Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (45 page)

“But that wasn’t us, was it?” the false Jenkins asked first.  His predecessor bit his lip and broke eye contact at that.

“That’s why I did it, if you didn’t know.  I had figured out that it wasn’t me down there in New Chicago.  I didn’t know Justin or Phil or Kristen Harrison.  I never called anybody a raccoon brother.  He did.”

“That motherfucker,” the artificial soldier said with a smile.

“They gave you a better sense of humor, if anything,” the real Jenkins said, curling the corner of his lips in an attempt at light-hearted conversation.  His counterpart shrugged at the remark.

“Norris was a little upset that I was stealing his thunder, though.”  The newborn laughed at that.

“He would…”he said before looking down at his armored hand.  It felt like only hours ago he had discovered his own corpse and sent a bullet through his brain.  He knew it had been a month.  “Neither of us are that first Jenkins, Ryan.  I don’t even have a better right for it.  So what if they didn’t tamper with me?  Just by the very fact I’ve been here, or people whose memories I have, I’m not the same guy.”

“Yeah, so?” the artificial soldier asked, finally stumped as to what his counterpart might say.  The messiah figure looked up and shrugged.

“So it doesn’t matter which one of us lives, Ryan.  We both have equal rights to this messiah gig.  You don’t have to think of yourself as fake, because really,” the newborn said before rising to his feet.  “I’m fake, too.  We’re both products.”  At that the artificial soldier had to laugh.  He had to concede that his counterpart knew exactly how to motivate him.  The false soldier stood up with his clone.

“Deep down I knew I’d like you, Ryan,” he said with a smile before putting his hand on the man’s shoulder.  The messiah figure shrugged and set his hand on his counterpart in a mirror exchange.

“Why was I ever afraid?” he asked with a grin.  The false Jenkins brought his arm around the back of the other man’s neck and then the two of them walked towards the entrance of the mess hall.

“You think either of us are getting out of here alive?”

“Fuck, man.  You already know.”

“We really do need to figure out names.”

“We’ll get there when we get there.  Might only be one of us after this anyway.”

“You’re a depressing motherfucker, you know that?”

“Got it from you.”

“You asshole, we got it from him.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jenkins said as they moved through the doorway.  It was nice to joke around after all this time, but he couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming despair tugging at the smile on his face.

It was a shame; Ryan had always wanted a brother.  Now he might have to watch him die.

-

Charlotte looked through the mountain of files and wondered how she was going to go about this.  Hawkins had created hundreds of different incarnations of Haywick, and the unfortunate truth of it was that he labeled them by how he had tortured the man.  The words “incineration” and “broken” came up far too many times to count and made the woman feel sick to her stomach.  She had hoped to find some brain mapping that didn’t have some brutal predecessor.

She realized quickly that it just wasn’t possible.  In her hopes, she had thought that she could avoid using the last incarnation and avoid the pain from his memories, but only the first incarnation would have had a chance at that and he would be largely useless.  He would be no good in the field and would likely suffer a mental dissolution.

Charlotte loaded the most recent brain mapping onto her flash drive and walked through the now-empty medical clinic.  The soldiers had all left, even Roberts and Carver, and she was alone.  She had heard the half-mad screams of Hawkins as he expired, but she didn’t come to his rescue.  He had committed far too much evil within the span of his terrible life.  She took extra care not to look into the room that held his corpse as she passed.

The eerie silence of the clinic took her by surprise.  She had thought herself prepared for this, but it was so odd to think that she was the only living person in the building.  Even Hawkins’ presence had been a benefit to her, apparently.  Her stomach didn’t thank her for this experience and she wondered if it would be better for her to keep it empty or try to sneak in a meal before the coming battle.  She pushed the thought from her mind, realizing that it was unimportant.  She had a task to do before she could return to the barracks.  She couldn’t waste any time on herself.

Dr. Kane reached the Control Room and sat down at the main terminal.  She placed the flash drive into the data port and waited for the window to pop up on the display.  Soon enough she found Haywick’s stoic face looking at her from his data file.  Even if he was resurrected perfectly, he would still have all the terrible memories of those concurrent lives.  The good doctor did what she could to justify it; at least he would have a chance at life instead of being forced into retirement.

While it was only fifteen minutes in between the upload and the arrival of the soldier into the resurrection chamber, it seemed like much longer.  She knew that she had a time limit and she didn’t want to be in the clinic when the EOSF arrived.  Even the relatively quick process of draining the biotic fluid seemed to pass at an unbearably slow pace.  She watched from the side of the machine as the loading arm lowered the cell into the mooring and the door hissed open.  She crossed her fingers as the resurrected soldier was exposed to the air of the clinic.  Charlotte tried not to hope, even though she desperately wanted this to work.

Her heart sank as Haywick looked at her with wild eyes.  She leaned over the resurrected soldier with a look of compassion on her face and withdrew the breathing tube from his throat.  Charlotte smiled at the man and set her hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Do you know who you are?” she asked, hoping for some sign of intelligence.  Early adoptions were almost a direct correlation to mental dissolutions.  In the most likely scenario, the soldier would come out brain-dead, but even worse were those who had some capability of thought.  They just couldn’t function well enough.  Carver and Jenkins were the only ones who consistently were able to work through the process.  She hoped that Haywick would follow their example.

But as Charlotte asked her question the resurrected soldier was unable to follow her words.  His eyes were unfocused and his tongue hung outside of his mouth.  He turned his head weakly but then was unable to summon enough strength to lift it back.  The poor soldier couldn't see the tears that had formed underneath the good doctor’s eyes.  He wouldn’t have been able to understand the reason for them.  He wouldn’t have even known what tears were.  This was a brand new world for him.

Charlotte lowered her head into her hands.  She had failed, again.  This Haywick was essentially a vegetable.  He wasn’t going to be useful for the revolution; he couldn't live at all without constant medical attention.  She didn’t even need to look at the brainwave meter by her side.  She had brought a man back from the dead, but without the ability to live in this world. 

Charlotte sat like that for a long moment.  She had difficulty processing this new event.  She didn’t know the exact limits of morality, here, but she knew she was well past them.  If he wasn’t going to die on his own, he was going to die when the EOSF got there.  This was a man who would not survive.

Charlotte turned from the half-formed soldier and prepared the euthanasia materials.  The least she could do was send him out gently.  As she filled the syringe with the deadly substance she tried to will the tears back into her eyes.  One fell down her left cheek and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her lab coat.  She promised herself that she wasn’t going to let it affect her; this was a known risk of this procedure. 

She watched as the concoction made its way into the poor man’s circulatory system.  The half-formed thing had recovered the ability to turn its head and it stared at her as the feeling of death coursed through his veins.  His eyes were glassy and not understanding, but what struck Charlotte Kane was the fear.  Even without a fully-developed brain, the man could still feel fear.  He died like that, in terror, and Charlotte felt the tears threatening her eyes again.

But she pushed them away this time.  There was no time for this; no time for misery.  She had to try again.  Charlotte brushed her hand past the newborn’s eyes to stop them from staring and then initiated the process for cell retrieval.  Haywick’s body laid there as the plastic casing sealed him inside, ready to be thrown away.  The loading arm emerged from the darkness of the opening loading bay and attached itself to the back of the cell.  Dr. Kane retreated from the room as the loading arm dragged the cell, and the body inside it, into the darkness.  She tried to think about how the man hadn’t really existed.  It was just another soulless creation.  She knew that it was hollow reasoning.

The good doctor walked into the resurrection chamber and initiated another premature adoption.  The loading bay doors stayed open after Haywick departed, not bothering to close in between procedures.  Charlotte sighed and walked back to the stool near the terminal in the resurrection chamber.  The vitals seemed the same.  She tried not to think about how many times she would have to do this.  She didn’t know how her conscience would take it.

Once was already too much. 

-

It was broken.  He knew it.  They had used too much force.  Jamie wouldn’t have done it that way; that’s not how to extract information.  The trick was to threaten violence, make the victim
believe
that pain and misery was coming his way.  It was all about the deception, not the follow-through.  A broken tibia wasn’t going to do much to someone like Jamie Caswell.  He’d been conditioned too well; he’d undergone far too many simulations.

“I don’t KNOW anything,” he cried out, doing everything he could for the performance.  They had to believe him.  They had to see him as the weakling; they had to see him as a coward.  That was the role he needed them to believe.  It was necessary; it was the second most important role he had to play.  They had to believe him when Jamie told them that Douglas was in charge of the operation.  He couldn’t risk the information in his head getting out.

“Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,” the interrogator said as he pulled up the metal chair close to Jamie’s position in his chains.  The man was well-built and wore a vest over his nice, button-down shirt.  The blue of the shirt was now covered in blood, but the man didn’t seem to care.  The slight smile underneath his well-trimmed moustache and the wild look in his pale eyes were enough to show that he enjoyed every minute of this.  His hair was starting to go gray, but there was still plenty of blonde hair to show off.  It made him seem even more sinister.

“We
know
that you know everything,” the man said as he drew a cigarette from the pack in his chest pocket.  He lit the thing with a match and took a drag before looking at his victim.  “You were the producer for
War World
, for God’s sake.  This was clearly your baby,” he said as Jamie looked at him desperately.  The resistance agent watched as the interrogator took it as a plea for a cigarette and offered the pack forward.

“I’m sorry, did you want one?” the man asked with that same arrogant smile.  Jamie considered the question before the man slapped him on the shoulder, which had already been stripped of skin, and laughed heartily.  “Ahh, I’m just messing with you.  I paid good money for these,” he said before taking another drag.  Jamie contemplated how he was going to play this and decided to play the supplicant.

“Look, Edwards, I told you.  I’ve told you so many times,” Jamie said before intentionally faltering.  The sadist had already spent four hours on him, doing all kinds of terrible things, but it hadn’t shaken Jamie in the least.  He had to play along, of course, but he was still able to think rationally.  “I don’t know… I got recruited just like Eric,” he said, trying to plant the idea that Eric was just another pawn.  The celebrity would break in a second if they really worked on the man.  Jamie could spare him that kind of pain.

Edwards scoffed at the statement and then ground his cigarette into Jamie’s right eye.  The pain was excruciating, but Jamie had felt much worse in the simulation chamber.  As he screamed he inwardly chuckled about how it compared to the Pope’s Pear and the Wheel.  He hadn’t expected to be given medieval torture, but Jamie wanted to be prepared in any case.  His willpower needed to be unshakeable for this deception.

“You need to stop lying to me, Caswell.  I’m not gonna buy it.  Eric got recruited, I’ll give you that, he ain’t smart or brave enough for it, but you can’t expect me to think you were all patsies.  You were much too smart in college, Mr. Producer,” Edwards said before placing his hand underneath his chin and propping it against his armrest.  Jamie cursed at that; they had fully checked him out.  By the time he had started college He had already started on the path to becoming an undercover agent, but it was still a weakness.  He couldn’t play the idiot like he had planned.

“Look, I’m not a leader, man…” Jamie said, unable to stop thinking about why he was doing this.  “It’s just that the job got to me after so long.  When they came to me…” Jamie started, doing his best to hesitate in the right moments.  He couldn’t give up too much information at one time.

Soon, Jen.  Just a little longer
.

“Alright, I’ll bite. 
Who
came to you?” Edwards asked before digging into the exposed muscle of Jamie’s shoulder.  The pain lanced through him and filled his mind with white light, but Jamie did his best to keep composed.  He gasped and winced before forming the next sentence in his mind.

“I can’t…. I can’t tell you.  It’s too important,” he said, leading the interrogator on.  As the light faded from his mind, he thought about that last day on the hill.  Jennifer was so beautiful that day.  The sun gave her hair that perfect color and her eyes were so vibrant.  And that smile…

“Alright, Jamie, I’m going to get impatient with your story,” Edwards said before slamming the back of his hand across Jamie Caswell’s jaw.  It was enough to knock the resistance agent back to the present.