Retribution

by T. R. Harris

  A nurse moved up to the exam chair and placed an IV into Perry’s left arm. She also drew blood, handing the vial to another tech who placed the container in a port at his station. A moment later, more data came streaming onto the monitors.

  The IV line didn’t run to a jar of plasma hanging from a stand; rather, it snaked to the equipment panel. Rev dosages would be controlled by computer.

  Zac and his friends didn’t get chairs to sit on. Instead, they leaned against the wall near the door, the only wall not covered with lighted equipment and monitors.

  Looking like a typical doctor in his white lab coat, David Cross rolled over to his patient on a wheeled exam chair and placed the cold end of an archaic stethoscope onto Perry’s chest. He listened for a moment.

  “Because of the time constraints, Mr. Perry, I’ll be subjecting you to a series of stress tests all in rapid succession,” Cross said without so much as a good morning. “Normally, we stagger these tests over several days, but we don’t have the luxury of time. As a result, you will probably experience enhanced effects from the various drugs without time to recover. We’ll do our best to keep a close eye on your vitals to make sure nothing exceeds lethal limits.”

  Perry blinked. “Lethal limits? You mean this could kill me?”

  Cross looked over at Zac. “AC-3 doesn’t affect the body like the old NT-4 formula, so normally our thresholds are lower for AC-3 applicants. But in your case, I want to see a full range of responses up to maximum, so I’ll know how to formulate the proper dosage if the experiment works. These baseline readings will go a long way in helping me with that. Are you ready?”

  “Ready to die?” Perry pursed his lips. “I guess so. I hope my sacrifice will be of some use to Humanity.”

  “You’re not going to die, Major Perry,” Cross said seriously. “At least I hope not.” He rolled away on his stool before Perry could see if he was kidding or not. Again, the Air Force officer sent a savage glare at Zac, as if saying, “What have you got me into?”

  “Anytime now,” Cross said. He nodded to the waiting techs. “We’re beginning the screening tests. Panel A … initiate.”

  Zac suddenly had flashbacks to his original screening test for the program. That was twenty years ago, but because of either his REV-enhanced memory or the fact that he was now a Delta, he could remember every moment as if it was yesterday. Panel A was a mixture of some of the strongest stimulants available at the time. As he learned later, these included amphetamines, methylphenidate, methamphetamine and even a form of cocaine, all in a balanced cocktail—what Zac imagined was a junkie’s fantasy mixture. The idea was to jack the body up to such a degree that the heart, blood pressure, blood vessels and open pathways to the respiratory system were triggered almost to the point where the body exploded. Tolerances would then be measured to form the baseline Dr. Cross mentioned. Only those with exceptional resistant ability could survive the initial surge that came from the Rev drug, either NT-4 or AC-3. Once Rev was in the system, it helped strengthen the body against further assault or lasting damage. But if a person couldn’t survive the initial cascade, then there wouldn’t be time for the drug to save the subject from either stroke or myocardial infarction.

  Zac cringed slightly, not from empathy for the Air Force officer, but his memories. Perry’s body arched away from the chair, his eyes bulged open in shock, his mouth agape, his face flushed bright red. Guttural groans echoed off the walls, followed by a rough gurgling coming from deep within his throat. He remained in mid-spasm for nearly a minute before his body relaxed. By then, the veins in his arms were bulging and his chest remained expanded, filled with rapid, fitful breathing.

  Perry’s eyes suddenly squeezed shut, and his head slumped over. He’d passed out, but Cross didn’t seem concerned. Instead, the doctor watched the readouts with rapt concentration.

  “Ready Panel B.”

  Angus leaned over to Zac. “You don’t think Cross will push him over the edge, just to see how far he can go?” he whispered.

  Zac shrugged. “Maybe. He probably has other 308 pilots already on the way here if this one burns out. Who knows—”

  “I’m not trying to kill him, Lt. Price,” Cross said from across the room. It was a miracle he could hear what Angus said over Perry’s labored breathing and the hum of the equipment. The man must have superhuman hearing.

  “Of course not, sir,” Angus replied. “Just kidding.”

  Cross ignored him, then nodded to the tech at his left.

  Perry spasmed again, this time with a trickle of blood draining from his mouth and nose. It took even longer for Perry’s body to recover from the most recent infusion. Zac had no idea what Panel B consisted of; he wasn’t even sure Panel A still contained the same stimulants he’d been given. That was a long time ago; who knew what new drugs had been invented in the interim. Out of growing concern, Zac watched Perry’s all-important heart monitor, making sure he was still alive. According to the screen, he was very alive, his pulse rate and blood pressure sitting precariously near the red line. How long he could sustain this was anyone’s guess.

  Cross let Perry rest for nearly twenty minutes after the application of Panel B while he studied the results with the techs. He said nothing to Zac and the others, nor did he personally examine his patient. Everything he needed was in the computers. However, the nurse did come over and clean the blood off Mark’s face, as the officer’s breathing came in short, rapid bursts. Perry remained unconscious, which Zac saw as a blessing.

  And then it started again.

  After a while, Zac and his friends had seen enough, and they left the room. Each had painful memories of the screening process, followed by years of high-stress activations and the Twilight regimen. Seeing the toll Rev took on the body, it was a miracle any of them were alive today. However, even as Rev was the cause of all their torment and torture, it was also what made it possible to survive their years as NT-4 REVs. It was no wonder Zac’s body took matters into its own hands and created a substance to help him survive his new paradigm. Evolution worked that way. Survival of the fittest was the rule unless doctors in lab coats took over the process.

  Zac understood he was a new type of man, a product of evolution in its own right. What he didn’t know was whether or not this was the right way to go about it. He felt he’d cheated evolution. It was supposed to be a natural process, not an artificial one. In a way, his body was the exception that proved his point. It found a way…

  With most of the day still ahead of him, and no chance to talk to General Cross about what he and the other Deltas could contribute to the defense effort, Zac left the testing facility and went looking for Joanie Hollis.

  As a lead Controller, he expected to find her in the hangar that housed the main training facility for the new operators. It was located in Building 217, an old structure that once served as the hangar for the U-2 spy plane. With time being the issue these days, most of the structures on the base had been rebuilt to the point where they weren’t falling down. Even so, Building 217 smelled of rotting wood and desert dust. Time was everyone’s enemy these days, so accommodations were made in the rehab.

  Adjacent to Building 217 were four huge buildings known as the Red Hat Hangars, where hundreds of operator stations were set up. The goal of the new training regime was to get the control team down to a maximum of three people, rather than the customary seven. As Zac heard the night before in the Officer’s Club, the current thinking for use of the REVs was very short-term. The idea was to kill as many of the Ha’curn as possible, depleting their numbers until they could no longer perform their mission. This meant recovery and rehab of the AC-3s was of a secondary concern. They were the best fighters Humanity had to pit against the alien cats, and as many as possible would be thrown into the mix with little regard for their long-term welfare. The future would take care of that.

  The main training facility for the Controllers was a chaotic mess of frenetic energy. The concrete floor was filled with operato
r stations, with hovering instructors in a constant state of irritation as they berated their students, stressed out by the demands of the job. General Cross and the others were turning out more AC-3 REVs than they could handle, and now Command was coming down on the instructor crews, demanding they up their quotas. As a result, only the bare minimum was being taught, primarily how to activate a REV, steer them in the right direction and then set them to task. Extraction protocols and medical considerations were cut back drastically. If one of their REVs went down from injury, the operator team would be assigned another to be sent in. Zac could sense the coming slaughter, but he held his judgment. He knew what was at stake. This was probably the best mankind could hope for.

  Unless his REV-pilot idea had legs. If so, then most of these new Controllers wouldn’t be needed.

  Zac wandered through the mass of people, looking for Joanie’s bright blonde hair. Eventually, he spotted her, hunched over a station with a set of headphones clamped over her head. He moved into her line of sight, causing her to pause momentarily in her lecture to the surrounding trainees. Then she pulled the headphones off and handed them to an assistant.

  “Take over here, sergeant. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She walked past Zac without looking at him and headed for an exit door from the hangar. Zac followed.

  It was mid-November in the high desert of Nevada, and a blanket of light snow covered the surrounding hills. Zac ignored the weather, while Joanie zipped her coat up to the high collar.

  “I was wondering when you’d make it out this way,” she said into the cold wind, not looking at him. “I thought you’d be in Colorado.”

  “I couldn’t find her,” Zac said honestly. Joanie knew about Olivia; what she didn’t know was how his old girlfriend factored into the equation.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m okay with it. Cross is pretty protective of his side projects, so whatever she’s doing for him, she will probably come out okay. Hell, she may be off-planet by now. The man has resources.”

  Now Joanie turned toward him. “There’s no time, Zac, no time for anything.” She waved a hand toward the hangar. “We’re going to be working around the clock up until we can’t work anymore. I can’t afford to be distracted.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I’m not as confident as the rest of you about your plan for the pilots. I’ve never seen evidence that REVs retain any past skills. Remember, I’ve been with the program since the NT-4 days. I even Ran you once, if you recall.”

  “I remember.”

  “Of course, you do, you and your damn REV memory. Too bad you weren’t able to use that memory during a Run and build on the experience. Does that tell you something about your plan? If AC-3s retained their operational memories, why don’t they learn with each Run?”

  Zac shook his head. She had a good point. “I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this,” he growled, turning away to stare off into the desert. “I just need something to believe in. We all do. Cross has started the testing, and as far as I can see, Perry will pass with no problem. That means he could be on AC-3 as soon as tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? God, I hope not,” Joanie said, suddenly concerned. “Imagine what would happen if he still has residual stimulants in his system from the testing. He needs time to purge the drugs from his body.”

  Zac snorted. “I don’t think Cross is too concerned about our pilot, at least not this one. He’s on a mission to find what he can as fast as possible. Perry is simply a test subject to him.”

  “He’s not going to find out if Perry can still fly on AC-3 if he kills him first.”

  “There are a lot more pilots available,” Zac countered. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that. In a way, I’m on Cross’s side about the timetable. If this works—and I know it’s a big if—we’ll need time to get everything in place. It’s already been two months since the blockade began. At the outside, we only have a couple months more to come up with something that will work.”

  “You’re telling me,” Joanie snapped. “We get that drummed into us every minute of every day. Why do you think I’m so stressed out?” She looked up into his face. “And I can’t simply send a little natural NT-4 into my system to help me handle it.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments before Zac wrapped her in his arms. She fell into him, melting into his strength. He gave out a small laugh. “But just think, whatever’s going to happen will be over in a few months. No long wait. And after we kick some alien butt, we’ll have the time to work this out—whatever this is. Is that a deal?”

  She pulled away and looked into his eyes. She reached up and kissed him passionately. “That’s a deal, Mr. Murphy, sir. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get back to work. Hopefully, what we’re doing here will end up being Plan B. I pray to God your Plan A works as you hope it will.”

  In the late afternoon, Zac went to Building 275, the old Consolidated Services Facility that had been transformed into the base hospital. Mark Perry was moved there after his tests. The fact that he was in the hospital was good news. At least he was alive.

  As Zac stepped into the private suite, he had to reassess his thinking.

  Perry was alive, but barely. His skin was a pale yellow, and his face sallow. Blood vessels had burst in his eyes, giving him an alien appearance. Zac had to laugh. He’d seen enough real aliens to know that some did have red eyes, although the eyes of their mortal enemy—the Antaere—were gold.

  Perry was awake but extremely weak. He didn’t bother trying to make Zac feel guilty; he could see there was enough of it already on the REV’s face.

  “Hey, buddy, how you doing?” Zac asked, sheepishly.

  “We ain’t buddies, Captain Murphy,” Perry moaned. “We just met a couple of days ago … and now look at me.”

  “Well, the good news is you passed the preliminary tests. That should make you happy.”

  Perry moved his head slowly from side to side. “Whoopie for me. But I have to say, I have a little more respect for you REVs now. If this is what you guys have to go through before you even make the program, my hat’s off to you. You are some superhuman motherfuckers.”

  Zac pulled a chair over to the side of the bed and sat down. “To be honest, the normal screening process takes place over a couple of weeks, and it’s not all chemical injections, either. There’s a lot of PT involved, running and weight training, that sort of thing. It’s funny, but the one thing they never gave us were mental acuity tests.”

  Perry snorted. “I know why. You’re all crazy to put yourselves through this. Everyone of you would fail an IQ test.”

  “And now you’re one of us. If the shoe fits …”

  “Not yet.”

  Zac turned serious. “So, when do they have you scheduled for the AC-3 test?”

  “Luckily, I have two days in here before they do that. Tomorrow I go in for dialysis to cleanse my system. And then there’s all these damn fluids they’re pumping into me. I hope this doesn’t screw up the testing,” he said sincerely. “I really hope you’re right about this retained skill thing. If not, then we’re all screwed. But from what General Cross says, he’s going to test that out at the same time I get my first dose of AC-3.”

  “Really? That sounds … odd.”

  “Cross says if I don’t show any ability, there’s no need to carry out anymore studies. I just have to show I know which end of the 308 is up.”

  Zac shrugged. “He has a point. And no matter how much I hate the guy, he’s a genius when it comes to Rev.”

  Perry tried to smile. “Yeah, he does have a pretty nasty bedside manner. Can I trust him?”

  “Trust, I don’t know; he’s always working an angle. But he does know his shit.”

  Perry reached out and grasped Zac’s arm with a surprisingly strong hand. “And, captain,” he began. “No matter how this works out, I want to thank you for trying. I’m sure you and the other super-REVs have ways to get o
ff the planet if you want. Thanks for sticking around and helping the rest of us.”

  Zac smiled. “It would get pretty boring around here without the rest of the Human race to beat up on. Now, rest up, major. And get all those drugs out of your system, you damn druggie. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.”

  5

  That night, with nothing else to do until Mark Perry recovered in the hospital, Zac and his friends returned to the Officer’s Club at Groom Lake. It was called The Jack Rabbit Bar and sat on the site where the rec center known as Sam’s Place once stood. It was a new building, erected two years ago. A couple of hundred yards away, and closer to the baseball field, was the much larger and boisterous Enlisted Club called Sally’s. It was strange it had taken that name, seeing that originally, nearly all the patrons were men, AC-3s REVs or REV candidates. However, recently there was a more even mix of the genders with the influx of hundreds of REV Controllers and trainees.

  The bottom line was both facilities were usually packed to the gills, although not so much for fun and celebration, but to help those at the base cope with the anxiety of the times. Mankind’s impending fate was on everyone’s mind. Some chose to ignore it; others obsessed. MP’s set up a field office between the two buildings, and every night the place filled with both enlisted and officers sleeping one off or healing from the frequent fights. Most of these minor infractions never made it onto a person’s service record. Even if they did, it didn’t seem that important anymore.