Axe turned off the music and looked over at Gina.
“Bad news, baby. It’s not gonna be okay,” he told her.
Axe put the pistol to her head. Six inches of stainless steel shot through her skull with a sickening crunch and quickly retracted with a snap. And just like that his strong, vibrant, smart, beautiful wife ceased to exist. It took a moment, a moment that stretched into forever as time slowed, forcing Garrison to absorb Gina’s death in excruciating detail. She hit the floor like so much dead meat, another slaughtered carcass.
Garrison’s world became rage as he tore at the restraints, fighting to break free. He would kill Axe with his bare hands, his teeth, taste the other man’s blood.
“YOU ARE NOTHING! YOU DON’T EXIST ANYMORE! I PROMISE YOU... I WILL FIND YOU AND END YOU! YOU BETTER KILL ME NOW BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT GET A SECOND CHANCE!”
Axe appeared to consider the threat as Garrison felt his restraints give. He was dimly aware of the pain of his thumb dislocating as wood splintered and he tore himself partially free of the chair he’d been tied to.
Calmly, Axe drew the .45 from his belt and aimed it at Garrison.
“Thanks for the advice.”
And then Garrison’s vision was full of the fire from the muzzle flash.
CHAPTER 5
The mouse’s corpse had been both exsanguinated and eviscerated. KT slid the tiny body into the medical incinerator for disposal. According to Dr. Harting this was what it meant to live on the “bleeding edge” of science. It was an easier place to live when part of a black ops facility. You never heard the word “ethics.”
“I’m sorry my little friend,” she said and activated the incinerator. Everything useful had been harvested from the creature. It was only the flesh that remained, the hollow shell that burned. She wondered if that was his eventual fate. The incinerator hummed. It wasn’t much of a send-off.
Not for the first time she wondered why they were still doing animal trials. The words “needless cruelty” occurred to her but then she remembered what she was about to do. Maybe it wasn’t “needless,” maybe, but it was certainly cruel.
KT heard the door hiss open behind her.
“Are you ready?” the doctor asked.
She didn’t turn around.
No, KT thought, fingering the coin in her pocket.
“Yes,” she told him.
CHAPTER 6
It dreamed of machines. Not it. He. He knew he was male. He dreamed of machines, huge alien machines with their own music. A vast sprawling network colonizing a gray, strangely familiar landscape of rolling hills interspersed with rivers of neon blue light. Millions of strange mechanical creatures built the network.
He opened his eyes.
“Project Bloodshot procedure log... transfusion complete.” The voice was female, expressionless.
Bloodshot: Typically used to describe eyes that are inflamed or tinged with blood, often as the result of tiredness.
He wondered where that had come from.
Transfusion: The act of transferring blood, blood product or other fluid into the circulatory system of a person or animal.
It felt like there was something in here with him, helping him think. If that was the case then he had a question: Who am I?
Silence.
He felt cold metal beneath him. An autopsy table.
Autopsy: A post-mortem examination—
Stop!
The voice inside went silent. Post mortem. Was he dead? If so then why was he able to think and feel? Though not remember? Or move!
“Commence bioelectrical charge.”
That didn’t sound good.
Bioelectrical: Of or relating to the electric phenomena—
He quashed the voice once again.
“Seventy-five percent...” It was the same woman’s voice.
He tried to move. He couldn’t. He felt unnaturally cold. Then the sickening realization: He was trapped in a corpse!
“Full cycle.”
Electricity surged through him. Muscles spasmed, his back arched, lifting him off the table, he smelled something like ozone before he thumped back down onto the cold metal. Information crackled through his brain to become signals he then interpreted as pain. There for a moment and then gone. A dim red light illuminated his immediate surroundings.
He watched as some kind of mechanical surgical apparatus folded back up through the freezing fog, away from his body, like an insect’s sting. The ceiling was mirrored. Through the chemical mist he caught glimpses of himself. A powerfully built man in his thirties, corpse pale, his body covered in electrodes wired up to unseen machinery. The red glow that suffused the room was coming from a perfectly circular scar in the middle of his chest. He knew enough about human physiology – and he was pretty sure that he was human – to know this wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have a glowing scar in the center of his chest.
He sat up, sucking in breath as though for the first time. He was somehow aware of the chemical changes caused by the adrenaline surge as it coursed through him. He grabbed a fistful of wires and started tearing the electrodes off of his body while looking around. Other than the autopsy table, the medical equipment, and the circular track lighting hanging from the ceiling, the room was bare. There was a familiarity to it, however. He felt as though he should know this place, that he had either been here, or somewhere very like it, before. He reached for a memory, seeing flashes of this room, but he couldn’t be sure if what he was remembering was real or just the deja vu of the last few moments since he had regained consciousness playing back to him on a psychosomatic loop.
“Psychosomatic.” The word sounded strange – foreign – in his head, as though he instinctively knew it was not the kind of word he commonly used, or even thought.
He was not alone.
A woman. Twenties. She had long dark hair. She was wearing a long-sleeved cropped top and dark pants. Despite the way she was dressed the woman seemed to be carrying out the duties of a technician, but he could tell by the way she carried herself that she was physically capable, a fighter. His thought process was a tactical assessment. The shocked expression on her face suggested that she wasn’t an immediate threat even as she hurried toward him.
“Where...?” His throat was raw as if he hadn’t used it in an age.
“Easy, just breathe...”
He detected concern in her tone as he tried to swing himself off the table.
“I wouldn’t do that...”
His legs buckled and he hit the freezing floor.
“Not much of a listener...”
She crouched down next to him.
“Look at me. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He looked up at her, her brown eyes meeting his. Seeing no ill intent there. Then he saw the piece of tech fused with the flesh of her neck. It looked like some kind of breathing apparatus. That wasn’t right, he knew that wasn’t right. He was aware of his heart rate increasing, the change in his breathing. None of this was right!
“Where am I?”
CHAPTER 7
The recovery room was less like a morgue and much more like a hospital room, though he had absolutely no idea why he thought so. The room had one glass wall that looked out onto a nearly featureless corridor. The color scheme screamed institutional corporate, and it was full of diagnostic equipment; banks of screens displayed his biometrics and other more arcane information. The room was unguarded. The door didn’t look as though it had a locking mechanism but if it did he was pretty sure he could break through the glass, even if it was reinforced safety glass. Beyond the recovery room was an unknown quantity, however. He looked around for objects he could use as weapons... and then he found himself wondering why he appeared to be doing a tactical assessment of his surroundings as though it was second nature.
He was sat on the bed rubbing his temple and wincing. His headache felt like lightning shooting through his brain. What he couldn’t understand was how he seemed to know so much, have such awareness of
the internal workings of his body, which he wasn’t sure was right, and yet still somehow not know who he was, which he was sure was wrong. He enjoyed the feeling of control over his body, however. He felt powerful, as though he was capable of anything. Except, apparently, remembering who he was.
Project Bloodshot. That was what the voice had said when he’d first become conscious. It would have to do as a name for the time being, a way to refer to himself if nothing else. Also it seemed to fit, somehow, and he found himself desperate to grab hold of anything that even vaguely resembled an identity.
The sliding door hissed open as the female technician returned, this time with somebody else. He was older, maybe forties, physically fit but no initial threat. The women held back and gestured toward where he was sat on the bed. The man stepped forward.
“Awake and cognitive. This is phenomenal,” he said.
Bloodshot watched the woman for a few moments longer before turning to look at the man.
“I know you guys?” he asked. There was a familiarity in their manner but he just wasn’t feeling it himself.
“Right, yes, of course.” The male appeared to be just brimming with enthusiasm and judging by their body language he was in charge. “Welcome to RST, Rising Spirit Technologies. I’m Dr. Emil Harting, this is my facility, and my esteemed colleague, KT.”
“Katy?” he asked them.
“Initials,” the woman said, quick to correct him. “K.T.”
Bloodshot turned to look at her. He remembered her helping him, the concern in her voice, the strange apparatus on her neck.
He could feel Harting’s eyes on him.
“Alright, look here, please.”
Bloodshot took his time looking back at the doctor. Harting produced a light pen and waved it in Bloodshot’s eyes.
“Dilation looks good,” the doctor mused, mostly to himself. “Eyes are clear, no redness.” Bloodshot found that a little ironic. “Retinas look healthy.”
“What am I doing here, what happened to me?” Bloodshot demanded, looking around, his eyes drawn back to KT for some reason before looking back to Harting as the doctor was pocketing the light pen. Bloodshot noticed Harting’s hand; it looked robotic, a very sophisticated prosthetic that appeared to be as functional as a normal hand. Bloodshot frowned and blinked once. This seemed to be a place for strange people.
“Tell me, do you remember anything?” Harting asked.
“Anything? That’s a little broad, doc.” Bloodshot analyzed his own speech. He seemed to have a particular syntax. Western United States perhaps? But with other elements as well, as though he’d traveled. How could he work this out but not know who he was? It made no sense, nothing here did.
“Sorry, yes, let’s start easy. Name, rank, serial number?” Harting asked.
“Sure. My name’s—It’s, uh... shit.” It was strange, for just a second Bloodshot had thought he had known his real name. Even though he’d previously been unable to remember it. His false confidence had come in the phrasing of the question, as though the answer had been drilled into him, that the answer should have been somehow instinctive. Then something occurred to him. “Wait... rank and serial number?” He knew this was important.
“Yes. Your body was donated to us by the US military,” Harting told him.
It took a moment for the significance of the doctor’s words to register.
“My body?”
“Yeah, it was either us or Arlington,” the doctor told him.
Bloodshot knew that Arlington was the main national cemetery for the United States armed forces. He just didn’t know how he knew that.
“Doc, you’re not making any sense,” Bloodshot told him, though all the parts of the puzzle were starting to click into place, he just didn’t like the picture they were forming.
“You... you got yourself killed.” Sympathy, faux or otherwise. It was the first time that Harting had sounded like a human and not a kid with a laboratory specimen.
Harting went quiet. Bloodshot sat for a moment, trying to process the impossible truth. Trying to come to terms with what he’d suspected since he’d woken up trapped in his own dead flesh. He guessed it made sense if he had only been dead for a few minutes. It would explain the electric shock. He knew that a brain could get damaged if it was cut off from oxygen for long enough, which could explain his memory problems.
“I was a soldier,” he told himself. Except if he had been a soldier and died on the battlefield, how come the resuscitation had happened here, wherever here was? He was pretty sure that his surroundings weren’t typical of a field hospital of any kind, though he wasn’t sure how he knew that either. If he had been dead for longer then how had they brought him back, and why?
“How’d I go?” he asked the doctor. He wasn’t sure why it was so important but he had to know.
“I don’t imagine quietly.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
Harting gave the question some thought.
“For mutual protection they don’t tell us lot about how you died, or even who you were. We do know you were good at what you did though. There’s only one criteria for donation...” Harting told him.
“Which is?”
“That the subject be a Tier One operator.”
That meant he’d either been Delta, SEAL Team Six or maybe a Marine Raider. If those were the kinds of people they were recruiting then it had to be for a reason. If it had just been people in excellent physical shape then athletes were a better choice than operators, less high-velocity wear-and-tear. No, if they wanted operators then they wanted fighters, and that meant that George Santayana was wrong and the dead had not seen an end to war.
George Santayana? WTF? “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” From Santayana’s Soliloquies in England, 1924, misattributed to Plato by General Douglas MacArthur during his farewell address to the cadets at West Point in May 1962.
Again, he wondered how he even knew this.
Then something else occurred to him. The familiarity he had felt toward the room he had woken up in. If he had been a soldier, particularly one on the sharp end, then it was entirely possible that he had spent a lot of time in medical facilities, though he somehow doubted that they would be as well appointed as this one. Except where he had woken up had felt more like a morgue.
“But... somebody must be asking about me, out there. Waiting for me to come home. Or call.” There was something there, just on the edge of his consciousness, something he couldn’t quite touch. He was starting to suspect that he had been dead a lot longer than he had initially thought, a lot longer than was natural.
“Look... ah... it’s difficult for me to tell you this,” Harting said.
It seemed that the doctor was much better at dealing with the science/tech elements of his operation than the people ones.
“Shit. Harder than telling me I died?” Though Bloodshot wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this either.
“Well...” Harting started.
“The military only donates remains for soldiers who weren’t claimed by family,” KT blurted out.
Remains? This wasn’t resuscitation. It was reanimation. He had been a corpse and they had brought him back to life with lightning just like in Frankenstein. This realization that he should be worm food settled over him like a cloak of ice and suddenly he felt very cold, hollow, desolate.
Harting turned to look at KT.
“Sometimes you just gotta rip the band aid off. Get through the pain quicker...” she told him.
Bloodshot stared at the floor, his head bowed. No family, no past, not even a real name. He was nothing. Some messed-up experiment in a facility full of freaks.
“But you don’t need a history to have a future,” Harting told him. It sounded like he was willing Bloodshot to believe him. The eagerness in his voice. The child with his test tube was back. “You’re the first we’ve ever successfully been able to bring back, and it’s worked beautifully.”
Bloodshot rubbed the circular r
ed scar on his chest. It was hot to the touch.
“Has it now?” he asked.
CHAPTER 8
Bloodshot followed Harting into a glass elevator, KT behind him. There was just a brief vertiginous moment when he realized they were at least seventy-five stories above street level and he found himself looking out over a futuristic city of soaring glass high-rises. He knew that the cityscape spread out below was a collision of Asian traditional, Malaysian Islamic inspired, western colonial, modern and postmodern architectural styles. It was information that he couldn’t see any real reason for a soldier to know. The disparate voice he’d heard in his head had stopped, as though the voice had integrated somehow, and now he just knew things. Like he knew he was in Kuala Lumpur, and every other damn thing except who he was, and why nobody had cared enough to claim his body.
“What is this place?” he asked as the glass elevator traveled even farther upward.
The doors dinged open to a tastefully minimalist corporate lobby. The subdued lighting made the area feel a little eerie, a little empty. A screen in one corner displayed the letters RST, presumably the corporate logo. The floor was so polished it was almost a mirror and the poured concrete walls gave the adjoining corridors a somewhat industrial look.
Bloodshot and KT followed Harting across the lobby.
“RST focuses on rebuilding the most important assets in the US military. Soldiers like you.”
They approached a wall of frosted-glass panels with the glyph-like RST logo emblazoned across them. The central panels hissed open and Bloodshot found himself on a raised walkway that overlooked a busy, open-plan high-tech workspace. In the center of the workspace was a self-contained, fully automated microfactory. He watched as robot arms worked the production lines assembling various components. Around the microfactory were various workstations crewed by human technicians. The workspaces were decorated with blueprints, filled with screens showing various CAD schematics, and cluttered with various tools. It looked as though they were constructing prosthetics, robotic prototypes and lots of other technology designed to repair, heal or enhance. There was even a wearable exoskeleton. It was a hive of activity, the busy techs barely even glanced in their direction. Bloodshot stared, eyes wide. It was an Aladdin’s Cave of tech.
Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization Page 3
