by Bob Mayer
"All right?" Dr. Hammond's voice was loud and clear in his ears.
Dalton gave a thumbs-up. It was extremely hard to move in the solution. Dalton was surprised at the viscosity of the liquid. He wasn't able to speak with the lung tube stuck down his throat. It was irritating, but the hardest part had been when Hammond had put it in, getting past his gag reflex with one practiced push. Dalton had been on the other end of that technique several times in his army career during his medical training.
"Okay, we're going to do several things, all at the same time. Just relax. Let us do it all right now."
Dalton concentrated on his breathing. He felt a buzzing inside his head. A light flickered in his eyes. He didn't know if it was the cyberlink pad over his eyes or the thermocouple projecting directly into his brain. The light became a white dot.
"Follow the dot," Hammond said.
The dot moved slowly to the left.
"Don't move your head," Hammond warned.
Dalton moved his eyes and they followed the dot. Or was his brain following it? He wondered. His eyes were covered, so they couldn't be. . . . The dot was moving the other way and Dalton had to stop his wondering and follow it.
This went on for a while, how long Dalton couldn't know, but he gradually became aware that he was cold. The buzzing in his head was still there, but he was hardly noticing it; it had become the norm.
"You're doing good." Hammond's voice was more distant. "Give me a thumbs-up if you hear me clearly."
Dalton was shocked to find that he couldn't feel his hand. He couldn't feel any part of his body. He made the mental effort anyway. He tried to feel his eyelids, to determine whether they were open or not, but there was no way he could tell.
"At this point," Hammond said, "your peripheral nervous system is just about shut down, so you shouldn't be able to feel your extremities. You're doing fine. We're doing the last part of the physical aspect now, taking over for your central nervous system. Relax. Relax."
Dalton felt a twinge in the tube in his throat. His chest spasmed as liquid slithered into his lungs.
"Relax."
Dalton was drowning, his lungs filling.
"The dot, follow the dot."
There was a flash of brightness. Then the dot reappeared, now moving in a circle.
Dalton felt as if his chest were being crushed. He tried to expel the liquid coming in, the dot forgotten.
"Relax."
Dalton wanted to tell her to shut the hell up as he concentrated on accepting the foreign substance pouring into his lungs. He focused on the knowledge that he wasn't drowning, that this liquid was sustaining his life. The body didn't buy it. He was drowning.
"You're all right. That's done," Hammond said. "The machine is breathing for you."
Dalton halted the panic with a firm mental slam on the runaway emotion, using what he’d learned during Trojan Warrior training. He was breathing. He couldn't feel his lungs but he accepted that he was getting the oxygen he needed. He'd actually passed out several times in scuba school, drowned, so he knew what it was like to go under without oxygen.
"The dot. Look at the dot."
Dalton went back to following the dot. He felt very small, as if his entire being had closed in around the core of him, the "I" that rattled around inside his skull. He was fading away, losing awareness, losing consciousness.
"The dot, find and stay with the dot. It will be your connection with Sybyl, along with my voice."
Dalton was startled out of his lethargy. During winter warfare training, he'd seen men, tough soldiers, curl up into small balls inside their snow caves and totally withdraw from the outside world. Just wanting to fall asleep and then slip into frozen death.
Dalton focused on the dot.
"All right," Hammond said. "You're in good shape. We're doing your breathing for you. We've got your heart regulated and beating in the correct rhythm. Everything is fine."
Yeah, right. Dalton thought. He noted that her voice was growing fainter, as if she were very far away.
"Your senses are shutting down. Soon you will no longer be consciously processing information from your normal senses."
Dalton had to strain to hear her.
"You'll be hearing me on Sybyl's link next. Just give me . . ." The voice faded out. A deep, profound silence ensued.
Dalton felt himself start to drift away, and he snapped to.
There was a buzz, then silence. Then a clicking sound that really caught Dalton's attention.
He felt a stab of pain above his left eye. The pain grew stronger, almost to the point where he couldn't take it anymore, then it disappeared, to come back just as strong.
The dot was still there, but Dalton didn't care. He went back further inside his memories, to a dark hole. Dank, dripping, concrete walls. The surface pitted. Dalton knew every little divot, every scratch in those walls. The four low corners, each one of significance to him. The ceiling too low for him to stand up, only four feet high.
He could reach his arms out and touch wall to wall. Exactly square. He'd measure it by using his thumbs. Sixty-three thumb widths wide each way. He’d spent a long time considering how whoever had built this thing could have been so exact in their measurements, because when he was taken out he could see the entire building that was his prison and how poorly constructed it was. It was a place that no one talked about in the media, a place where the Taliban exacted their own revenge for Abu Gharib.
"Sergeant Major Dalton."
The voice was raspy, echoing, intruding. The pain that had been so distant was back, although not quite as sharp.
"Sergeant Major Dalton."
Dalton tried to answer.
"Sergeant Major Dalton." There was a change to the tone and timbre of the voice.
Dalton didn't know how to speak. He had no throat. No mouth.
"Sergeant Major Dalton." The voice was smoother now, almost human.
Dalton tried to figure it out, how to answer with no voice of his own.
"Sergeant Major Dalton.” It was recognizable as a human voice now. A woman's, but there was a timbre to it that was unnatural.
"Sergeant Major Dalton. This is Dr. Hammond. I'm talking to you through Sybyl now. Through the computer directly into your brain. You have to focus your mind to answer. This may take a while, as we have to adjust your program link to your brain."
Dalton tried to reply.
“To answer, you must focus on the dot."
The damn dot, Dalton thought. He did as instructed. The dot was still now, centered.
"Now, say ‘hello’."
Dalton tried, but he knew it wasn't working.
"It takes time to learn. Relax."
Dalton thought that humorous. How could he relax when he had no control?
A sharp stab of pain right between his eyes caused Dalton to start.
"Good. The computer heard that," Hammond said.
The pain came again, but Dalton was ready.
"I didn't hear that," Hammond said. "You must relax and allow your emotions to pass through."
The pain once more.
"Screw you," Dalton projected.
There was a long pause. "We must do a series of tests now to format your program. I'm going to have Sybyl run you through a program we've prepared for this. Do what she tells you to."
Sybyl's voice was a flat mechanical one, barking out directions. Dalton did as instructed, feeling like a child as he responded, sometimes feeling a little silly.
A series of grid lines appeared. Sybyl had him focus on various coordinates. After a while, the computer guided him in moving along the grid line, a task that Dalton was able to accomplish only after many tries. He had no idea how long this went on until finally Sybyl told him he was done. For now.
Dalton felt a snap, followed by an echoing pain that slid back and forth across his head like a slow-moving tide. The pain wound down, but then he began feeling a tingling sensation in his forehead.
The dot disappeared
.
The tingling turned to itching. The extent of the feeling came down his forehead, across his face. To his neck. He could feel the obstruction in his throat.
Soon his entire body itched as if armies of ants were marching across every square inch. And Dalton squirmed, since he couldn't scratch.
But then the cold came. Worse than the most bitter cold he had ever experienced in all his winter warfare training. He'd been in Norway above the Arctic Circle on exercises with the wind chill hitting seventy below zero, and it hadn't been this bad.
Hammond's voice exploded in his head. "I know you're cold. We're warming you up." The volume went down during the second sentence. "We're going to get you back on oxygen shortly."
Dalton sensed some uncertainty in Hammond's voice. Was this where they had had their accident and lost their man?
"It take a little bit of time to get the fluid out of your lungs, and when we start, you won't breathe again until your lungs are clear and we can get oxygen in. It takes about two minutes. Trust us. We’ll get it done and your body has plenty of oxygen to make it through. We'll keep your heartbeat slow. You can go ten minutes without oxygen at your present physiological rate."
A fist hit Dalton in the chest. Then a drill began ripping a hole right through him. He screamed, the sound resounding in his skull but not making it out his mouth.
A claw was ripping his lungs up through his throat. Dalton felt darkness closing down as he struggled for air. The only thing keeping him conscious was the pain.
Then the oxygen came and the pain got worse, shocking Dalton with its intensity. But he could breathe. He took in a deep breath, then began choking, hacking, trying to spit.
"The machine will get the rest of the liquid out," Hammond's voice informed him. "Relax."
Screw your relax, Dalton thought. He took another deep breath, relishing the feel of the oxygen as the tube fought his breathing, trying to suck out the last of the liquid on each exhale.
He was still cold, but he could tell that the fluid around him was warming rapidly.
"We're pulling you out."
He felt straps tighten around his shoulders as he was lifted. The fluid let go of him reluctantly, and with a sucking noise he was dangling in the air. He was swung over and lowered.
His knees buckled as his feet hit the ground. He felt hands supporting him. Arms went around him, keeping him still.
"We're extracting the cryoprobes and thermocouples," Hammond informed him. "You have to remain still. It will take a few minutes."
To Dalton nothing appeared to happen, but then fingers reached under the neck seal of the TACPAD helmet. It ripped open. The helmet was lifted off slowly. Someone delicately peeled the cyberlink pad off his skin.
Dalton blinked, trying to get oriented. All he saw was white. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. This time he could make out hazy forms around him. He shook his head, clearing his vision a little. Staff Sergeant Barnes was holding him up. Dalton slowly regained control of his legs. He looked about Dr. Hammond and Raisor were standing at the main control console.
There were three bodies in other tubes.
"Damn it! I told Anderson to wait until I was done," Dalton said, his voice hoarse and cracking.
Barnes frowned. "I know, Sergeant Major, but you were in there five hours and they said they had to get this thing going."
Five hours. To Dalton it had seemed no more than an hour. His throat hurt where the tube had been. He shivered and Barnes draped a blanket over his shoulders.
"You okay, Sergeant Major?"
“Yeah, I'm all right. Whole bunch of fun," Dalton said. He stared at the other men in their isolation tanks. He could see one of them quivering inside the green liquid. He peeled the suit off, down to his shorts.
"Geez, Sergeant Major, what happened to your back?" Barnes was looking at the bare skin the blanket didn't cover. A jagged scar six inches long reached up from the waistband of his shorts. The skin was rough and purple.
"Sword," Dalton said.
"Sword?" Barnes repeated.
"It's a boring story from a while ago." Dalton shivered once more, violently, as if the cold would never leave his bones.
"Here," Barnes held out a cup of coffee.
Dalton took it, wrapping his hands around the mug, grateful for the warmth. He walked over and stared into the closest isolation tube. He recognized the body in the tank: Staff Sergeant Stith, the demo man.
"How long have they been in?" he asked Barnes.
"They put the first one in two hours after you. Stith just went in twenty minutes ago. Captain Anderson was the first one after you."
Dalton stared through the glass at the body floating in the green liquid. He shivered once more, but not from the cold.
*****
The town of Markovo lay one hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, centered in the land mass just north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far eastern wasteland of Russia. This practically unknown and almost uninhabited land beyond Siberia was one step removed in the wrong direction from the worst stretches of hinterland on the planet.
The population of the town was less than five hundred hardy souls; half of them natives, the other half the progeny of political prisoners who had survived the local gulag long enough to bring forth life. The inhabitants of the gulag had dug out, under the year-round ice, the holes that now held the prefab components of Special Department Number Eight's Far-Field Experimental Unit: SD8-FFEU.
It was set underneath the tip of a rounded mountain that overlooked the town. One narrow road switchbacked up the side of the mountain, ending at two massive steel doors that led down into the station. Signs at the start of the road and circling the mountain at the base warned that intruders would be shot without warning.
There were six prefab components that made up SD8- FFEU, each buried fifty feet under the rock and ice. The communications center, enlisted men's quarters, mess hall/gym, officers' quarters, and science quarters were all spaced around the central compartment, known as the Brain Center. A five-hundred-meter tunnel led to the small nuclear reactor that supplied the power needs for the station. The supplies were stacked in a large tunnel that was over two hundred meters long. It also was the corridor to the ramp that led to the surface.
Here, hidden from the spying eyes of satellites, SD8 conducted its most secret operation, under the command of its most ruthless officer.
General Rurik paced back and forth, the track worn in the carpet showing that this wasn't the first time his feet had traveled that path. He paused, looking to the center of the room. His right hand was on his left, twisting the wedding band on his ring finger around and around.
A four-foot-high steel cylinder was set in the center of the room on a base of eight shock absorbers. Inside, carefully preserved, was what remained of Major Feteror, formerly of the Soviet Spetsnatz. Who…or what…he was now, was open to debate.
Rurik had been involved with SD8 for many years. He'd been present as a senior captain at the newly constructed FFEU facility when Feteror had been flown in directly from Afghanistan in 1986. The report from the GRU colonel who’d accompanied the body had been brief. Feteror had been recovered in a rescue mission responding to a radio call the major had made just prior to being captured. It had taken the GRU some time to locate the village, and during that gap, the major had been horribly tortured.
Rurik, an experienced interrogator, had been both impressed and disgusted when he saw Feteror's body being wheeled into the operating room. Impressed that the man was still alive, disgusted at the vulgar means the Afghanis had employed. Of course, he knew their goal had not been to extract information but rather to inflict punishment, and on those terms they had succeeded.
Department Eight had been looking for someone in Feteror's situation for half a year. Like ghoulish vultures, they'd put the word out to the commands in the field.
Feteror's condition had been critical when he arrived, but in a way, some o
f what the mujahidin had done to him had also kept him alive. Leather tourniquets had been wrapped tight around Feteror's limbs, so tight they had sliced through the skin. The extent of bone and nerve damage had been so great that the leather had never been cut on the eight-hour flight to Department Eight's facility. Since no blood had flowed to the limbs, they were effectively dead when Feteror arrived, and the surgeons lopped them off immediately, adding to the carnage the Afghanis had begun.
But that was only the beginning. Like sculptures working on a grotesque masterpiece, the surgeons continued to slice away, removing everything that wasn't absolutely essential to keeping Feteror's brain functioning. His digestive tract was completely removed. His heart and lungs, which had been badly torn by broken ribs, were also removed, once they were able to get him completely dependent on a heart-lung machine. What was left of his eyeballs was removed, the nerves capped, then eventually shunted to a computer for direct input. All this was done, in the words of the senior physiologist to remove any "extraneous nervous input."
What remained of Feteror, all twenty-six pounds, was encased in the steel cylinder. Over three-dozen lines and tubes ran into the cylinder. About half of those were biological, half mechanical.
Several of the tubes, carefully suspended, ran to a row of machines, the best the Western world had to offer to the highest bidder on the worldwide, very extensive, medical black market. The heart-lung machine handled the blood, keeping it at the right temperature and making sure the proper oxygen level was maintained. Another machine performed the functions of the intestinal tract by the expedient manner of injecting minute quantities of nutrients directly into the bloodstream on the way in from the H-L machine.
Inside the steel cylinder lay the bare minimum of a human being. A spinal cord suspended in solution. A head held firmly in place by screws drilled directly into the bone. Leads passed through the skull directly into the brain, the frightful legacy of the research done by SD8 over the years. All the medical equipment served only one function-to keep Feteror's brain alive-and little else. There were no eyes to see, no ears to listen, no skin to feel, no tongue to taste, no nose to smell. All inputs into the brain were controlled by the leads attached to the master computer.