The Praegressus Project: Part One

by Aaron Hodges

  “I’d prefer to keep my hands free, thanks.”

  Outside, the doctors had reached the cell directly across from them. Its only occupant stood at the bars, watching as the doctors drew to a halt. His eyes were bloodshot and tears streamed down his face.

  “Please, I never did anything wrong,” his voice was feeble, barely a whisper.

  He retreated into his cell as the guards slid the door open. Before he could so much as raise his fists they were on him, batons flashing in the fluorescent lights. A few seconds later they had him pinned to the bed. Without preamble, the doctors entered the cell. As the guards held the boy down, one doctor pulled down his pants, while another prepared the needle. The injection was given, then the doctors and guards retreated from the cell, slamming the door closed behind them.

  Liz flinched as the boy screamed and began to writhe. Then the guards moved between them and the other cell, and there was no more time to consider their neighbour's plight.

  Gripping the bars of their cell tight in her hands, Liz watched as the guards gathered near the door. The pain in her throat had strangely faded away, leaving only a dull ache. Blood pounded in her ears as she tensed, readying herself.

  “Stand back, drop those,” one of the guards ordered, eying their makeshift batons.

  When they didn’t move, he turned to look at the doctors.

  “What are you waiting for?” Doctor Radly’s voice carried into the cell. “Get in there and take those off them. You know we can’t use the collars. We can’t have any interference with their nervous system.”

  The guard nodded and reached out to unlock the door. The others gathered behind him, seven in total, their batons held ready.

  A strange calm settled over Liz as the door slid open, the terror of the past few days falling away. Whatever Ashley thought, this was it. This was their only chance. If they failed, she knew in her heart they would be lost.

  As the first of the guards moved into the cell, movement came from beside her. She turned in time to see Chris lunge forward. The guard grinned and raised his baton, but Chris was faster still. Leaping lightly from the concrete floor, he twisted in the air to avoid the man’s blow, and drove a kick into the side of the guard’s head.

  Liz gaped as the man’s eyes rolled up in his skull and he collapsed to the ground

  Chris landed lightly in the doorway and retreated back to re-join them.

  “Six to go,” he grinned, his smile infectious.

  Shaking her head, Liz gripped the metal bar tighter and tried to hide her shock.

  Outside, the remaining guards grabbed their fallen comrade by the feet and dragged his unconscious body out into the corridor. One of the doctors crouched beside him and placed a stethoscope to his chest. Radly glanced down at the man, then back at the guards. Each of them dwarfed even Sam’s large frame, but still they stood hesitating in the hallway. The fate of their comrade had given them pause.

  “Well?” he snapped. “What are we paying you for? Get in there!”

  The guards shared a glance, then approached together. Pushing the sliding door wide open, they entered as a group this time. They paused for a second in the entrance-way, hefting their batons, then came forward in a sudden rush.

  Liz tensed as the first guard came for her, his steel baton flashing for her face. Ducking back, the hackles on her neck tingled as it swept over her head. Then she lifted her own weapon and drove it into the man’s midriff.

  The blow caught him as he was moving forward, and his own weight drove the air from his lungs. As he staggered to a halt, Liz lifted her bar to strike him again, then threw herself to the side as another guard swung at her. Steel rang out as the baton left a dent in the bunk bed behind her.

  Recovering, she turned and found the first guard already straightening. Now the two of them bore down on her, forcing her away from the others.

  Liz gripped her makeshift weapon tight, knowing she was hopelessly outmatched. Snarling, she threw herself forward anyway. They grinned, raised their batons. Then a body stumbled backwards into them, sending them stumbling forward. Seeing her chance, Liz swung her pole into the face of the nearest guard.

  As the man staggered sideways, she leapt for the gap he’d left, eager to re-join the others. But as she moved, the other recovered and stepped in to block her, baton already in motion. The blow caught her in the stomach, knocking the breath from her lungs and sending her staggering backwards into the wall.

  Groaning, she tried to straighten, but a fist caught her in the side of the face. Her feet crumpled beneath the force of the blow, and she slid sideways into the crook between the wall and the bunk. Coughing up blood, she tried to regain her feet, but a heavy boot crashed into her back, pinning her to the ground.

  Head ringing, Liz twisted on the ground, desperate for a glimpse of the others. But the fight was already over, the guards’ weight and numbers making short work of the four prisoners in the narrow confines of the cell. Sam lay immobilised on his own bed, a guard’s knee pressed between his shoulder blades. Ashley was similarly restrained on the floor nearby, while Chris still stood, his arms held by a man on either side of him. The last guard was just getting to his feet, a nasty bruise on his forehead.

  “About time,” Radly’s sarcastic voice came from somewhere out of view. “Would you like something easier next time. Maybe some toddlers?”

  The guards were silent as the doctors filed in, carrying their assortment of vials and syringes. As the doctors prepared themselves, Radly looked around the room. His eyes settled on Liz. “Get her up.”

  Tears stung Liz’s eyes as a rough hand grasped a handful of her hair and pulled. Screaming, she drove a fist into the man’s side, but the blow hardly seemed to faze him. A tearing pain came from her scalp as he pulled again. Kicking and screaming, Liz found herself hauled to her feet.

  “This one’s feisty,” the guard commented as he tossed her onto Ashley’s bed.

  Before Liz could free herself, the weight of the guard landed on her back. An awful helplessness welled in her as she tried and failed to shift his weight. Pain lanced from her scalp again as the guard yanked her head back, forcing her to look at them.

  “Stay still,” the guard growled in her ear.

  “Please don’t do this,” Ashley pleaded from the floor.

  The thud of a boot striking flesh silenced her desperate words. A low groan followed. Liz twisted again, trying to get a glimpse of her friend, but the white coat of a doctor moved to block her view. Looking up, she saw Doctor Radly staring down at her.

  “Enough,” Radly’s tone brooked no argument.

  Unlike Halt, Radly did not appear to take any joy in their pain. Rather, he didn’t seem to care about their comfort one way or another. He moved around the cell with a cold efficiency, retrieving the stoppered vial from the hands of another doctor. Lifting a nasty looking syringe, he eyed the thick needle for a second before driving it through the vial’s rubber stopper. Then he drew back the plunger, watching as the liquid disappeared into the syringe.

  “Doctor Faulks,” Radly addressed someone standing just outside of Liz’s view. “This is the PERV-A strain?”

  “Yes,” a woman’s reply came quickly. “We’ve already finished with the B strain. The rest are marked down for PERV-A.”

  Nodding, Radly turned back to Liz. “Hold her,” Liz shuddered as the guard shifted, taking a firmer hold of her shoulders.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Radly approach, his gloved hands holding the syringe in a gentle grip. Then he disappeared from her line of vision. Seconds later firm hands tugged at her pants, and a cold breeze blew across her backside. She tensed, pushing back against her assailant’s relentless strength.

  A sigh came from behind her. “This will go easier for you if you relax, Ms Flores.”

  Hearing her last name sent a bolt of shock through Liz. For a second she hesitated, then bit off a string a profanity that would have made her father blush.

  Another si
gh, then a cold cloth pressed against her butt-cheek. A shiver raced up her spine, more shock from the violation than from the cold. A low, guttural growl built in her throat, and the guard’s knee pressed harder into the small of her back. But she no longer cared. A desperate horror was growing within her, an awful fear, a need to break free.

  She screamed again, writhing and bucking beneath the guard, straining to shift his weight.

  A sudden pinch came from her naked backside, followed by a cool pressure that spread quickly across her cheek. It was gentle at first, a cold numbness that tingled as it went. But it quickly warmed, like a fire gathering heat, until her muscles were aflame from its touch. The tingle raced outwards, spreading the numbing sensation to her legs and arms.

  Liz gasped, fighting back against the pain, desperate to fend it off. She gritted her teeth, tensing against its relentless spread. The pressure on her back vanished as the guard released her, but by then she barely noticed. Her attention was elsewhere, her focus fixed on the waves of sensation rippling through her body.

  Then as though a switch had been flicked, the muscles down the length of her back locked in a sudden cramp. Pain unlike any she’d experienced closed around her, walling her off from the world, trapping her in the iron arms of its cage. Her eyes snapped open, but all she saw were stars, whirling through her vision, blinding in their brilliance. In the distance she heard a scream, a girl’s voice tearing at the blackness of her mind, but she could do nothing to help her now.

  Agony engulfed her body, her mind, her very soul.

  CHAPTER 20

  Cold.

  The thought filtered through the thick sludge of Chris’s mind, parting the darkness like a curtain. Then it was all around him, wrapping his body in an icy blanket, turning his breath to ragged gasps. A shiver caught him, rippling down his body, throwing off the last dredges of sleep.

  Frozen air burned his nostrils as he inhaled, bringing with it the familiar tang of bleach. But there was more to the scent now, an underlying stench of rot and decay that made his stomach swirl. Opening his mouth, he tasted the metallic reek of blood and vomit on the air.

  Sound quickly followed the return of his taste and smell. His ears tingled, catching the murmur of a breath, the creak of metal joints moving beneath restless bodies, the hiss of an air conditioner. From somewhere in the room came the rattle of chains, the familiar whine of the overhead lights.

  I’m alive, the words whispered in Chris’s mind, though he couldn’t quite recall why that surprised him.

  Keeping his eyes closed, Chris sucked in another breath, struggling to restore the shattered pieces of his consciousness. Dimly he remembered the fire burning up his spine, spreading to his chest, filling his lungs. But there was no pain now, only the dull ache of his muscles, as though they had lain unused for countless days.

  How long? His brow creased.

  How long had he lain there, unconscious, in the clutches of whatever drug the doctors had given him?

  Sounds echoed from all around him, growing louder as he lay there, echoing as though from a wide expanse. Chains rattled as he moved his arms, and he felt the cold touch of steel restraining his wrists. Without opening his eyes, he realised he had been handcuffed to the bed.

  Apparently they were still taking no chances with their patients.

  Memories drifted through the darkness of his thoughts, rising as though from a fog. Images of the fight flashed by, the crack as Sam fell to a baton, the thud of Ashley hitting the floor. He had not seen what happened to Liz, not until the guards had overwhelmed him, and he’d found her curled up in the corner.

  Helpless, he had watched as Liz was lifted onto the bed and injected. Her screams had been instant and horrifying, so deafening even the guards had retreated from her. Her agony tore at his soul, begged for him to save her from the monsters. But he had been powerless against the raw strength of the men on either side of him.

  His heart beat harder as thoughts of the girl rose in his mind. A sense of urgency took him, and he shifted his arms, testing the movement allowed by the handcuffs. The links rattled as he ran a hand along the chain, and found where the handcuffs attached to a guard rail running horizontally along the side of his bed.

  Other sounds came to him now: the beeping of a nearby machine, the whir of a pump, the hiss of air escaping tubes. Listening, he heard the steady beeps accelerating, matching the racing of his heart.

  Somewhere in the room, a door banged. Chris froze, his fingers still clenched around the metal bar. The soft tread of footsteps moved through the room, followed by voices.

  “Has the danger passed?” Halt’s voice came from Chris’s right.

  “We think so.” He recognised Fallow, though her voice was strained, exhausted. “It was a close thing though. I told you it wasn’t ready.”

  “Perhaps,” Halt replied. “But we expected losses. Despite our best efforts, some of the candidates were simply too weak to withstand the morphological alterations.”

  “We lost forty percent!” Chris winced as Fallow’s voice cracked. He heard a long inhalation of breath, before she continued in a calmer voice. “I expected mortality to be less than fifteen. As it is, we barely have a viable population… If we’d had more time…”

  “More time?” Halt laughed. “That is the cry of a coward, Fallow! More time, more money, always more something!” he took a breath. “As Archimedes once said: ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.’ But we only have the time and resources the government has provided us with. And our time is up.”

  “The government will not be satisfied with a forty percent mortality rate, Halt,” Fallow growled.

  “No,” came the head doctor’s swift reply. “But if the survivors show promise, you will have won the time you need to find perfection, Fallow.”

  Silence followed. Slowly their footsteps came closer. Listening to the beep of the machine beside him, Chris held his breath, struggling to slow his racing heart.

  “And have we succeeded, Fallow?” Halt’s voice was eager.

  It was a while before the woman replied. “The results are mixed. Tissue samples taken over the last few weeks have shown steady integration between the host chromosomes and the viral DNA. Candidates who received the PERV-B strain have advanced more rapidly than PERV-A, and now show complete integration. However, we are yet to determine whether the altered genomes are expressing correctly.”

  “Excellent,” there was unmasked glee in Halt’s voice. “When do you expect them to be ready to test genome expression?”

  “We’ve taken them off the immunosuppressants, and so far, they have shown no adverse reactions. We expect them to begin waking from their comas over the next few days. Once they’re conscious, we can begin testing their basic motor skills and cognitive function, to determine whether the virus had any degenerative effects…” Fallow trailed off as Halt snorted.

  “We don’t have time to waste on your procedures, Fallow. We need results.”

  “I don’t see how–” Fallow began.

  “Don’t give me that, Fallow,” Halt snapped. “You know very well there is no need for those tests. As far as the directors are concerned, we have either succeeded or failed. There is only one test the candidates need to pass to show that.”

  There was a long pause before Fallow replied. “Halt…” her voice was entreating now. “That’s simply not possible. They’ve been unconscious for weeks. The recovery time alone… They’re in no condition–”

  “If the experiment succeeded, recovery time should not be an issue,” Halt’s voice sounded like he was just a few feet away. “Look, this one appears to be conscious.”

  On the bed, a tingle raced up Chris’s spine. Silently he held his breath, fighting the instinct to leap from the bed and flee. His arms prickled as goose bumps spread along his skin.

  “You’re right,” Fallow’s murmur seemed to come from directly overhead. “Her heartbeat has recovered to normal levels.

&n
bsp; A girl’s cry tore the air, followed by the angry rattle of chains. Chris cracked his eye open a fraction, desperate to see what was happening. Pain shot through his skull as white light streamed between his eyelids, momentary blinding him. Then the light faded and the room clicked into sudden focus. Beyond the rails of his bed, rows of beds stretched out across a wide room, each occupied by an unconscious patient dressed in green scrubs. A tangle of tubes and wires wrapped around each body like a spider web spun around a fly. From the brief glimpse he caught, Chris guessed there were some thirty beds, though many were empty.

  The girl Halt and Fallow were discussing was sitting up in the hospital bed directly across from Chris. Her back was turned to him, and she had both arms chained to the bed. Curly black hair tumbled down the back of her scrubs, and with a shiver of recognition, Chris realised it was Liz.

  She’s alive!

  Chris struggled to muffle his sharp intake of breath. Beside him, the beep of the machine started to race. Silently he clenched the sidebar of his bed until his palms hurt. Through the shadows of his eyelashes, he watched Halt move to stand over Liz.

  “Incredible.” Halt was studying the machine beside Liz’s bed. Lines and numbers flashed across the screen, he guessed providing readings from the long tubes and wire that covered Liz. “Look at her vitals.”

  Fallow stood in silence beside him, shadows ringing her eyes, her lips pursed tight.

  Halt shook his head and looked at her. “I would say she is fully recovered, wouldn’t you, Doctor Fallow.”

  Reluctantly Fallow nodded, a look of resignation coming over her face.

  “Excellent, then I see no reason to delay. Get her ready.”

  Blood pounded in Chris’s head as a sudden rage swept through him. He didn’t know what Halt had planned for Liz, what fresh horror he had in store, but he refused to lie quietly while she faced it alone. Whatever happened, they were still in this together. For all he knew, Sam and Ashley might already be gone, but Liz still lived. He would not lose her now.