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Seila returned with a small yawn sometime later, looking a bit calmer and just a little bit annoyed with him for having organized just a little bit of the scattered information that covered much of the kitchen counter. She sighed and decided to say nothing as she poured herself another cup of coffee and moved to take a nearby seat. She looked older than he remembered her being all those years ago when they had first met at the inception of the program that had changed both of their lives. The war had raged for nearly 5 years before they had met as the Alliance tried to bring an end to separatist movement that had been launching terrorist attacks and creating chaos behind the scenes of the planetary governments. With thousands of people dying every day, the genetic alterations had seemed a small price to pay to try to save lives. With the major corporations backing the separatists, they were well armed and well equipped even when compared to the Alliance fleet, it had seemed a logical step that there one and only advantage had to be the people who were serving on either side of the conflict. Series 1 and 2 had been more of an experiment, conducted in secret to test the theories that would be later applied to Series 3. The first large scale attempt to further human evolution through the application of genetic manipulation.
All of them had become smarter, that much was certain, with the information Series 3 supplied through the remaining war efforts the Alliance was slowly able to shift the tides of that conflict, and destroy the attempts of big business to recreate the colonies into their perfect image of a consumer driven reality. But it was the unexpected side effects that had almost prevented them from returning to the general populace and the friends and families that they had left behind when they had joined the war efforts. For his part Devin seemed to have avoided most of the side effects that others had reported after many of them had under gone the procedures, but he knew that Seila hadn't quite been so lucky as he had been. While scientists and science fiction had agreed that such things might exist, until the Series 3 projects had begun there had never been any hard evidence that empathy, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis could ever truly have existed. Those first weeks and months some of them had woken up at the end of their procedures and had been able to sense things, been able to do things they had never imagined. In the experiments that had followed the ones that had created them, the Alliance had tried to make what had been side effects into a whole new class of weapons.
"I knew about Series 4 and 5 before the war ended.." Seila murmured softly to him as if her own thoughts had echoed his own during those first moments of privacy. "But what could have possibly possessed them to make a Series 6?"
"Fear." Devin told her, she gave him an intense studied look that would probably make one of her students crack in only a short while after being fixed with such penetrating gaze, not even Shiva had been completely immune to it. Seila's empathic gift had been acknowledged early on and she had even spent some time helping to interrogate the captured separatist prisoners, but Devin was hardly moved by that gaze having known her too long to not know she was ultimately a gentle soul. "The corporations might have fallen, the armies might have been brought to an end, but with a group as fanatical as they were there was never a way of knowing if they had simply gone underground to start planning a new offensive in ten or twenty more years. At least that's the only answer I can come up with that makes any real sense."
"After seeing all of this spelled out in plain lettering, I was almost ready to believe you were somehow bringing me a monster, somehow trying to pawn your problem off on me." She murmured gesturing to the files spread out in front of her. Having had plenty of time to review that same information, he had almost been inclined to believe that very same thing. "But deep down under all.. that psychological mess they pawned off on her, there is a scared uncertain little girl isn't there?"
"I honestly don't know if there is any fear in there, at least nothing like normal fear.. but uncertainty, loneliness, the desire to be accepted and loved.. most certainly. Some might call me heartless, but I've seen just enough of those things leak through the cracks of that practiced exterior of hers to know that to be true." Devin corrected softly. "It will be a day or two before I can get all of her school transcripts gathered up, but.. this is the first time I have been allowed any sort of decision as to where I could take her after one of these 'incidents'. For two years they have been bouncing her around Earth to some of the absolutely worst schools you might name. All of which have had serious problems with violence, putting her into positions where she has been all but guaranteed to remain socially isolated and at risk. They made her a killer long before this reclamation project was ever attempted, and have consistently put her into a position where she would have to defend herself."
"Are you trying to say, that the brass is trying to sabotage your command?" She asked with just a touch of doubt in her voice.
"In so many words.. Yes. The reclamation projects off world have brought 20 of them out of stasis and have seen little to no trouble, but were the Earth reclamation efforts were to fail.. what would happen?" Devin murmured, she gave him a dark look as if she could easily guess the answer to question. "Perhaps the only reason it hasn't folded already is because of Shiva.."
"She's been expelled, what 12 times?" Seila countered quickly, Devin nodded and smiled at her.
"She's broken bones, knocked out teeth, torn muscles, but not once has there been an injury that was even close to life threatening. With her they made a conscious, focused effort to create a weapon that could be lethal on a massive scale, but a weapon incapable of spreading death against an army of thugs and criminals?" She nodded thoughtfully to that and then sighed as her eyes drifted up towards the ceiling. "I have never once been given a reason to think that Shiva can not or would not be able to raze a few cities to the ground, but not only has she failed to do that.. she has never once used the excessive force she was designed and programmed to inflict. If you look at it in terms of what she could have done, she rendered just enough damage to insure her enemies would not be able to threaten her for a considerable time period without causing permanent physical damage."
"I'll take your word for it, for the moment.. but do you really think that there is some conspiracy in place against her?" Seila asked with a bone deep sigh as her eyes refocused on him.
"I hope not.. maybe they just want to forget what their predecessors tried to do, lock up the rest and just let the stasis tubes collect dust for centuries to come, I don't know. But even if there is some kind of greater conspiracy, I feel almost certain now that after seeing all of that, they were expecting someone other than who Shiva really is to come out of that tube. That she was selected specifically because there was a high probability that she would fail." Devin murmured softly back to her. She looked down at the file and nodded as if only after a short while in Shiva's presence she was just about ready to believe that it was not really Shiva who was being analyzed in those scientific facts and figures.
"This is her last chance?" She asked of him after a long silence
"Last chance for both of us, she screws this up, and I'll be in front of a board of inquiry probably even before they are able to track her down." Devin told her honestly, she gave him a significant look. "Unless I decide to run with her, get her off-world and to some place out of their reach."
"You'd do that for her?" She asked with no small amount of surprise.
"She deserves a chance at something better." Devin reaffirmed now convinced of this, those three days in her company had given him his first real insight into what Shiva was really like behind that angry mask she put on when facing the world.
"I'll do everything I can." Seila agreed softly as she lifted up one of the pages to re-read it. "For both of you."
The Sixth Line of Defense Page 6