by Rob Horner
“Debbie here.”
“Okay, Debbie. What’s up?”
“There’s activity at the installation tonight.”
“There’s activity at the installation every night,” Brian answered tiredly.
“Not this kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“They just brought someone in, a woman.”
“Don’t tell me they’re about to start all over again,” he said quietly.
“No, I don’t think so. In fact, she looks familiar.”
“Reprogramming?” Brian asked, his mind picking up speed as Debbie’s words started to make sense.
“No, I don’t think she’s ever been here before. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s a mother—”
“Diane?” Brian asked, his voice betraying the old hope before his mind could make it stop.
“I—” Debbie’s voice faded to sympathetic silence, sharing Brian’s grief over his dead wife. Debbie was only a new acquaintance back then, but Diane had been a woman anyone could love.
Debbie waited until Brian recovered himself before continuing. “I think it’s the mother of one of the subjects, Victoria Galer.”
“Wait. Wait a minute.” Brian struggled to a sitting position, swinging his legs over the side of his bed, running his left hand through his thick brown hair. “Why would they be bringing her in? Did something happen with her daughter?”
“We don’t know, Brian. But we intend to save her before they can do anything to her.”
“Is that really the best thing for her?” he wondered, only realizing after the fact that he’d spoken the question aloud.
“What? How can you say that, Brian? It’s why you joined us in the first place, to keep things like this from happening to anyone else.”
“Like my son?” he demanded harshly.
“I wouldn’t have said that,” Debbie replied softly.
Shaking his head slowly, Brian exhaled. “I know…I’m sorry, Debbie. It’s just…well…this woman might be connected to him, you know?”
“Brian,” Debbie began, her voice soft, “don’t get your hopes up.”
“Yeah, I know. The old story, right. He was one of the first. And the fact we haven’t heard anything means he probably failed quietly somewhere along the way.”
“We’ve always warned you to be ready to accept that possibility.”
“Yeah, and I do! I do. But I’m still a father, and I won’t believe my son lost to me until I see absolute proof.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Debbie replied softly. “Especially after what you’ve gone through.”
“Yeah. What I’ve gone through.”
“But Brian—”
“Yeah?”
“We have to try to save Mrs. Galer, or whoever it is. Just like we did you five years ago.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that, well, if it is Victoria Galer, how can you ignore the connections?”
“Excuse me?”
“Victoria’s daughter was sent to the same place my son was—” he said softly.
“And must I remind you that we’ve scoured that place looking for him, and there’s not a trace anywhere? And in a military society that insists on keeping everything recorded in quadruplicate, that’s a pretty sure sign.”
“I know, Debbie,” Brian sighed. “I just can’t help hoping.”
“Tell you what, Brian. You’re a part of the team, have been since the day we saved you. Come along with us. That’ll give you a chance, firsthand, to talk to this woman, if it is Mrs. Galer, find out what’s happening, and why she’s been brought to the facility.”
“She might not know anything at all,” Brian said softly.
“Exactly, so don’t get your hopes too high.”
“I…all right. When is the attempt?”
“As soon as possible, Brian. Say, an hour. We’ll meet at the visitor lot outside the base. We’ve got to hurry, though. Who knows when they’ll start messing with her mind?”
“I know.” Brian drew a shaky breath. “All right, Debbie. One hour, the visitor’s center.”
“See you then.”
“Yeah.”
—Click—
2
Brian wasted no time getting ready for the rescue attempt; after all, he only had an hour, and it would take him half that to drive to the meeting place. Even at—he checked the softly glowing digital clock on his nightstand—three in the morning, there would be some traffic on Illinois’ highways. And around the Recruit Training Command there was always vehicular activity, whether it was training maneuvers for the SEALs or a disgruntled Company Commander coming in for a late watch.
Rushing into the shower, Brian winced at his lapse into the past. He’d called out Diane’s name, though her presence was an impossibility. The government made sure of that five years before.
Letting the hot water soothe the knots of muscle in his neck and shoulders, Brian forced himself through the memory, knowing this technique was the only guaranteed way to keep his thoughts focused on the present. It was a trick he’d mastered over the past five years, facing the past when it loomed, rather than hiding from it. It gave him fuel for the fire of his anger. If anyone got in his way tonight, they’d be sorry. He blamed them all, every government employee from the lowest E-1 to the highest-ranking officer, for the loss of his wife and the theft of his son.
Five years—God, but sometimes it seemed as though it happened only the day before, the pain was that bright. Perhaps Debbie was right in berating him for living in the past. It didn’t matter. Brian knew he’d never let it go, not until he knew, one way or the other, whether his son lived.
It was June of 2012 when James went off to Boot Camp, desperate to be his own man, to earn his own way. Though Brian was disappointed with Jimmy’s choice, he couldn’t deny the young man the right to make it.
And then, only a few weeks after Jimmy left, Debbie came to visit Brian at work, this tall, leggy brunette who introduced herself as a federal employee with “civilian interests at heart.” What had she said? Something terrible was about to happen. And Jimmy was in danger. Naturally, Brian rushed home to his wife, inviting Debbie along for the ride. Anything that concerned their son should be told to both parents at the same time.
Shaking his head under the shower, Brian reached to turn off the water. While a part of his mind tended to the need to get dressed, the rest relived that long-ago confrontation.
It was something to do with genetics. Jimmy’s genetic make-up made him perfect for an experiment, though Debbie wasn’t there to seek their permission. Rather, she told Brian and Diane that Jimmy would become an unwilling volunteer, one more casualty of a government seeking to out-do every other government in the race for man-made perfection. Though Brian had studied everything he could find on the matter, he still found himself confused whenever the subject came up.
Debbie blathered on in science fiction talk about some biologic material found on the moon, traces of an alien heritage possibly millions of years old, which modern technology had only recently discovered were very similar in design and function to certain cells in the human brain.
The terminology was even harder to understand when he’d first heard it, and he could tell by Diane’s expression that she was torn between outright disbelief, incredulity, and mounting anger that a stranger was playing on their concerns for their son in such an outlandish manner.
How were two laymen supposed to respond to claims that some of the combinations of the six parts of human DNA were replicated in this alien matter, which also contained new and previously unseen combinations?
Debbie seemed greatly impatient throughout the conversation, and Brian forced both himself and Diane to sit still, though his main thought had been to find some way to save his son.
“Why come to us with this?” Diane asked, ignoring all the technical mumbo-jumbo in favor of the one question Brian hadn’t been able to focus on.
“Because your lives
are in danger,” Debbie responded flatly. “Your son is going to be changed mentally as well as physically, so he’ll better fit into the government’s mold. Parents like you, to which he has strong ties and a strong foundation, are a threat to the government’s control. How can they be assured of anything as long as you’re around to confuse the issue?”
It was the first time Brian had heard of the government doing anything like this, though it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But what could they do?
“Join us,” Debbie offered. “We’re just a small group right now, but we’re well-funded, and our ranks are swelling weekly.”
“And do what?” Diane asked, shaking her blond head, her voice almost pleading.
“Help us keep other people like Jimmy out of the government’s hands. If we do everything we can to help them before they’re…altered, maybe we can put a stop to these experiments. Maybe we can gather enough information to blow the whole program wide open to the press. At the very least, we can try to save people like yourselves, who’ve done nothing more than be the best kind of parents you know how to be.”
Debbie’s arguments were persuasive—even as Brian dried off in his bathroom, they still sounded persuasive—but they couldn’t overcome a lifetime of stable living under a mostly benevolent government. No matter what she said, nothing was going to convince Diane they had anything to fear from the military or from any other government institution. In fact, it was Debbie who finally became the focus for Diane’s fear. As the brunette excused herself to use the restroom, Diane told Brian she didn’t trust the woman, that she must have been sent to deliver her pack of science fantasy lies with the express purpose of making the Jennings’ believe their son was already lost to them.
A shouting match ensued when Debbie returned, and it was at the climax of the argument that the brunette was told to leave. Diane saw her to the door. As soon as the portal was open, the shooting started.
Brian never saw the face of the gunman who fired at Debbie, his aim off by only a fraction of an inch, so the woman who should have died received a graze on the left shoulder, and the bullet meant for her found a home in Diane’s throat instead.
The rest of the night was a confused jumble.
Debbie leaping back into the house, pushing Diane’s falling body away so she could slam the door; Brian rushing to Diane’s side, though she was dead before he reached her; Debbie’s frantic shouting that they had to get away, to which Brian turned a deaf ear, because all he could concentrate on was trying not to see the jagged, bloody hole in his wife’s throat; Debbie finally pulling Brian away from his wife, telling him that if he didn’t get moving he’d never be able to see his son again; the frantic rush through the house to the connecting garage; the fumble in the dark for the keys to the Bronco; the wild crashing of the large vehicle through the flimsy garage door, tearing down the driveway and into the street, then the wild ride away from the place which had been home to Brian and his family for the past seventeen years; long hours of driving until Debbie finally said he could slow down, no one was following them.
None of it made any sense until he saw the news the following morning, how a sudden fire had claimed his house, trapping both he and his wife inside, bodies identified by dental records.
Dressed now, starting his truck and pulling into the deserted suburban streets, Brian marveled at how much his life had changed in the intervening years.
Debbie hadn’t exaggerated about the potential of his new position with the group. Funded by wealthy donors who shared a belief that humanity should evolve on its own, they worked to make life hell for the scientists and engineers inside the military installation while simultaneously tracking down and trying to help those whose lives had been changed.
They weren’t always successful, Brian thought with a grimace, remembering another young woman who’d been brought in under their noses almost, what, six months ago? They were learning, he had to give them credit for that. She’d been taken to the hospital on base first, held for psychiatric screening. Things like that happened with military people in about the same ratio as civilians. Acute depressive episodes and psychotic breaks could be engendered by the sudden stress of Boot Camp on a previously sheltered young adult.
But then the woman disappeared from the hospital, transferred somehow to the facility. Debbie didn’t find out about her until after she was altered--through a bribed guard of all things--and by then it was too late. She was only in the installation for a week before being transferred somewhere on the West Coast. So far, they hadn’t been able to learn any more about her.
Other things had changed as well, Brian thought, transitioning from I-294 to I-94 West. Shortly after the debacle with Brian and Diane, the military began working on the families of prospective candidates before the candidates graduated from Boot Camp, setting the stage for receptiveness to further instructions regarding their children. Sometimes they went so far as to generate hostility for those from Debbie’s group. When persuasion wasn’t effective, elaborate charades were enacted, such as the phony pomp and circumstance funeral presented for Mrs. Victoria Galer’s benefit.
They didn’t try to bring every set of parents into the group, of course. After the fatal shooting of Diane, very few families were threatened, and they didn’t have bottomless funding. For the past five years, they’d limited their recruits only to those who could be a benefit to them in their infiltration and extraction efforts.
I-94 was a sea of dark asphalt, none of the green of the Middlefork Savanna Forest Preserve visible in the early morning hours.
Debbie was a geneticist, one of the first scientists brought in by the military to begin testing the hypothetical what if.
What if this strange genetic material could be bonded to a human subject?
It was the question that hooked her. It was set up like any ethical research project using blood samples from new recruits taken during the routine specimen collection all new sailors underwent. Debbie maintained her belief in a transparent research project, a fact-finding mission based solely in the theoretical, using double-blind alpha-numeric codes instead of names, no way for researchers to identify a particular sailor or Marine based on the numbered sample provided.
In parallel research conducted in other parts of the facility, Debbie uncovered a resurgence of the MKUltra project run by the CIA and administered through eighty sub-contracted facilities, including universities and hospitals, from 1953 to 1973. The purported goal of MKUltra was to design and test methods of brainwashing, or mind-control, often on unwitting students, patients, and prisoners. When the project was shuttered in 1973, most of the collected research was reported destroyed, yet here it was, operational and successful, in 2012.
A little digging brought her to the realization that the subjects who provided the samples were not anonymous; they were being monitored as they progressed through Boot Camp. There were plans to begin bringing in the best genetic matches for live testing as early as January of 2012, with no mention given of informed consent and no filed paperwork through an Institutional Review Board. It smelled like the Tuskegee Syphilis Trials or the Edgewood Arsenal human experiments all over again, and Debbie wanted out.
She took with her as much data as she could find, including a list of viable sailor-subjects, provided by her computer programmer husband, William. His hacking abilities—though he preferred the term “subtle programming proficiency”—were a large part of why Debbie, Brian, and the rest of group were able to get away with many of the things they did.
Brian, who’d owned a private investigative service, also brought an impressive skill set, which he shared with anyone who wished to learn.
Most of their team was like this. Everyone had a talent to contribute, making them a small but effective force in the fight to keep families together. They’d once had more than fifty members, but their successes (and failures) had forced a slow curtailing of the project. That, combined with the finite amount of genetic material available, mean
t there were no more new victims being experimented upon, and Brian, Debbie, and a core group of four others now watched and waited, attempting to intercept family members scheduled for reprogramming. William desperately wanted to reconnect with the Institute server farm, hoping to locate the other hundred victims currently unaccounted for.
Brian felt unwanted moisture at the corners of his eyes as he recalled the first reunion he’d helped facilitate. Being there to reintroduce a beloved son to a family who thought him dead had brought back a hope so painful that it almost caused him to double over. It if could happen for others, then why not him?
But Debbie was right to caution him against hoping. None of the first-generation subjects had been recovered. Most had died, many after drastic psychotic breaks caused by a side-effect of the bonding method. Their group hadn’t been strong enough, in those early months, to facilitate anything, really. Their one strike, an attempt at freeing all the imprisoned sailors, had shown no results; no one came out to be rescued on that cold February fourteenth in 2013 when the power grid to the entire facility was hijacked, all exterior and interior doors opened, all security devices disabled.
Chances were Jimmy was among those anonymous deaths, just another letter and number lost somewhere in the military’s extensive files.
Despite the facts, and despite the long odds, it was that unreasonable hope which kept Brian fighting.
3
“So, what’s the plan?” Brian asked a few minutes later, after rendezvousing with Debbie, William, and another young man in the Visitor Center parking lot.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” William said, straightening to his full six-five height and turning to shake Brian’s hand. The sandy haired computer technician towered over Brian by almost a half-foot and belied the stereotype often associated with the trade. His broad shoulders were straight and well-muscled. Though he wore glasses, they were narrow and trendy—no myopic magnifying glasses perched on a beak of a nose. His features were fine and aristocratic, marred only by numerous laugh lines.
