Blue Shadow

by Brad Magnarella

  “Of course,” I said dryly.

  “During testing, Centurion found he responded to suggestions. Soon he was able to carry out complex commands—programming, the researchers called it. He was eventually sent to Sigma Base, where he accompanied basic missions. The researchers wanted to know whether he could continue to operate effectively in the field. That’s where you encountered him. Baine Maddox asked for, and received, permission to take Olaf on an oversight mission with your Team 5. Centurion didn’t know Baine’s intentions.”

  “So what are you saying? He’s a zombie?”

  “A crude term,” she said stiffly, “but if that’s how you would prefer to think of him…”

  My heart rate had settled back down. If Olaf lacked free will, then maybe he wasn’t to blame. But there remained other issues—sending someone like him into conflict not the least of them. “Regardless,” I said, shaking my head, “if all of this is true, if he was programmed, then he’s a liability. What’s to stop someone from getting him to work against us?”

  “That’s been addressed,” Sarah replied. “He’s been encoded.”

  “Encoded? I’m going to need a little more to go on than that.”

  “Humans possess oxytosin, a hormone that enables us to bond with and trust others. The researches found that by injecting Olaf with a high dose of oxytosin, he responded to instructions from a person whose image was shown to him on an order far greater than anyone else. He imprints on them, like a child to his mother. Right now he’ll follow commands from the team and two researchers. That’s all. In fact, he’s already been instructed to ignore commands from anyone else.”

  “So if someone like Baine were to come along and tell him to mow us all down with a stream of .50 cal fire…?”

  “Baine is dead,” she answered.

  “I’m aware of that. I’m just using him as an example.”

  “It wouldn’t happen.”

  “Not even with a shot of oxytosin.”

  “The research and compound we use are classified. Someone like Baine wouldn’t know what to administer, or even to administer anything in the first place. And the effect wouldn’t be instantaneous. We would have sufficient warning that something was amiss. Now if that’s all…”

  “What does he think about all of this?”

  Sarah blinked at me from behind her glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “Shouldn’t Olaf have some sort of say in how he’s being used?”

  “How can he? He’s nonliving.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “You’re concerned with the ethical issues,” she said in understanding. “When Olaf signed on to Centurion he agreed to donate his body to Centurion’s research division in the event of death. He asked for this.”

  The argument was flimsy as hell, no doubt bolstered by a platoon of Centurion lawyers somewhere. “Are there others like him?” I asked. “Is Centurion building an army of zombies?”

  In my negotiations with Purdy, I had made it clear that, save to develop a cure, my wolf condition was off-limits to researchers. I didn’t want anyone attempting to replicate what I’d become.

  Sarah shook her head. “Though other soldiers have responded to the tissue-regeneration regimen, none have done so as dramatically. And none have returned from the dead. The research on Olaf is ongoing. We’re still trying to determine why his case is so unique.”

  “And in the meantime we use him as a soldier,” I said bitterly.

  “Yes. An injury-resistant soldier. Just think if we could say the same for all of our soldiers one day.”

  She sounded like she was reading from a script, but it made me think of Parker, my former civil affairs officer. I wondered if an injection of the tissue-regenerating drug would have spared him from the dragon’s lethal ice blast.

  “We’ll see how it goes,” I allowed at last. “But at the first sign something’s off, I’m pulling him.”

  Sarah simply nodded. “Was there anything else?”

  I gestured toward the closed door to the conference room. “Is this the entire team?”

  “There’s actually one more. He should be—”

  At that moment, the front door to the building clattered open and a figure bisected the flare of sunlight. Combat boots clomped loudly down the corridor. As the door slammed closed, the man who’d come to get me that morning arrived in front of us red-cheeked and puffing, his mutton-chop sideburns shiny with sweat.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Rusty said as he adjusted his trucker hat. “Had to run Mr. Purdy back to the main campus.”

  “We haven’t gotten started yet,” Sarah replied. “Have a seat inside. We’ll be there shortly.”

  Rusty nodded, then glanced over at me. “Captain,” he said formally, before pulling the conference room door open and stepping inside.

  “He’s on the team?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Keeps getting better,” I muttered.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah, there is. When Purdy made his pitch, he said I’d be heading a division of special operatives. I assumed he meant a dozen or so trained soldiers—what I’m used to. But there’s only six of us, including you. And we seem a little short on pros. I mean, there’s a guy in there who calls himself a priest, smoking like a chimney and sucking down booze.”

  “I’ll be going over everything shortly. As for Yoofi’s habits…” She patted the stack of files. “That information is in his profile. You can review all of them following the meeting.”

  “Why the tease? If he’s an alcoholic, just tell me.”

  “Like I said, you can go over their profiles following the meeting.”

  “I don’t like surprises.”

  “Me neither, and we’re already behind schedule. Why don’t we rejoin the team.” Her patience apparently spent, she turned and opened the door. I peered past her at my new team.

  A priest, a ninja, a zombie, and a guy who looks like he should be working crew on the carny circuit, I thought as I followed Sarah back inside. It sounded like the setup to an awful joke.

  And let’s not forget the werewolf, I reminded myself.

  5

  “Welcome to day one,” Sarah said as I took a seat in the large gap between Rusty and Olaf.

  With that bit of preamble, she pulled a small remote control from her pocket and pressed a button. LEGION appeared at the top of the large screen, spaced to cross the seams between the LCD panels, and a series of bullet points dropped into place underneath. A giggle emerged from Yoofi’s cloud of smoke.

  “There are beings on earth that, for the majority of people, exist only in fiction. The fact is, most of these beings have coexisted with humans since the earliest civilizations, carving out niches for themselves as societies spread and became more complex. In many cases the beings pass for humans; in others, they meld with them. Some, however, prey on them.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw the three teenaged boys—vampires—draining Billy’s blood.

  “Centurion classifies those cases as Prodigium 1s or Prod 1s. Those are the cases we’ll be called to put down.”

  “Hell yeah,” Rusty drawled.

  Great, a trigger-happy poser, I thought. Just what we need to round out this “team.”

  The screen changed to a map of the world that looked like something from the Centers for Disease Control. The majority of the map was dark, but yellow, orange, and red crosses clustered here and there, and they looked like outbreaks. Most of the clusters appeared to coincide with major cities. The rest were isolated, scattered around with no apparent rhyme or reason.

  “For the past decade, Centurion’s computers have been scraping and analyzing info on suspected Prod 1 cases, using crime databases and news reports. The crosses represent the frequency of Prod 1 homicides, with the color indicating the degree of certainty that they were, in fact, committed by Prod 1s. Yellow being at the lower end of that spectrum and red in the high-certainty range.” A laser dot appeared from Sarah’s
remote, and she moved it around the map. “Prod 1s appear to operate primarily in dense population centers, but they can turn up anywhere.”

  As her laser pointer touched some of the isolated crosses, I noticed a few in east Texas, where I’d grown up. One of them must have represented the vampire attack on Billy.

  “Prod 1s are poorly understood by officials, when they’re even acknowledged at all. Those homicides often end up as cold cases. There are exceptions, however. Last summer, New York City implemented a program to eradicate Prod 1s that had become embedded in their city.”

  She clicked the remote and the map changed to shaky footage of a street scene. Screams sounded from off camera as a huge fiery creature, blood spouting from a severed wrist, stalked toward a man on the ground.

  “Look at that!” Yoofi exclaimed.

  A second man, whom I immediately recognized as Prof Croft, stepped up and swung his sword into the creature’s neck. The blade seemed to lodge there. Following a struggle that involved the creature’s severed hand seizing Croft’s calf, the wizard shouted one of his magic words and nearly blew the creature’s head from its shoulders. He then covered the man on the ground as a hail of automatic fire from off camera completed the decapitation of the flaming hulk and dropped its body to the street.

  As the footage ended, Yoofi parked his cigar in the corner of his mouth to applaud. “Way to go, brother!”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Rusty put in, slapping Yoofi a high five.

  Croft’s efforts were impressive—damned impressive. It was a shame I’d had to reject his offer of teaming up. But ten years to a cure was simply too long, and New York looked to be in good hands.

  “The Prod seen here is known as a ghoul,” Sarah said. “You’ll be learning about all classes of Prods in the coming weeks. As you see, they can be killed. The problem is cost. New York’s program required more than one hundred additional officers and personnel, a special consultant, and equipment. Once property damage was factored in, the total ended up in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s not sustainable. Indeed, at the start of his second term, the mayor quietly shuttered the program. Legion will offer better results at lower costs.”

  Though Purdy had tried to sell Legion to me as a humanitarian program, it was a mercenary outfit through and through. With the data Centurion had gathered, their reps were meeting with officials in high-concentration areas to discuss the problem and, of course, the solutions Legion could offer.

  We would be battling beings who hurt humans, sure—but the idea of only providing those services to those who could afford them bothered me. Purdy had mentioned taking on pro bono cases once the program got its legs, but I didn’t see that happening in the first year.

  “The other problem is coordination,” Sarah continued. “No government or international body has done what Centurion is doing: compiling data with the goal of developing teams and best practices to confront the threats wherever and whenever they appear.”

  “But aren’t non-governmental actors tackling the threat?” I asked, thinking about Prof Croft and his magical Order.

  “Such groups exist,” Sarah replied. “But they tend to be regional and/or esoteric. And there’s little evidence to suggest they’ve been effective on a global scale. Indeed, we’ve witnessed a rise of new cases in the last several months.”

  I remembered what Croft had said about fresh rips around our world making it more susceptible to intrusion from other planes, but that wasn’t what I’d been getting at. “No, what I’m asking is whether there will be any efforts to coordinate with them. At the very least we’re going to want to avoid friendly fire incidents.”

  “At this stage, our operations are strictly confidential.” She cleared her throat and directed her glowing glasses back toward the screens. “Legion is a pilot program, hence its small size and the recruitment of operatives with unique skills. That would be you five.” She pressed the button again, and a column of our headshots appeared on the screens. The laser point squiggled over my wolf face.

  “Captain Jason Wolfe is a former special operations soldier and officer with a special knowledge of military weapons and equipment. His recent transformation has endowed him with enhanced strength, speed, and regenerative abilities, as well as wolf-like senses. He and I will be running Legion’s day-to-day operations, but he will also be your field commander.”

  I picked up a scoffing sound from Takara. I turned to find her lips set in a scowl. She wasn’t looking at me, but I could feel the challenge radiating from her. My nostrils instinctively flared, pulling in her aroma. It was strong, but not unpleasant, like crushed tea leaves. Beneath that scent was a sharper one that I couldn’t put my finger on. I looked away, forcing my shoulders to relax.

  On the screen, the laser pointer fell to the next image, which happened to be hers. “A former disciple of the Phoenix Temple in Iga Province, Japan, Takara is an expert in ninjitsu. She excels in stealth, sniper operations, demolitions, and close combat, particularly with blades.” Sarah’s delivery was matter-of-fact. “Takara can also fly short distances.”

  Rusty spun toward her. “You can fly?”

  Takara ignored him and remained staring straight ahead.

  “She will assist in operational planning,” Sarah continued. “And though this has yet to be verified, she is said to—”

  “Peasant legends,” Takara cut in. “Not important.”

  Though Takara had barely raised her voice, a sudden tension filled the room. I caught my gaze switching between the two women, anxious to hear the information Takara hadn’t wanted shared. But Sarah only nodded and moved the pointer down.

  Guess I’ll have to wait to read her profile.

  “Yoofi Adjaye is a priest of the Gomba tribe in the western Congo. He has a relationship with an entity called Dabu, a god of tricks and the dead. By this relationship Yoofi is able to channel energies that can be used for a variety of operational purposes, including deception.”

  Yoofi broke into loud laughter, looking around as though we were all in on the joke. When no one joined him, he took a swig from his flask and chuckled some more. I swore under my breath. If I couldn’t train that happy shit out of him, it was going to be a long year.

  The pointer dropped to Rusty’s headshot. “Next up is Russell Hackett, from Maysville, Kentucky. He’s been with Centurion for the last six months, working in the security division. Largely self taught, he’s an expert in weapons, electronics, and vehicles.”

  Rusty leaned back and crossed his arms. “Won the Mason County demolition derby four years straight.” His self-satisfied smile soured as he added, “Wouldn’t let me compete in a fifth, though. Said I was juicing with nitro, but without a lick of proof. Damned politics.”

  “He also patented a secure wireless motion-detection system that Centurion purchased last year,” Sarah continued. “That’s how we first learned about him. A medical condition kept him out of the military … and most other forms of steady employment, for that matter.”

  “Attention deficit disorder,” Rusty announced. “Hell, I just get bored easy.”

  “He’ll be contributing to Legion in a non-combat capacity,” she finished.

  Thank God, I thought.

  “And then there is Olaf Kowalski.” I caught Sarah glancing over at me. “Originally from Poland, he is a Centurion soldier with a specialization in light infantry weapons and tactics. He is also a beneficiary of Centurion’s tissue-regeneration protocol. He can heal from light wounds instantaneously and more extensive wounds, including bone and organ damage, within twenty-four hours.”

  Yoofi’s eyes glittered as he leaned forward. “Now this I would like to see.”

  Olaf looked at Sarah, who nodded as if to say that he could go ahead. From beneath the table, a large combat knife appeared in his grip. Turning his right arm over, palm up, he drew a line from his elbow to this wrist. Thick blood welled from the wound and instantly coagulated. Olaf used the edge of the blade to scra
pe the blood neatly away. Beneath was a thin scab that curled up at both ends and fell to the table. The remaining scar smoothed until it became indistinguishable from his pale skin.

  “Pretty cool,” Rusty said.

  “And you can do this too?” Yoofi asked me.

  “Yeah, but you’re gonna have to take my word for it.”

  Yoofi laughed and fell back into his smoke. Even Rusty smirked. But my gaze lingered on Olaf. I was still grappling with the idea he wasn’t at fault in the bombing. Hell, I was still grappling with the whole “non-living” thing.

  He replaced his knife in a sheath and raised his eyes to mine. I’d mistaken his bland look earlier for indifference, but now I saw that there was simply nothing there.

  “And everyone here has met me,” Sarah said, drawing my gaze back to the screens. “Sarah McKinnon. In addition to running day-to-day operations, I’ll be joining you in mission operations as chief investigator and medic. I’ll also be conducting research in the field.”

  As odd-ball as we were, I was starting to see how each member might fit into a traditional Special Ops role. Sarah would act in intelligence and medical capacities; Rusty could handle communications and weapons, with Olaf possibly acting as a junior weapons sergeant; Takara could be used as a sniper and for demolitions; and Yoofi … I didn’t know quite where he fit in yet. Of course all of this was just a mental exercise until I could assess everyone’s skills myself.

  “The Legion Program is highly classified. You’ve already signed confidentiality agreements, but before we do anything, it’s crucial we go through Centurion’s updated policies and procedures for the program.” When Sarah clicked the remote, an exhausting display of numbered headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings appeared on the screen; the paragraphs beneath were thick with legalese. My muscles went jumpy at the idea that this could last the rest of the day.

  I took that as my cue and stood. “Can I address the team?”

  I could tell by Sarah’s rapid blinking that I was upsetting her carefully laid out schedule, but she yielded the front of the room. “Of course,” she said.