‘Thank you for taking us,’ Sophia said. ‘Not many would.’
The skipper shook his head. ‘I’m not going to judge you for what you’ve done. I don’t have that right.’
‘A lot of people would disagree with you there.’
Including herself sometimes. The more the mainstream media decried her crimes against humanity, the more she was starting to believe it. Lately, it had been wearing her down. In her dreams she was becoming the monster she had been painted. She injected all those women with the Chimera vector and watched them die. Nasira was there too, and the rest of her deceased team. Adamicz as well, the kind old man who had rescued her from the Fifth Column and deprogrammed her. The man who had given her freedom. He watched as she injected the women. The look of disappointment on his face broke her every time.
‘DC saved my life once,’ the skipper said, pacing the narrow gap between the computers on both sides. ‘There aren’t many real heroes left these days. They’re ground to dust before we even know they exist. This world has no place for them.’ He lifted a mug of coffee to his lips and slurped thoughtfully. ‘I’m happy to help good people, Sophia. If I can look back on today and say, I helped those people and they went on to do something good for this world, then I consider myself a lucky old son of a bitch.’
Sophia shook her head. ‘I’ll level with you, skipper. I don’t know if there’s any more good I can do. You might just spend the rest of your lives smuggling me around the world, hiding me from the Fifth Column.’ She picked dirt from under her thumbnail. ‘And somewhere along the line, my ticket comes up.’
The skipper frowned. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. And maybe you’re wrong. We’ll just have to see what destiny has in store for you.’
Sophia shifted uncomfortably on her feet. ‘How did you know we needed to escape so soon?’
‘It’s how we do things. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. We knew from back when the Council pulled you across the hot coals that things weren’t looking rosy. We prepared for the worst, and by damn that was the card we got dealt.’
Sophia heard footsteps down the narrow corridor behind her. She turned to see DC, Damien, Nasira and Benito assembled behind her. She introduced them all, except DC, to the skipper.
Damien took the skipper’s hand when he insisted, enduring what looked like a bone-crushing handshake. ‘Nice to meet you, Captain.’
‘Skipper,’ the man said, shaking Nasira’s hand equally as hard. Nasira didn’t wince. ‘Welcome aboard the Perseus,’ he went on, ‘the Akhana’s only nuclear-powered fast attack submarine.’
Nasira nodded her appreciation.
‘Thank you,’ Benito said.
‘I hope our medical officer is taking good care of your friend.’
‘She did an excellent job,’ Nasira said. ‘Give him a day and he’ll be on his feet and as irritating as always.’
‘You have some serious sonar equipment here,’ Damien said, looking around.
The skipper beamed. ‘That we do, son. Our sonar officer and his assistants here watch everything that comes in.’ He pointed to an array of screens that looked like something from The Matrix. ‘The key here is to listen passively. My people watch the acoustic data and can eavesdrop from miles out. The Perseus is covered head to tail in sonar arrays. We even tow one behind us to watch our blind spot.’ He nodded as he watched the sonar computer displays. ‘She’s a beautiful thing, bless her.’
‘How long is our trip to this other base?’ Damien asked.
The skipper opened his mouth but DC jumped in first. ‘Seven days, give or take two. Depends on what other craft we encounter along the way. We need to travel unnoticed and avoid anyone else’s sonar, so that means taking a time-consuming arc around anything in our path.’
The skipper moved between Damien and Sophia, coffee mug in hand. ‘Since you’ll be stuck for a week with us sons of bitches, pardon my language, it would be remiss of me not to give you a tour. Come through. It won’t take long.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Damien echoed with some nervous laughter that almost made Sophia laugh.
The skipper ferried them into what looked like a small diner. Sophia counted eight booths, one counter and two fire extinguishers. Only one of the booths was occupied with crew members.
‘This here’s the crew’s mess,’ the skipper said. ‘Did I mention we have excellent food? Four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner and midrats.’
‘Midrats?’ Benito asked.
‘Midnight rations,’ Nasira said.
‘You can fit everyone in here to eat?’ Damien said.
‘You bet. This shindig usually runs on shifts, but since we’re now a skeleton crew and we’re not fitted for weapons, we clock in at less than half. Forty-two crew.’ He grinned. ‘You can squeeze ’em all in here at once if you have the need, but we run on eight-hour shifts, three cycles a day.’
He moved back into the narrow corridor, with DC following first, then Damien, Nasira and Benito. Sophia fell into line behind them, smirking to herself whenever DC’s sword got snagged stepping through a hatch.
Above the crew’s mess was the sleeping quarters, which the skipper referred to as ‘berthing’. Bunk beds lined the walls, stacked three high and concealed only with blue curtains. The corridor through the bunks was so narrow Sophia had to walk sideways so her shoulders wouldn’t hit the beds.
‘We have over a hundred berths,’ the skipper said. ‘Only half are taken, just make sure you pick an empty one. There’s a locker under each mattress.’
Sophia pulled the curtain back on one bed, and found a man sleeping, his mouth agape. One hand was curled around a copy of the Akhana’s survival guide for humans, which Owen Freeman had written several years ago. The book contained much of his research on psychopathy but was only ever disseminated to the Shadow Akhana. She closed the curtain slowly.
‘Everyone onboard, you can trust,’ the skipper told her. ‘As much as you trust DC.’
Sophia smiled. ‘No offense, skipper, but I’ll take that with a grain of salt.’
‘Whatever keeps you alive, ma’am.’ He turned around so everyone behind him could hear him clearly. ‘I have clothes for y’all to change into. You’ll find them on the bunks at this end. They’re comfortable and you’ll thank me for it later. Shoes are in the trunk at the end — help yourselves, we have all sizes. Dinner in fifteen, don’t be late.’
* * *
Wearing his new one-piece blue overalls and white sneakers, size twelve, Damien squeaked into the mess. It was already full of crew. Judging by the conversation, the crew seemed to be a mix of Australian and American. He knew that many of the Americans were transfers from the Manhattan base after the hurricane had hit.
He spotted Jay at the far end, his neck wrapped in white dressing. He was sitting snugly with the skipper, two officers and the rest of Sophia’s group, all in their new blue overalls. The only person missing was Nasira. Damien made his way past the tables. Some of the crew looked up and nodded. He nodded politely in return. One guy shook his hand vigorously, catching him off guard. Despite the fact they’d just abandoned yet another Shadow Akhana base for unknown waters, morale seemed overly high. Everyone was talking and stuffing their faces with food. And god it smelled good. He’d forgotten the last time he’d eaten.
DC shuffled over on the seat to give Damien some room. He sat down opposite Jay and checked his G-Shock watch. It was 1920, somewhere around dinnertime.
‘Get stuck into some southern cooking,’ Jay said, pointing with his elbow to a large plate of fried chicken and bowls of gravy. ‘Fried chicken. Gravy’s real too.’
‘We use almond flour,’ the skipper said from beside Jay. ‘Gravy’s made with pan drippings, garlic and onion.’
‘The Shadow Akhana embraced the operative diet,’ Sophia added. ‘Almond’s about the only flour we cook with these days.’
Damien’s mouth watered as he seized a drumstick and sank his teeth into it. Juice dripped down his c
hin. Jay’s plate was already littered with chicken bones that he’d picked clean. Now he was washing it all down with a plastic cup of beer. Before Damien even realized how dehydrated he was, Jay had poured him a cup of water. He filled it to the brim so Damien would spill it, just like he used to do when they were kids and test subjects in Project GATE.
Jay grinned. Damien carefully brought the cup to his lips and drank while Jay stole one of his drumsticks.
‘How’s your neck?’ Damien said.
‘Shoulder,’ Jay said. ‘Good. Doc says the stitches come out in six weeks.’
Damien laughed. ‘So probably tomorrow then.’
An officer from the adjacent booth overheard. ‘You guys got super-healing or something?’
Another officer, who Damien recognized as the sonar officer from the command room, elbowed his comrade. ‘It’s the Chimera vector, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Damien said.
He didn’t really want to get into it. Last time he’d explained to an Akhana member what the Chimera vectors did, they’d started calling him Captain America.
‘Actually it’s two Chimera vectors,’ Benito said. ‘The healing comes from the Axolotl one. Accelerated repair and regeneration.’
Damien wanted to stomp on Benito’s foot but he was too far away. Benito was just encouraging these guys.
The first officer whistled. ‘Wouldn’t mind that one.’
‘What’s the other one?’ the sonar officer asked.
‘It’s the one that killed off half a billion women,’ someone else said. ‘You might’ve heard of it.’
The room went silent. Sophia stopped eating. Damien looked over his shoulder to find the officer who’d spoken. He was sitting in a booth further down the mess, a slight smirk on his face. Past him, Damien could see Nasira standing in the doorway.
Nasira had heard everything. She walked calmly to the officer and leaned over him, both hands on the table.
‘Just a question that comes to mind,’ she said. ‘Off the top of your head, how many times have you put your life on the line to protect the Akhana?’
‘I didn’t mean … I wasn’t trying to …’ the officer said.
‘To protect anyone?’ Nasira said.
‘I’ve served the Akhana for three years,’ the officer said.
‘It takes a certain quality in a person to go toe to toe with the Fifth Column on their playing field,’ Nasira said. ‘It’s called backbone. You might’ve heard of it.’
Damien watched Sophia stare at her food a moment longer before starting to eat again. His own appetite had faded as he realized exactly what he’d gotten himself — and Jay — into. Again. If the leader of the Akhana, Owen Freeman, was the Fifth Column’s most wanted, then Sophia was their second most wanted. And as Damien had discovered last time they’d joined Sophia on an operation, hanging out with one of the Fifth Column’s most wanted usually resulted in a very bad day. One that came with its fair share of near-death experiences.
Chapter Eight
Sophia climbed into her cot. She didn’t bother undressing. A hand appeared from the cot below. Nasira’s. She was holding Sophia’s childhood cassette player and pocket-sized German-English dictionary rolled in papers. They were the only real possessions she had left.
‘I grabbed them from your quarters before we rescued you,’ Nasira whispered.
Sophia took them. ‘Thank you.’
She held the bundle on her chest and closed her eyes. She was tired, but that didn’t count for much because her brain wasn’t switching off. She drew her curtain and turned on the bunk’s reading light. Her thoughts went to her parents, her sister, her brother. They were nothing now. Erased. As far as anyone else in this submarine was concerned, they’d never existed. They were her imaginary family, conjured long ago.
As a qualified and satisfactorily programmed operative, Sophia had been assigned her first operation: to assassinate a terrorist cell. This terrorist cell just happened to be her entire family. In the mind of her handler, Denton, it was some sick way of authenticating her programming and her loyalty. If she could be convinced beyond reason that her family were the enemy and she needed to kill them, and did it, she could kill anyone. She was fit for service.
Anger sparked inside her again. She pushed it down and looked at what Nasira had handed her. The papers … she’d forgotten about them. Scanned photocopies of Adamicz’s diary that she’d attached to a string of draft emails while in Belize and later printed.
Half in Polish and half in German, the diary documented the events throughout Project GATE that had led to Adamicz, Cecilia and Benito defecting to the Akhana. Benito had remained undercover while Cecilia faked her own death. Adamicz, somewhat less dramatically, had simply retired. Adamicz’s diary entries detailed their orchestration of Sophia’s kidnapping and deprogramming.
Adamicz’s last entry had been made not long before his death, but it was the earlier pages that had interested her, the German ones. She’d translated those using the German-English dictionary. Benito had suggested she just scan the pages, use character-recognition software to convert the handwritten words to text and then pump them into Google Translate. While it was tempting, she had never trusted the computers under Dolph’s control. Besides, she doubted the software would recognize one word of Adamicz’s skewed, tight writing.
This was the first time she’d read the diary entries in months. She arranged the photocopies from the beginning and found where she was up to: Adamicz’s first project with the Fifth Column. She placed her pocket dictionary on standby and got to work transcribing to her notepad.
June 4, 1958
Phase 1 volunteer subjects for Project Seraphim consist of thirty-two healthy, non-pregnant, pre-menopausal women and ten healthy men. Male and female participants are randomly divided into three groups. Each of the groups undergo electroencephalogram monitoring, and blood and urine sampling for two weeks (period 1—pre-exposure) before beginning exposure. When exposure begins (period 2—exposure), group 1 (n = 12 women, 2 men) and so forth are admitted to four weeks of testing.
Exposure of subjects commences with one week of sine waves, square waves and triangle waves. Subjects are exposed to range of frequencies between 5.2 and 9.6 hertz. Results indicate sine waves produce entrainment more successfully. Following this, three weeks exclusively of sine-wave field exposure. The sine-wave output produces a rotating magnetic field where there is gradual build-up, collapse and reversal of field intensity.
Some subjects demonstrate entrainment over wide frequency range, while others remain resistant to many frequencies. Entrainment occurs rapidly, within a quarter of second in most cases. If entrainment does not occur inside of one second, it does not at all. During entrainment, amplitude of subjects’ brain waves nearly doubles in size.
Entrainment above 8.6 hertz is consistent, whereas below 8.6 occurs in bursts. The subjects’ brains appear to fight the frequency to maintain own frequency. I record the brain generating low-amplitude beta frequencies in the range of 15 to 20 hertz during this fight phase. The lower the exposed frequency, the more often the subjects’ brains fight the frequency. By 5.2 hertz, there is almost zero success rate of entrainment.
Frequency range is successful in eliciting array of emotion that scales from complacency, depression and paranoia on lower end to uneasiness, frustration and agitation in mid-range, and anxiety, fear and anger on higher end. At the highest end of spectrum, a manic, uncontrollable rage is observed.
Interestingly, subjects are unaware of any mood change. They are also unaware of the ELF field itself, whether it is active or inactive, when field is terminated or initiated. Despite lack of awareness, subjects describe a variety of symptoms during exposure. Between 6 and 7 hertz, subjects report occasional ringing in ears, flushed face, fatigue, experience of tightened chest and increased pulse. And between 8.6 and 9.6 hertz, subjects report tingling sensation in fingers, arms, legs, teeth and roof of mouth. Three subjects report a metallic feeling in their
mouth. One subject reports tightness in both chest and stomach.
Monitoring follows exposure for one week (period 3—post-exposure) and subjects are closely observed and interviewed. Effects from exposure are observed as non-residual and do not remain in effect. A later phase will see long-term testing and analysis of residual effects.
Phase 1 has demonstrated that it is possible to alter change in subject’s brain-wave frequency and thereby alter mood and emotional state without subject becoming suspicious or concerned with the cause of alteration. I can make subjects feel relaxed with ELF exposure and I can make them feel scared with ELF exposure. Denton is satisfied with the results of phase 1 and has authorized proceeding with phase 2: transmission of coded messages through field. If successful, I will be able to make subjects believe they want to drink orange juice instead of apple.
* * *
When Sophia woke, the glowing tritium hands on her watch pointed to five after six and the miniature hand indicated morning. Breakfast was an hour away, but she wasn’t hungry. She rolled over, dislodging the papers covering her chest. The cassette player poked her in the ribs. She picked up the papers and reassembled them. She noticed some of the pages near the end were blank. She’d photocopied the original diary in a rush so it didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was a page near the end with more handwriting. It looked rushed. How had she missed this?
She skimmed the words, then sat up and bumped her head on the cot above. Cursing, she pulled the page closer.
Project Seraphim.
She turned the page. There was more. Five, ten, more than fifteen pages. She dug around her bed for a pen but couldn’t find one. She opened her curtains to let in more artificial light, then leaned out of her cot and hit Nasira on the shoulder.
‘Pen. Give me a pen,’ she said.
Nasira grumbled and handed a pen up to her. Sophia craned forward as best she could in the confined space and started translating, scribbling the English below each line. She’d only made it a third of the way through the first page when Benito called her for breakfast. She placed the dictionary and diary entries into the bunk locker, but tore her transcribed pages free, folded them and slipped them into her hip pocket, reluctant to leave them.
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