THE GIRL WAS very young and thin. She could have been any age from eleven to fourteen. She might have been biracial, but her dark, straight, short hair gave no clues, and her coloring could have been due to Mediterranean descent, Greek or Italian, or even Spanish. Dr. Marcus Dufresne only knew her as “Subject 0067.” The hospital scrubs all the subjects in the Program wore were baggy on her slender frame. From here, he could not see her eyes.
She stared fixedly at a small, foam ball resting between hands flat on the surface of the table where she sat. Every visible line of her radiated tension and effort. Watching her was, frankly, boring. Finally, she let out her breath in a sigh. “I can’t,” she said, or rather, whispered, apologetically.
“Yes, you can Sixty-seven,” came from a speaker in the room; a stern, harsh voice. “Two hours ago, you threw a pitcher full of water at Eighty-eight’s head. Now you claim you can’t lift a tiny foam ball. You aren’t trying.”
In another child, that might have elicited an angry response. Not from this one. The girl looked up at the speaker, and a slow tear trickled down her face. Now Marcus could see that her eyes were a sad, deep dark brown, like the eyes of a beaten puppy. “I am trying,” she whispered. “My head hurts, I’m trying so hard.”
“No, you’re not!” the voice snapped. “You’re useless! Worthless!”
Instead of rebelling, the girl shrank into herself, and her features froze into a mask of terror. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.
Through the one-way mirror, Marcus watched as another slow tear ran down the girl’s face. There was something there. Something familiar. It sparked a brief twinge of despair, a distant memory. He pushed the thought away and glanced back at his tablet, intent on recording the brain wave activity that blipped steadily from the device attached to Subject 0067’s cranium.
“There you have it,” said the Project Lead, Dr. Joseph Garvey. He was an ugly man, and his looks were not improved by facial and cranial scarring. He had clearly had some cosmetic surgery, but the ropy keloid scars that remained testified he had at one point been severely burned. The injury had to have been substantial; enough that his left arm was either completely cybernetic or in a cybernetic sheathe. The arm hummed at times, and when Garvey lifted something heavy, it whined. Hydraulics, perhaps. It threw Garvey off-balance when he walked, but it was strong enough Marcus had once seen Garvey crush the edge of a metal table during a heated discussion with another of his underlings. “She’s perfectly capable of throwing cinder-blocks at people when she’s frightened enough, but she can’t seem to lift a grain of rice otherwise. And her psychometry is erratic and weaker than we’d like. She can only backtrack about a week before it becomes useless. Think you can do anything with her? You did wonders with Fifty-nine and Seventy-two.”
“I’ll have her up to speed by your deadline,” Marcus murmured, still studying the oscillating waves on his tablet. “This one is different, to be sure. Look here.” He turned the tablet towards Garvey and pointed. “There’s a strong undercurrent to her efforts. She might not have the baseline strength others have, but she’s still developing. Still, look at the regularity of it. She’s displaying a resonance that no one else has before. It’s solid. I can work with this.”
Garvey studied the tablet. “That resonance may be the problem. Something’s holding her back. Can you turn it off ?”
“I suppose I could,” Marcus said. “Not the first thing I would propose though.”
“And why’s that?”
“It might play havoc with her natural development. You run the risk of it strengthening her ability now, only to have it burn out.” Marcus paused. “Oh, and it might kill her.”
“What’s your point?” Garvey said. “If she dies, we can get more.”
“It just seems a waste of a perfectly good subject. Call it instinct. I think there may be much more to this one than a common foot soldier. I’m thinking of the long game here.”
Garvey sniffed at Marcus’s objections. “When has that ever been an issue? We need working operatives now, not at some nebulous point in the future. Besides, children obey; teenagers rebel. They’re better for our purposes when either young or old enough to be trained to respond to commands by a superior.”
“This one might be different,” Marcus argued, although he kept his tone flat and uninflected. “There’s potential there for more. Her behavior suggests you might mold her well into adulthood as the perfect operative. If you play this right, she’ll follow your orders until her dying breath.”
Garvey waved that away. “Operatives now, Doctor. Not in the future. Invisible, obedient operatives. No one ever pays a damn bit of attention to children. No one thinks of them as metas.”
Marcus shrugged. “As you wish. I can start her on the cocktail immediately.” He swiped at his tablet a few times and began to input notes.
“Test Subject 0067,” Marcus said, as the tablet dutifully began to record his voice. “Note vitals and tailor the usual cocktail to her specifications. Standard monitoring apparatus.” He paused, and shrugged again. “Ignore elevated risks of compromising her immune system, shock, and death. Subject 0067 is expendable.”
VIRTUE HUDDLED IN the corner of her bed farthest from the door. The room was scarcely big enough to hold the bed and a tiny bedside table with a tablet. She had wrapped herself in her blanket and was hugging her pillow, knees to her chest. They never allowed her any tissues unless she was actually sick, because they had discovered the little fairies she’d made from them hidden under her mattress. So her sleeve had to do for her sniffles and her pillow to dry her tears.
A gentle tap on her door made her stiffen. “Querida, it’s me,” said a soft, accented voice, and she relaxed, relief flooding through her.
“Ramon!” she exclaimed. “It’s okay—”
She didn’t need to go any further. The door opened long enough for a lean, tall, Hispanic man in a janitor’s coverall to slip inside. He was carrying a teddy bear and a box of tissues.
She reached for the bear first, as he sat down on her bunk, slipped his arm around her shoulders, and held her, pulling out a tissue for her. “Were they very terrible today, chiquita?”
“They keep saying I don’t try,” she said plaintively into his shoulder. “But I am! I am trying!”
“You do not need to convince me. I know you are,” Ramon replied. “I wish I knew how to help you,” he added, in frustration. “But I do not. I wish I could take you away. You could be a sister to my little Maria.”
“I’d like to have a sister,” Virtue said, for what was probably the millionth time.
“Well, you know I am taking night classes to make my English better, and I have just read a story in my English class about sisters,” Ramon replied, drying her eyes gently with a tissue. “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful queen. She wanted a child very badly. One day, while a fairy was listening, she stuck her finger while she was embroidering—”
“What’s embroidering?” Virtue interrupted.
“It is making pictures on clothing with colored threads and a needle,” Ramon said patiently. “It makes clothing prettier.”
Virtue examined the hem of her scrub sleeve and sighed. She would never have pretty clothing…
“So she was embroidering, and stuck her finger, and before the blood could soil the sleeve, she held her hand outside the window, so the drop of blood fell on the snow outside instead.”
Virtue did not ask what “snow” was. Ramon had explained that to her, and she had looked up pictures on her tablet.
“Oh, the queen said. I wish I could have a little daughter with lips and cheeks as red as blood, and another with skin as white as snow, she said, and the good fairy, who was listening, and knew she was a good and virtuous queen, nodded, and said, Let it be so…”
MARCUS LET THE cold water run over his hands and felt that familiar surge of numbing clarity as the chill set in. He wondered if it was enough, and considered the prospect of a good long shower in freezing water. It had been another bad day, but numbing it away was hardly going to solve his problems. He had just spent hours fruitlessly trying to stimulate Test Subject 0067’s brain activity with a diverse barrage of challenges, ranging through electrical, chemical, and even emotional triggers. Nothing seemed to elicit more than a passive blip on his monitors. The remnant spikes he observed in her brain activity after her rare episodes of explosive power suggested she was on the cusp of something unprecedented. There was something in that subject that defied prediction, as if she was on the verge of actually evolving into something entirely new. Maybe not homo superior, but certainly no longer mere homo sapiens. The sharp, staccato spikes that streamed across the screen of his tablet suggested something more to him than neuronal synapses dutifully firing off. They seemed to cry out in a muted rage, shackled and tethered mere inches away from a satisfying and violent release.
He sniffed in distaste. Violence was chaos; it was unrestricted emotion vented out through destructive channels. He had always preferred the calculated order he could impose on his reality. He was a scientist. He loved the elegant task of posing questions and systematically designing and executing experiments to prove or disprove them. Done correctly, conclusions drawn from experimentation could be absolute and overpower any counterpoints founded upon flimsy, nebulous beliefs and pre-existing notions. Any truth could be uncovered by the collection of hard facts. Marcus had never let something as prosaic as morals or emotion lend its voice to the process.
Until the day Emily had told him she was sick, the day Marcus had discovered another part of himself.
Marcus grunted as he pushed the thought away. He didn’t have time for it. He had promised Garvey a working assassin before the end of the month, and he was no closer to that goal than he was to his own freedom. It was a long-standing joke in academic circles how most scientists were little more than indentured servants—slaves really—but having now served under not one, but two well-funded madmen, Marcus had to wonder when his life had crossed that undefined line from lampoon to full-fledged horror show. He had barely escaped the clutches of Dominic Verdigris III with little more than the shirt on his back, but—he had escaped. And he still drew breath. That was something at least, an achievement of sorts, something he was incredibly lucky to have, and he knew it. But there was the problem. How had he been so euphoric from his escape, so grateful for his new-found freedom, that he had stumbled so carelessly into the hands of another crazed scientist?
Still, at least here he was able to continue his own work, to some degree. While Marcus could draw many similarities between Dominic Verdigris III and Dr. Jacob Garvey—in their paranoia, their obsession with success, their indifference to human life—at least Garvey was less hands-on in his approach. He more-or-less trusted his subordinates to do the work and get his results. Their lives depended on it, after all. Verdigris had never been so trusting. It really was a miracle that Marcus had managed to escape.
Be grateful for small “favors.”
It helped that Garvey didn’t seem to want to be here either. It wasn’t just his disdain for his researchers or his impatience for positive, repeatable results. Marcus suspected Garvey approached all aspects of his life in a similar fashion. He could feel it coming off the ugly man in waves. There were more important things to attend to than the unpredictable surges of power in filthy, disgusting, unreliable children! Garvey wanted adults who were like children in that they could be easily controlled, but were otherwise responsive and predictable. Marcus had long suppressed the notion of correcting Garvey’s misplaced notions. The last thing anyone, man or child, could be was controlled, at least in any real way that mattered. Frightened, perhaps, cowed into a superficial state of submission to escape the threat of pain. But short of lobotomizing them, Marcus couldn’t see any way to fully control a sentient being. People were too damn stubborn for their own good. Marcus often wondered what the world would be like if people simply obeyed their betters, trusting that the smarter person knew what was best for them.
Emily had never obeyed him. Emily had been something of an annoyance, really. They had been orphaned at a young age, and it had fallen to him to look after her through years of foster care. Between their schooling and the constant moves from one home to another, it had been his duty to make sure she was protected. It was the last promise he made to his parents. She was only nine when they passed. He remembered telling her the news, rather bluntly, and the awkward days that followed; she an inconsolable mess, and he the helpless older brother, clueless as to how to make his sister stop crying. She was sensitive—too sensitive, he thought. When she wasn’t sobbing over their dead parents, she was trying to find ways to help the other kids in their foster homes—and worse, making him help too. Why should they care about kids they were never going to see again? Soon, they would be moved, and again, and again. They could never find foster parents who could handle both Emily’s weakness and his strength. He thought of her as a burden and secretly wished that someone, somewhere, would finally release him of the thankless task of being the only guardian she could ever have.
The day Emily told him she was dying was also the day she finally thanked him, for everything he had ever done for her.
She had always been so different. Where he had excelled in his studies, she never seemed to have the focus required for anything academic. She followed her heart, flitting effortlessly from one endeavor to another, throwing herself into whatever cause, whatever fight against injustice struck her as earth-shattering that week. In that contest, Marcus supposed she was the leader, not him. She was always sure of herself, fully in the moment, and she propelled herself through life with sheer drive.
Until the day she just… stopped.
Perhaps he should have seen it coming, should have recognized the signs early. The blackouts, the sudden lethargic episodes—they should have been a warning of things to come. How had he not taken notice when a girl who never stopping talking, never stopped moving, suddenly resigned herself to sit quietly in the corner of his laboratory at midday, her head nodding off, fighting off inexplicable exhaustion? He didn’t even have time to take her to the doctor; his experiments had to come first, of course. So when the diagnosis came in, anaplastic astrocytoma, a rare form of brain cancer, for the first time in his life Marcus had felt a wave of rage and a burning sense of injustice. It had slammed into him, a sucker punch to the gut, a roaring in his head, unlike anything that had come before. The bitter taste of every prior failure paled in comparison: when he had been passed over, repeatedly, for foster care, for scholarships, and even the lost feeling that seemed so overwhelming at the time when his parents had quietly passed away in their hospital beds… nothing could have prepared him for this.
She was just a young girl. A young, earnest girl who had fought for everyone else, every day of her life, despite having nothing herself. Not even, it seemed, an older brother who gave a damn about her. She had nothing to call her own, except her drive, her will to fight, and now even that was slipping away. After she had told him the news, it shocked him how weak she looked, how frail, almost translucent and ethereal. She was dying, and she could do little more than flash him a weak smile and tell him it was going to be all right, that maybe it was just her time. He remembered peering at her, wondering where his sister had gone. Where was the girl who had once rallied an entire school of self-absorbed high schoolers to action, setting up an impromptu blood drive in the wake of one of the worst hurricane disasters to hit the East Coast? Where was the strong, passionate voice that had once cried out against the rise of violence towards women on campus in her freshman year at college, leading a giant protest down Main Street and up the steps of Convocation Hall? She was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a ghost, a mere wisp of the vibrant soul that had given him the strength to go on, for all those years. She was dying. Where was the justice in that?
He remembered it so clearly. He remembered himself gasping as she thanked him for taking care of her, for looking out for her, ever since their parents had been taken from them. She was thanking him, when he should have been thanking her. What had he given her, really, that she had not returned tenfold? He remembered reaching out to do something he never remembered doing before. He drew her into his arms and held on for dear life. And he had never really let her go.
She gave him something else that day. A purpose. From that moment on, he had devoted his research to her. In retrospect, he realized he had made some startling advances in the field, but it wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t. There simply wasn’t the time, and no one, no matter how brilliant or driven or lucky, could solve something so overwhelmingly complex in a few short years. She held on longer than anyone thought possible. It seemed there was still something of a fighter in her yet. Even now, years after she had slipped into perpetual sleep, Marcus was still looking for his answers.
So much time had passed, and still he was looking. And what was the cost? All that she had given him, was there anything left? His humanity. He had ignored it for so many years, only realizing its value when it was far too late. What little was left felt like it was slipping away. He almost laughed. He wanted to live. He needed to live. For her, for Emily. But to live, he had to do some terrible things. To live…
Marcus caught another glimpse of himself in the mirror. This time, he didn’t look away. The hard lines that defined his lips, his chin, his cheekbones… they might have been considered handsome, but his eyes…
They held nothing.
They were his eyes, but not just his. He had seen them before, in another face. They were hollow. Dead. He blinked, and winced, watching Garvey’s eyes blink back at him.
“…BUT THE HORSES slipped on the glass mountain, and never reached the top,” Ramon said, holding Virtue tenderly, as she held the bear. She sighed, and more tears escaped her. He paused in the story, for she usually hung rapt on his every word. “What is the matter, mi corazón?”
“I feel like that,” she replied, as he gave her a tissue to blot her tears. “All the time. Like I’m on a glass mountain, and no matter what I try, I can never reach the top.”
He fell silent, unable to think of anything to say to help her. He had no idea what it was they were trying to get her to do—and even if he knew, these special children, they could all do things that were like magic, and he felt as helpless in his ability to advise them as he was to save them. All he could do was hug her shoulders, wait to hear if she said anything else, and then continue the story. Maybe she would find some clue to help her in the tale. It was, after all, a story about how to do the impossible.
“And all the while this was going on, the king’s son was wandering with his oxen…”
RAMON CLOSED THE door quietly and stowed the bear and tissues under the drape on his cleaning cart. He would have loved to leave both there, but he knew the consequences of doing so would be dire for both himself and the little muchacha. He did not mind punishment for himself… but it would be more than punishment for her. She would lose her only friend in this horrible place, and they would be even harder on her, if that was possible. They had not resorted to beating her—yet—but he had no doubt they would do so if they thought they would get better results.
The mere thought put him in a rage, a rage he quickly clamped down on. Results! Children were precious jewels, the hope of the future, and these men were treating them like… like cans of beans. Worse. Like helpless lambs in a slaughterhouse. He seethed, and was so preoccupied he didn’t sense the presence behind him until he straightened up from the cart. And by then, of course, it was too late.
It was one of the scientists. They wore no nametags, of course. That way if “something happened” none of the underlings could identify them. And they all wore thick goggles that obscured the upper halves of their faces, which would make picking out pictures almost impossible. But Ramon had names for all of them. “The Boss.” “The Sneer.” “The Nervous One.” To Ramon, they all were uncaring, brutal bastards, but this particular scientist chilled him to his core. He never seemed to betray anything about himself. Even his voice was hollow and monotonous. Ramon had named him “The Cold One.”
He thought for a moment about greeting him as if nothing was going on, but that in itself might be a betrayal that something was going on. “The staff” were supposed to say nothing to the scientists. Like slaves of old, they were supposed to keep their eyes down and move aside. So that was what he did. He dropped his eyes and touched the cart to roll it to the side so the scientist could pass.
The Cold One didn’t move. He stood in place, his hands clasped behind his back, his goggles fixed firmly in place on Ramon. He tilted his head, a curious gesture which Ramon took as quizzical. It was the first hint of emotion he had ever detected in this man.
“You are not allowed to disturb the test subjects,” The Cold One said.
Ramon felt a chill. He had been seen. He had heard unsavory things happened to those who did not keep their heads down, to those who meandered from the razor’s edge of their duties.
“I heard her weeping, señor.” Ramon said. “I only went in to see if she was hurt.”
The Cold One’s head tilted further askew, and Ramon fought down a scream of terror when the man took a step forward, followed by another, and another, until his goggles were near enough Ramon could peer past the tinted glass to see the hard, unforgiving eyes beneath.
“You are not allowed to disturb the test subjects,” The Cold One said again.
“Por favor…” He reminded himself that his father’s father’s father’s father had fought the Spanish. That his father’s father had fought the Nazis. That his own father had been a talented boxer. That he came from a line of fighters. It helped… a little, enough to keep from shaking in tooth-rattling terror of this creature that seemed more like a thing than a man. And to manage to choke out a few words, a quote he had heard… somewhere. “‘No man stands taller than when he stoops to help a child in need.’”
The Cold One continued to stare at him. Ramon sniffed, stifling a sigh of relief when the goggles finally dropped, only to shudder in fear as The Cold One’s gaze came to rest on Ramon’s cart. Ramon watched, paralyzed, as a gloved hand reached out and pulled away the drape, revealing a box of tissues and Virtue’s teddy bear.
The goggles rose, and Ramon saw the man’s eyes again, boring into him.
“You’ve done this before,” The Cold One murmured. “Tell me, Custodian Tomaso, just how tall do you need to be?”
The words came out of him before he could stop them. “As tall as the muchacha needs me to be.” He gritted his teeth, but it was too late. The words of defiance were out, as was the secret.
“Ah, a man of compassion,” The Cold One said. “You don’t approve of what we do here, do you?”
“They are children—” Again, the words escaped him before he could stop them.
“It is not your place to approve or disapprove!” The Cold One barked. Ramon felt his resolve falter as he bent beneath the strength of that icy gaze. “It is not your place to do anything more than clean and maintain the infrastructure of these facilities! You are merely a tool—one that performs its duties, keeps its head down, and does not interfere with the delicate projects destined to shape the future of this nation! Is that understood?”
Later, Ramon wondered what had come over him in that instant. Perhaps it was hearing his querida referred to as a “delicate project.” Perhaps it was time when a man was past all fear. Perhaps it was the spirits of his ancestors, deciding to step in and strengthen his backbone. Perhaps none of these, or all. But he suddenly straightened and said, “You know nothing of children. You do not know that when you starve their hearts, you break them. You do not know that when you do not comfort them, you kill their spirits. And what you do not know is breaking her. Soon she will be useless to you. Is that what you want? Can you make a delicate project out of a thing that is broken?”
“As a matter of fact, I can. You assume we want them whole, with anything resembling spirit. Frankly, our job would be much easier with their backs broken. I can mold something soft and supple. I can…”
The Cold One took a step back from Ramon and rested his hands on his hips, his head down, as if struggling with indecision.
“Señor…”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
The Cold One stood still for a long time. Ramon struggled against his need to retort, that to break Virtue would be to shatter her like a delicate porcelain figure, and there would be nothing left but shards too small to piece together. Finally, the scientist relaxed, and turned to walk away.
“You should really be more careful when you make these visits,” the scientist said. “There are eyes everywhere, you know.”
“Señor…”
“Call me Marcus.”
“That’s… that is not allowed…”
“You’re right, so try to do it only when we’re alone, will you?” The Cold One walked away. Ramon could only stare after him.
CRYSTAL CLEAR SURVEILLANCE footage played on the video monitor. Everything visible, from each stitch on Marcus’s coat to the tiny beads of sweat on Ramon Tomaso’s forehead. This was the third time Garvey had played the footage for Marcus, and he froze it as Marcus walked off camera, the sharp patter of his footsteps growing faint in the distance.
“So. What am I supposed to make of this?” Garvey asked, rhetorically. “That you are encouraging insubordination in the help? Giving the nod to the contamination of my subjects? Is this why we’re getting poor results from Sixty-seven?”
“I’m guessing you wouldn’t have been so forgiving with him?” Marcus said.
“He’s as good as dead,” Garvey seethed. “Everyone here is easily expendable. Why do you think I go through the trouble of vetting everyone in this establishment? He’s no one. At least, no one that will be missed.”
“No one?” Marcus asked. “No family?”
“He did have a daughter, but she died a couple of years ago. He’s taking a class or two but if he disappears the school will assume deportation. There’s no one left to question his disappearance.” Garvey’s eyes narrowed. “Or yours, for that matter.”
Marcus sighed, and shrugged in a helpless gesture. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to hear me out,” he said.
Garvey was on him fast, faster than Marcus would have expected from a burn victim with a heavy metallic arm that swung him off-balance when he turned too quickly. In a flash, Marcus felt the powerful grip of steel fingers throttle him about the neck and heard the shrill whining of hydraulics as Garvey picked him up and slammed him back against the wall.
“You know,” Garvey began, “I’m sure it has not escaped your notice that I am not a patient man. I have worked long and difficult hours to get where I am. I’ve sacrificed more than you can imagine to achieve what I have, of myself, and yes, of my staff. So don’t think for a moment I have any reservation about simply turning you inside-out if I think it will help me in the slightest.”
Marcus grunted in pain and tried to speak, but could only manage a hoarse cough.
“Oh dear,” Garvey said, relaxing his grip. “I seem to have broken you. Pray, continue Dr. Dufresne. Please, convince me not to kill you, Subject 0067, and this meddlesome janitor right here, right now, and move on to the next subject.”
“Y… y… you…”
“Really, man, you need to speak up,” Garvey said. He released Marcus, who fell to the ground in a heap, breathing heavily and holding his throat in pain.
“You’re…” Marcus wheezed. “You’re missing an opportunity here.”
“Oh, this should be rich,” Garvey sighed. “You have thirty seconds. Convince me.”
Marcus exhaled, drew a few deep breaths, and began.
“I’ve done a full analysis of her resting power. That’s what we’ve been seeing, that mature, low-level resonance that’s always in play when we record. We almost got the full read, once. It was coming back to rest after her last display, but we were too late to get a decent pattern. We need to have a recording during a full telekinetic flash. And the closest we’ve come since is when we threatened to throw Subject 0013 into the sensory deprivation tank for a week. The green one. The one the subjects call ‘Gremlin.’ She seemed to have some concern for the boy. What if we could use that? Run the scanners, get a full reading, just one, and I assure you everything you need to unlock her talents will be found there.”
Garvey knelt down and pulled Marcus in close by his shirt.
“And how do you propose we do this?”
Marcus glared back at Garvey, and told him.
THE ATTENDANTS BROUGHT her in, dropping her unceremoniously in her chair. Test Subject 0067 slumped forward, face and body rigid with apprehension, her hair already clumping with nervous sweat. Without a word, Marcus stepped forward and attached the sensor to the base of her neck. There was a soft click, followed by a gentle hum as the device flared to life.
“There now,” Marcus said, stepping back. He brought his tablet up and checked her vitals. All systems seemed normal, and the steady, resonant waves began to oscillate across his readouts, like clockwork. “I think we’re just about ready to begin.”
Test Subject 0067 stirred and gave him a furtive glance.
“No tests today?” she mumbled quietly.
“And why would you think that?” Marcus asked, his fingers tapping his tablet, queuing up the standard equilibrations and baseline monitors.
“Because…” The girl hesitated, and looked about, flinching as she caught her reflection in the one-way mirror. “Because you’re in here, with me. Not in there.” She pointed at the mirror. “You’re safe in there. In here…”
“You think I’m in any danger?” Marcus asked. “Really, Sixty-seven, you’ve hardly done anything dangerous. Yet. I’m in here today to try and change that. I think we can give you a nice little boost and see what you’re really made of. Would you like that?”
The girl didn’t answer, at first. Finally, she nodded. Clearly she had learned it best to always agree.
“Very good,” Marcus murmured. “If it helps, you might be happy to know that today we’re not interested in hurting you at all.”
Slowly, the girl raised her head. There were tears in her eyes, and a wild hope.
“R… really?” she said.
“Really,” he answered.
“No shocks.”
“No gas?”
“Not a bit.”
She stumbled through a wavering sigh of relief and gingerly wiped away her tears.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you…”
“No, I thought we would do something a little different today, Sixty-seven.” Marcus looked over at the mirror and nodded. “It seems you’ve made a friend here. I thought you could use some company right now. Would you like to see him?”
The girl looked simultaneously elated and terrified. “I don’t have any friends! Don’t hurt Gremlin! He doesn’t even know who I am!”
“Oh no, no,” Marcus said. “No, no, no, not Subject 0013. I don’t think he’d provide the…” Marcus paused, scratching his head theatrically, “…the depth we would require for today’s agenda.”
The girl stared at him.
“I don’t have any friends,” she repeated. “The other kids don’t talk to me, they…”
She paused as the door swung open, and a man strapped firmly down to a gurney was rolled in. He was frightened, shivering, his hands clenched into tight fists at his side. He turned to look at the girl and tried to give her a reassuring smile. Instead, he looked phrenetic and crazed.
The girl screamed. “Ramon!”
“Yes, Ramon,” Marcus said, waving the attendants out of the room. He strolled over to the gurney, looking down at the struggling man with a curious tilt of his head. He glanced up, and the girl shrank from him, sobbing uncontrollably.
“P… please…” she stammered. “D… don’t hurt him! Oh please, don’t hurt…”
“Then show me!” Marcus barked. “Show me what you can do!”
“Yes! Please! I’ll do anything you want me to! Just…”
“We’re out of patience, Subject Sixty-seven! You have power! You’ve used it before! We want a full demonstration, now, or…”
Marcus paused, as Ramon stopped struggling and glared up at him.
“Her name is Virtue,” Ramon hissed.
“I do beg your pardon?” Marcus said.
“Her name is Virtue,” Ramon repeated. “She’s not some number. She’s a child, and she has a name!”
“Of course, she does,” Marcus agreed. “Very well. Where was I? Ah. Virtue. We want a full demonstration, and right quick. If I have to ask you again, I don’t think Ramon here is going to have a very good day.”
Virtue’s eyes overflowed with tears, which ran unheeded down her cheeks, dripping onto the front of her smock. She shook, her hands clenching and unclenching. The blood drained from her face until she was almost the same color as the smock itself. “I… I can try…”
Virtue braced herself, laying her hands flat on the table in front of her. Completely rigid, she stared at the foam ball on the table before her.
Nothing happened.
Marcus picked up the scalpel from the tray beside him and jammed it into Ramon’s shoulder.
Ramon’s whine of agony was drowned out by Virtue’s scream. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave him alone! I’m trying, can’t you see I’m trying?”
But the balls didn’t move. Not even a fraction of an inch. Clearly this was going to require an extraordinary level of stimulation.
He twisted the scalpel, and with clinical precision, dissected out the brachial plexus, laying it bare to the air. Ramon’s screams rang in his ears, and Virtue—Sixty-seven’s—screams echoed them on a higher note. Marcus fought down an urge to join them. This was getting out of hand. For once, he was thankful for the goggles and the half-mask that Garvey made all the scientists and technicians wear. Keeping his hands steady from shaking was one thing, but if anyone could see his face they would know. They would see his doubt. He glanced at the mirror and could feel Garvey’s cold eyes staring back at him. Marcus felt an odd tingle about his neck, where Garvey had so callously wrapped his metallic fingers around the day before.
He struggled with indecision, staring down at the screaming man, at the exposed nerve bundle glistening with a sheen of blood, and the blood dripping down the shoulder, onto the stainless steel of the gurney, and from there to the floor. This… this was wrong. People weren’t… things, objects to be manipulated and broken. They weren’t disposable. Were they? They weren’t, surely. Were they?
It seemed an eternity, but then one, singular, sharp sound broke his concentration. A sharp rap on glass.
He looked up at the mirror. He felt Garvey’s impatience. He felt what little tolerance Garvey had for him rapidly coming to an end. In a moment, Garvey would summon security, and he would die along with the janitor.
It was only a janitor. No one of importance. The man’s last link to anything had died along with his daughter in a school bus crash. No one would care when he was gone—no one except the single person Marcus needed to goad into the full eruption of her potential.
Him, or me. Or him and me. It was no choice at all. He couldn’t die. He had too much to do. For Emily.
With a single swift incision, he slit the carotid artery. Blood fountained over the edge of the gurney in a long arc. Marcus felt something snap inside of him. He had done it… dear lord, he had done it…
He glanced at Sixty-seven, bracing himself, expecting to see the horror of the moment consume everything else on that young frail face. She would likely be crying. Those who witnessed her last episode swore that her eyes had lit up in a brilliant silver flash, so he braced himself for that as well. Instead, he saw something else.
She wasn’t Sixty-seven—Virtue—anymore. In her place, he saw another. He saw Emily’s face.
And it was angry.
After that, there was nothing but incredible, excruciating pain as he smashed into the wall behind him. Then into the wall to the left. Then to the right. The ceiling, the floor, and the ceiling again. And now, barely conscious, he felt himself flung through the one-way glass, smashing it, to land in a shower of shards at Garvey’s feet. His body was screaming, bent in odd angles. He was screaming as well. He heard himself stop, coughing, wheezing, and he stared, astonished, as a bloody froth erupted from his mouth.
Above him, Garvey peered over his tablet and flashed him a grin.
“Reading complete,” Garvey said. “Well done, Dr. Dufresne.”
Marcus stared back at him.
“You look dreadful,” Garvey noted, sighing. “Those wounds are clearly… oh, what is the word… ah! Mortal. I doubt you would even last the trip to the infirmary. Still, you never know. We do perform miracles here, don’t we?”
There are no miracles, Marcus thought, sinking into the black.
FAMILIAR SOUNDS PENETRATED the deep and formless blackness. The steady beep of a heart monitor. The whine of an overhead fluorescent light. Pings and clicks and hums of other medical equipment, all comforting in their familiarity. Cold comfort, but still, comfort,
Thoughts swam up, like curious fishes.
I’m not dead.
Where am I?
Why am I not dead?
A face appeared out of the shadows. Emily. Emily enraged, as he had last “seen” her. He cringed. And to avoid looking at that angry face any more, he opened his eyes.
And winced away from the light, that cold, pitiless fluorescence he had heard.
“Welcome back, Dr. Dufresne.”
Marcus knew that voice. It filled him with an icy resolve. He let his eyes adjust to the light and looked around. There were the monitors, the IV drip, and next to his bed there was the man himself, Dr. Joseph Garvey.
“Where’s Virtue?” Marcus said.
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Virtue,” Marcus repeated. “Subject 0067.”
“Oh, you need not worry about her anymore,” Garvey said. “She’s progressing nicely. No, Dr. Dufresne, I think our time would be better spent discussing you, and what a pleasant surprise you’ve turned out to be.”
Marcus didn’t respond, and instead tried to prop himself up on the bed. He felt some alarm as his arms refused to move. He strained to look down at himself, and snarled as something blocked his chin. Was he paralyzed? If this was paralysis, it wasn’t like anything he would have imagined. For one thing, his senses seemed, if anything, ramped up. He could swear he felt slight eddies and shifts in the air around him. He thought he could taste a faint antiseptic perfume on Garvey, almost masking the metallic, oily aroma wafting off Garvey’s metallic arm. Marcus felt alert, energized, alive. He tried to lift his head again, and caught a disturbing sight before he let his head fall back down again.
His body was in a full metal restraining suit.
“What have you done?” Marcus demanded, glaring up at Garvey, who smirked in return.
“I saved your life, you ungrateful twit,” Garvey muttered. “And more. You, Dr. Dufresne, are the first successful test subject of the next stage of the Icarus Project. I suppose I should thank you. It seems being so close to death was an unforeseen exploit for portions of the process. Pity, if only we had known that before. So many test subjects lost to pointless, stubborn attempts by my witless team. As for you, virtually every bone in your body was broken. You had multiple internal ruptures and bleeding, and severe head trauma. As I told you at the time, I frankly had no expectation you would make it as far as the infirmary. In any case, it would seem that congratulations are in order. Believe me when I say I am very intrigued by what you are now capable of. We’ll let you rest for a spell, of course. You will be very weak for a while. We will need to monitor you quite closely while you recover.”
Garvey rested his metal hand gently on Marcus’s chest, and smiled.
“But when you’re ready, oh my boy… you will be a wonder. The first of many. So believe me when I say, I shiver to think of the possibilities.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Marcus seethed. “I did what you wanted. I got your results. A deal’s a deal, Garvey.”
“The situation has changed, dear boy,” Garvey said. “You are now far more valuable to me than ever before. You can’t think for a moment I would simply let my crowning achievement just… leave.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Marcus repeated.
“Of course I can,” Garvey scoffed. “Like all my employees and subjects, you were vetted. There’s no one to miss you. There’s no one to come looking for you. You are mine, Dufresne, and the sooner you accept that, the easier your life will be. You are alone. Best you accept that.”
“I’m not alone,” Marcus said, struggling within his iron prison. “I’m not! I…”
“You have no one,” Garvey said. “You had… what… a sister? A sister who died years ago? I had you investigated quite thoroughly, you know. She was the only one, and from what I understand, you failed her. Spec-tac-ularly. You were supposedly a brilliant neurodegenerative specialist, Dufresne, but let’s be blunt, hmmm? You were always a failure. And now, you are the first in a new, highly advanced line of prototypical meta-soldiers! You have me to thank for that.”
Garvey leaned in closer and smiled again.
“Isn’t it about time you did something right?”
Marcus didn’t answer and continued to struggle against his restraints, for all the good it did him. He was stronger, much stronger, he could feel it, but it didn’t seem to matter against the iron maiden that deadened any of his attempts to flex his muscles. He supposed he wasn’t the first metahuman Garvey had to restrain. The suit would be reinforced, of course. It had to be. Metahumans, especially newly minted ones, had a tendency for rage. Aside from the moment Emily announced her diagnosis, Marcus could not remember a time he had ever felt rage. Some people just didn’t have the temperament for it. Instead, he felt what he always felt when on the defensive—an icy resolve to turn the tide, to find a weakness to exploit, to win.
He buzzed with energy. It was a strange sensation and so surreal—to be so confined and helpless, yet suffused with so much vigor and life. And it was growing. He exhaled, a faint and cold mist trailing off his lips. It felt odd and out of place. Under the harsh lights and encapsulated in a heavy metal prison, the room had felt so warm…
“I asked you a question, Dufresne,” Garvey said.
Marcus grunted, his breath steaming in the cold air.
“I asked you a question. Are you ready to finally do something right?”
Marcus glared at him and sneered.
Garvey sighed, and began to pull away. “A pity,” he said. “Breaking your spirit will take time, and I was so hoping we could skip the dreary preliminaries and hit the ground running. Ah well. I suppose it was too much to ask for. I suppose it—” Garvey stopped, a puzzled expression on his face. He shook his arm, but it appeared to be stuck fast to the restraining suit, fused palm down to Marcus’s chest.
“What in the—”
Garvey’s eyes widened as wispy ropes of vapor flowed from his metallic hand and a frosty rime traveled up the arm. Garvey couldn’t move; he was pinned in place, immobilized as a sudden chill had fused them together, a chill that intensified in waves from Marcus’s suit, from Marcus himself…
Marcus felt the energy crescendo and let it flow over him, through him. In a sudden explosive burst he lashed out, shattering his now brittle prison into jagged pieces. Already he was moving, bounding from the confines of the bed, on his feet, his hand lashing out, gripping the astonished Garvey about the throat and ramming him back against the wall.
Garvey gurgled his surprise and tried to swing his arm. Nothing happened. The sound of the arm’s hydraulics moaned and stopped. The arm shuddered in place and shattered, pieces falling to the floor, trailing wisps of vapor from the extreme cold, leaving nothing but a bloody stump that flailed wildly from his shoulder.
Marcus glanced at the stump, and back to Garvey.
“Oh dear,” Marcus said. “I seem to have broken you.”
He brought Garvey in close and scowled as he held the frightened man’s eyes with his own.
“Now then. Where is Virtue?”
