He went on and on, singing the praises of One New Earth. She only heard half of his words. He didn’t sound anything like the Aidan she knew, the one who followed the beat of his own drum, the man she knew bucked authority in any form. He’d gotten kicked out of the military for a rebellious act and he’d left the safety of Fort San Manuel because he didn’t like the rules. He certainly would not have voluntarily sold out his principles to O.N.E…. even for the promise of a restored body part. As he continued talking like an starry eyed initiate who’d just gone through indoctrination in a cult, she wondered if they’d really just done a brain scan and an eye surgery. Maybe they had done something to his mind as well.
When Aidan paused, Marshall walked over to him and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “You see, Cheryl. Life isn’t so bad when you choose to side with progress. Aidan’s had a change of heart now that he’s with us. I’ve offered him a job at XCGen. We haven’t been in this building for very long. It’s a new headquarters for the lab, and he’s going to supervise the construction of some new office spaces.”
She looked at Aidan, pleading with her eyes for him to tell her it wasn’t true. Did O.N.E. have a Cyclops here, a machine that could telepathically control minds, implant thoughts and orders? “They changed you. What did they do?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s all me. I literally just see the light now.” He turned towards Marshall. “Maybe if I could have some time alone with her. I could talk to her and—”
Marshall vetoed the idea with a shake of his head. “I’m afraid that would be an effort in vain. We tried to talk sense into some other members of the RT before resorting to punishment, but it never worked.”
Then, how did they get to Aidan? She knew there was some sort of manipulation going on here.
“Why don’t you go back down to the café on the fourth level?” Marshall said to Aidan. “I’ll meet you there in a little while and we can continue our conversation from earlier. I have some ideas about that floor plan idea you suggested on the twenty-sixth floor.”
“Great,” Aidan said. “Then, I’ll hook up with Cheryl later.” He looked at her now, reaching out to grasp her hands in his. “You should see the apartment I’m staying in. Well…you will…that is if you want to share it with—”
“Actually…” Marshall interrupted. “Cheryl is going to be staying here…for a while.”
“Oh. Okay then. After you’re done here, we’ll have plenty of time to hang out. We can check out the town, see what’s happened around this joint since we left.”
Really? Happened around this joint? She wanted to ask him: How about taking a leisurely drive to see if you can find the corpse of your former girlfriend and her son? The skeletal remains of your buddies at the construction site? How about coming with me to see if we can find what’s left of my co-workers who were at the insurance office when the shit hit the fan last summer?
But, she didn’t say any of those things when Aidan released her hands.
“I’ll see you again soon then.” He turned around and began to walk away.
What? He was just going to leave her here? Abandon her without any protest? Was he really that indifferent to what Marshall might do to her? How could he believe every word that came out of Marshall’s mouth like it was the golden truth? She wanted to scream at him. Tell him to wake up! Break him out of whatever mental prison they had put him in.
Keep going. Do as you’re told.
The voice was inside her head. Where had it come from? It was a steady, deep male voice of indeterminable origin. Was it a warning from Aidan or a threat from Marshall? Aidan stopped walking, turned around and for just a brief second looked directly at her. Was there was a message there? Had the voice been his? Something he wanted to say, but couldn’t say out loud?
When he disappeared down the long hall, she stood there watching for many seconds after he was gone. When she heard the door to the outer reception area click shut, she was ready for the charades to stop. She turned to Marshall and confronted him again. “What do you want with me? Why am I here?”
“Why don’t you have a seat, Cheryl?”
He motioned for her to sit in one of the chairs facing his desk. She preferred to stand, but decided to comply if it would finally get her some answers. When he sat down in the other chair, leaned back and crossed his ankle over his knee, he was so close she could smell his minty aftershave, the garlic on his breath, and some other pungent odor that might be the fumes of power lust. She considered the idea that she could leap on him, wrap her hands around his throat, squeeze until the life drained out of him. He was an average sized man, a good twenty or more years her senior, but very fit for his age—he might be stronger than her, but her rage would make up for it. O.N.E.’s machinery would likely go on without him, but if she killed him, it might give her some sense of satisfaction, some measure of retribution for all the misery and death that he’d unleashed on the world.
She reigned in that violent fantasy when she noticed the two-foot wide panels on the wall behind him. There were cracks between them and that reminded her of the hidden door that led to Jeremiah’s lab. She considered the possibility that any threat to his life could cause him (or someone else watching them now from the security control center) to activate any number of Beasts hidden in the walls. Despite the appearance of being alone in this top floor suite, there was no doubt that Marshall was protected whether it be by technology, bodyguards, a team of undead assassins, or some other currently invisible means.
“You and your RT friends in Sedona caused me a lot of trouble, Cheryl. Do you have any idea how much money and effort went into building that pyramid and the Cyclops?” His face reddened like the blood inside him was boiling up to his scalp. “Do you?” He leaned towards her, made a fist and thrust it in the air.
She sat mute. Was this it? The hammer finally about to fall?
He unclenched his hand and leaned back again. “You’re one of the few Resistance members left in the country. The few that aren’t dead are being held until I decide what to do with them.”
“That’s why I’m here? So, you can toss me in a cell?”
“No. There was a very important reason why I went to all the trouble to have you picked up in New Mexico and brought here…alive.”
That wasn’t reassuring. She remembered seeing Ruth as a captive before she was fed to a pit of Eaters, and he’d threatened to do the same to Vinnie. Now, he’d done something to Aidan’s mind, some sort of lobotomy or implant to squelch his rebelliousness. She’d considered the idea of taking her own life rather than subjecting herself to either fate.
“You’ve been a busy woman since last summer. You traveled from Colorado to Arizona, spent time in Fort San Manuel, Sabre, and Sedona. You’ve had numerous encounters with the infected and eaten all sorts of possibly tainted food, and yet…here you still are…perhaps looking a bit more slender than you used to be, a bit scratched up, shell-shocked, war weary…but still looking quite healthy. You’re the perfect example of the type of citizen we want to rebuild this country with…all except for one thing. You just won’t willingly get on board with our program. Now…what am I to do with you then? Hmmm…?”
He rubbed his chin with his fingers, staring at her. The patterns and images in his eyes seemed to fade away. They were replaced by a solid wall of blackness that went from corner to corner, seeming to reveal the dark void that he was made of. She felt a whoosh of fear run through her like a blast of icy air. Her heart began to beat so loudly, she was sure that he could hear it.
“It would be easy to kill you. I could even do it publicly as I’ve done to some of your RT comrades to set an example. He closed his eyes for a second, seeming to search for the right words inside his ocular data bank. When he opened them, he opened his hands out to either side with the palms facing up. “But what good would that do? It would just make you a martyr to those who sympathize with the Resistance.”
She wished she could breathe now, relax just a bit, but she knew ther
e were things worse than death.
“There was one upside to the destruction you helped to cause in Sedona. It made me realize something. All that effort we put into the visual shock and awe of the pyramid and the machinery to pacify the population was a waste of time and resources. With XCGen, I have the power to achieve peace through simpler means.”
He stared at her now for an uncomfortable number of seconds as if daring her to guess what he had in store for her.
“Although my first inclination was to destroy every member of the Resistance after I found out what they’d done, I’ve spared you for one important reason.”
She didn’t know what he meant, but she didn’t like his tone. It was dark and menacing.
“You’ve done me a disservice. Now, you can do me a favor,” He rose from his chair. “Come…there’s someone waiting for you on the forty-second floor.”
Chapter 18
She followed Marshall past the macabre and mute receptionist and out the door to the elevator. He didn’t speak on the way down, but there was a lightness about him now, almost a joviality as he rocked back and forth on his feet, waiting for their floor to arrive.
At the forty-second floor, they got off.
On the wall facing them, there was a table with a bronze vase, filled with a colorful array of silk flowers, and above it there was an enlarged black and white photograph of smudge-faced miners holding pickaxes and shovels, an image from the late nineteenth century.
Marshall paused in front of it. “Science is a lot like mining, don’t you think? You keep digging; you keep searching until you find the treasure you’re looking for. It’s just a matter of persistence.”
He continued on down the hall until he came to a room with a sign on the door that read: BIOENGINEERING TRIAL CENTER. There was a control panel on the wall. He typed some numbers into it, scanned his index finger and opened the door.
Trailing behind him, her eyes darted about the room as they entered. Beds with patients in most of them lined both walls. At the far end of the room there was a man wearing a white lab coat who was bent over a bed. When he heard them approach, he straightened up.
“Senior Warden Marshall…”
It was someone she had never expected to see again—Jeremiah Sadler.
Pastor. Scientist. She only knew him as friend, someone she’d given up for dead. She wanted to run towards him, embrace him with joy, but the startled look in his eyes and the realization that O.N.E. had kidnapped him and brought him here, making him as much a prisoner as she was, prevented her from an overly exuberant reunion.
“Afternoon, Sadler. I’ve brought a new patient for you.”
“Cheryl? My God…” Jeremiah started across the room, his hands palm to palm in front of him in a prayer stance.
“Remember our agreement.”
Jeremiah stopped and stiffened. He lowered his arms and regained a more reserved demeanor. “You said anyone. You didn’t say it would be any of my friends.”
“Anyone includes anyone, now doesn’t it?” Marshall said. “Of course if you wish to change your mind…”
Jeremiah shook his head. “No. It’s fine. I’ll do it.” He tossed a sheepish glance Cheryl’s way. “It’ll just take me a minute to finish up here.” He went back to what he was doing before they came in, tucking in the corners of a sheet and rearranging some vials on a nearby tray.
The door opened and two soldiers burst in, holding the arms of a man with a tangle of black hair and wild amber-colored eyes. He wore filthy jeans and a t-shirt, and screamed obscenities at them while he tried to wrestle free from their grip.
“Take care of him first,” Marshall told Jeremiah.
As the guards forced the man into a chair with leather arms straps, he craned his head towards Marshall and spat. He deftly stepped back in time to avoid the projectile.
“Though I think we’ve gotten most of them, there are still a few pockets of the Resistance here. A couple days ago, David here and some of his partners in crime attacked a Beast training center. They removed EM boxes and set them loose in the streets. It caused quite a bit of chaos as you can imagine. Just before you arrived, he forced his way past the guards in the lobby on a mission for more destruction of some sort.”
Cheryl watched Jeremiah remove a syringe from a plastic wrapper then insert it into a bottle and take up the clear liquid inside.
The man thrashed about, trying to free himself from his restraints. “You’re all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes! I’m going to kill you and this whole goddamned…”
Jeremiah plunged the needle into the man’s arm. After a second, he went quiet though he still seemed full of fury as his chest heaved up and down. After a couple more seconds, the sparks in his eyes dimmed.
“Do you see now, David?” Marshall asked as he leaned down to his eye level. “We can all get along. Isn’t it better this way?”
David returned a dull, glassy look as if all of the fight had gone out of him. A few minutes later, his restraints were undone, and he walked freely between the guards without any resistance as they exited.
“Where are they taking him?” Cheryl asked when the door closed behind them.
“To the reassignment office,” Marshall replied. “They’ll verify that the serum has pacified him then put him into hard labor for a while to make sure his spirit is broken. Do you see now, Ms. Malone? O.N.E. is not an evil organization. We’re not out to murder everybody. Months, years from now, when there is peace across the land, we’ll be regaled as saviors.”
She saw Jeremiah take another syringe out. She tried to catch his eye, silently plead with him to find some way to stop this as her heart thumped in her chest. She didn’t want a chemical lobotomy like she’d just witnessed David receive. Wouldn’t that somehow be worse than death? O.N.E. being able to use her like a Beast? Some marionette they could use for whatever task they desired?
Marshall motioned for her to sit on the edge of the bed next to Jeremiah. She remained where she was, still hoping against the odds that there was some way to avoid the injection.
“If you won’t take it willingly, I’ll call for help and we’ll strap you down too.”
Jeremiah gave her a small nod. Suddenly she didn’t trust him either.
“It’ll be okay,” he whispered to her after she finally edged onto the bed. “Everything will be easier after this.”
Easier for who? She wondered.
He wrapped a piece of rubber tubing around her upper arm, tied it tight, and whispered to her. “How is Hannah? Is she…”
Cheryl shook her head and looked down at the floor, unable to tell him what had happened.
He spoke more loudly then. “First, I’m going to take some blood. We get a sample of everyone that comes in here. It’s important for our research.”
“What research is that?” she asked.
Jeremiah looked up at Marshall. “Just improvements. We figure out how to do something then we figure out how to do it better.”
Marshall beamed his approval.
She didn’t watch her blood being withdrawn—she’d seen enough blood to last a lifetime.
When he finished, he labeled the vial with her name and some numbers then set it aside. His hands were noticeably shaking when he picked up a fresh syringe packet and opened it. He stared at the cylinder for a moment. “This syringe is cracked,” he said, holding it up for Marshall to see. “I’ll have to get another one. Be right back.”
Marshall frowned as Jeremiah walked away, seeming agitated by the delay.
“What if I refuse the serum?” she asked.
“It’s too late for that. You’re not going to leave this room without being injected.”
As much as she wanted to say, ‘We’ll see about that…’ she believed him. The only way out looked like it was through the door they’d come in. Even if there were windows in this lab, they were a dizzying forty-two floors up. And even if she and Jeremiah tackled Marshall, she was sure they’d never make it out of the buildin
g alive. If she wasn’t shot, her escape attempt could land her in a pit of programmed Beasts or wild Eaters. What was there to do but submit and hope for some positive outcome down the line?
Jeremiah returned bearing a fresh packet. His hands seemed steadier when he opened it. She watched him load the liquid before turning her head away. A moment later, she felt Jeremiah’s fingers brush her arm, and the next thing she knew he was taping a cotton ball onto it.
“That’s it. You’re done,” he said cheerfully like he was talking to a school kid getting a vaccine.
Marshall was already half way to the door. “Let’s go,” he said, suddenly in a hurry.
Cheryl rose from the edge of the bed.
“Where are you taking her?” Jeremiah asked.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Will I see her again?”
“That depends…”
“On what?” she asked.
“On you,” Marshall said, his cyber eyes glittering at her like he was multi-tasking as he talked, performing a dozen communications, monitoring cameras, or searching for information.
He exited the room, and Cheryl followed him, only pausing once to glance back towards Jeremiah. His head was down as he rearranged tools on the tray next to the bed, and he didn’t look up at her. Perhaps he was as shocked as she was at their unexpected reunion. Maybe he was too concerned about what was going to happen to her to rekindle their friendship. Whatever his perspective, she was glad to have found him, knowing that whatever O.N.E.’s purpose was for him, at least he was alive and well.
In the hallway, her feet wobbled and Marshall caught her elbow to steady her. “How are you feeling?”
She thought about it for a moment. How was she feeling? Okay…but different somehow. She had an odd sensation. It wasn’t unpleasant—it was sort of a numbness causing many of her worries to slip away.
“What kind of drug did you give me?” She asked only out of curiosity. Although, she knew the idea that she’d been drugged with some sort of mind altering serum should be upsetting, she couldn’t muster the appropriate anger. Somehow…at the moment…she just didn’t give a damn what was going to happen to her next.
Eaters: Resurrection Page 24