Soul at War (14 page)

I found
Rebecca amongst the worst. Men here were dying in the blood stained
beds, their screams and moans becoming an orchestra of agony. These
were the most severe traumas - severed limbs, crushed skulls,
spinal damage and blindness. Franticly running between the beds,
the limited staff looked near to the grave themselves and I had to
squeeze between them to get to her.

"How is
it going?" I asked, but it seemed like a really stupid question
considering. I couldn't think of much else to say.

"Well
this is as close to Hell as you can get, John. Soak it up, most of
these people will be dead by the morning and there isn't a damn
thing we can do about it." She stood over the body of a dead
volunteer, her white smock now a tapestry of blood and sweat. In
her hands she still carried the surgical saw she had used to
amputate the poor man's arm, just before he died from the blood
loss.

"Where
are the worst?" I asked, implying more than the words meant. She
wiped her brow with a soiled towel and pointed to a room separated
by a thick plastic curtain.

"In
there. Alone." I smiled weakly and made my way over, passing a
soldier who was writhing on his bed as he tried to escape the grasp
of the orderlies trying to pin him down. I pulled the curtain apart
and stepped in.

The room
was dark, the lights dimmed to the minimum. There were eight beds
in a row, each one occupied by a motionless figure that breathed
loudly. I stepped slowly towards the first and found a frail,
bloodied hand hidden amongst the sheets. I took it in my own and
leaned over to whisper.

"What's
your name, my friend?" The man's face was turned the other way, his
blonde hair dirty and caked in dust. Slowly his head turned on the
pillow and I stifled a gasp. Most of his jaw was missing and one of
his eyes had been removed. I looked at the card above his head on
the wall, read off the name. "Jack?" The man nodded. "Well Jack,
the moon is out, I can't sleep and it's too cold to stand outside.
You don't mind if I stay a while, do you?" He shook his head, a
tear escaping from his one good eye. "Good. I don't like being on
my own."

CHAPTER 13

At some
point during the night I'd dozed off in my chair. It felt like
years since I'd last seen my bed and decades since I'd had a good
nights sleep. I jumped into alertness as a tray of surgical tools
crashed to the floor.

The
lights had been switched off as patients slept but I could make out
four of the Commander's personal security staff fumbling with
something, making their way to the door with difficulty. Their gold
epaulettes shone, refracting the moonlight coming in through the
windows.

"What is
going on?" I asked, raising the light level. All four turned their
heads and I realised that the object they were struggling with was
a black plastic body bag - a heavy one at that. None of us knew
quite what the next step was, but I could see that they were
beginning to panic, like a criminal caught in a spotlight. I'd
stumbled onto something and it was just starting to dawn on
them.

"Forget
what you're seeing and you may just live to see tomorrow," one of
them said, the biggest of the four and more than likely the
leader.

"Who the
hell is in there?" I asked, reaching up for the digi-com control on
my lapel.

They
moved quickly, dropping the body and drawing blades from their
thighs. Before I could get a word out they had crossed the medical
bay and I was forced to go for my side arm. The nearest one got the
first round and the report was deafening. Then, dropping to one
knee I fired again, double tapping another in the chest. The room
was suddenly alive with patients waking up screaming and the lights
went to full brightness just as the third intruder reached
me.

The
knife came down from my left at an angle, one I sidestepped and
followed up with a crushing blow to his knee. The man stumbled
forward, grabbing hold of the nearest bedpost and dropped the
weapon in the process. The fourth man swung and just caught my
shoulder with a wide arc, slicing away at the padded part of my
jacket. I pivoted on the balls of my feet, went down awkwardly and
fired - the shot scorching a red track across his cheek. It was
enough to send him reeling backwards and I fired again from my
prone position, slamming another round into his chest. Blood
vaporised out of his back and coated the wall like surf on a
beach.

The man
who'd dropped his knife was up and running to the door, the ward in
utter chaos now that shots had been fired and people were dying. I
got to my feet and ran after him.

In the
corridor I saw him descend a set of stairs to ground level and I
followed, passing Doctors scrambling into their smocks. I took the
steps three at a time and began to load a fresh magazine into the
pistol. At the bottom I looked franticly round for him, just
catching a glimpse of his uniform as he rounded a corner to the
left. I tapped my lapel.

"Shap,
Burns. Code six in progress, University ground floor. Three
suspects dead, in pursuit of a fourth, I need assistance." I
reached the end of the hallway and hugged the wall before sticking
my head around the corner. I didn't want to run round and find a
knife waiting for me. As I looked I saw a door swinging on its
hinge - the fire exit. Somehow he'd managed to avoid tripping the
automatic fire alarm; maybe they'd planned on leaving that way and
had rigged it earlier.

I ran
down the hall, reached the exit and checked carefully for an
ambush. When I found none I made my way out into the moon dappled
grounds of the university and searched. Gone, melted into the
night. On the other side of the building I could hear the rush of
heavy boots and clattering weapons, the back up I'd asked for. I
had one last look and then turned around, heading back
inside.

*

"It's
one of them," someone said from the back of the crowd that had
gathered around the corpse. The body had been lifted onto one of
the operating tables and was now laid bare under a spotlight;
Doctors and surgeons busied themselves around it. Burns was stood
opposite me, examining the identity tattoo on the cadaver's
arm.

"Look at
his body - it's a mess, and that was before he died," Rebecca
Frakes said as she ran a gloved hand over the many lacerations on
his chest. "He's been tortured."

"And
you're telling me you knew nothing about a POW being held captive
in your University?" Burns spat at her.

"No, we
knew nothing. The dead and wounded come in here all the time, half
of the time we don't even know who they are until afterwards," she
said, attempting to ease his anger a little. Green appeared from a
doorway at the back of the room and looked paler than when he'd
gone in.

"Sir, I
think you should see this," he said.

I
followed Burns and Green down a dark corridor, took a right at the
end and went down eight steps to a solid steel door. It swung open,
the lock having been forced apart by Green and we went inside, but
from the smell we were able to guess at what he'd found.

It was a
makeshift holding cell with handcuffs fixed to a rung in the floor.
The walls were white above waist level, but below they were covered
in smears of shit, urine and blood. The whole room stunk of decay
and body waste.

"They
were getting rid of the evidence for when ARC overrun the place,"
Burns said, examining the room with disgust. "So they wouldn't be
punished for it, maybe survive as POW's themselves."

"Who's
behind it then? Commander Frakes?" Green asked.

"I
thought the bastard was a coward deep down, ever since that
briefing. This is why. He was afraid we'd find out about his
'plaything'."

"I don't
understand. Was it interrogation?"

"Maybe
it started that way. When it looked like he wasn't going to talk,
maybe he just became a target for their pent up anger. Maybe Frakes
came down to vent his frustrations and take a little revenge out on
him."

"Green,
I want a new lock on this door in half an hour."

"How
come, sir?" Burns began to leave.

"It'll
have a new guest soon. I'm going to talk to Frakes."

*

"You
can't do this!" Frakes yelled as he was frog-marched from the
command centre to the University by Wulfgar and Tekoa. The men on
the wall had turned and were watching the spectacle. Burns walked
in front, I followed up the rear as he writhed in Wulfgar's iron
grasp.

"Commander Frakes, you are charged with the imprisonment,
torture and murder of a prisoner of war, thus breaching the 2023
Mars convention. Until we can arrange a court marshal, you shall be
held in confinement."

"LET ME
GO!" he screamed.

"I am
now assuming command of this city and you have forfeited all the
status your rank provided. May god have mercy upon you, because I
don't believe the courts will."

"We'll
all be dead before then. I hope they kill you first! I hope..." A
fist slammed into his chin and suddenly Frakes went limp, his feet
dragging on the ground. Wulfgar rubbed his sore
knuckles.

"Well
done, Private," Burns said.

As we
passed out of the night and into the warm glow of the University,
Rebecca was stood at the bottom of the stairs, her beautiful eyes
stained red from the tears. As we marched her father past her, she
took one last look at him, and then turned away in
disgust.

As we
made our way out, one of the students grabbed my wrist.

"Sir, I
think you need to look at this." He led us to a computer tucked
away inside an office and once he'd sat down he began tapping away
at the keyboard, the light from the monitor giving him an eerie
blue face. "I noticed something odd about the dead guy."

"I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked young man and I would
appreciate a little more respect from someone in your profession."
I gave Burns an approving sideways glance. The student flushed red;
even the blue didn't hide it.

"I'm
sorry, sir."

"Well go
on, don't keep us in suspense, lad."

"Well I
came across a blood sample a few months ago, one that had no name
to it and at first I'd dismissed it as contaminated. It had some
strange DNA results when I ran it through the machine and at first
I didn't think anything of it."

"Where
did this sample come from?"

"I was
handed it as part of a wide selection from the city. Routine blood
testing you see, part of the health and well being program. Anyway,
when you found the body tonight, I got to thinking about this
sample and so I took another - from him. It matched." He began to
work feverishly at the keys, his eyes darting left and right. "I'd
been given the sample while he was alive, being held without us
knowing."

"For
what purpose?"

"I
always put the information on the mainframe, we're quite honest
here. Frakes would have had access to the results of the original
test."

"What
would those results have shown him? That the blood contains some
odd DNA?"

"Not
odd, no I can see it now I've got the entire picture."

"Go on."
The student turned the screen round for us all to see. It showed
two simulated strands of coded DNA like you'd see in biology
textbooks. The one on the left was marked by a citizen's name; the
right was simply 'ARC'.

"The
left one is pretty normal and contains data from both father and
mother. But the right...” he tapped more keys and the image
changed, overlapping the two pictures. "Can you see it?" We leaned
in further.

"No,"
Burns said.

"The ARC
DNA has had alien elements introduced. This strand has been
altered."

"We
already know they are genetically altered. Tell me something
new.”

"I'm
getting to that but to confirm it I will need more samples from
other ARC soldiers, but I think the results will be the same.
They're being engineered, not as an enhancement because there
seemed to be nothing special about the ARC soldier. But the
evidence is there, they have been through some kind of alteration
at birth, something that changed the very identity of their make
up."

"Could
it be somehow woven into their beliefs? Could it be something to do
with their leader? A ritual of some kind?" Burns said to
me.

"It's
possible, like Jewish circumcision. If it has no obvious physical
or mental gains, then that's the only possible answer."

"They
aren't being born like this, a mutation perhaps?" Green
asked.

"No,
this is trademark GM breeding. They're being altered during the
foetus development."

"It's a
long shot theory," I said after much thought. "But could they be
trying to introduce an alteration into their population, a sort of
forced mutation."

"But
why? I can't see anything to gain, they haven't increased speed,
agility, healing. They've just changed the genetic..."

"Image,"
the student said. “That's what I discovered. They all have the same
DNA that has come from a single source.”