The Fog of Dreams
Page 58
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Agent Grace stood facing the window, his arms laced behind his back, as he looked down onto the vacant lot next to the three-story brick "high rise" that the National Security Agency called their own. His office was large enough to accommodate a small conference table, and around that table sat Agents Halifax, Mathis, and Burndock. Grace stared down at the lot, still surrounded by crime scene tape, and had a forensics team down there now, surveying the area for the fifth time. There would be enough evidence to support the NSA story of a rogue gang killing, which wouldn't implicate anyone sitting in this office. Granted, a violent and bloody gang battle in the middle of this Ivy League town was enough to rattle the community anyway, but it was a much more contained rattle than it could have been.
"Gentlemen," said Agent Grace slowly, still facing the window. "It's been two weeks since the incident, and I'm sure you've all spent plenty of time reflecting on what happened that night."
He turned around, unlacing his fingers, and leaning back against the windowsill. Purposefully not speaking for a few seconds, he wanted those words to sink in.
"As I'm sure you can all appreciate, what you witnessed, and any conversations pertaining to said event are classified Top Secret, and are part of a Special Access Program with only very select few individuals designated as having a 'need to know.' The three of you are lucky enough to now be in that loop."
Halifax rubbed his jaw, which still had a metal brace around it. "Remind me what your definition of 'luck' is," he mumbled through the plate.
Ignoring the wise crack, Grace continued. "As we all know, William Strickland is a unique individual. He wasn't always that way, but everything you saw that night is by design. He is a work in progress, but the results so far have been encouraging. Over the past two weeks we've been working on healing the damage from that skirmish and getting him back on the correct cycle."
"Where is he now?" asked Burndock, suddenly curious.
"Resting at home. If our calculations are correct, he should be waking up sometime tomorrow, and we will resume our surveillance."
"So, he won't remember any of this?" Mathis was dubious.
"We are in uncharted territory here, gentlemen. We have designed the cocktail with memory suppression components, but this level of control has never been done before. We all stand on the precipice of a change event." Grace walked towards the group, standing at the head of the table, leaning slightly forward, and resting on his hands.
"So what exactly is this 'territory,' if I may ask?" Burndock piped in,
Agent Grace had admired their restraint. For the past two weeks, they'd gone along with the administrative nightmare that surrounded the cleanup of events that night. Without question, without hesitation, and with pure obedience, all three of these NSA field agents had done what they were tasked with doing, and didn't ask any questions. He wasn't surprised these questions came up now.
"What you saw fourteen days ago was a small piece of Operation: Harvest. In order to fully appreciate the scope of this project, I have invited Dr. Worthy to come and give everyone a rundown of its purpose, and where we currently stand."
Agent Grace walked slowly back to his desk and pressed a key on the phone.
"Janet. Can you get Dr. Worthy in here?"
Less than a minute later, the older man walked in, draped by a black trench coat and matching suit and tie. He wore a black hat and narrow wire-framed glasses, looking very much the part of elder scientist.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he said slowly, in his faint European accent, draping his jacket over the back of Grace's swivel chair. "As you may know, the theory of genetic evolution and engineering began right around one-hundred and fifty years ago with Charles Darwin who was the first person to analyze the state of human existence and a potential for something more." He looked at the small group and smiled thinly.
"There were rumors that as far back as World War II, Adolph Hitler had secret German scientists working on engineering a genetically 'perfect soldier' based on his philosophy of an Aryan race."
Burndock looked sideways at Halifax who just shook his head softly.
"This a history lesson, Doc?" Burndock asked, not disrespectfully.
Dr. Worthy smiled. "How can we move forward if we know not where we have been, Mr. Burndock?"
Dr. Worthy's smile faded and he turned back towards Agent Grace's desk, still speaking. "Even though it's been a whispered rumor for several decades now, the world of genetic engineering didn't really open up until the last ten years. As stem cell research has evolved and genetic mapping has become second nature, we've been able to do things we couldn't have even conceived of fifteen years ago."
He turned back to the assembled crew and folded his arms. "Granted, we've been through some ups and downs, and many test subjects have paid the price for our research." He paused introspectively, almost in memoriam of past experiments. "But we've come to a crossroads, and William Strickland is at the very center of those two roads."
"So?that thing he turned into? That was genetic programming?" Burndock looked confused.
"That, my dear Agent Burndock, was a happy accident."
Everyone in the room shot glances at each other.
"We've been using a new stem cell injection technique to try some 'outside the box' thinking. Same thing we've heard about in all the science fiction novels, mixing animal and human DNA. It's an experiment that should not work by all accounts, simply due to the different structural elements of each base creature."
"Jesus Christ," Agent Halifax sighed, again through his broken jaw.
"Pretty sure he had nothing to do with this," grumbled Agent Mathis.
Dr. Worthy chuckled. "There were some missteps along the way, but Strickland represents our first real quality specimen, though none of us expected the dramatic transformation we saw two weeks ago. It's always been a balancing act, using just the right mixture, all complimented by the right cycle of prescription therapy. Strickland took to the procedure perfectly. It was the best result we'd ever seen. Muscle density, agility, eyesight, hearing and smell? it was all increased just enough. Enough to give him an edge in battle, but not so much that he became a liability."
"I dunno, Doc. That looked like a liability that night. He didn't give a shit whose guts he ripped out." Burndock didn't tell anyone, but he was still having trouble sleeping after witnessing those events that night.
"As I said, that night was an anomaly. It was an experiment. Nevertheless, it showed us just what this process is capable of. It opened the doors, gentlemen. That dart that Strickland was hit with was an accelerant. It was a special cocktail that attaches to dormant genes and speeds up their process of metastasizing. Only instead of cancer cells replicating, it's these infused stem cells from wolf DNA. We weren't entirely sure what the result would be, but we sure found out, didn't we, my friends?"
Burndock was the first one to catch on. "Yeah, would have been nice if you could have let us in on this little plan before we were in the belly of the fucking beast."
Dr. Worthy managed to almost look offended. "My dear boy, we had a fall back plan as you saw. Within sixty seconds, we had put a stop to his little rampage. Things had to be properly compartmentalized."
The NSA agent did not look convinced. "So what now?"
This time it was Agent Grace who stepped in. "What now? Well, we adjusted the formula based on the results of our little test. We increased the amount of nebulizer, which has the added benefit of affecting his long-term memory. Basically we're wiping the slate clean, and running more tests with this new cocktail."
"So how do we know this isn't going to happen again?" Mathis asked.
"That's why we're running these tests, Agent. To see exactly what the limits of Mr. Strickland's newfound abilities are. As Dr. Worthy said, this is uncharted territory, gentlemen. You are witnesses to history."