Damn it. I really hoped I proved to be a better sniper than conversationalist because that was twice now I’d said something before realizing the consequences of my speech. And now, I had to admit I’d talked to Cade and allowed him to talk to me instead of just shooting him as soon as I saw him.
“Not much,” I lied. “He was really drunk. And that other guy in the back of the house started shooting at me. He didn’t really say anything until I ran back outside, and then he just tried to tell me something like, ‘We’ve known each other for years.’”
I was also totally lying about what he’d said and how much I remembered because I remembered every word.
Ethan watched me for a few more seconds before unburying a hand and waving it toward the charred remnants of the Project’s laboratory. “So none of this seems familiar?”
I noticed he asked loud enough so that the guards could overhear us so when I answered him, I made sure to speak loud enough, too.
I shook my head. “I was asleep. How could it seem familiar?”
He shrugged and looked over his shoulder. “How the hell should I know? Let’s get some lunch.”
I waited until he’d turned his back to me before eyeing the guards one last time. None of them had moved, but they’d watched us carefully the whole time. Not just me but us. For whatever reason, they didn’t seem to trust Ethan anymore than they trusted me.
He brought us to a fast food restaurant then a motel but he didn’t mention the Project again. As I opened my door, exhausted and ready to lock myself into the quiet of my own room, he placed a hand out to stop me.
“We’ve got to leave in the morning,” he said. “We’re going overseas.”
“Why hasn’t Dr. Parker sent me any information?” I asked him.
“He will,” Ethan assured me. He stepped inside my room and closed the door behind him. “This is one of the most important kind of jobs we work, Drake… rescuing one of our own. You understand that, right?”
I wanted to roll my eyes at him, but I also didn’t want to piss him off. I wasn’t technically human, but that didn’t make me an idiot. “What difference does it make whether or not I understand its importance? I get the directives and follow them regardless.”
“Do you?” Ethan asked. He didn’t say anything else but just stood there watching me until I finally lowered my eyes and stared at what may have been a cigarette burn in the worn carpet. Ethan grabbed the door handle and glanced over his shoulder at me one last time. “Get some rest, Drake. We’re leaving in the morning and where we’re going, you’ll need to be on your game.”
In some ways, Mosul also reminded me of Mogadishu—mostly because it was unbearably hot, although far drier. But maybe everywhere I went would remind me of the city I woke up in because I had so few places to compare it to. Intelligence indicated that the Air Force pilot who’d been shot down in this area was still alive and being held hostage, but nobody believed a ransom would save his life anyway, if that’s what his abductors demanded. Besides, the government had that whole, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists policy” so that’s how I found myself in northern Iraq only one month after waking up in a hospital in Somalia.
Ethan carried a small device with him that could send new orders to me while we were in the field. Dr. Parker made him test it several times before we even left for Virginia. By the way he’d shoved it into the pocket on his thigh, I got the impression he’d rather have forced a live grenade in there though. He hadn’t said much to me on the entire flight across the Atlantic other than to confirm I had actually gotten the orders I was supposed to receive from Dr. Parker. The rest of the trip, he read or talked to others, largely ignoring me.
The other men largely ignored me, too.
Once we were on the ground, nobody seemed interested in conversation anymore. Our platoon had been divided into four Fire Teams of four men each so we could surround the hotel in the city where we believed Airman Griegson was being held. Since coordinates could be input into my head, which made me the best marksman, we were assigned the farthest position from the hotel in an abandoned building about half a mile away, still well within the other men’s ranges but nobody wanted to risk mistakes. Two men remained on the first floor to keep anyone else out while Ethan and I climbed upstairs to the fifth floor.
Inside the room that faced the hotel, I knelt by the window and moved the curtain aside, squinting toward the blindingly bright sky. I listened to the instructions in my head as I replayed them and what little information intelligence had been able to gather about the terrorists who held Airman Griegson.
Ethan squatted on the floor next to me and said, “Headley’s team is looking for confirmation that our intelligence is right. As soon as we get it, his team’s moving in. Conley’s team has positions set up all around the hotel.”
I nodded and wiped my sleeve across my forehead. Ethan glanced out the window and narrowed his eyes at the old hotel in the distance.
“Why wouldn’t they take the pilot to one of their camps?” I asked.
“Because we’ve been bombing the shit out of their camps for months trying to take this city back,” Ethan explained.
“That’s a good reason,” I agreed.
Ethan snickered and sat on the floor across from me. There was no glass in the window above us, just a curtain that swayed gently in the hot breeze. If we received confirmation Griegson was in the hotel, we’d have a perfect vantage point if they attempted to move him. I’d been hoping they wouldn’t because Headley’s team was supposed to go inside the hotel to rescue him unless the terrorists left the building, in which case Conley’s team should be able to assist. But if for any reason, those bastards got past eight highly trained SEALs, we were here.
I already suspected the men inside that hotel would be dying whether Griegson was still alive or not.
I hoped Headley’s and Conley’s teams didn’t need us.
It’s not that I had reservations about killing terrorists or even that I was worried I’d make a mistake. As far as I knew, computers couldn’t make mistakes unless they were malfunctioning, and my diagnostics had come up clean. Ultimately, what bothered me was that I might have to see this pilot and what they’d been doing to him. Before coming here, I’d often found myself wishing I had more memories, a childhood and adolescence and life before now. But this wasn’t a memory I wanted.
If the other guys on the ground got him out, I didn’t have to see him that closely. We’d go our separate ways depending on the way things played out because each Fire Team had a different escape and evade plan. Then we’d return to the States by different planes, and all I would have to hear was that he’d been brought home.
I wondered if not wanting to see a man who’d been tortured made me a coward, and if that were even possible since I’d only been programmed for one purpose and this was it. Someone in that mysterious universe of the Department of Defense had decided the first workable outcome of The Genesis Project would belong to the Navy. I could have just as easily been programmed as a Green Beret or even as a pilot like the poor bastard inside that hotel.
But I couldn’t ask Ethan if it were possible for me to be a coward either.
I thought I’d hidden my quiet brooding well, but I was wrong. Ethan leaned his head back on the wall and asked, “What’s up?”
I blinked at him as I scrambled for a lie. “It’s awfully hot here.”
He shrugged and kept waiting. I wiped the sweat from my forehead again, and then a question just spiraled from my mouth before I could stop it. “You ever been shot?”
“No,” he said. “Not with a bullet anyway.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and snorted. “What else is there? That a person could survive, I mean.”
Ethan smiled and told me, “You’d be surprised. In my case, paintballs and an arrow.”
“An arrow…” I repeated slowly.
Ethan shrugged again. “Shot myself in the foot when I was a kid. Hurts a lot more than you might thin
k.”
“No, that actually sounds pretty painful actually.”
I wanted to ask him what that scar looked like, but I didn’t dare let on I had so many questions about the scar on my thigh.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Worried about getting shot?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I was just curious.”
That now familiar buzzing filled my mind, and I squeezed my eyes closed. I heard Ethan shuffling as he moved closer to me, awaiting the news of whatever information had been sent to us.
Identity confirmed. Need backup on the ground near front entrance due to number of combatants. Raid commences in two minutes. Conley’s team to provide cover.
The message stopped and I let out the air I’d been holding in my lungs. “Two minutes,” I told Ethan. “We need to be on the ground instead. They have more men inside than we thought.”
Ethan jumped to his feet and ran toward the stairs. I grabbed my rifle and followed closely behind him. The other two members of our team who had been on the ground floor immediately joined us. The way they moved together, so fluid as if they shared some silent bond, made me briefly question if I really were the only survivor of The Genesis Project. But I’d seen their forearms. Mine had the only small black and blue rectangle, this port to always remind me what I was and what I never could be.
I could run faster than the others, but I held back so I could keep pace with Ethan. I didn’t know him well, but I liked him and if he found himself in deadly fire, I wanted to be there to protect him, to take the bullet myself if I had to. We’d almost reached the hotel when a new directive arrived and I faltered. Ethan noticed and waved his team members on.
I leaned against the side of a building as I waited for the buzzing to subside. “They went in through the back entrance and met heavy fire. They’re sending me back there,” I explained.
Ethan grabbed my arm before I could run to the rear of the hotel. “Hold on. We’ve got a sniper back there. If they exit, he’ll take care of them. I can’t agree to this until I know you have a safe entry point. Right now, it’s too dangerous for anyone on the ground to try to get in.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I argued. “I’ve been given the order.” I pulled my arm free, but he grabbed me again.
“Drake, it’ll get you killed! I have the authority to override orders on the ground, and I’m telling you to stay here!”
My eyes flickered to the pocket where he’d stuffed the remote capable of overriding commands from back home. But he didn’t reach for it. I pulled my arm free for the second time and snapped, “If you want to stop me, you know how.”
That goddamn directive hadn’t ended but just repeated over and over, and part of me thought it might not be such a terrible thing for Ethan to be right about this order killing me. I tried to move away from him, but I didn’t get far.
Instead of pulling the remote from his pocket, he pushed me against the side of the building and got within inches of my face. “I am ordering you to stay with me.”
“I can’t,” I insisted weakly.
“Bullshit,” he hissed. “Our objective is to provide cover for our men as soon as they step out those doors. Do you understand?”
I bit my lip as the new directive continued to play in my mind. “That’s your objective. Mine has changed. I follow orders, Ethan. That’s what I’m designed to do.”
He still stood so close to me that his features blurred. He never backed down. “You follow them to shut that thing off in your head because it drives you nuts. You can and you will ignore it. You try to take off again, and I will knock your dumbass to the ground. Now tell me you understand.”
You can and you will ignore it.
I wanted to, but he was suggesting I could, that somehow I possessed the ability to make my own choices and act on my own.
That somehow, I wasn’t just a machine.
I nodded, and Ethan let go of my shirt. He backed away from me, facing the hotel again as we waited for someone to emerge. From inside, we could still hear firing. The noise inside my mind was so loud, I only then noticed nobody had screamed. The street had mostly emptied, but violence here was so endemic, it had become routine.
The heat in this city had kept me sweating since we’d arrived, but I felt new beads of moisture breaking out along my face and neck, trickling down my spine as I concentrated on staying by Ethan’s side. The urge to obey, to shut off that incessant buzzing command, was overwhelming. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and tried to focus on the pain, but it didn’t distract me from what was going on inside my head.
And yet, I listened to Ethan. I chose to obey him and not the order from back home, the order that had been sent to those microchips in my brain.
The doors to the hotel finally opened and two figures carefully stepped out. Ethan and I squeezed the triggers on our rifles at the same time, and both men fell to the ground. Now that those inside knew we were out here, it seemed unlikely anyone else would try to escape. As the sun beat down on us, baking us in its unyielding cruelty, the buzzing inside my head suddenly stopped then started up again. A new message.
“They’ve got him out,” I told Ethan quietly. “They met heavy fire at the back, and someone on Headley’s team is injured, but everyone’s alive. Time to go home.”
Ethan glanced at me before giving me a new order. “If we meet any resistance, be prepared to split up. Meet me back at the safe spot.”
I hadn’t been given permission to operate on my own during our evasion, but I realized it didn’t matter. He’d insisted I listen to him—not because of a directive forcing me to but because I chose to—and he’d proven that I could ignore commands. The possibility of choice excited me, yet as we left Mosul, I still had no idea why Ethan would demonstrate I possessed an ability to ignore a direct order to those chips in my brain.
And that potentially made him more dangerous than the doctor whose motives I at least understood.
Chapter 8
My mind remained blissfully silent for the return trip to Lake Charles. I wanted to ask Ethan why he’d refused to use the dark blue remote Dr. Parker had given him, but we were never alone. Even during the short car ride from the regional airport to the rented house by the lake, there was somebody else with us and I sat alone in the backseat, largely ignored by the two men up front.
But the driver didn’t take us to the house where I was staying with Dr. Parker. He brought us to a building that looked like it might have been a doctor’s office at some point, and Ethan seemed just as confused. He asked the driver where we were, but the man who had picked us up and drove us here said, “Dunno. I was just told to bring you both here.”
Ethan looked into the backseat at me and grinned. “Maybe they think we need a physical.”
“At this place?” I muttered. “Who’s doing the physical? Hippocrates?”
Ethan snorted and climbed out of the car so I got out, too. We both stared at the exterior of the building, the worn red bricks and cracked parking lot, the overgrown shrubs by the door, before he sighed, “I’d better not have to get a shot of any kind in this place.”
“If you do, they’re probably just trying to turn you into Captain America,” I joked.
Ethan nodded. “That would admittedly be pretty badass.”
“Except for the part where your most powerful weapon is a shield,” I countered. “I wouldn’t mind having his shield, but that’s all he ever travels with.”
Ethan smiled and gave me another strange look. “You’ve seen those movies? Or read the comics?”
I gave him a strange look in return because the words had just come out. But now that he’d mentioned it, I couldn’t remember seeing any of the movies or reading about this character. I had so much information in my mind that existed because I’d been programmed to know it, but why would Dr. Parker think I needed to know this? I brushed off the comment and said, “Guess Dr. Parker just threw some random trivia into my coding.”
/> “Maybe,” he replied, but he didn’t sound like he really agreed with me.
The door opened and a guard I recognized from the hospital in Mogadishu poked his head out. “You two going to stand out there all day?”
“Depends,” Ethan responded. “Why are we here?”
“Hell if I know,” the guard said.
“Any chance Dr. Parker is going to turn me into Captain America?” Ethan asked.
The guard blinked at him then pushed the door open wider, indicating he expected us to enter.
Ethan never got his answer.
The interior of the building appeared far cleaner and newer than the exterior. What used to be the waiting and reception area now contained tables topped with salvaged materials from the Project’s headquarters. Ethan reached toward one of the boxes, but one of the guards stopped him. “Not supposed to touch. Dr. Parker’s in the back. He’s waiting on you.”
I flinched as I tried to envision why Dr. Parker would have us brought here. Of course, I already suspected why. I’d ignored a direct order in Mosul, and he wanted to reprogram me, which meant connecting me to his computer. Ethan shot a nervous glance in my direction but headed toward the hallway that the guard had pointed toward. More guards waited at the end and directed us to a specific room. The entire building smelled medicinal and I tried to hold my breath, but, apparently, even cyborgs had to breathe.
I stood in the doorway as men and women in lab coats, like another scene from a movie for which I had no specific memories, worked over petri dishes and peered through microscopes. Their steady hands carefully moved from one dish to another but I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I hadn’t been given that knowledge. Random trivia about superheroes must have taken precedence over scientific advances.
Dr. Parker looked up at us and waved us closer. “What do you think, Drake?”
“About what?” I asked.
“This,” he answered, waving his hand around the lab.
Genesis Revealed (The Genesis Project Book 2) Page 6
