“I need to talk to you. It’s safer here than back in the barracks. Besides, I’ll keep an eye out. We’ll both be listening for them and I can tell you from personal experience, they don’t like to trudge around through the trees. They pretty much stick to the paths and the grass clearings near the fences.”
Skepticism filtered through his mind but he wanted to trust the man. “Even though they think I’m still running around out here.”
James shrugged. “This is a huge place and there aren’t that many of them.”
Nick remembered back to when he was a Boy Scout, camping in the forest. No AR lenses then, either. No receivers. Just a bunch of other boys eating freeze-dried meals rehydrated and boiled over a fire as they told stories of ghosts and murderers loose in the woods, hooked hands and genetic mutants. He remembered how scared he’d been, how he’d shuddered but put on a brave face, refusing to show weakness. “I don’t like sitting around here like this.”
“Look, I need to tell you this so you understand how things work and what’s at stake. I haven’t told anyone else and I might not get to.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? Can’t it wait until we’re out of this place?”
James leaned forward. Frustration and tension sizzled in the air. “I have no idea if there will be a tomorrow. I’m the last of my batch in this camp. The only reason I’ve survived is because I did what you did tonight.” He exhaled slowly. “I killed another with my bare hands. I watched him die, silent and struggling, just like they trained us. He was helpless, just days out of the chambers.”
“Why? Why did you have to do that?”
“They wanted to exterminate my entire batch. The reason I’m different—the reason I know more than any of them—is because I went through the old education and training program. They gave us more freedom. Yes, the training was harsh and they were unforgiving, but we weren’t restrained to the barracks. They allowed us more paper books, holobooks, and movies. They even implanted AR lenses so we could connect to the camp’s intranet to consume training programs.” James tapped his temple. “Of course, without our own Chips, the AR lenses can’t connect to anything else. Still, as part of the training, our classes taught us about the world we might be sent to. I suppose it was an effort to teach us enough culture to fit in. To be human.”
Nick rubbed the scar on his left forearm. “Why did that change?”
“We wanted out. We wanted to escape and, as we learned more, even when they restricted our education, even when they fed us propaganda, we managed to keep those ideas alive between each other. I think as one of the first batches, we served as an experimental group. From the talk I overheard through my time here, it sounds like it wasn’t just the education that contributed to our rebellious attitudes. I think they suspected something in your genes—something that also contributed to our prowess as soldiers. They segregated us from the newer batches and our training ceased. It seemed like, from a genetic level, they had controlled the glitch that made us particularly unruly in their prescribed training program while still maintaining the strength, agility and mental prowess that made us good soldiers.
“Because my batch threatened them, they wanted to get rid of us. We spent two days digging a long trench. They rounded us up and we were marched in front of it. We knew what they intended to do and then it happened.” His chest swelled and he breathed heavily. “We ran. Most were shot. Like you, I couldn’t find a way past the fence. I didn’t know where to go, so I stumbled back to find a weapon or a place to hide. I wasn’t sure. I just wanted to get away from the gunfire and that’s when I ended up in the barracks. At first, I ran into one full of women, then another with children. Then, another with a newer batch of us—of you.”
Nick’s mouth sagged open. “Just like me.”
“Just like me. The next morning, they ordered us, the new batch, to collect all the bodies and dump them into the grave.”
“I’m sorry.”
James closed his eyes for a moment. “There were only ninety-five bodies.”
“Wait. I thought there were a hundred in your batch.”
He nodded.
“So, what happened to the other five? I mean, the other four besides you? Did they blend in as well?”
He sighed. “I tried for a while to figure out if anyone else was an imposter. I actually thought you might be one of the five. But no, no others have ever showed up.”
“Oh.” Nick’s head sagged, his body exhausted. He mulled over James’s story. “So the others...you never found their bodies?”
“No. I mean, I never heard anything about it. Not like the keepers would have told me much anyway. But no, I don’t think so.”
A glimmer of hope arose. “Maybe they escaped. Maybe they found a way out of this place.”
“I’d like to think that. I hoped they would tell someone or come back for us. Foolish, I know.”
Nick stood. “No, it’s not foolish. You need to hold on to that hope. Just knowing someone else might have made it out of this camp could be a good sign. Besides, we’ll be out soon enough.” Kelsey would run to him when she saw him. She would wrap her skinny arms around him. They’d make love and lie in their bed, soft and warm, all day, all week, making up for the lost time. “Let’s go drop me off by the fence.”
They lugged One-Ninety the rest of the way through the foliage until they came to the clearing. Nick tucked the shirt emblazoned with ‘One-Eighty-Five’ into the body’s pants just as he had done during his escape. He slipped the Glock 54 into the dead clone’s waistband.
“Are you sure about this?” James asked.
Nick nodded. “Can you help me? It hurts like hell to bend over.”
Together, they heaved One-Ninety’s body up and threw him against the electric fence. Sparks flew and the smell of burned flesh permeated the air around them. Nick checked One-Ninety’s arm to ensure black burns covered enough skin to obscure the strangulation marks and to ensure the soldiers wouldn’t be able to tell that the singed corpse had never had the tell-tale Chip scar they were looking for.
Voices called out in the distance. They sprinted back into the trees. Nick struggled to keep up. James ran ungodly fast, like a machine. Before his induced slumber, Nick had run three to five miles every day. He didn’t feel too unfit, but James’s athleticism deserved a class of its own.
A thought bubbled up in Nick’s mind. He’d tried to ignore it before, but not this time. James’s lessons, classes, training. It must have been weeks, maybe months of arduous labor in the cloning camp and facilities. All the events that James had described could not have occurred in a matter of days. And how long had it taken for the scientists to harvest his DNA and replicate his cells? Even with the rumored advancements in accelerated growth chambers, developing a mature adult human being couldn’t have happened in less than a few months. Could it?
Nick’s mind burned hotter than the pain in his back as he joined James near the edge of the clearing. James leaned against a tree, one hand against its trunk and peered around.
“I don’t see anyone.”
Nick grabbed James’s shoulder, his heart pounding. “Wait. There’s something else I want to know.”
James whipped around.
“How old are you?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but I estimate I'm around two years old. Maybe slightly more. My cognizance was not optimal when I was young.”
Nick staggered backward. He felt sick. “Do you know how long the growth chambers take?”
James shrugged. “I’m not sure. Batches seem to come out every three, four, maybe six months or so, though.”
“Were you the first batch?”
“No, remember? I was Eighty-Four. There were three batches before me. Batches of twenty-five men each.”
Nick crouched, tugging at his hair with his hands. His stomach turned over and he suppressed the urge to vomit. His vision swam as the realization crushed him. He crumpled onto the ground. Clenching his fists until they shook
, he ignored the pain in his back. “Oh God. Oh God.” His eyes shot up to James. “I’ve been here for three, four years. At least. Oh God.”
Nick had spent years in the chamber underground. Years unconscious, invisible to the world. Invisible to Kelsey. She would never have found out what happened to him, never known if he was alive or dead. By now, she would assume he was dead. That he would never return.
He had wanted to go back. But she might have found someone else to pull the pieces of her shattered life back together. She would have worn another dress to another wedding to settle down into another life with children who looked like another man. He couldn’t bear the thought and almost laughed aloud, thinking about how his own unintended progeny surrounded him. No, he wanted to believe she had waited for him. Maybe she’d still be waiting for him. He’d told James to cling to a modicum of hope, however dismal. Now, Nick tried to reassure himself with the same advice, tried to bolster his spirits. He needed to hold onto her, even if it was just a dream.
Just one good dream to hold on to in this nightmarish world.
Fourteen
Lieutenant Reid Fulton crouched. His Exosuit let out a quiet hiss as it adjusted to his posture. The Exo clung to him like a wetsuit. Its micromachinery and circuitry were woven into a synthetic fabric like an electronic layer of blood vessels and nerves. Nanospun polymeric- and metal-based fibers interlaced within the synthetic fabric to protect against most small-arms fire. With it, he could run for miles without tiring. It allowed him to react faster and augmented his strength. He felt like a demi-god, roaming through the forest.
He gestured to Patel. Nodding, the sergeant prowled forward and hid himself behind a tree trunk with peeling tawny bark.
Frogs’ croaks and the shrill cries of birds hidden in the jungle canopy ringed in his ears until he turned on his receiver’s sound filters. Silence, except for the subtle crackle of background noise. “Cloaks on.”
Patel disappeared, now only a shadow glimmering faintly in the night air.
“Cooley,” Fulton whispered. “Move.” He couldn’t see her in his line of sight, but the real-time map in his AR lenses showed her moving from the east. They approached within one hundred yards of the target. He still couldn’t get a visual on the small camp—just a faint heat signature. He trained the receiver on the location and thought he could make out the sounds of slow, rhythmic breathing. The Congo Resistance Movement scouts probably slept for the night. They likely thought that their stolen American technology could make them invisible. It might work on drones flying above the jungle canopy, but they couldn’t hide from an Exosuit unit.
He sent a message over Patel’s and Cooley’s heads-up displays that commanded silent communications from here on out. They stalked in formation toward the camouflaged site. Within twenty yards, the heat signature appeared more evident. It leaked out from the skirt of the stolen camoshield.
A message from Cooley lit up his HUD: “Open fire or confirm targets first?”
“Confirm. We’ll also retrieve the stolen camoshield.”
Cooley’s “Affirm” was followed by another “Affirm” from Patel.
“I’ll make the call.” Fulton crept up to the edge of the shield. As he passed over its holofield, he saw huddled shapes in blankets. A small plastic device sat at the center of the encampment. Now beyond the protective range of the shield, he shot an immobilizing EMP blast at it with the Exosuit while training his rifle on the blanketed shape near him. He extended the spectrum on his AR lenses to include infrared, enabling him to make out the human shapes within the blankets.
None of the four people he counted had stirred. He smirked, admiring his own stealth as a silent hunter. With each subsequent mission, his unit had grown more cohesive and increasingly effective, confident in their abilities and the Exosuits. Cooley approached from the opposite side as Patel remained behind to ensure no one else approached the camp.
Cooley’s message scrolled across his HUD. “Cap them for interrogation?”
“Affirm.”
Fulton pulled the non-lethal MP-55 pistol from his thigh holster as he cradled the assault rifle in his left arm.
“You take the two nearest you. On my count.” He counted down from three and fired two paralyzing electric blasts at each of the sleeping men nearest him. He expected to see their bodies writhe and then hold still, muscles frozen in place. Instead, the campsite erupted into flames. He was thrown into a tree. His head slammed against the bark. The HUD flickered and went blank.
Gunshots rang out in his ears. He heard a loud scream, then silence. Pain flickered through his body, dulled by endorphin enhancements and the painkillers administered by the Exo. The crackle of flames burned bright on the ground and the intense heat blinded his AR lenses. He tried to put an arm over his eyes, to block out the flames as he struggled to correct his sight. The AR lenses no longer responded to mental commands. He needed to manually set his vision back to its default settings. With his right hand, he reached to his other forearm. Instead of feeling the firm coolness of the Exo fabric, he touched a pulpy warm mass that clung to his fingers. His left arm was torn apart. He could make out the glint of his exposed Chip, protruding from shredded muscles and fatty tissue.
His vision swam at the sight, despite the hormones his enhancements and the Exo pumped into him. His stomach churned and he retched over the front of his suit. With his right hand pulling on a broken tree limb, he yanked his body up. He fell under his own weight. The suit shut down.
“Cooley! Patel!” He yelled out into the night.
The birds remained silent. The frogs had stopped croaking. Only the roar of the fire and the rustle of the wind over leaves responded to his calls.
He could feel the presence of someone else near him. He bent his neck to see a face illuminated by tongues of fire. Shadows flickered over the man’s face, but Fulton did not mistake the familiar Roman nose, the blond hair, or the intense blue eyes. The man’s square jaw, his thick eyebrows, his prominent forehead. It was a ghost. It must be.
“Steinweg?”
A once-distant memory of his tour with Steinweg came back to him. Their nights hunting in Exos together, the beers they’d shared to celebrate each consecutive return to the States. Steinweg had ended his service when his last contract ended, electing to pursue civilian life. Each time Fulton came home to Reston, Virginia, Steinweg would travel up from North Carolina, ready to share a beer and the stories of Fulton’s latest tour.
Then, almost a year and a half ago, Steinweg had broken that tradition. He’d never offered a reason why, nor had he responded to any of Fulton’s messages. The man had disappeared.
“Steinweg? What’s going on?” Fulton’s left eyelid swelled shut, and he struggled to keep his right eye open. As though in their final stages of life, his AR lenses flashed a message across his vision proclaiming that they were recording and reporting an anomalous event.
Steinweg leaned over. He plucked out the Chip hanging from Fulton’s destroyed arm and crushed it between his fingers. The device shattered into tiny pieces. Steinweg brushed his fingers together and let the fragments flutter over Fulton’s body.
Fulton opened his mouth to speak again but no words came out. They caught in his throat and he coughed to clear it. His stomach squeezed as if being constricted, and he spat up blood.
Brandishing a knife, Steinweg swung his arm through the air. The blade tore clean through Fulton’s neck. The lieutenant’s head fell back, flopping against the tree trunk. Then, black.
Fifteen
A low murmur of voices simmered in the barracks as Nick put on his uniform. He could sense excitement in the air as talk of leaving spread between replicate persons making their beds and retrieving their clothes from the communal closets for the last time.
Sweat dripped down his back. His shirt already felt damp with the humid morning air that suffocated the barracks. The fabric clung to his wounds and stuck to the ooze that seeped from his damaged skin. Each time he rotated or
moved too quickly, the shirt would tear from the healing lacerations and send tremors of electric pain through his back. Assuming they sent him out via the same type of plane he’d been delivered on, he didn’t look forward to the stiff plastic seats pressing against his back. He wanted to distract himself with thoughts of Kelsey, but those memories and dreams reminded him of how long he’d been missing. For all he knew, she didn’t give a shit about him. Probably even hated him, thinking he’d run away.
“You going to be okay?” James placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder and he winced. “Ah, sorry.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be there.”
Nick feigned a smile. “I appreciate your certainty.”
“Someone once told me it was better to hold onto your optimism and hope. Besides, today’s the day we get the hell out of here. That’s at least one step in the right direction.”
“I wish I knew what direction we’re stepping in.”
“We’ll figure something out.” James licked his lips. “It will all be much easier when we have weapons of our own to carry.”
Nick nodded. He longed to have a weapon in his hands again and figured he knew how James felt. It seemed as though the two shared an unspoken connection, both confident that their flight would be much easier in the hands of the purchaser rather than caged here.
The canvas flaps to the tent whipped open. Two keepers walked in, their hands hovering over the pistol grips sticking out from their hip holsters. They barked at the clones in their unfamiliar language and left.
“Does anyone speak English besides the clones?” Nick asked James.
“The guards all speak Danish.” James’s expression appeared worried. “We have teachers who force us to speak English on our own to practice and ensure we’re worthwhile out in the rest of the world. But in camp, the guards all speak Danish.”
“Danish? Why?”
James shrugged as the clones filed out. “Couldn’t tell you. But, if you want to blend in, you’re going to need to stick close to the others in your batch. File in beside One-Eighty-Nine and One-Ninety-One and do what they do.”
The Human Forged Page 7
