by Nick Ryder
She clutched the rabbit tighter as she said it.
“I thought you wanted to pour it all into making traps.”
“I think that I want to be able to give you a hug more, Sol.” She gave me a shy smile before turning back to the rabbit. “It’s weird to care about someone without a body. I guess, technically, we’ve never even met.”
“Yeah,” I said, because really I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed in between Elaine and Marie. “I’ll start it gestating. I should tell the rest of the girls first, make sure they’re on board.”
“No.” Marie stood up, and the rabbit hopped off her lap. “You should just do it. We all agreed that you should have a body. No one will resent you having made the decision.”
I felt giddy with the knowledge it wouldn’t be long before my body was ready for my brain. “Okay.”
I returned to the system, bringing up the screen that held the prototype for the body I’d been working on for days now. There was probably something that could be better, but I didn’t care anymore. I was finally going to have it, the body I’d been craving.
A sudden wave of doubt overtook me. The girls were fine in their new bodies, but I’d had Ego alter them a little, to accept their new bodies without freaking out. I wasn’t letting Ego do anything to my brain, so did that mean that my new body would feel alien, that I’d struggle to accept it?
It looked alien, on the screen. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to control wings, to have claws instead of hands. Would I cut myself to smithereens when I went to scratch an itch?
“We have a problem,” Ego said.
My moment of hesitation had cost me. “What kind of problem?”
“You should go and see Lisa.”
I hurried through the cameras until I found her in the main laboratory by herself. I was surprised to see trails of tears on her face as she stood by the incubator that held the birds’ nest.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, wishing I had a better angle so I could see inside the glass cage.
“They died,” Lisa said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The white fur there turned darker. “One hatched but it just died straight away. Oh God, I feel so stupid being upset about this.”
I’d never seen her like this. “It’s okay, we can find some more.”
“We never found anymore before,” Lisa replied, and another round of tears fell down her cheeks. Her voice didn’t break, though. She didn’t tremble. Even now she held it together as well as anyone. She was a real soldier. “Back when I was human, before all this shit, we always had birds in the house. I don’t know, it’s stupid. It’s just, I found the nest and I thought it’d be nice to have a pet like that. Something that was mine. I know Elaine and Marie are close, and I’m glad they are, but I’m in charge. It’s different.”
“I could bring it back,” I said. “I can make a new one for you.”
“Would you?” She blinked back a fresh wave of tears, and looked up into the camera with glassy eyes. “That would really mean a lot to me.”
She turned away when I got a bot to come and reclaim the dead bird and the rest of the eggs so that I could take their blueprint.
When I saw it on the screen, I realized the potential of what Lisa had stumbled across. The eggs had been for a mutated eagle. Larger than average, with sharper talons and a sharper beak. The main mutation wasn’t obvious to the naked eye. The eagle had developed senses. An eagle’s eyesight was always top quality, but this one could smell prey from miles away. It could hear something move just an inch through grass. That was the kind of thing that would be very useful on every creature that I made afterward.
And would be useful on my own body, too.
I played around with the blueprint a little, while Lisa sat at the table in the lab with a mug of hot water in front of her. No coffee beans had survived the last twenty years on a shelf.
“I can make you a new bird, definitely,” I said. “How do you want it? Small, or larger? The blueprint is for an eagle. There’s the potential to make a really devastating addition to the army here.”
Lisa’s hesitation was minor, and I ignored it. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely. I think maybe this is the time to try creating a C-tier monster. We can use what’s left over from the rabbit slaughter to create it.”
I knew that meant putting off the creation of my own body for a little longer, but I was enamored by the wings on the eagle. They were perfect. Exactly what I’d wanted the moment after waking up from my daydream.
But if I was going to put them on my new body, I wanted to have a tinker with them and do as much as possible to make sure they would work. I could wait a couple more days for that.
“Okay, you should do that then,” Lisa said. “Anything that flies has an advantage.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. That was why I wanted wings. Wings and enhanced senses. Coupling that with my strategic mind would set me above and beyond everyone in the facility, and probably above most of the things outside it, too.
If I was going to be in the small number of people robbed of having a superpower, then this was the next best thing. This was better than some of the superpowers I’d witnessed or heard about in the few days before I became a brain a jar.
I set Ego to work right away with making the bird. Lisa had pulled herself together and instructed the bots to clean up the mess of the dead birds.
“I want to get back outside soon,” she said to me, folding her arms, all trace of anguish gone from her face. “We’ve set some traps, now let me go and find out what’s coming to get us next.”
“Okay,” I allowed, my frustration dwindled thanks to the new creature now gestating. “You should go out again tomorrow. Just don’t go too far, and don’t stay out too long.” I hesitated, then added a belated, “Please.”
Her lip quirked. “We won’t.”
“And keep Elaine away from Cara. I’m worried she’s going to make a move by herself and start something I’m not ready to commit to.” Elaine was completely enamored with the leader of the rival village, and it was dangerous.
She was dangerous.
I was certain she was on our side for now, but I was perfectly happy for us to lead our own existences independent of each other. Maybe teaming up with them against this new tribe was something I’d consider in the future, but there was no way I was putting my neck on the line for people that weren’t my own, and I wasn’t ready to let them all move into the facility, even if we probably had enough space.
This was my fortress. Me and the girls against the world.
That was how I wanted it to stay.
Chapter Eight
Cara returned to the village with her head held high. People noticed her bloodied and bruised body first, and the fact that two of the people she’d set off with on her expedition were missing quickly afterward.
Murmurs flew around the people gathered and there was an edge of hostility to them.
Losing people on scavenging missions was nothing abnormal. It always happened. It was part of life living in the village after the cataclysm.
When people were looking for any excuse they could get to discredit her leadership, though, her detractors lunged on it.
It had taken longer than it should to get back to the village after the attack. She’d come around to find herself hidden beneath an outcrop of rocks, in the shade, and covered with makeshift bandages. Wilbur was the only one of the other two people awake. He was poking a stick into the desert sand, drawing shapes and then scribbling them out again.
He’d jumped when Cara had said, “What happened?”
“Those animals attacked the tribe that attacked us. I don’t know, I think we all ended up out cold. When I woke up I was here. They were nowhere to be seen.”
“You think it was the same girls as last time?” Cara asked, knowing it had to be. Wilbur hadn’t been to Sol’s facility though, he hadn’t spent as much time around them.
“I d
on’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It would make sense if it was.”
She’d learned that two of her team had been killed in the attack. A red and a blue. She hated that her first thought was that at least it wasn’t two reds. Then she’d have really been in the shit.
Now, she headed straight for the amphitheater in the center of the village. She had to address the people straight away, before rumors could be allowed to fester.
She spotted her dad in the back, stood watching her with folded arms and a concerned gaze. She held back the smile she normally would have sent him. This wasn’t a time for smiling.
“Enemies are on our borders once more!” she shouted into the crowd, hands so tight around her halberd her knuckles were white. She lifted it up, as though rallying them for a battle that was about to take place right at that moment. “Two of our men have sacrificed themselves in the fight against invaders, and we will honor them tonight.”
The murmurs got louder. People were tense, had pulled weapons from their holsters.
But they weren’t angry at her, they were worried.
Maybe she could be the one to rally them behind her, to keep them safe. Not that standing there bloody and broken was a way to instill confidence in her village.
Not unless she exaggerated the threat and failed to mention the fact Sol’s girls had stepped in and done most of the heavy lifting, anyway.
“We were camping when two dozen men and women surrounded us. Many of them had powers, I’m sure they were A-class, some of them. A woman with the strength of all of us put together. They came upon us as we slept and attacked without warning. It was impossible for everyone to make it out alive.”
She avoided looking at Wilbur, who she knew would be judging her for her lies. They were nothing extravagant. She was certain there were more of the tribespeople in the desert, and they had managed to sneak up on Cara and her team without anyone knowing.
They had not even guessed there were other people nearby. They’d led people straight to them with their campfires, and with striding through the open space instead of sticking close to the cliff edge.
She’d been complacent, and she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for that. She’d gotten too comfortable now she could use her powers without inhibition.
“We fought them back, but Jack and Martin sacrificed themselves in that fight. We must pull together, to rally behind what they lost, to make sure these newcomers don’t take any more that’s ours!”
She lifted her halberd higher, and one of her supporters cheered. Quickly more people joined in, and she held back her smile, trying to remain fierce.
“Tonight, we feast!” she said. She turned around and let the lump she’d been carrying beneath a wrap fall from her back. When she unwrapped the blanket, it was the fresh corpse of an animal that looked closest to a boar, only larger and with fierce large teeth and muscles larger than any person in the village.
Most importantly, it was an animal that had been killed, eaten and very much enjoyed in the village before. It was the kind of rare meal that was talked about even years down the line.
Part of the reason they were so late to return back to the village was Cara’s insistence on taking a detour when she’d recognized the tracks of the animal.
Between them they’d taken down six of the things. They’d carried back four. Enough for everyone in the village to have at least a small amount of the meat.
There was another cheer, this one louder, and finally Cara stepped down and disappeared away from the crowds toward the hut she still shared with her father.
The eyes of Victor, previous leader of the village, were poisonous on her back and she fought the urge to scratch the spot he was glaring at. He still hadn’t let go of leadership. He was still going to fight for what he thought was his rightful spot the second he thought he had a chance of regaining it.
Right now, though, Cara felt confident in her position. People had reacted overwhelmingly positively to her speech.
She’d earned a night off, and some time to recover from her aching wounds.
Chapter Nine
It didn’t take long for the bird to gestate. I hadn’t modified it too much, and that meant the its creation happened much quicker.
It was when it was nearly ready to wake that Lisa called me into the lab. “I think there’s something wrong,” she said.
I only need one look at the bird to know it wasn’t right. Instead of the snow white fur that I’d seen on the creation screen, the feathers were a dirty grey mottled with black and white. It still looked like a bird, but the color was all wrong and Lisa knew it.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that’s something that just happens.”
Lisa shifted in her chair. She’d spent the last few hours in the seat watching the bird grow in its nutrigel cocoon. Before that she’d been outside, running free in the desert, probably searching for the other tribe despite my repeated instructions not to.
At least the bird had kept their excursion short. Lisa obviously wanted to be here when it woke up.
“Has it ever happened before?” she asked, scooting back a little in her chair.
I didn’t blame her. The bird was huge. Twice as big as she was, with a beak and talons that looked like they could rip her apart.
“I don’t think so. Ego what’s going on with the feathers?” I asked.
“The feathers are growing in the nutrigel, with the rest of the bird.”
“I mean, why are they the wrong color?”
“I don’t know,” Ego said. “It’s possible there’s been a mutation in the DNA. Creating animals can never be an exact science.”
“Just a mutation of coloration?” I asked, thinking back to the Class-D wolf-things we’d created. They had been different. Maybe Marie was wrong, it wasn’t because they were individuals, it was because of mutations in the creation process.
“I can’t answer that for certain,” Ego said.
“Maybe we should stop it,” I suggested. The bird looked nearly fully formed. “Just stop it from waking up and reconsider.”
“You can just stop it?” she asked.
“I think so. I can, can’t I, Ego?”
“Yes. You can stop gestation by removing the nutrigel and instructing the nanobots to stop working.”
“Girls!” Lisa called from her seat. “You might want to get in here. I’d bring that damned lizard too, if I were you.”
“It’s okay, I’ll just stop the gestation,” I said.
“No,” Lisa said without hesitation. “Don’t stop it. It might be fine. I don’t want to see another one die in front of me.”
“It’s not alive yet.”
“It’d be like killing a baby nine months along,” she argued. “And this will be the most powerful creature we have if it’s not corrupted.”
I dithered just long enough for it to be too late. Finding out how much the DNA of the creatures could mutate was important information, especially since it seemed like mutations were more common the higher the tier of animal created.
Then the eagle opened a beady, amber eye and there was no turning back.
Elaine and Marie entered the room, Elaine’s lizard trailing along behind them, the collar it wore when they left the facility was absent. “What’s going on?” Elaine asked as the eagle began to move more and more. It flexed a huge wing, revealing just how big it was going to be.
“Jesus,” Marie said, looking at it. “That thing is ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Lisa stood up, moving back a little. “Maybe a bit too ridiculous.”
“You did put the obedience up, didn’t you?” Marie asked.
None of the girls realized I’d messed with their own levels of obedience when I’d created them, even if they knew I did it to the animals. I’d lied to their faces about the level of tampering that had been done to their personalities during their own gestation. With Marie it had been an accident– Ego had done it without me knowing, but when she’d woken up calling me
Master I hadn’t exactly been complaining. With Elaine I toned it down a bit, and with Lisa even more.
With the animals we created, though, it was turned up to the max. If we made an army that didn’t follow our instructions, we’d be securing our own downfall.
“Altering the personality of a C-grade creation is more art than science,” Ego said. “And I was definitely programmed for science.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Elaine demanded, standing with hands on her hips and glaring at the camera. It was the camera I was behind, too, and I felt the full force of her irritation.
“I’m saying that I can’t guarantee the obedience is as high as I attempted to make it.”
“Shit,” Marie said. “Well that thing looks powerful as hell, so let’s hope it’s not too angry.”
Angry was a very good way of describing how the eagle acted when it fully gained consciousness.
It spread both wings as wide as they would go, and it took up practically the width of the laboratory. It blinked rapidly, trying to get to its feet once and failing. When it beat its wings to stabilize itself, the girls’ hair flitted in the breeze. It got to its feet, blinked once more, and then attacked.
The eagle dove straight for Marie, perhaps some instinct telling it that the half-rat hybrid was prey. She ducked and scurried across the lab, moving quicker than I’d thought she could to avoid the razor sharp beak of the eagle.
“What do we do?” Elaine screeched as her lizard opened its mouth and breathed fire in the direction of the eagle, now flapping in the center of the room. The space was so cramped that Lisa had to duck out of the way of the fire to stop herself being set alight.
There was ringing in my ears as I watched the girls dodge out of the way of swift attacks.
The beast was amazing. Powerful and strong like nothing we’d made so far.
“We need to isolate it,” I said, my voice cutting through the chaos as I amplified it through the speakers.