The Deep Beneath (21 page)

As Commander Sturgis waded through the paperwork on her desk, she thought,
What to do with my teenaged guests?

They had to be terminated, that much she knew. It would be fairly easy to create a convincing cover story. Three teens in the desert at night, less than ten miles from the Mexican border. With the amount of drug and human trafficking going on in the area, the press and families of the kids would devour clues that led to a kidnapping and hustle across the border.

But her butt was already in a sling with General Bardsley. After the mishap with 9, she had little chance of convincing the Makers to keep her program alive. If they found out that she’d offed three teenagers … it was a delicate situation, to be sure.

And she had to find a way to win 9’s trust. She could force his obedience with sedation. But a sleepy hybrid drooling on his pillow was of no use to the Makers and thus of no use to her.

The three teens may be of some use to her after all.
Perhaps I can use them to win 9’s trust.
She’d have her people plant evidence of their disappearance. The authorities would chase their tails into Mexico and away from the truth while the families busied themselves putting up ‘Have You Seen Me?’ posters rather than stop to sniff the evidence.
They can stay in the holding tank a few days while I take care of cleanup and consider how to handle it.

Sturgis had just begun reading over a second stack of papers when Sewell buzzed her on the intercom. She had been so deep in thought that the unexpected sound made her jump.

“Yes, Sewell, what is it?” She did not bother to hide the irritation in her voice.

“First of all, congratulations, Commander, for bringing 9 home safely.”

Commander Sturgis ignored Sewell’s attempt at niceties. She had little time and no patience for his courtesies. “Get to the point, Sewell.”

“Yes, ma’am. One of the officers radioed that one of the kids they picked up, the one named Jack, had been shot and needs medical attention.”

She had been only half listening as she often did when Sewell spoke, but now he had her attention. “One of my men shot him?” Sturgis’ anger flashed hot at the thought of a soldier using deadly force without her authorization.

“No, ma’am, at least not according to the officer that radioed. He said the boy got shot
before
you showed up out there in the desert. Says that 9 apparently did some healing work on him, but allegedly he still has a bullet in him.”

Sturgis pondered the information but not because of her concern for the teenager. If he died of an infection, it was one less headache for her. No, it was the part about H.A.L.F. 9 healing him that caught her ear. They had seen signs of 9’s ability to heal himself when he was a young boy, but during the long period of sedation, they were unable to fully test and confirm it. She had hoped he could heal others but until now had no evidence of it.

“You want me to have them take the young man to Dr. Dolan for treatment?”

Why waste medical treatment on someone who will be terminated?
But H.A.L.F. 9 was with Dr. Dolan. If she had the boy taken there, H.A.L.F. 9 would see it. It was a chance to show him a sign of good faith and perhaps win his loyalty.

“Commander? You want me to radio ops back and tell them to put the guy in the cell like the others.”

“No. Tell ops to take him to Dr. Dolan, as you suggested.”

“All right, Commander,” Sewell stammered.

Commander Sturgis hit the button making the light to Sewell’s extension go dark. If only it were so easy to extinguish all problems that plagued her.

Sturgis opened her desk drawer and retrieved the thumb drive General Bardsley had given her. She stared at the bit of plastic as if staring at it could make it disappear.
What am I going to do about this?
The adrenaline high of the evening had worn off, and Lilly Sturgis was as tired as she’d ever been.
If I sit for much longer, I may not wake up for a week
. She did not have time for sleep.
Not yet.

H.A.L.F. 9 was home and the disasters of the night had been contained. But she held in her hand a much larger calamity, and she knew that she would be alone in finding a solution. Dr. Randall was gone. Dr. Dolan was merely a physician, not adept at the politics of the food chain that tangled itself all the way to the Makers. And she had trusted Sewell with too much for too long.
But no more.

The problem of how to protect her H.A.L.F.s and keep the program alive would have to wait. First she had to consider how best to take care of the three new complications that had arrived.

I’m sorry, H.A.L.F. 9. Some promises are made to be broken
.

Tex was lifted from Commander Sturgis, but he did not know who raised him. His head bounced gently on someone’s arm. The swaying motion of being carried lulled him, and he drifted off to sleep, not knowing if he would awake again.

Warmth. Heat against his face. The heat felt like … like something once unknown but now familiar. It felt like … the sun.

Am I? How could I be?
He had been somewhere cold and wet. He was drowning. He’d fallen down, down, down to a place where only darkness dwelled.

But the sensation of heat on his skin pulled him up and out of the black. He blinked his eyes open, hoping against hope that somehow while he had been in a place without dreams that his alien cousins had retrieved him.

A bright, white light assaulted his eyes from overhead. It hurt, so he closed his eyes. He opened them again, but this time only part of the way, using his large eyelids to shield his eyes from the intense illumination.

The light above him was an engineered light source, not the sun. He blinked his eyes a few more times and his surroundings came into focus.

He was not outside with a star called the sun over his head. Nor was he in an alien ship or on a distant planet. Tex was in Dr. Dolan’s medical suite at A.H.D.N.A. He lay on an all-too-familiar examination table in an all-too-familiar room being stared at by an all-too-familiar face. He wanted to sink down again to the deep void so that he could forget that he was back in his prison home.

“I feared that I may lose you,” Dr. Dolan said. His small, dark eyes stared down at Tex from behind glasses so thick they distorted Dolan’s eyes and made them look like small slits in his face. Dolan smiled at him with thin lips under a bushy black mustache peppered with grey. Tex thought Dolan’s mustache could use a good trim. His smile quickly faded. “Damned fool. She nearly killed you.”

A part of Tex wanted to remind Dr. Dolan to speak quietly if he was to speak ill of Commander Sturgis. As Dr. Randall once said, ‘The walls of A.H.D.N.A. have ears.’ But he was too disheartened by being back at A.H.D.N.A. to care what happened to Dr. Dolan. He did not want to look into the doctor’s face, so he shut his eyes.

“That’s it. Close your lids and rest. Let the heat lamp draw the excess moisture out. I’ve got you wrapped up in blankets made from wicking material too. You’ll feel better soon. Not that it’ll last. She’s going to amp up the humidity in your quarters, I guarantee it. It’ll be like a damned sauna in there.” Dr. Dolan’s voice was usually cheery regardless of time of day or circumstance. Tex had considered the possibility that the doctor was mentally unstable. But Dolan’s voice was not upbeat.

Tex did as Dr. Dolan told him and kept his eyes closed, though he did not do it because Dr. Dolan asked it of him. He simply did not want to face his reality anymore.
I was so close.

Dr. Dolan continued to speak to him. He asked questions about what he’d seen outside the walls of A.H.D.N.A. and had he met any humans. Dolan’s questions reminded Tex of Erika and the others. He wondered if they had, in fact, been brought to A.H.D.N.A. as promised. Or perhaps they had already been terminated. The thoughts about the fate of his friends made him feel helpless. He turned his mind further inward, away from Dr. Dolan’s prattling. He remained motionless and mute as he sought emptiness.

“Look, I know it’s a disappointment,” Dr. Dolan whispered in his ear. The doctor’s face was so close to his that Tex could smell the doctor’s gum disease. “But you can’t give up. We’ll find a way.”

Tex pondered Dr. Dolan’s use of the word ‘we’. To who did his ‘we’ refer? As far as Tex knew, Dr. Dolan had simply acted as a courier delivering Dr. Randall’s directions on how to escape. Dr. Randall had been the mastermind of the escape plan, and Dr. Randall was dead.

When Tex offered no response, whispered or otherwise, Dr. Dolan quit his chattering. Tex was glad for the quiet. He withdrew into himself as he had done in the copter. He took his attention off of the beating of Dr. Dolan’s heart.
He has a faulty valve.
Tex closed out the sound of the ticking clock and the heat of the lamp. He ignored the pleasant silky feel of the synthetic fabric in which he was wrapped and the sensation of electricity that coursed through the cable wrapped in conduit over his head.

Tex forced his attention on the realm beyond the conscious one, to the place where thoughts travel on waves. He opened his mind like a lid flipped off of a jar to allow other beings who traveled in the realm of the mind to read his thoughts. He turned on his mind like an antenna in the quantum realm, searching like a radar for a hint of the buzzing voices that came from his alien cousins.

But the realm of thought was silent save for his own consciousness. There was no humming in his head, no voices other than his own. He had never felt more alone.

The metal doors to Dr. Dolan’s medical wing slid open, forcing Tex’s mind back to the mundane realm in which the humans dwelled. He kept his eyes closed, but his ears were wide open.

“What the – who’s this?” Dr. Dolan asked.

“One of the kids Commander Sturgis had us bring down,” a man said.

A kid? Could it be Erika?
Tex took a whiff of the air and knew immediately that it was not Erika. Erika’s scent was light and slightly sweet like a mix of the sugar that Ian had introduced him to the night before and the oranges that he ate for breakfast. Her odor was wholly pleasant to him. But the ‘kid’ in the room smelled of salt and soap and testosterone. It was a scent that Tex did not enjoy.
Jack.

“What in the world? Down here? Why in God’s name would she –?” Dr. Dolan asked.

“We got orders, Doc. He was shot, and Commander Sturgis says you need to fix him up.”

“Of course she did,” Dr. Dolan said. “She makes the mess and I’m supposed to clean it up.” Dr. Dolan’s voice was no longer melancholy. Despite his words, Dolan’s tone was nearly gleeful.

“You gonna take care of it or not?” asked one of the two soldiers.

“Of course I’ll treat him. Put him over there on the other exam table. I’ll take a look.”

There were footsteps; then Jack’s body landed heavily on the metal table. Tex opened his eyes. Dr. Dolan began to go to Jack, but Tex reached out his hand and caught Dr. Dolan’s white lab coat with his finger.

“Dr. Dolan,” Tex said. His voice had not been used for quite some time, and it came out crackly and much smaller than he’d intended.

Dr. Dolan stopped and leaned down so he could hear.

Tex whispered, “Get the soldiers to leave us alone. I must speak with Jack privately.”

Dr. Dolan nodded and walked toward Jack. “Take your shirt off, young man. Let me take a look at you.”

Fabric rustled as Jack removed his shirt. But the guards did not leave.

“I’m going to have to remove that bullet or it’ll fester.”

“Will it hurt? When you remove it, I mean,” asked Jack.

“Only a lot,” Dr. Dolan said. There was no hint of a joke in his voice.

Tex could not help a surge of gladness at the thought that Jack would feel pain. He wished Dr. Randall was there. Tex very much wanted to understand why he wanted Jack to suffer when the guy had never done anything hurtful to him.

Tex could feel Jack’s sharp intake of air and he could hear his heart rate increase.
Get rid of the soldiers.

“You two can take a hike,” Dr. Dolan said.

“Nah, we’ll wait while you take care of it,” one of the soldiers said.

“Look, I have to perform a minor operation here and need to concentrate so I don’t accidentally sever this young man’s carotid artery. I am assuming that if Commander Sturgis asked you to bring him here for medical treatment that she wants him alive. And I don’t need you two hovering over me like pesky mosquitos. I’m asking you to go wait in the hall.”

Still the guards did not move.

“Let me put it to you another way. I’m not cutting into this kid with the two of you here. So either disobey your commander’s order and take him without treatment or wait in the damned hall.”

Their boots clopped on the linoleum floor as they left the room. As soon as the door locked closed behind them, Tex unwound himself from his wraps and hopped off of the table.

He stood for a moment without moving, checking the steadiness of his legs. The heat lamps and wicking material had done wonders. His legs were sturdy and strong beneath him.

Jack sat upright on a table less than ten feet from him, his chest and stomach bare. Tex was once again standing naked, but this time he felt more exposed than he had on Bell Rock or in the pool. As he stood in such close proximity to Jack, he could not help but compare himself. For the first time in his life, Tex felt that his body might be inferior to a human one.

Jack’s chest was not tight with muscles like Ian’s, but it wasn’t small and thin like Tex’s. Jack’s torso was covered in a light-colored downy fuzz that made him seem manly in a way that Tex’s hairless body would never be. Jack’s eyes were full of color and reflected the emotion that lay behind them.

But it was not the mere sight of Jack’s human form that made Tex feel suddenly inadequate. It was the knowledge that Erika appeared to care for Jack, perhaps even want him for a mate. If she found Jack’s form pleasing, then by contrast, she surely found Tex’s body displeasing to look upon.

Tex stood planted where he was and considered his options for how to work around the bugs. Dr. Dolan opened his mouth but stopped himself at the last minute. He put up a finger then walked to the wall filled with drawers and cabinets. Dr. Dolan rifled through them as though looking for something then slammed doors closed when he did not find what he searched for. Finally he pulled a device from one of the drawers that looked like a small plastic gun but with a cord coming out of the end.