by Weston Ochse
The building itself was in the shape of a large H. The side nearest the parking lot had windows; the other side, without, was where the most generators were allocated. The parking lot was lit by several portable light generators. Their sound would cover any sound I’d make.
I started to make my way into the parking lot when the side door to the building opened and two men came out. I ducked behind an old military Chevy Blazer and watched with increasing worry as they headed in my direction. Had I just chosen their car, out of two dozen, to hide behind?
But they stopped two cars down and got into a Dodge pickup. I waited until they backed out and drove away before I stood and quickly walked to the side of the building. Now I’d see how well security was working. I skirted the edge of the building, then sprinted across the middle space to the other side of the H. Once there, I went to the other end of the building until I could see the generator field.
Each generator had been sunk into a pit, leaving three quarters of the generator hidden, which also served as a sound dampener. I chose three generators, then quickly sabotaged them. I pulled a lead free from one, adjusted the fuel filter to starve another of air, and turned the third off completely. As they began to die, I ran to the side of the building, to a spot that would be hidden when the door opened.
With three generators offline, a response didn’t take long. A man in a lab coat exited the building with a harried look on his face. He never saw me as I slid into the building. Now inside, I was greeted with white institutional walls. I was almost disappointed that there was no sign announcing that this was HMID headquarters. I reminded myself that this was one of three places that could be the home of the HMIDs, and it was only on a hunch that I chose this one. My hunch could be taking me to entirely the wrong place.
I heard footsteps and tried the nearest door. It was locked, so I tried the one next to it—thankfully unlocked—and quickly ducked inside. No lights were on, but I could smell cleaning chemicals. How clichéd! I was hiding in a supply closet.
I pressed my ear to the door and heard the footsteps go past. I counted to thirty, then opened the door to an empty hallway. From the hollow of my back, I drew my Sig Sauer P226 and held it at high ready. I went down a short hall, then peeked around a corner. Seeing it empty, I slipped down the hallway, keeping my back to the wall. Halfway down, a door opened right in front of me and out stepped Malrimple. We locked eyes right away. I saw his eyes go wide. When he opened his mouth to call out, I shoved the barrel of my pistol into his cheek, pressing the skin hard against his teeth.
“Don’t make a fucking sound.”
I could see the terror in his face. Part of me hated myself for relishing it.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Malrimple whispered.
“I have no intention of getting away with this. Now take me to Michelle.”
He stared at me, fear locking his legs.
“HMID Aquinas.” I pushed the barrel harder against his skin. “Take me to her. Now!”
He turned to head down the hall.
I grabbed the back of his collar. “Don’t fuck around. I don’t like anything about you and wouldn’t mind putting a round into your smug face.”
He stiffened, then nodded.
I put the barrel of the pistol to the back of his neck and let him lead me down one hallway, then another.
A woman in uniform came out of an office holding a clipboard. She was looking down and might not have seen us, but when Malrimple stopped, she glanced over. She brought her clipboard to her chest and stared at me, trying to gauge what I was doing and what she should do.
I helped her out. “Go back into your office. If you think you need to call someone, then go ahead.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“See my girlfriend,” I said plainly.
Her eyes widened a moment, then she nodded and returned to her office. She closed the door and I heard the latch click into place.
We continued down the hall and came to a door with a keypad lock.
Malrimple hesitated.
“Punch it in,” I said.
“This isn’t the best time,” he began.
“It’s never going to be the best time. Now open the fucking door.”
He sighed and keyed in an eight-digit number. The door clicked open and we pushed into an immense room. I recognized the black box immediately. But there wasn’t just one—there were three of them. One stood at the end of the rectangular room, with the other two on either wall. Each had multiple cables exiting it. Some of the cables went through the wall to the generators outside, while others went to a row of computer servers squatting in racks against the walls. Here and there were tables with computer monitors and keyboards. At each one sat a worker. Another man in a lab coat stood at the servers, pressing lit buttons.
It took only a moment for me to take in all this, then my attention focused not on the visuals, but on the screams coming from the speakers. Michelle’s voice.
“Let me go. Please fucking let me go!” she cried.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded as she launched into another scream. But the moment I spoke, she fell silent.
The others in the room turned at my voice and upon seeing my gun, reacted. Most them stood and backed against a wall, but the man at the server pulled a pistol from his side.
“Drop the weapon, soldier,” he said.
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Doctor Malrimple, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Doctor Cole. This is Lieutenant Mason. He wants to see HMID Aquinas.”
Doctor Cole stared at me but didn’t lower his pistol.
“You were with Norman.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about for a moment, then it clicked. Doctor Norman Dupree. I nodded. “I was there.”
“How did he die?”
“Saving the rest of us,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was absolutely true. “He died getting samples from the alien vine.”
“You were there?”
“I was.”
“You left him there?”
I licked my lips and nodded. “We had to. Listen, everything is going to be all right here.” My eyes were mainly on the pistol, but I glanced at his face and could see him working through what he should do.
“You know they’re going to arrest you,” he said.
“I know.”
Through the speakers came the words, “You never should have come here, Ben.”
“I know that. But I did.”
She sighed, the sound like wind through the speakers.
Doctor Cole locked eyes with Malrimple. “At least the screaming has stopped.”
Malrimple nodded. “Go ahead and leave us, Doctor Cole. I’ll be all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t think Lieutenant Mason wants to shoot anyone today.”
Cole seemed to consider this for a moment, then holstered his gun and headed toward the door. I kept Malrimple between us, just in case he changed his mind. When he was out the door, I went over and slammed the pistol down on the internal keypad several times. I hoped it would be enough to bar the door.
When I turned, Malrimple was standing where I left him.
“Now, open that black box there,” I said pointing to what had to be Michelle’s.
“No, Ben. Please don’t. I don’t want you to see me.”
“But I’ve come all this way.” I nodded for Malrimple to do whatever it was that had to be done. “They said you tried to take yourself offline. That you tried to kill yourself.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “I’m a distraction. As long as I’m alive I’ll be a distraction for you.”
“I don’t care. I love you.”
“You love the memory of us.”
“Maybe I do, but you’re as connected to that memory as I am. You can’t tell me that you don’t love me as well.”
“
I do love you. It’s just that now I’m... now...”
“Now what?” I asked softly.
“Now I’m a monster. How can anyone love a monster?”
Malrimple had paused and was staring at me. If she was a monster, then he was her Frankenstein.
“What’s her condition?” I asked him.
“She’s ripped out most of her tubes. She’s a Mod One and still has her arms. We removed them on the other modifications, for just this reason.”
I gulped. “And why not remove hers?”
He shook his head. “It has to be her choice. She wanted to keep them.”
I took that in and thought about what it would mean to have someone take off my arms. It was nothing more than another bit of dehumanization, and Malrimple clearly didn’t think of Michelle as anything other than a machine, even if she did have to choose which body parts to throw away.
“Open the fucking box, Doctor Frankenstein,” I growled.
He pressed a few buttons on his keyboard and the side of the black box opened. Gas escaped, obscuring what lay within for a moment. I made out cables, dangling wires, and a figure.
“Michelle?”
“Please... please go away.”
I stopped cold as the gas dispersed enough for me to see the body within the box. It was... wrong. It wasn’t recognizable as human. It looked more like a log with attachments. Had Malrimple opened the wrong box?
“Michelle? Is that you?”
“Ben,” she gasped. “Don’t look at me!”
Too late.
The gas faded away and I saw her in all of her miserable reality. She hung at chest level. They’d removed her legs. Why shouldn’t they? She’d never walk again. Her body was ravaged with sores. Here and there the skin looked dead and rotting. Curious metal flanges spotted her body. Some had been capped; some ran out to transparent hoses, viscous red, yellow and blue mixtures traveling to and from her body. Still others dripped fluid, presumably ripped out by her thin, sticklike hands.
Her head was turned away from me, and her shoulders shook. Her head had been shaved, and the bald skin was gray and sickly.
Malrimple came up beside me. “We use her to assist new recruit HMIDs to assimilate. She has a way with the new ones that helps them better accept the drastic change in their reality.” He sounded genuinely saddened as he continued. “She’s in terrible shape. We’ve been trying desperately to keep her alive. She still has a use to us. She has value.”
For a moment it almost seemed a human response, to the terrible toll being an HMID had wrought against Michelle’s body, but I now realized he was lamenting the loss of an asset. To the scientist, she was no longer human. She was a thing to be studied, to be used. To be kept alive, regardless of the inhumanity of it.
I punched him hard in the gut, pushing my fist in as deep as I could while still holding the pistol. Then I brought my hand up and smashed it into his face, laying him out on the cold concrete floor.
I approached the black box and stepped inside. The floor was covered in viscous goo, but I ignored it. I holstered my pistol against the small of my back and took Michelle in my arms. She flinched at my touch and tried to push me away, but her arms had withered until they could barely support themselves. A slick cable descended from the top of the box to a flange at the base of her skull, I placed my hands lovingly around it and used it to turn her head.
Her eyes were the same, as was her nose and lips. If I could block out the rest, I could almost imagine we were still in the cave beneath Kilimanjaro, her face near mine as we made love on the cot behind the generators. But that was sentiment. This was now.
“Michelle,” I murmured. “How I’ve missed you.”
A tear fell from her left eye as she spoke. Her voice came both from the speakers and her mouth, creating an eerie chorus. “I saved your life in Africa, you know? It’s the best thing I ever did.”
I nodded and brushed her cheek. “They never knew we were coming. You didn’t just save me, you saved everyone.”
“I’m so tired of it now.” Her voice was tiny and breathless.
“Even heroes need the chance to rest.”
She smiled. “Is that what I am? A hero?”
“Of course you are.”
“I’m not a monster?”
I shook my head as an ache grew in my throat, making it difficult to speak. “Never. You did what none of us would do. You’re far braver than I ever was.”
She smiled. “You’re the Hero of the Mound.”
I stroked her head. I felt a thin layer of fuzz beneath my hands. “And you are the hero of us all.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, finally holding me.
I closed my eyes.
I’m not sure how long we held each other this way, but I became aware of a pounding behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Malrimple working on the keypad, trying to fix it so that he could open the door. We didn’t have much time.
“I’m really quite crazy,” Michelle said suddenly.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, you are. But then so are we all.”
“What now?” she asked.
I touched her chin. “I came to take you home.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you.”
I reached down her body and pulled out each hose until the only thing that connected her to the infernal machine was the cable attached to her neck. I folded her into my arms, so that her hips were over one arm and the other held the back of her neck. I leaned down and kissed her once. She opened her eyes and we had a final kiss, even as her fluids drained away.
She looked me in the eyes. She tried to speak but she couldn’t, but I heard her words in my mind.
“I love you too,” I said aloud. Then I pulled the main cable out of the back of her neck.
Her eyes snapped shut.
Her breathing hitched.
And sometime in the next few seconds she died.
I began to sob. I sat like this until they came and took me away. I barely felt it as they threw me to the floor. I barely felt their kicks. In my mind I lingered with Michelle, with the memory of us, locked in the tight, forever grip of my soul.
Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis.
John Scalzi, Old Man’s War
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WALLS OF my cell were covered with colorful words and phrases. I especially loved the limerick about the woman from Venus with the curious body shape. I found myself concentrating on the words, because not to do so would mean remembering what happened two days ago. Like the name Renate, scratched into the wall on its own near the corner. Was Renate someone’s wife? A long-lost girlfriend? A gal he’d met at one of the many bars in Barstow? SNAFU turned up a lot, which didn’t surprise me. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up could explain half of my existence on this planet.
That afternoon, a guard came and had me put my hands behind me and through a rectangular gap in the cell bars so that he could ziptie my wrists together. Once that was done, he grabbed the back of my collar and led me out of my cell, down a set of hallways, and into a small but brightly-lit conference room.
I’d wondered when they were going to lower the boom. I’d known they’d be madder than hell at what I’d done, and I hadn’t cared; to let things continue as they were would have been immoral and impossible. I’d done what had to be done, and I’d do it again tomorrow. Of course, now that they were going to lock me up and throw away the key, I wouldn’t get the chance.
Still, I was curious to see how the cast of characters would react. First I saw Ohirra and Olivares sitting in the cheap seats against the wall, along with a dozen other young officers I vaguely recognized. A conference table had been set up with a single empty metal folding chair facing it. Centered behind the table sat Mr. Pink, and to either side of him were a bruised and battered Malrimple, Doctor Cole, Lieutenant Colonel Hendrix, and Colone
l Wade. Drake sat in a chair by the window, a submachine gun across his lap. He had an unpleasant smile on his face.
At the very end of the table on the left side was a stocky, red-haired stranger wearing a US military uniform, with a patch I’d never seen on his shoulder: the stars and bars of the US flag, inside the cameo of what could only be George Washington, giving America’s first president a red, white, and blue face.
The guard led me to the chair and placed me in front of it. I tried to get his attention to remove the zip-ties, but he ignored me. I sighed as I stood like a pet monkey in a kangaroo court. I let my flat gaze fall on Mr. Pink and waited for the theatrics to begin.
After five minutes, he made me sit, introduced himself and the men at the table. The man at the end was introduced as Major Vincent Dewhurst of the New United States of North America. I let my gaze linger on him, wondering why he was here.
“Mr. Mason, we have brought you before this panel to determine the punishment for the murder of HMID Aquinas. We have a complete audio and video record of the event. All the members of this panel have reviewed the record several times and concur with the chair’s assertion that you deliberately broke into the Fort Irwin HMID lab, assaulted Doctor Malrimple, and killed HMID Aquinas. There will be no trial. The determination has been made. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
I said my words slowly. “It looks like you have everything you need.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
It was. But I wanted to throw eggs at them. And I didn’t want it on record that I murdered my girlfriend. Far from it; I did what had to be done. “After watching the audio and video evidence, do you really think it was murder? Seriously?”
“What would you call your role in the death of HMID Aquinas, then?”
“Assisted suicide.”
Malrimple snorted.
Cole shook his head.
Fuck them both.
Only the stranger, Dewhurst, showed any sort of positive emotion, smiling slyly.
Mr. Pink turned to Malrimple. “Doctor, do you have anything to say to this?”
