Authors: David Berardelli
Things from this point on would be tough. The scanner made the door
inaccessible. If I wanted to gain access, I’d have to use some ingenuity—and I
couldn’t make any mistakes.
After we’d reached the green door marked LAB, my escort waved his palm at
the scanner. The door clicked. He pushed it open and nudged me with his
automatic. My heart thrashed as I went in.
Fifteen large cages had been shoved against the wall, each containing a naked
male subject. Three males sat cross-legged on the cage floor, their heads lowered.
Three others lay on their backs, not moving. Five older males lay on the floor, not
moving. The sixth sat in the corner, sucking his thumb. The remaining three cages
contained elderly males, all dead.
Naked females sat imprisoned in similar cages against the opposite wall. The
first six contained teen girls. The remaining subjects were in the forty-to-sixty
range. The teens pulled at the bars while the others repeatedly pounded their
heads against them. One girl shouted something incoherent. The others whined
and whimpered. The rest were deeply affected, and lay on the floor of their cage.
Two were obviously dead.
The smell of urine and feces, not totally absorbed by the air-filtering unit,
made my eyes water.
In the center of the room, a naked man lay strapped to a table angled at
around sixty degrees. The bottom edge of the table was submerged in a
galvanized tub of ice water. His bound feet shivered with cold just inches from
the frigid water. He cried out, struggling frantically, but the heavy black straps
pinning his chest, waist, and thighs to the table held him fast.
Beside the table, a female technician faced a monitor, busily typing away at a
keyboard. Slender and fairly tall, she was dressed in a long white lab coat. Her
thick black hair was tied in a knot at the base of her neck.
The table, attached at its center with hydraulics, lowered slowly, until the
man’s naked flesh entered the water, submerging him up to his genitals. His
screams shook the walls, growing weak as he struggled violently, his efforts
pulling him toward unconsciousness. Knots stood out all over his bluish flesh.
The man remained submerged for about one minute. When he stopped
struggling, the technician raised the table, until only his feet remained in the
water. She felt for a pulse then busily scribbled into her pad.
Another female in a white lab coat emerged from behind a partition and
walked over. She was about the same height and build, with thick brown hair
hanging loose. The first technician said something to her, and the second female
turned in my direction to pick up a flash drive from the table behind her.
It was Fields.
I watched numbly, unable to move or even breathe.
If I could believe my eyes, Fields was assisting this bunch in the involuntary
cloning of human beings. Had she become a member of this psychotic crew?
Colonel Forbes’s three words thundered in my head.
Specimens … need … nurse.
At the time, the actual image hadn’t registered. I’d been too busy gleaning
him for information—too busy thinking of some way of pulling the plug on this
government-manufactured nightmare. I never would have thought of Fields
helping them—actually joining them.
She was a nurse, for God’s sake. She’d been trained to help people. To relieve
suffering. To aid them in their time of need.
How could she be a party to this?
Had I been wrong about her?
Had she lied to Reed and me?
Was she a spy planted by Colonel Forbes’s clone, or was she working for
General Eldon?
I had to confront this possibility. Her behavior might have been staged for my
benefit. At the roadblock, maybe she’d feigned fear and confusion. Maybe she
hadn’t really wanted me to go for her gun. Maybe it was just an act to persuade
Reed and me that she was just as scared as we were.
I imagined her being escorted from the van while another TAB grabbed Reed,
knocked him unconscious, and hauled him away. I imagined her relaxing
comfortably in the back seat of their lead car, confident she’d done her job of
luring us into their trap. I imagined them bringing Reed here and tossing him in
one of the cells. I imagined them coming for him, escorting him here, stripping
him, and fastening him to a table, while Fields slipped into her lab coat and
started the cloning process.
How could I have been so wrong about her?
If she was one of them, as attractive and desirable as she was, they’d have no
trouble luring me into their trap. Using their equipment to monitor my chip,
they’d taken her to Breezewood and waited for me to show. They’d even roughed
her up a little to gain my sympathy. They probably even gave her a bonus for it.
She hadn’t stumbled upon the trio of TABs, as it appeared. She’d gone with them
to find me and make sure I drove to the roadblock.
I should have been suspicious when she didn’t shoot me at the gas station. If
she’d been as terrified and as enraged as she let on, she would’ve just blown me
away.
Part of me started to believe all this, while the other part told me I was being
stupid, that Fields had been brought here just as I had, that she’d been ordered to
the lab. She had no choice. If she didn’t comply, she’d have been executed.
How could anyone fight them? How could anyone stand up to these
superhuman clones?
That was the part of my reasoning that didn’t make sense; that told me I
wasn’t being stupid. Even if she’d wanted to resist, she couldn’t have found a
way. Sure, this was a lab arrayed with deadly instruments lying within easy grasp.
Possibly she could have picked up a scalpel, sliced the brunette’s jugular, and
released the lone survivor from the examination table. She could’ve unplugged
things, disabled the lab...
My thoughts spun, and my imagination ran wild.
No, I concluded. She was one of them. That fact alone made me want to grind
my teeth. But if I was right, it meant I wasn’t the only one in danger. Every
functioning veteran imbedded with a chip would be snared in a similar way and
brought here. They’d want as many of us as they could find to help them.
I wanted to kick myself for playing into their hands. I also wanted to wrap my
hands around her slender neck and…
Another nudge of the automatic in my back snapped me out of my rage. The
TAB gestured toward that empty exam table awaiting me.
A shiver ran down my spine. I’d seen a couple of these bad boys before. The
military employed them on terrorists and illegals suspected of subversive
dealings. We’d used them with great success on Muslim terrorists to locate
sleeper cells.
At each end, sturdy straps were bolted into the metal frame—in case the
patient/subject was uncooperative. For intensive sessions, the interrogators would
add a leather harness with snaps for electrode placement. I didn’t see that
apparatus, but based on what the colonel had told me, I knew it was nearby. I did
notice the straps bolted to the table’s sides and dangling loose to the floor. They
secured the victim’s chest, waist, and thighs. I saw a black hood made of heavy
material lying on a table against the wall. Beside it, an array of wires extended
from power outlets on the wall. And underneath the table, there was a foot pedal,
which I knew controlled the application of electrical current.
Torture or involuntary cloning—some choice
.
The TAB gestured for me to lie down on the table.
My nerves quivered, and I trembled. These people were going to copy my
body to create a new line of TABs, and they would empty my brain to program
them.
The gun pressed into my back again.
My time for action had run out.
Panic hovered frighteningly close, like the hot, salivating jaws of a predatory
beast. I forced myself to ignore it by trying to remember what the colonel had
told me, but too many things prevented me from thinking clearly. I wanted blood,
not answers. I needed to take action. Drastic action. Extreme, violent action.
I had to disable the TAB then kill Fields and the brunette. Fields was busy
working and wouldn’t notice anything else going on in the lab until it was too
late. My adrenaline was pumping at a frantic rate. I could probably snatch a
scalpel and slash her throat before my guard could get at me. At this point, I had
lost any illusions of surviving—I wanted only revenge. For Reed, for the poor
slobs on the table, for the others dying elsewhere in their cells, and for all the
other military men and women who would be brought here for this evil plan.
Last, I wanted revenge for myself, for letting these savages bring me here.
I was right for not believing anything the colonel’s clone, the general, or the
senator told me. They wanted only to create their own personal empire, enforced
with battalions of superhuman clones.
I had to stop them. I’d faced overwhelming odds before. I’d seen what this
New Order held for all of us. I didn’t have much to lose.
The hood.
Something about it nagged at me.
Why would they need a hood? Light deprivation? Isolation? A fear tactic?
Was waterboarding part of their repertoire?
The colonel had said something about the clones. Something very important,
yet I still couldn’t focus.
The gun poked me again, this time harder.
The sudden contact pumped even more adrenaline into my system and forced
my brain into deeper focus.
The TAB, essentially a walking computer, operated very much like a human.
Without the use of its eyes, it would be forced to rely on auxiliary information,
and I might be able to subdue it during the transition. If I could just grab that
hood from the table, maybe I could subdue the guard long enough to disable it
completely.
Movement to my right made me start. Fields had left her station and was
walking toward me.
My first instinct was to lunge at her, but something about her made my scalp
buzz, and I didn’t move.
Her eyes were totally blank. Her expression told me nothing. I saw no
familiarity, no kindness. No hint of emotion whatsoever.
How could she do this? How could she…?
No hint of emotion.
My God.
The realization slapped me in the face.
Was this a clone, too?
She approached the table and reached for the straps. The TAB kept his
distance, staring at me as I climbed on the table.
At that point, his gun was about two feet away, too far to try knocking him off
balance. A kick to the groin? I had no idea what was down there. A TAB wouldn’t
need testicles, so I had to pass on that. Besides, I’d seen clear evidence they
weren’t programmed to feel pain.
How else could I get him to drop the gun?
Then Fields did something unexpected. She reached for the hood on the wall
table and handed it to me. Her face still showed no emotion. Given my
predicament, I had no choice but take it from her. I was about to say something
nasty, when her left eye suddenly twitched.
Twitched? Or blinked?
Did clones blink? Or was this my imagination?
No. It wasn’t a twitch or a blink.
Fields just winked at me.
Was this actually Fields herself?
Her eyes shifted from my face to the hood in my hand, then furtively to the
TAB at the foot of the table. She brought up her left hand to pull back her hair,
and subtly pointed to her head at the same time. When she brought her hand
down, she pointed to the hood.
That’s when I remembered: Colonel Forbes had told me the Asian clone
model had suffered from claustrophobia. Fields had somehow figured this out and
was trying to tell me what to do next.
She gestured for the TAB to help her strap me in. He holstered the gun and
reached down for the chest strap on his side of the table. As he did, he lowered
his head toward me momentarily. I quickly brought up the hood, pulled it open,
and covered his face. He immediately lunged out with both arms, but his
movements were imprecise, as if he had no concept of space without the aid of
his eyes.
Capitalizing on his confusion, I pushed myself off the table and leaped onto
his shoulders, forcing him to the floor and using his muscular bulk to cushion my
landing.
The TAB flopped around helplessly beneath me, rolling from side to side
while groping clumsily for the hood. He wasn’t going for his gun or trying to
push me off. He had obviously switched to full panic mode. The Asian’s
claustrophobia must have penetrated deeply into the TABs’ behavioral
programming.
“Keep his head covered.” Fields rushed the technician, who’d grabbed a
scalpel and charged at her.
I kept my weight on the TAB’s shoulders, using all my strength to hold the
hood tightly around his head. Fields grabbed a loose hospital gown and, like a
toreador, whipped it in the air and around the technician’s head and neck. She
immediately dropped the scalpel and, like the TAB, grabbed at the air, as if she
had completely lost her spatial sense.
Fields pulled a Phillips screwdriver from her pocket. With her left hand, she
held the gown wrapped tightly around the woman’s head; with her right, she took
the screwdriver and plunged it into the technician’s left ear. She gave it a
counterclockwise twist, and the woman collapsed to the floor.
The move astonished me so much that I almost lost my grip on the hood.
Fields sprinted in my direction.
“When I say now,” she whispered, dropping to her knees beside me, “yank it
up. Grab the backs of his ears and hold on tight. We have to do this fast. Once he
can see again, he’ll recover immediately. Got it?”
I nodded.
Fields positioned the screwdriver just a few inches from the TAB’s left ear.
She took a deep breath and gawked at me. I could tell she was scared. She took
another deep breath and focused on her task. “Now!”
I ripped off the hood, grabbed the TAB’s ears, and put all my weight on them.
Fields quickly stuck the screwdriver into his exposed ear and twisted sharply. The
TAB stopped struggling and went limp. His eyes immediately dimmed.
Winded and shaking from my exertions, I sat back on my haunches. I wanted
to kick myself for thinking what I had been thinking.
“Good job,” I said, my voice shaky. “But how did you…?”
She put her hand to my mouth then pointed to the tiny black camera
positioned above the door. Another one tilted down from the ceiling at the
opposite end of the room.
“Any idea how many of them are still in charge?” I whispered.
“They’ve kept me pretty isolated since they brought me here.”
“Well, now they’ve got two less.”
“They can be turned back on, you know.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that.”
“A turn of the screwdriver only powers them down. Their main chip is inside
the center of the forehead, and the power-down is temporary and used only for
maintenance, or a quick reboot in the field. If I don’t power it back up, it
automatically brings itself back up after three minutes.”
“Then I guess the only way of putting them out of commission permanently is
to kill the program.”
She jumped up. “We’ve got to move. We might only have seconds to get out
of here.”
“I have to get to the computer room.”
“It’s got a double scanner,” she said.
“Are you authorized?”
“Just Forbes, Eldon, Cameron, and the TABs. Quick, follow me.”
Grabbing the hood from the floor, she moved to the technician. She picked up
the scalpel, grabbed the female’s wrist, and sliced off her hand. There was no
blood. Fields then stuffed the severed hand, the screwdriver, and the hood into
her lab coat pockets, jumped up, and headed for the corridor.
I yanked the pistol from the TAB’s waist holster and checked the clip. Then I
joined her just as she pulled open the door.
Across the corridor, she waved the detached hand across the scanner. We
heard the click as the computer room door unlocked.
Red lights flashed brightly from the ceiling panels. Sirens wailed loudly from
speakers, turning the corridor into a chaotic nightmare.
“The TABs must be hooked directly to the security program,” I yelled over
the sirens.
“No doubt. When you turn one off, the program automatically does a search
on the broken link and assumes there’s been a security breach.”
“Any idea how long it’ll take them to get here?”
“Judging by the size of the corridors, I’d say no more than a couple of
minutes.”
We rushed into the computer room.
“Do you think you can find their operating system?” she asked.
“Don’t know, but it’s our only chance.”
The walls of the computer room were obviously sound insulated, because the
wailing of the sirens went silent as soon as we shut the door.
The room was about half the size of the lab. Rows of processors spanned the
area, and data readouts flooded the array of monitors on the walls.
Eight people sat facing the far wall. Three of them had already collapsed onto
their keyboards. One sprawled face-down in the aisle. The others continued
punching keys, oblivious of us or their fallen comrades.
As I stepped over the fallen geek, Fields whispered, “What are we looking
for?”
I approached one of the vacant work stations. It displayed Chinese characters,