by T. C. Edge
She was alone.
She could hear rushing voices in her ear, the other three calling their positions. It all turned into a blur as she stared out, heart pumping loudly, eyes shifting from one tree to the next. All went quiet for a moment, the leaves rustling gently, the voices in her ear fading.
Mikel, she thought. Are you out there…
Her instincts brought her hands to life, warming blue, dancing with silvery light. They glowed brighter, crackling. She held them up and forward, illuminating the dark grove ahead. The trees lit up, their leaves shining. Suddenly they didn’t seem so daunting anymore.
She drew a long, deep breath.
I’m just being stupid, she thought. There’s no one out there. There’s no one here but me.
A sound made her jump.
It didn’t come from ahead, from the trees, but away over the wall. It was distant, and yet loud in the suffocating silence, breaking it apart with a crack that echoed across the estate. A gunshot.
More followed. Dozens of them, hundreds. The world was suddenly alive with noise, busy and bustling, chattering loudly as bullets sprayed. Chloe took another look into the thicket, her hands still glowing, and then shook her head.
I’m alone, she thought again, this time with conviction.
Slowly, she began to relax, an odd feeling to have when a raging battle was burgeoning in the distance. She drew a calming breath, shut her eyes, and returned to Remus. The battle came into view below, Remus adopting a high position to avoid any errant gunfire.
Chloe could see Ragan and Nadia, outside the house now, two guards lying still on the steps. A couple more had appeared, perhaps drawn from their patrols by the commotion, and were firing from behind statues or fountains. Further down the track, Tanner was visible, still rushing onwards. He’d clearly taken out another guard on his way, a human-shaped lump contaminating the otherwise pristine, perfectly manicured track. The other two men from the gate were a little further ahead, also taking cover and firing at Ragan and Nadia.
They didn’t see Tanner coming.
Two shots to the back of the head, and they toppled. The other guards seemed to notice the withdrawing of two roaring weapons, the battlefield suddenly growing a little quieter. They turned to see their allies down, which gave Ragan and Nadia plenty of time to zip from position, thus disappearing from the guards’ sight as soon as they looked back around.
With Tanner closing in from the rear, they seemed to realise that the game was up. They split, hurrying off into the safety of the gloomy grounds, disappearing from sight. A quiet fell as Ragan and Nadia hurried off towards Tanner, meeting him on the edge of the courtyard.
She heard Ragan’s voice barking down the line.
“Did you kill those men?” he asked sharply. Chloe could see he was looking at the guards from the gate.
“Pfft, what do you take me for?” said Tanner. “They weren’t threat enough to kill. It’s fine. I was using non-lethals.”
“Good.”
“Why do you care so much anyway?” asked Tanner. Chloe could hear the prickliness in his voice.
“I don’t, really,” said Ragan. “I just don’t like killing unless it’s necessary. Like you said, these guards were no true threat to us…”
“Yeah, and like I said, I didn’t kill them.”
“Right? So what are we arguing about?” queried Ragan.
Chloe could see Tanner shrug.
“I dunno. Your self-righteousness, I guess. You just assumed I’d killed those men. That sort of thing gets under my skin, Ragan.”
A weary sigh came down the line. Nadia, Chloe thought. That would be Nadia.
“Is this really the time?” she said, exasperated. “There are more guards out there, and who knows if the staff have called in for backup. Here’s an idea - maybe leave your infantile bickering for the jet? How about that?”
She shook her head, and began rushing off towards the gate. The two men locked eyes with a stare, before following on.
“Nice one, Nadia,” said Chloe down the line. “Someone needs to mother these two.”
“Tell me about it,” said Nadia, panting as she ran. “They’re like brothers, always at each other’s throats.”
“It’s only because we love each other so much, right brother?” joked Tanner. Chloe saw him wrap an arm over Ragan’s shoulder as they jogged down the track towards the gate. Ragan didn’t shove it off immediately. That was progress.
Still, the sight was a little jarring, and incongruous with the setting. With guards strewn all over the place - dead or not didn’t really matter - it wasn’t necessarily the time to be playing around and making jokes. Then again, that was Tanner’s nature. The greater the tension, the more he seemed to feel the need to cut it. It spoke volumes of the group that something like this could be taken on with such calm; just another night’s work, and an easy one at that.
They soon reached the gate, hurrying around to greet Chloe outside the wall. She opened her eyes for a final time, Remus flitting forward and first to meet her. He swept around her head a few times, changing to a bird, before forming back into a drone and retaking his vigil above. The others caught up a second later, Chloe’s eyes keen as they arrived.
“So what happened in there?” she asked eagerly. “You weren’t in the room for long. Did you find out anything?”
“You didn’t hear down comms?” asked Nadia.
“Well, I heard bits. You took your helmets off, so I couldn’t hear too well. And I was watching the hall through Remus. It’s hard to do both at once sometimes. Sooo?” She leaned in expectantly.
“We’ll talk about it on the falcon,” said Ragan, voice a little hollow. He seemed troubled, unsettled by something. His eyes drifted towards the woods. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The group continued on, moving quickly and without hindrance back to the falcon. The first suggestion of dawn was being considered by the horizon, the faintest glow reaching up from the depths of night. Chloe hustled along, studying Ragan, noting that pensive look on his face. They reached the jet and boarded, gunned the engines, lifted skyward.
That blush of dawn grew more clear as they rose, Chloe moving to the window, looking out. The blossoming light gave an outline to the lands below, the vast estates, the grand mansions. She turned her gaze towards Martha’s residence; it seemed even more wonderful, more vast from this height, the uniformity of the gardens becoming apparent, everything fitted and shaped with such care and symmetry. She could see figures now, nothing but dark shapes far below, hurrying out of the house and towards the unconscious guards. Chloe thought of the two Remus had electrocuted. She hoped they’d be OK. They didn’t deserve to die for Martha’s treachery.
The falcon continued its gentle ascent, lifting vertically as the city of Chicago began to appear to the south, a great network of lights giving shape to the buildings and streets. Chloe looked east, to the black mass of water that stretched into the unknown. The ambulance had taken off in that direction, she was sure of it. Why would they take a sick girl out there?
Eventually, with sufficient height gained, the falcon slowed and began to settle, hovering in place high up there in the heavens. Chloe never felt entirely secure just floating like this, particularly with a foreign capital city visible below. Thankfully, it was only Chicago, and only the MSA. Weak…apparently.
The group gathered within the belly of the jet, peeling off their combat gear and leaving them in their shorts and t-shirts. Tanner tossed his suit to the floor disdainfully. Chloe raised her eyebrows at the sight.
“Issued by the Crimson Corps, who betrayed us,” Tanner grunted, explaining. “And funded by Martha, who betrayed them. Leaves a nasty taste wearing that suit now.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Ragan, placing his suit more carefully on a shelf and moving towards the briefing table. “It’s just combat gear. Doesn’t matter where it came from or who issued it.”
“Just a reminder,” said Tanner.
; “Of what?” asked Chloe.
“Of the fact that you had it right all along, little Phantom,” he said. “You can’t really trust anyone, can you?”
Chloe shrugged, looking down.
“We can trust each other,” said Nadia resolutely. “I’d trust any one of you with my life.”
Chloe looked up at her and smiled.
“Same,” she whispered.
Tanner grunted.
“Well, I wasn’t counting us,” he said. “That goes without saying. Anyway, fill us in on what happened.” He looked to Nadia, and then to Ragan, quietly standing at the briefing table. He’d drawn up a map of Chicago, and the area specifically to the east over Lake Michigan. The others moved over. To Chloe’s eyes, that lake was just an empty void, dark and endless.
“Honestly, not much happened,” said Nadia. “The nurse didn’t know much at all.”
“But the girl? You found out who she was?” asked Tanner.
“Yeah. She’s called Sarah. Martha’s daughter.”
Tanner raised his eyes, pursing his lips.
“Interesting.” Then he frowned. “Or, is it? Does that actually mean anything? Does it get us anywhere?”
Nadia didn’t have much of an answer. She made a noncommittal shrug, sighing, and turned her eyes to Ragan. He was still searching around the holographic map, scanning across the lake, apparently in search of something.
“Ragan?” asked Tanner. “What are you doing there, bud?”
“The ambulance went that way,” said Chloe. “You’re looking for a hospital or something, aren’t you?”
Ragan leaned back, seeming frustrated and a little distant. The shadow of distraction covered his eyes, darkening, brooding.
“The nurse said that Martha’s daughter has incurable cancer,” he said quietly. “That’s what she said, isn’t it Nadia?”
Nadia nodded, thinking.
“Yeah. She said that.”
“And she mentioned that this girl, Sarah, was being taken away for a procedure. A procedure she didn’t know anything about.”
“Um…correct,” said Nadia.
“So,” said Ragan, standing taller. “We have a medical professional who takes care of a girl she says has a form of cancer that’s incurable. And yet the girl is taken away for a procedure that the nurse has clearly never heard of. They don’t take the girl to the city, or to any known hospital in the area.” He referenced the map, which lit with all the hospitals and oncology treatment centres around Chicago. “Instead,” he went on, “they take her out over Lake Michigan, where there are no hospitals. None that are known about, anyway.”
“So…you’re saying what exactly?” asked Tanner. Then it twigged, his mind clicking into gear, eyes widening. “You think this procedure is the transference, don’t you?” he asked, voice tensing. “You think the MSA have a secret facility somewhere out on the lake.”
Ragan smiled, and nodded.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he said, a little more animated now. “The nurse wouldn’t have any idea about the science of transferring human consciousness into another body. She thinks the girl has incurable cancer, and she does. But it’s her body that’s terminal, not her mind. If her consciousness was transferred to a synthetic or cloned body, she could live on.”
“So that’s why Martha did it,” whispered Chloe, her breathing growing shallow. “She stole the data to save her daughter?”
“I think so,” said Ragan. “If the MSA were to build a facility capable of developing this science, then they’d make damn sure it’s hidden. I think Martha’s role was to retrieve the data, and her reward was to get her daughter back. That’s why they’ve taken Sarah away, to have this procedure done. Now we just need to find out where they’ve taken her.”
“Well good luck with that one,” grunted Tanner. “Do you have any idea how big Lake Michigan is? And who knows, they might have flown straight across it, or changed course or something. There are about a million places this facility could be.”
It was a dampener on the room, a cold, hard truth. A silence followed, and Chloe noticed Ragan looking back at the holographic map, eyes sharpening, narrowing, head beginning to shake. It was all negative body language, based off of the horrible realisation that Tanner was absolutely right. If the MSA had developed a secret facility under the noses of the inspection teams from the other nations, then how on earth would these four be able to track it down.
And if they did, then what? You could bet your bottom dollar that a secret facility capable of highly advanced, cutting edge science, wouldn’t only be extremely well hidden, but extremely well protected too. No doubt they’d have an entire squad of nano-enhanced Ravens there, assuming this was a government led operation, as well as the likely possibility that they’d have a new breed of synthetic soldiers just waiting to be uploading with functioning, combat-experienced, human minds. If that happened, and they quickly decoded the data, then…
The thought was too terrible for Chloe to imagine.
They had no help, no support. All they had was Dax, back in LA. A great hacker, yes, but limited in what he could find. If top government agencies didn’t know about this facility, then surely no one would.
It seemed to Chloe that things had spiralled beyond their control. They’d been trying so hard to contain it, and had been so close to ending it several times, but now everything was hurrying forward at a speed that they could hardly keep up with. If the girl was being rushed off in the dead of night, did that mean they’d already decoded the data? Were they ready, right now, to transfer her consciousness? Could they do the same with others, fit out a new army of super-synthetic soldiers?
Chloe’s thoughts rushed on, hurrying into dark places, down gloomy, unpleasant alleys. It was still speculative, she knew - they didn’t have any actual proof of all this - but their conjectures were making far too much sense right now. Horrifying, nauseating sense.
Eventually, the silence was broken by Ragan. He breathed out loudly, pulling back from the map, flicking his hand across the hologram and sending the image spinning off wildly.
“You’re right, Cliff,” he grumbled, huffing. “We’re never going to work this out just looking at a damn map.” She shook his head, and drew a little comms unit from his pocket. “I’ll speak with Dax, see what I can find out.”
“And if he doesn’t know anything?” asked Nadia.
Ragan ran a hand through his short, dark hair, brows pinching.
“Then I guess it’s onto plan B,” he said with a grimace.
71
Ragan marched back from the cockpit, shaking his head, to find the others around the briefing table. They were poring over maps and news articles, scanning for anything pertinent, any intel that might be some help. A clue, a hint; something, anything that might light their way.
By their expressions, Ragan quickly concluded that they’d found nothing. That wasn’t overly surprising; his conversation with Dax hadn’t been particularly fruitful either.
They saw him coming, eyes lighting in hope, though probably not expectation. Outside, the blushing dawn was speeding towards completion, the sun clambering steadily up over the horizon. Light streamed in through the sparse allotment of windows, illuminating haggard expressions. For a group so young, it was testament to their stress.
“So, anything?” asked Chloe hastily. She noted the shaking of Ragan’s head. “Oh…”
Ragan reached them and drew a breath.
“Nothing about a secret facility?” asked Tanner. “No hidden base out on Lake Michigan? Nothing at all?”
“No location,” grumbled Ragan. “Nothing tangible for us to follow. According to Dax, there’s no record of any synthetic life development programme or consciousness-transference research on any MSA databases. Which isn’t altogether surprising. Anything like that would be kept off the books so it couldn’t be traced by the other nations. He did find some links between Martha and President Chase, however.”
Chloe raised her
eyebrows.
“Martha knows the President of the MSA?” she asked.
“Not unusual,” said Ragan, nodding. “The most esteemed councillors at Project Dawn have ties to all sorts of powerful people. As it turns out, Martha and Pamela Chase are childhood friends. They grew up together, both from powerful, influential families. Dax used the term, ‘like sisters’, according to a report he unearthed. Seems as though it’s likely that President Chase and her government are behind this.”
“We could have figured that,” said Tanner. “Who else was Martha going to be working for?”
Ragan didn’t answer. He took the question as rhetorical.
“So, anything else?” asked Nadia. “This strengthens our theory of what’s actually going on, but we don’t have any proof.”
“I’d call this proof enough,” said Ragan. “According to Dax, Martha and President Chase had lost touch a long time ago, and had barely seen each other in many years. At least, until more recently. They’ve been visiting with each other regularly over the last year or so, particularly for the past few months. That speaks of clear collaboration between the two.”
“It is pretty clear-cut,” murmured Tanner, now pacing around the room. “But it doesn’t help, does it? We don’t have any location on this facility, which is still a presumption, rather than a fact, and, let’s be honest, we are only four people. Well, five if you count Remus. Which I do, I might add,” he said, looking at Chloe, Remus perched in bird form on her shoulder.
“I should hope so,” she said, nodding to her little friend, who nodded back.
“So even if we do, by some miracle, find out where this supposed facility is,” went on Tanner, “then we hardly have the manpower to do anything about it. Let’s face it, we’re out of our depth here.”
Ragan frowned.
“I’m a little surprised to hear that from you, Cliff,” he said. “You’re usually the guy who’s happy to face down armies alone.”