Subject 12

by S. W. Douglas

  I chose what fit me best.

  "I think Hammer will do for now."

  She quirked an odd little smile and sniffed as she took my hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Hammer."

  "I'm glad you think so. I have the feeling that there are few people who would agree with you."

  "The same could be said of Steamroller, my friend. Come on. It's too late for breakfast but I'm sure Vivian will want you to eat something after she's done poking at you."

  I laughed, an evil thought crossing my mind. "That'll be a switch."

  I wasn't thinking any faster but it was like a fog that had been living in my brain had burned away. Connections I hadn't seen before were suddenly obvious and memories of things said and done came unbidden to me to take my thoughts in new directions.

  A farmer, Jessie had said. Her mother was a farmer.

  Clockwork was Jessie's father.

  Grid Iron's smile and mocking laughter.

  The time on my thirteenth birthday when Wendy Fong had given me my gift after the party. The smell of her perfume as she undid her bra and the feel of her bare skin against mine as she worked her hands on me.

  They came at first in a trickle and then in a rush, all distinctly clear and forcing themselves upon me with all the urgency and gentleness of a prison shower gang-rape and with much the same impact. I screamed and screamed and screamed, slamming my head against the wall, beating my fists against the wood until my knuckles bled and my throat was raw...

  My eyes snapped open and my hands flew to my head. I was laying on the floor in the medical room. My throat was a little sore but my knuckles were pristine and my head didn't hurt.

  "Could someone please tell me what just happened?"

  Venom's face appeared above me. She looked concerned but relieved. "You came in here with Corrine, I told you to wait a minute while I finished mixing up some ointment for Wildcard, you sat down and all of a sudden you stood up screaming, took a couple of steps towards me, and fell forward. I no more than flipped you on your back when you convulsed, so I took a step back. When it wasn't repeated I made sure you were breathing and went to get my flashlight to make sure you hadn't given yourself a concussion when you fell. As soon as I turned my back you asked for an explanation."

  "I see." Damn it. This confirmed some of my fears. "I think I have full control of my arms and legs, but if you could give me a hand up I'd appreciate it."

  Venom extended her hand and I took it, using it as a balance point I pushed off from the floor and slowly got to my feet.

  "Thank you." I took a cleansing breath and let it out slowly. "I haven't felt something like that in years." I smiled and squeezed her hand gently. "What did you put in that IV?"

  "A little of this, a little of that?" I could read the nervousness on her face like a large-print book.

  And that was the clincher. "I already know, Viv. Just tell me."

  "Well, you have to understand that I didn't know what else to do. You were pretty badly hurt and even though you heal fast..."

  "Please," I said gently. "Just tell me."

  "I couldn't think of anything else, I swear."

  "Vivian, please." I let her hand go and stepped back as another mild wave of nausea washed over me. "I know, but I need to hear it."

  "I synthesized more of the serum from your blood and gave you as much as I dared." She bit her lip. "I monitored everything and made sure your vital signs stayed within range, and you started to get better so goddamn fast..."

  "Thank you," I said, sagging. "I think I need a moment."

  "Are you alright?"

  "Yes." I sat in one of the chairs and put my face in my raised palms, my elbows on my legs. "I'm fine."

  I could feel her standing there, her arm outstretched, but a lack of surety held her palm tantalizingly close while not touching me. So she had dosed me again. My wildest dreams and worst fears were coming true.

  And then I heard them. The voices, the screams, the gibbering from deep inside me. My own insanity, my darkest nightmares, all rushing back. It was happening faster than before, more intensely, but that was to be expected. The IV bottle (Who still used those, anyway? I thought those went out of fashion in the 1970's.) had been nearly empty, and the memory of it was so sharp I could see the meniscus ring from how high it'd been. I hadn't been dosed with that much serum the entire year I'd been a test subject for it combined.

  "I've just been damned to my own personal hell again," I said, mostly to myself.

  I ate a slice of a special breakfast apple pie that had been saved for me. Since we only had about half an hour before it was time to leave for the airport I was eating in a hurry. I was the only one in the house that had a problem with traveling by jumper --- to be fair I made a bigger deal of it than was needed --- but it had nothing to do with my comfort that we weren't getting jumped.

  That sounded wrong. But I digress.

  Apparently even the four of them weren't priority for jumpers when there were so many Guild members who were too far away to travel by any other means. The memorial didn't start till mid-afternoon, there was a private jet kept at a nearby airport for travel under these circumstances, so while I was having a bite to eat the others were finishing their packing.

  I still hadn't seen what they'd purchased for me, but I was assured I could change in the plane. For some reason that didn't bolster my confidence.

  The pie was delicious. It had a granola-based crust that reminded me of really good apple crisp topping and the filling was sweet with just enough tang to make it really interesting. I washed it down with milk so fresh the cream was starting to separate and cold enough it made a couple of my teeth hurt. Venom had been adamant that I not have any meat for at least thirty-six hours after I'd finished taking the serum. She was worried about a protein reaction that might turn my blood into pudding. Apparently the serum could cause crystals not dissimilar to kidney stones to form in the bloodstream. That certainly explained what happened to a few of my fellow test subjects.

  It also meant no beans, not that I was a big chili-for-breakfast kind of guy. The milk had been allowed under protest and I was limited to one glass. The water was less appealing, but at least it would keep me from spitting snot for the next two hours, so I saved it for last.

  I hadn't had a full-blown psychotic episode yet. Yes, it was a little early in the cycle for one, but I'd never been megadosed with the stuff before. What happened now was a mystery to me. All I could go on was what had happened before.

  The freak-out/pass-out earlier had given me an appetite. If memory served, it had never done that before. Too bad I was going to find out the hard way what new things I had waiting in the background. I would have rather just wondered for the rest of my life.

  Speaking of my life, I had no doubts Venom had saved it. The heart monitor was a recent model that saved the last four patient readouts for review if needed. She'd called mine up and shown me how irregular my heart rate was, how low my blood pressure was getting. My respiration rate had neared that of hibernation. As near as I could figure, the Dragon Breath, or the antidote, had done more damage than anyone had counted on. Couple that with my exertions, stress, pheromone poisoning, and everything else that had gone on in recent memory and I wasn't in the best of shape. Now if we toss in the beating I'd taken from Jackhammer right before Corrine had nearly shattered my skull and my spine, we end up with me in iffy shape. Possibly too much for me to recover from, though I wasn't totally sold on the idea I wouldn't have if I hadn't been helped:

  If Venom hadn't dosed me I might have healed up, but I might not have survived. If my brain had suffered any damage from the blood pressure and hypoxia issues I might have gone through... Of course, the hell I was going to go through before too much longer might be far worse.

  But at least I had a chance of surviving it and still being me when I was done.

  Corrine had served me breakfast herself before running off to pack.

  Corrine. I really was thinking of her
as Corrine and not Steamroller. She was no longer a mystical, almost-mythical being. She was human, flesh and blood, and I felt closer to her than I'd thought I ever would.

  Wildcard was Wildcard because even Venom, who used to date him, called him Wildcard. I wonder if they ever knew his given name.

  Jackhammer was Jackhammer and would always be Jackhammer. Somehow, Jack just didn't really fit. At least not to me.

  Finally, Venom --- whom I'd had sex with --- was still Venom and not Vivian.

  There was something wrong with that. Something very wrong.

  I could smell the low-tar cigarette long before anyone came into view. I was grateful for it. After six days in the bush I smelled of sweat and mud, and if the breeze came up they would smell me long before they saw me. I might not have been a master of camouflage but I knew how to hide in the jungle with a few streaks of campfire soot and some severed vegetation fairly well, but after six days, crushed up charcoal from last night's campfire rubbed into your armpits didn't kill the smell anymore.

  The heat, even after two weeks in-country, was oppressive. So was the humidity. The breeze I'd been dreading seemed reluctant to come, and for that I was thankful.

  The guards were sloppy, but that's what you get when your firepower was six magnitudes greater than anyone else in the immediate neighborhood. And you had enough jungle between you and them as to make a casual approach as unlikely as a bear living in a Manhattan apartment without disturbing the grumpy bastard upstairs. They walked by me without even looking into the greenery even though I was close enough to trip them. Hell, the free-fire zone they'd cut the year before when the camp had been built was down to about arm's length, in several places with huge leaves resting on or poking through the chain link fence. It proved it wasn't electrified, not that I was expecting it to be. I couldn't hear a generator running anywhere and the solar panels mounted over the main building looked insufficient to do more than charge some batteries and run the lights.

  We'd been given standard-issue M4A1 carbines and a thousand rounds of mil-spec ammunition to split up amongst eight men, twenty grenades --- ten fragmentation and ten concussion --- to go with them, and a pistol with twenty rounds of 9mm NATO-spec hardball and one demolition charge for each of us. Our mission was to infiltrate undetected and detonate.

  Being soldiers, we called missions like this IUDs. This IUD was to show some petty warlord in some third-world hellhole that Kinsey and Alpha Zulu had a long enough reach to hit him even here, in the very depths of his stronghold. This one, the rumor mill had eventually ground out, had not only refused to allow Alpha Zulu to move freely through his territory but had insulted Kinsey personally. My team was to knock out the main building, or at least damage it severely, and another team was to cut off his cocaine suppliers, crippling his finances at least temporarily.

  If he happened to be in the building when the charge(s) went off and he didn't come out then there was supposed to be a bonus. That part came from the man who'd told me to plan and execute the mission.

  I wiped my palm on a cargo pocket before slipping my fingers inside to pull out a floppy tube. I bit the end off and sucked the sweetish contents out before dropping it to the jungle floor. I ground it into the mud for a couple seconds to disguise it. It would decay in twelve hours without the gel inside stabilizing it. I had about a minute before the chemicals I'd just swallowed hit my system.

  It was a standard Alpha Zulu combat dope. For twenty minutes the pain from any wound I might get would be halved and the potent antibiotics would help keep infections at bay. The downside was I'd shake like a newborn calf in about an hour unless adrenaline was still pumping and most people taking one would wish they hadn't the next day when breakfast decided to leave in a hurry.

  My plan was simple. Wait till the guards passed, cut through the fence, and sneak as close to the main building as possible. Then hopefully set the charges and leave without firing a shot, but the priority was to get at least one charge on the wall. As such each charge was wired with a twelve-second pin-primer and a button-set one-minute countdown.

  The guards rounded the corner. I waited thirty seconds and raised my hand then dropped it like a hammer. Advance. The four men watching me would relay the signal and we'd all be going through the fence inside one minute.

  So far so good, I thought to myself as I rounded the corner of a wooden building. The main building was just over there and nobody had seen me. If anyone had spotted any of my men they'd been dealt with silently. Time to hit it and quit it.

  And that's when the gunfire started. First it was the flat cracks of the M4A1s, followed by the instantly recognizable chatter of the guards' Kalashnikovs, but it wasn't long before the heavier note of some machine guns joined in.

  I ducked behind some crates so the group of guards I'd spotted running my way wouldn't see me, but it was too late and they started firing. I pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it, counting to four before it exploded, then popped over the edge of the crate and started pulling the trigger. I saw a guard's face disintegrate as the bullets tore through it. I cycled the rifle dry and dropped, pulling the magazine loose and slamming a fresh one home before slapping the bolt closed. Nobody had returned fire so I cautiously looked over the crates again. The grenade had gotten two and my shots had taken out the third, but number four had run away.

  I ran for the building, all pretense of stealth gone. If I was going to get a charge laid I needed to do it soonest. Luckily it was close enough I could almost spit on it from where I'd been spotted.

  I threw myself to the ground to avoid hitting the building and possibly alerting anyone inside to my presence. I pulled the charge free and thumbed the detonator live before sticking it to the wall with the adhesive strips on the back. I had one minute to get clear before the fireworks really started going.

  I got back to my feet and look a hurried look around before taking off for the fence again. I knew where I'd entered relative to where I was so I was headed back there. The continuing gunfire told me at least one of my men was still alive. Well, once the bomb went off anyone who was left would withdraw, and hopefully we'd all meet at the rendezvous point in an hour.

  I'd almost made the fence when the first bullet tore into my leg. The dope kept the pain from overwhelming me but it must have hit something important because my next step made the leg go out on me. I hit the ground and tried to roll but the shooter had anticipated the maneuver and sent another slug ripping through my upper arm. The shock alone was enough to make me sprawl, but my entire arm went numb and threw my balance off when I fell on it. I slid and my head hit a rock that had been too big to remove when the place had been built. Consciousness became an iffy thing and I laid there, groaning, for the few seconds it took for whoever had shot me to reach me. I felt a boot poke at my back before crashing into my side with enough force to cave ribs. Dope or no dope I felt the pain flash through me. It was all I could do not to scream. I could taste the blood from how tightly I was biting my lip.

  Then, suddenly, I found myself on my back staring up into the barrel of a gun. Pain from my wounds lanced through me with every breath, every heartbeat. All I could hear was evil, gleeful laughter and the smell of gut wounds starting to fester in the heat. Fear assaulted me. I squinted against the pain and bright sun to see the face of my tormenter but all I could see was a dark shape against the searing light. The laughter increased and without warning the shape moved to block out the sun so I could see his face clearly.

  Kinsey laughed and with a sadistic grin he pulled the trigger.

  I snapped awake. I had no idea where I was for a moment and I fought rising panic until I could remember I was on the plane, bound for Reno, and the Titans were in the main cabin playing a game of poker for matchsticks.

  My heart was racing and I could still feel the pain of the dream wounds to my leg and arm. I forced my breathing to slow and in a few moments I wiped the sweat from my forehead. My hands were shaking.

  The dream had sca
red me, which was normal. Nightmares were a side-effect of the serum, so I wasn't surprised by the one I'd had, but what really scared me was the fact that I didn't remember falling asleep or even feeling tired. We'd driven to the airport, boarded the plane, all normal, and it wasn't too long before Wildcard had pulled out a deck of cards and I'd suggested a game of poker to pass the time. I'd won the first three hands when I'd needed to go to the bathroom, so I'd gone and then I'd decided to check out the outfit they'd bought me, so I'd excused myself further, gone into the private room, unzipped the suit carrier...

  And then I was in the jungle, rerunning a mission I'd done for Alpha Zulu years ago, but with a different ending. I couldn't remember what had happened in the middle. Apparently I hadn't objected to the suit because I was wearing all of it except the mask.

  I looked at myself in the full-length mirror to see what the blasted thing looked like. There wasn't a cape and it wasn't yellow spandex, I was relieved to see. It was black, leathery, and had a stylized red star embossed on the chest. I poked at it and found it was removable so it came off and buried itself in the bed. Overall, I was forced to admit, it was not only unobjectionable, it was comfortable. If I wasn't mistaken, it was made out of the same material that a lot of super hero and villain costumes were comprised of. That meant it was temperature stable, comfortable, insulated, puncture- and abrasion-resistant to a high degree, damn hard to cut, and while not bulletproof, it was very resistant. It breathed, it didn't chafe, and while it wasn't space-age enough that sweat would clean it, it had replaceable carbon inserts in the armpits and crotch to help mask any sweat smell if it was worn for days at a time. Dry clean only, of course, but nothing's perfect.

  The mask was a different matter.

  First off it was some rubbery material that I couldn't rule out as spandex, though jumping to that right away just proved I was getting obsessed with the idea. It didn't look comfortable and the fine powder coating the inside didn't encourage me to just try slipping it on.