Zero's Return (3 page)

As Marie watched
the other technicians rush in to help Carter carry the experiment from the
room, she felt undefinable sadness.  After two years of near crush-like status
towards the ‘cutie in cell 5’, the lieutenant’s good will had officially ended.

She and I
were his only two friends in this place,
she thought sadly, watching his
limp body as it was carried out.

Afterwards,
Colonel Codgson hosted a celebration to commemorate their continued research,
but Marie could not bring herself to stay.  She left the restaurant and drove
back to the lab, thinking about the look of anguish she’d seen on Twelve-A’s
face as Carter had used the modifier.  It had remained even after she had led
him back to his cell and reattached the driplines, that lifeless pall of
someone who had lost all hope.

Even though she
got chills thinking of it, Marie wanted to see him.  Console him.  Assure him
things would get better.  She was in her car, driving back to the lab before
she realized what she was doing.

When she got
there, the lab was cold and dark, the monitoring booths empty.  Marie flicked
on the lights and moved to the holding area, then swiped her card and waited as
the hydraulics pushed one of the thick leaden doors open.  Inside, a sixth of
the lights remained permanently on, more for the technicians’ comfort than the
experiments’—no one wanted to be alone in the dark with the monsters they had
created.

Somewhere, near
the back of the room, Marie heard crying.  She frowned, thinking the sobs
sounded as if they were coming from Cell 5, though knowing Twelve-A couldn’t
possibly be awake.  She had seen the drip-bag Carter had given him.  She had
watched the woman add extra sedative.  Deep down, Marie had actually hoped it
would OD and kill him.

The sobbing
continued, despondent and alone.

Though she
carried no restraining devices, had followed none of the pre-entry assessment
protocol, Marie stepped inside the corridor.

“Hello?” she
whispered.

Though she knew
her words had not been loud enough to carry beyond her own ears, the sobbing
cut off instantly.

Cold prickles
crawled across Marie’s arms and back.  She had
seen
Twelve-A get
drugged.

Had Lieutenant
Carter forgotten to actually attach the bag?  Or had Twelve-A made her forget? 
Could he have done that, while bawling and shaking?  They had always assumed the
distraction of pain was enough to keep him from utilizing his abilities…

Marie knew right
then she should hurry back behind the protective leaden walls and lock the
containment area down to wait for assistance. 

She knew…and
yet, with the echoes of his misery still staining the walls around her, she
found herself rooted in place, unable to leave.  Guilt welled in her gut like a
moldy sack, weighing on her soul.  More than Carter, more than even Codgson,
she was responsible for this lab.  She had been with these young men and women
every day of their short lives.  She had decided on their exact genetic
sequences, had implanted their modified embryos, made the gut-wrenching call of
which fifteen from each batch could survive to puberty.

They don’t
deserve this,
she thought, eying the other experiments in their beds.  All
slept, either naturally or by drugs, splayed out in naked disregard like
animals.

The crying had
not begun again, and Marie got the eerie impression that Twelve-A waited for
her in the darkness.  Realizing how blithely she’d stepped into his trap,
Marie’s pulse began to race.  She had no behavioral unit with her, no way of
mediating his rage.  Like a farmer standing feet from a tiger hidden in the
undergrowth, she had entered his realm, and her continued existence was solely
at his discretion.  Running was no longer an option, as much as her panicked
thoughts screamed at her to do so.

Though it took
every ounce of willpower she had, she made herself move deeper into the
corridor of cages.

Twelve-A was
tucked into a fetal position on his bed, knees to his chest, back against the
corner where two walls joined.  There was no drip-bag hanging from the stand
inside his cell.  A cold wash of goosebumps prickled Marie’s body in a wave,
seeing that, knowing that she
had
seen a drip-bag earlier.

He tinkered
with our minds,
Marie thought.  She wondered how many times he had done
that before, and for what purpose.

As soon as
Twelve-A saw her, he stopped rocking and met her eyes. 

I know their
fear before I kill them,
he said in a whimper. 
I have to.

The
self-loathing that emanated from Twelve-A in that thick mental wave drove Marie
into an uncontrolled stumble against his cell.  Panting, she struggled to keep
from bursting into tears at the sheer
power
of the emotional barrage. 
Knowing that this was how he felt, that this was
him,
Marie’s instincts
screamed at her to help him.  Before she could talk herself out of it, she
opened the gate to his cell and went to sit down on the thin mattress beside
him. 

“Everything’s
fine,” she said, touching his knee.  “You’re done.  You’ll never have to do
that again.”

Her touch made
Twelve-A jerk, and for the first time, Marie realized that the experiment had
never been allowed to touch another Human being before, other than those he
meant to kill.  Yet, before Marie could correct her mistake, he unfolded and
threw himself into her arms like a frightened child.

There, the lab’s
most dangerous creation cried into her shoulder.

Marie froze,
terrified of his presence, terrified of what she’d done.  She felt Twelve-A’s
body tremble against her, wracked by an emotional torment whose very residues
still left her weak and nauseous.  Despite her fears, she felt tears coming to
her own eyes and softly began stroking Twelve-A’s shaven head.

“Everything’s
going to be fine,” she whispered, again.

He shook his
head against her chest and sobbed.  Pent-up breaths exploded from him in
tortured spasms, and the emotional barrage—anguish, unhappiness, despair,
self-loathing—hit her in wave after crashing wave that left her shaking.  His
grip on her back began to hurt.  Realizing he needed her touch more than her
words, Marie said nothing more and wrapped her arms around him.

Biologically,
Twelve-A was a healthy twenty-two-year-old man.  Mentally, however, he was as
vulnerable as a small child.  Like all the experiments, they had kept his every
stimulation to the barest necessary for survival, sedating him with drugs for
most of his life, punishing him for basic Human urges like curiosity or attempting
to talk, never speaking more than their experiment numbers or basic orders
within hearing range, never giving him a chance to
think.
 

The reason was
simple; undrugged and unhindered—like he was now—he could execute his keepers
with a thought.  Unrestrained, his cell open, he could cast Marie aside and
simply leave the lab.  He could walk through the open containment area doors,
all the way to the reception area, where it would be a small thing to get the
guard to open the door for him and escape, never to be seen again.  Like with
Carter and the drip-bag, he could probably even make them all forget he had
even existed.

Marie considered
all these things as she sat there, holding him, but found she did not care.  He
needed her, and that was all that mattered.

Thank you,
came his mental whisper in her mind.  Twelve-A’s body had calmed somewhat,
leaving only an underlying shuddering, like someone who’d spent too much time
in the cold.

“I’m going to
help you,” Marie said, before she realized it was true.  “I’m going to help you
escape this place.”

Twelve-A looked
her in the eyes and said,
I could escape any time I want.

She froze,
seeing the truth there.  “Then why don’t you?” Marie whispered back.

The others,
Twelve-A replied. 
If I took them with me, they’d all be caught and brought
back here.

She watched him
closely.  “But you wouldn’t.”

His face
tightened almost imperceptibly and he shook his head once.  The gesture gave
Marie chills.  She wondered just how powerful their experiment was, just how
much he’d been hiding from them.

Tentatively, she
said, “You know what’s outside the complex, don’t you?  Can you actually feel
beyond the walls?”

Twelve-A looked
away.  His silence was answer enough.  All of their precautions, all of their
procedures, all their efforts to keep him ignorant of his Humanity…all had been
for naught.  Twelve-A had been in contact with the real world since the moment
he’d been born.

“I’ll get you
out of here,” Marie said, on impulse.  “I promise.”

Twelve-A’s blue
eyes flickered to her for a moment of desperate hope, then, reluctantly, he
nodded.

#

That night,
Marie drafted an anonymous letter to the funding committee, to three separate
civil rights groups, to eight government officials, to six leading scientists,
and to three different news agencies.  She knew it would end her career.  She
knew she and her colleagues would spend the rest of their lives in prison. 
But, after everything she’d done, it seemed a fitting demise. 

She told them of
kidnapping three hundred and thirteen of the planet’s best ‘psychics’ and
installing them in cells deep beneath the mountain.  She told of measuring
their capabilities, charting their genomes, harvesting their genetic material,
then, once the first batch was successful, ridding themselves of the hosts. 
She told of traveling to alien planets to steal naturally-evolved telekinetic,
telepathic, or telemorphic genetics.  She told of killing six Jahul they had
lured to Earth with whispers of oregano trade, then dissecting them to examine
their sivvet.  She told them of the over sixteen hundred culls.  She told them
of Codgson’s cruelties, the deathmatches, the mind-wipes, the drugs, the
nakedness, the child-soldiers, Phil’s Jreet experiment, the alien genetics… 
She told them everything.

To Marie’s surprise,
her letter was not published the next day.  Nor the next.  Not even a whisper
of it came in the weeks that followed.  Her only indication that something had
happened was the colonel’s increasingly terse attitude, his shortening temper.

“Get Twelve-A,”
Codgson finally snapped upon entering the lab almost a month later.  “He has
another demonstration to make.”

Lieutenant
Carter left her desk and immediately went to do as she was told.

“No!” Marie
cried, stepping between the iron-faced Lieutenant Carter and the holding area. 
“You promised, Colonel.”  Even as she said it, she knew it sounded weak,
desperate.  Like a child begging for a reprieve.

Codgson’s eyes
were cold, chipped obsidian as he said, “Someone betrayed us to Congress. 
Confirmed their suspicions.  Their ships are coming.  The committee is here to
decide which specimens to use in the fight against the Dhasha commander.  One
of Representative Mekkval’s own nephews.  We put some alien captives in the
Dark Room so Twelve-A can show those pencil-pushing bureaucrats what he can
really
do.”

Marie froze. 
Congress was coming.  By experimenting with genetics, in creating
weapons
,
they had broken the Second Law of Congress.  And now they would kill them
all.

“Let me do it,”
Marie said, desperate, now.  “Let me retrieve him.”

The colonel
glanced back to frown at her.  “Why?”

Before she could
override the aching in her chest with the logic that had ruled her life the
last twenty turns, she blurted, “He is like a son to me.”

Codgson’s face
flashed with superior disdain as he looked her over.  “He is an animal,
Doctor.”

It took all of
Marie’s willpower to say, “It’s not a crime to be fond of one’s dog, Colonel.”

Codgson gave a
bitter laugh.  “Whatever.  Hell, screw the skinny prick if you want to.  Just make
sure he’s in the Dark Room in six minutes.”

Marie was
shaking with a mixture of rage and terror as she walked down the corridor. 
Congress was coming, and Earth would feel its wrath for ages to come.  She and
every other scientist who worked on the experiments would be executed.  The
experiments themselves would be murdered, the labs destroyed.  Their only hope
of avoiding the coming apocalypse was if the experiments could do what they
were created to do.

Defend Earth.

Defend their
home and their people against a power so great it spanned the entire universe.

But
would
they?

Marie felt
helpless as she approached Twelve-A’s cell.  She’d tried to help, but she’d
brought the aliens to their doorstep, instead.  It was her fault.  All of it.

It wasn’t
you,
Twelve-A told her, looking up from his cot to meet her gaze with
solemn blue eyes. 
I never let you send that letter.

Marie clearly
remembered sending it.  She remembered checking her Sent files and getting
Delivery Confirmation on the physical drafts, just to make sure. 

Then Marie
gasped at what the minder was trying to tell her.  She had been in her own home
when she drafted and sent those letters, twenty miles from the lab.  His
influence couldn’t possibly reach that far.  But if it had… 

What was the limit?

Fearful, Marie
began backing away.  Twelve-A watched her soberly through the bars.  He was
huddled in one corner, his lanky knees tucked under his chin.  She felt like
she was caught in the tiger’s stare, but this time the tiger was debating.

After a moment,
Twelve-A looked away.

Marie sank down
to her knees in front of him, so relieved she was shaking.  Softly, she said,
“I can help you all get out of here.  I can help you start new lives on the
surface.”