by G T Almasi
“Hey.” Doska picks this marvelous time to comm in. “Darwin, Scarlet. You guys all right up there?”
Both of us answer, “We’re fine!”
Doska hesitates. “What’re you guys, like, quarreling or something?”
“No!” my partner and I comm.
“Uhh, ho-kay.” Doska leaves his comm-line open and says to Krysta, “Hey, they’re fighting.”
Through Doska’s commphone we faintly hear Krysta ask, “The SZ?”
“No, each other. They’re having a spat.”
Pause.
Long inhale from Krysta, then howls of laughter.
The last time someone laughed at me like that was martial arts class. I shattered her leg. No one laughed after that. Nobody would get in the ring with me, either, so I had to spar with the instructor. But this is different because I deserve it.
“We’ll be right there.” Patrick cuts the comm-call. He straightens up. “How you feeling?”
“Better,” I say sheepishly. Doska put it mildly when he said this little episode is not too cool. An Interceptor who faints during a mission is about as useful as a toilet made of shit. I’ve gotten away with my spells so far because they haven’t happened in front of anyone else. Now, however, word will spread because Doska has to mention it in his after-action report, which means so does my partner.
Patrick pulls me to my feet again. This time I remain upright.
“Still dizzy?”
“More embarrassed than anything else.” I draw my sidearms. “C’mon, let’s go.”
We lope past the burning SZ mess hall. All the troopers we see are dead, wounded, or busy fighting the fires. We advance between two rows of storage sheds.
“Over here!” Krysta comms. “On your left.”
We stop and peer into a small, dark alley between a pair of sheds.
“Down here,” Krys comms. His decapitated head sits on the ground, waiting for us.
Fuck. I’m hallucinating.
I glance at Patrick. His gaze is pointed at…the head. My partner moves into the alley.
Have I infected Brando?
I follow. On the dirt next to Krysta’s head is a heavy round metal plate. We’re almost on top of Krys when I finally realize he’s peeking from the top of a manhole shaft. The rest of his fully capitated self stands inside the hole.
“Watch your step.” Krys drops out of sight. Within the recess, a steel ladder leads straight down. We shimmy through the manhole and slide below.
Krysta leads us along a plain, concrete tunnel. Signs to this and that are painted on the walls with glow-in-the-dark paint.
He comms, “How you feeling, Scarlet?”
“I’m fine.”
“Should you…uh, maybe hang back?”
It’s too dark for Krysta to see me frown at him. “I said I’m fine, Krysta.”
“Okay, then.”
Patrick changes the subject, “How’d you guys find this?”
Krys comms, “A bunch of the surviving soldiers were gathered in that alley. Dos noticed their number dwindling until we saw the last few climb down here.”
“And Carbon?” I ask.
“We scouted the complex until we found a laboratory. But it doesn’t match the cloning facilities you’ve described.”
I resist asking about Fredericks. Krysta would tell me if they’d found Scorpio hanging around down here. The three of us approach a right-angle intersection with another tunnel. Krysta stops walking. “The lab is straight ahead, but the guards went this way.” He points into the side passage.
Krysta opens our team comm-channel. “Dos, I’m in the main tunnel with Scarlet and Darwin.”
“Understood,” Doska answers. “How’re you feeling, Scarlet?”
I press my teeth together. “I’m fine.”
“You wanna hang back?”
“No!”
“Ha-hm. Okay, then.”
Time to reassert my authority. “Gimme a sit-rep, Doska.”
“You bet. I have eyes on a large group of SZ competitors.”
“Where are you?”
“It’s hard to describe. Can you follow my comm-sig?”
“Yes. We’ll be right there.”
We follow Krysta into the side tunnel. Presently we approach a closed metal door. Krysta passes the door, proceeds another dozen or so steps until we’re in front of a ventilation shaft. The vent’s detached cover leans against the wall. Krys crawls into the ventilation shaft. We trail after him.
Inside the vent we find Doska, silently crouched behind a louvered grate. Voices echo from beyond the aluminum slats. Very distressed voices.
I lean toward the grate and study the large room inside. Desks and chairs cluster in one corner. A row of dark-green bathtubs hunch up against a wall. In the room’s center stand thirty SZ troopers, all talking at once.
Doska comms, “My German isn’t very good, but one word I keep catching is ‘Luftwaffe.’ ”
I’ll bet.
“Is Schweinhund something?”
“Yeah.” Patrick grins. “The word means ‘pigdog,’ but it’s like calling someone an asshole. Anything else?”
“One sec, let me rewind my Day Loop.” Doska pauses, then comms, “What does pensionierter Offizier mean?”
I comm, “Retired officer.”
“How about Eine grosse Truppe?”
I answer, “Literally, ‘a big troop,’ but in this case it could mean a large force, like an army.”
“Ah, okay, well.” Dos leans away from the vent. “A retired German officer is raising an army to oppose Markus Wolf’s forces.”
“Who?” Even as I ask this, my eyes meet my partner’s.
“His name is Victor Eisenberg,” comms Doska.
Brando’s smile is mirrored by my own.
Vic, you magnificent bastard.
“I’ve never heard of him,” comms Dos. “Have you?”
“We met him last year, during ANGEL. He’s the perfect guy to lead a counter-coup.” Patrick leans forward and looks through the vent cover.
Within the large room, the blackbirds’ chattering gives way to the voice of a single man, a captain. The officer tells his dispirited grunts that reinforcements are coming, then he orders them back to their posts.
Doska comms, “If the Fritzes spread out, it’ll take much longer to eliminate them.”
Without another word, Krys and I draw our weapons. I set Li’l Bertha to .22-caliber Explosives. Punx clings to my right palm.
Brando grabs my arm and hisses, “Go easy, Hot Stuff. Send Krysta first.”
“No way, I’m—”
My partner’s eyes flare with anger.
Jesus Looweezus. Okay!
“Krysta,” I comm. “You enter first. I’ll be directly behind you.”
“Yes, sir,” he answers. “Er, I mean, ma’a—”
“Stop!” I cut him off. “A ‘yep’ is fine.” I turn to Krysta’s partner. “Doska, you help Darwin, understand?”
Doska replies, “A-a-a-yep.”
I nod at my partner. “Go ahead.”
Brando rolls onto his back and aims the soles of his boots at the ventilation grate. I increase my flow of Madrenaline, a little. Patrick kicks out the vent cover, which drops from its mount and clangs to the floor.
Krysta jumps from the ventilation shaft, spins left, and vanishes from my point of view. The ceiling flashes in time to automatic fire from his 503. The stunned soldiers barely have time to duck before some of them fly off their feet and fall to the cement floor.
At full boost I’d literally launch into the room, but with my limited Madrenaline the best I can do is pitch myself through the vent opening and tumble into a crouched firing position. I stick my pistols in front of me and pull their triggers.
I move my arms apart and then yank them together like I’m operating a bellows. The streams of fire from my bullet-hoses overlap as I cross my arms. Then I swing Li’l Bertha and Punx from side to side.
The mass of competitors scream, twitch, and spin. Their bodies become red shapes against pure white walls. The floor is drowned in black spattered heat.
My pistols run dry. I yank out the empties and ram full clips into each grip. The confined air is so foul with gunsmoke I have to remain on my knees to breathe. A hot, brackish lake sloshes across the floor. My weapons look for more targets, but Li’l Bertha’s data screen returns negative.
Krysta reloads his 503 and comms, “All competitors down. Nice shooting, Scarlet.”
Our Info Operators jump from the vent tunnel into the lagoon of congealing red goo.
“Blech.” Patrick examines the soles of his boots. “I suppose it’s a little late to remind you to leave a couple for questioning?”
I don’t answer. I’ve always hated that rule. Besides, I’m in charge here.
The smoke begins to dissipate into the ventilation system. We stand and survey the carnage. The space looks like a bomb went off in a mannequin factory. Their matching uniforms make the hideously mangled bodies look interchangeable, like a bunch of ripped-apart action figures. The similarity of their heads—short hair and fair skin—enhances the surreal spectacle before us.
One of the heads rolls itself over and says—
Brando gently pulls me to the door. We exit to a narrow hallway. Harsh overhead lights, sternly worded signage, and gray, thickly painted concrete blocks march into the distance in both directions. The signs to the right indicate an exit; to the left are a set of freshly smeared footprints.
Patrick and I follow the footprints. Krys and Dos follow the EXIT sign.
We’ve only gone thirty or forty yards when red, dripping handprints appear on the wall. It’s like one of those House of Horror rides at a carnival. We hustle around a bend and nearly trip over Mr. Handprint, who drags himself through a thickening pool along the dark floor.
From the sucker’s hat we can tell he’s the officer who was rallying the bongo brigade. The son-of-a-bitch is still breathing even though he’s bleeding out faster than a broken bottle of ketchup. A bite from his skull is missing, and his elbow is bent the wrong way. The fact that he’s alive at all tells me he’s incredibly tough. He’s also incredibly unlucky, since now he’ll suffer our brutal interrogation technique.
Patrick opens his shoulder bag and pulls out a small black plastic box with two long red wires neatly wrapped around it. Each wire is tipped by a sharp silver spike. My partner unspools the thin cables and gives one to me.
I jab the electrode’s heavy needle into Handprint’s back, just above his tailbone. Screams and flying saliva. I hold the man’s head steady. Brando zings the second electrode through the kraut’s right eye. I lift my hands off our prisoner’s skin so I’m not touching him anywhere, then my partner flips a switch on his black box. Wild shrieks, splintering dentistry, and acrid, greasy smoke. A hot stench like boiling urine surges into my nostrils.
The Thackery Procedure never fails to amaze and astonish.
In German, Patrick barks, “Where is the Gestapo taking the American prisoner?”
Handprint’s mouth is spasming so violently we can’t understand him. My partner shuts off the juice and asks again. “We know the secret police were here. Where are they taking the American?”
“Ich weiss n-n-nichts!” I don’t know!
“Yes, you do!” Brando shouts. “He’s tall, mid-fifties, with gray hair. Where did they take him?”
My vision flickers off and on a few times, like a kid playing with a light switch.
“M-m-m-nnn-h-h-hhh…”
“Speak!”
“M-…Mun…cheh.” Munich.
The officer’s smoldering features stretch themselves into a grotesque mask. His throat emits a wet gasp and Hauptmann Handprint abruptly stops moving.
I unplug the electrodes and wipe them on my pants. Brando waves the pungent fumes away from his face as he packs the equipment back into his bag. We leave the dead man and retrace our steps. I jog along behind my partner. Our footfalls echo like a violin being hit with a brick.
My sense of sight is still fritzing out. I press my fingers to my eyes and feel my lashes rapidly brush my fingertips. My eyes are blinking involuntarily.
Terrific.
I take a few deep breaths and hold one eye shut at a time, alternating left and right.
“Guys,” Patrick comms. “We’ve got a lead on Fredericks.”
“Okay, cool,” Doska comms back. “We’re inside the laboratory.”
“Anything interesting?”
“You’d better come see for yourself,” Krysta answers.
Patrick turns to me and cocks an eyebrow. I pull my hands away from my face. We pass the Chamber of Dismemberment and continue on. Glistening, blood-specked footprints lead to a catwalk over a broad, natural cavern. Fifteen feet below, Krysta and Doska wait for us.
Everything in the cavern is arranged around three gleaming metal boxes big enough to be coffins. Surrounding them are three rings of liquid-filled containers. The inner ring consists of glass vessels no bigger than a teakettle. The middle ring is made up of transparent receptacles the size of a dishwasher. The big capsules in the third, outermost ring are occupied by full-grown humans, presumably clones of the Originals in one of the high-tech caskets.
Patrick and I walk down the steps to the main floor. I decrease my Madrenaline flow and give myself a boost of Kalmers to make my eyes chill out.
The facility was very recently evacuated, probably because of our airstrike. Lab books with half-written entries lie open next to mugs of still-warm coffee. As we pass Krysta and Doska, I notice they’re both pale.
“What’s the matter with you lugs?”
“Scarlet,” Doska says quietly, “you’d better brace yourself.”
My partner and I continue into the rings. I look back and say, “I’m fine, Doska. That only happens once in a blue—”
Patrick grabs my arm. “Dear God in heaven.”
I follow Brando’s eyes to the middle and inner rings. The contents of the medium and small tanks are flesh-colored, but they’re shaped like…well they aren’t shaped like anything that makes sense.
“Parts.” Patrick leans heavily against one of the big capsules. “They’re making parts.”
Doska has moved to a computer station tucked under the catwalk, but not to patch in. He’s so stunned he needs to sit down.
My sense of vision loses color and everything turns black-and-white. I kneel on the floor. My pant legs leave syrupy dark smears on the polished white tile. Too much of what I’ve seen on this mission has been straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
Patrick takes a seat next to Doska. The two IOs turn to the terminals in front of them and begin hacking in. Meanwhile Krysta slowly paces around the rings. I join him. We both swivel our heads around to make sure we record everything.
Floating in the tanks are pieces of people. Organs. Limbs. A jawbone complete with teeth. The medium-sized tank in front of me contains a perfectly healthy-looking right forearm and hand. It’s never been attached to anyone; the skin on the elbow is too smooth, too perfect. This arm before me, those teeth over there, that set of lungs across the ring. These disembodied things were grown.
What the devil are they doing here?
My last few missions have taught me a lot about Germany’s decades-long cloning program, Carbon. It began as a British effort to clone the hardiest specimens of grain crops like wheat, barley, and rice. After the Fritzes conquered Europe, they repurposed the British research to focus on cloning humans. The first phase attempted to reproduce a human embryo. That was Generation One, or Gen-1. The project sucked down
billions of marks—more than three Manhattan Projects—but it worked. In 1958, Carbon stunned the world by cloning a human being.
The next phase, Gen-2, used twice as much money to create full-grown adults. This also worked, although it took almost twenty years. The Gen-2 clones aren’t exactly a success, however. Their bodies are mature, but their minds are not. They’re literally big babies who must pass through the same emotional phases as regular children.
Gen-3 will try to build on the first two generations. It’s insanely ambitious. The Carbon scientists are attempting to transfer an Original’s complete consciousness into a clone—memories, personality, education, everything. The German biologists call it psychogenesis.
American scientists think psychogenesis is impossible, but I’m not sure. After all, we said the same thing about clones in general. But the abomination we’ve walked into doesn’t fit anything I know about Carbon. The laboratory is well kept, but obviously not brand new. These lunatics have been at this for a while.
As Krysta and I return to the lab’s control center, I call out, “Doska, Darwin, what happens to these…uh, specimens when the researchers are done with them?”
My partner says, “Some of the samples are implanted in people, and the rest are taken upstairs and cremated.”
Stacks of burning rib cages. A skull in the corner. Columns of hot, greasy smoke rush up to a darkening cloud.
Inhale.
Finger painting. Island of Misfit Toys. Dad cannonballs into a pool and splooshes a column of transparent water up to a sunlit sky.
Exhale.
“What about the Originals?”
“There are no Originals.” Patrick rapidly types on the terminal keyboard. “Everything in here was created with cloned material.”
Great. A self-sustaining bleakosystem.
“Holy shit!” Brando whips his fingers away from the terminal’s keyboard like the thing is on fire. He stares at the screen, eyes flicking back and forth. Doska, Krysta, and I hold our breath waiting to hear the latest awesomely borked-up thing that’s happened.
Patrick presses his fingers against his temples and looks at me. “ExOps has been suspended.”