing him critically.
Doctor Pedemont began handing out the phials from his tray. Each contained the mysterious substance Kentbridge had referred to as White Gold Powder.
Seventeen was the first recipient. Sitting upright in bed, she glared at Nine whose bed was directly in front of hers. She was clearly still smarting from losing to him in the gym earlier. Her cold, blue eyes reflected the resentment she felt.
Nine noted Seventeen didn’t even blink as she poured the White Gold Powder under her tongue. As was custom, Seventeen let the salty substance dissolve under her tongue so that the product entered her bloodstream sublingually. The other orphans took the contents of their phials in the same manner as the doctor continued his rounds. The nurse followed him, handing out a set of headphones to each orphan.
Nine was the last to receive his phial. He took the contents in the same fashion as the others, then studied Nurse Hilda as she handed out the last of the headphones to Ten and himself. As always, her severe, angular face was devoid of emotion. Donning his set of headphones, Nine thought just how much the middle-aged nurse resembled a man.
And an ugly man at that.
Aware she was being observed, Nurse Hilda wheeled her trolley from the room. Doctor Pedemont followed, pausing only to switch off the lights as he left.
While any outside observer would have considered the last few minutes highly unusual, it was totally normal for the residents of the Pedemont Orphanage. It was a routine the orphans and their minders had repeated daily, without fail and without question, for the past ten years.
As the orphans drifted off to sleep, foreign languages played through their headphones. It was the start of another night of hypnopædia, or sleep learning, for them.
Nine thought of Helen as he drifted off. Even the languages that echoed in his brain couldn’t prevent the image of her beautiful face filling his mind’s eye.
4
A shot rang out, shattering the silence of Montana’s Custer National Park. Its echo reverberated off the surrounding, snow-capped mountains, growing fainter as the seconds passed.
Special Agent Kenbridge lowered his rifle and peered through the mist. His victim lay, unseen, in the long grass of a forest clearing one hundred yards upwind. Directly behind Kentbridge, lying prone on the damp ground like him, the twenty three orphans stared as one at the distant clearing.
The agent stood up, shouldered his rifle, and motioned to his young charges to follow him. He led them at a fast jog toward the clearing. As always, Nine and Seventeen followed close behind their master, vying to be first on the scene.
As they neared the clearing, the results of Kentbridge’s handiwork became clear: a wounded deer lay on her side, trembling. White foam covered her nose and mouth, turning pink then red as her internal organs reacted to the trauma caused by the bullet that had pierced her lungs. The dying animal could only watch as the children approached her.
Kentbridge hung back. He had planned this, altering his aim infinitesimally before squeezing the trigger so as not to kill the deer immediately. Now he wanted the orphans to observe the death of a living creature up close and personal.
Nine was closest to the deer. Her big brown eyes, wild and tortured, focused on him and held his gaze. Nine physically recoiled. He looked around, searching for Kentbridge and wanting him to end the animal’s misery. The agent ignored him.
Alongside Nine, Seventeen was bursting with excitement. She’d never seen anything bigger than a frog die a slow death before, and she found she was enjoying the experience. Nine thought he heard her snigger, but couldn’t be sure.
“Alright, people,” Kentbridge announced as he pushed through the orphans’ ranks, “you have just witnessed the result of a poor shot.” Standing between them and the deer, he added, “That was what we call a non-kill shot.” He looked at Number Five. “In the field, there’s only one thing worse than a non-kill shot, isn’t that right Five?”
“Yes sir.”
Looking at Five’s twin sister, Kentbridge asked, “And what is worse than a non-kill shot, Six?”
“A complete miss, sir,” Six said without hesitation.
Kentbridge turned to Number One. “What’s wrong with a non-kill shot, Numero Uno?” Glancing at the deer, he quickly added, “It’s clearly dying, so what’s the problem?”
The Native American boy said, “A non-kill shot allows for the possibility of escape.”
“Exactly,” Kentbridge replied. He glanced at the deer, which was now gurgling and pawing at the air with her front leg. “Worse still, if it was your enemy, he or she could still shoot back.” Looking at Nine, he asked, “So what’s the moral of this little tale of woe, Nine?”
“Always make sure of your kill-shot, sir.” Nine steeled himself for what he instinctively knew was coming.
“Always make sure of your kill shot.” Kentbridge thrust his rifle into the boy’s hands then nodded toward the trembling animal.
Nine understood what Kentbridge wanted him to do. He hated him at that moment.
Watching Nine prepare to carry out Kentbridge’s order, the other orphans felt jealous he’d been selected to do the deed. None more so than Seventeen. She’d long resented playing second fiddle to Nine and never being able to beat him at anything.
Cradling Kentbridge’s powerful, semi-automatic rifle, Nine looked down at the deer. His startling green eyes looked as desperate as those of the animal he was about to kill. None of the other orphans noticed this, but Kentbridge did.
Nine raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim through the rifle’s scope. He suddenly hesitated. One of the deer’s magnified eyes stared back at him, almost accusingly, filling his vision. He couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Finish the mission, Nine,” Kentbridge commanded.
Nine looked up at his master then returned his gaze to the deer which was now twitching violently.
“That’s an order!” Kentbridge said, raising his voice.
Nine felt close to tears. He sensed Seventeen move closer to him and knew she was willing him to fail. His competitive instincts kicked in. He tried to force his trigger finger to finish the job. The deer’s magnified eye seemed to be looking right into his mind, imploring and desperate. Unable to do the deed, he lowered the rifle and looked up.
Kentbridge breathed a sigh of relief. This was the outcome he’d hoped for. Shaking his head in mock disappointment, he snatched the rifle from Nine and handed it to Seventeen. “Complete the mission, Seventeen.”
The blonde-haired girl needed no encouragement. This was the opportunity Seventeen had been waiting for all her life. She expertly raised the rifle and prepared to finish what Nine had failed to do.
Unable to watch, Nine walked away.
Kentbridge couldn’t help but notice the boy had the same haunted look the deer had at that very moment. His failure came as no real surprise. The agent had observed the affection Nine had shown the orphanage’s pet dog, Cavell. It was obvious the boy was a real animal lover and Kentbridge had been pretty sure Nine wouldn’t be able to kill a deer. Not close up anyway. That was why he’d brought all the orphans to the national park: to see Nine fail at something.
As Nine walked off into the forest, a single shot rang out, its echo rebounding off the surrounding mountains just as Kentbridge’s shot had minutes earlier. Nine jumped involuntarily. The sound reverberated in his head,
like a jackhammer inside his brain. Without looking back, he walked deeper into the forest. He began to cry as he internalized the deer’s pain.
Nine touched the ruby that hung from his necklace. As always, for no apparent reason, its touch brought him comfort.
#
In the forest clearing, Seventeen looked up proudly as Kentbridge removed the rifle from her hands. At her feet, the deer’s head had been virtually blown off as a result of having been shot at near pointblank range.
The other orphans looked at Kentbridge expectantly. They knew he’d have something profound to say, as he usually did on meaningful occasions like this. He did have something to say, but he intended to wait until Nine returned before saying it. His pre-rehearsed speech was as much for Nine’s ears as for the others.
Moments later, a disconsolate Nine emerged from the trees and rejoined his fellow orphans.
Kentbridge looked directly at the ninth-born orphan. “Nine lacks Seventeen’s killer instinct,” he said by way of an opening volley.
On hearing this, Seventeen felt ten foot tall and couldn’t hide a smile. Nine stared at his boots, humiliated.
Unlike Seventeen, Kentbridge wasn’t enjoying making an example of Nine one little bit, but he knew he had to make it clear to the orphans that Nine had failed in his eyes. And failed miserably. That’s what Naylor had demanded. Kentbridge concluded, “Nine will need to develop a killer instinct if he’s ever to become a working operative.”
With that, the agent set off along a forest track. The orphans followed with Nine trailing behind, lost in his own private hell.
5
Who are you?
Nine hardly recognized his own face. Sitting on a rock on the edge of Little Calumet River, he looked down at his reflection in the water and studied himself as if staring at a stranger. Admittedly, the Little Calumet wasn’t the purest of waterways in the Chicago district, conveniently serving as an unofficial receptacle for the population’s garbage and sewerage, but even allowing for the water’s murky state, Nine’s mirror image was eerily unfamiliar to him.
Maybe it was because he had grown so much of late. Still only twelve, his face now had the awkward appearance of an individual stuck somewhere between childhood and adulthood, between innocence and worldliness. His features remained boyish, yet his striking green eyes were all knowing and seemed to belong in an older face.
Nine idly tugged at a strand of his hair, which he now wore quite long. He had recently adopted River Phoenix’s hairstyle, having seen a photo of the young film star in a magazine. It made him feel slightly rebellious, especially as Kentbridge and his fellow male orphans all had short, cropped hairstyles. Even the female orphans wore their hair fairly short.
Nine looked up as a siren sounded out from distant factories across the river. Smoke from their chimneys drifted up into the blue sky – too far away to pollute the air on Nine’s side of the river on this on this crisp, winter’s morning.
The orphan, who wore a black long-coat, looked skyward and breathed in a lungful of air. He felt a sense of freedom. A fish jumped in mid-stream, too fleetingly for Nine to identify it. He guessed it was a carp, but couldn’t be sure.
Occasionally, on designated days like this, the Pedemont orphans were given permission to roam around Riverdale. This symbolic gesture of freedom was only granted because each orphan had a microchip embedded beneath the skin of their forearm, enabling Omega to track their exact whereabouts no matter the time or place – underground, underwater, inside, outside, overseas, anywhere.
Omega had decided years earlier it couldn’t risk its orphans going AWOL, be it by accident or design. The financial investment in each orphan had run to millions of dollars by the time they reached five years of age, and that investment had to be protected.
Nine studied his forearm. He wished he had X-ray vision so he could see the microchip he knew was there. He knew because Kentbridge had told him and his fellow orphans as soon as they were old enough to understand. The other orphans had accepted this as normal. Not Nine, though. He’d long resented it, and that resentment was rapidly turning to anger.
Not wanting anything to spoil this rare free day, Nine returned his gaze to the river. He hoped to spot another fish, but all he saw was his own reflection. His unsmiling face stared back at him, almost accusingly. Again, Nine’s thoughts returned to his life as an orphan, a product of Omega. You’ll soon be a man. He shook his head critically at his reflection. Yet you haven’t even had a childhood.
It was then he thought of Helen, the beautiful young neighbor he spied on each day. Nine sensed that only with her could he ever become a man. Remembering something, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. He had written it for Helen earlier that morning.
Speed-reading the letter’s contents, a split second was all it took for his mind to process the words. Besides, he already knew the words by heart. The letter read:
Dear Helen
You do not know me, but I am in love with you. I watch you from afar and think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.
One day, when the time is right, I will make myself known to you. I shall romance you, and mark my words, I will win your heart.
Until then, for reasons I cannot explain, I must remain in the shadows.
Your Secret Admirer
For the umpteenth time, Nine pondered the idea of getting the letter to Helen. The best he could come up with was wrapping it around a stone and throwing it through her window.
What a dreamer you are! None of his romantic fantasies were possible and he knew it. How ridiculous to even consider that.
He was a manufactured orphan destined to become a lethal weapon. Love, or even the semblance of a normal existence, would never be part of his pre-ordained world. Never. Omega would see to that.
Nine screwed the letter up into a ball and threw it as far as he could into the river. He watched forlornly as the current carried it away.
6
The first orphan to smell the gas was Number Three, a half Arabic, half black boy who, for the moment, was alone in one corner of the windowless storeroom. “I think they’re trying to gas us,” he announced.
The other orphans picked up fear in Three’s voice and quickly walked over to join him. His voice reflected the fear they all felt – a valid emotion given there was no obvious escape route and they knew their enemies wanted them dead.
Sniffing the air to reconfirm his suspicion, Three was now sure. “Definitely gas.”
His young companions didn’t dispute his assertion. They, too, could smell the pungent odor they knew could only be gas. “Bastards!” someone cursed.
Nine immediately identified the type of gas. “Hydrogen sulfide,” he said with conviction. His certainty was based on his recollection of experiments with various gases conducted during their studies at the Pedemont Orphanage. The rotten eggs smell of the powerful, deadly gas was unmistakable. Though none of the orphans were experts on hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, they knew enough about it to realize they had a few minutes at most to escape. Any longer than that and they’d be asphyxiated.
Trapped on the top floor of a high rise building in downtown Chicago, Nine, Three, Seventeen and a handful of other handpicked orphans were on a mission Kentbridge had set them. The building was the headquarters of a shadowy organization known as the Nexus Foundation. Being elitist and hell bent on creating their own version of a New World Order, it was similar to the Omega Agency, only more powerful.
The orphans’ mission was to recover a vital Omega document Nexus had stolen. They’d found the document – in a safe on the top floor – but their presence had been detected before they could leave the building. Nexus assassins had converged on the storeroom. Quick thinking by the orphans, barricading themselves inside, had kept their enemies at bay.
Now, it appeared, their makeshift panic room would end up serving as their burial chamber. Several of the children appeared close to panic. Only their exhaustive training enabl
ed them to keep it together, for the moment at least.
The sounds of running feet and muffled voices from the other side of the barricaded door confirmed a hot reception awaited them if they dared try to escape.
Number Eight, an Asian girl who happened to be standing closest to the door, began coughing violently. Realizing the gas was probably streaming through the gap beneath the door, Fourteen, a resourceful boy with Aryan features, rolled up a rug and used it to seal off the gap.
“Stop,” Seventeen said. Fourteen and the others looked at Seventeen. She pointed to air vents in the ceiling. Near the vents, hanging decorations left over from some office party were fluttering in a slight breeze. “The gas is coming in from there, too.”
“We’re going to die!” Eight moaned.
“No we’re not!” Nine snapped. The others turned to him, as if looking for direction. A plan was already forming in his mind. Tearing off his shirt, he wrapped it around his face, covering his nose and mouth. The others followed suit, using any material they could lay their hands on to cover their faces and, hopefully, buy themselves time.
“What now?” Seventeen asked, her voice muffled by the torn blouse now wrapped around her face.
Before Nine could voice his thoughts, Number Thirteen, a muscular Polynesian boy, stepped forward, brandishing a sledgehammer he’d found in the storeroom. “We can fight our way outta here.”
“Damn right we can,” One, the Native American boy, said, crowbar in hand.
The others agreed, brandishing hammers and other make-do weapons they’d found.
Nine was growing tired of always being the odd orphan out. “There’s at least twenty Nexus assassins ready to kill us,” he reasoned, “and they’re outside that door.”
“Don’t listen to Nine,” Seventeen interjected. Since Nine’s failure to shoot the deer on their recent hunting trip in Montana, Seventeen felt more confident opposing her nemesis. “He’s too much of a pussy to fight.”
Nine ignored the girl. He knew he needed to lead by example if he was to persuade the others. Besides, there was no time to argue. Breathing was becoming ever more difficult, and loud thudding against the barricaded door told them their enemies were now trying to batter the door down.