Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

11

  December 14th.

  Grayman:

  The bandages come off for the first time. The surgeon makes little fanfare of it, barely appreciating his work. It might be because you so adamantly insisted on keeping the scar across your eye—difficult patient. He keeps the exam short, reminds you again that the residual bruising will fade as the last of the fine sutures dissolve—just use the salves and don’t scratch. You tell him it looks good thank you very much. And then you get out of Secure Medical and slink back to your “cell” as gracefully as you can, trying to avoid the stares of anyone you pass.

  Alone in the bathroom mirror, you get up the nerve to really look at yourself. Your new self:

  There are sickly yellowing bruises under your eyes, and a handful of fine, short suture lines on your nose and brows. Thankfully, your eyebrows have partially grown back already.

  They’ve actually done little to the basic structure: your brows are heavier, your nose a bit thicker at the bridge. The fresh crew-cut disguises you more than the surgeries. But the most striking changes are due to a combination of biochemistry and heavy physical training: You weigh forty pounds more than you did a month ago. Besides the overall change in build, it’s made your face wider, fuller. You are no longer the person you were.

  But then, that’s not just cosmetic. The person you were is now “dead” in all ways public and official: executed by Euro-Neowab terrorists, a statistic, a brief flash on the news nets, a funeral without a body (the story they gave your family was that your recovered corpse was proactively incinerated due to a recent enemy tactic of loading their victims’ remains with biological agents—the FBI claimed to have confirmed your ID by fingerprints). Now absolutely nothing remains of Christian Michael Palmeri.

  You try to remember your old face as if it’s still hidden beneath the new one. Most surprising is that you don’t miss your thick, unruly mane of hair—having it shorn off was disturbing at first, but it’s revealed new, intriguing lines (and it’s so easy to care for). One of the plastic surgeons remarked that you’re lucky to have what he called a “noble skull.”

  No, not noble. You look harder, tougher (more so with the bruising and scars). Like a cage fighter. Like a soldier. Or like what a soldier looks like in the movies.

  They’ve cast an actor to play you, and he doesn’t look anything like you.

  Losing yourself in the mirror for a few moments, you try to recall other faces that you’ll never see again: Your sister. Your mother. Step-father, even. (But not Margaret.) You can almost see them when you close your eyes, but they flash and fade, like they were from a movie you’d seen of someone else’s life a long time ago. Not your life. Never your life.

  You open your eyes to the mirror again. The face that looks back is no longer new to you. It’s familiar, now. It’s yours. And it always has been yours. Always.

  You turn from the mirror and wander back into the main room of your “cell.”

  It’s eight-by-ten, concrete walls and floor, steel door, no window (unless you count the big wall screen that offers a selection of perfect landscapes when you’re not watching TV or Net-feed on it). Trying to be good hosts, they’ve agreeably stocked it with what little you’ve asked for: a nice music player, exercise equipment to maintain your training regimen (they appeared pleased with your enthusiasm for PT), and a small fridge for cold sodas.

  It’s not much, but it is reality, not VR, so it’s a welcome respite between your marathon immersion and PT sessions. The spare simplicity is actually very soothing. Like your new body, you’ve lived in it long enough now to feel like it is yours. And it’s relatively private (compared to all the eyes on you when you’re at “work”), despite the ever-present sentry scanners that watch you even when you sleep.

  They haven’t even bothered to lock you in for several days now.

  You sit on the basic steel-frame bed, made military perfect and smooth the way they taught you in VR, and you see—on the glowing blue desktop of your new field notebook—that Datascan has sent you confirmation of your commission.

  They did it (or so it would appear). They made you an officer. But this doesn’t strike you as any more real than anything they’ve put you through in the last six weeks.

  Henderson tried to tell you that the rank was not only an expression of their confidence in you and the impressions you’ve made these last weeks, but also a sign of how much stock they put in their new training program. They insist that they’re confident that the VR is as good as the real thing—better in some ways, because you can “live” through decades worth of critical scenarios in a matter of weeks, progressing as fast as individual aptitude and diligence can manage. They tell you they’ve already put you through the experiential equivalent of a life-career of combat duty in fifteen different theaters, and their VR library has sped you through the essentials of US Army Boot, Ranger School and OCS.

  But despite the drugs and the “realism” of the new VR, you could tell the difference between the virtual and the real, at least in all the important ways: There was no real fear (despite the drugs and the pain of simulated trauma), and no primal satisfaction in the taking of lives that so essentially need to be taken.

  Maybe it would suffice for making a soldier, for training a fresh recruit to do their duty for country, to prepare them for what they might face, to ingrain responses, to desensitize them—at least partially—to the stresses and horrors potentially waiting.

  But not for you. Because despite what your commission says, you know you’re no “soldier.”

  Predator. You’re a predator.

  And you feel better, stronger, than you ever have in any life.

  There’s a flash on your screen then: fresh mail from Henderson. It appears they’ve finally given you a new name.

  It’s catchy. Silly, but catchy.