Zero's Return (57 page)

Into her hair,
Doctor Molotov said, “You won’t remember this, but I just wanted to tell you
there were a dozen times I wished I could have taken you home with me.  You’re
the bravest kid I’ve ever seen in this program, the
smartest
, and I’m so
sorry what happened to you.  It wasn’t fair.  None of this was fair.  I didn’t
understand that when I signed on.  I had no idea what the program was really
like.  I swear to you, I had no idea.”

Six Six Five
listened, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything in response.

“But once I was
here, once I was
in
, I had to stay,” Doctor Molotov said.  “I was the
only one keeping the insanity from tearing this place apart.  And when it
became too much, when I couldn’t handle it any more, the general wouldn’t let
me leave even when I wanted to.  He said I had to stay, counter Codgson’s
crazy…”

Six Six Five
heard Doctor Molotov swallow against the top of her head.

“This isn’t what
I thought I’d be doing with my life,” Doctor Molotov said, after what seemed
like an eternity.  “I thought we would be saving Earth.”

“You will,” Six
Six Five said.  “Twelve-A will kill the aliens for you.”

Doctor Molotov
froze, then slowly pulled away.  Her mascara was in narrow black rivulets down
her cheeks, but there was a frown on her face.  “Did he say that?”

Six Six Five
frowned.  “No.  But everyone says he’s your best soldier, and that’s why
Codgson hates me.”

Doctor Molotov
gave her a long, apologetic look.  “No…  The reason Codgson hates you had
nothing to do with Twelve-A.  You were a different batch that got mixed up with
the one he wanted to test—the eleven series.  It was a stupid mistake, and he
had already fired the tech, but I figured we’d already put the resources into
incubating you, so we might as well see what came out.  Codgson thought it was
a waste of resources from the start.”

Six Six Five
considered that.  “Are you going to put me on ice now?”

Doctor Molotov
pulled back completely, looking at her from arm’s length.  “No.  Phil’s got
a…project.  Long-term behavior modification.  You were an…ideal candidate.”  It
looked like it was getting harder for Doctor Molotov to speak, and, biting her
lip, she turned away to pick up the chart again.  She flipped papers for
several minutes, then cleared her throat and put the chart down.  Briskly, she
tapped a button on her wrist and said, “Call Phil Ingles.”  A moment later, she
grimaced.  “Yeah, I finally found her.  Sleep wing.  No, not dead.  Charles was
padding his timesheet again.”  She hesitated.  “Well, I can’t do it.  And
Codgson’s gonna be back at five.  If you induct her into the project now, we
can get that ball in motion and he’ll have to back off.  He’s got no say in
S.H.A.E.L.”  Doctor Molotov paused for several moments, her frown deepening. 
“Yeah, screw that.  If he comes in there again, just call me.  That is
not
under his jurisdiction.  He keeps nosing around, we’ll just have to go to
somebody higher up.”  She cocked her head slightly.  “Okay.  I’ll see you in
half an hour.”  She reached down and tapped a button on her wrist again.

“Doctor
Molotov,” Six Six Five asked softly.

The doctor
hesitated and reluctantly lifted her head to meet her eyes.  “Yes?”

“What is
S.H.A.E.L.?”

Doctor Molotov’s
face trembled with apology.  She swallowed, looked away, and visibly steeled
herself.  When she turned back, she said, “Shael is dreaming again.  Mothers’
ghosts, don’t you have some sort of mental anesthetic or something?  She’s
gonna puree these flakers if they keep getting too close.  Can’t you tell them
to leave?  Stay on the
safe
side of camp?”

Shael groaned
and opened his eyes.  Joedobbs was there,
touching
him again.  As Shael
lifted his hand to hurl him aside, however, Joedobbs quickly straightened and
held up both his palms.  “Was just making sure you didn’t need help, Shael,” he
said, much too quickly.  “You were yelling in your sleep that you needed help.”

Shael flinched
and sat up, his great heart hammering in his chest.  The fire had burned low
and many of the drooling furg-experiments were awake and staring at him from
their huddles.  The minder was watching him from atop an abandoned Human
vehicle, legs crossed beneath him.  That Twelve-A ga Test Tube had
again
witnessed his shame was almost enough for Shael to end him right there.  The
way
everyone
was staring at him, though, stayed his hand.

“How…” Shael
cleared his throat, realizing his voice had devolved into a hoarse rasp
sometime during the night.

“Here,” Joedobbs
said, offering a canteen.  “Good Voran fire-water.  Calms the nerves.”

Shael gratefully
took the canteen and drank, but couldn’t manage to take more than a few sips,
again, to his shame.  To keep yet another of his failings from showing, Shael
hid his shame with, “This drink is the lifeless swill of things with teats.” 
He threw the canteen aside, allowing its contents to spill to the ground. 
Though unintended, it was almost comical the way Joedobbs rushed to collect it,
almost as if he thought the contents precious.

“Well,” Joedobbs
said, capping the canteen and stuffing it back in his coat, “it certainly isn’t
Welu sludge, I’ll give you that.”  He eyed Shael with the same wariness one
would give a hatchling Dhasha, however.  “You feeling better?”

In truth, Shael
wanted—
needed
—water, but he kept his weakness from showing.  “I am
fine.”

“Fine, huh?”
Joedobbs asked.  Unbidden, he sat down on the log facing Shael’s pile of
blankets—they had been gathering more and more from every empty house they
passed, at Shael’s direction, and now he had a pile vast enough to bury a
kreenit, so many that Shael felt he could even risk sharing his spoils with the
drooling furgs they were protecting.  “You wanna tell me what you’ve been
dreaming about?”

Instantly,
Shael’s scales tightened against his skin, resulting in a full-body prickle.

Joedobbs quickly
held up his gloved hands in peace.  “No biggie!  Not my flake to dig around in,
after all.  Just curious if you needed someone to talk to, you know?”

Shael did—he was
desperate
to know why this woman Six Six Five haunted him—but he would
rather eat his own tek than show weakness to a Voran.

A gentle touch
on his shoulder made him spin.  Twelve-A was standing there with one of the
jugs of water that the Voran insisted on carrying around.  He wordlessly
offered it to Shael.  Reluctantly, Shael took it, grateful for the cool liquid
to calm his throat.  He drank until his great stomach distended, then wiped his
mouth and offered it back.

“So,” Joe said,
as Twelve-A ga Test Tube reclaimed his water and climbed back to his seat atop
the abandoned vehicle.  “I guess the question of the day, sunshine, is whether
or not you’re going to be okay.  You’re
really
making the two of us
nervous.  Hell, the mind-furg has actually been waking up before noon to check
on you.”  He gestured behind him at the telepath, but Shael didn’t hear
anything else.  He was suddenly in another place, another time, staring up at a
doctor with mussed-up hair and sleep-deprived brown rings under his eyes.  He
was tapping another syringe, and Shael was strapped into a weird, egg-shaped
bed.

He smiled down
at Shael as he leaned over the lip of the bed, syringe in hand. 
“So I guess
the question of the day, sunshine, is whether you’re ready to become a Jreet.”

Shael’s eyes
widened and he screamed.

#

“What’s a Jreet,
Doctor Philip?” Six Six Five asked, confused.

“What he means
is it’s time for you to take a quick nap,” Doctor Molotov said briskly,
shooting Doctor Philip a pointed glance.

“What?” Doctor
Philip demanded.  “It’s not like she’s going to remember.  I’m throwing it on
HIGH.  Starting completely over.  I’ve got a deadline, and you
know
Codgson’s gonna fight to get the program shut down once he finds out you—”

“Finds out she
what?” Colonel Codgson demanded, striding into the room.  “What, you two ripped
your phones from your bodies?  We had an emergency four-thirty meeting to
discuss Thirteen-Series’ weird reaction to antibiotics last night, and neither
of you even bothered to send me a no—” he froze upon getting close enough to
the scoop-shaped bed to see inside.  Instantly, his face darkened.  “That
better not be what I think it fucking is.”

Faced with his
hateful scowl, Six Six Five cringed into the bed holding her.

“Six Five is
part of the S.H.A.E.L. project now,” Doctor Molotov said.  “As of this
morning.  She’s no longer in your jurisdiction.”

Codgson’s face
was beginning to redden.  “I had her culled.”

“Yes, we are all
aware of your personal bias concerning Six Six Five,” Doctor Molotov said,
holding up the clipboard with the big CULL written in blood-red marker across
the page.  “If you would also remember, I am the medical director on this
project.  I gave the order to have her reallocated for memory patterning due to
her high telekinetic potential.  That was
my
decision to make, and when
you tried to override it, you were directly going against your orders from the
general.  You are
not
to intervene in my medical decisions, colonel. 
Just as I am not to intervene in your…training.”  Her face twisted with
disgust.

Codgson ignored
her and continued to stare down at Six Six Five, and for a long moment, she
thought he would simply draw his knife and bend down and slit her throat. 
Instead, slowly, he lifted his head, face tightening in a sneer.  “So let me
get this straight.  You’re gonna make the little bitch think she’s Jreet. 
Because you can.”

Doctor Philip
reddened.  “We’re going to test the newest tweaks to our machinery, and try to
ascertain just how malleable a mind is to the power of suggestion.  If it
succeeds, we could skip the personnel-heavy training methods we’re using now
and just raise them in hypnosis beds.”

“You’re gonna
make the little bitch think she’s Jreet.”  This time, Codgson actually sounded…
pleased
. 
“Because you want her to prove your system works.”

“It
does
work.  That yours beat my last subject was only due to a lack of preparation. 
Your challenge was last-minute and I didn’t have enough time to work the drugs
out of his system.”

“War,” Codgson
sneered, “does not give you an extra thirty minutes to prepare.  My recruits
needed no such preparation.”  He grinned down at Six Six Five.  “Still, I’d
love
to see you dismantle this little bitch.  The moment you think she’s ready, I’d
be happy to give you another chance to prove yourself.  I can think of five
that would give her the ass-raping she deserves.”

“And again, we
come to your personal bias,” Doctor Molotov snapped.

“Personal bias?”
Codgson snorted.  “You intentionally created a place for her so your favorite
little bunny-hugger didn’t get the axe.”

Doctor Philip
crossed his arms over his chest and gave Colonel Codgson a challenging look. 
“I’ve been requesting another test subject every day for three weeks.  Each
time Doctor Molotov gives the go-ahead for a transfer, you kill the subject.” 

“Because it’s an
idiotic experiment that will never work,” Codgson growled, still staring down
at Six Six Five.  “Machinery can
never
replace true Human guidance.”

“Worried about
your job security, Colonel?” Doctor Philip challenged.

Codgson laughed,
but didn’t lift his thoughtful gaze from Six Six Five.  “One of mine—trained by
real
battle and
real
stresses of war would take out one of your
mind-numbed morons any day.  And has.  If you want to raise another loser for a
face-off, by all means.”

“Mine are
utterly stable inside their war-minds,” Doctor Philip retorted.  “Something
you
still have yet to achieve.”

Codgson
snickered.  “True.  I
control
mine’s use of their war-minds.  Make it a
tool.  You…” he looked Doctor Philip up and down in disdain, “…hand them the
button for the nuke.”

“I guess we’ll
see which project has more merit once Phil completes his restructuring,” Doctor
Molotov challenged.  She hesitated.  “That is…if you really want to chance
being around Six Six Five again once Phil’s trained her in her war-mind. 
Something could go…wrong.  Certain…memories…may be hard to bury.  They might…
resurface
.”

Codgson’s face
soured.  He lifted his cold black eyes to Doctor Philip, who continued to give
him a smug look, then Doctor Molotov, who was lifting her chin in challenge. 
“You know,” he said, with a calm smile, “I know
so
many people who have
died in car bombs.  It’s really quite sad.”

Doctor Molotov
took a step towards him and said, “And I know
so
many people who have
died of an insulin overdose.  Completely untraceable, especially if the medical
examiner overlooks the entry point.  So sad. 
So
sad.”

“Don’t forget,”
Doctor Philip said, his arms over his chest, “A solution of radioactive
isotopes.  I’ve had
so
many people I know just randomly swallow gallons
of the stuff. 
Really
hard to diagnose.”

Codgson’s eyes
narrowed.  “I have an entire compound of soldiers who would execute you both on
my order.”

“And you haven’t
made any friends on the medical staff,” Doctor Philip said.  He smiled.  “Let’s
just hope one of your ‘soldiers’ doesn’t actually manage to damage you enough
that you need treatment.  Or, say, you get a sandwich filled with glass powder
and staph infection.  An absolute
riot
break out over who could treat
you.  Wouldn’t that be fun.”