by Nick Thacker
No, he was the perfect candidate for his team for another reason: his intuition and ability to read a person. He had a proven track-record for determining the trustworthiness of another person, after only a few minutes speaking with them. It was both a talent, given to him by God, as well as a honed skill. An art he cherished and practiced.
They needed Father Canisius to determine whether or not their investment here, with Orland Group, would pan out.
They needed him to secure their assets.
He wiggled his clerical collar again and checked his makeup once more. Finding everything satisfactory, he flipped off the light switch and stepped out of the hotel bathroom.
11
Ben
“Ben, a word?”
Ben’s mind was moving a hundred miles an hour. First, Victoria Reyes’ news that she would be heading to Peru. Second, the news about the disappeared villagers and the dead farmer. Then, as if that weren’t enough, Julie’s revelation that she remembered what had happened. That she remembered what Vicente Garza had done to her.
“Yeah, buddy, what’s up?” he asked. He stepped over to where Reggie was waiting, just inside the cabin’s front door. While there hadn’t been very many people at the wedding, it still felt to Ben like too many. Too many conversations to juggle, too many hands to shake.
“About Julie,” Reggie said. “She gonna be okay?”
Ben shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I guess. I’m not a, you know…”
“A shrink?”
“Right, I’m not a shrink.”
“You think she should see one?”
“No idea. Probably. Hard to say. I never have, and God knows I could use one.”
“I have,” Reggie said. “They’re not all bad. Usually pretty good, actually. Might be worth going, just to see.”
Ben sniffed. Looked down at his drink, which was dwindling. Reggie reached for it, and Ben gave it to him. “Yeah,” he said. “I might do that.”
Reggie topped off their drinks with the bourbon he’d gotten Ben for the wedding, and added a huge cube-shaped piece of ice into the top of it.
“Sorry it’s not a proper build,” Reggie said.
“Huh?”
“The drink — it’s supposed to be ice-first. Then liquor.”
Ben chuckled. “Yeah, like I care about that.”
Reggie grinned. “Well, you know… that’s sorta the way we do things here. In this little group.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know,” Reggie said. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. You wanna find your friends who’ve been kidnapped, you call the police. That’s the right way.”
“I liked my way better.”
“Oh, trust me,” Reggie said. “Me too.” His grin extended all the way around his face. Ben hadn’t seen that smile for a long time — it was a characteristic of Reggie’s, and he’d had a hard time showing it of late.
“What’s your point?”
“Well, just that I think the CSO, by definition, does things… a little differently. We put the drink in, then stick the cube on top.”
“Okay…”
“So I’m saying that the ‘right’ way to handle this situation with Garza… the way we should do it, is to ignore it. Peru’s not exactly close, and Garza’s pretty well-protected down there. Hell, whoever we call wouldn’t even have jurisdiction.”
“Right, that’s my point,” Ben said. “That’s what I was trying to tell —”
“Unless we didn’t call someone by-the-book.”
Ben looked at him quizzically.
“Look, Ben. I got kicked out of the Army, but I was good. Real good. I turned some heads, and those heads have now risen through the ranks. They’ve kept an eye on me, and I think — I’m not sure, but I think — I could call in a favor or two.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, we can’t go to Peru. Not alone. The CSO, it’s — like you said — a suicide mission. We’re trained better now than we ever have been, but we’re still a handful of people. Not even a squad. Against Garza, who’s got an army of Ravenshadow grunts who’ll do whatever he says, and —”
“Giants. Possibly.”
“Right. But if we had a team, a group of soldiers, a surgical force…”
“You know people who would do that?”
“I know people who might be able to put something together. Mr. E might as well, but at least his word would help us out. There’s a guy I worked for way back when — Sturdivant. Career army guy. He’s in charge of a lot more now, including stuff like this.”
“You think they’d be up for it? Whoever these soldiers are?”
“I know they would be, Ben. It’s what they do — Rangers, 75th. They’re trained, the ones I know went through Ranger School, too. I think we could get a fireteam or squad down with us.”
“Reggie…”
“You’re scared?”
“Of course I’m scared!” Ben said. “I just got married. I feel like a kid, Reggie. I wasn’t trained like you, like Mrs. E.”
“You know my arm got chopped off last time I went, Ben?”
Ben looked at him, seething.
“You know what kept me going?”
“Adrenaline?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Reggie said. “That was part of it. Adrenaline gets the good press, but when something like that happens, when your arm gets chopped off by an eccentric lunatic, you’re scared. Fear, Ben, increases blood flow, gets you moving. It heats up lactic acid, which helps us focus. And it produces cortisol. That helps with clotting blood. It helps you keep going. The human body builds in chemicals that help us fight when we’re terrified out of our minds.”
Ben swallowed a sip of the bourbon. It tasted warm now, even though the ice cube had settled and already chilled the drink.
“I’m saying that we should go because we’re scared. We know this guy better than anyone. We know his strengths, his weaknesses, we’ve fought him before.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t killed him yet.”
“And he hasn’t killed us yet, either.”
Good point, Ben thought. Still, he wasn’t sure. Messing around with a guy like Vicente Garza, in an unfamiliar country, still seemed like a suicide mission. With or without the Army Rangers.
“I need to think about it, man,” Ben said.
“Well think fast. Victoria said she’s leaving tomorrow.”
12
Garza
“Soldier 147, please stand.”
The high-pitched whine seemed to fade as Vicente Garza focused on the machine standing in front of him.
Garza waited, the operator watching him for the next order. Garza nodded, and the operator repeated the instruction.
“Soldier 147 — Cisco Cabrera — please stand.”
Through the glass, Garza saw the open warehouse laid out in front of and slightly below him. Its walls were piled high with wooden crates, boxes of gear, and cast-aside bits and pieces of suits and technical apparatus. The center, the “demonstration floor” as they called it, was empty, save for a single man, wrapped in a cacophony of tech. His head swiveled and his body followed suit, the whining sound returning to Garza’s attention.
He stood. It appeared to be difficult, as the motion had taken four whole seconds. But 147 now stood on the other side of the glass, staring blankly at Garza and the operator, as well as the three men behind them.
“Don’t use their names,” Garza said. “It reattaches them to their unrequited memories.” That was the theory, anyway. Vicente Garza wasn’t entirely sure what it would cause in their minds, but he didn’t want to take the chance that his subjects would all suddenly have a change of heart and decide to spurn his experiments.
“Got it. Yessir. Orders?”
“Tell him to walk forward.”
“Soldier 147, please walk toward the booth.”
The man’s expression stayed blank, his eyes stoic and unmoving, and he stepped forward.
The tech around him clinked and rattled, but the bodysuit moved, slowly at least.
“It’s working, sir.”
Garza stared, silent.
Two more steps, and the bodysuit fell sideways. The quarter-ton apparatus around 147 bounced on the concrete floor of the warehouse, then settled. 147 was still staring out in the space between the suit’s armored “shoulders,” his eyes still expressionless and dead.
Three engineers ran out to the main floor and began pulling the suit back up. Garza heard the report through the tiny wall speakers. “— balance gyro might be out, or at least malfunctioning.” “Could be just a support weld. Something snapped, maybe?”
Garza turned to the other men in the room with him. “How long?”
“To repair the suit? Well, it depends on whether it’s —”
“How long until we’re fully operational?” he barked.
“Sir, it really is a matter of how many subjects are prepared for —”
“Days? Months?”
The man shrugged, and his colleague jumped in. “My estimate is two weeks.”
The other two men, a mechanical engineer and a robotics specialist, turned to their colleague with open jaws. They began to argue.
“Fine,” Garza said. “I want fully operational prototypes within a week. After that, we double down on production. Hire as many people as you need to get this done. I lost one very lucrative contract, and I am not about to lose another.”
The men nodded in tandem, then left the room. He assumed they were going to get to work immediately — two weeks was a tall order, and even Garza was pessimistic that it could be accomplished.
It has to be, he thought. Two years and twenty-million dollars, and I’ve got nothing to show for it.
He had intended to bring another project to light long before this one. A project that would have changed the world, and human history. A project that, he now realized, was doomed to failure from the start. He hadn’t realized just how many other factions had been vying for control of his research, and when it had come down to his project or his life, he’d chosen the latter.
So this was it. His best bet at landing a permanent place in the annals of history. Not that it was about fame, or even fortune. He had a bit of both, at least in some circles. But he wanted the achievement. To know he’d done it. To know he’d created something miraculous.
“Ready for round four, sir,” the operator muttered.
“Same thing, run it back.”
The operator nodded, then spoke into the mic. “Soldier 147, please stand up.”
147 stood, this time in three seconds.
“147, please walk toward the booth.”
The exoskeleton suit and the man inside slowly marched toward the booth. He stopped a few feet in front of the glass. Due to the suit’s height and size, 147 and Garza were now at eye level. Garza looked at the young man inside the suit and watched his eyes. Does he know? he wondered. Does he care?
His doctors had explained that the subjects should do neither, but Garza had always been skeptical of doctors.
“Orders, sir?”
“Tell him to walk a circle around the warehouse, steady at five miles per hour.”
The operator pressed the transmit button on the mic and was about to speak, when Garza saw something flicker in 147’s eyes. They… came to life. As if the man had suddenly woken up from a dream. Nothing else moved or changed.
“Hold that,” Garza said. He watched. The young man’s face registered nothing. Blank, empty expression, as always. “Vital monitoring?” Garza asked.
“Heart rate elevated, blood pressure within normal range, nothing else —”
“Give the order again,” Garza said.
“Yessir.” The operator did, and Garza waited. Nothing happened.
For three seconds, Garza locked eyes with the kid.
“Again, Soldier 147, please —”
147’s arm rose, the exoskeleton’s pistons and hydraulic fittings firing and pushing like artificial muscles. The gigantic arm extended nearly to the glass, a parallel line with the floor.
“Sir…”
“Hold that.”
147’s face was still empty, and Garza watched. Three more seconds passed, and then… there.
The kid’s eyes flickered again, this time with an unmistakable fury. Garza’s own eyes widened and he reached down for the emergency killswitch mounted on the control panel in front of him. It was too late.
Soldier 147’s arm flew backwards, propelled by the opposite thrust of the launch. The tiny wrist-mounted rocket slammed into the glass and through it, into the control room.
Garza fell to the floor, almost getting there before the blast enveloped him. He covered his head with his arms and felt the searing heat of fire and glass scraping away his clothes and hair.
And then, within half a second, it was over.
He rose, carefully holding onto the edge of the control panel desk for support. The back of his shirt and pants had been burned off, a few areas of second-degree burning on his skin already starting to swell and rash. He looked to where the operator had been. Nothing but a charred husk remained, a piece of the chair, and a section of window that had somehow survived the blast intact.
Garza turned to the warehouse floor. Smoke billowed from somewhere below the window, partially blocking his view. He saw the suit, lying on the floor on its back about halfway across the room. His men surrounded the subject, rifles pointed and awaiting his order. They closed in, shrinking the circle around the suit and preparing to blast it with enough rounds to decimate a solid block of concrete in a half-minute.
And then Garza saw 147’s eyes. He was lying on the floor, partially crushed beneath the weight of his own suit.
Still staring at him. Blank, lifeless eyes.
Still seeing him.
Garza held up a hand, and the men on the floor relaxed.
He had no mic, but there was no need for it anymore; he shouted through the smoke.
“Repair the suit, and send 147 back to the ward. Fix him up.”
“Sir?” one of his men shouted back.
“We will use him as a model. Take an MRI and run the battery of tests. I want to know what he’s made of.”
13
Julie
I’m married, she thought. Juliette Alexandria Bennett. JAB. She smiled into the mirror, pushing her hair around and then a strand of it over her ear. Married to Ben.
She was alone in the cabin, as the rest of the party was still outside, chatting with one another and dancing. Ben and Reggie had been arguing about something when she’d snuck away. She examined her face in the mirror, trying to see if it physically expressed how she felt inside.
Am I old? she wondered. It had been two years and ten months since she’d met Ben, and those nearly three years had been an absolute whirlwind. From their time at Yellowstone, to trekking through the Amazon Rainforest and a research station in Antarctica to their time in Alaska, they’d been together. They’d never questioned whether or not they should be together. Being with Ben felt right.
Still, she had nothing to compare him to. She had no experience with long-term relationships — when she’d met Ben, she was thirty-three years old, but she might as well have been a teenager. Her entire knowledge of relationships had come from her high school and early college years, before she’d gotten serious with her computer science and cryptography courses. She’d gone on a few dates, but nothing stuck. Her experience of men was mostly garnered from the pages of the rare Cosmopolitan magazine she’d pick up at the supermarket.
Not that she was unhappy with Ben — she couldn’t have lucked into a stronger, kinder man if she’d tried. He was stubborn, but it wasn’t even close to her own stubbornness, and he often let her win. He didn’t need her approval to feel confident about himself, though he often sought it anyway. She loved that about him.
So she couldn’t figure out what it was she was feeling. Ben’s perfect, you’re fine, she kept te
lling herself. Your friends are here, and they’re here for you.
Yet… something about their conversation had jolted her into awareness of how she was truly feeling. There was something calling to her, deep inside her. It had started a few months ago as a simple hollow anxiety, not something she was used to but not something she wasn’t able to handle. When that anxiety grew into a hardened ball of depression, then fear, she sensed her subconscious trying to tell her something.
That something had been repeated to her in her dreams for the past month. Waking up with cold sweats more nights than she could count, she knew she needed to address the issue: what was causing this?
It was a memory, she knew, but she couldn’t quite place exactly which memory. Something to do with Ben? The CSO team?
It eventually became clear to her a few nights ago, after she and Ben debriefed about their trip to Peru. Something about the way Ben had said Vicente Garza’s name — something about the way he looked at her when he’d said it — clued her in.
It had taken the next day to unravel, but she eventually knew: Garza was the man in the dream. The man in her nightmare. She was the woman, coerced by him, to kill her friend.
Joshua Jefferson died because of me.
No. She wouldn’t let herself believe that. He died because of him. Because of Garza.
Her wedding day had been filled with joy and life, but there was death inside of her. She knew that now, and she couldn’t not feel it. It trickled down over the entirety of her core emotions, tainting her joy and happiness and love for Ben with a blackened, terrifying realization.
A realization that this wasn’t going to end.
She wasn’t going to just get over it.
She couldn’t talk or reason or believe her way out of it — something had to be done. Physically, by her.
She looked into the mirror and her reflection told her more about what she needed than her own subconscious. She needed to act.