Project Pandora

by Aden Polydoros

“I don’t know his name, but I call him Zeus.”

  “What is your real name?”

  In the corner of his eye, he spotted his wallet on the cushion next to him. There was a credit card knife in there. If they hadn’t already confiscated it, he would be able to use the small blade to cut himself free.

  “Alex Morello,” he said, using the name on his D.C. license. He figured if they hadn’t searched his wallet yet, they would eventually. Better to give that name than any of the others.

  Shannon, Skunk Girl, and Tyler did a bit of a huddle then, talking to one another in hushed voices. Hades shifted on the cushion, groping around for the wallet. When Shannon glanced at him, he relaxed against the cushions. Once she looked away again, he continued his search.

  One fingertip touched worn leather. He pulled the wallet closer, taking care to avoid any sudden movements that might draw their attention back to him. He searched the billfold, feeling around for the thin aluminum rectangle. It would be difficult to open the knife with his hands bound, and he would probably cut himself in the process, but any blood he lost would be nothing compared to the amount he spilled.

  He would show them no mercy. The sooner he slaughtered them, the sooner he would be able to return to Elizabeth. To Nine.

  She was the only person who mattered in the world.

  His fingers touched metal. Colored red with typeset lettering, the folded knife resembled a credit card. Only the thin lines cut into it gave it away, but they must not have taken a close look at it.

  “Hey, he’s doing something!” Skunk Girl said just as he found the knife. “He’s got something in his hands!”

  He hardly had time to open the blade before Tyler was upon him.

  Grabbing him by the arm and shirt, Tyler twisted Hades around and shoved him face-first against the cushions. The knife slipped from Hades’s fingers as he writhed against Tyler’s grip. He kicked out at Tyler but, with his ankles bound, did a rather ineffective job at hitting him.

  “I knew it,” Tyler said, retrieving the knife from the cushions. He scoffed in disgust at the sight of the blade. “You were faking it.”

  “You have a different code, don’t you?” Shannon asked.

  “Who knows?” Hades wormed into a sitting position once more, with some difficulty. His contortions had caused the duct tape to bite into his wrists, which were bruised from the restraint chair straps. Still, compared to the ache in his head, it hardly hurt at all.

  Shannon glowered at him. “Listen, if you don’t tell us who sent you, we’ll—”

  “What? Kill me?” He bared his teeth in a grin, though he felt only hatred now. “Just like you killed Eveline Grey.”

  Shannon froze. “What did you say?”

  “She had a little girl, you know,” he said, remembering the time he had asked Eveline how her brat was doing and mentioned how fragile kids were compared to adults. The scientist had paled and rushed from the room, and as punishment for that harmless comment, he had received three days in the padded cell.

  Now, Shannon’s expression looked a lot like Eveline’s had. Her skin turned ashen, and her mouth disappeared into a flat, puckering line. She lost color with each word spoken, until even her lips were as pallid as those of a corpse.

  “An eight-year-old girl,” he said. “I guess it’s a good thing she was staying with her grandparents that day, or else you would have killed her, too. And you probably would have liked it.”

  “Shut up,” Shannon said through clenched teeth.

  “Did it feel good to kill Eve?” Hades murmured, craning his head up at her. He stared into her eyes, waiting for her to avert her gaze. He knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain this false righteousness for very long. If he couldn’t attack her body, at the very least he could devastate her mind. D-05 wouldn’t have flinched at the idea of murder, but this girl standing before him—this lie—was obviously not D-05 anymore. The outside world had weakened and corrupted her.

  “Shut up.”

  “Did it make you feel powerful? I bet it did.”

  “Just shut up.” Her words were barely audible now, and she looked away from him.

  Hades knew he was getting to her. Good. He wanted her to suffer. Thanks to her, he had gone back into the tank. It was all her fault, and Tyler’s, too.

  “Do you remember all the blood?” he purred. “How warm it was? The way it felt on your skin? How will you be able to live with knowing you’re a murderer?”

  “I said shut up!”

  He fell back against the cushions, laughing. Her expression was just priceless. She’d really conned herself into believing she wasn’t responsible for murdering Eve and all of the others. Except she was responsible, and she had enjoyed it. He knew it. He knew that deep down inside her something cried for the taste of blood. She could act as pious and innocent as she wanted to, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she was a natural-born killer. They all were.

  “You’re horrible!” Shannon said. “You’re a monster.”

  He smiled at her. “I guess that makes two of us.”

  He spoke the truth. They weren’t really humans, though their genetic donors were. Hades had seen pictures once of the place where he had been gestated—that cradle of impersonal fiberglass, steel, and synthetic amniotic fluid that in many ways was so much like the sensory deprivation tank where he had been reborn fifteen years later.

  “Why are you protecting Zeus?” Tyler asked suddenly.

  Hades broke eye contact with Shannon to look his way. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Well, why else wouldn’t you tell us?”

  For once, Hades was at a loss for words. He wasn’t protecting Dimitri. He just wasn’t interested in helping them. Why should he? It wasn’t his problem. Besides, they were the enemy, and they would probably just kill him once they found out who Zeus really was. Why keep a prisoner alive after all the useful information had been extracted from him?

  “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d kiss ass to anyone,” Tyler said.

  “I’m not protecting him,” he said.

  “Then do you not know?”

  Hades fell silent.

  “I mean, you knew my name. You knew hers. You knew the name of the woman we…who Eveline was, and even we didn’t know that. So you have to know at least a little about Zeus, right? Why won’t you tell us where he is or at least who he is?”

  His smile died on his lips. Unease ate away at him as he found himself confronted by the troubling dissonance between his actions and his intentions.

  “I’ll tell you why.” Tyler staggered to his feet. “Because he has been manipulating you this whole time. Just like us. Only you’re too far gone to even realize it! You’re dead inside!”

  Each word was like a needle prick. Fine on its own but painful in multitudes. He wanted to punch Tyler in the face just to get him to shut up. He wasn’t dead; he was evolving.

  If you are evolving, then why can’t you even break free? A-02 asked from inside his head, and he tensed at the voice that was his but not his. Sometimes, it calmed him to engage in an inner monologue with himself, but these thoughts were unwelcome and invasive. A-02 could just go back to sleep.

  Just shut up, he thought. I don’t need you right now.

  Growing bolder, Tyler stepped closer, distracting Hades from himself. “You don’t even remember your own name, do you?”

  “My own name.” Hades scoffed. “So you know yours?”

  Names meant nothing. Especially names like Tyler Bennett and Shannon Evans. Those were just masks, even more so than the code names Apollo and Artemis. They were all numbers in the end.

  “What would you do if I told you where to find him?” Hades asked.

  Shannon tensed and glanced at Tyler.

  “We won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Tyler said.

  “I meant what would you do to Zeus,” he said, putting sarcastic emphasis on the last word.

  At the blank expression on Tyl
er’s face, Hades realized the other boy hadn’t thought that far ahead. As Tyler groped for an answer, Shannon stepped forward.

  “We’d stop him,” she said, trying to sound firm but obviously conflicted with the idea of committing a conscious act of murder.

  “Do you really think it’ll end with him?” he asked, knowing it never would.

  As long as Charles Warren was alive, the Project would go on forever. And even if Charles Warren expired, it would probably still continue. There was already a schism in the organization. On one side were Warren’s loyal followers, and on the other, there were people like Dimitri who thought the Academy would be better off with a new overseer. Project Pandora wasn’t a one-man operation. It wasn’t anything they could stop on their own, so why bother?

  “Just because he calls himself Zeus doesn’t mean he’s the leader,” Hades added.

  “Then who is?” Tyler asked.

  Instead of responding, Hades settled against the couch, closing his eyes as another wave of pain and nausea struck him. He thought he might be able to go away for a bit if they began torturing him, as he knew they soon would. Now, he just wanted to prepare himself for the inevitable.

  “Are you in pain?” Shannon asked. “We can give you something for that if you help us.”

  “No, you won’t,” Hades said, listening to the rain strike the roof above. He wanted to go outside and allow the water to wash the drying blood from his face. He knew the storm would ground him, make him feel a little more normal.

  “We’ll drop you off at a hospital.”

  “No, you won’t.” Hades opened his eyes, suddenly disturbed by the darkness behind his closed lids. It seemed to have actual substance, like a vast pool of ink that would swallow him whole, engulf and devour him. The sound of rainwater sloshing down the gutters outside only enhanced that impression.

  Shannon sighed and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a strip of paper that Hades recognized in an instant as the photos he and Elizabeth had taken at the National Zoo. “So, who is she?”

  Hades shrugged and glanced at the stuffed bobcat on the fireplace to avoid staring at the picture. If his hands weren’t tied, he would’ve snatched the photograph from her in an instant. It made him furious to think how she was getting greasy fingerprints all over it, but he knew if he showed emotion, she would realize how important the photo was to him. The last thing he needed was to give her more leverage against him. Show nothing, feel nothing.

  “Is she the girl you bought flowers for?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?” he asked, turning his gaze to the coffee table now. His hazy reflection bothered him, and he looked away again, to the photo Shannon held.

  “You look different in these,” Tyler said, taking the photograph from her. “Like an actual person.”

  Hades chuckled at that.

  “What’s so funny?” Tyler asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “We’re weapons, not people,” Hades said.

  “Do you really find any of this funny?” Tyler asked. “You smile like you do, but you know what I think? I think you’re just faking it. You don’t want to be here any more than we do, and you hate that you have to do this. You want to help us, don’t you?”

  He declined to respond to that inane comment. He leaned against the couch, running his hands along the edges of the cushions. If he could find an upholstery pin, he might be able to use it to cut through the duct tape.

  “Just who are you when you’re not Hades?”

  The questions aggravated him. They should’ve known who he was, but nobody ever did. They always forgot about him, and he ceased to exist in their eyes. Each time he had to repeat his code name, it was like a little part of his identity was taken from him once again, crushed underfoot into dust and ashes. Then he would begin to wonder if he was really who he said he was, if he was even there, if they could still see him.

  What if he didn’t truly exist? Sometimes the question kept him awake all night, paralyzed with dread. Sometimes, the only way to relieve the fear of not being was to lift weights until the pain grounded him or to witness others’ responses to him, their screams of agony and terror. The only time he felt alive was when hurting someone else or being hurt himself—except when he was with Elizabeth Hawthorne.

  She was his bridge to the past and future. His only salvation.

  Hades stared at the photographs strip, at the bouquet draped across Elizabeth’s chest. Forget-me-nots were just pretty, ephemeral things. They could turn dead and shriveled in an instant.

  At the sight of her beaming smile, he realized she would forget him again, and then he would have no one. Nothing but broken recollections, until electroshocks and deprivation tank sessions stole even those away.

  At that revelation, a surge of enraged determination engulfed him. He would never let Elizabeth forget him. Not her. Never again.

  But how was he supposed to protect her when he was here? Any moment now, Shannon and Tyler would kill him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was at their mercy.

  I need to join them, he realized. I need to help them. Then Elizabeth will be mine again. She’s the only thing in the world that’s worth a damn. I need to save her. Mine. She’s mine. I won’t let the Project have her.

  “Are you even listening to anything we’re saying?” Shannon snapped.

  “Subject Two of Subset A,” he said finally, smiling at her. “That’s who I once was. But that boy is dead, so now I’m no one at all.”

  Case Notes 37:

  Artemis

  Subject Two of Subset A. Those five words echoed in Shannon’s head, reverberating through her mind like seismic waves. And also like an earthquake, his response left her feeling apprehensive, unsettled, as if the carpet might give out beneath her feet at any moment.

  Subject Two of Subset A. That was not a name you gave to a person. As for his statement about his old self being dead, what could that possibly mean? What had been done to Hades to make him this way? And could she have gone through that same ordeal, without remembering it?

  Tyler groaned in frustration. “Can you just make sense for once?”

  “I can do better than that,” Hades said. “I can tell you exactly who Zeus is and where you can find him. I can even take you there, because there’s sure as hell no way you’re getting inside alive without my help. But what guarantees that you won’t kill me once you know?”

  For a moment, Tyler seemed to be at a loss for words. Then he shook off his daze and said, “Because I’m not scum like you, and I’m not a sadist.”

  “But you plan to kill Zeus.”

  “Not unless we have to.”

  “Oh, so you’re one of those people.” The words were carried out on the softest of scoffs. Yet, even unamplified, Hades’s voice was thick with condescension.

  Tyler glared. “One of those people? The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A pacifist. Will you try to reason with him? Convince him to turn himself in?” Hades smiled, cocking his head. “Or maybe you’ll call the police. So what will you tell them? That he made you kill—what’s the body count now, five people?”

  “Leave him alone,” Shannon said, stepping forward. She was sick of being mocked by a boy who was supposed to be their prisoner. Maybe he thought that by insulting them he could gain control of the situation, but she refused to lose her cool in front of him again.

  “Look, like I was saying, I’ll take you to him,” Hades said, turning his head to her. “I’m serious.”

  She narrowed her eyes. Yeah, he might take them to Zeus, but as soon as they cut Hades an inch of slack, he would take the opportunity to stab them in the backs. Whether he was still brainwashed like them or working off a completely different program, he was just too shady. He could not be trusted.

  “But only if I can kill him,” Hades continued, taking her off guard. Why in the world would he want to kill Zeus?

  Tyler’s anger blanched from his features, leaving him pale and weary. �
��But I thought… Why would you?”

  “Out of everyone here, only I know Zeus’s full potential. And I’m the only one who has the guts to actually finish the job. Thoroughly. And I have reason to, more so than any of you.”

  “No way,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re not giving you a gun.”

  “Then at least untie me.”

  “Tell us where he is,” she said.

  “Georgetown,” Hades said. “A residential area. It’s a large home. You’ve been there before, but you won’t be able to find it without my help, let alone get inside.”

  Shannon trusted him about as far as she could throw him. Instead of responding, she grabbed Tyler’s hand and pulled him to the back of the room.

  “We shouldn’t do this.” She lowered her voice to a whisper so Hades wouldn’t hear and leaned in close enough that her and Tyler’s heads were nearly touching.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” he said, searching her eyes. “He knows where Zeus is, and it isn’t like we can just torture the truth out of him.”

  She sighed and leaned against him, wishing they had a different option. But as long as Zeus remained active, they were in danger. They needed to get answers from him. There was no other alternative.

  “Relax,” Tyler murmured, brushing back a strand of hair that had fallen over her face. Even with the blinds shuttered, in the shadow of the taxidermy trophies, his leonine eyes were brighter than ever, like sunlight filtered through warm rum. “Let me talk to him. Since he knows he can get to you now, he’s going to keep antagonizing you.”

  “He’s not getting to me. He’s being an immature little asshole.”

  “That’s putting it lightly,” Tyler said, frowning. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  Glancing back at Hades, she realized she didn’t like it, either. Even as he smiled, his eyes were frigid and wary, restlessly flickering from person to person. He had come to her to complete a hit, a hit that, if he had the choice, would still be completed. She sensed that the moment they let their guard down, he would, as he had just so aptly put it, finish the job—thoroughly.