by Frank Carey
“What about you?” she asked Sam. “Serve?”
“No, ma’am. Didn’t have the pleasure,” Sam replied while turning on the charm.
“Seth warned me about you,” she growled. “I look forward to our time together,” she said with a smile which could freeze liquid nitrogen. Sam felt his testicles retract.
She moved on to Margo. “What’s your story?”
“Mother of the three most headstrong kids on the planet, four if you include their father.”
“And what does he do?”
“Actor. Action/adventure films. Goes by the stage name of Stone Quarry.”
Tiffany stopped chewing her stogie. “The Stone Quarry?”
“Yes? You’ve seen his work, ma’am?”
“Oh yeah, all his films. Damn. Can you get me a picture?”
Margo looked at Seth and gave a quick nod toward the wall. He smiled as he walked over and pulled a frame from the wall and handed it to Margo. It was a headshot of Stone with the signature “To my biggest fan, Stone.”
“Will this do?” she asked while handing it to Tiffany.
“Oh, yeah. This is perfect. My oldest daughter will have a fit when she sees this. Thanks,” she said as she moved on to Megan while the others tried to imagine what the father looked like.
“I saved you for last because Seth told me you were new.” Before Megan could reply, Tiffany had a large knife in her hand which she was trying to plunge into Megan’s heart. Before it even got near her, it was skittering on the floor across the room while Megan held Tiffany's wrist in a rather uncomfortable position. “He also showed me your dossier. Impressive. How’s old Master Toshiro doing these days?”
“He’s doing well. He sent me flowers for my birthday.”
“White Chrysanthemums?”
“Of course,” Megan answered as she released Tiffany’s wrist and bowed.
“They’ll do, Gunny said as Sam retrieved her knife and handed it to her butt first.”
“All of them,” she added. “Have them at the facility at 0500 sharp,” she said as she headed to the door with Seth in tow.
“I'll be back,” he said as the doors closed behind them.
“What the hell was that all about?” Margo asked Raj and Juan while Sam and Megan watched intently.
“That’s Gunny Gunderson! Legend tells she led a recon force deep into a rebel stronghold and rescued half-a-dozen hostages while taking out one hundred heavily-armed insurgents. That's how she got the Medal of Honor.”
“This is why you two saluted. See, I know things. I thought that was a story made up to get increased funding for the war effort,” Sam said.
“No, it was all too real,” Seth said as he walked through the doors. “Notice the scars on her hand? That was from enemy fire. That was one hairy day,” he said as he rubbed the back of his head.
“Oh my God,” Raj exclaimed. “You were there?”
“Yeah, I was there. I recommended her for the Medal of Honor. It’s one of those things you wish you didn’t have to see but you’re glad you did.”
“Wait a minute,” Margo said. “I read someplace that all the men on that op died from chemically induced brain tumors.”
“Not all of them,” he said as he turned to watch Megan scan him. She stopped and looked at him, her eyes huge. He walked over to her and smiled while he took her scanner and smashed it on the desk. “Megan, you’re my doctor now and I’m fine,” was all he would say.
“Boss, what’s happening at 0500 tomorrow?” Juan asked as he glanced at Megan.
“Gunny now runs a military training school. For the next six weeks, while Section Twenty-Eight catches up with our research, the six of us are going to receive special combat training.”
“Why do we need combat training?” Sam asked as he spit out his energy drink in shock.
Seth said nothing as he brought up a video he shot earlier in the week. It showed three lab techs wheeling something out of a lab. Something that looked like a cross between an armored personnel carrier and a rhino. Thankfully, it was dead. He stopped the vid.
“The six of us are contractually obligated to continue working here. I shot that vid two days ago when I was down in twenty-eight looking for Mavis. Look closely at the vid. That’s fresh blood dripping from the seam where flesh meets metal.”
Recovering a little from whatever she saw on the scan, Megan said, “That’s what they want the bots for, isn’t it?”
“What?” Sam asked.
Seth looked at him and said, “They want to use our work to fuse the robotic from to the living form, to create some kind of nanorobotic zombie.”
“You mean a ZomBot?” Sam asked. Margo cuffed him.
“For lack of a better term, yeah, a ZomBot,” Seth agreed.
“And the training?” Juan asked.
“To give us a fighting chance to get out of here when the shit hits the fan, and hit it will.”
“What does Dir. Quinn say about this?”
“She said we are to do our work and let twenty-eight do theirs. She then said something about treason and felony.”
They all stood there trying to come to grips with what he told them.
“I’ll be in my office. You can knock off early. Last one out turn off the lights,” he said as he got up and headed to the door. “We’ll meet here at 0400 tomorrow and drive in together. Don’t be late.
Seth walked into his office and sat down behind his desk. He grabbed some aspirin from a drawer and swallowed them dry before turning his chair around to face the wall. He reached over and picked up a picture of Olive and stared at it while thinking about all the ways he had screwed-up their relationship. He looked at it for a long time before putting it back.
He spun his chair back around to find himself facing Megan. “Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“Explain this,” she said, her anger barely contained showing him the display on her new scanpad.
“It’s a scan of a human brain with a benign, walnut-sized, inoperable tumor about dead center in the left hemisphere, but you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Do the others know?”
“They didn’t, but I think they now suspect something is amiss.”
“Did she know?”
“Who? Olivia? That would require her and I have a conversation, which never happened. Any other questions? I’ve got a headache...”
Before he could finish, she was around his desk and running her new scanner over his head. She looked at the results and glared at him. “No change,” she said as she put the instrument away.
“I told you I’m fine, so stop worrying. If you really need something to worry about, how about those things downstairs. Question: What modifications to our serum and/or bots would be required to merge metal parts to an existent organic body?”
She said nothing. Finally, she turned for the door, but said, “You'll tell me if anything about your little friend changes. Anything, am I understood?”
“Yes, Doctor. You have my word,” he said.
She left the office without a word.
“Damn. Why do all the women in my life have tempers?” he asked the gods, but they weren’t answering.
A few hours later found Seth finishing up some work at his desk. While the others had gone home he had stayed to catch up on a few things before leaving for six weeks. A knock at his door interrupted him. “Come,” he said as he closed his notebook and slid it into his desk drawer.
The door opened and Mavis walked in with a bottle in her hand. “Beware scientists bearing gifts,” she said as she walked in and sat down unbidden.
“Mavis. I would mention it was nice to see you but I'd be lying. I’m busy, so what do you want?
She got up and walked over to the cabinet where she pulled out the bottle of Rocket Fuel. “My God, man. Do you drink this? It’s used to clean crime scenes.” She carefully replaced it and grabbed two glasses. She returned and poured two-fingers of brown fluid into each tumbler.
“Mavis...”
“Seth, we got your data, and I’ll be honest with you. We’re stumped. Your work is far beyond anything we’ve ever seen. I was wondering if you would consider working with us instead of just shoveling copies of your data in our direction.”
He leaned over and looked at her. “Sure, as long as you include the rest of the team and tell us what the hell you’re trying to accomplish down there. I can’t work in the dark. It would be like trying to dress tarantulas in a dark room. You’ll eventually get bit."
“Impossible. The military would never allow it. They know about your past and your feelings about secret military work.”
“If you saw what I saw in the field, you might think the same way. Our work is for saving lives, not taking them. I know death is more lucrative, but only at the cost of one’s soul.”
“Don’t preach to me, Dr. Marsden. I sleep well at night.”
“And that’s what worries me, Dr. Houng. I stay awake at night thinking about what can go wrong with what we create in this lab. One mistake, one overlooked interlock and this place could be turned into a puddle of nanorobot shit. No. I can’t help you. I’ll send you information. I will answer your questions, but neither I nor my team will actively help you with whatever you’re cooking up downstairs. Now take your bottle of fine scotch and get the hell out of my office.”
She glared at him with a look of hatred so intense the Gumby doll on his desk started to wither. She grabbed the bottle and the glasses, and stormed out the door, leaving Seth convinced that training his staff in combat was the right decision.
###
Three weeks after Seth and Mavis had their talk, Olivia sat at the conference room table and half-listened to the presentation as she thought about Seth. Normally he called after a cooling-down period, they'd go out, have amazing make-up sex, then fight again. This time, though, he didn’t call. It had been weeks, but no call. She then remembered he had taken his stuff, which he had never done before. Damn! He’s serious this time! she thought as panic crept into her reality. I need to call him.
Abruptly, she stood up and walked out of the room while her boss looked on in horror. Olive ran down to her office, locked the door, and plopped down in her big chair with phone in hand, hoping to God she hadn’t erased Seth’s number in anger. She found it and dialed.
“Dr. Marsden’s phone. This is Charlie, his secretary. How may I help you?”
“Charlie, thank God. This is Olive. Is Seth there?”
“Olive? Girl, you really screwed the pooch this time. What the hell were you thinking? Do you realize he pulled out the Rocket Fuel? Damn!”
Not the Rocket Fuel, she thought. He pulled out that elixir from hell only during the worst of times. “Charlie, please. I screwed up. Let me talk to him.”
“No can do, Liv. He’s incommunicado. I have an emergency number, but have been warned I could lose my job if I call it for anything except total global apocalypse.”
“When can I talk to him?”
“He said he and the team would be back in six weeks, and that was three weeks ago. All I know is he had a visitor--beautiful woman built like a body-builder with great nails. Called her Tiffany. She left and he and the team left the following morning. Something about training.”
Tiffany? Why is that name so familiar? she thought. “OKay, I guess I’m stuck for the next three weeks. Can you leave him a message telling him I called and I need to talk to him?”
“Not a problem. I’ll put a note on your picture in his office. You know? The one that takes up half a wall.”
“Really?”
“Damn skippy, girlfriend. Now, don’t you worry. Everything will be alright.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” Liv said as she hung up the phone.
“Shit! The meeting,” she said as she ran out the door and back to the conference room.
###
Seth and the five members of his team stood at attention while Gunny Gunderson handed out their diplomas and shook their hands. She stepped back and looked at them with tears in her eyes at the thought she may never see them again. For the first time in her long colorful life, she found herself actually liking hyper intelligent geeks.
On their way back to the complex, they tried to relax as the painkillers started to wear off.
“Damn, if that’s what hell’s like, then I’m going out and get religion, Sam said as he tried to rub some feeling back into his legs.
“I don’t remember it being this tough in boot camp,” Raj said as he tried to find a comfortable position.
“It wasn’t,” Juan said. “I know; I was there with you.”
Margo said nothing as she slept while Megan sat back and read something on her tablet, seemingly unaffected by the severe workout.
“You guys are wusses. I’ve got fifteen years on you and I’m fine. Sheesh. All I can say is I hope we never have to put that training to use. By the way, you five are now members of an exclusive group.”
“What’s that?” Megan said with her nose buried in whatever she was reading.
“The Clan of the Warrior Geek,” he said as he handed out ID cards.
“Is this for real?” Sam asked.
“Yep. They keep a very low profile. They were thrilled when I contacted them this morning. Gunny Gunderson vouched for you, by the way.”
“Damn. Do we get hats?” Margo asked half-asleep.
“No, but they will come to assist you anywhere on the planet if you need it, so keep the card handy and memorize the phone number on it.” He stopped when he heard a familiar hum. He looked over at Megan and saw her scanning him. She finished before he could say anything. She looked at the readout before putting it back into her pocket.
“Either of you two going to inform the rest of us about what’s going on?” Margo asked suddenly awake.”
“Nothing is going on,” Seth said as he turned forward in his seat. “The good Doctor is just concerned I may have strained this old body.”
The rest of the trip was spent in silence.
###
They arrived at the Todihara Ltd. building only to find it surrounded by military vehicles and troops. They were stopped by a guard who demanded ID.
“My name is Dr. Seth Marsden and this is my team. Who’s in charge here?”
“That would be me,” a National Guardsman wearing Captain’s stripes said as he walked up to their vehicle while waving off the MP. “My name is Capt. Michaels. Please park by the tents over there.”
They parked and Capt. Michaels showed them inside the tent where a command post was set up. “Doctors, a breach has occurred in Section Twenty-Eight. So far it’s been contained there, but we don’t know for how long. The only plan we have is to light-off a nuke and incinerate whatever’s down there.”
“Where’s Dir. Quinn?”
“On a tour of Section Twenty-Eight. Dr. Marsden, what's down there?”
“I’m sorry, Captain, that’s Top Secret,” a bureaucrat type said from the opposite side of the table.
“And who the hell are you?” the captain asked.
“Capt. Michaels, meet Mr. Cheaver, Assistant Director of this facility. He’s right, I only know a small part of what’s going on down there, and I can’t tell you anything under penalty of death or imprisonment.”
“Not anymore.” Seth turned and saw a General walk in to stand next to Capt. Michaels. “Sergeant at Arms, escort the pencil pusher and his toadies out of this tent, now!”
As the three suits were led out, the general handed Seth a piece of paper. “I’m Gen. Morris from Science Command. Doctor, those orders free you to tell Capt. Michaels anything and everything you and your team know or even think you know about what’s down there.”
“What made you all change your minds?” Sam asked.
�
�This,” the general said as one of his aids sat down at a console and brought up a video on the tent’s main screen. It was of a dimly lit hallway. A large hulking figure walked into the light. It was part human, part gorilla, and part robot. It reached up and crushed the video camera.
“Oh my God,” Megan said. “It knew what a video camera was and deliberately crushed it. That monstrosity is sentient.”
“It took ten of our best people an hour to come to the same conclusion, Dr. Allen. The entry in your dossier labeling you a genius doesn’t do you justice. You’re correct, that thing is sentient as are at least a dozen others we were able to observe before they killed the video at their end. What are we dealing with, Doctors?”
Seth and the others told what they knew or suspected. It did not sit well with the general or the captain.
“Dr. Marsden, will a nuke work?” the general asked.
“I doubt it. Many nanobots will survive the blast and probably mutate from the radiation. The cyborgs like the one we saw may survive. The big problem is the potential release of nanobots into the environment by the explosion.”
“Damn, what do we do then?”
“The building has two electromagnetic pulse bombs designed to cook any nanobot or electronic circuit within one thousand yards of ground zero.”
“Two? Boss, I think Gunny Gunderson hit you a little too hard in training. We’ve got only one EMP generator,” Margo pointed out.
“I had a second installed in a closet in my office,” he said. “My paranoia knows no limit.”
“What are you suggesting, Doctor?”
“I can go in, rescue the director, and initiate a countdown on the bomb in my office. It'll take out everything within twenty floors above and below. I suggest you also drop a conventional bunker buster to collapse the building into the lower levels.”
“Not by yourself,” Margo said as she and the rest of the team walked up to Seth and the general.
“I can’t ask you to do this. The chances of survival are slim. It'll take twenty minutes for the EMP to charge. Once it starts it cannot be stopped and an EMP charge that big will kill anything organic.”
“Well shit, I’m volunteering!” Raj said while the others nodded they were volunteering as well.
