by Amy Taylor
McKusick was about to speak, but Sosa grabbed his arm. She shook her head. The geneticist scowled. “We are fine. Sosa is just a little banged up. How are you and Mader?”
“Probably better than you. I’ll send Mader to get Sosa. You two need to look at something anyway. I found something you will want to see.”
Everyone congregated in Anders’ console room. He made one wall an enormous holographic screen for optimum viewing and they sat down on floating chairs.
Anders tapped his tablet. “I have two things: information about the base, and a video. Which do you want first?”
“Tell us about the base, Anders.” Sosa said.
“I found out how Cyrano has hid itself from all of our satellites and planes for two hundred years.” Anders brought up a schematic of the base. “It generates its own clouds and moves around with the local weather patterns of central and northeastern Canada. Basically, it hides itself in the storms, and when there isn’t a storm, makes a dense cloud. The electromagnetic field keeps any of our machinery from picking it up. The fact it moves also helps to evade detection and prevents aircraft collision.”
Mader laughed. “But McKusick saw it anyway.”
McKusick scowled.
“That is an interesting concept. I’m sure the director will love hearing about it.” Sosa chuckled at McKusick’s expense. “You said something about a video?”
“I found it in a corrupted database. It’s only a few minutes long. I’ve tried to find more, but this is all I have.” He turned off the lights and started the video.
Sosa’s hand went to her mouth. “What in the world is that, Anders?”
The programmer shook his head.
The data reading said “Mind Project 2103: Subject 12-A3, Day 46.” The subject was housed in a sizable glass box with a locked door. It was bipedal, with grotesque musculature and grayish, flaky skin. Wide, crazed eyes darted around, taking in everything outside its chamber. When a group of lab technicians came into view, it howled and clawed at its prison. Foam flew from its mouth. A familiar type of mouth, with a familiar set of teeth.
McKusick’s face grew unnaturally pale underneath the blue light of the screen. “Sosa, do you see it?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
The geneticist said what they all were thinking. “That used to be a human, once. That was a man.”
The video continued. The researchers filled the box with a sleeping gas and hauled the unconscious creature onto an examination table. They took blood and tissue samples for testing and then cut the subject’s throat. It woke immediately, for one split second. Hate, fury, confusion, and terror contorted the human-like face into a grim, otherworldly mask. Then it was dead, and two men came to throw the body down a chute. This repeated six times.
Finally the video ended. Silence fell. Sosa leaned back in her chair, gazing at nothing.
Anders looked at them with sorrowful, entreating eyes. “Who would do this? McKusick, you’re a geneticist. You don’t do things like this.”
“No, of course we don’t.” He frowned as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “We don’t experiment on people and then kill them like they were petri dishes of bacteria. We treat our mice better than they treated that man. They were monsters. They didn’t even know what they were doing. No one did stuff like this. The review board wouldn’t allow it.”
“But someone did.” Sosa ran her hands through her hair. “A lot of people did. Someone sponsored this facility, McKusick. Someone paid for it, built it, supplied it with flesh to experiment on. This place is enormous. How many people lived here?”
McKusick looked at Anders. “Have you found anything on this Mind Project?”
“Not much.” He went back to his computers. Lines of code and data flew over the screens. “It went on for three years and was suddenly canceled. No telling who started it, or any of the names of the geneticists, though they did list base numbers.”
“How many subjects, Anders? How many slaves?”
“Over thirty thousand, sir.”
McKusick just stood there for a long, agonizing moment. The number crashed like jagged rocks in his head. He licked his lips. A throbbing started in his ankle. “And.....How many survived?”
“....None.”
Blood rushed to the geneticist’s face. His voice cut the air. “What happened to the bodies? Did they burn them? What were their names? Where were they from?”
Anders shrank away from him. “They didn’t record any names. Just numbers.”
“Just numbers.” McKusick said.
Sosa straightened her back and stared deep into the geneticist’s eyes. A vein in her forehead twitched. “McKusick, you need to go do your work. Mader and I will comb through the facility and find anything we can about the poor wretches who were brought here. We’ll bring the truth to light. This isn’t just about research anymore. This is to satisfy the wrongfully dead.”
Chapter 3
Operation West 1935
A couple days later, everyone sat down together on blankets spread out in the middle of the glass dome, the center of the base, and a wonderful place to rest after a grueling day of search and research. Stars glittered above their heads. Dim lights cast a soft glow, so as to not overwhelm the natural ambiance. They reclined on the blankets in the manner of ancient people from the Middle East. McKusick preferred this because he was sick of sitting in a chair. Anders took it upon himself to be the cook, and he took the task of opening sealed packages dreadfully seriously.
Anders handed Mader his meal, a swarthy assortment of black beans, black rice, and pumpernickel bread. He patted him on the shoulder. “You need to get some rest, Mader. Your face looks a little peaked.”
He offered a weak smile. “It’s hot in here, don’t you think?”
“No, I think that’s just you.” McKusick said. “Anders says it’s been 74 degrees for two hundred years. We don’t even use the blankets to sleep.”
Mader blinked and wiped beads of sweat from his brow.
Sosa scooted over to him. “Are you feeling alright? Do you have a fever?”
“I just feel a little light-headed.” Mader waved off Sosa’s concern. “I should go to bed.” He tried to get up, but his knees gave out, and he fell like a sack of potatoes. Anders and Sosa rushed to catch him. The soldier screamed and howled. His body tensed until only his shoulders and feet were still on the ground. Sosa shouted for McKusick to help them, but Mader flung them off like paper dolls.
Mader scrambled across the floor to the wall, leaving a trail of sweat behind him. His back and shoulder muscles rippled and contracted with uneven, intense pulses underneath his suit.
Sosa dashed over to the medical pack for a sedative and when she returned but seconds later, Mader was gone.
Anders pointed down a hall. “He took off, Sosa. So fast I couldn’t even shout. McKusick was right next to him, but he couldn’t catch him. I don’t know what I just saw.”
“You saw the effects of a genetic change.” McKusick said. “Anders!”
The computer programmer snapped to attention. “Sir?”
“I need your blood sample.”
Sosa said, “Finding Mader is more important than blood samples, McKusick.”
The geneticist’s fingers clenched into tight fists. “I need to make a cure for this, Sosa, or we’re all going to end up like him. It’ll take five seconds to get samples and then our beloved programmer can get back to his computers, but I need that blood.”
He took a needle fitted with an evacuated tube system and drew five, 3 mL vials of blood for analysis. Then the geneticist disappeared into his laboratory without saying a word.
Sosa’s shoulders trembled. She turned to Anders, who flinched. “Get that life detection system working. Now. Ignore the quarantine. Find Mader.”
Sosa went to an empty room, what used to be an office, and closed the door. She set her tablet up on the desk. “Catalina Sosa, Agent TRJ29R. Calling CIA Director Gregory Benren concerni
ng Operation West 1935.”
The tablet’s screen whirled around in a circle. Sosa tapped her fingers on the desk. She ran over past events in her mind as she waited. Six days ago she didn’t think about dying. Now she wouldn’t be surprised if she keeled over at any moment. It produced a surreal type of despair, and Sosa felt the temptation to give into it. Black hopelessness alighted on her shoulders like the hands of a friend. Sosa slapped the table. “Begone.” She whispered to herself. The blackness disappeared. A deadly quiet replaced it.
A man’s face appeared on the screen. He was a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a generally dour expression.
“You’re reporting early, Agent Sosa. Enlighten me.”
She tried to make her face flat, but judging by Director Benren’s face, he didn’t buy it. “There has been a setback, sir.”
“And what would that be?”
“Major Mader has gone insane and fled into the unknown parts of the base. We are…”
The director’s face wrinkled inward, with his brows knitting together above his nose and his jowls turning his mouth into a massive downward U. “Say that again, Agent Sosa?”
“He went insane, sir. A chemical got into the atmosphere during a temporary and unforeseen power fluctuation in the base, and we are assuming this chemical has caused some physical changes in Major Solomon Mader.”
“What chemical is it?”
“Dr. McKusick is determining that as we speak, sir.”
“Where is Major Mader?”
“We do not know, but Agent Anders is working on that as well. I will assist the endeavor the moment this report is over.”
“You seem to have a spectacular failure on your hands, Sosa.”
She winced. “I understand, sir.”
The director rubbed his forehead. “I am initiating a quarantine of the Cyrano base until further notice. We will send supplies and food, but nothing is getting off that base until the contagion is eliminated. Effective immediately. Do you understand?”
She bowed her head. “Yes, sir.”
The screen went blank.
Sosa crept down the pitch-black corridor with her beam rifle secure in her hands and ready to fire. Her helmet provided her with adequate vision to see in the dark. Finally, they were able to search for Mader in earnest, for Anders had gotten control of the life detection system. His voice provided a constant stream of information in her ear.
“The other life signs have not moved. Agent Mader is also stationary.” How she adored the life detection system.
She plastered herself to the wall and directed one finger around the corner. The camera on the tip of her pointer finger directed a video feed to her left eye. Nothing. Only a blank hallway. “You tell me if anything changes.” Sosa continued on.
She licked her dry lips. This mission was supposed to be something fun and interesting, a respite from the spying and near death experiences of year 2300 life in the CIA. She personally preferred working in the Air Force, but her husband liked CIA life more than the military. She came home more often. They were going to go on a vacation when she returned, a long and well-deserved stay at the Gracillarii Resort on Callisto, one of Jupiter’s major moons. Now Sosa doubted she, or any of them, would be alive in a week to go on vacation.
“Wait.”
Her feet ground to a halt. “What is it?” She whispered.
“92-F4 is moving towards Mader. Hurry! They’re still five miles away. I don’t think you can make it in time. He moves so fast.”
She put the rifle in its back holster and ran down corridors, through rooms and labs, up stairs and over balconies. Sosa didn’t care about the sound or her own welfare. Her legs carried her like a deer over level ground.
“92-F4 is leaving. Mader’s life sign has…disappeared.”
Sosa ground her teeth. Then she got to the spot where Mader’s last signal was and fell to her knees. She hoped it wasn’t true, that it was just an anomaly in the system. “Mader.” She took off her helmet and let her tears fall in the dark.
He lay on his belly with broken and twisted limbs. She hardly recognized him, but he still wore his pilot jacket and had his beam pistol in its holster. One of his legs was gone. The rest of him was torn as if by claws or fangs, with huge, regularly placed gashes. Some of his organs decorated the floor. Blood splattered the entire hall. Sosa crawled towards the body, took his gun and tags, and wiped her tears on her arm.
“Anders, seal this area when I leave.”
“Yes ma’am.” She heard the quiver in his voice.
McKusick’s face went flat when she told him the news. He sat down in his lab chair and clasped his hands together in his lap. “It is what I expected.”
Sosa nodded. “I know. I know.”
“I’m sorry, Sosa.”
“Don’t blame yourself, McKusick.” She inhaled a fluttering breath. “It is no one’s fault. Better that people like us discovered this place than a group less prepared.”
“Sosa.”
She looked at him.
“I think we are going to die here.”
Her mouth opened to respond, but he interrupted her.
“I cannot make a cure. I don’t have the lab I need.” McKusick said. “Think about this, Sosa. Why did this happen to Mader? We were the ones exposed. He was on another side of the base scouting. Do you know what that means? It means that what you dropped wasn’t just a chemical to use in genetic engineering. It was an accidentally made weapon. These researchers were so primitive that they didn’t recognize something they could not control. This thing acts differently in every person depending on their own unique genetics. They made an aerosol weapon.”
“Do you think that is what happened to them? They either mutated or were killed? And eaten?”
“That would explain why there are no bodies, not even bones. The survivors ate whatever they could.” He leaned forward. “Sosa, those other mutants are the originals. Anders told me the logs say we are the first to find this place after the project was shut down. These things are two hundred years old, but trust me when I say they are not human anymore. Even if one might still look like it, they are monsters in the truest sense of the word.”
Sosa’s eyes regained a bit of their former gleam. “Don’t worry about me, McKusick. You know I’m perfectly willing to shoot. If you changed and you were no longer the aggravating and impudent geneticist I’ve worked with for so many years, I would shoot you in the face without hesitation.”
“And that’s why I like working with you, Sosa.” He smiled, and it was a real, affectionate smile. “We have a good understanding. If you weren’t married…”
“Don’t finish that, McKusick.” She held up her hand to stop him. “Don’t go soft on me now just because we’ve been infected by an unknown genetic pathogen. We have been in worse.”
“True.” He graced her with a low chuckle. “That’s true. I think I would rather be mutated than do that one mission in Prague again.”
Sosa covered her hand with her mouth to suppress her laughter. “Oh, my. Yes.” She chuckled and looked down at the floor. “McKusick.” Her voice went flat and hard. “Who would do something like this?”
Neither spoke for a long time. The geneticist finally got up, patted her on the shoulder, and went to the door. “We should probably go comfort Anders. And you have to give your report.”
Chapter 4
Quarantine
The next evening, Sosa went to her office to give her daily report, but the tablet’s screen did not stop whirling. The call eventually failed. She tried again. It failed.
“Anders.”
The programmer’s voice blossomed in her ear. “Yes?”
“Are we having communication problems? I can’t connect to the director.”
She could almost imagine his puzzled face. “No, but let me check.” A few seconds later, he said, “You’re right. The satellites around the base are blocking all outgoing messages.”
“Thank you, Anders
. Any progress on lifting Cyrano’s quarantine?”
“No, but I should have it soon.”
The communicator went silent. Sosa propped her elbows on the desk and made a pyramid with her fingers. Yes, it was as she thought.
“McKusick.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to talk to you for a moment.”
He grumbled. “Can it wait? I can’t keep working with all these interruptions.”
“I haven’t interrupted you since breakfast. Get in here.”
McKusick appeared half an hour later, sat down in a chair bolted to the floor, and frowned. “What is so critical I had to walk a mile to hear it? Couldn’t you have told me over the communicator?”
