The First: EVO Uprising

by Kipjo Ewers

  “Any other orders you’d like to give us?” Abe dryly asked.

  “Only for you to kindly remember that all of this is not yours,” Graves displayed a false smile, “this belongs to the United States Government, and you are all its employees. And if I continue to see a lack of productivity or a growth of insubordination, I will shut you down, take all of your cute little toys, throw you out on your ear, and stretch the budget to pay someone a lot more to replace you. Do we have an understanding?”

  Both Rogers and Champion wore mirrored looks of displeasure toward Grave’s polite and professional threat.

  “Oh!” He snapped his fingers, “you do know divulging information of national security to a civilian is treasonous, and punishable by a very long federal prison sentence.”

  Erica smacked her lips knowing the comment was aimed toward her.

  “I really hate him,” Erica mentally whispered to Abe.

  “Me too,” he thought back, “and stay out of my head.”

  “No need to see us out,” he smirked, “we know the way. You need to get back to your ‘guest.’”

  He turned, strolling off not even giving them a second look as he, Mendes, and Dr. Alexander followed him back to the lift. Rogers noticed Lady Tech narrowing her eyes further as she locked onto Graves.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t trust Graves,” she sneered.

  “You didn’t go…” he began with a disapproving tone.

  “Of course I did,” she snapped back, “but I didn’t pick anything up… his thoughts mirrored his words, which means he has a device on him that can block me.”

  “How do you know?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Usually when we talk, we’re sometimes subconsciously thinking about something else,” she explained, “taking out the trash… the movie we saw the other night… all I picked up from what he was thinking is what he was actually saying. Also, even though they said nada, I couldn’t read Mendes or Dr. Alexander’s thoughts either.”

  “All three?” Abe narrowed his eyes.

  “Somehow they were shielding their thoughts from me.” Her nose twitched. “Which means there’s something they all know that they don’t want me to know.”

  “Let’s keep that between ourselves for now,” he furrowed his brow, “till we know what’s up.”

  “Mums the word,” she nodded.

  “And Dr. Champion,” Rogers watched as the lift took the trio back up to the surface, “real solid work out there today.”

  “I had a tough teacher,” she smirked. “That’s why I’m still alive.”

  The two briefly glanced at each other before heading back to the central command to deal with more pressing matters.

  ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜

  Several thousand miles away, Graves sat in his government-issued private helicopter across from Mendes and Dr. Alexander.

  “We’re clear now,” indicated Dr. Alexander.

  “Finally I can take this damn thing off,” Graves sighed.

  He pulled off a patch of “skin” from the side of his head; underneath it was a small silver disk that he laid down on the table in front of him.

  “I do hope this device of yours did its job, Dr. Alexander.” He glanced at him.

  “As I said it would,” indicated the doctor, “it only emits thoughts of what you are saying at the time, all of your other thoughts were cloaked from her via a psionic jamming frequency.”

  “Can’t take the chance of that nosey little brat digging into any of our skulls,” Graves huffed. “They’re not the figure heads I want, but they will have to do for now.”

  “Sir, is it really a good idea to start this over again?” asked Mendes. “Considering what happened last time, and if Ms. Dennison finds…”

  “That overpowered wench will never find out,” interrupted Graves dismissively. “My predecessor failed by making it personal and forgetting about his first duty which was to his country. I won’t make that same mistake. There will be no paper trail to follow because as usual none will be created. The only good that came out of the disaster in 2008 is now we have ample raw material to work with to do it better.”

  “But sir,” Mendes hesitantly asked, “is this really necessary now that the Regulators are online, even if premature?”

  Graves leaned forward to look Mendes in the eyes.

  “Mendes remember this,” he said sternly, “this country has remained great by the “heroes” created in the light to keep the masses’ mind at ease… and the monsters created in the dark that do what needs to be done no matter how unsettling it is… that is why project D.E.A.D… must be rebooted.”

  “Should I begin the profiling for a new team?” Mendes asked, finally falling in line.

  Dr. Alexander adjusted his glasses while Graves let off a low chuckle.

  “Candidates will not be necessary, Mendes,” Graves answered, leaning back in his seat. “As I said, no more mistakes… no more breaking in wild horses… this new team will be home grown.”

  “Sir,” Mendes swallowed, “you’re not talking about cloning?”

  Graves lazily turned to look out the window of his helicopter.

  “Sir,” Mendes stammered, “you do realize both the legal and ethical implications of this, not to mention how this looks from a religious standpoint.”

  “Mendes, do you remember why I hired you?” Graves continued to stare out of the window.

  “You said you weren’t just looking for the best candidate capable of doing the job, but someone who shared your views for what was best for our country,” Mendes swallowed. “You said I met both qualifications.”

  “Did I make a mistake?” he looked at his fingernail flicking dirt from underneath it.

  “No sir,” Mendes shook his head. “Not at all.”

  “Good,” he smiled, “because I like you Mendes, I really do. I would so hate for that to change. Dr. Alexander, enlighten me please, how long before we begin production?”

  “With our new process and samples, we will be able to produce full grown subjects in a span of two and a half years,” confirmed Dr. Alexander. “Actual production can take place in the next six months.”

  “Shoot for the six months, but if you need additional time do take it,” Graves advised, “zero mistakes can be made this time around. Zero.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Rosann, Adrian, and Oliver departed to get cleaned up and recover from the hellacious battle in Manhattan. Leaving Rogers and Lady Tech to deal with an extremely defensive Dennison still standing in the corner waiting for answers. Rogers gave her a dull look before turning to Erica.

  “So how do you want to play this?” he huffed.

  “How about we just do this girl to girl?” Erica answered. “You’re not exactly her biggest fan right now, and it’ll take away a lot of this tension.”

  “You sure you want to be left alone with her?” Rogers asked.

  “Dude, I’m a child,” she returned, “and I’m cute. She’s not going to do anything to me.”

  Rogers nodded to her logic. “You girls have fun.”

  As he walked off to find food and clean up, Erica turned displaying a bright Lolita smile toward an annoyed Sophia. It did not chip her hardened visage.

  “Okay,” she whistled with a gesture, “this way, please. It’s time to tell you everything that I know.”

  ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜

  Fifteen minutes later, Sophia’s bad mood had softened a bit as she was now fixated on the technological advancements of the Regulator’s base. Her head could not stop moving as she looked around at the various types of Doozers moving about the place either doing repairs, maintenance, or builds. She picked up a mini quadruped one that waved at her before scurrying up her arm, and jumping off her shoulder back down to the floor to go about its business. The act cracked a smile on her face for a b
rief minute, until she came upon the S.A.M unit without its armored shell standing dormant in a form of docking station. It underwent repairs by mini Doozers similar to the one she picked up, scurrying up and down its frame. Clearly, it was not like the ones she fought four years ago. Seeing it, however, brought back bad memories she had chosen to suppress leaving a very bad taste in her mouth.

  “It’s called a S.A.M,” Erica broke the ice with an introduction, “which stands for Synthetic Assault Mech, similar to the first generation ones you fought in DC seven years ago. He’s a second generation that I built from scratch. Unlike the ones you fought, he has his own A.I. so he can operate on his own, lessening neural link injury when I hook up to him.”

  “Neural link,” Sophia knitted her brows, “allows for it to mimic your movements by linking your neural synapse to its own.”

  “The originals which were called B.A.Ms.” Erica nodded while revealing the neural link on her neck. “Biological Assault Mechs, they were a fusion of cybernetic skeletal structure and shell, with a cloned organic muscular and nervous system. The idea behind the concept was to create machines similar to tanks that not only possessed raw strength, but speed and agility, while requiring very little maintenance or fuel.”

  “So that red liquid I saw was blood?” she asked.

  “A type of blood protein,” Erica explained. “A rich mixture of oxygen and adrenaline which saturates the muscle during high combat situations to give it additional strength and speed. S.A.M here is one hundred percent cybernetic down to the muscle, skeletal, pulmonary, and nervous system.”

  “Let me guess,” Sophia formulated getting closer, “you were able to reverse engineer the human body to fabricate its structure. What material did you use to construct the skeletal muscles?”

  “A special blend of carbon fiber that can mimic the expansion and retraction of an actual muscle with strength greater than Graphene; it took six fabricators and four days to create the whole system intricately. The rest was pretty easy, and overall less creepy, making him far stronger and superior to his predecessors,” she said. “Like his sisters he runs on Liquid Ion.”

  “Liquid Ion?” Sophia raised an eyebrow with a smirk. “Like liquid electricity? You actually turned fantasy into reality?”

  “Shaves off the reaction time by picoseconds.” She looked up at her mech with pride. “Delivering a near finite supply of power with three quarters the output of a nuclear power plant.”

  A look of impressiveness appeared on Sophia’s face for a split second. Her eyes narrowed as she turned to Lady Tech looking for more answers. Erica knew what she was thinking just by the expression on her face.

  “Let me guess,” Erica nervously smiled, “you thought you obliterated everything at Mount McLoughlin.”

  “Didn’t I?” she asked with a head tilt.

  “You were successful in wiping out the base and everything of value,” Erica answered. “Except for the upper half of a badly damaged B.A.M.”

  “So there was no data or samples left.” Sophia breathed a sigh of relief.

  “None that could be found,” Erica confirmed, “and from what I know every inch of that base was combed.”

  “I’m a bit surprised Dr. Champion.” Sophia continued to look at the Doozers working on the S.A.M. “I would not expect someone of your vast intelligence to be trolling around as a superhero.”

  Her remark made Erica blush as if her hand was caught in a cookie jar.

  “I keep up to date with what’s happening in the medical community,” she continued. “Your breakthroughs in Stem Cell and Cybernetic Genetic Research should have you in grant money until your retirement age. It’s also a lot less dangerous.”

  “We all know the military grants better access to toys for R&D, and less red tape. I could have Bill Gatesed it but, I don’t have the stomach for business, nor the desire to be a suit,” she smirked. “I just got tired of sitting behind a lab desk just working on experiments. It started to feel like my old life.”

  “You sound like you’re forty years old,” Sophia looked her up and down.

  “Actually as you already know.” Erica turned to her smiling. “I am autistic.”

  “You have Asperger syndrome,” Sophia confirmed.

  “I had a knack for numbers and puzzles but not very much else,” Erica sighed watching the Doozers work on her armor. “I can’t speak for others with my condition, but for me it was like that scene in Man of Steel when young Clark Kent was sitting in the classroom overwhelmed by his powers. Only my situation was a billion times stronger. That’s why a lot of us are viewed as idiot savants or the PC term autistic savants. We have the ability to receive data and information faster and better than anyone else, the problem is that our current processor cannot keep up with the continuous waves of information causing us to crash repeatedly to the point where we can barely function. The EVO virus gave me a better processor.”

  “So the real reason you became a dog of the military,” Sophia deduced, “was to further your research with the virus to find a cure?”

  “Dog of the military,” she beamed. “I love that, makes me feel so much like Full Metal.”

  “Well you built your own Alphonse.” Sophia motioned to her massive armored suit.

  The humorous anime references severely lighting whatever tension was floating about.

  “Seriously,” Erica glanced up at her, “if being a dog of the military will allow me to give others like me the gift I received; then slap a collar on me.”

  Sophia turned sitting on the guardrail separating them from the repair bay giving a listening ear.

  “One day I was banging my head against walls and throwing things in temper tantrums because I had run out of puzzles to do,” Erica nonchalantly scoffed. “I remember my mom crying in a corner because she could not help me. Then one morning the noise just stopped, and the world became clear and bright. I got up out of my bed, walked into our kitchen, and started making breakfast for my parents and three other siblings. Everyone woke to the smell of food, walked into the kitchen, and just stared at me. All I said was, ‘good Morning’ and my mom fainted right in front of us.”

  She leaned forward placing her forearms on the guardrail looking down as a little Doozer scurried pass her on to its next job.

  “After going through a series of tests to clear me to attend regular school,” she smirked, “I went ballistic. I blew through school, high school, and college like a whirlwind. A part of me also had a chip on my shoulder as I did it. Eventually the world around me began to feel small and primitive. I started to view everyone around me as my former self before the virus… even my own family.

  “What should have drawn us closer, ended up making us distant.” Her smile dropped a bit. “It wasn’t their fault. My dad’s a first generation Anchor baby from Mexico. He worked in construction for eight years while getting his degree in IT, he’s now a CEO of his own IT company, that’s where I got my love for tech. My mom was a junior analyst for a hedge fund. They met while my father was pitching a new protective firewall to her company. She climbed up the corporate ladder to be a senior executive and was one year from making partner before she decided to resign so she could spend more time taking care of me. But even though I never said it to their faces, I saw them as slow and stupid like everyone else. I think they saw it in my eyes when I looked at them too. It also didn’t help that I could read their minds and I started doing this.”

  Erica extended her hand as another Doozer with a red and black color scheme ran by. It stopped in its tracks as it began to levitate off the ground. The curious little machine waited while looking around attempting to comprehend the phenomenon. As she lowered it back to the ground, it took a minute to recalibrate before heading about its business again.

  “I’m not as powerful as say Mind Blast from the Defenders of Justice,” she smiled, “but it was enough to scare the hell out of my mom. She called my abuela and both my aunts, who came armed to the teeth with crosses, incents,
candles, and a live chicken. When I turned thirteen, I asked to be emancipated from them, and they both agreed and granted it. Been on my own ever since which is for the best.”

  “You don’t miss them?” Sophia asked.

  “I check in on them from time to time.” Erica shrugged. “Usually just to know that they and the family are okay and healthy. It’s usually an uncomfortable five to ten minute conversation. This maybe the coldest thing I will ever say, but it’s a small sacrifice to pay to get rid of the hell I was in and feel normal. Everything else I’ve obtained is just a bonus. I wouldn’t wish that existence on my worst enemy.”