Isolation

by Dan Wells

  She threw the jacket left and rolled around to the right of the destroyed turret, firing at the soldiers as they fired at her jacket. Almost immediately they realized their mistake, but it was too late. Both riflemen went down, shot through the neck, and when the ammo crewman poked his head around the turret, he went down as well. She turned her rifle toward the antiair cannon, and it turned toward her, its two giant barrels pointed straight at her, barely twenty yards away. She raised her rifle calmly, aiming back past the barrels to the glass of the cockpit, seeing the faint glow of the targeting reticle display, and behind it the gunner. It was an incredibly tricky shot, and she lined it up carefully.

  The cannon fired.

  Heron’s hearing still hadn’t returned, but she felt the roar in her bones. The smart rounds exploded out of the barrels, perfectly centered on her . . . and missed her. The wide double barrels weren’t calibrated to hit a human-sized target only twenty yards away, and the rounds flew harmlessly past her, punching massive holes in the roof behind her. The gunner realized his mistake and starting turning the turret to compensate, but Heron already had her shot. She breathed out and squeezed the trigger, and the gunner fell lifeless on the controls.

  Heron dropped the rifle and walked to the final turret, slapping her head to try to restore her hearing. The world was still ringing. She rotated the turret down to shoot directly at the roof below it, pulled an elastic hair band from her pocket, and wrapped it around the joystick trigger. It started firing, and she jumped out and ran down to the door leading back to the elevator. Her clothes were covered in dirt, and she brushed them off while she waited inside for the elevator. When it arrived she went knock-kneed, putting on her best expression of abject terror, and screamed in hysterical fright at the soldiers who stepped out of the elevator. “He’s on the roof!” she shouted, clutching at them madly. “He’s on the roof! He just started shooting the other turrets, I don’t know what’s going on! Please, you have to help me!”

  They consoled her solemnly, though she couldn’t hear a word of it, and pushed her gently but firmly into the elevator while they took up careful positions around the upper doorway. The cannon outside was still firing into the roof, each shot sending a powerful reverberation through Heron’s legs; a moment later the roof gave way with a wrenching groan, and the cannon crashed through to the lower floors. The elevator doors closed, and Heron dropped the act of fear. Time to get the generals.

  PARAGEN BIOSYNTH GROWTH AND TRAINING FACILITY, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  February 15, 2059

  Heron recited the poem again as she showered, the first of Du Fu’s Autumn Meditations: “Jade dew withers and wounds the groves of maple trees. On Wu mountain, in Wu gorge, the air is dull and drear.” General Wu was slightly fond of classic poetry, and very fond of his own name. It could be a useful poem to know in the right moment.

  As she reviewed the poem—out loud, to practice her pronunciation and delivery—another part of her brain was going over the day’s lessons, reexamining the facts she had learned in history and the behaviors she’d practiced in etiquette. Another part of her brain was puzzling through the latest tactical problem Latimer had presented her with in their daily drill: Tomorrow morning she would be inserted into the training field while two groups of Partial infantry carried out a war simulation; she had to find a way to disrupt both teams’ battle plans, resulting in a total loss on both sides. Neither side knew she was coming, and if she wanted full marks, neither side could know she’d ever been there. It was the trickiest puzzle he’d given her yet, and he seemed to have no confidence that she could pull it off. She turned off the water and stood in the remnants of the steam, planning her attack and her homework and her poem all at once. It was easy—after all, she was nearly five months old. It was time for a bigger challenge.

  The door to the locker room opened—down a hall and around two corners, but with the water off she heard it clearly. The footsteps and the breathing marked the newcomer as male, and the lack of any link data marked him as a human. Latimer, perhaps? He’d never come to the showers before. She grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her.

  Latimer appeared at the edge of the shower room and paused in the entryway. Heron snapped to attention, her feet sliding just slightly across the thick tile floor.

  “At ease,” he said, dismissing her formality with a wave. His voice was soft and casual, more easygoing than she’d ever heard him. He sauntered into the shower room, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a thin brown bottle. “You did well on your drills today.” It was late, and they were the only two people in the entire locker area. He walked toward her slowly. “You’ve mastered every obstacle course we have, even the broken one they closed for being too dangerous. Your pistol accuracy has surpassed the human world record, and your long-range rifle work is some of the best I’ve ever seen. You convinced your new Chinese teacher you were a native speaker, and you tricked your new math teacher into thinking you were a physics professor, waiting in the same room for another student. You can run, shoot, think, and lie your way out of every problem we’ve ever given you. I gotta say, I’m impressed.” He was directly in front of her now, nearly an arm’s length away. His breath smelled faintly of alcohol. “But that’s not all there is to being a spy.”

  Heron ran through the list of other topics she’d studied: acting, strategy, computer science, electronics, and more. She wasn’t yet an expert in all of them, but she was getting there. They’d even started her in some piloting programs, running basic tank drills with the new Beta-model girls fresh out of the vats. Latimer said she’d be starting aircraft classes soon as well—was that what this was? He seemed to be leading up to some kind of new instruction, but what?

  “Have some.” He handed her the bottle and stepped away, wandering through the empty shower. “So this is where you guys shower. For some reason it always surprises me how much the women’s locker room looks like the men’s. Seems like they ought to be more different, but I don’t know how. Or why, really; it’s kind of a stupid idea anyway.”

  Heron sniffed the bottle: definitely alcohol. And it was nearly full. Had he brought it specifically for her? “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “That’s beer,” he said, turning back toward her. “It’s for drinking. Have some.” He took a few steps toward her and leaned against the wall, about ten feet down where it was dry. “You’re a spy, Heron; you’re going to have to drink sooner or later. Standard training schedule for a Theta has you introduced to alcohol at six months, but I figure, what the hell, huh? You’re a big girl now. Have a drink.”

  She took a sip and grimaced. “I don’t like it.”

  “Just try it.” His voice was more insistent now, creeping up from “casual” toward “commanding officer.” She stopped herself from frowning, refusing to show disapproval to her trainer, and took another drink. It tasted sour, like something that had gone bad.

  She kept her face passive. “People drink this on purpose? For fun?”

  Latimer walked toward her and took the bottle, then knocked back a long, deep drink that nearly drained it. He was standing just a few inches away, far closer than he needed to. He lowered the bottle and smacked his lips. “I guess you’re not getting the full effect of it anyway, are you? Crazy Partial metabolism.” He took another drink and finished the bottle, then pointed at her with it. “You know, in early testing it took our boys nearly all night to get a Partial soldier intoxicated. Glass after glass, pitcher after pitcher. We eventually had to use the hard stuff—tequila, gin, whiskey—and all through a straw because I swear that gets you drunk faster. Don’t ask me how it works. Poor kid got alcohol poisoning before he even got tipsy.”

  Heron cocked her head to the side. “You were part of a research team?”

  Latimer laughed. “You could call it that. Mostly we just wanted to see what happened, so we pulled some lucky punk from the barracks and got plastered. I couldn’t walk for a day, and he spent a week in the hospital.” He
tried to take another swig from his bottle, discovered that it was empty, and lowered it again. “You realize how hard it is to put one of you things in the hospital?”

  Heron turned to go. “Speaking of barracks, I need to get back to mine.”

  “Drop your towel,” said Latimer.

  By pure force of habit Heron reached for the fold that held her towel tight around her chest, ready to take it off, but stopped as her hand touched the cloth. Something’s not right about this. She turned back to him, studying his face—he was smiling broadly, drinking in her image as deeply as he had drunk the beer. She became acutely aware of how little of her body the towel covered, and put her hand back down. “Why?”

  “You have a genetically perfect body,” said Latimer. There were a number of low metal stools in the room, and he set his bottle on the nearest one before stepping toward her. His voice seemed deeper now, as if his breathing had changed. “Do you know how to use it?”

  Heron had no idea where any of this was going, or what it meant. “I can run a mile in three minutes five-point-two seconds,” she said. “I have a standing vertical leap of four feet, and I can bench-press three times my own weight. Last night I hit a moving target with a throwing knife at thirty paces, direct bull’s-eye, five out of five times. I think I use my body pretty well.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” said Latimer. “I’m talking about seduction.” He stopped in front of her and brushed his finger lightly against the cloth over her stomach. “Drop your towel.”

  She had heard the word “seduction” before and had a vague inkling of its meaning: to play on someone’s emotions of love and physical attraction. It was a form of interrogation and coercion. One of the other Thetas had talked about seduction lessons from a special instructor—a female instructor, not her drill sergeant.

  Something was very wrong about this.

  She took a step backward. “No, sir.” Even in this situation, where nothing made sense and his orders seemed so obviously wrong, she couldn’t help but feel a deep pang of guilt for disobeying him.

  She saw his slap coming long before it hit; she saw his shoulder tense, his arm fly out in a wide, powerful arc, his face twist into a dispassionate sneer with the sheer force of his blow. She saw it coming, she could have dodged it, but she had been trained too well. You obeyed your superiors. You accepted their punishments. The slap hit with a loud crack, whipping her head to the side and leaving, she was sure, a nasty red welt. It wouldn’t last long. She rolled her spine to the side, absorbing the impact without faltering or falling, and turned back to face him.

  “You do not say no to me!” he roared. “I am your superior officer! You do what I say, when I say it, and you don’t even have the privilege of not liking it, because you are a machine. You’re a doll—you’re my doll—and I will play with you however the hell I want to. Now drop your towel!” He reached for her, his fingers curled like claws, and in a split second Heron examined the situation in her mind. Everything he’d said was true: He asked, and she obeyed; he pointed, and she followed. She was an artificial thing, not a person but a product, and every decision she had ever made had come from him or someone like him. Her life was his, and always had been.

  But she didn’t like the way he was using it.

  Heron stepped back, turned to the side, leading Latimer’s hand as he reached, twisted, and lost his balance. He teetered, slipped on the wet tile floor, and fell. She caught a metal stool with her foot and slid it into place, perfectly aligned with the back of his neck. He hit it with the full weight of his fall, snapping his spine with a tiny, life-ending pop.

  She looked around the shower, at his body, at hers. She tousled her hair and pinched her cheeks, giving them a bright, flustered sheen. The welt where he’d slapped her was already going away, no match for the incredible damage repair system of Partial physiology. She picked up the bottle and walked carefully across the wet floor, then ran through the locker room to the outer hall. She dropped the bottle in a half-full garbage can and then threw open the door to the hall, crying for help.

  “Somebody come quick! My trainer slipped in the locker room! Get a paramedic team in here, now!”

  It was late, but the training complex never truly slept, and the hall was soon filled with a flurry of motion and emergency responders. Heron walked back to the shower and watched as Latimer’s clothes slowly soaked up the water from the floor of the shower. Paramedics arrived quickly, but there was nothing they could do.

  I suppose I’ll have a new trainer tomorrow, she thought. I’ll follow his orders, and do what he says, and be a good little soldier.

  But their goal is to use me, not to protect me. From now on I protect myself.

  ZUOQUAN CITY, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA

  June 9, 2060

  The generals’ office was in Building 1, the farthest west, and as she ran through the courtyard to reach it, she passed crowds of terrified workers and hundreds of soldiers running back and forth. The men on the eastern wall were already firing, telling Heron the Partials were closer, certainly closer than she’d thought. The early attack wasn’t completely unexpected—her 2300 deadline implied only that the air strike was coming at that time, not the entire invasion. Under standard tactics they would launch the air strikes early, blunting the Chinese counterattack before it started, but they didn’t have to, and Heron knew that there was nothing standard about these tactics. The orders still bothered her, and particularly her handler’s suspicious way of delivering them—not to mention his timing. She needed to figure it out.

  She heard the generals yelling through the door, but she wasn’t sure how many other people were in the room with them. It would be safer to enter in character, assess the situation, and build a capture strategy around it. She smoothed her skirt and entered the room, and both generals cried out immediately.

  “Where have you been?” shouted Wu, slamming the table angrily.

  “Mei Hao,” cried Bao. “You’re okay!” He rushed toward her a step, then stopped, and Heron noted his lapse of protocol without reacting visibly. She realized she was still tarted up from the roof, though her skirt had worked its way back to a normal position. She buttoned up her shirt and made the best excuse she could, because it was partly true.

  “I was caught on the far side of the courtyard when the shelling started,” she said. “I barely survived the crossing.”

  “Bah,” said General Wu. “Now that the entire Chinese army has waited on you to arrive, perhaps you would deign to activate the satbox.”

  You can turn it on as well as I can, thought Heron, though this wasn’t the first time he’d waited to make her do it. Men liked exerting their authority. She glanced around the room, counting the people there with her: both generals; Bao’s elderly secretary, Jin Wong; and three soldiers. She knew all of them, and she knew their capabilities, and without a better weapon she was unlikely to incapacitate all six people before they overpowered her—especially since she had to leave the generals alive. She sat down at the satbox and opened it up, waiting to see how the meeting unfolded.

  “The best way to retake the factory is not to lose it,” said Bao, evidently continuing the thread of their earlier conversation. “These are the devil soldiers we’re talking about; if we let them get entrenched, we will never take it back from them.”

  “Perhaps your army cannot,” said Wu.

  “No army can do it!” cried Bao. He was more confrontational than normal, which Heron chalked up to the added stress. “Not even our armies together. But if we strike now, if we make the most devastating counterattack we can possibly make, we can kill them while they have no cover. No defense. It is our only hope of victory.”

  Wu mused on this. “A decisive blow now, while their entire army is committed, could destroy them utterly.”

  “Yes!” said Bao. “But we must act quickly.”

  “We will mobilize your army to the counterattack,” said Wu, nodding at his own decision. “Mine shall hold the flank
s.”

  “Hold the flanks against what?” asked Bao. “There is no other army—the Partials have committed every soldier in this sector to this fight. Ten thousand BioSynth super-soldiers. Our scouts report that their forward base is empty, and the devils stream through the streets like foul water.”

  “Then we must flee in the Rotors,” said Wu, and Heron saw a hint of fear in his face. “We cannot allow . . . the satbox to fall into enemy hands!”

  He wants to save himself, thought Heron, and searches for excuses.

  “We must be seen to lead,” said Bao, shaking his head adamantly. “How can you ask your soldiers to fight while you flee to the rear? It will break their morale.”

  They were both acting exactly according to type—exactly the way Heron knew they would act, following almost point by point the psychological profiles she had sent to her handler. Wu was a coward, and would sacrifice anything to save his own skin. Bao was an idealist, a man who saw himself as the savior of China. Wu would always seek to protect himself, and Bao would stand his ground even to his own destruction.

  Both men, she realized, in this situation, facing this exact set of circumstances, would do the same thing.

  “Every single devil in the army,” said Wu softly. He wrung his hands in fear. “And us trapped here like crabs in a cage. We will need as many men as we can get.”