Yeah, reassignment in their case meant death. I wondered if Lucas had known about the researchers being assassinated. The next words hit me hard. “As for your parents, I can only tell you how sorry I am for what we did to them.”
“Bull,” Joe muttered, clenching his fists. “This is what happened, and you say you didn’t know? I’m calling total bull on that.”
My heart skipped a few beats. Those nameless, faceless government employees, those army generals and senators and people in congress, they were all equally guilty. They’d ruined everything, all in the name of better killing through science. I wondered if they’d had anything to do with my father dying when he was younger or Joe’s mother dying during his birth. They couldn’t have had anything to do with that.
Or did they?
The questions would have to wait, and I swiveled my head to watch the video. Lucas’ voice rang out clearly. “If you’ve chosen to view this, you probably won’t believe a word I’m saying. I don’t blame you.
“We’ll never be friends, but all the same, I can’t allow anyone to know the secrets I carry about you. The committee within the Department of Defense has been officially disbanded, as your group will be.
“However, there are those who cannot and will not give up their ideas. While they have left you alone to watch you grow into adults, they have never stopped watching you and probably always will.”
So if they’d been watching us, why hadn’t they tried to eliminate us before? Lucas’ next words underscored everything. “I have heard about the other scientists, the researchers. However, I have secrets as well. I have hidden them. My superiors know what I’m capable of, and therefore they are afraid I’ll go to the authorities.
“So I made them a deal. You would be left alone, and I would keep silent. I know too much. They’ll probably try to kill me, but I’ll fix things so that they cannot get to you. I’m ensuring your future.”
It didn’t really make sense. How could he ensure anything? It was blackmail, yes, but the government was so big, so powerful, could one man actually stop them?
“In order to leave you alone, this is my way of giving you your privacy. This is a drug our scientists have developed. It’s experimental like so many of our drugs are, but the science boys assure me that it will wipe my memory clean.
“It’ll also destroy my mind, but if it protects all of you, then that’s an equitable trade-off. Doctor O’Hara has already done the same thing. She was a most brilliant scientist, and if anyone could have found a way to help you out, she would have.”
His eyes betrayed a shadow of doubt. He was about to do something no sane person would ever do—deliberately enter the realm of oblivion. It had to be the craziest and most courageous thing I’d ever seen, but it was hard to watch. Still, like watching a car or train crash in slow-motion, I couldn’t look away.
“So here I am, I’m about to wipe my memory clean. I’m sorry. The scientists who created you, those higher up, maybe they knew what would happen, and maybe they didn’t. But you have to believe me when I say I didn’t know. Even so, this is my way of taking responsibility.”
The video cut out at that point and Joe shut down the computer. No one said a word, but we were all thinking the same thing. We’d seen perhaps the ultimate act of atonement. Lucas had destroyed everything that made him a person, a part of society. Soon, he wouldn’t be a part of anything. “This doesn’t make sense,” Neil said.
Joe, though, swiveled his head around, mouth tight and face grim. “Yeah, it makes perfect sense. He knew the government people would try to lock us up.”
“Or try to kill us,” I said. “The Department of Defense is behind this. He said—”
“He said nothing. My father tried contacting the government. They didn’t tell him anything. Why should they?”
We started arguing then, him and me, but he was right, and I knew it.
Callie interrupted with, “He mentioned hiding secrets. What kind of secrets?”
I answered, “Probably who’s on the committee. There must have been a lot of people. The only problem is, we don’t know where he hid the secrets. They could be on a disc. They could be anywhere.”
Thinking about it further, Lucas had probably known the committee would send something after us. Those creatures, maybe they’d been growing all this time. Or maybe someone on that committee had engineered them, or maybe someone else did. I didn’t know how or where, but it didn’t matter now. “He did it to protect us,” I said.
“Protect us... how?” Neil asked.
Manner now calm, Joe supplied the answer. “He probably figured if he died, someone, maybe a reporter, would find out his secrets about who was doing this and the government guys would back off.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “Mitch, the monsters that jumped you, did they seem to have a plan?”
“If you count them showing up out of nowhere and disappearing into that same place a plan, well, yeah.”
Still, one thing seemed wrong. The creatures had known my name, but the second one, the flame-thrower, had ignored Callie. Also, something else bothered me. “Why didn’t they attack our houses?”
“What?” This came from Neil.
For his benefit, I repeated the question. “Why didn’t they attack us where we live? They knew my name and what I could do. I’m guessing they know about all of us. But the monsters only went after me.”
“Maybe those committee guys want us to sweat,” Neil said, repeatedly slamming one fist against his open palm. It sounded like a mini-cascade of rocks each time he did it. “They want us to know.”
His theory sounded good, but all the same, something was missing. I couldn’t think of what it was, though.
“Maybe the creatures don’t know after all,” Joe mused while unplugging the computer and modem. “Anyway, I’ll try to get this thing going back at my place. See you there.”
He spun off for the exit. Just one thing left to do. Neil and I hunted around and found the little boom box. It was buried under a number of fallen timbers but seemed undamaged. “You got this, right?” Neil asked and then let out another sneeze.
I studied the buttons in front of me, let my wings out, and got ready to grab Callie. “Yeah, I got this. See you back at the house. Be careful.”
Callie stuck with me, and we waited to give Neil time to get clear. “How long is the timer for?” she asked. Although she trembled with fear, she didn’t break.
“Two minutes, so get ready.”
One last look around, and then I hit the buttons in sequence. Immediately, the cables lining the walls and the ceiling began to spark, and a distant rumbling began. It intensified, and then the entire underground cavern began to shake. Dust and rocks began to rain down upon us. “That’s our cue,” I said.
Before leaving, I took a couple of the armored suits, just in case. Callie leaped into my arms, and I flew as fast as possible for the exit, and we made it out with seconds to spare.
As we soared up into the stillness of the blue sky, the top cover of earth caved in, and then nothing but silence ruled. That part of my life was now over, but I still had some things to find out.
Chapter Twelve: More clues
Back at my house, Joe had already set up the computer. An image flickered on the screen. “I’ll keep searching,” he said while tapping the keyboard. “This thing is damaged beyond belief, but I installed a debugging program. There might be something, that is, if there’s no virus attached.”
Callie headed off for the hallway. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“Home,” she answered over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mitch, but that whole thing really messed me up mentally... and I think I might change again.”
I caught her by the arm. “Stay—please. If you change, you do.”
A wan smile greeted me. “Let me call my mother to check in.”
“Yeah, go for it.”
She made the call, and then I showed her to the guest ro
om where she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. After I’d stowed the armored suits away in an empty closet, I went back to my room. Neil was sitting on the floor, and it groaned under his weight. “You and Callie, huh,” he finally said. “You find it hard figuring out which is which?”
Oh hell, I really didn’t have time for that. Neil had never understood and never would. Still, an edge appeared in my voice, and it made me think a transformation on my part wasn’t far behind.
“Neil, if you’re pissed that you’re not getting any action, don’t blame me. Callie and I have been together from day one, in case you hadn’t noticed. I like her. She likes me. You got that? So quit your whining.”
Neil blinked. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have mouthed off to him or anyone else, but people constantly dissing my girlfriend pissed me off. That’s what I thought of her and too bad if no one else comprehended the situation.
“Fine, man, fine,” he said as he lumbered to his feet. “Does your backyard have any rocks?”
“Yeah, it does. Help yourself.”
He nodded at me and paused at the doorway. “Sorry about what I said. Callie’s okay.”
His footsteps thudded down the stairs. I felt bad for speaking so harshly, so a little rapprochement was in the cards. We needed Neil on the team. Separated, we were vulnerable, but united, while we weren’t exactly invincible, we still carried more firepower than anyone else, except perhaps the monster or monsters chasing us.
And that raised more than a few questions. The questions I’d thought of in our now-destroyed underground lair returned. Along with those questions came another. Would the monsters risk jumping us in broad daylight? To regular people, maybe, but to super-enhanced people, that was a different matter.
Lost in thought, Joe’s voice jarred me into reality. “Mitch, I found something.”
Turning around, his face wore an urgent look. “What is it?”
He pointed at the screen. I saw a bunch of files with our names on them on the screen. “What are these?”
“They’re medical files. This is what they did to us.”
Checking the numbers required something more than I possessed. It required someone with medical knowledge. The top half of the document had layers of notes on DNA, mutation, enhancements, and nothing else. Joe’s voice came out hushed as he pointed to a line. “Look at the bottom.”
Reading it aloud, it sent a chill through me. I already knew the answer, but all the same, it was still shocking.
Program’s effects are irreversible. DNA mutation is expected to set in during the mid-teen years. Enhancements will shortly result from Operation Born Twice.
That was it, but it meant more than just getting powers. Raney had told us that Doctor O’Hara hadn’t been trying to find a cure. She’d merely been charting our progress. Anger first ruled, and then despair set in. We were all stuck this way.
With a grunt of disgust, Joe smacked his thigh and got up to stare out the window. “We never had a chance.”
For him to admit what he’d just admitted, it was a revelation. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you liked your powers.”
He let out a rueful chuckle. “I like moving fast, yeah, but I never hung with the cool kids. I only hung out with you. I’m a nerd who likes books more than people. I’m just as screwed as you are.”
And now the truth had finally come out. However, when it came to being screwed up, he really didn’t fall into the same category as the three of us. He could pass if he wanted to. The three of us couldn’t.
A sharp snap echoed in the air, and it was Joe, snapping his fingers to get my attention. I’d really have to stop spacing out so much. “So, what are we going to do?” he was asking.
Good question. I read on further.
Operation Born Twice is expected to produce the soldier of the future, soldiers who are unstoppable, possess stealth, flight capabilities, speed, even other abilities such as X-ray vision, extreme body heat or cold reproduction, and more.
Said soldiers will ensure the safety of not only the citizenry within the United States of America but also for our allies abroad.
Joe shifted from snapping his fingers to drumming them on the table in a staccato fashion. “So we’re dealing with some kind of shadow committee inside the government. It doesn’t take a whole lot of brainpower to figure it out.” His expression shifted to a glum one. “But unless we go to the Pentagon or someone high up who’ll believe us, we have no case.”
“What about sending this to the press?”
“What?”
Although we didn’t need any more negative publicity than we’d already gotten, maybe it would be a good thing. “Joe, it might get the media involved and on our side. They could spread the news, and—”
“And they’d do what,” he interrupted and smacked the table, making the computer dance. “Face it. We’re the outcasts around here. We go to the media with this, and the government will deny it ever happened.”
“We have powers. Isn’t that enough evidence?”
Joe snorted his disdain at my question. “Mitch, fact one—this is the government. They can say we’re freaks and the public will believe them. They already believe it.
“Fact two—we have no witnesses. Lucas was our only go-to guy, and his mind is gone. What’re we going to do, put him on the stand and ask him questions about what he used to do? Man, he’s probably forgotten how to tie his shoelaces. We got a ghost in the machine. That’s all.”
Frustration set in and made my pulse race. Breathe deeply, focus, and breathe in and out. While meditating, I felt my pulse slow and thought about what Joe had said. It made sense, but the government covering things up, it all led back to the same source—the DOD-slash-committee. Suddenly, the lightbulb in my head went off, and the meaning of everything became clear.
“No traces. Whoever’s still running the experiments, they want no traces. That’s why they created those monsters. They’d go and get their targets, escape and then dissolve. No one would be able to get any details. And that fake FBI agent, Reilly, he took any evidence he had with him.”
Joe’s eyes widened, and a faint smile appeared. “You just stated the obvious. Congratulations. Now explain why the monster didn’t go after Callie.”
Snark ruled in his voice, but I let it pass. Now, my moment of triumph had arrived, late though it was. “I’m guessing it didn’t know about Callie changing over. Maybe it’s got some of my hormones hardwired into it. Maybe it sniffed out my DNA, but Callie’s a girl. Her DNA is different. Her hormones are different. That’s why it ignored her.”
He clapped his hands. If sarcasm could be shown through the sound of two palms meeting, then Joe had it nailed down. Still, his face was wreathed in a smile, a sharp contrast to his earlier outburst. “Terrific theory—lots of maybes. Your explanation was good enough to get you into med school.”
“I have my moments,” I answered, secretly pleased.
He turned back to the computer. “I’m going to take this home with me. I want to see if Lucas hid anything else.”
“All right, do it.”
Leaving my room to go downstairs, on the way I passed by the guest room where Callie was still lying quietly, her eyes shut. Her face seemed to shift for a fraction of a second back to male, and then her feminine features shone through. Changes... we all had to go through them, some of us more than others. Later, we’d talk later. I had to talk to Neil first.
He was sitting in the garden, picking out various stones and chewing on them, a look of total bliss on his face. They must have been like chocolate to him. He picked his head up when he heard me coming. “You got nice pickings here,” he said between bites. “Mostly quartz, but some shale and I found a few slate pieces. They go down real easy. Did Joe find anything?”
Quickly, I explained what we’d found and what we figured might be the reason for things being this way. As I did so, Neil’s expression went from bliss to blank. He mer
ely nodded at the appropriate pauses in the narrative, chewed his rocks, and maintained a stoic manner.
After I’d finished, he crunched the last of the stones and then lumbered to his feet. “Well, figures Lucas would screw us over. Or, maybe it was the doctor or those committee guys. It doesn’t really matter.” He swept his hands down his body. “I’m never going to be normal, so I might as well get used to it.”
“Are you in with us?”
When he cracked his knuckles, it sounded like a gunshot. “Yeah, guess I am. I got nowhere else to go, anyway. My aunt’s gone, and my neighbors don’t want a rock dude living around their parts. The cops came around after the funeral to say it was cool, but I knew it wasn’t. That stuff you saw in my truck? That’s all I got.”
There’d been nothing in there, which had been his point all along. He had nowhere else to go, and a stab of pity went through me. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick around,” he added in a hopeful tone.
More than fine by me. “It’s cool if you stay.” I turned to leave but spun around when he called my name. “What is it?”
He frowned and tossed away his handful of pebbles. “Sorry for saying what I said about Callie. It was wrong, man. You have to get the chance to be happy, same as the rest of us. I didn’t get my shot, and that’s how it works.”
He didn’t sound as if he was fishing for pity. “Thanks, Neil. You can always stay with us. We’ll fix up a room downstairs.”
A throaty chuckle came my way. “I got my room right here.” He indicated the surroundings with a massive arm. “This is my garden bed. If I can’t stay here, then I can always sack out in the forest. I don’t get hot or cold, I sleep sound at night, and I don’t snore. It’s all good.”
Well, he was set. Going inside, Callie met me at the bottom of the stairs, cellphone in hand. She yawned, and while stretching out, said, “I called my mother a few seconds ago. She’s fine. Then I heard you and Neil talking. You two are okay? I mean, with me?”
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