Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (22 page)

“Doesn’t really matter.  It’s all about image and perception.  We can turn him into whatever we want and the kicker is,” Templeton said before leaning forward and giving a slight smile, “the Commission is already doing most of the work.  Just today they aired a special about how Jenkins is a hero and how he will change the game.  They’re trying to make the behavior modification less costly,” he said before sitting back.  The whole uprising was risky, but having the Commission unintentionally help them tickled the resistance agent.

“Really?  I don’t remember him being a hero,” Feldman said before looking at the ground in front of him and laying his massive limbs on the armrests.  He seemed to have given up on composure.

“Image and perception, Gregory.  The truth doesn’t matter.  So can I count on you?” Templeton asked, sure that he had manipulated the intellectual’s emotions enough to garner his support.  The giant furrowed his brow and flicked his gaze back at the resistance agent.  Templeton didn’t see that as a good sign.

“What?  No.  Nothing has changed,” Feldman said before resuming his full height in the arm chair.  Templeton was shocked at that.  He had thought that the giant was on his side.

“But Jenkins…”

“Is a coward.  Just because you have a poster boy doesn’t make your revolution any less irrational.  You stand a slightly better chance, I’ll admit, but he’s just one man and he’s not even that great of one,” Feldman said as he started to flit through pages.  Templeton’s resolve hardened.  He wasn’t going to just let this go.

“He was your friend.  You confided in him, right?  We’re going to bring him back.  He’s going to help us,” Templeton said with a note of frustration.  He didn’t understand how the giant could disregard his friend like that.

“He
was
my friend.  He gave up.  He gave into despair and lost himself.  Then he took the coward’s way out and ended his life.  The man you bring back will not be the man with whom I was friends.  He will be the same coward who chose death over life.  Why would I care if you brought him back to a hellish existence just to die again?  If anything it’s cruel and disrespectful to the dead.  We’re done here, Templeton.  Wage your war or not, but do it without me,” Feldman said before he found his page and invested his interest in the old philosophy.  Templeton huffed as he realized he had lost this conversation.  He stood up and made his way to the doorway, but another thought stayed his departure and he turned to point a finger at the giant.

“You can do whatever you want, Feldman.  You can read here in your library and spend the rest of your days quoting Danish philosophers but this revolution is going to happen.  We’re going to fight and this planet will be the first battlefield.  We might die, but that’s up in the air.  But there’s one truth you’re not going to be able to escape, Gregory.  When the slave soldiers rise up, the Trade Union is not going to make any distinctions.  You’ll be their enemy with a book in your hand just as if you had a gun.  One of those is going to be useless,” Templeton said before storming out of the tomb of literature. 

Feldman didn’t watch the man leave but he heard every word.  He tried to read the book in front of him but soon found that he could not make it past a single sentence.  He had made the right choice, of course.  It was irresponsible to throw away his life on a doomed cause, but Templeton did have a strong point.  Their enemy was not going to make a distinction.  Feldman’s hand was going to be forced and he didn’t appreciate it.  The giant thought about their plan for propaganda.  The Ryan Jenkins he knew was no messiah figure, but it wasn’t about truth.  It was about the story.  Feldman sighed as he thought about his old friend.

“They just couldn’t leave you buried, could they?”

-

Charlotte Kane wished that she had another drink nearby.  It was a downright horrible plan that Albert and Laurence had presented to her, but with the alcohol it seemed manageable.  She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if she had the guts to see it through.  Charlotte had no idea what horrors Hawkins had been able to perform in the depths of their clinic, but she knew she didn’t have the stomach for it. 

She also knew she didn’t have a choice; she would have to deal with the hit to her conscience.  There simply wasn’t any other way of obtaining Jenkins’ brain mapping; the monster in the lab coat would not trust her with it.  The good doctor would just have to grin and bear it.

She wiped off her hands with one of the linens in the washroom and then exited into the hallway.  Dr. Kane gathered her courage and left for the Resurrection Control Room.  There were no bodies to be resurrected yet, the Crows were scheduled for a game later that day, but it wasn’t often that Charlotte did not find Hawkins tapping away at his personal display in the Control Room.  He had a habit of turning the area into a nest for himself, surrounded by papers, articles and a dozen empty coffee cups. 

When Dr. Kane arrived in the Control Room she was surprised to find Hawkins absent.  The scientist certainly had been there, as the half-built nest was there to testify, but the monster was gone for the time being.  Charlotte tried to think about where the scientist could possibly be, but then she remembered all of the research rooms and cells further into the complex.  She had only a cursory introduction to the area before Hawkins let her know that she was forbidden from entering while he was working.  She had taken to her exclusion readily; Dr. Kane had no desire to see the horrifying things that Hawkins could be up to when left to his own devices.

The knot twisted in her stomach as she realized that she had to pretend to have that desire.  It did not sit well with the good doctor and she felt the knot threatening her insides.  She debated on running back to the washroom before realizing that she just had to deal with it.  She stood up to her full height and then looked at the Resurrection Chamber.  Charlotte remembered the first time that Jenkins had come out of the darkness of storage; she remembered the fear and pain in those wide eyes.

Charlotte walked towards the research area with a confident stride.  The knot was still there, but it held no power over her anymore.  She remembered why she was doing this; she understood how, in some cases, the ends really do justify the means.

As she walked to the research area she passed by the massive supercomputer for the entire clinic.  She sighed as she realized that the twenty-four members of the Crows were recorded into those databanks.  It held the data on every soldier; their lives, their deaths and their memories.  It was updated from a satellite constantly receiving updates from the sub-dermal implants in each soldier.  Whenever the soldiers in question expired, their experiences would be transmitted to the computer and then to the clones waiting in storage below. 

It was an efficient system, but there were still problems.  Charlotte remembered a few instances of satellite and communication failure.  It was the main cause of premature adoptions and mental dissolutions.  Jenkins and Carver were the lucky ones.  Dr. Kane had seen half a dozen dissolutions since she came to work for the Crows.  She remembered Lewis’ desperate face as he didn’t understand how to breathe.  Luckily, the soldier did not recall the experience after he was resurrected again, but Charlotte would never forget.  The good doctor shivered as she remembered the man choking to death just because his brain didn’t work.

She stepped into the research lab and almost felt relief.  It was not nearly as foreboding and grim as she thought it would be.  It had the same paint job and focus on blues and whites that was so prevalent in the rest of the complex.  It was hard for Charlotte to imagine what atrocities were committed behind some of these closed doors.  That was until she remembered how sick and demented Hawkins could be.

Charlotte Kane walked down the hallway listening for some clue as to the scientist’s whereabouts.  There were windows into each room, but the curtains had been drawn behind each one, so Charlotte had no idea what would be present behind the closed doors.  However macabre the thought was, Dr. Kane hoped that at the very worst there were dead bodies.  Charlotte could understand that kind of curiosity and experimentation.  She just hoped nobody living was beyond the doors.

Charlotte was just about to give up and head back to the Control Room when Hawkins walked out of the room ten meters from her.  The weasel-faced scientist was deep in thought as he analyzed his findings and almost didn’t notice the raven-haired woman standing there in the middle of the hallway.  Charlotte had stopped in her tracks once she saw the man leave the room; her mind blank as she realized she had no idea how to talk to the scientist like this.  It felt like an eternity before the scientist looked up from his charts and spotted the woman.  He was at first surprised and frightened, but soon his expression turned to anger and annoyance.

“What…,” he said nervously before gathering himself and grunting at the woman.  Hawkins had not anticipated seeing the woman anywhere near his research subjects. She had no taste for it and Hawkins preferred it that way.  He narrowed his eyes and continued.  “What are you doing here, Dr. Kane?  I told you when you first got here that this wing is forbidden.”  Charlotte heard the question and desperately tried to think of an answer before she realized that she knew exactly how to talk to Hawkins.  He would only respect her if she was just as aggressive.

“You might have your rules, Peter, but I don’t need to respect them.  I’m here for the first time to finally see for myself what you’ve been doing down here,” Dr. Kane said, fixing her eyes into stone.  She was not going to budge.  Hawkins glared back and shifted his weight, uncomfortable with this change in their dynamic.

“Well, Charlotte, I’m quite certain you’re wrong on that point.  I’m your boss and what I say goes.  I don’t need to explain myself or my experiments with the likes of you.  You’re ornamentation,
Doctor
,” he said, dropping the temperature of his words to ice. 

“You might think that,” Charlotte started, making sure to confront him with the same cold indifference, “but I don’t have a medical degree for nothing.  I understand far more about human physiology and psychology than you realize.  Just because you’ve spent years manipulating these men and breaking their minds doesn’t mean I can’t understand your processes; that I can’t understand your way of thinking.  I’m not asking, Peter.  I’m forcing myself into your world because it’s about damn time for someone to stand up to you.”  The scientist narrowed his eyes and almost snarled at the upstart doctor. 
Such a foolish little girl,
he thought.

“Time for someone to stand up to me?  What do you think you can do,
Ms
. Kane?  Do you think if I show you my results, my research, my very life’s blood that I will cow down when you start talking to me about ethics and feelings?  I don’t much care about your brand of psychology or therapy.  These are
my
guinea pigs.  You can’t help them, now,” the scientist stated in his particular brand of snide superiority.  Charlotte had to resist taking a deep breath.  She had to remind herself that she didn’t need to believe the words she was about to say.

“This isn’t about helping them, Hawkins,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her to show a degree of defiance.  “I want to know what you’re doing so I can
help
you.”

“Wh…what?” Hawkins asked, letting the clipboard in his hand drop to his side.  It was the absolute last thing he would have expected to hear.  Not from the sweet, good doctor in front of him.  Immediately his thoughts turned to skepticism and a frown distorted his features.  “Why, in the name of scientific progress, would I ever believe that load of bullshit?  You forget that I’m a genius, Charlotte.  You cannot change your colors.”  Charlotte looked back at him and did what was completely unnatural to her; it was the only way she could get the madman to trust her.  She smiled and laughed.

“It’s not a matter of colors, Hawkins.  It’s a matter of perspective.  It took me some time due to the nature of this scientific marvel, but I forgot the usefulness, the potential of what laid in front of me.  I could not realize the opportunities I had with these marvels and with,” she said as she stepped closer to the man, close enough for him to smell the odors from her fragrant shampoo.  “the mind I was working with this whole time.”  Charlotte turned and let the man’s heart skip a beat.  She fought the urge to shudder and looked over her shoulder at the scientist while she grabbed a chart off the nearby wall.

“Simply put, Peter, we have a great opportunity here on Eris.  Men who have no business living in the first place are given to us with political and economic carte blanche.  These are criminals and debtors; unclean filth and plebeians,” she said, masking her hatred of the philosophy as it spouted from her throat.  “No one misses them; society at large cheers at their deaths.  They can’t contribute to this world, not like us,” she continued as she flipped through the chart and skimmed over the results.  A clone of Haywick was apparently on the other side of the blacked-out curtains.  She felt the bile attempting to rise to her mouth, but did what she could to ignore it.

“What we have here, Peter, is a way to experiment with humanity at its very core.  No need for animal testing, no need to guess what human beings are able to tolerate.  We have an endless supply of volunteers,” she said as she looked back over her shoulder, letting the rich coffee of her eyes focus on the man.  The scientist couldn’t help but drink in that stare, and his heart fluttered at the coy smile flashing at him.  “At least,” she continued, “it says so in their contract.”

“Pick your jaw off the ground, Peter,” she said as she placed the chart back into its mooring and came within breathing distance of the shrinking scientist.  She reached out and corrected his lapel, and peered down at her superior.  “I just came to my senses.  My emotions, well, they got out of control.  I want to know what I can do,” she purred before letting her gaze burn and smolder into his eyes.

Hawkins had forgotten what it was like to have a woman interested in him.  He had forgotten what it was like when he wasn’t surrounded by his endless experiments.  The most he had accomplished with women in the last decade was to subtly impregnate the female Crow in an effort to see what accelerated growth cycles would do to zygotes.  As he watched the raven-haired temptress in front of him, Hawkins could only think about the possibilities.