The Deep Beneath

by Natalie Wright

  It was Ian’s turn to cave. “Dammit. Go get your mutant friend. But I’m going on record as saying that I think this is a really bad idea.”

  “Fine. You’re on the record, whatever that means.” If time proved that Ian was right, Erika would have more to worry about than wounded pride. She hoped for the sake of all of them that she was doing the right thing. Erika called to him. “9, come with us. You’ll at least get to Phoenix. It’ll be easier for you to make your way to wherever you’re going from there.”

  H.A.L.F. 9 hesitated. He looked around as though he searched for an unseen road. He cocked his head to the side as though he listened for an unheard helicopter. Erika wasn’t sure why, but he finally walked toward the car.

  “I’ll ride in the back with Jack. You take the front seat,” Erika said.

  Ian sighed loudly again. She didn’t mean to stick Ian with 9, but she thought it was best for her to be near Jack in case he needed something.

  Ian drove Jack’s Jetta as fast as he could over the washboard road, but still it took close to twenty minutes to hit the two-lane paved road. Erika held Jack’s head in her lap and stroked his hair. His eyes were closed, but she knew he was awake because he occasionally winced when Ian hit a particularly deep rut. Ian, normally as chatty as a ten-year-old girl, was quiet. His eyes were fixed on the road before him. The being sitting in the seat beside Ian remained as still and silent as a stone pillar. It was almost as if he weren’t there.

  Erika finally broke the silence. “So what exactly are you?”

  H.A.L.F. 9 didn’t turn to look at her. “I am an experiment gone wrong.”

  “How can a person be an experiment?” asked Ian.

  “You assume I am a person.”

  “You look like a person to me,” Ian said.

  “Do I look like a person to you now?” H.A.L.F. 9 removed the overly large hat he’d taken from Nacho and turned so that Ian could see his face straight on.

  Ian turned his head briefly, then turned it again in a double take. “What the …”

  “He has freaky eyes, doesn’t he?” Erika asked. She had no doubt that H.A.L.F. 9, whatever else he may be, was, in fact, a person. He may have been experimented on (a thought that troubled her deeply). But he was not an experiment.

  “Yeah. How’d that happen?” asked Ian.

  “I was born this way.”

  “Can you see in the dark?” Ian asked.

  “Yes.”

  Not much of a talker, this one. It’s like an interrogation to get answers from him.

  “Look, you saved us, but now we’re returning the favor. The least you can do is give us some answers,” Erika said.

  “Am I not answering your questions?”

  “You still haven’t answered what you are. You’re clearly not human. At least not just human.”

  “You are correct. I am not merely human.”

  Erika let out an exasperated breath and tried to stay calm. She wasn’t into word games and liked being toyed with even less. She needed answers but didn’t want to tick off their wild-card companion. She tried again. “Okay, you’re part human. What’s the other part?”

  “The answer is in the name.”

  If this had been an ordinary conversation with some asshat at school, Erika would have cursed the chode under her breath and walked away rather than endure more of what felt like a mind game intended to determine her intelligence. But seeing as how she was in a moving car with a being capable of sending her to an early grave, she kept her curses to herself.

  “What name?” asked Ian.

  “H.A.L.F.,” said Jack. He sat up. His face was still pale and his eyelids heavy. His hands trembled slightly.

  “Are you feeling okay?” asked Erika.

  “Yeah, better now. Just a bit light-headed. I think I need food.”

  “Your companion’s body lost considerable blood. He requires nutrients containing glucose and protein.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop. You can eat at the hospital,” Erika said.

  “They’re not going to let him eat there,” Ian said. “When I broke my nose, I sat in the ER for three hours and they wouldn’t even give me a sip of water in case they had to operate.”

  Erika weighed the options. She considered asking 9 for his opinion but decided against it. He would likely take the question as an opportunity to send them into another spiral of riddles. She opted instead to defer the decision to the one to whom the answer mattered most. “Jack, what do you think? Should we stop at the crossroads and get you food or plow through to the hospital?”

  Without hesitation, Jack said, “Stop.”

  “Are you sure?” Ian asked.

  “Yeah.” He rotated his shoulder, winced but did it again. “The shoulder is okay. Pretty much anyway. But I feel woozy in the head. Nothing some food won’t cure.”

  “There’s that twenty-four-hour truck stop place at the crossroads, Ian. I think we should stop there,” Erika said.

  “Okay. But I want to go back to the prior conversation. Jack, what did you mean when you said H.A.L.F.?” Ian asked.

  “It’s an acronym. Human-Alien Life Form. Am I right?” asked Jack.

  “You are correct,” H.A.L.F. 9 said.

  “Shut the … no freakin’ way,” said Ian.

  “I do not understand this word ‘freakin’. What does it mean?”

  “It’s … well, it means …”

  “It means he can’t believe what you said. You want us to believe that you’re part alien?” said Erika. Erika had treated Jack’s belief in UFOs and aliens the same as if he had believed in unicorns or fairies.

  “I do not want you to believe anything. You asked me a question. I gave you the answer,” said 9.

  H.A.L.F. 9 never looked at them as he spoke. He looked forward, his eyes trained on the road unfolding ahead of them.

  “Are you the product of an alien abduction or something? Like they took a human woman on their ship and had sex with her and made you?” Jack asked.

  “You watch too much television, Jack,” Ian said. “That’s not what you’re saying, is it?”

  “I am not the product of a sexual encounter between two mates as humans are. At least that is what I have been told. The genetic material from the egg of my mother was spliced with alien DNA. The egg was fertilized with human sperm, and the resulting embryo was implanted into another woman – a surrogate host.”

  H.A.L.F. 9 spoke as though alien DNA was a substance every fertility clinic had lying around. Why didn’t I think of that? But Erika kept her sarcasm to herself for once.

  “Okay, so where did they get alien DNA?” asked Jack.

  “I do not know the answer to that question. All I know of my origin is what Dr. Randall chose to tell me.”

  Questions swirled around Erika’s head. She wasn’t sure she could believe the story given by the … man? Boy? Alien? But she wanted answers, and 9 was the only one that could give them. She’d worry later about whether his answers were the truth.

  “That Commander Sturgis who came after you. Is she military?”

  “Commander Sturgis is technically a member of the air force. I am not an expert on the function and command of the United States government, but from my studies, I deduce that Commander Sturgis operates outside of what you may call regular channels.”

  “The secret government. I knew it,” said Jack.

  Erika and Ian had argued this topic with Jack more than once but had never been able to persuade Jack away from his belief that there was a secret government within the government that controlled things. Jack wasn’t a fanatic. It was more like something he just accepted to be true. As they drove in a car with a person who claimed to be an alien-human hybrid, Erika wondered if Jack had been right after all.

  “Calm down, Mr. Government Conspiracy,” said Ian. “No offense, H.A.L.F. 9 is it? But we don’t know you. We don’t know a thing about this guy, Jack. He may be a wacko who escaped from a psych ward. That commander lady may
have been searching for him for a good reason.”

  “A psycho who can kill a man simply by thinking about it?” said Erika. “And since when do armed soldiers hunt down psych ward escapees? Not your typical tinfoil-hat-wearing nut job. The head of a psych ward ordering teenagers to be killed?”

  H.A.L.F. 9 did not participate in their conversation even though the debate directly concerned him.

  Despite the chill down her back that Erika got whenever she looked into his eyes, she had an irresistible urge to stare at him anyway. He was both frightening and intriguing. She wished they were face-to-face having this conversation. “What I want to know is why are you running?” she asked.

  H.A.L.F. 9 did not answer.

  “Look, if you want us to help you, you have to give us some answers.” Erika had tried her best to hide her irritation, but her patience with his aloof demeanor was wearing thin.

  “I did not ask for your help,” he said.

  Erika resisted the temptation to reach into the front seat and slap 9 for being so evasive. She threw her head back, took a deep breath and unclenched her hands. She had not realized she had balled them up into fists on her lap.

  “Don’t you have a name?” Jack asked.

  “We are identified by our number. I am number nine.”

  “Wait, that means that there are –” Ian said.

  “At least eight others,” Erika said. “How many of you are there?”

  “I am the only one of my kind. The eight before me … they –”

  “They what?” Erika pressed.

  “When I escaped, I saw them. They are preserved in glass cylinders. Some were what you might call grotesque. Deformed heads and hands. One had no legs. Most were quite small. Number eight was larger than the rest. It must have been at least one when it died. Or was killed.”

  “That’s awful,” Erika said. She reached her hand up and touched 9’s shoulder. He jumped under her touch and moved forward away from her hand. Erika pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just meant to –”

  “It is all right. You did not know that I prefer not to be touched. You must understand. I have lived my life as a lab experiment. I have rarely been touched for any purpose other than to perform a medical test. Most times it involves a needle or surgical knife. ”

  The car fell silent. Though Erika still knew next to nothing about the stranger, each piece of information he offered made her feel more confident in her decision to help him escape the commander woman.

  “Do you think they’re still after you?” asked Jack.

  “Yes.”

  Ian looked up toward the top of the windshield. “I don’t see any helicopters. There aren’t any cop cars or tanks after us. I think you’re in the clear.”

  Erika wished she could join Ian’s optimism on the subject, but her gut told her otherwise. Commander Sturgis had looked far too emphatic about getting 9 back for Erika to believe that they’d seen the last of her.

  “I am the property of the U.S. government. Commander Sturgis is quite fond of reminding me of how expensive I have been to create and to keep. She will not let me go that easily. In fact, Commander Sturgis will never let me go.”

  H.A.L.F. 9’s voice got soft as he spoke the last part. Though his eyes remained focused forward, Erika wondered if he was sad about his long odds of permanent escape from the commander.

  Erika was angered and disturbed by his revelations. And with each passing minute she became more determined to help him escape so that he would not be returned to a place where he was held against his will and treated as though he were a mere object. “You’re part human,” Erika said. “You can’t be property. We have laws against that.”

  “Yeah, Erika’s right. What you need is a good lawyer,” said Ian.

  “I don’t think a lawyer is much help in a situation like this,” said Jack.

  “Forget a lawyer. You need to get a name. It’s bugging the crap out of me referring to you as an acronym and a number. What do you want to be called?” asked Erika.

  “I am H.A.L.F. 9, property of the United States government and a lethal weapon. People do not generally name weapons, do they?”

  “You escaped. You’re free now and not the property of anyone. You need a name.”

  “If you insist that I have a name, then you name me.”

  Erika considered it. She hadn’t even seen him in full light. As she looked at him from behind, the too-large-for-his-head cowboy hat that he wore overwhelmed his image. He’s wearing a dead man’s clothes. It seemed like the kind of thing that was probably bad luck. As Erika pondered 9, he looked more like a little boy wearing his dad’s clothes, playing at being a cowboy, than like a ‘lethal weapon’. “Tex,” she said at last. “How about we call you Tex?”

  For the first time during their car ride, 9 turned his head and looked at Erika. She thought she saw a small smile on his thin lips.

  “Tex?” asked Ian. “Come on, we can do better than that. How about Devon or Ethan. Tex? What the heck?”

  “I don’t know. With his cowboy hat on and everything. It may work,” said Jack.

  “It’s up to him,” said Erika. “What do you think, 9?”

  “I think you may call me Tex.”

  6

  CODE NAME ALECTO

  H.A.L.F. 10 sat motionless in the dim room. She was typically unaware of the beating of her own heart. But as she waited for the commander, she was unnerved by the sound of blood pumping through her body. The awareness distracted her from the intense concentration required to hear beyond the walls of the room in which she waited. A thin film of moisture formed on her skin. Most unusual. Sidetracked by the sensation of water leaking from her body, she was unable to focus on the vibrations she normally felt from the world around her.

  H.A.L.F. 10 did not know why she perceived these new experiences, but she assumed it must have something to do with the fact that she had been summoned to meet with Commander Sturgis. She had spent very little time alone with the commander. Dr. Dolan, various attendants, and lab assistants carried out tests and experiments on her and provided her with the education they had deemed necessary for her to have. Commander Sturgis sometimes observed her during testing or examinations but rarely spoke to her. The commander had never had a private meeting with her. H.A.L.F. 10 deduced that since the sensations she now experienced were unpleasant to her, she must be in danger.

  Despite the thumping in her heart, H.A.L.F. 10 heard Commander Sturgis’ heels click as they approached. 10 tuned out the unfamiliar feeling of her wet skin and concentrated. Commander Sturgis was no more than twenty feet away and moving quickly. H.A.L.F. 10 perceived a significant energy force bound within the commander’s body. Not of the power scale of her own energy, of course. But still, it was on a higher order than the energies of most humans she dealt with.

  The door banged open and Commander Sturgis marched in. Her ever-present assistant, Sewell, was only inches from her backside. Commander Sturgis waved Sewell off.

  “Make yourself useful and help with containment,” she said. “This is between us girls.” Sewell hesitated for a brief moment, but when Commander Sturgis turned and glared at him, he quickly backed out of the room and closed the door.

  H.A.L.F. 10’s stomach lurched. She swallowed and it helped ease the bile that had risen in her throat back down. Strange. Despite the unfamiliar state her body was in, H.A.L.F. 10 did not allow any emotion to surface on her face. She kept her body rigid and her demeanor calm.

  Commander Sturgis gently pulled out the stainless steel chair across from H.A.L.F. 10 and sat down. She smoothed her navy blue skirt and put one hand on each side of the hem of her jacket and pulled down. She sat silently and stared directly into H.A.L.F. 10’s eyes.

  H.A.L.F. 10 had been trained not to speak unless spoken to and even then, to offer as little information as possible to answer only direct questions. She waited uncomplainingly for Commander Sturgis to speak.

  After a fe
w minutes, Commander Sturgis asked, “Do you know why I asked Sewell to bring you here?”

  “No.”

  “Good answer. In brief, I have a job for you. A task only you can do. Does it please you to be handpicked by your commander for such an important job?”

  The commander’s question felt like a test. If she said yes, it would mean that she required pleasing. She was schooled to want nothing. She had no need for ego gratification. On the other hand, if she said no, it may be construed that she thought the job somehow beneath her. Commander Sturgis may find another to fulfill the request. H.A.L.F. 10 had trained her whole life to be useful to the program and to Commander Sturgis. But in her sixteen years, this was the first time she had been called upon to fulfill a duty request.

  Unsure how else to respond, H.A.L.F. 10 answered with the truth. “I am uncertain how to reply to your question, Commander. H.A.L.F. 10 does not require to be pleased. But I am eager to fulfill the purpose for which I was created.”

  Commander Sturgis sat back in her chair and smiled. “Yes, you have been trained well. I am very pleased with what I see. I am happy to give you this opportunity to fulfill your purpose, though it is under the most unfortunate of circumstances.

  “What I am about to tell you is, of course, classified. You must not speak of these events to anyone, including Dr. Dolan. In fact, especially not to Dr. Dolan. For this mission, you will report to me and only to me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Good.” Commander Sturgis got quiet for a moment. She leaned forward and steepled her fingers beneath her chin. “You have a name other than H.A.L.F. 10. It’s a code name that I chose especially for you. Would you like to know what it is?”

  “If you would like to reveal it.” H.A.L.F. 10 was curious, but she knew better than to seek an answer solely to fulfill her own inquisitiveness.

  “You lack pride. I am pleased. Your code name is Alecto. Do you know what it means?”

  “No, Commander.”

  “No, of course not. How would you? Your duties do not require learning Greek. Alecto, from the Greek meaning ‘unceasing’. You are, my dear, the product of my genius. And you are unceasing.”