Legion

by Robert Swartwood

  Hogan downed the dregs of his soda and popped his lips. He crumbled the can in a fist, rose from his seat. “I could go for some junk food. You want some junk food?”

  Zach waved away the offer and watched Hogan open one of the cabinets over the counter and grab a small bag of Doritos. He returned to the table and opened the bag.

  “So what’s on your mind?” Hogan asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve known each other now for over, what, twenty years, give or take? I know when something’s bothering you. What is it?”

  Zach wasn’t sure he wanted to get into it with Hogan. It was true, they had known each other for nearly twenty years—had ended up in the same training school, in fact, had even become bunkmates—and he knew just how dismissive Hogan could be. Hogan was great at what he did—no doubt about it—but still he could be difficult at times.

  “Just thinking about Eli.”

  “What about him?”

  “How he and his kid managed to find us on the island. And then how he just came to the door, like ... like he wanted to get caught.”

  Hogan munched on the chips, nodding slowly. “Yeah, that’s been bothering me, too. We know why he came to the door, though, to distract us so his kid could get the girl.”

  “But why? They didn’t know each other. There was no connection besides the fact she was friends with Melissa Baxter.”

  Silence then, both men thinking it over.

  Hogan said, “We checked the girl once we got her in the helicopter. She didn’t have anything on her except the throwaway phone and a lighter, and we destroyed the phone.”

  “The lighter, then.”

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe it was more than just a lighter. Maybe it was a tracking device.”

  “Seriously? I think you’re reaching.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “So you think after everything Eli went through not to get caught, he just, what, suddenly decides to turn himself in?”

  Zach was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. “Did we check him?”

  “Of course we checked him. He was clean.”

  Silence again, Zach staring off into space, running everything through in his head. Something just didn’t feel right. Something didn’t make sense.

  “Hey,” Hogan said, snapping his fingers.

  Zach blinked. “What?”

  “Do you remember why I ended up helping you out on this?”

  “Something about an FBI agent.”

  “That’s right. So you want in?”

  “On what?”

  “On dealing with him.”

  “I doubt I’d get approval.”

  “I already got you approval. Called and confirmed it an hour ago. If you want in, you’re in.”

  “And what’s this about again?”

  “An FBI agent stumbled across the games, started asking too many questions.”

  “So you’re taking him out?”

  “Him and his family. Guy’s got a wife and a baby boy at home.”

  “You’re going to make it look like an accident?”

  “That was the plan at first, but after what we just dealt with, I could use some entertainment. I’m thinking about throwing him into a game. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “The guy will know at once he’s in a game. He’ll probably already know the stakes, and know they’re bullshit.”

  “Still, just imagine the surprise on his face when he wakes up.”

  Zach pinched the bridge of his nose. A headache had been building for a while now, and it was just starting to get worse. He kept thinking about looking through the front door window and seeing Eli out on the porch. The stupid act the man had tried playing, like he was there to sell magazine subscriptions.

  “We need to check him again.”

  “Who?”

  “Eli. We need to scan his entire body.”

  Hogan started munching again on the chips. “I think you’re overreacting.”

  Zach rose from his chair and walked toward the locked cabinet in the corner, pulling a key from his pocket. “Something just doesn’t add up.”

  Hogan held out a hand, his fingers already stained with orange Doritos dust. “Are you crazy? Matheson’s in there with him now. You can’t interrupt him.”

  Zach inserted the key into the lock and opened the cabinet. Inside were weapons—rifles and guns—as well as several electronic devices. The selection wasn’t nearly as varied as Zach would have liked—this was a satellite location, after all, the closest facility to Matheson—but Zach found what he needed anyway, closed and locked the cabinet.

  “You’re going to piss him off,” Hogan said.

  Zach started toward the door. “He’ll get over it.”

  sixty-two

  “Thirty-two years,” Matheson said, his voice low and rusty, the wheelchair beginning a harmonious hum as he maneuvered it to the side of the bed so he could get a better look at Eli. “For thirty-two years I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now here it is, and I’m still not sure yet what to do with you.”

  Eli kept his gaze level with Matheson, his mouth a tight line.

  “You disappointed me, Eli. I always held you in such high regard.”

  “And yet you never told me the truth.”

  “I wanted to. I was even going to, once I received permission, but by then you had betrayed me.”

  “Your judgment became clouded.”

  “Clouded? If anything, my judgment became crystal clear. You know why I began the work I did, don’t you? Of course you do. Your sister—what was her name again?”

  Eli said nothing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Matheson said, his words tinged with annoyance. “But your sister—who we tried to find, by the way. What did you do with her, hide her or did she die?”

  Eli said nothing.

  “We had quite a few discussions about your sister’s Down’s syndrome before I hired you, if you recall. After all, you saw exactly what kind of harm her disease did to your family. My own sibling was mentally retarded. It killed my parents’ marriage. Their entire fate—mine included—changed the moment he was born. My parents started fighting all the time. They started blaming each other for my brother. Sometimes, when they were most desperate, they even tried to blame me. But it was nobody’s fault. It all stemmed from a mutation in the genes. That’s it. One simple, innocuous mutation, and it caused such friction that my parents eventually divorced and sent my brother away so he would become someone else’s problem.”

  “My parents loved my sister just as much as they loved me.”

  “I’m not saying my parents didn’t love my brother—I believe they loved him very much—but still he was a ...” Matheson tilted his head back and forth, searching for the right word. “Well, a burden. And not just on my family, either. There were the people who came to work with him. The staff at school. The doctors and nurses and everyone else. And I realized it wasn’t just my brother—it was all these people with disabilities, all over the world. They were draining the life from their families, from their caregivers, from the people who came to work with them. Some might find a place in society at some point performing menial tasks, but most of them would do nothing more than take up space until the day they died.”

  Matheson shook his head slowly, staring past Eli.

  “I knew it didn’t have to be that way. I knew that, in theory, these mutations could be eliminated. It would take hard work, and it would take smart people, but I knew it was possible, and I wanted to be the one that helped find a cure.”

  “What changed?”

  Matheson blinked, looking at Eli as if just remembering that he was there. He took a deep breath.

  “The simple realization that even if these mutations were eliminated, it wouldn’t change anything. Yes, we might manage to do away with mental retardation and autism, but what then? Tha
t wouldn’t save the world. If anything, it would cause even more trouble.”

  “How so?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Matheson said, leaning forward in the wheelchair, his voice gaining in pitch, “the world is going to hell. War, famine, genocide—you name it, it’s happening.”

  “Is that why you created an army?”

  “You think you know what this is all about, don’t you? You know nothing. The world is falling apart, but the people I work for are going to save us all.”

  “Well,” Eli said, “judging by the last thirty years, they seem to be doing a bang-up job.”

  “The time is coming soon. When, I don’t know, but in the next several years it will happen.”

  “What will happen?”

  “Change. A tide so large and powerful it will alter our entire society for the better. I’m just disappointed that I may not be around to see it happen.”

  “Why?”

  Matheson’s frail and bony hand, marked with liver spots, floated dismissively between the two of them. “Cancer. Despite everything we’ve accomplished, we have yet to find a cure for cancer.”

  “So now what happens—you’re going to kill me?”

  “Eventually.”

  “You didn’t have to kill the others.”

  “But I did, Eli. You understand that, don’t you? Their deaths were all part of your punishment.”

  “What is the rest of my punishment?”

  Matheson released another deep breath, his frail body looking as if it was about ready to sink in on itself.

  “That’s a good question. I’ve been waiting for this day for so long, you’d think I would be better prepared. There are so many different options worth exploring, but killing you outright isn’t one of them. What fun would that be? After all the trouble it took to get you here, why would I just end your life? No, now that you are finally here, I think we’ll come up with something much more appropriate and fitting.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” Eli said. “You don’t want to die before I do.”

  Matheson smiled. “Not to worry, I won’t.”

  “ ‘Nothing beside remains.’ ”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That line you had up in your office, the one from ‘Ozymandias’—‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.’ You do know what that line is really saying, don’t you?”

  Eli could see from the slight wrinkle in the old man’s eyes that he didn’t. For years—decades, even—Matheson had probably had that line up in his office, always chuckling about it, always quoting it, but had never taken an extra minute to read the entire poem.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Eli said. “Some day soon I will die, you will die, everyone will die, and nothing of what you are trying to build will remain.”

  Matheson leaned forward in his chair, the slight movement clearly causing him pain. “That’s where you’re wrong, Eli. It will remain. And even if I’m not alive when it happens, people will know what I did. They’ll read about how I helped change this world for the better. That’s my legacy. What’s yours?”

  A hurried knock came from the door, and the two men from earlier entered.

  Matheson turned awkwardly in his chair. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The taller of the two men approached the bed, carrying an electronic device. “I’m sorry, sir, but I need to check something.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The electronic device was the size and shape of a flashlight. The man flicked a switch and hovered the device first over Eli’s feet, then began to move it up his legs.

  That harmonic hum started up once again as Matheson turned the chair around, his face growing red. “You fool. You didn’t scan him already?”

  The man didn’t answer. He slowly moved the device up the length of Eli’s body.

  “Apologies, sir,” the other man said, standing by the door. “We did scan him when he first arrived, but Zach just wants to—”

  The device beeped, a light on it turning red.

  Zach paused, keeping the device hovered right above Eli’s stomach.

  “What is it?” Matheson’s voice had turned to a growl. “What does that mean?”

  Before anyone could answer him, the lights in the ceiling flickered as the room trembled slightly. Almost immediately, a small LED just above the door began to flash red.

  Matheson stared up at the ceiling. “What in the world is that?”

  “That,” Eli said, staring straight back at the scientist with a cold smile, “is my legacy.”

  sixty-three

  When the first bomb goes off, it goes off. For some reason I was expecting the same kind of blast that those charges had made back on Martha’s Vineyard, the ones we used to bring down the trees, but this one creates ten times the blast, if not more, the whole world momentarily shaking.

  “You okay?” I ask Ashley, who’s crouched beside me, taking cover behind a fallen tree, the both of us maybe three hundred yards away from the building.

  She nods distantly, her gaze focused on the smoke and fire and all the bits and pieces of concrete the explosion has created. I had set the charge at the corner of the building, away from the garage entrance. The building itself is two stories tall, seemingly abandoned, the parking lot small and empty with faded white lines. Weeds stick up through cracks in the concrete, the surrounding grass high and ragged. The building sits a quarter mile off the main highway, hidden behind a cluster of trees, a sign along the highway announcing that a lease is pending.

  My mind usually isn’t one to jump to crazy conspiracy theories (at least not until the past couple of days), but I’m guessing that this building is meant to look abandoned, and has looked like this for several years, just as the lease has probably been stuck in pending purgatory for just as long. It’s enough of an eyesore that nobody wants to give it a second glance, but not too much of an eyesore that it will stick in anyone’s mind.

  It’s just an empty building, one of thousands across the country, except this empty building has state of the art security cameras bolted near the roof. They’re almost impossible to see—almost too tiny, little black circles—but I saw them as I circled the building to drop off the charges. Whether those cameras are connected to anything, it’s impossible to say, though I’m betting they are. I can even imagine a room somewhere packed with computer screens, all the screens showing different views of the surrounding area. Several of those screens would have shown me only minutes ago, sprinting forward to do what I needed to do, because this wasn’t a time to act inconspicuous, especially considering that there’s nobody around, and my fingers were crossed the entire time that there was nobody currently viewing those computer screens, and if there was, that maybe they had taken their bathroom break for the minute or two it took me to do what I needed to do and hurry back for cover.

  And, well, nothing happened—no alarm started blaring, no guards with Uzis came scrambling out of the building, no laser cannons popped up out of the ground, searching for my heat signature. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this building was just an abandoned building and nothing more. But I do know better, thanks to the GPS signal—Eli’s location—currently coming from somewhere inside.

  Plus, there was the car that twenty minutes ago came breezing down the drive, its brake lights flaring red as it stopped in front of the overlarge garage door. It sat there for a few seconds, just idling, before the garage door slowly creaked open and the brake lights winked out as the car glided into darkness.

  The car’s windows were tinted, so we have no idea how many people were inside, but the car had come after we had already arrived, so it was safe to assume that the person who had just arrived was Matheson, the son of a bitch responsible for all of this.

  Now, several seconds after the explosion, dust and smoke enveloping the building, Ashley whispers, “Now what?”

  It’s just after ten o’clock in the morni
ng. We’ve already made the calls we needed to make—to the local police, to the local news, direct calls that ensured we were speaking with what we hoped were normal average citizens and not part of the legion. We explained that there had been an explosion at this location. Will they come? Maybe not, but our hope is they’ve already sent someone out here, a few fire trucks and police cars, anyone who is trustworthy and willing to stand up against this evil.

  I grab hold of the second detonator and press my thumb down on the plunger.

  Another explosion, this time on the other side of the building, causes the ground to shake beneath us.

  I strap the RPG over my shoulder, then grab the assault rifle, my gaze focused on the closed garage door three hundred yards away.

  “Now we wait.”

  sixty-four

  The LED above the door still flashing red, Zach said to Hogan, “How much support do we have?”

  Hogan took a moment, biting his lip, working the numbers through his head. “Two guards, two staff, and the driver that came with Dr. Matheson.”

  The phone in Zach’s pocket vibrated. He pulled it out, saw who was calling, placed the phone to his ear.

  “Tyson, tell me you know what’s going on.”

  “I just accessed the security feed. It looks like John Smith managed to find you.”

  “Yeah, I just confirmed how he was able to do it. Eli must have swallowed a tracking device. Do you know where Smith is now?”

  “Two of the cameras went down from the blast, and the rest are just showing smoke right now.”

  Zach started toward the door, the old man behind him demanding to know what was happening. “Smith has to be acting on his own,” he said into the phone. “Maybe he has the Walker girl with him, but either way we can eliminate him.”

  “That’s fine,” Tyson said, his voice hesitant, “but I’ve just been instructed to tell you to execute a code black. The rest of the staff has been notified. You have twenty minutes.”

  This made Zach pause, turning his wrist to glance at the plain watch he—just as everyone else—was required to wear in the facility. Already the screen showing the time had been wiped clean, now with the numbers 20:00:00. As if on cue, they began to count down.