Then as suddenly as it began, it was over: the machines, the old man, the hallucinations—then nothing.
For the first time in a long time, there was light—real light—and even before he opened his eyes Dylan could feel it falling across his skin, across his face, disrupting the darkness. For a moment, Dylan lay motionless, his eyes pressed shut. He was naked under crisp, freshly laundered linen sheets; the air smelled clean but not fresh and there was a lingering hint of antiseptic. Mouthing the words he counted to 10, praying that when he opened his eyes he would be back in his own bed, in his own apartment; that somehow the past month would be nothing more than a very intense dream. When he reached 10, he said the number out loud, as if he were casting a spell. He listened to his heartbeat once, twice, before opening his eyes.
The world snapped into focus. Dylan screamed and shot out of the bed, stumbling across the pale, distressed wood floor, squinting as he took in his surroundings. He was standing in the middle of a large, sparsely decorated hotel suite: sharp, minimalist décor; high contrast whites, blacks, tans, browns; clean lines; 90-degree angles; a vague but undeniable vibe of transience, of flux, of suitcases and phone chargers and promises. The bed was pressed against the far wall and there was a bathroom a few paces from the bed, a behemoth of cold black marble sinks and floors and a transparent glass shower with a stainless steel showerhead. But there was no nightstand, no dresser; just a mounted flat screen television, a thin nonfunctional desk, a single sliding-door closet, and a few open-face cubes attached to the wall: minimal storage space for the minimalist man.
The light that had woken him was filtering through the thin bamboo blinds pulled down over a massive sliding glass window, which consumed most of the wall behind the bed. The blinds looked sexy, they looked edgy; they helped advance the chic aesthetic sought by the designer. The blinds did not, however, block out the light and so Dylan was squinting as he searched for an opening in the blinds. His fingers wrapped around the smooth edge of the hyper-processed bamboo, but before he could yank open the blinds he was overcome with a strange certainty that beyond the window there would only be a massive desert. The hotel room seemed to recede, the walls and window dissolving, and for a single terrifying moment there was only a desert, one that seemed to stretch from the hotel window to infinity, miles of nothing—just rock and sand and a red sky and Dylan could even hear the crunch of earth under his boots, could feel the chill as the sun fell and the moon rose and predators began to stir. Then as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone and Dylan was pulling aside the blinds and where the desert had been, the Tiber City skyline now loomed.
“The fuck,” Dylan muttered, stepping back from the window. Tiber City was a big place, and although the landscape indicated he was in the Glimmer district, maybe somewhere near Chiba Street, there were over two dozen hotels in that part of the city and after awhile, they all looked the same. His frustration and fear were building, twisting around one another and he was reaching for the phone on the desk but it was dead. He ripped it off the desk and fired it at the window, hoping the glass would shatter and that someone in the street below would notice the shards raining down and come investigate. But the window held, and the phone crashed to the floor.
And that’s when he saw it: There was something hanging in the closet. His eyes were still adjusting to the light and as he moved toward the closet he was convinced that a body was hanging from the ceiling; in the low light anything was possible and he saw a swollen rotting corpse, festering with flies, but as he inched closer, unable to swallow, his heart heaving in his chest, he realized that was no body: just a suit dangling from a hanger. And at first Dylan was relieved, more than relieved, actually, because now he wouldn’t have to wander around naked asking for help, a scenario that seemed likely to end up with him being put in a hospital, maybe a rest home like Springwood. In fact, whoever left the suit had also been kind enough to leave matching shoes and a menagerie of toiletries—a lovely added bonus because the inside of his mouth tasted like someone had mistaken his throat for a garbage chute and every time he swallowed he tasted hospital. He had a beard and there were little gray sticky patches all over his body, as if something had been attached and removed, attached and removed, over and over. The vein inside his right arm was swollen; the skin around it littered with track marks.
The idea of showering, of cleaning himself and getting dressed, was so appealing that at first, Dylan didn’t pay much attention to the suit itself; it wasn’t until he was laying the suit out on the rumpled bed that he realized it was the same suit he had recently worn to his birthday party—his father’s old suit. After that, things went a little fuzzy: He remembered shaving, remembered the hot water blasting his skin until it radiated pink, as if enough pressure and heat could wash away the past, uncover the future; putting on his father’s old suit in front of a full-length mirror, his fingers trembling as he fumbled with buttons and zippers; hallways and elevators and smiling staff. There was an address written on a piece of paper that Dylan found in the jacket pocket, an empty book of matches. At some point he realized he was standing in the lobby of the Hotel Yorick. And that’s when he started to scream.
Dylan was sitting in the back of what he thought was an H4, or maybe an H5—whatever the model or year a basic truth remained: This was a military weapon, a vehicle designed for urban combat and now it was being used to ferry Dylan across Tiber City. The idea was so absurd he just had to laugh and even though it was the fall, and it would soon be night—most of the sun had slunk below the horizon—the city was suffering through a massive heat wave and there was a voice on the radio whispering about animals being driven mad by the heat, tearing up their nests and devouring their young, and although there were conflicting reports on the matter, there were two things for certain: These beasts were coming to Tiber City and they were coming soon.
“Hey,” Dylan shouted at the driver, banging on the bulletproof partition dividing the front of the vehicle from the back. “You gonna tell me where we’re going?”
The driver didn’t reply but the voice on the radio seemed to get louder, the host’s voice rising, growing hysterical, addressing rumors of an underground network of alchemists responsible for a banking crash, of a restaurant that had added human flesh to its menu, that entire streets in the Jungle district had begun to vanish, and it was all due to the heat wave but maybe there were other explanations and we can get to those after the break, the voice on the radio assured Dylan before the show cut out, replaced by an ad for gold coins, and Dylan was hitting the partition again, begging the driver to at least turn the fucking radio down but the guy just ignored him. Dylan couldn’t even remember what the driver looked like: After having slamming down two shots of whiskey in the bar of the Hotel Yorick, Dylan’s hands stopped trembling long enough to call the number on the card and whoever answered the phone—male voice, clipped, gruff, very official—had also ignored Dylan’s questions, cutting him off mid-spiel and announcing a Hummer would be parked outside the Yorick in seven to nine minutes and that if Dylan ever wanted to see Meghan Morrison alive again, he’d keep his mouth shut and get in the fucking car. That had gotten his attention.
Seven and a half minutes later, the car arrived. Dylan climbed in and that’s how he came to be in the back of an urban assault vehicle dressed in his dead father’s favorite suit, with no idea where he was being taken. All he knew was they were blasting down Chiba Street, the four-lane artery that pumped life, and death, into Tiber City’s Glimmer district and its mix of clubs and bars, bleeding-edge fashion boutiques and high-end electronics dealers, unmarked warehouses and sex clubs; all of which operated in the shadow of towering skyscrapers, home to multinational giants whose buildings often went nameless, identified only by a logo.
Outside the car, the very streets themselves seemed to be wilting under the heat; the lines outside the Chiba Street clubs listless, languid, and Dylan leaned back against the leather seats, the lights of the city still visible e
ven after he closed his eyes. He thought about Meghan and he thought about his father; he thought about love and fear and the human soul. He tried not to think about beasts driven mad by the heat, rampaging across abandoned city streets. He replayed the video his father left for him on the flash drive over and over and over in his head; he could cite the old man’s journal entries word for word. He tried to piece together any memories he had between the Gas-n-Go and the Hotel Yorick but before he could give order to the disjointed images and sensations rattling around in his skull, the car stopped, the locks popped up, and the door closest to Dylan swung open.
By the time the Humvee rumbled away from the curb, it had started to rain but Dylan was already moving, past a series of guards—Kevlar Knights rocking military-grade automatic weapons—through revolving glass doors and a battery of metal detectors, and into the main lobby of Morrison Biotech’s Tiber City headquarters. Security didn’t even blink. Neither did Dylan—as soon as he realized the Humvee had stopped in front of the Morrison Biotech building, things seemed a little clearer.
“Use the private elevator down the hall to your left,” someone barked at him. “Penthouse level. You’re expected.”
Aside from the guards, the lobby was empty and Dylan hurried toward the elevator, weaving his way around enormous wrought iron statues—huge abstract beasts that loomed above the lobby like the skeleton of some prehistoric monster. There were televisions mounted on the wall next to the elevators, all tuned to continuing Jack Heffernan retrospectives and remembrances—the same footage that had looped over and over since the assassination: the horrified bystanders, the state funeral, the patsy fingered for the shooting being led in and out of courtrooms wearing shackles and a bulletproof vest on top of an orange prison jumpsuit, every last detail presented in gorgeous hyper-definition video. Allegedly the country was still in mourning and even as a smorgasbord of “religious leaders” mugged for the cameras, touting a “time of healing,” the news ticker running under the video testified to the contrary: a gunman holed up in an elementary school outside of Albuquerque, a celebrity overdose in the Hollywood hills—life rolled on.
Dylan stepped onto the elevator and the doors snapped shut behind him, soundless, and then he was moving up and the walls of the building fell away: The elevator continued its ascent behind one-way, rain-streaked glass, rising 10, 20, 30 stories above the Tiber City streets.
As the elevator moved up through the darkness, the city followed him, a monster of steel and neon, pushing through the sizzling rain. Plumes of smoke and smog and gas drifted up from the city’s maze of streets and alleyways, desperate offerings to an indifferent deity. As the elevator continued to rise, the city seemed to glow radioactive, the lights from the individual multinationals melting together, glowing with a menace that might, at any second, break loose and spill out across the entire city, country, world. Maybe that was why the entire city seemed to climb vertical—it was a desperate attempt to escape the terrestrial, like a starving rat, determined to gnaw its way into the celestial.
“Penthouse level,” a vaguely female voice informed Dylan as the elevator glided to a stop. The doors slid open, revealing an office that might have been any other executive suite in Tiber City—if every other executive suite came with walls adorned with Zero Movement data feeds, a fireplace surrounded by black leather chrome-base coconut chairs, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of Tiber City. Michael Morrison was standing in front of the glass, dressed immaculately in a dark Armani suit, white shirt, and a deep crimson tie, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out into the Tiber City night.
“Welcome, Mr. Fitzgerald.” Morrison said as he turned away from the window, smiling. “Nice suit.”
“You motherfucker,” Dylan growled, as he moved toward Morrison, each step deliberate, cautious. He scanned the room for a potential weapon but there was only a desk with a computer, the flickering of the Zero art, and the glow of the city outside the window. “Why did you bring me here?”
Raising a bandaged right hand, Morrison made a sweeping gesture toward the fireplace at the back of the office. Dylan spun around, his stomach dropping when he saw the strands of dark hair spilling over the back of one of the chairs facing the lifeless hearth.
Dylan shot across the room, calling Meghan’s name but she didn’t respond. Kneeling beside the chair, he took her pulse—it was strong. He stroked her cheek with his fingers, whispering to her, trying to wake her—he couldn’t.
Standing up, he turned back toward Morrison, his fists clenched, his face twisted with rage.
“Meghan’s fine,” Morrison said, although his tone was even, his smile was cold and the hint of menace was unmistakable. “She is simply my means of ensuring your undivided attention. So I wouldn’t worry about her right now. Instead, I’d worry about myself. I’d worry that because crazy old man’s been whispering in my ear, or because I read some scribblings my dead daddy left behind, I was going to do something stupid.
Dylan felt the surprise register across his face.
“Oh yes,” Morrison continued, “I know all about Campbell and the things he told you. I know more than you could possibly imagine. In fact, I know a great deal of things, particularly about your daddy, that you might not know.”
“Like how it felt to watch him die,” Dylan said, his anger growing, radiating from his belly to his limbs in white-hot bursts.
“Do you want to know the truth about your father,” Morrison asked.
Dylan held Morrison’s gaze for a moment and then nodded.
“Then shut the fuck up and listen,” Morrison snarled. The sound of rain pelting the outside of the tower filled the room and Morrison lit a cigarette.
“Toward the end of the Cold War,” Morrison began, “the U.S. government decided a new generation of leaders was needed to lead our lost nation back to greatness. God’s design was no longer good enough; there were too many mistakes, too many limitations. Project Exodus was launched in response to these limitations. This was before Morrison Biotech even existed; it was just Campbell and myself and a handful of other researchers. Only Campbell and I knew the truth. And even then, Campbell lacked the vision, the drive, to grasp what Exodus was truly capable of—the birth of a new man, one who would stand outside the limitations of God and the natural world. That man was your father.”
Dylan was shaking his head; he wanted Morrison to stop, but he needed him to continue.
“I created your father in the Exodus laboratories miles under the Chihuahuan desert,” Morrison continued, his words slithering out across the room, swirling around Dylan. “The only womb he ever knew was made of silicon and microprocessors. He represented the first great success of Exodus: An 18-year-old man, born fully developed with a set of implanted memories. The first man ever made by man.”
Outside the rain began to fall harder and the wind picked up, rattling the windows and for a moment it felt like the entire tower was swaying and the power flickered once, twice, but held.
“There was only a single human gene Project Exodus failed to identify,” Morrison said. “A gene that seemed to have no function; to serve no purpose. So we went ahead and created your father without this gene, which we dubbed ‘the Omega Gene.’ At first, it appeared Omega was indeed superfluous. I believe your father’s…suicide proved just how wrong we were.
“So we tried again, this time with Jack Heffernan. Only in Heffernan’s case, we actually replicated the Omega gene and included it in his genetic code. Yet, even with this artificial Omega gene, Heffernan still suffered the same meltdowns as your father.
“It wasn’t until recently that I learned the truth behind the Omega gene—that it is the gene responsible for connecting man with his Creator, with God. You see Mr. Fitzgerald, the Omega gene is the human soul.”
Dylan flashed back to the strange hospital, to the sensation of nodes being attached to his forehead, to the whirl of machines, and the stories an old man whispered into his ear: of the desert,
of his father, of the human soul. Another explosion boomed somewhere outside the tower and the lights flickered in response, the grid overloaded and unlikely to hold.
“But deducing the identity of the Omega gene did nothing to advance the goals of Exodus,” Morrison continued. “No, there was still one final question I needed to answer: Does Dylan Fitzgerald have a soul? The Omega gene manifests itself in a certain type of activity in the human brain. Your father’s brain never experienced this type of activity; neither did Heffernan’s. In fact, none of the prototypes we created before your father did. But the tests we ran on you revealed you not only have a soul, but that your soul is particularly sensitive to whatever external, possibly divine, stimuli engages with the Omega gene. Yet, curiously enough, there are times when your Omega activity drops to abnormally low levels as well. If you could find a way to harness that activity, to control and direct it…you could be the one to accomplish everything your father could not.”
From every side of the office, Zero art flashed and swirled, shapes appearing on the digital canvas then vanishing back into the void, only to be replaced, seconds later, by another explosion of information given shape by a someone somewhere across the globe, maybe across the street, and as Morrison spoke and the screens roiled Dylan waited for the perfect moment to strike out and destroy the man who destroyed his father.
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