There was silence while he mulled it over. Bel, who’d heard only Nick’s side of the conversation, gazed at him quizzically.
The doc finally answered. “Neurologically, we’re still very much in the dark when it comes to the idea of independent tways. This is brand new territory. But I’d be willing to say there’s at least a fair chance that what you’re suggesting is possible.”
Nick thanked him and hung up.
“Well?” Bel asked.
“I think Humanity’s Avenger just might be in business after all.”
Thirty-Two
Bel wanted to see the creature up close and personal, this tway of an Ash Ock Paratwa. She felt that meeting it would somehow alleviate the distress she felt when she considered what Nick and Doctor Emanuel were intending.
Jannik Mutter, the tway of a Fifteen-Forty assassin, had enjoyed a long history of murder and mayhem. But Bel had only read about his exploits or viewed videos after the fact. There’d been a disconnect from her personal experience. She hadn’t witnessed Jannik Mutter ruthlessly murdering hundreds of soldiers, brave men and women with families and loved ones.
This Ash Ock deserves to die.
She would have been pleased to see the Royal dealt with in the same way the Thai government had dispensed justice yesterday to the so-called Human Scorpion, a one of a kind genetic freak that had been terrorizing Bangkok-sec. The Human Scorpion had murdered hundreds of pedestrians with poisonous stingers sprouting from its spinal column. The vile perversion had been caught, dragged into a lead-lined razzle box set up in Lumphini Park and publicly executed via painful injections of plutonium.
Such a deserved fate wasn’t going to happen here, no matter how much the more savage aspects of Bel’s personality might wish it. The Ash Ock had been groomed to lead Nick’s combat team. It was meant for a more useful purpose than shooting it full of radioactive material.
The conflict of those two scenarios constituted the source of Bel’s distress. Her desire for justice in its bleakest form – no fair trial, no appeals – clashed with the more rational side of her that recognized the creature might serve the greater good, give humanity hope.
Emotions versus intellect, Doctor Emanuel often proclaimed. The ancient wellspring of most of the human animal’s internal conflicts.
Complicating matters for Bel was a third scenario, one that seemed to straddle both her raw hunger for vengeance and a desire to do what was best for her species. It was a growing acknowledgment that neither of those options was preferable, that neither executing nor deploying this surviving tway was the right thing to do.
She kept returning to the dream she believed she shared with Ektor Fang’s wife, of a distant horizon, a brighter path not sodden in endless violence. That path resonated ever stronger by the day, amplified by her growing desire to become a mother, to bring new life into this world and nurture it toward…
Toward what? she asked herself cynically, terminating the entire blend of enticing thoughts. Such dreams were little more than unrestrained idealism, wholly impractical. How could such a better world come to pass in the madness of 2095 Earth?
She forced concentration back to the moment as Nick steered the Destello off the deserted nighttime street and into a small gated parking lot. Bel sighed and hopped off the back of the vehicle. Being conflicted was no easy thing. She sometimes wished she possessed Nick’s absolute certainty of purpose.
They walked up the ramp toward the private clinic. He’d bought the place only last week. Located near his warehouse, it represented another aspect of his plan to prime the Ash Ock tway to seek vengeance against its own kind.
The plan had been put in motion after Nick arranged to procure the creature from the EPF, smoothing away all objections with more massive bribes and convincing the generals to report through their military hierarchy that the captured tway had died of his wounds.
Doctor Emanuel had again performed his magic with the implants, creating a new identity for the tway. Facial reconstruction to repair the severe injuries suffered in Thi Maloca and to give the tway a new appearance had been accomplished by a team of blackmarket surgeons, each paid well enough to keep their mouths shut. The creature had been brought to the clinic for recovery.
“Too many people are in on this,” Bel said worriedly as they entered the building. “I still think there’s a good chance of leaks.”
“Not really. The surgeons were kept in the dark about the identity of their patient and I trust the EPF people I paid off. And no one connected with the clinic knows the truth.”
“So it’s still just you and I and Doctor Emanuel in the loop?”
“Plus Slag, Basher and Stone Face. But you could stand those guys in front of a firing squad and they wouldn’t talk.”
They strolled through the unmanned lobby. Nick keyed them through a pair of security doors and into a long hallway. Bel glanced into the single bedrooms they passed. Several housed older patients, all of whom appeared to be asleep. But the majority of the rooms were empty.
“Where’s the staff?” she wondered.
“Just a skeleton crew of nurses running things and a trauma physician on call.”
“What about the patients?”
“They’re all late-stage dementia cases.”
They continued down the hallway. Bel realized they were headed for the final room, the only one whose door was closed.
Nick broached a concern. “So far, we’ve only allowed male nurses and the male doctor into his room. You’re the first woman he’ll be meeting since his alterations.”
“Afraid it won’t like me?”
“Considering the sex of its tway, the doc and I aren’t sure how he’ll react to a female presence. It’s possible you’ll upset him.”
Bel had dressed down for the encounter, minimizing her sexuality with baggy trousers and a nondescript jacket.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” she said. “I don’t look anything like its tway.”
“Maybe not. But if things do start to get dicey in there, back away from his bed as far as you can. Let the security system handle things.”
The sec protocol, Nick had explained, consisted of stunners and anesthetizers hidden in the drop ceiling. They would activate upon detection of any threat of violence and, in theory, instantly subdue the creature.
But no kill switch, Bel reminded herself. Doctor Emanuel had rejected that option as too risky. Even though this creature was fundamentally different from Jannik Mutter because of its ability to function independently from its monarch, there was still too great a chance that the presence of an implanted fail-safe device could shatter the personality veneer put in place by the mnemonic cursors.
Which means, if it goes crazy and manages to outwit the safeguards, there’s nothing to stop it from killing us.
They arrived at the room. Nick reached for the knob. Bel hesitated.
“What do I call it?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, its name. We’ve christened it John Jones.”
Resoundingly generic.”
“I would have preferred something a bit more exotic too. But it matches our backstory. Which reminds me: make sure you stick to the outline. The doc says it’s vitally important at this early stage that we don’t mess up any of the details. We don’t want to give him any reason to doubt we’re being truthful.”
Bel nodded, recalling the narrative Nick had come up with. John Jones, at age eleven, had witnessed his parents being slain by an assassin. They’d perished along with hundreds of other civilians as the Paratwa made its last stand against Marine commandos in his Michigan hometown.
The incident, as well as John Jones and his parents, were real. That should be enough to fool the tway should it get the urge to delve into its past by researching the newsphere.
In truth, the son had never been found after the battle, presumably having been vaporized in one of the explosions set off by the marines. Nick’s reworked myth not only had the boy surviving, but leaving town with one
of the assassin’s missing Cohe wands he’d found in the debris. Throughout adolescence, the invented story went, John Jones secretly trained himself to wield the tricky weapon, imagining that someday he’d avenge his parents’ deaths.
He was sidetracked from that goal in his early twenties when he met the love of his life. He and his bride were on their honeymoon in South America when misfortune struck again, this time in the form of another assassin and a raging street battle. His new wife, Catharine, was one of the innocent victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bel grasped the significance of implanting the memory of a beloved mate. Should John Jones’s restructured personality suffer any lapses and he started to recall aspects of his dead tway, the invented memory would serve to conflate the identities of the two females. At least, that was Doctor Emanuel’s theory.
John Jones had supposedly come to E-Tech’s Philly headquarters a few months after losing his wife. He’d demonstrated his prowess with the Cohe wand and vowed to help the organization defeat the Paratwa. That’s when he ostensibly met Nick, who convinced him to help train and lead a clandestine combat team.
A final lie had to be added to the mix, not only to account for his new personality, but to provide a reason why he’d undergone extensive facial and dental reconstruction, as well as repairs of the other extensive injuries suffered at the hands of the EPF soldiers.
According to the fabrication, before the team could begin training, John Jones had ventured unarmed into the zoo one evening to follow a lead on the whereabouts of an assassin. But he’d been jumped by a gang of mokkers, who’d proceeded to beat him nearly to death.
Bel strode cautiously into the room, a pace behind Nick. The creature was sitting up in bed, reading or viewing something on a pad. The only remaining sign of its severe injuries was its left arm, which had suffered too many shattered bones for hyperstem regrowth and was instead encased in a qwikcast. Several tubes connected its right wrist to a standard IV panel.
It looked up as they entered. Sharp gray eyes focused on Bel, making her uncomfortable.
“Hello, Nick,” it said. “Who’s your friend?”
“Annabel Bakana. She’s the new head of E-Tech, remember?”
The creature frowned then broke into a disarming smile.
“Of course. Those mokkers really rattled my brain. I keep forgetting things I should know.”
“The doctors tell me the memory lapses are entirely normal,” Nick said. “You might have some recall problems for a few days. And there will likely be some longer-term lapses. But the doctors assure me that whatever losses you’ve suffered won’t impact your normal abilities.”
Bel forced a smile at Nick’s string of lies and nodded in affirmation.
John Jones extended an arm toward her. Fighting a sense of revulsion, she came forward and shook its hand. The grip was strong.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms Bakana.”
“Likewise.”
“My apologies for the memory lapse. In some circles, forgetting a woman of such beauty might be considered a mortal sin.”
She found the attempt at charm creepy. And it didn’t seem to want to let go of her hand. Its fingers tightened, squeezing their palms together with such intensity that she nearly grimaced. She sensed that the furious grip wasn’t based on any desire to inflict pain but on some weird longing, a hunger for connection.
And then it did something even odder. It hunched forward and sniffed at her neck. The action made her feel even more uneasy.
Please let go of my hand.
The creature stared at her. “I like your perfume. A base of modified gardenia extract layered with faint traces of cedar and orange blossom. And I’m picking up another scent mixture, something far more subtle. I can’t identify it.”
“I should’ve mentioned that he’s got a truly extraordinary sense of smell,” Nick said.
Like that of a wild animal.
“The gardenia extract reminds me of… togetherness.” A frown came over him and he shook his head. “Isn’t that a strange thing to say?”
Bel managed a nod. He gave her hand a final squeeze before letting go. She backed away, feeling disconcerted. Despite her best efforts to resist, his comments and the intense longing in his grip had served to humanize him. She was forced to think of John Jones as a “he” not an “it.”
She studied his appearance, so radically different from that rampaging tway in Thi Maloca. The reconstruction had rendered him rather handsome. He reminded her of the sort of perfect male prototype she’d often been attracted to and dated in her younger years.
He was tall and slender, with well-muscled upper arms. His hair was dark brown, cropped short on the sides but long in back. The one aspect that remained unchanged was those intense gray eyes. They seemed to be scanning the room, yet in a slow and casual manner that didn’t call undue attention to themselves. She had the impression he’d been trained to constantly be on the lookout for potential threats.
Nick pushed an empty food cart aside and hopped up on the edge of the bed.
“So, John, how are we feeling today?”
“I’m good. But I’ve decided that my name’s not John.”
“Pardon?”
“I won’t be using that name anymore. John Jones isn’t who I am. From now on, I’m just plain Gillian.”
Nick glanced at Bel, hiding his unease. Gillian, they’d learned, was the creature’s secret name, supposedly known only to the tway and its other half, the slain female, Catharine. Those facts had come to light during the neuro debriefing, performed via emotive probes as the tway lay strapped unconscious on a surgical table. It was too bad that such probes were limited to accessing only the most recent memories. Beyond that, very little actionable intel had been gleaned.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to change your name,” Nick said.
The gray eyes grew distant. “It came to me in a dream. When I awakened, I knew the name was perfect.” A frown overtook him, as if he was struggling to remember something.
“Changing your name might lead to even more memory confusion.”
“I don’t believe that will happen.”
“Still, why take the chance? Why don’t you put off a final decision until you’ve had more time to consider–”
“GILL-ee-uhn,” he interrupted, using the phonetic pronunciation to accentuate the syllables. “That’s my name. It’s non-negotiable. The quicker you get used to it, the easier it will flow off your tongue.”
Nick had no choice but to acquiesce. “OK… Gillian. Anyway, your doctors tell me you should be released in a couple of days.”
“And then I start training with the team?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll need to see your initial database of potential targets.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You have a lot of work to do first.”
“Not really. I’ve been studying your four-man combat simulation. All in all, it’s not a bad template but it does need tweaking. Once I’ve made the necessary improvements and the sim is right, it won’t take me long to get the team up to performance level. Given their expertise, I estimate two weeks at the most.”
Nick didn’t respond. Bel could tell he wasn’t happy at being one-upped and having his work criticized.
“As to the target database,” Gillian continued, “send it to me ASAP. Based on my appraisal of the team’s progress, I’ll select the order in which we go after the assassins.”
“I believe that’s my responsibility.”
“I’m certainly willing to consider your input. But since I’m the one putting my life on the line, I’ll be making any and all final decisions in that regard.”
Gillian gave him a steely smile and calmly turned his attention to Bel. “I’ve been reviewing E-Tech’s attempts to discredit and disparage the assassins, and in particular the Royal Caste. I’m afraid you’re not doing a very good job on those fronts. Even though most polls reveal strong and abiding hat
red of the Paratwa by the populace at large, there’s a corresponding paucity of support for E-Tech. At the very least, you need to have your people institute a far more aggressive PR campaign.”
“I don’t believe that hatred of the Paratwa and the popularity of E-Tech are necessarily directly related,” she countered.
“Trust me, they are. I’m outlining a better methodology for E-Tech to employ. I’ll have Nick send it to you. After you adopt it, you should see a trend reversal toward positive outcomes within a matter of days.”
“Thank you for your suggestions,” Bel said, barely able to hide her outrage at his gall.
“Anything else?” Nick asked dryly.
“That’s it for now. I need to study. The two of you may come back tomorrow afternoon. We’ll talk further then.”
“Yeah. I suspect we have a lot to talk about.”
“Oh, and Ms Bakana?”
“Yes?”
“You shouldn’t hide your natural beauty behind such unbecoming attire. Your perfume choice is exquisite. But those pants and that jacket… they do little to express your deeper essence. Next time we meet, wear a dress.” He offered a disarming smile. “Maroon is my favorite color. Accentuate it with black trim.”
He returned his attention to the pad, dismissing them without so much as a parting glance. By the time they got outside and closed the door, Bel was seething.
“What an arrogant son of a bitch!”
“Yeah. Not exactly a model of tact and diplomacy.”
“Who the hell does he think he is?”
Nick shrugged. “He’s a tway of the Royal Caste. Just because he’s not conscious of his true self doesn’t change certain personality aspects that are part of his basic makeup. Empedocles, and by extension his tways, were groomed for power. They were trained to rule over all of binarydom, and ultimately, all of us. That kind of training produces outsized egos. And considering his breed, he’s no doubt a master manipulator as well.”
“Maybe so. But you’d better figure out a way to control his royal highness before he gets out of hand.”
Binary Storm Page 24
