by T. C. Edge
It was her friends she thought of. Those she cared about. Those she loved.
Remus stretched his wings in Chloe’s periphery, an indication of the lateness of the hour. He did that as a human might stretch when tired, sometimes doing so to draw Chloe’s attention to the time, and suggest it might be time to get some sleep.
She looked across to where he perched, standing upon Nadia’s shoulder. He’d spent most of the last few hours with the Texan, sensing her distress, trying to cheer her up. It had worked to a limited degree; there was only so much he could do for someone whose closest friend - and maybe more - lay so mutilated nearby.
Still, Nadia noticed Remus stretching his wings, and drew a weary smile.
“You tired?” she asked, though not to Remus - to Chloe.
Chloe shook her head. She wasn’t tired at all. Drained, yes, emotionally and mentally. But tired, no, that was something different. She didn’t imagine sleep would come easy if she tried to seek it.
“We should probably try to get some sleep anyway,” went on Nadia, though she sounded reluctant. She glanced again to the rear of the jet, where Tanner lay upon the briefing table now used as a medical bed. She did that a lot. “I’ll watch him for a while if you want to sleep. Someone should be up to keep an eye on him.”
Chloe reached across and squeezed Nadia’s arm.
“I’m OK, really. I don’t need to sleep. You should, though. You look tired.”
She did. Her eyes were bordered by darkness, heavy bags appearing beneath them. Nano-enhanced soldiers could go days without needing sleep if required, but emotional turmoil often served to drain them more quickly than normal.
“I don’t want to sleep,” said Nadia, turning back out to look over the wilderness. A few silhouettes dotted the gloomy horizon, those of the occasional belligerent tree that refused to die out here, or piles of rocks and boulders, big and small. “Someone needs to be awake in case Ragan contacts us,” she added. “There might still be work to do.”
“How, though?” asked Chloe, thinking again of Ragan. “He’s got no way of contacting us.”
“He’ll find a way if he needs to,” said Nadia. “He knows the codes for the falcon. If he sends a message, we’ll get it.”
“Really?”
That news brightened Chloe up a little bit. She’d wondered just how Ragan was going to make contact again. If, of course, he wasn’t dead already…
“You think they’ll believe him?” Chloe went on, gazing out. Possibly in the direction of New York. She didn’t know.
Nadia offered a tired shrug.
“About the MSA research facility? Yeah, I reckon so. No sense in ignoring a threat like that…”
“No, I mean, believe that he hasn’t really betrayed them? That he was only doing it to help me. If they find out about his role in Project Dawn, they’ll execute him, won’t they?”
Nadia turned to look at Chloe with soft eyes. She drew a half smile, consoling.
“Yes,” she said. “They’d execute him as a traitor.”
Chloe felt a pulse of grief at the thought.
“But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” continued Nadia, trying to be supportive, though balancing it with a dose of realism. “Ragan went willingly, and he knew what he was getting himself into. I trust him to know what he’s doing. He won’t leave you, Chloe. He’ll do everything he can to get back to you.”
Chloe smiled. Those words - they made her feel so…so alive.
She turned again to look at the night sky, the endless black world ahead. It was so calm, almost eerily so. A stark contrast to the storm they’d endured that day. A storm from the skies and a storm down below. Mikel was the storm. He seemed to bring it with him wherever he went.
Her smile faded with thoughts of him. She glanced at Nadia, whose own eyes - usually soft, warm, inviting - were filled with thunder and lightning. Full of vengeance against the creature that had caused such harm, ruined so many lives.
Mikel had been at the heart of everything; he was the pivot on which the future had turned. If it wasn’t for his interference, everything would have been fine. Ragan and Chloe would have escaped the CID, data disc in hand, and destroyed it. Nadia and Tanner would never have had to join them on their mission to retrieve the data from the vamp. They wouldn’t have had to go rogue, putting them on this collision path with Slattery, Quinn, and the rest…
Quinn, Chloe thought, and his men…men who I might well have killed.
A whole host of them, eight souls. Alive one minute, dead the next. Blood boiled and skin scorched by her lightning, by her raw power. Men she hadn’t wanted to kill. Deaths that were now on her hands, and for what reason?
Mikel.
He was the devil incarnate, Chloe thought. He took pleasure in death and pain, setting the fire to watch the world burn. A nano-vamp, not even entirely human, created to kill and set loose from his leash. It seemed almost fitting, in a way, that a creature created by the hand of man was the one to turn the key, unlocking this terrible future. Man who ever strove forward in the name of invention, fashioning weapons of destruction and death. And Chloe’s own father was among them, his science, his progress, set to lead the world down a dark and dangerous path.
“And what do we do now?” Chloe found herself whispering quietly.
She looked over to Nadia, hidden in a storm cloud, supping on her whisky. Remus lounged on her shoulder, curled up with wings folded. Nadia’s eyes shaded darker, lips opening. She’d heard Chloe’s question.
“We keep on going,” she said, staring out. “We do what we’ve always done, all of us.” She looked Chloe dead in the eye. “We endure, Chloe. And we don’t give in.”
Her words held conviction and weight, spoken by a young woman Chloe was certain had been beginning to falter. But no, not this Southern Queen. Nadia gritted her teeth and nodded, unwilling to bend, unwilling to break. Her eyes turned for a hundredth time to Tanner at the rear of the jet.
“We’ll get our revenge,” she growled. “Mikel made a mistake in not killing Cliff. When he wakes, he’ll have nothing else left. He’ll hunt Mikel down if it’s the last thing he does. And I’ll be right there with him.”
“So will I,” said Chloe firmly.
Remus unfurled his wings, climbing to his spindly silver feet. He looked from one girl to the next, nodding his little avian head. He didn’t need to be able to speak to state his position. That posture, that gesture…it said it all.
The girls drew up their whisky cups, eyes linking, cups clanking. They knocked them together, and then drank again, sealing the bond. Nadia looked back out towards the vast plains ahead, hidden in shadow and darkness.
“He’s out there somewhere,” she said. “Lurking, biding his time. And you can be sure he wants us as much as we want him.”
The thought sent a shiver up Chloe’s spine. It reached the top and faded away, dismissed by her hatred. She glared out, imagining Mikel striding towards them, grinning that sadistic grin, sliding his tongue over those horrible, extended fangs.
She willed him closer. She wished for him to near.
Bring him on, she thought.
Her hands were buzzing blue.
88
Mikel’s eyes opened to a room of slick grey, his nose filling immediately with a scent he wasn’t used to. The air was too clean, too pure. He preferred the smell of death than that of life.
He looked around the room and found that he was sitting in a chair, light grey in colour and pleasantly cushioned. His wrists weren’t bound, nor were his ankles. He could move freely if he wished.
He stood, looking around the room curiously. It was basic, but comfortable. There was a bed to one side, a small table and chair with a lamp fixed to the wall. On the table were books and an electronic tablet, set into a little holder. On the opposite wall was a screen, currently unlit. The things were used for entertainment, Mikel knew. Movies, games, holo-vision. Nothing that interested him, of course, but something regular people se
emed to enjoy.
He moved towards the door, fitted with a small window at about head-height. The glass was thick, probably impenetrable. He gripped the handle, but found the door locked. It was, for all intents and purposes, a prison, albeit a comfortable one.
Mikel imagined that the scientists and ‘subjects’ of this research facility - those intended for consciousness-transfer - occupied rooms like this, entertained and kept comfortable, but locked away when required.
He peered through the glass, and saw a corridor stretching left and right. He could see doors, all identical, running along the hallway at regular intervals, numbered as they stretched off into the distance.
Around one, the farthest he could see from his vantage, several people were gathering. Three of them dressed in black suits - Ravens, probably - and two others garbed in utilitarian coats of light grey. The door opened, and a man stepped out. He was tall, gruff, and held himself like a soldier. The men quickly led him away and out of sight.
Mikel stood there for a time, straining to see anything more. Some time later, the same men appeared, moving to the door one down from the previous room. They opened it up, and another man appeared. He looked fairly old, an experienced combatant. He nodded to the man who’d come to fetch him, and moved off again, out of sight.
This process continued for some time, the attendants getting ever nearer as they went from room to room, gathering up the soldiers within, and moving them off down the corridor. Mikel’s curiosity grew intense as they approached his own door. Before long, they were at the one just across the hall.
A soldier appeared with the same eyes as all the others, eyes Mikel recognised. They spoke of death; taking it, seeing it, experiencing its wonders. Mikel loved that look. He felt an affinity with anyone who knew death even half as intimately as he did.
He linked eyes momentarily with the man as he was led away, watching with his face pressed to the glass as he disappeared into the depths of the corridor and escaped his sight. His pulse, which so rarely rose other than during a fight, or when about to feed, began to steadily speed up as he waited for the men to return. His hunger didn’t seem to bother him, forgotten as he waited.
Perhaps they’d given him something to settle it, make him more compliant? He couldn’t know what drugs they’d put into his body. The last he remembered, he was stepping onto that sleek aircraft outside of the MSA border, sitting in a plush seat, and being administered a sedative by one of Martha Mitchell’s bodyguards. The scent of that Raven had been his final tease. Now, his hunger was gone.
A thought suddenly struck at him, one he hadn’t yet had. Had he been…changed already? Had he gone through his procedure?
He lifted his hands and looked upon his cold, pale, almost translucent flesh. Nails, long and sharp, extended upon command. Their tips were still faintly red, hints of flesh and congealed blood stuck beneath them.
Tanner’s flesh. Tanner’s blood. The thought drew a smile.
I wonder how he’s doing?
No, he was still Mikel. Mikel as he’d always been. Mikel the nano-vamp. Just, without the hunger right now. Another vessel, just as all these others were, waiting to be turned, updated…perfected.
The light thuds of footsteps came again. He pressed his face back towards the glass and saw the grouping of Ravens and scientists incoming. They moved towards his door, and he stepped back, eagerly waiting for it to open.
It didn’t.
The footsteps continued on, until he saw the men pass by through the window. They moved to the next door, and began the pattern once more; opening it, greeting the soldier inside, leading him back down the corridor and out of sight.
Mikel grew frustrated. He stepped angrily for the window, slamming his fists against it. It made a muted, dull sound, but nothing more. The men didn’t even look at him.
His panting became intense, his eyes narrowing. Was this all just a trick? Had they locked him away in here with no intention of letting him out?
His nails and fangs extended, teeth bared in a snarl. He paced around the room, fists bunching, blood boiling with a sudden rage.
What was going on? How could he have been so stupid…
The door clicked and opened with a heavy grind. Mikel spun around and saw three people he recognised. Two, tall and dressed in black; one cleanly shaven at the jaw, the other cleanly shaved on the head - though with a heavy beard to balance things out. It was the reverse of how men should look, Mikel thought. He had no liking for facial hair - he couldn’t grow it himself.
The third was a comparably diminutive woman with auburn hair, easy brown eyes, and an attractive smile. She was a handsome woman for her age, and seemed to be wearing the same vibrant blue coat she’d worn during their last rendezvous a few days ago. It contrasted nicely with her burnt-red hair, and that smile of hers, so artificial before, appeared to be genuine on this occasion.
She stepped ahead of her two guards, smile growing as she approached, holding a folder to her side. Mikel’s rage subsided immediately at that look in her eyes, that sparkle, that twinkle. She beamed wider, and nodded hurriedly.
“Mikel, so good to see you awake,” she said. “I apologise for the wait, but things have been quite…busy here of late. But I have not forgotten you, and I wanted to pay a personal visit. You…you have served me well, Mikel.” She drew a breath. She seemed positively buoyant. “Thanks to you, I have my beautiful daughter back. I can’t thank you enough.”
Mikel frowned. Daughter? What did that mean.
“I…you’re much obliged, Mrs Mitchell,” whispered Mikel in that usual way of his, eyes losing their cloak of suspicion, fists relaxing. He glanced at the two Ravens, and the sight of them drew a slight pang of hunger back into his gut.
The smell of their nanites filled the room. Martha, perceptive, seemed to notice. She looked at them and nodded for them to leave. They did so only reluctantly, but without a word, eyes glaring at Mikel as they departed, leaving the door ajar as they closed it and began their vigil outside.
Martha waited until she was alone with Mikel, before speaking again.
“Now, Mikel,” she said breezily. “I’ve arranged for your procedure to occur later this afternoon. We have been busy testing things out over the last twelve hours, and barring the occasional hiccup, have seen excellent results so far. You will have a choice of synthetic bodies to choose from, though not all are quite ready for use.”
She moved towards the table and set down her folder, ushering Mikel over to join her. Opening the file, she drew out several pictures, listed with various statistics and notes underneath. She looked at Mikel with a smile. He eyed the pictures with interest, carefully flicking through them.
“Anyone catch your eye?” she asked. “I’ve reserved these for you, pending your choice. Without you, none of this would be possible, so take your time. If you have any questions, please ask.”
Mikel leaned down, feeling almost…uncomfortable. He should feel excited right now, but a different sensation spread through him. He was being treated with…was that respect?
That had never happened before. He’d never been given a choice like this. He’d never had a choice at all. Life had been an endless cycle of feeding and death, pain and suffering. He administered it, and endured it himself. Even those who created him, who had once commanded him, held his kind in contempt, fearing them and what they were.
But this woman was being very different. She stood nearby, watching Mikel as he looked over the images. I have my daughter back, she’d said. The data must have saved her. Perhaps the girl’s consciousness had been stored somewhere, and now uploaded into a new body?
What an odd feeling, being thanked, being smiled at with such genuine gratitude. What an odd feeling to have helped someone, given them joy rather than pain. Odd but…satisfying, in a way. He smiled awkwardly at Martha, feeling quite uncomfortable being watched like this, and returned his eyes to the files.
Faces flooded his vision. There were a dozen or so of
them, all men, all youthful and handsome. They had square jaws and keen eyes of blue, mostly, with the occasional fleck of green here and there. All had brownish hair, sometimes a little darker, sometimes splashed with a tint of blond. Their stats informed him that they were all a little over six feet in height, all well muscled and with perfect body composition. They were, for all intents and purposes, perfect specimens of the human male, more or less identical.
Mikel flicked through them, doing so more quickly as he went. By the time he’d got to the last few, he was barely giving them a second glance.
“Something the matter, Mikel?” asked Martha.
Mikel stood to his full height.
“This…isn’t of great interest to me,” he said. “I don’t care how they look. These are just clones. They all look the same.”
“Yes,” nodded Martha. “We tried to change a few cosmetic details, but mostly they are identical. So, you don’t have a preference?”
Mikel shook his head, glancing again at the images, splayed out upon the table.
“You know what I am, Mrs Mitchell. People like me haven’t been programmed to care for looks. My mind won’t change in that regard, even in a new body. What matters to me is what that body can do.” His cold eyes narrowed, intensifying. “I must lose my hunger, Mrs Mitchell. I have to escape my pain.”
Martha smiled, blinking slowly.
“Oh, you will, Mikel. Your hunger is driven by physical needs, which trigger your mental anguish. In one of our new synthetic bodies, that won’t be an issue any longer.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Quite certain.”
“And the physical capabilities?” queried Mikel. He glanced again at the files, listed with facts and figures. “I don’t care about physical appearance. I want to be gifted, Mrs Mitchell. That is all.”
“You will be,” Martha insisted. “We have run several early tests, and the results are better than expected. Our synthetics are faster, stronger, more physically capable than the best nano-enhanced. Their senses are highly attuned. Smell, sight, hearing, all superior to even your own kind. Their bodies have been specially designed, hybrids of natural biology and advanced robotics, to be able to withstand great stress and injury. Internal organs are all well protected by what we call ‘interior defence’, and flesh wounds will heal quickly and cause little to no physical pain. Put simply, Mikel, these bodies are perfectly adapted for combat. And they are just the beginning.”