Designation 261 (The Wholeness Project)

by Catherine Miller

And everyone would die for that failing.

  He kept an even pace, though perhaps it was slightly more brisk than the one he had used to guide them down below. Or perhaps that was her own sense of urgency that made it seem so, made her own steps quicken and he simply matched her own gait.

  She was ashamed to say that she kept less room between their bodies, uncertainties warring against one another in a sickening roil. He had suggested he would see her off of the doomed vessel, yet he was also the ultimate danger.

  “What are you thinking about?” the madman asked once they were settled in the lift. He was giving her that curious look again, the one that suggested he was still trying to understand her, that if he could look hard enough, he might see all of her secrets.

  It was so incredibly unnerving, and she unconsciously brought her hands closer to her chest.

  She doubted he would be pleased with the direction of her thoughts, but when he took a measured step forward, she gave any words she could think of, simply to keep him from coming any closer.

  “I wish there was a way I could warn people to leave. I wish that...” she eyed him fearfully, wondering if she should stop now before he grew angry enough to kill her here and now. But he was still looking, still waiting, and though the impulse was there to lie, she supplied the miserable truth instead. “I wish you had never come here. That... that things could have continued as they were.”

  He leaned against the wall of the lift, showing no indication if he was pleased with her responses or not. But how could he be? It was as close to an admonishment as she felt capable of providing, yet still, he merely stared. “If you were to warn the people, that would quite defeat my aim. Their knowledge would go with them, and this place would be rebuilt. Not soon, but eventually. And I will ensure that never happens.”

  She nodded, unsurprised by his response. She didn’t know what to believe, the thoughts in her head too big and jarring to pay much attention to.

  Much better to push them all away, to do as she was told, to try to behave in whatever way would see her back home again.

  With no job, and no money.

  She chewed at the side of her cheek, anxiety threatening to break through the numbness she was so desperately trying to cultivate.

  “Why am I here?” she asked him, finding that one of the most pressing questions. “You’re intent on killing everyone else, but I’m...” she showed him her hands, uncertain what to call herself. His hostage, maybe, or his captive. “What am I here for?”

  He did not answer immediately, and she resigned herself for her query as it was—hanging between them, a plea and a rejection. But eventually he seemed to settle on a response that was adequate, for he spoke. “The man with the gun, he had a female with him, yes?”

  Her brows furrowed. Of course he had a woman with him. She’d told him that. “I can see that you are confused when you make that face, but it did not indicate to me whether you do not understand my words, or if you simply do not know why I am speaking them.”

  She cleared her throat and smoothed out her expression. She didn’t like him looking at her so closely, scrutinising every move of her muscles and features. She wanted them to talk, to, however foolishly, feel like maybe if they could talk enough, everything might go back to how it had been before.

  She knew it was stupid. For the two crewmen cooling downstairs, nothing would be the same ever again.

  “The second one,” she murmured, keeping her eyes downcast. He might feel comfortable staring, but she didn’t. And maybe if she didn’t look, she could pretend that he was looking somewhere else, and her hands would stop shaking so much.

  There was a hint of surprise in his voice, as if he had not actually expected her to clarify her thoughts for him. “Very well, I shall expound. He had a female with him, and claimed that she was important in his determination to leave the Project. I am attempting to ascertain if that is equally true for me.”

  She could not help but look up, aghast. “So, you’re saying that you weren’t going to do all this until you ran into me?”

  The madman blinked once, and it looked forced and unnatural. “No,” he admitted. “My course had been decided already. But should I waver, perhaps having a female companion would help.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “I don’t... I’m not going to finish the work for you if you decide all of this is wrong!”

  Another blink, the minuscule shaking of a head. “Then perhaps you are not useful after all.”

  She felt suddenly cold, and she remembered the terror she felt when his hands went to her throat. She had to suppress a whimper, her thoughts coming too fast, too quickly, and she was unable to decide how best to answer.

  But clearly he was expecting one.

  He came a touch nearer, and she reached the limits of her ability to move back, the corner of the lift obstructing any further movement. “I don’t’ know,” she complained, she begged. “I don’t understand.”

  She’d said it before, and it had caused him to talk rather than act. She had no expectations for it to work a second time, but the words came unbidden, a voice for her confusion and distress that nothing seemed able to soothe.

  They were in an endless loop, the two of them. She did not want to die, but she did not want to help him. He would clearly kill her if she did not prove useful to him.

  Her lip trembled, and she bit it painfully in an attempt to keep hold of her composure. “Calm yourself,” the madman instructed. “Perhaps these circumstances are not conducive for ascertaining if you are what I require. Presuming I require anything at all. We will depart from here, and I will make further queries.”

  She did not know if that meant he would be asking more of her, or if he would be looking for another woman to replace her. A sick sort of relief overcame her at that thought, although the guilt came soon after. She shouldn’t wish that, shouldn’t wish for him to pick somebody else, not when it would mean being terrorised and frightened in her place.

  But she didn’t want it for herself either.

  But before she could make any further enquiries, the lift doors opened.

  And the blaster fire began anew.

  And she screamed.

  3

  The sound of the woman’s screeching was nearly as irksome as the alarm still blaring overhead. Had he not been preoccupied with putting an end to the guards obviously alerted to the liberation of his craft, he would have ended the screams—as that was quite within his power while the siren overhead was not.

  The guards had the benefit of first action, but there was cover, and he was the better shot. The girl fell blessedly silent, and from what small glance he allowed himself, he could see her beginning to crumple. He gave the tether a quick pull. “You will keep standing,” he instructed. “Our movements will be quick.”

  If he wondered at his unwillingness to allow her to leave, to simply release the tether and find safety on another floor, he would not dwell on it.

  He had spoken truly to her. He would delay any decision making about her importance until he had time to study her file, to hear more from her lips, as most of it was fairly contradictory and not at all helpful.

  But first, the guards.

  They had him penned in fairly well. At least four of them had blasters, though it was possible they were simply too clustered together to know if there were more of them. Cover was good, and he had the benefit of being able to shut the doors should conditions prove unfavourable.

  But it did not change that he needed that ship if he was going to continue his purpose elsewhere.

  He was firm in his resolve. He might once have been satisfied with the destruction of this single facility, to end his life with it, a glorious act of rebellion that would also release him from any further existence.

  But now...

  The work was not finished, and he would not pretend that it could be by a single blow. An organisation of this size was too vast, their data stores across the galaxy. To destroy only a portion would pe
rhaps cripple, but not maim, not utterly oblate all that he detested.

  And, if only to himself, he could admit to a certain... curiosity about the girl. She had proven no great use as of yet, and had told him that she would not be, but that could be explained by the ignorance she claimed regarding the Project’s true intentions. They preyed on the desperate, and exploited their money and their genetics for personal profit, and it was reasonable to assume they kept the lowly of their staff isolated from such truths.

  He wondered if her attitudes might change once she grew informed, once she understood that the job she claimed to need was merely a front for atrocities.

  Or maybe she would not care. That was equally possible.

  He was willing to wait and see her response when she knew. And he would see they both lived long enough for such a reckoning to transpire.

  “Throw the blaster out and then get on your knees,” a voice called out, sharp and commanding—one clearly used to being obeyed, quickly and without question.

  261 looked in the direction of that voice. Its owner would be disappointed.

  There was a toss, as instructed, a clatter of metal against the floor, a shout of alarm coming too late as the lift doors began to close. But not before a flash, before smoke began to pour, thick and noxious as it worked to fill the hanger. His primary function might not have been assassin, not like the later generations that followed his creation, but he was well equipped to incapacitate, to bring in the wayward that his masters wished to interrogate.

  Or simply expunge personally.

  He waited, knowing that time was growing shorter, but that it would do no good to fill his lungs with gas that would immobilise him just as swiftly as it did his targets.

  The girl was staring blankly at the closed doors, seemingly dazed—either from the flash of light, or some inner turmoil. Maybe both.

  That was one thing he did not wish to acquire. He preferred a steady course, decisive action, rather than the waffling he saw so often with others who had not had their persons tampered with.

  He went to the girl’s level, watching her as she blinked at him with unseeing eyes, and wondered if he’d miscalculated her reactions. There would be time yet to discuss it, to explain its necessity, but only if he got them on that ship.

  He reached down, felt her flinch, but ignored her, tearing a piece of her skirt. It gave way fairly easily, though the fabric was obviously of some quality. She released a sound of protest and pushed backward, attempting to get impossibly closer to the wall and away from him.

  She was being unreasonable.

  “I am attempting to shield your lungs from the gas,” he informed her curtly. “Unless you would prefer to be ridden unconscious and for me to carry you?”

  She shook her head, far less vehemently than he was certain she intended to. Clearly his escapades were affecting her negatively, and he wondered if that would be a mark against her. He would have to decide later.

  For his own face, he pulled out a mask. It was not terribly effective with that particular compound, but it would have to do, height and speed making up for what the shielding fibres could not.

  He grabbed hold of the female’s wrist and pulled upward, and he was pleased that she did not bother resisting.

  He pushed the button on the lift, and the doors opened, a plume of thick smoke pouring through the opening as soon as it was made. The girl made another attempt to dissolve into the lift, but he stepped forward, blaster at the ready, knowing the tether would keep her moving.

  There were no sounds in the hanger, no indication that any of the crew was still a threat. There was cover now, but only temporary, and 261 would have liked to have put bullets into each of them to ensure they would not warn others of his presence and departure.

  He had been clever with his tampering, but that did not mean it was infallible. And he would be... severely displeased if his attempt failed.

  The tether was pulled taut, the female evidently finding the thick mist an unwelcome thing to walk through. He did not wholly blame her for that—it was always disconcerting to have to move when one could not be certain if the next step was a stable one, but he did not have time to coddle. He kept moving, the invisible cord keeping her doing so as well, her impractical shoes making a subtle click whenever she moved.

  He should have told her to remove them lest she give away their position, but there were still no sounds that would indicate the crew had roused too soon.

  The ship should be within reach in a moment. If he was correct about the angle, the point of entry should be...

  A streak of orange went past him, the zing of a blindly fired laser nearly hitting his shoulder, striking against the metal of his ship with an unappreciated force.

  It was undamaged—a regulation blaster was no match for such a craft, but it was an irritant all the same.

  He raised his own weapon, and calculated the relative distance, the angle of the fire, and fired two shots of his own in quick succession.

  He heard a grunt, then a thump, suggesting the foolhardy crewmember had fallen. Hopefully this time for good.

  “Bang bang,” the girl whispered beside him, a haunted, broken sound. He’d heard it before, mostly on the vids projecting the prisoners he’d brought back to the masters. They’d known what was coming, known that their miserable lives were about to end, and nonsensical babble sometimes emerged.

  But he could waste no more time, not if they were beginning to rouse. He reached out with his free hand, skimming the sides of the ship, trying to place each indentation and seam, using them as an inelegant map until...

  His fingers strayed over the panel, the light of it glowing at the accepted touch, piercing through the film of mist that covered them so thoroughly.

  It required a fingerprint, not a code, and he was allowed entrance. They had never expected him to take it without authorisation, never thought that he would find the will to turn on them. His generation were lauded for their obedience, their near mindless affinity for whatever the masters’ ordered. Or so they believed.

  He had only spoken to a few of his kind, most terminated fairly early as they could not adapt to the outside world. They had no initiative, no sense of purpose, only a subtle, persistent awareness that they should listen to the ones in the crisp white coats, to do as they were told.

  But orders could be vague, words taken too literally, and when frustrations mounted in the masters, second-borns turned into lifeless corpses, incinerated with the rest of the waste.

  He would not be like that. He was not going to die at their whims.

  They would die for his.

  He pulled the female through and shut and sealed the door behind them.

  She was still staring oddly, and he knew she needed tending, but that would have to wait a little while longer. He reached into his pocket and deactivated the tether. The cuffs remained around her wrists, but she would not be bound to him, which was not unreasonable given the confines of this space.

  She did not seem to recognise her allowed freedom for she followed him anyway, all the way to the main consoles that would see them soon freed of this place.

  He settled in his chair, tapping his screens until the lights woke from their slumber, ready and willing to do his bidding.

  He put in coordinates, an arbitrary selection as he would need time to regroup before making any further attempts on the Project’s other locations. He needed to plan, needed to think. And, he supposed, decide about his hostage.

  The hanger doors opened at his command, a modification he’d made while in engineering. Approval was typically required to ensure that none of the more... ambitious of the generations made any attempts at freedom, but he had managed to get around that.

  Maintenance was required on even the finest of technologies, and those codes were much easier to fabricate, systems opening with ease with the promise of cleaning and refurbishment.

  The ship began to move, gliding forward into the maw of space, and while he
could not claim pleasure at his success, there was a certain satisfaction to what he had achieved. It was more than any of his kind had ever attempted, and thus far, things were proving most efficient.

  He removed his mask, tucking it back into his pocket. It was ineffectual to keep his tools where they could not easily be reached. He glanced over at the girl, finding her attention riveted to the viewscreen. Not of the openness of space that promised freedom and retribution, but to the one showing their departure, the station they had left.

  The strip of cloth he had torn from her skirt was still tied over her mouth and nose, and she’d made no attempt to remove it herself, nor did she ask him if she was permitted to do so.

  He could not name why that was troubling.

  The coordinates he had chosen had an added benefit—he would be positioned far enough away so as not to be in any danger of debris, but close enough that he would see if his work truly was complete within this quadrant.

  From the look on the female’s face, she would not want to view such a happening.

  “If you do not want to see my success, I suggest you stop staring in about...” he glanced toward the controls that gave the standard time. “Three minutes.”

  She turned, her skin unnaturally pale as she regarded him. “You cut your departure rather close then,” she commented, her voice muffled by the cloth, but still intelligible.

  He stared back at her. “I was not the one that was walking so slowly.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again, her eyes returning to the viewscreen. Her hands were shaking badly, and he wondered how many thoughts were flooding her head to make her so upset. He leaned back in his chair, keeping an eye on the sensors. He would be alerted if any vessels were dispatched in pursuit, though he hoped they would be overtaken by the swell of destruction that would come from behind any such interceptors.

  “You are disturbed,” he observed, content to watch her, to work out her feelings that, he was beginning to acknowledge, were fascinating to him. There was usually a tinge of resentment when he thought of others and their capacity for emotion, but not with her. She clearly felt a great deal about many things, and he would learn more about it. And maybe, through such study, he might be able to leech away a few measures of feeling for himself.