There was a click as she unlocked the door. Edward quickly threw on a shirt and exited the room, walking carefully so none of the mess in his pants dislodged and fell on the floor. This was already horrifying enough as it was without leaving a trail of shit all the way to the bathroom.
Edward had gotten a quick look at some of the CRS facilities when they had brought him in, but once the van had pulled up at the back door of some moderately tall skyscraper the people who were waiting for him hadn’t allowed him to stop long enough to look. He knew from the drive in that the building was somewhere in the center of the city—the very center, according to Liddie’s idle chatter—and he’d been able to piece together from various other clues that the lower floors of the building housed Land’s End University. The upper floors belonged solely to the Center for Reanimation Studies. He’d been ushered right through a series of non-descript hallways to an elevator that his handlers had to operate with a key. Although he didn’t know exactly which floor he was on, it had to be somewhere near the top. The elevator ride had been very long.
After that he’d been quickly brought to his room, so now was his first chance to see the facilities that were, for lack of a better term, his new home. He’d expected a sterile, drab series of hallways with no real decoration, and other than a few random generic landscape paintings on the walls he was right.
“You guys aren’t much for decorating, are you?”
“Not on the lab levels, no. Some of the other floors are a little more homey. If you want, we can probably find a painting to give your room a little more color.”
“Thanks, but no. Although, if you find me a Dale Jr. poster, then maybe we can talk.”
“Who’s that?”
“Seriously? You mean no one here remembers all the NASCAR legends?”
“What’s NASCAR?”
“Ugh. Never mind.”
She led him to a unisex bathroom down the hall, but not before taking him past several more doors like the one he’d been behind. Most of them were empty, but four of them had zombies behind them. No, scratch that, five. There was another further down the hall. He knew that was another thing he shouldn’t have been able to tell, but by now it didn’t surprise him. He could tell by that honey scent in the air.
“Tell me, can you smell that?” he asked Liddie.
“Um, yeah. Sorry. It’s getting pretty strong now, but I know where I can get you some extra pants really quickly.”
Edward blushed. “No, I mean…whatever.”
She left him alone to go into one of the bathroom stalls and came back several minutes later with a pair of scrub pants. He’d cleaned himself up by that time, although he still needed a damned shower. He shoved the soiled pants underneath the stall door and winced when she hissed at the smell.
“So are you going to keep those, too?” he asked.
“Are you joking me? Why the hell would I do that?”
“Your mother did it.”
“And yet again I need to remind you that I am not my mother.”
Edward finished pulling up his new pants and then opened the door. Liddie was gingerly shoving the old pants into a garbage can and then tying off the bag.
“Hey, Liddie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For, you know, treating me like a human being.”
She gave him a bemused look. “Someone has to. And look, to be completely honest, I’m not sure how much of that you’re going to be getting from anyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve already overhead some of the plans my mother has for you. Don’t worry, no one’s going to do anything to hurt you. But she sure does plan on getting every bit of scientific data she can out of you.”
“So what, they really are going to dissect me at some point?”
“Hey, I just promised you that wouldn’t happen, didn’t I? But if I were you I’d cooperate with everything. Some people like Dr. Chella are just looking for excuses to make trouble, and you could be the perfect excuse.”
Somehow, Edward didn’t find any of that the least bit reassuring.
Chapter Twenty One
Once she got some sleep of her own, Liddie was able to convince her mom to let her sit in on the directors’ meeting the next morning. It wasn’t terribly hard. Liddie knew everything about this place, and there was rarely a time where she didn’t have some useful tidbit to contribute to any planning meeting. This one was different however. Liddie didn’t even register until after she sat down at the table with her mother, Dr. Chella, and Chella’s assistant Dr. Emmanuel that the television monitor on the far wall was actually on. There was another monitor in the room for when they needed to have meetings with other people in distant locations, but that one was much smaller. This one was only supposed to be used for one person and one person alone.
“Mom, uh, Director Gates?” Liddie asked. “Is he actually going to be talking to us?”
“He talks to us all the time, Claudia,” Dr. Chella said. “We just don’t usually see any reason for you to be here when he does.”
“Well this time there is a reason, Chella, so just let it go for now,” Liddie’s mother said.
“I thought we were just going to be discussing Edward,” Liddie said. Her mother raised an eyebrow, but Liddie wasn’t sure why.
“We are. Don’t you think Mr. Schuett is someone he’s going to be interested in?”
“I suppose,” Liddie said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it that much.”
Dr. Emmanuel rolled his eyes. He was another one that thought Liddie had no right to all the access she had, but Liddie didn’t care. She was reasonably certain the only reason he had this job was because someone had blackmailed Chella into giving it to him, but she had never found the hard proof of it.
The monitor blinked a couple times as it established a connection with Washington, D.C., and the President of the United States appeared before them.
“Director Gates, Dr. Chella, I hope you’re both well,” he said. Liddie was too starstruck to care that he didn’t acknowledge her, although she had to stifle a smile at the way Dr. Emmanuel bristled at his exclusion.
“Sir, we couldn’t be better,” Liddie’s mother said. “I’m sure you’ve already been fully updated on what we’ve discovered.”
“I have. I have to say how shocked I am. And that I owe you an apology. You’ve predicted this event for a long time, but I must admit I was starting to doubt you. Certain people were very vocal that your obsession with this was getting in the way of your work. I’m sure you feel vindicated.”
Chella fidgeted in her chair.
“Thank you, sir, but now is not the time for that. There are certain things we need to discuss. Specifically, what is to be done with the Z7.”
“I understand your devotion to studying the specimen, but it would probably be in the best interest of the American people to destroy it immediately.”
“Wait, what?” Liddie asked.
The President blinked and looked at her for the first time. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced?”
Liddie’s mother cleared her throat. “Sir, this is my daughter Claudia. She’s second in charge of special projects. I thought she should be here today because I think she might be able to play an important part in any operations regarding the Z7.”
“And I don’t think any such operations would be prudent,” the President said.
“But why?” Liddie asked. “He’s not a danger to anyone.”
“A reanimated capable of reasoning? My apologies, but I think such a thing is very much a danger. Everyone knows what just a few Z5s and 6s did to Atlanta. A Z7 in my book would classify as a weapon of mass destruction that no human should try to control.”
“Edward is about as far from a weapon of mass destruction as someone could possibly get,” Liddie said.
“I’m sorry. Edward?” he asked.
�
��Yes sir, that is something that might not have been in any of the early reports you’ve received,” Liddie’s mother said. “You see, there’s more to the Z7 than was originally hypothesized. It doesn’t just possess greater intelligence. It looks and acts completely human. If it weren’t for the high concentration of the Animator Virus in his system and a few physical abnormalities we are still attempting to chronicle, he would seem to be no different than you or me. His name is Edward Schuett.”
The president took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This…is not something I was prepared for, Director Gates. You’re telling me this man is not really a reanimated at all?”
“He is, sir,” Dr. Chella said. “The tests I’ve run have proven it.” Liddie turned to her with a confused look. Last night the woman had refused to acknowledge that Edward was anything more than a practical joke, yet now she was the first to jump in and say what he was. Liddie would have had to wonder what her game was if the woman didn’t reveal it right away. “From what I’ve seen, I believe you were right the first time. This thing is dangerous. We cannot let it continue to exist here. The director is putting everyone in danger.”
“He’s not a ‘thing’,” Liddie said. “Not only does he have a name, but he was talking about having a family once. A life. And he’s an American citizen, sir. You can’t just kill him for no reason.”
“You say he had a family?” the president asked. “How long ago was this?”
“About fifty years ago,” Liddie said.
“And he was a reanimated that whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Gates, what do you think this thing has been doing that whole time? Knitting? Playing solitaire?”
“Sir, I’m not sure that I understand what you’re—”
“It was killing. That’s what the reanimated do. It killed people. It isn’t even alive by any legal definition, even if it can talk and act like a human. It gave up any sort of American citizenship it had a very long time ago. So if I order it destroyed, it will be destroyed, do you understand?”
Liddie didn’t say anything.
“With that said, if this thing is capable of reason then it might just be capable of cooperating,” the president said. “Director Gates, you want to study it. What exactly do you have planned?”
She outlined a few tests she wanted to do. It was really very basic stuff. Cognitive tests, reflex tests, tests of Edward’s tissue samples. “But most importantly,” she said, “I want to see if we can get it to remember anything of the past fifty years. We’ve learned so much about the reanimated, but there are still things we don’t understand. How they group together, how they sense when humans are near, how and why they migrate the way they do. The Z7 may just be the key to unlocking some mysteries we’ve been trying to understand ever since the first days of the Uprising.”
The president looked at Dr. Chella. “And I assume you have a well thought-out argument against this plan?”
Dr. Chella hemmed and hawed, but there was nothing about what she said that could be considered “well thought-out.” Even with all his prim and proper posturing, Liddie thought for just a moment that she might have seen the president roll his eyes.
“Director Gates, you’ve already talked to this thing. Has it given you any reason whatsoever to believe it might not be willing to let you experiment?”
She hesitated. “Maybe. It did show a willingness to fight when we picked it up in Wisconsin. But it wants to know all the details about what it is just as much as we do. We can use that. Even more so, it wants information regarding its family.”
“It has a family?”
“It did when it was alive fifty years ago. It seems to be under the impression that some of that family might still be out there somewhere.”
“And have you found any information about this family?”
“You know how the records are from that time, sir. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fake it. I’ve already commissioned a team to forge some fake documents. It won’t know any different.”
Liddie looked at her. This was the first she had heard about any of that. She knew there was nearly no hope of finding out what had ever happened to Edward’s daughter, but the idea of lying to him about it horrified her.
The president nodded. “Okay then. I believe I will let this continue, but from now on I want daily reports. I want to know everything, no details left out. And if this thing so much as sneezes in a threatening manner, I will order it destroyed. Is that understood?”
Liddie’s mother nodded. “Absolutely, sir.”
“And I’m sure you’ve already taken precautions, but I still need to stress this as well. This is top secret. You may pick a few of your top people for the research, Director Gates, but beyond that the only people who are to know of this thing’s existence are the people in this room.”
“I’ve already done everything I can about those precautions as well. The number of people that even know he’s here on campus is minimal, and most of them are being told he’s an outside consultant.”
“Good. Tread carefully with this, Gates. After all, I’m sure that I will hear if there’s even the smallest slip up.”
Dr. Chella actually smiled at that. Liddie would have reached over and smacked the woman if she didn’t think even her mother would fire her for that.
“Thank you, sir,” Liddie’s mother said. The president nodded, and the monitor went blank.
Liddie sat quietly next to her mother while Dr. Chella and Dr. Emmanuel stood up and mumbled to each other. Her mother opened up a file folder she’d had in front of her and began thumbing through the documents inside, but Liddie could tell she wasn’t really looking at any of them. She knew that look on her mother’s face. She’d seen it ever since she was a little kid. This was the look when she expected Liddie to throw a tantrum and was preparing to give her daughter a severe talking-down.
Well, Liddie wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction this time. She was an adult now, after all. She was fully capable of having a calm adult conversation about things that upset her. There would be no yelling involved. Really.
Once Chella and Emmanuel were gone, Liddie spoke in a quiet, measured voice. “You never said anything to me about the fake documents.”
“That’s because I was hoping you would come to that conclusion yourself,” her mother said. “Actually trying to find records of his daughter would be a wild goose chase and a waste of resources. But we need him to be cooperative.”
“So your answer is lying to him?” Liddie noticed she was beginning to raise her voice and made a conscious effort to bring it back down. “And something else. What was all that while you were talking with the president where you kept referring to Edward as ‘it?’ You were talking like he was another reanimated, and he’s not.”
“He is, Liddie, at least in the eyes of most people. Especially to the president, who hasn’t had a chance to meet him yet. I was merely talking in a way that the president would comprehend. If I had referred to Edward as a ‘he,’ that would have made the president think I was getting attached.”
“Referring to a person as a person isn’t getting attached. That’s just giving him basic human dignity.”
“Dignity like you tried to give him when you helped him with his soiled pants last night?”
Liddie was surprised for a moment, but she supposed she shouldn’t be. There were cameras all over the place in here. They would have seen her go into the bathroom with a fresh set of pants and come out with the garbage bag. Her mother had probably even retrieved it from where she had thrown it away simply so the pants could be studied.
“So what now?” Liddie asked. “You don’t want me to let the big bad reanimated monster feel like a human anymore?”
“Actually, just the opposite. I want you to continue doing exactly what you were doing last night. I want you to be his friend.”
This time Liddie was surprised enough that she couldn’t speak.
“Of course, I
want you to maintain some professional distance,” her mother said. “You must be very careful not to get too attached. We don’t know enough about him yet, either as a Z7 or a person. I mean, really, for all we know he was convicted child molester or serial killer back before he died. It isn’t like we can check his records or anything. Or he might one day not be able to control his reanimated impulses and try to eat someone. But until that happens, we need him happy, or at least happy enough that he goes along with whatever we need.”
“Mother, I’m not going to pretend to be something just because you ask me to.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend anything. I’m asking you to show the same sort of compassion I would like you to show anyone else. Because let’s face it, I can’t be the one to do that. I have far too many things to take care of. All I’m asking is that you talk to him. Let him confide in you if he needs it. If you’re so convinced he really is completely human despite his condition, then don’t let him forget that. Remind him what being a human means.”
Liddie stared at her. “Mom, I do hope you understand this is a weird request. It’s like telling a kid to go to someone’s sleepover because they don’t have any friends.”
Her mother smiled. “You thought that was weird? You never said anything about it.”
“That’s because Jamie was…well, I felt sorry for her. I thought maybe you were right.”
“Of course I was. I’m your mother.”
She kissed Liddie on the forehead and left the room, leaving Liddie to contemplate Edward and that long ago friend Jamie. The problem with Jamie was they had become friends after all, best friends, but only up until high school. That was when Jamie had slept with Liddie’s boyfriend.
That wasn’t exactly the sort of friendship Liddie wanted to have again.
Chapter Twenty Two
It was tough for Edward to tell how much time passed. He never got a chance to go outside and none of the rooms he went between had windows. He would have tried to judge the number of days by the number of times he slept, but he never slept for more than two hours at a time and even then it seemed like he got sleepy at completely random intervals. He didn’t want to ask anyone, though. Keeping track of time was the sort of thing any old person should have been able to do, and he refused to admit he couldn’t.
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 13
