Feedback

by Cawdron, Peter

  Jason wondered if this was how the media twisted people's words? Record enough footage and you're bound to catch a smirk here, a poorly chosen phrase there. String them together and you can make any story you want. Take a couple of hours of footage and splice it down to a minute or two, and you can make someone out to be anything you want, monster or hero.

  “It's OK,” Stegmeyer said, apparently reading his thoughts. “You can trust us. We're all here to help.”

  Jason nodded in reply. Against his better judgement, he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but he wasn't sure quite what was expected of him.

  “What can you tell me about the alien craft?” she asked.

  Jason looked at Lily.

  Lachlan spoke, saying, “His memory is hazy.”

  “Let the man speak,” Stegmeyer replied gently. “We need to get as much of this as possible from him, in his words.”

  Jason was acutely aware of the video camera focusing on him.

  “I ... ah,” he began. “I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about. This is all new to me.”

  Stegmeyer looked over her shoulder at Lachlan as he got out of the front seat and moved back into the RV.

  “His memory is incomplete,” the professor said. “Given time, he'll remember the details.”

  “You told me he would remember by now.”

  “Look,” Jason offered. “Maybe there's been some kind of mistake.”

  Lachlan ignored him, speaking to Stegmeyer as he said, “Even without the spacecraft, we still have him. Jason carries the proof of his origin in his body.”

  Jason was horrified by what he heard. He leaned back in the chair, pushing himself into the cushion. Lily must have felt his muscles stiffen. She rested her hand on his knee, and whispered, “It's going to be all right.”

  Lachlan crouched down beside Stegmeyer, looking Jason in the eye.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. “But your body is remarkable. You're a miracle of biology.”

  “Me?” Jason replied. “But I have Cander’s Syndrome. A genetic defect that causes blood anemia.”

  “There's no such thing,” Lachlan said smiling. “They made that up as an excuse to keep you under close medical supervision. Your medication is nothing more than sugar pills. Oh, occasionally they'll slip something in there to make you feel sick and get you back in for MRI and blood tests, but it's all just a cover.”

  “It's true,” Lily added. “They even faked the PubMed papers on Cander's, faked the research results and peer reviews, all so they could get a credible entry in Wikipedia in case you ever looked it up.”

  “But why?” Jason asked.

  Lachlan opened his folder and tossed a couple of scan results on the table.

  “Your heart is the size of a newborn infant's, and yet it pumps almost four thousand gallons a day, well over a million gallons a year. That's twice the volume of an olympic sprinter.”

  “No,” Jason said, shaking his head, looking at a chest scan showing a tiny heart. “I have a weak heart. I have annual ECG scans.”

  “You see the results they want you to see,” Lachlan continued. “The average lung capacity of an adult male is just under two gallons, yours is over three. Your kidneys, liver and spleen are all enlarged. They're roughly the same size as someone that's twice your weight. What's more, your elastic muscle strength and peak force strength are off the charts. Your muscle tissue is denser and heavier than anything we've ever observed.”

  Jason laughed, saying, “This is absurd! Next you're going to tell me, Jor-El's my father and I've got to steer clear of Kryptonite.”

  “Not quite,” Lachlan replied, smiling. “But close.”

  “Perhaps a demonstration would help.” Lachlan turned to the FBI agent, saying, “Agent Bellum, you look buff. How much can you bench press?”

  “I'll warm up with two hundred pounds and work up to three fifty, maybe four hundred on a good day.”

  “Would you mind demonstrating your strength by arm wrestling Jason?”

  “What?” Jason asked, watching as Agent Bellum removed his jacket. He was a huge man with a barrel chest and muscles like an ox. Agent Bellum grinned, rolling up his sleeve and revealing the thick muscles of his forearm. His biceps were hidden by his business shirt, but only just. There wasn't a lot of extra room in those sleeves.

  Jason looked to Lachlan for an explanation.

  “Did you ever wonder why you were discouraged from sports? You were a natural. The problem was, you were too natural. You'd outrun your classmates and wonder why they were out of breath when they caught up to you, right?”

  “I was never any good at sports,” Jason replied. “Sports made me sick.”

  “Not quite,” Lachlan said. “Your meds made you sick. Your handlers would see you starting to assert yourself physically and they would switch your meds to make it unpleasant for you. Think about it. All those times you felt sick, it was never on the same day. It was always the next day, wasn't it?”

  Jason nodded as Lachlan continued.

  “You'd kick a football half the length of a field without really trying. The people assigned to you did all they could to steer you away from anything physical, but they couldn't stop you from throwing a basketball the length of a court in the fourth grade for an impossible three-pointer!”

  Jason smiled at that. He remembered that day well. He remembered the awe and amazement he got from the other kids in the gym, and he remembered being sick for almost a week afterwards. Had he been punished? Was that it? Could anyone be that cruel to a child?

  Agent Bellum knelt down, resting his elbow on the coffee table. He flexed his fingers, smiling at Jason.

  “Go on,” Lily said, encouraging him.

  Jason felt stupid.

  He wasn't going to roll up his sleeve. His arms were embarrassingly thin compared to Bellum's.

  Agent Bellum had to be in his late twenties, early thirties. He was in his physical prime. His arm was massive compared to Jason's. There was a compression bandage just visible beneath Jason's shirt. His fingers touched at the bandage beneath the cotton.

  “It won't matter,” Lachlan said confidently, observing Jason's reluctance. “You won't break a sweat.”

  Getting down on one knee, Jason offered his hand. He rested his elbow on the table across from Bellum.

  The FBI Agent grinned. He'd clearly done this before. From the way he positioned his hand, arching his wrist over Jason's, it was obvious he knew what he was doing. He was relishing this.

  Jason felt his hand swallowed up by Bellum's paw.

  “OK,” Lachlan said. “Ready?”

  Jason felt the big man beginning to apply pressure, trying to force Jason's hand backwards onto the table.

  “Go!” Lachlan cried.

  Bellum surged, applying a massive wave of strength that took Jason by surprise, bending his hand back to within an inch or so of the stained wooden veneer.

  Bellum leaned over the coffee table. The veins in his neck bulged and his face started turning red. Jason's forearm was trembling under the strain, but he found he could hold onto those last few inches. The bigger man shifted his weight, trying to get more leverage, but to Jason's surprise, the added pressure didn't bother him. He had plenty of strength in reserve. It was quite fascinating to observe, he thought, mentally detaching himself from the action. Across from him was this huge man on the verge of pinning his arm to the table, but only if Jason let him. Here was an FBI agent struggling with someone half his size.

  Jason looked over at Lachlan and Stegmeyer. Lachlan looked relaxed, as though he had no doubts about what would happen next, whereas Stegmeyer looked nervous. She didn't want Jason to lose, much to his surprise. The contrast in their visages was stark. Stegmeyer never expected him to win.

  With a little upward pressure, Jason straightened his arm, easily bringing Bellum back to their starting point.

  Bellum's face flushed. Veins appeared on his forehead. His right arm trembled und
er the strain.

  “Finish him,” Lachlan said. Stegmeyer may have doubted Jason, but Lachlan didn't. Jason took pride in the confidence of his mentor.

  In one fluid motion, Jason rolled Bellum's arm backwards, watching the big man fight with all his might not to lose. Rather than slamming Bellum's hand into the table, Jason touched it gently against the veneer, and Bellum released his grip, gasping for breath.

  “Damn!” Bellum cried, shaking his fingers. Jason hadn't even thought about how hard he'd been holding Bellum's hand, but Bellum flexed his fingers, apparently trying to get some feeling back into them.

  “Did you catch that?” Stegmeyer said to her cameraman.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Amazing,” the Washington Post reporter said. “So, he's an alien?”

  “No,” Lachlan said swiftly, cutting her off. From the tone of his voice, it was clear the professor was defending Jason, and Jason appreciated that. With everything that had happened, Jason felt almost a sense of vertigo. He wasn't physically dizzy, but mentally he was struggling to come to terms with the pace of events unfolding around him. To have Lachlan staunchly defending him was reassuring.

  “He's unique,” Lachlan added.

  “Look at him,” Bellum protested, getting up and sitting in his seat. “There's no way he's human.”

  “I've heard the rumors,” Stegmeyer said. “Either he's an alien or he's some alien hybrid experiment.”

  Lachlan was visibly annoyed with both Stegmeyer and Bellum. Jason could see him going red in the face, but somehow he retained his composure and spoke with deliberation.

  “You have no idea what we're dealing with here. Wild and fanciful guesses will not help.”

  “So what is he?” Stegmeyer asked. She was abrupt, and Jason got the feeling he was seeing the real April Stegmeyer, the cold, calculating reporter behind the warm smile.

  “Human,” Lachlan said, with a note of triumph as though that one word required no more explanation.

  “Nah,” Bellum replied. “Not with strength like that!”

  “You don't understand,” Lachlan continued. “You've heard the old mantra so many times you've come to believe it, that all men are created equal. They're not. No two men are physically alike. This is something Charles Darwin understood, but lately we seem to have forgotten it.

  “Not only is your fingerprint unique among over seven billion of us walking around on this planet, so too is your nervous system, the attenuation of your muscle shape, size and tendons, your skeletal structure, and your cardiovascular and lymphatic system. They're similar and yet distinctly different.”

  “But he's too different,” Stegmeyer stated bluntly.

  “Is he?” Lachlan asked. “Usain Bolt can run a hundred meters in less than ten seconds. Does that make him an alien? Or does it make him exceptional in both his physical capabilities and discipline?”

  Jason was fascinated by the professor's perspective, and somewhat relieved to know he was counted in the ranks of humanity.

  “But ... But there's no discipline here,” Bellum countered, gesturing with his hands toward Jason.

  “No, there's not,” the professor replied. “But Jason is human. I assure you, the scientists at DARPA are wrong in their assessment of his physical origins.”

  “How can you know that?” Stegmeyer demanded.

  “Because science is founded on the principle that you don't jump to conclusions. Honestly, what's more likely? That Jason's an alien? Or that Jason has exceptional physical characteristics for some entirely valid reason we've yet to discover?”

  “And that's enough for you?” Stegmeyer asked. Jason noticed she didn't answer Lachlan's question.

  “It is,” Lachlan replied. Jason's admiration for the professor grew in that instant. Lachlan wasn't going to abandon him. Jason might only just now be grasping at the threads of all that was happening, but he was confident he was in the right place, with the right people, with Lachlan and Lily by his side.

  Chapter 11: Midnight

  Lee peered through the bars of his sunken cage.

  After hearing that these narrow, low confines were used to house animals during winter, he couldn’t think of his confinement as a jail. They’d imprisoned him in a stock holding pen, a stall.

  The moon fought to break through the low clouds. The bars covering the window of his cage were level with the ground, allowing him to see out across the courtyard. In the darkness, he could make out the main gate roughly two hundred yards away. A dim light hung from a high pole, illuminating the barrier by the guardhouse. There must have been fences stretching to either side, but in the dark of night he couldn’t see them.

  Somewhere to his right, a yellow light bulb flickered slowly above a door, stuttering as it struggled to produce light from the irregular surges of electricity. Every now and then, the clouds would part and allow the full moon to shine through, highlighting the feeble effort of the artificial lights.

  Lee cradled his wounded hand, trying not to feel sorry for himself. With spasms of pain shooting up his arm from time to time, he struggled not to let the weight of hopelessness bear down upon him.

  “I’m going to make it,” he muttered to himself, reminding himself of the note, trying to convince himself this wasn’t the end.

  Lee felt useless. It was an irrational feeling, he knew that, but knowing didn’t help. An impending sense of dread swept over him.

  “Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he whispered, trying to buoy his spirits. “Don’t go there, you dumb son of a bitch! You’re alive, that’s all that matters. Now, get yourself the hell out of here!”

  Lee steeled himself, trying to remain grounded in the present.

  A series of huts lined three sides of the yard outside his low cage, with the road to the main gate passing where the fourth side of the square should have been. What he’d thought of as a courtyard was little more than a muddy parade ground surrounded by a gravel road that ran past each of the old wooden buildings. A truck was parked to one side, but in the dark he couldn’t make out what kind of truck it was, only that it looked old, like something from the Korean War in the 1950s. Surely, they couldn’t have nursed their aging technology that long, he thought. Perhaps it was just that they had no need for new models and considered the old style trucks perfectly adequate.

  There was a car on the far side of the truck, but all Lee could make out was the hood and the front wheel guard. Small flags were proudly displayed on either side of the curved hood. He hadn’t noticed the car before, but then he hadn’t noticed much of anything before now. Only now was his mind starting to think tactically, trying to glean any information that might help with his bid for freedom.

  Who was helping him?

  Had one of the Navy SEALs somehow escaped?

  Or perhaps the SEALs had evaded capture in the first place?

  Why would they come for him?

  How did they know where he’d been taken?

  Why would they risk exposing themselves by sneaking into a military base to free him?

  He didn't know the answers to these questions, but he was glad they had.

  Lee could see the hut where he had been tortured directly opposite his sunken cage, on the far side of the yard. It didn’t look that different from any of the other old wooden huts, with their warped weatherboards and peeling paint. Lee could pick out that building only by remembering what direction he’d been dragged in as he staggered across the gravel road.

  Even back then, through the haze of pain, he'd fought to retain at least a vague notion of distance and direction. His mind was all he had left. Physically, they had taken away his freedom. He had to fight to ensure they didn't win the mental battle.

  His hand still throbbed but the tablets had taken the edge off the pain.

  Trying to think objectively about where he was distracted him from the physical torment of his injuries. Focusing his mind brought relief, restoring his confidence.

  Lee watched the guards, observi
ng their routines, noting how they switched routes over by a darkened building he assumed was used for administration. They would retrace each other’s steps to the barracks where he was located before marching past. The camp must have extended further to his right, as they marched out of sight for roughly ten minutes. He knew his helper had come from that direction with the painkillers, creeping up silently behind the guards as they marched on, and that seemed to validate that this wasn't another ruse by the North Koreans. Whoever it was that brought the painkillers, they had to be watching the camp, observing the same routine, and that thought gave Lee hope. He reasoned that it couldn’t just be one person. It might have been a single person who came in and made the drop, but there had to be several people working together. Lee was buoyed by that thought.

  There was another window at the back of his cell, but it was boarded up. Perhaps that would show where the sentries went, he thought, and with some difficulty, he crawled to the far end of his basement cage, protecting his right hand by holding his arm across his chest, keeping his wrist to his sternum.

  There were cracks in between the boards nailed over the outside of the window.

  One of the bars was missing and another had come loose.

  Lee could feel the crumbling concrete crunching in the window frame as he wriggled the bar around. He lifted the loose bar a little and got a feel for how shallowly it had been set into the concrete. With a bit of work, he could probably pull it out, and that brought a smile to his face, his first smile in days. Knowing why the soldiers had boarded up the window made him feel as though he was gaining some small advantage over them. They’d been lazy. Laziness was easily exploited.

  Lee worked at twisting and tugging at the iron bar until it came free, knowing he could use the bar as a club. Having a weapon lifted his spirits, even if it was a poor match for a gun or a knife. Being armed felt good. Slowly, he was reclaiming the confidence that had been stripped from him.