by Peter Clines
“Hold position,” shouted Freedom. His voice echoed between the buildings.
The exes stopped. A few of them were off balance in mid-stride and fell over. They lay still on the ground.
A few seconds later they still weren’t moving.
“What the hell just happened?” growled Cerberus.
“They’re programmed to move out when the door to their Tomb opens,” said Shelly. “They just needed a counter-order.”
Stealth still had her batons up. “Programmed?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
The armored titan took a step back. “These are, what … domesticated exes?”
Freedom gave her a nod. “More or less, Dr. Morris.”
“Cerberus.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” The huge officer stepped forward, lifted a fallen ex by the scruff of its neck, and set it down on its feet. It made no attempt to grab him. It didn’t do anything.
“They are not moving their jaws,” said Stealth.
Smith nodded. “It’s one of the first behaviors Dr. Sorensen eliminated,” he said. “No more chattering teeth. Also helps us tell ours from the feral ones.”
The exes were dressed in Army uniforms. A few had tan T-shirts or tanks. On the ones with ACU jackets, the ranks were stripped off, leaving fuzzy patches of exposed Velcro. Now that they weren’t moving, Cerberus could see they were standing in loose rows and columns. There were a hundred and fifty of them here, all standing immobile. They were shaved bald, no matter what their gender had been. A few had bristle across their scalps, and she remembered reading somewhere that hair and nails kept growing for a few days after death. She’d never considered if it applied to exes or not.
“You called this a Tomb,” she said.
Freedom nodded. “Where we keep all our unknown soldiers.”
Above the left ear, each of them had a green plastic housing the size of a box of cigarettes. There was dried blood where the screws went into the skull. A bundle of thin wires spread out from the housing to a handful of sockets across the bare scalp.
The crackling stun fields deactivated. The armored titan took a step forward and looked at the closest ex, the one Freedom had placed back on its feet. Stealth was already there. They could see its teeth through the gaping hole in its cheek.
The cloaked woman reached up and squeezed the edges of the green box. The front panel popped off in her hand, revealing an array of circuitry and LEDs.
“Careful,” said Shelly. “Damage that and you’ll have a killer on your hands.”
“Perhaps these components should not be in an unsealed housing,” said Stealth.
“Not much to it,” said Cerberus. The titan had dropped to one knee and bent close to the dead man. “A few flash memory cards, micro-transistors, batteries …” The thick metal finger traced wires for a few moments before the armored skull turned to Freedom. “This thing lets you control them?”
“Sir,” Smith said to the colonel, “perhaps I should see if Dr. Sorensen can spare some time away from his current work?”
“Please do, Mr. Smith. The captain and I will answer as best we can in the meantime.”
Smith adjusted his tie, gave a quick smile up at the Cerberus armor, and headed out the door. One of the sergeants followed him.
“Company,” called Freedom. “About face.”
There was a pause, and the undead shifted with a thump of boots.
“Five paces, march.”
The exes took five stumbling steps and stopped again.
“About face.”
Stealth stiffened. Even with the armor, Danielle’s reaction was apparent. The colonel glanced at them. “Something wrong?”
“Last time we saw a bunch of exes moving in sync,” said the titan, “it didn’t … it didn’t work out well for one of our friends.”
“You’ve seen them act like this before?”
“The same superhuman who damaged the Cerberus armor,” said Stealth, “also had an ability to control ex-humans.”
“Where’s this person now?” asked Shelly.
“What’s left of him’s at Melrose and Gower,” said Cerberus. “I burned all the big pieces.”
“Sir,” said Freedom to the colonel, “if you’ll pardon me I have a drill in ten.”
“Of course, captain. Dismissed.” The two men exchanged salutes, and Freedom bowed his head to Stealth and Cerberus.
“The immediate question,” said the cloaked woman, “is why?”
“Why?”
“Why have you developed a method of controlling the exes?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” countered the colonel. “If we can’t contain the ex-virus, we need a way to control it.”
“But why use them as soldiers?”
“We were short-staffed,” Shelly said. “At the start of the year we were down to nine hundred soldiers, and over six hundred of those were our barely trained civilian recruits. They’ve come a long way since then, but it still left us with a lot less than a base like this needs. Dr. Sorensen’s work is going to be a huge benefit to the United States.”
“It would seem the risk of losing control would cancel any possible benefits.”
“There’s no risk,” he said. “Besides, at the moment we’re only using them for low-pressure jobs like sentry duty.”
“Of course,” said Stealth. “The large numbers at your perimeter.”
“That explains why Zzzap didn’t see anyone,” muttered the titan. She looked back at the rows of silent exes. “I’d love to get a better look at those control boxes.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Shelly. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to go over all the specs with Dr. Sorensen once you’re set up. We could even move your lab into the main building near his.”
“It’s better if I stay out here so the suit has easy access,” she said.
The colonel gave her a look. “Well, that won’t be your concern, though, will it?”
“Sir?”
“Dr. Morris, you were never intended to be the pilot of the Cerberus suit,” said Shelly. “We both know that. If it hadn’t been such a time-intensive, crisis situation you never would’ve worn it into battle.” He shook his head. “Now we can get you back in the lab and working on improvements to the system. That’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”
“But …” the armored giant looked at Shelly, then over at Stealth. “It will take months to get anyone up to my level of proficiency. It’s better to have Cerberus out on the front lines, isn’t it?”
“Of course, and Lieutenant Gibbs has been studying the suit’s specs for some time. We even got him a working copy of the simulator you designed.”
The Air Force lieutenant stepped forward. “I’ve logged over fifteen hundred hours, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve built an amazing weapons system.”
“I didn’t think the simulator was ever built.”
The colonel smiled. “Some of our tech boys have had a lot of time on their hands. I think you’ll find Gibbs is qualified and ready to take over as the Cerberus pilot.”
“If,” said Stealth, “we decide to leave the armor with you.”
Shelly took in a breath to respond and bit his tongue. “Yes,” he said. “If that’s what we all decide.”
Her head tilted inside her hood. “It strikes me as suspicious this point has not come up before, colonel.”
“Is it, ma’am?” He looked up at the armor. “If I recall, Dr. Morris, the only reason you agreed to put on the suit and fight during the outbreak was because you were worried someone else might damage Cerberus, correct?”
“Well, yes, but I wanted to help—”
“You weren’t expecting to be the one using it when you built it, were you?”
“No, but I was the only one who knew how to use it to its full potential.”
“Before you were deployed in Washington, had you ever been in a fight?”
“I’ve had several fights over the requirements for—”
“Not arguments, doctor,” he interrupted. “Fights. Had you ever come to blows with someone? Did you ever once throw a punch?”
“I’d fired over ten thousand rounds through the suit’s M2s on the firing range.”
“At wooden targets,” he said. “Did you receive any training at all as to how to deal with combat situations? Basic tactics? Target priority? Anything?”
A rasping hiss came from the armor. A sigh. “No.”
“So,” said Shelly, turning back to Stealth, “the most sophisticated weapons platform on the planet has spent the past two years in the hands of an untrained civilian who didn’t want to be using it in the first place, and you think it’s suspicious I want to put an experienced soldier behind the controls?”
“I find it suspicious,” said Stealth, “the matter was not brought up until we were here and disarmed.”
The colonel looked up at the nine-foot battlesuit. “You call that disarmed? I think if Dr. Morris disagreed with me, there wouldn’t be much anyone could do to stop her, would there?”
“It’s very simple,” said Sorensen. He peered at the elbow joint of the Cerberus armor. It was at his eye level, and he’d pushed his glasses up onto his head to squint at it. “We couldn’t train them because they’d died.”
“No wonder you’re a doctor,” murmured Cerberus.
Sorensen stepped away from the battlesuit and moved to one of the exes standing at attention. It was a dead woman with a square jaw. “It takes three to four hours for a corpse to make the transition to ex-humanity,” he said. “Lack of oxygen destroys the mind and memories, leaving only core survival patterns like eating, basic motions, and reaction to raw stimuli like sound or movement.” He set his glasses back on his nose and rapped the dead woman on the forehead. “There’s nothing there to train. It’d be easier to teach a grasshopper how to type.”
Then he went silent, staring into space.
“Doctor,” said the colonel.
“Madelyn had a baby bib with a grasshopper on it,” said Sorensen. He looked at Shelly. “Eva and I saved it. I’m sure it’s still boxed up in the attic at our house.”
“The exes, doctor.”
“Yes,” the older man muttered. “The exes.” He glared at them for a moment, then poked the dead woman in the forehead again. The ex rocked back and forth. “The physical structure of the brain still exists,” he said. “Just like a computer processor without power. The Nest restores electrical activity to key areas, allowing simple memories to form and reflexes to be redeveloped.”
Stealth interrupted him. “The Nest?”
Sorensen turned the dead woman’s head to the side before pointing at the green box. “Neural stimulator,” he explained. He looked annoyed by the question. “It took almost a year to find precisely the right regions of the brain, the correct amperage and voltage.”
“I would think decay within the brain would prevent such a device from functioning for long.”
The doctor shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “Yes, there’s initial decay. We have to give each subject several EEGs to make sure it’s still viable. But once the ex-virus takes hold the level of decay drops to almost nothing, so our largest worry is dehydration.”
Stealth tilted her head at Sorensen. “According to our research, the dead continue to decay, just at a decreased rate.”
He shook his head. “Your research is wrong. A lot of work was done before … before …” The doctor was lost in thought for a moment. “Before things went bad,” he said. “One of the last things they established about the ex-virus was that it’s lethal.”
Stealth shook her head. “It is harmless,” she said. “Individuals die from secondary infections, not from the virus itself.”
“Humans,” he said, nodding. “That’s not the problem. The ex-virus is a lethal bacteriophage. It attacks necrotic bacteria and uses them to reproduce. All necrotic bacteria. An ex’s decay rate drops by eighty-seven-point-eight percent.”
“They smell like they’re rotting,” said Cerberus.
“Material in their digestive tract or on their clothes,” the doctor said. “You notice none of these exes have the scent of decay on them. Once they’ve been cleaned, they tend to just smell like … well, clean skin. When you calculate in the resilience the virus creates in cellular membranes and the lower core temperatures in the afflicted—”
“Exes could remain active for years,” Stealth said.
“Almost eleven,” said Shelly, “by the last estimates we formulated here.”
“It’s a magnificent freak of evolution,” said Sorensen. “I’ve never heard of any organism in nature so perfectly suited to keeping its host alive. Or as close to life as possible, I suppose.” He shrugged and began to examine the Velcro fuzz on the female ex’s shoulder.
Cerberus shot a glance at Stealth while moving a metal palm back and forth before one of the exes. “Do they remember anything? About, you know, who they were.”
Sorensen glanced up from the Velcro and shook his head again. “That was my first hope, but no. They’re blank slates. Not a scrap of individuality or independent thought left in them. In fact, every time a battery pack dies, they lose any training we’ve given them and it’s back to square one.”
“You’re sure? What if they’re … comatose or something?”
“Positive. We’ve done numerous EEGs and MRIs. No activity at all in either the Broca’s or limbic regions, which means minimal language and emotion. I’d put their IQ below a lab rat at best.”
“A rat cannot be trained to follow complex commands,” said Stealth.
“Neither can the exes,” said Sorensen. “You can only issue one command at a time, and it must be an order they’ve been trained to follow. The most complex thing they grasp is a priority scale, that some commands can supersede others.”
“Priority?”
“On a few occasions we’ve gotten them to acknowledge soldiers over civilians, officers over enlisted men. There’s more work needed. Speaking of which”—he turned to Shelly—“if I may get back to my lab, colonel? I was in the middle of something.”
“Of course, doctor. Thank you for your time.”
“Shall I, sir?” said Smith. When the colonel nodded, the younger man guided Sorensen out of the Tomb.
“He’s a bit off,” said Colonel Shelly, “but believe me, he’s brilliant.”
Stealth was examining a Nest unit again. “Who is Madelyn?”
“His daughter,” said Shelly. “He lost his family at the start of the outbreak. We tried to evacuate them here to Krypton, but there was an accident. His wife and daughter were both killed.”
Stealth’s head tilted inside her hood. “Killed?”
“What would you rather hear, ma’am? Eaten alive? When he got the news it shattered him. He was in shock for months, and he’s still in denial. It’s not unusual to just find him sitting in a corner in his lab. He probably could’ve gotten the Nest done seven or eight months sooner but he has trouble focusing.”
The cloaked woman turned from the exes and walked out into the sun.
“If you don’t mind my saying, Dr. Morris, your companion isn’t very social.”
“No, she isn’t,” said Cerberus. The titan turned and followed Stealth outside.
The cloaked woman was a pillar of black in the sun-bleached road. “Are you going to give them the battlesuit?”
Another metallic sigh rasped from the armor’s speakers. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“They filmed the assembly procedure,” said Stealth. “There are four cameras in your work space. Two visible, two concealed. I would assume the office is monitored as well.”
“I’ll remember to be careful in the bathroom, too,” said the titan. “Look, they already know how to assemble the suit. That lieutenant said they’ve got all my records. They didn’t get anything from me they wouldn’t’ve figured out after doing it one or two times themselves.”
“Cerberus may have once been just a w
eapons platform,” said the cloaked woman, “and you were once just an engineer. But that is no longer the case. You have become a symbol to the people of Los Angeles. A hero. If you give the battlesuit away, that will go away as well. It will be just a weapons platform. You will be just an engineer.”
The huge lenses looked down at her. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
THE SUN HIT the horizon just as St. George crossed the Krypton fence line. He’d circled the base once to make sure they knew he was there. A group of soldiers waited for him. They didn’t aim their weapons at him as he landed, but they didn’t make a point of aiming them away, either.
“Hey,” he said, pushing the biker goggles away from his eyes. “I think you were expecting me. I’m St. George.”
One soldier stepped forward. He was about the same age as the hero and wore a single chevron on his chest. “Sir,” he said, “we weren’t expecting you until later this evening.”
“I got done early in Los Angeles. Decided to see if I could race the sun.”
None of them relaxed. “Do you have any ID on you, sir?”
St. George blinked. “Seriously? Are there a lot of people trying to get onto the base who can fly?”
“Standard procedure, sir,” said the soldier. “If you don’t have ID someone here on base will have to vouch for you.”
Twin lines of smoke curled out of St. George’s nostrils. “Well,” he said, “I forgot my wallet about a year and a half ago, so I guess somebody’ll have to vouch for me. Is Freedom around?”
“Captain Freedom is in a meeting,” said another soldier. This one was pushing fifty and had a fair amount of gray in his hair. Again, the hero saw only one chevron. If memory served, it meant the man was a private.
“Look,” St. George said. “Can I be blunt?”
They shuffled on their feet.
