Enhanced

by Ben Brown

  But what?

  It bothered him. Zac had gotten along for countless years not needing anyone, not a soul. Then he met Lea, a woman who hadn’t said thirty words to him, but she was part of him in a way he didn’t understand. Zac knew that if push came to shove, he would put his life on the line for her. And she would do the same for him. How did he know that? Why was he more certain of that than anything else he had ever felt, or known? It was truly like he’d awakened from a coma, to see the one person who really cared for him sitting at his bedside, gently stroking his hand. That person was willing him back to consciousness. Willing him back to a life that he’d been absent from. Zac wanted that new life to start right now, not a second later.

  It was early, 4:30am, according to the clock on the wall. He decided to have a look around.

  Zac got dressed and headed for the door. It was unlocked — that surprised him. He wasn’t a prisoner after all, unless this door didn’t lead anywhere important. The door opened onto the short hall that led back to the room he’d left earlier. Zac entered the room, which was empty apart from some electronic equipment and the computers along the walls. A desk and chair sat in the corner of the room. On the desk sat the papers Skinner had been looking at the evening before. Zac walked over and picked them up, the front page read:

  Subject 8.

  Zachary Thomas.

  D.O.B 10.9.79

  He read as fast as he could, devouring every word. Zac was stunned at the details it contained. Medical records, school records — these you could find without too much work — but the details that concerned him were things like childhood friends, many of whom had been interviewed. It even contained his likes and dislikes in areas as varied as film, food, music and art.

  His political leanings, things he’d purchased on-line — they had even found things he’d downloaded from Lime wire and torrent sites.

  How did they find all this out, and why?

  Zac heard the door opening; he turned in time to see Lea enter.

  “Enjoying the reading material?” She smiled.

  “How the hell did you get all these details?” Zac demanded as he waved the unsettling document in her direction. “My old friends are in here. I’d forgotten most of them. So how did you find out all of this?”

  Lea’s smile disappeared.

  “I didn’t find anything, Doc did. He’s good at research, whether it’s scientific or personal information. If he wants to know something, he’ll find it out.” She snatched the papers from his hand.

  “But why is it important who I played with as a kid? Or what I download from the net?”

  Lea paused for a second and then answered. “Doc likes a full picture of the people he works with. If all your friends at school were bullies, then most likely you were, too. Previous friendships through early life help shape the person you become. If you’re downloading hard-core porn, then you could be a pervert, or you could be susceptible to blackmail. Most people hide this sort of thing well, but it’s still who you are. Considering what he does here, it could be very dangerous to unlock abilities if that person is a nut.”

  Zac considered this. It seemed reasonable, and then something occurred to him.

  “Wait, he’s unlocked a nut hasn’t he? He didn’t check one of his subjects well enough, and he unlocked someone he shouldn’t have!”

  Lea seemed shaken by what he’d said. She looked away from him, trying to hide her face.

  “What is it? Lea, if you don’t tell me, then I’m walking out of here. If I can’t trust you, then forget it!”ssss

  Lea sighed, dropping her shoulders as if she’d given up on hiding the truth.

  “He did unlock someone he shouldn’t have, and that person has become a threat to us and to the world. He became extremely unbalanced after his code was unlocked. He wasn’t strong enough to handle all the changes that happened to him. His mind began to slip. His self-control began to lapse. He started to become violent — very violent.”

  She almost choked up, but swallowed hard and continued. “The more Doc and I tried to help him, the more he pulled away, until he killed someone — someone close to me. And then he … disappeared.”

  She sat in the chair and talked, her floodgates open. She couldn’t stop.

  “D … Doc and I have hunted him since,” she said, tears coursing down her cheeks, “but he is powerful, too strong for me or the other subjects to handle. He has killed several people since then, and we can’t stop him.” She paused and sniffed. “That’s why we need you.”

  She looked up at him, eyes wet from crying. Her breathing was short and irregular. She fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose.

  “We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Zac. You have the potential to overpower him. You could be the strongest of all the subjects. Nevertheless, Doc needed to be certain. He didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. He knows you’re the one Zac — he doesn’t doubt you, he doubts himself. He feels that all the deaths are on his hands for making a mistake, and he won’t let it happen …”

  Zac cut her off. “Then why is he messing around with people’s lives, as if he’s God? We’re not ‘subjects’, we’re human beings. I was happy enough with my life, and now I don’t know what’s going on!”

  Lea’s voice rose as she became visibly angry. “Doc does see us as people. He calls us subjects to protect our identities from each other. Subject one, Dominic, is Doc’s son! Doc knows he must stop him at any cost. It kills Doc, knowing that he did this to his own son; but he was trying to help Dominic. He didn’t think that Dominic’s issues would affect the recoding. In fact, he thought it would help him.

  “Dominic, like his father, is brilliant, and from a very early age many said that one day he would out-shine his father. However, at the age of sixteen, he started to show signs of mental instability. He started making unfounded claims about his research and the advances he had made. It became clear that although brilliant, Dominic was losing his mind. Doc became obsessed with helping him. That’s why he dropped out of public life. When he discovered the genetic code in Dominic, he believed that reactivating it would help him. He was wrong, and he knows that now.”

  Lea’s eyes dropped to the floor. She apparently knew she was saying too much, but she seemed relieved, as if a great weight had lifted off her.

  “How did you get involved?”

  “Before Doc turned the code on in Dominic, he needed more subjects to make sure that Dominic wasn’t an anomaly. He needed to know that he wasn’t the only human with the code. He needed to crosscheck his findings. Doc designed software to search the world’s genetic and medical databases. After two years of hunting, he found two more subjects.”

  “You were one of those subjects, weren’t you Lea? Can you say who the other one was?”

  As Lea answered, she looked at him with a pained expression.

  “Yes, Doc found me and — my brother Ian. We both had the code. We were living in London with our mum. Doc came to see us and to ask permission to do some tests. When he saw how we were living — our mum had a drug problem and dad was gone — he convinced our mum to let us go with him. She couldn’t wait to see the back of us. I was nearly eighteen and would have left soon anyway, but Ian was sixteen. I thought anywhere was better than living in that flat with her.”

  “But weren’t you worried? I mean he could have done anything to you, and you just left with him?”

  Lea raised her eyebrows as she pondered Zac’s question. “I didn’t really think about it, I just wanted Ian out of there. I liked Doc right off; I knew he was a good person. Trust me, living with my mum, I met a lot of her … let’s say, ‘boyfriends’. You soon learned to tell who the real bad ones were. Doc isn’t one of them.”

  Zac nodded, trying to look as if he understood. Of course he couldn’t. He’d had a good childhood. Parties and sleepovers. The normal stuff, nothing like Lea’s. Maybe going off with a stranger did seem reasonable, and if that was the case, she mus
t have had a rotten childhood.

  “Doc brought us back here and we met Dominic. Sure, Ian and I thought he was a bit weird, but we liked him well enough. We liked the Doc straight off. After a few months, we were like a family. About six months had gone by when the Doc told us what he wanted to do. We trusted him, so he unlocked all of our codes. Within hours, we could feel the changes starting. Within a week, I could really see things happening. We were all stronger. Our reflexes were off the scale, and we got smarter. You name it, we could do it.”

  She smiled as she said the last bit, but a distant look came over her.

  “We all changed. Dominic was changing really fast, but instead of his mental issues easing, as Doc expected, they got worse. Much worse. His delusions turned to megalomania. He became violent, and uncontrollable.”

  Lea was crying again. “One day Ian came into this room.” Lea looked around the room gesturing with her hands. “And he found Dominic with his hands around the Doc’s neck, his own father! Ian pulled him off Doc. Dominic was in a rage, and he … he ripped my brother apart. He killed him! Then he left Doc for dead! He escaped and we have been hunting him ever since.”

  Lea looked up at Zac.

  “We have to stop him! He’s mad! We have to …”

  She was crying uncontrollably now.

  Zac knelt beside the chair and put his arms around her. Her pain was so raw he could feel it. He kissed her on her cheek and whispered, “I’m sorry; I don’t know what to say, except this — I’ll help, and if you trust Doc, then I trust Doc.”

  She pulled her head away from his shoulder and looked into his eyes. Zac could see and feel every bit of her pain.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  3

  Doc walked in to find Zac and Lea still hugging. Both looked at him.

  “Good news, Doc.” said Lea, as she stood to approach the old man. “Zac is going to help us.”

  “Excellent!” replied the old man enthusiastically. “What changed your mind, my boy? I know Lea can be very persuasive.”

  “She told me about Dominic and Ian. I’m sorry, Doc, but I need to know. Why is Dominic so powerful?”

  Doc stopped in his tracks, the color drained from his face.

  “I see.” He was looking at Lea as he spoke. “Yes, Lea was right to tell you. It’s hard for me to talk about. I severely misjudged things. I let my love for Dominic cloud my judgment. That won’t happen again.

  “In answer to your question, the reason he is so powerful, as you put it, is his code. It is very advanced in comparison to the other subjects. He has lines of code that I haven’t seen in any other subjects until now. You, Zac, have the same lines of code as Dominic. However, he wanted more, so without my knowledge he began to manipulate his own code using nanites. I trusted him blindly, so I didn’t check his work carefully enough. As a result, we have a very dangerous and unstable man out there. I want to show you the video footage of his attack. I warn you, it is very graphic, but I think you should know what we are facing.

  “Lea, maybe you should leave.”

  Lea nodded and left the room.

  Zac turned his attention to the monitor Doc was sitting at.

  “Are you ready?” the old man was grim faced.

  Zac nodded as he sat next to him.

  Zac wasn’t ready. No one could be, not for what he saw on that monitor. He watched in silence as the brutal scene played out in front of his eyes.

  “Dominic, son, this hasn’t worked. We need to reverse things. I …”

  “What do you mean? Things have worked better than I hoped. The fact is you are intimidated by my abilities, which is normal for a lesser human.”

  As Dominic spoke, Doc, on the screen, became nervous. Clearly he knew his son was on a knife-edge.

  “I think we took a wrong turn, son. We need to start again.”

  “‘Son’. Don’t call me that! You think of those other two as yours, and I won’t be grouped in with that filth. Mother was the only one who cared. She knew me. She loved me and you don’t. You just want to control me. You’re threatened by my genius.”

  Dominic grabbed his father by the throat and began to squeeze the life out of him. Doc wasn’t struggling — he was still pleading with his son, hoping that reason would prevail.

  “Please, son, you’re killing me!” Doc gasped.

  “I know.” Dominic laughed, with delight in his eyes. Zac could tell he was enjoying this act of violence. He relished every gasp for breath his father took.

  “I know!” he repeated.

  The door burst open and a teenage boy ran in excitedly. The boy was Lea’s brother, Ian.

  “Hey, Doc, look what I got — what are you doing, Dominic?”

  He was at least ten feet from Doc and his attacker, but he covered the distance in a single jump, hitting Dominic hard in the side. The impact broke Dominic’s hold on the now unconscious Doc. The two landed on the floor in a heap. Dominic responded with amazing agility.

  “You little fool!” he screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”

  In one fluid movement, Dominic was on the boy. Ian fought with all his strength, but Dominic was like a giant snake. He wrapped himself around the boy's body, as if his bones had turned to rubber. He twisted around Ian’s torso and worked his way up to his head. Soon one arm was around Ian’s shoulders and the other around the terrified boy's head. Dominic brought his mouth to Ian’s ear.

  “I’m going to rip your head off, and there’s no one here to stop me!”

  “No, Dom …” Before Ian could get the words out, his head had been ripped from his neck. Ian’s body twitched, with Dominic still wrapped around it. Blood pumped from Ian’s mangled neck. Then the boy’s body became still. Silence filled the room. Dominic released the body slowly; he stood up and looked at his father.

  “Perhaps we can finish this another time?”

  Dr Skinner heard nothing.

  Ian lay in a pool of blood next to the man he had come to think of as a father. The small Superman figure he had excitedly bought for Doc as a joke, lay broken beneath him.

  Dominic left, smiling at the pain he had inflicted.

  The screen flickered and turned off. Doc and Zac sat in silence as both stared at the now blank screen. Zac’s hand reached for the old man; it found his shoulder. He could feel the old man’s body shuddering as he struggled to control his tears.

  Zac waited until he had the strength to ask the question that was burning in his mind. “How could he do that? His body was like, rubber or something. He wrapped around that poor kid like a snake!”

  As Zac spoke, he looked from the monitor to Doc. The old man had tears in his eyes as he struggled to respond.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure how he did it. However, my hypothesis is this. Dominic, has not only added more lines of code to his D.N.A., he also uses the nanites to manipulate his cell structure at the molecular level. To this end, I believe the nanites are still active in his body, making changes second by second, as he needs it. The nanites were originally designed to deactivate after six hours, but his seemed to be able to replicate and evolve.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Skinner hit some keys on a keyboard to bring up another screen on the monitor. “Ian must have injured Dominic in some way. I found some of Dominic’s blood on the floor, and this is what I found. The devices you see on the screen are the nanites from Dominic. They are the most advanced nanites I have ever seen. This is due in part to Dominic’s brilliance in the field of Nanotechnology. However, the nanites are evolving. This is adding to the device’s sophistication. This gives Dominic abilities beyond imagination. We know he can manipulate his bone structure, as seen in the attack. More than that is unclear.”

  “You’re not going to use those things on me are you?” Zac asked with concern; how else would Doc think he could help?

  “No, my boy, these things are wrong.” He pointed at the computer monitor that displayed Dominic’s nanites.

  �
��These things are an abomination. I will use nanites, the ones I have designed. My nanites are harmless. Once they have unlocked your code, they simply deactivate and your body absorbs them. The reason we need you, Zac, is your code. It is as advanced as Dominic’s, if not more. Therefore, you should be able to deal with him more efficiently than anyone else could. You see, Dominic thinks the nanites he has built are an advantage, but they are not. They make him even more unstable! I think that you will be able to stop him, maybe even bring him home.”

  “Stop him? You think I may need to kill him, don’t you?” As the words left his mouth, Zac found it hard to believe he was even considering this, even if it was the right thing to do.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, everything had scared him — why didn’t this?

  Doc’s eyes seemed distant.

  “I hope you can bring him home, but he is sick, very sick. He must not hurt anyone else. He is finding and developing his own subjects, and he will soon be unstoppable.”

  “What? How is he doing that? I thought he was just hiding.”

  Doc looked at Zac as he considered his remarks. “People like Dominic don’t hide. He wants power! He’s getting funding from someone in the weapons industry. We’re not sure who, but it’s a lot of money. He has also managed to lock us out of nearly all the D.N.A. databases around the world. We only just found you in time. We think he wants you dead, Zac. You’re his biggest threat.”

  “Is he building an army or something?” Zac already knew the answer to his question.

  “We’re not sure. He has a lot of subjects; it’s unclear how many. It could be hundreds, even as high as a thousand. Many have weaker codes, and therefore, fewer abilities. I would say that the weapons industry would be able to use these people as assassins, rather than an army. There are not enough people with the code to make a usable army, and of course not everyone will do as Dominic would want.”