H.A.L.F.: The Makers

by Natalie Wright

  Anna grabbed the binoculars. “Good eye.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s pulling something from his pocket. Looks like a piece of paper. He looks confused. Now he’s talking to the doorman. Doorman’s pointing up the street. He nods.”

  “Getting directions to somewhere?”

  “Yup. He’s on the move. Let’s follow him.”

  “How will following this guy away from the Croft penthouse help us get into it?”

  “I have no idea. But it beats sitting in this smelly car and staring at it.” Anna threw the binoculars onto the dash and turned the key.

  The car whined like a sick cat. “Oh, come on. Don’t do this now.” Anna hit the dash. She turned the key again and the engine rolled over and made a dying sound.

  “Come on. We’ll go on foot.” Jack had no idea who the guy was, but he was the first connection to the Makers that they’d seen. If they followed him, maybe he’d lead them to more information.

  Jack walked briskly to keep up with Anna as she jaywalked across three lanes of traffic. The man had a head start and walked quickly. They had to jog to catch up to him.

  The man turned left then right, and after about fifteen minutes, they were in a mainly residential neighborhood of brownstones and tree-lined streets dotted with corner cafés and small mom-and-pop shops. There were no doormen or limos.

  The man stopped and took the scrap of paper from his pocket. He looked at the building in front of him and shoved the paper back into his pocket. He looked back up the street in the direction from which he’d come, then headed down a basement stairwell.

  Anna continued following him.

  “Wait.” Jack pulled at her arm. “He looked back at us. Do you think he knows we’re following him?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he was just looking back in this general direction.” She continued on toward the building into which the man disappeared.

  Anna stopped by the stairwell. A sign in the basement window said ‘Trattoria Segreto’. As soon as Jack had caught up to her, Anna began to walk down the stairs.

  He caught her arm again. “A bit early for lunch, don’t you think?”

  She stopped and shot him an exasperated look. “Not too early for him. Come on.”

  “Maybe he’s picking up a take-out order. We can wait for him out here,” Jack said.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve heard of this place. It was in the news when I lived here. Notorious for being a place where mobsters hang out.”

  “And that’s another very good reason to wait for the guy out here.”

  “Come on, Jack. We can’t learn anything about what they’re doing by waiting out here. We’ve been staring at glass and steel for two days. Now one of Croft’s guys is at a mob hangout? Sounds fishy. Like something we should look into.”

  “Like something that will get us killed.”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “I’ll go in by myself and poke around.”

  “No.”

  Anna had already taken another step down. She turned icy-cold eyes on him. “Excuse me?”

  Jack had a bad feeling about the place. He’d had the same stomach-churning feeling when Erika had suggested leaving Earth in a spaceship. He’d ignored his gut feelings then. And now Erika and Ian were gone.

  Anna was as determined as Erika. Maybe even more so. Neither of them seemed to pay fear any attention. But fear existed for a reason. It kept people from doing damned fool things that got them killed.

  Anna had made up her mind. He could see it in her eyes. Jack doubted there was anything he could say to change her mind. But if he’d learned nothing else from his long journey into the surreal hell of A.H.D.N.A. and back, he’d learned to listen to that voice in his mind that said ‘Pay attention, stupid’. She didn’t have to listen. But at least this time he’d know that he tried.

  “Look, this whole scene feels – wrong. I don’t think you should go down there. Let’s go back to the car. We’ll go back to Thomas’ place and come up with our plan B.”

  Anna stepped back up to the sidewalk. “I have to do this. He’s here for a reason, and I have to know what it is. It could help us figure out a way in. And Alecto has already been here for weeks. Who knows what kind of shape she’s in. She may not last much longer.”

  “Then I’ll go in instead.”

  Anna laughed.

  “What? I can spy too,” Jack said.

  She reached up and planted a light kiss on Jack’s cheek. “You’re sweet, Jack. But you should leave the lying to me. You’re not very good at it.” Before Jack could respond, she made her way down the stairs.

  “What am I supposed to do while you play Mata Hari?”

  “Take a walk,” she called up to him. She dug the keys out of her pocket and tossed them to Jack. “I’ll be back in half an hour. Tops. Bring the car back and meet me here.”

  Anna opened the door and stepped into the dim light of the basement restaurant. Jack feared he was letting another woman walk into an unknown never to be seen again.

  28

  TEX

  The white light from above seared into Tex’s eyes like a laser. It made a halo of brightness around him. Everything beyond the light remained in shadow.

  He was once again naked. The stone table was cold beneath his bare body. A shiver began in his stomach and moved outward until his whole body shook uncontrollably. Nausea came over him like a wave and filled his mouth with an acrid taste. He wished he could vomit the bile that was caught in his throat, but for some reason it stuck there. A most unpleasant sensation.

  Feet shuffled and fabric rustled near him, but no one spoke out loud. They were likely communicating with each other telepathically. Tex tried to read their minds but was unable to. The Conexus had built a virtual wall around their thoughts.

  Without warning or a sedative to ease his pain, a sharp object sliced into the back of his head. His scalp was wet and a pool of liquid gathered where his head met the stone table. A red-hot knife of pain twisted into his skull, sending splinters of heat throughout his head like a fiery spider’s web.

  He tried to raise his hand, to yank out of his head whatever foul object had been placed there. But it was no use. His hands and arms were pressed firmly to the slab. Invisible restraints held him still except for the shivers that racked his body. He tried to mentally sever the bonds, but his mind was too addled and weak. The restraints remained firmly bound around him.

  The hot tendrils wound their way through his grey matter. The pain was so intense he thought surely he would soon pass out. But as suddenly as the poker had jabbed into him, the throbbing ceased as though a switch had been flipped. Now there was only peace and stillness like he had never known before.

  The nausea passed. The uncontrollable shaking stopped as well. Relief flooded through him. Though the intense suffering might have lasted only a few minutes, it felt as though he’d been in torment all his life. But now he was filled with euphoria, the intensity of his agony matched by an equally intense joy.

  A word came to his mind unbidden. “Collective.” The word repeated itself over and over as a visual image formed in his mind to match the word. In his mind’s eye, he could see the Conexus. There were many of them, their hands joined, their eyes open and alert, their tiny mouths closed and set in the expressionless stare that they had mastered.

  The Regina sidled up to him in his mind’s eye. Her slim fingers touched his face, cool and light fluttery touches. She once again offered him the choice to join the Conexus collective willingly. “No more pain,” she whispered.

  They opened the door a bit and let him dip a toe into their collective mind. There was no hatred in the Conexus. Tex was no longer fearful or panicked. He was not hurt or angry. He was comfortable. Serene even. He had only to relax and allow himself to flow as a river to an ocean. If he dropped his mental barriers and permitted them to fully infiltrate his consciousness, he too could join their collective mind. He would no longer feel worry or fear, hurt
or loss. He would know only comfort and ease. He would be just another in the collective. He would have access to all that the collective knew. He would be all that it was.

  They had allowed him a window through which he could experience the Conexus without actually committing to it fully. He peered through the window and explored the Conexus like a tourist traveling a city by motor car. They noticed him but paid little mind as if he were a breeze at the back of the neck. The hive mind was busy with the chatter of doing, of organizing and calculating. It was like a constant clicking of tasks that must be done, then the sharing of knowledge gained from the doing.

  But there was no joy or hope. He sensed no love. How can they love? There are no individuals. There is only one mind.

  And the thought of love brought to mind that one person who had intrigued Tex so much. Was it last week? Or last year? Did I experience her at all? Or was she merely a dream that I had while restrained here on the hard, icy table?

  Tex combed through the collective mind much as one might search through files on a computer. He hunted frantically for any indication of Erika. He found mental images of the Conexus city, Tro, with its rows of grey hive-like houses and images of nameless humans pinned to tables, receiving injections. But none of the faces were Erika or Ian or Dr. Randall.

  As soon as he formulated the thought of Erika in his mind, it was as though doors slammed shut all around him. The chatter that had been a painful buzz and then an almost soothing whoosh of whispers was now completely silent.

  He was more alone than he had ever been before.

  A picture began to form in his mind. Erika and Ian. They were dressed as they had been when he first met them and standing in the desert. Erika’s hair was smoothly pulled back in a tail behind her head and her clothes looked freshly laundered. She smiled and waved, as did Ian. Are they waving at me? Do they see me?

  Ian’s clothes were also pressed and fresh looking. He had no beard growth, and his hair was short and well groomed, as it had been when Tex had first met him. In fact, both Ian and Erika looked even better than they had when he first met them.

  But what of Dr. Randall?

  The image was perhaps meant to reassure him – to get him to stop asking questions. But it had the opposite effect. The image was too smooth. Too perfect. It was static and unwavering. Erika and Ian looked like paper cutouts of themselves, pictures from a glossy magazine.

  That’s not Erika. The Erika he knew – the one saved in his mental files – was grittier. She seemed larger than she actually was merely from the power of her strong personality. The Erika he liked thinking about wasn’t this unrumpled, smiling denizen of joy. Erika was just this side of surly and was as likely to smirk at him as smile. But his Erika risked her life to save his. The Erika in his memories had flashed him a genuine smile and was not afraid of him despite the fact that he had given her ample reason to fear him. At least that was how he remembered her.

  “Why show me this false image unless you have something to hide? Let me see the real condition of my friends and of Dr. Randall.”

  The fiery tendrils of pain wound through his cerebral cortex once more. The shaking and nausea returned as well. Tex felt as though long, thin needles pressed into him unbidden, trying to obliterate all that made him Tex. The Conexus wanted to rip apart the very notion of his self and knit his yarns into the collective. He would be one of many nondescript threads.

  This thought, more than any that he had ever had, frightened him beyond his ability to measure. He had wanted only one thing for the whole of his life: to be free.

  As the slivers of pain tore into his brain, he understood freedom as he had never comprehended it before. True freedom began with the ability to think his own thoughts. His self grew out of that. On that score anyway, he had at least had a modicum of freedom during his captivity at A.H.D.N.A. At least there he had been free to think his own thoughts.

  In that moment of agonizing pain and terror at the thought of losing himself entirely, he could not help but wish that he was back at A.H.D.N.A., in the relative comfort of the dank walls and standard-issue blue cotton pants and flip-flops. He imagined himself eating the bland nutrition bars he had eaten all of his life and reading something from the approved reading list. Perhaps a book about human history, his favorite subject.

  Commander Sturgis came to his mind, her heels clicking on the concrete floor of the hallway, headed for the H.A.L.F. examination room. In his mind’s eye, her blonde hair was swept up at the back of her head, her suit unwrinkled, her eyes coolly regarding him. Though thinking of Sturgis often brought a feeling of dread, this time he was not afraid. Her words echoed in his mind: “You are special. Unique in all the universe.”

  Funny how he had never before heard the pride in her voice when she spoke of him, but it was there. She was a crazy woman, but in her own warped way, she cared about him.

  She would never destroy me. The thought lessened his hatred of her though it did not erase it.

  I cannot allow myself to be obliterated. He knew the Regina would not easily give up. She had tried to create a hybrid with Tex’s ability to mentally handle being part of the collective but had so far been unsuccessful. She labeled the hybrid she created ‘Infractus’ and considered it damaged. Tex, on the other hand, represented all that the Regina had hoped for in a hybrid being plus he brought new DNA to her. Though the Regina did not specifically threaten him with death, he felt certain that if she was not able to bring him into the collective, she would ‘harvest’ his genetic material then terminate him.

  Tex had lived through much in his relatively short life. And for the first time, he felt he had something – someone – to live for. He doubted Erika felt the same way about him that he felt about her, but it did not matter. His heart longed to see her again, to know she was safe. And he wasn’t going to lay down his defenses and simply submit to the eradication of all that it was to be him.

  He did not need to utter the word no. The Conexus knew his thoughts as instantly as he did. And their reply was instantaneous too.

  The tiny beads of pain that had found their way to his temples exploded into his frontal cortex. The bile that earlier had been caught in his throat ejected itself forcefully. A tube came from somewhere and roughly suctioned his throat, leaving it a raw, burning mess.

  Gone was the euphoric feeling they had gifted him. Taken was the simplicity and harmony of the hushed whispers of the collective. Tex’s skull reverberated with the echo of millions of voices screaming in a long, narrow tiled hallway.

  A lone voice cried out, raspy and cracked, loud and urgent. “Stop!” he shouted.

  But they did not stop. Their mind marched into his like an invading army, trampling over him without a care for the pain they caused.

  Tex tried his best to imagine walls springing up in his mind like bricks mortared around his consciousness. But the pain was so intense. It was nearly impossible for him to form a cohesive thought. It was like a thousand rats scurried into a warehouse full of filing cabinets and nibbled away at the papers until nothing but tiny, illegible shreds remained.

  A specter of darkness rose up around him, blotting out the intensely bright light and easing the pain in his eyes. He could not distinguish if the thing that loomed over him was real or created in his mind. Another wave of nausea flooded him followed by a chill that ran from his spine to his toes.

  His eyes perceived pure black all around him and his heart leapt to his throat. The flash of darkness brought a small bit of peace to his mind. He mentally beckoned it back, and this time allowed it to overtake him. He preferred to dive forever into a pit of blackness than live one more second in a world where he was stolen from himself.

  29

  ERIKA

  Erika’s lungs burned from lack of oxygen and her thighs throbbed from exertion as she jogged to keep up with Dr. Randall. He moves fast for an old guy. The wound on her left thigh burned, but it no longer hobbled her. There must be something in that goo that causes
cuts to heal faster. She was glad Dr. Randall had taken it as well as the antiviral.

  As they walked, Erika tried to shift her thinking about Tex. She’d convinced herself he was the enemy. Once her mind was made up about something, it generally stayed locked that way. Ever since they landed in the world of the Conexus, she’d assumed that Tex betrayed them.

  But Xenos had shattered her ideas about him. Tex, too, was a prisoner of the Conexus. And it sounded like he could be in worse shape than they were. Maybe even dead by now. Guilt wound its way into her gut, making her feel sick inside.

  Dr. Randall turned a corner and they entered a hallway that seemed familiar, even in the dark. It was like a memory plucked from a dream she’d had long ago.

  They were in the H.A.L.F. wing. Above them was the opening for the gate that had come down from the ceiling and behind which Dr. Dolan had been shot down.

  There were no flashing red lights or sirens whooping and wailing. There was only the musty dark. The hall was silent except for the hiss and sputter of water finding its way into the long-abandoned conduits.

  Dr. Randall slowed his pace. The toes of Erika’s shoes were wet, and she squished as she walked. They were in no immediate danger of a deluge, but it was only a matter of time until the few inches of water on the floor became a few feet. “How do we know which door he’s behind?”

  Dr. Randall didn’t immediately answer. At last he said, “We don’t. We’ll have to try them one by one.”

  Erika counted to herself. “Eight doors, Doc. I don’t think we have enough torch canisters for all of them.”

  Dr. Randall pulled the pack from his back and handed Erika a fresh canister. “Hopefully it’s not a dud.”

  Erika shoved the fresh canister of chemical fire into the end of the torch. “Pick a door.”

  Dr. Randall scanned the hallway but settled on the first door. He put his ear to it then called out, “H.A.L.F. – I mean, Tex?”