X

by J. D. Glass

  He examined his surroundings once more. The room he was in could have been a high school lab, if that chemistry lab had been well funded. Cream yellow and white tiles lined the walls to about two feet over his head, while neat and empty cages lined a back wall next to gated windows. The antiseptic smell was a faint burn in his nostrils despite the occasional swirl from the vents that hummed over his head.

  There was nothing to do but watch and wait for John and Charli to return with the laptop and the vial—or whatever it was contained in—that would change the world, and Ben quickly grew overwarm and bored.

  He wondered how it would happen—John hadn’t told him specifics about that yet, and he wondered what kind of life they would come to lead, him, John, Charli, and the others they would help set free.

  It wasn’t complete yet, but still, they could live off the grid, he supposed, back at his place. He could easily picture the future, could easily see the center his home could become, his role in it, and Charli’s. They’d live the way people were supposed to—in harmony with nature and their own multiple potentials. They’d have clean water and air, they’d hunt…that was it, he decided. That was the reason John had asked him to stand guard. He was a hunter, and weren’t hunters really warriors that weren’t at war?

  The thought made him almost giddy with joy. He’d finally proven himself, to John, to the world, and he was a real man, a true warrior and—he grinned to himself with the realization—there was no way that Charli hadn’t seen that for herself.

  Charli…she needed time, he decided, time to get used to these new thoughts that he and John were already used to, to meet some of the other people online, to… What was that chirp? Probably crickets, he dismissed. Hadn’t John told them they experimented on bugs as well as other animals there? It wasn’t crickets, though, it was…ticks. That was right. Ticks.

  He eyed the cages against the wall. Had to be more than ticks for those, too large for most rodents, he thought. Cats? Dogs? Monkeys? He stood, craning his head to see if he could find a tag on any of them.

  His cell phone went off, an almost-mute vibration in the front pocket of his jeans that made him jump, thinking he’d been electrocuted or some such for half a second before he slammed his elbow into the tiled wall, sending another shock down his arm and he remembered. “Fuck,” he muttered in soft surprise as he rubbed the bruised joint, then reached for his phone.

  The worn and frayed denim edge was almost satin soft against his knuckles, and the pocket liner warm against his palm calmed him as he pulled out the precious piece of plastic. If he didn’t have to worry about the Man anymore, then he wasn’t going to wear his uniform either, he’d decided when John had contacted him.

  * * *

  COORDINATES CLEAR AS EXPECTED; SHIP AND LOCATION SECURE FOR NEXT APPROX 20 MINUTES. ETA SAME?

  * * *

  Ben frowned down at the display, addressed to both him and John, from a user named IMcre8tor. The tag was familiar to him, although he was sure he hadn’t met its owner yet. As John had explained to Ben—to all of them, he was certain—it simply wasn’t safe. Ben also didn’t know all the details of exactly what would happen next, but he trusted John—everything he’d said, everything he’d planned, had all worked out perfectly so far; Ben wouldn’t be the one to jeopardize that by second-guessing now.

  * * *

  ALL IS COPACETIC. EXCHANGE SHOULD BE COMPLETE SHORTLY.

  * * *

  He carefully typed in his reply, then pressed the button that would send his answer winging its electronic way to both the sender and John. He sat back down. His skin…he wasn’t cold, he realized, he itched, and as he rubbed his arm through his sleeve for some relief, he wondered if it was poison from that damn cup—he was normally much more vigilant about environmental toxins—or if there were any ticks left crawling about the lab. What was it they did with ticks, anyway? John had told him the experiments involved using them as a disease vector, and the ones they’d most recently worked with were now spread up the northeast coast, carrying with them a debilitating disease that had heretofore been restricted to some very distant part of the country. Ah…the country. It was going to change, was about to start changing in just a very few minutes.

  Ben returned to his musing, his hand warm in his pocket, his cell phone warm in his palm while he created his perfect world in his mind, where the air was clean and so was the water, where men could be free and women—there was that sound again. He picked his head up from the wall.

  Did the door on the other end of the room move?

  This waiting was making him nervous, he decided. How long could it take them to move through a corridor, to perform one little electronic exchange? Even given that they needed time for the laptop to boot, for the link to engage…where were they? He got off his stool and pulled the gun from its holster under his coat.

  The weapon was warm and while he knew it was really from his own body heat, he couldn’t help but imagine he still smelled cordite from when he’d drawn it earlier as he stepped carefully down the aisle between the stone-covered stations.

  He was halfway across, certain now that the door he’d thought completely closed had been cracked just the slightest bit open. There was nothing in the room, no sound either, just the faint whoosh of air through the vents, vents he suspected that given the nature of the research were more than likely isolated from one section to another. He could hear his own breathing as he reached for the brass knob and checked it.

  Closed. The door hadn’t moved at all, not since he’d seen it close behind John and Charli. His face twitched, a stiff movement of muscle, a jerk in his neck as he silently made fun of himself.

  Too many stupid movies and too much caffeine are making you the stupid screamer girl who loses her dog in the basement and investigates in the dark only to get herself killed in her underwear, that’s all that’s going on, he told himself. Hey, at least you’ve got a flashlight and a gun—and the lights are on.

  Armed with that reminder, he felt relief flood through him. There was nothing out of place, he was merely spooked by the hour, the place. It was easily explained—it was natural to feel some tension when so much was on the line. The skin at the nape of his neck crawled and crawled hard; hard enough to feel like a pinch, hard enough for him to speak out loud to the part of his brain that screamed at him to turn around. He grudgingly gave in to it. “There’s nothing—” He choked on his words as he turned and saw what, or rather who, stood behind him.

  “You—you’re dead,” he said dumbly, disbelieving what his eyes told him, knowing he sounded stupid, knowing what he saw was equally impossible. He gripped the pistol tightly as adrenaline, which had just started to ease down, came roaring back through him with a fury that made his still crawling skin tighten further. “I shot you dead-on,” he continued, saying the only thing he could think, thoughts now words as he stared into eyes made brilliant chips of malachite—dark and hard—over the barrel of what he recognized as a service-standard issue SIG 229. He saw the bruise that covered her temple, and the scraped line of skin that disappeared into her hairline, and came to the only conclusion that made sense. “I missed?”

  “You didn’t,” the woman he could now admit he despised and knew only as Anna Pendleton told him. “And the only reason you’re not about to face a capital murder charge is because you didn’t really check your weapon first. Did you know your gun’s loaded with wax bullets?” she asked conversationally. “Trusts you a lot, Romello does. So you’ve been helping him, and you’ve been rewarded—a murder you didn’t commit to hold over your head. Although you did draw and shoot with deadly intent. And now… Where’s Charli? He took her with him, right?”

  Ben popped the chamber with a fingertip and let the proof of her words drop into his palm. He checked the round in his hand, scratched the blue paraffin in its copper casing, and still in the hard grip of shock, stared at the crescent-moon indentation his nail had left in its otherwise smooth surface.

  “Now d
rop it—and put your hands up.”

  He gaped back at her even as he nodded, not knowing what to say, to think, to do, except to follow orders. He raised his arms over his head. The useless weapon dangled from his finger even as he felt his wrist grabbed hard and his mind twisted with his body. The planet swirled and his chest hit the wall while his hands—weapon free—were locked together, wrist to wrist, behind him.

  John had given him an almost useless weapon. There had to have been a good reason, he was a good man, a smart man, a man like his father, a man who valued freedom and true American values, a man who—a man who’d lied to him, Ben realized, or if not lied, then had left out some extremely vital and pertinent information.

  Good reasons, there have to be good, sound reasons. Ben’s mind raced. What was it his father used to say? Need to know—soldiers operated on a need-to-know basis. Information was withheld all the time so that larger aims could be accomplished without doubts or distractions, or the potential for leaking critical intelligence. Perhaps…perhaps it was something similar, and John’s nondisclosure was to keep Ben safe, or maybe it was about something Ben, unaware of the aims it would serve in the larger picture, wouldn’t immediately like or agree with.

  For the first time in ages, maybe ever, with his skull full and pounding, a gun before it and a churn within it, Ben asked himself a truly deeper question: Did John have goals Ben wouldn’t have concurred with? And if that was the case, then was withholding the same as lying? Was it actually deception? The answer came to him slowly. It was almost the same thing, he concluded.

  She wasn’t rough, merely efficient as she once more turned him so that he faced her, and Ben felt his knees give way when his back hit the wall, leaving him to slump against it.

  He shook once more with the instant cold that seemed to invade the room. He seemed to have trouble breathing, and the sudden rush of the vents overhead pulled the air from his lungs. Something was very wrong. He knew it, had known it somehow and not wanted to face it. John had been too quick to agree about Charli, too quick to set up Anna, and right now John was with— Suddenly, Ben was clear again and an ugly suspicion raced through him.

  He remembered the infuriating certainty that had raced through him scant hours ago in the moments before he’d drawn and pulled the trigger. But with the new idea that had just grown in his mind, it suddenly didn’t matter that he hated the woman before him or that judging from the weapon pointed at him, the feeling was coldly returned. The one topic that divided them they could also agree on—she could help, she had to know.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything—”

  “Listen, Anna,” he interrupted desperately, using the only name he had for her as he straightened against the wall to convey the strength of his inention, “John’s with her—he’s got—”

  The concussive blast that shook the walls around them sent Anna flying past him and through the door he’d only moments ago inspected, and Ben fell back on his heels, unable to hear her footsteps as she ran to the source of the explosion. When the five members of the extraction team arrived almost half a minute after she’d gone in, one pulled him roughly to his feet and quick-marched him in the opposite direction, back to the place they’d come from. An alarm sounded, a klaxon call that bit through his skull and his thick jacket, made his ears hum and his chest burn while lights dimmed and flashed. Though he wondered where they were going and how they’d get there, he knew—as his heart beat like a frantic caged rat in time to the swirl of the lights, and his eyes stung—that his role in the revolution he’d wanted so much to be part of was over.

  *

  “‘We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special,’” Charli read aloud from a plaque on the wall as they walked through the darkened and quiet hallways as John halted momentarily to check his cell phone. Her peripheral vision caught the satisfied smile that crossed his face as he read it.

  “Ah yes, Stephen Hawking, the most brilliant man of our age,” John agreed, with what she assumed was his version of a gallant smile as he pocketed the tool, then took her arm. “Of course, the majority of human beings are nowhere near his status—more like hairless monkeys than advanced ones.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Charli countered. “I’ve tended to think that we’re all about ninety-eight percent monkey and the rest is caffeine and food dye—probably yellow number five.”

  John stopped and let her go to face her directly. “Did you just make a joke?”

  Charli dropped her serious mien, then smiled at him. “Well, what’s a revolution without a little humor?” she asked him. “I mean, laughter will be allowed in the new world order, won’t it?”

  He stared another moment, then gave a laugh of his own. “You’re priceless!” He chuckled. “Perfect and priceless. Come,” he said, his tone both inviting and officious as he took her arm once more, “we’re almost there.”

  This girl game she played, the careful line between almost-fawning admiration and “spunky independence” was wearing her thin, but based on his behavior, she felt she had no other choice, or rather, no other safe choice. Given his avuncular attitude coupled with the smug superiority that oozed from the air he breathed, it was the only thing she could think of that would truly work, gain his confidence. She was certain it was what had allowed her to have gotten this far. It was alarmingly simple, and the simplicity of it left her with a sour feeling—a cross of disgust for herself that she could do it and contempt for him because he so easily fell for it—that she didn’t know what to do with.

  All of them, young, old, smart, stupid, even the insane, as she considered John, all of them were the same: hold out even the vaguest, remotest potential that there was any sort of admiration for them, and they took that to mean “she wants me.”

  There were, Charli conceded as they bustled down the corridor, degrees of difference. For Ben, the “it” factor was as simple as breathing on the same planet, or even giving him anything beyond formal politeness—she knew that, had known it for a long time. John wasn’t quite that easy, but not that much more difficult, either. John required agreement—not an easy, unreasoned acceptance, he wanted to share conviction, and to receive some sort of metaphorical applause for his conclusions, affirmation and validation of his abilities. While with Kevin, well, that had been her own mistake but still… He operated—perhaps more politely and with much more social awareness than Ben, but the underlying working had still been the same—with the conviction that if person A, meaning himself, had such strong feelings, then it was impossible that B didn’t or couldn’t return them to some degree, if not an equal one.

  That assumption, the forcing of one’s emotional state on another, had always infuriated her, as if one could be forced to feel a specific way for a specific person or place or idea, that one person’s feelings overrode another’s. That politeness, or even friendly kindness, implied some sort of deeper desire.

  Still, though, it didn’t matter, because in the end the results were the same, always the same, so damn easy, no challenge whatsoever and always the knowledge that underneath everything, they all really wanted the same thing: touch my dick. That was the gear that turned the world.

  The promise of sex, no matter how distant, improbable, or even downright impossible, was the overriding factor, the true coin of the realm, the purely self-serving basic motive—the true motive—behind every single interaction, no matter how seemingly innocent. Sex was the promise, the desire, the underpinning wish and hope that drove everything; men and women were, in that respect, no different from one another—or such had been Charli’s experience with everyone. Everyone wanted someone to get them off.

  Not everyone, she corrected herself. There had been one exception, and that exception—Charlie muffled her sigh, forced the painful thud that shook her chest down and in, contained someplace she’d reach for later as another door hove into view.

>   John almost imperceptibly tightened his grip on her arm and the pace quickened.

  It seemed to be the entrance to yet another lab, retrofitted for security purposes. The entire complex as they’d walked through it looked that way to her—old construction, with newer overlays. What was it John had said? They were able to operate as long as all the air vented out, and took extra precautions in addition to working at—was it Level Three? Whatever it was, Charli was pretty sure she knew what the money was going to: upgrading the facility—it surely needed it.

  That didn’t matter at the moment, she told herself impatiently as they approached. This was it, then, where the exchange for the substances she’d been told about earlier would happen unless she could delay or derail his plans. She racked her mind for anything she could remember from high school and the requisite classes she’d taken in college. Most labs were the same, weren’t they? Had to have certain universal characteristics.

  She saw the panel on the wall, the inset rectangle with its clear plexi cover and evenly spaced holes. One was green, which meant, if she remembered correctly, oxygen. The other was yellow—she got a quick glance at the plastic label between the openings. Emergency valve shut-off, she read.

  There were gas lines in there, she realized as she self-consciously slipped her hand into her pants pocket. Her fingers found the brochure she’d jammed in there earlier, then curled comfortably around the matchbook beneath it. Something in that room—either in what she assumed would be the connection they’d hook into for the laptop John carried or in the surrounding structure itself—something would help her to at least create a delay. There had to be something—maybe something electrical, or perhaps an issue with the laptop John carried, or even the network hookup. Whatever it was, she’d either find it or create it. She had to.