“Little risk?” Les asked. “The guy is basically a defector with skin. Remember? The machines that nearly killed us the last time we came to this hell hole?”
“He’s asleep, Lieutenant,” Michael said. “And we have him secured to the table. I say we let Timothy do this.”
Layla looked over at Les. “Before we leave, I personally want to know what work was being conducted here. We may never have the opportunity again.”
“The answers reside in his skull,” Timothy said. “He may also know where the defectors are.”
“You guys are nuts,” Les said. “You, too, Pepper.”
“I do take slight offense at that,” the AI replied.
Les heaved a breath, fogging the inside of his visor. “Well, if you’re going to hack in, hurry up. I want to find what we came here for and get out of this underwater dungeon.”
“What else do you need from us?” Michael asked Timothy.
The AI moved over to the head of the table, where the hybrid’s metal crown rested. “Hook up the electrical nodes to Layla’s computer, and I will get started.”
They worked quickly, Layla doing most of the prep. After she had finished hooking up the cords to the additional computer, she took out her tablet.
“You’re up,” she said to Timothy.
The AI flickered several times and closed his eyelids. “Tapping into the network… working on getting past the firewall…”
Les directed his flashlight through the other labs as they waited, growing increasingly uneasy. They had been down here over eight hours already, and he wanted to get moving.
“This firewall is tricky,” Timothy said.
Les paced as they waited, and checked his submachine gun several times. He had a round chambered, and he knew that the magazine was full, but he was nervous, and fidgeting with the gun took his mind off the reality of his situation—at least, for a few moments. But it wasn’t long before he focused back on the situation.
Trey was sailing across the dangerous seas for the Metal Islands, and more than Cazadores were out there waiting. He needed to get back to his boy.
“We’re in,” Timothy finally said.
Les moved back to Michael and Layla, who hovered behind her tablet. She placed it on a lab table, using the kickstand to keep it upright.
“I’m scanning millions of documents, downloads, and memories,” the AI said. “But I’m narrowing the search to anything that may contain… Ah, here we go.”
A video feed came on.
“This will give Layla a good idea of the work they were performing here,” Timothy added.
The familiar face of an olive-skinned man wearing a surgical mask around his neck came online. He smiled at the camera.
“This is Dr. Julio Diaz, recording on February fifteenth, 2041. We are now operational and beginning our tests on the first subject.”
The camera panned from the young doctor to a white calf with black spots. Cables led away from the plastic skin protecting the animal, and four mechanical legs.
“This is Spade,” Julio said. “As you can see, we’ve removed all four of his limbs and replaced them with robotic limbs. These vacuum-sealed biostasis vats will accelerate the healing process. Once that’s done, we will begin the tough part of my work: replacing parts of the brain with our new microchips.”
Les looked over at the man lying on the table. Had he been one of Julio’s patients 260 years ago?
Not possible.
Les remembered the boneyard he and Michael had found on one of the ships docked outside. Bones from humans and animals. The defectors had worn some of them as decorations. A memory of a machine sporting a cow skull surfaced in his mind as he looked back at the calf on the video.
What sort of macabre experiment was going on here?
Timothy brought up a new video dated seven days later. The calf was standing, using the new mechanical limbs to walk around the white lab. It stumbled, fell, and pushed itself back up.
“Today, we will begin the process of removing Spade’s brain and replacing it with a microchip,” Julio said. “Once this process is complete, we should be able to control the animal—much like operating a remote-control drone.”
Another video popped online, showing the surgery. Julio and several members of his team were dressed in white surgical gowns, but they weren’t performing the surgery themselves. They were sitting at consoles and supervising as a surgical robot with six white limbs worked on removing the top of the calf’s skull.
“Is that an ITC spider?” Layla asked. She wasn’t looking at the screen, but at the machines in the corner of the room.
“Yes,” Timothy said.
“I mean those,” Layla said, pointing.
The AI turned from the table. “Oh, yes, those are the same machines that performed the surgery you’re watching now. I believe we have one on Deliverance.”
Les didn’t know much about it—only that it used similar technology to the early da Vinci surgical systems that were discontinued and taken over by ITC, like most technology in the twenty-first century.
“I’m excited to begin the final stage of our little friend’s journey,” Julio said. “Once we complete the transition to mechanical parts, we will then begin the most important part of our research: to make Spade the longest-living cow in the history of his species.”
“Did I miss something?” Layla asked.
Timothy paused the video. “Yes, I believe we did. Let me see if I can go further back.”
Les scanned the labs again and locked his headlamp on the medical machines in the corner. The spiders were really starting to freak him out.
“Relax, Lieutenant,” Michael said, although Les could hear the edge to his voice, too. “Aside from this guy, we’re alone down here.”
“I just want to get this mission over with,” said Les. “We still don’t even know where the defectors are.” He looked at the mission clock. “We’re going on nine hours down here.”
“I know, I know,” Michael said.
“Here we go,” Timothy said.
The divers turned back to the tablet. Dr. Diaz and his team clinked glasses on the deck of a villa overlooking the ocean. Clouds crossed the blue sky as they celebrated, and a breeze rustled the fronds of palm trees on the beach.
“Good evening,” Julio said. “Today, I want to thank every one of you. We have come a long way in a short time. That the United States Navy commissioned us for biostasis research just five years ago is hard enough to believe. And now we have secured our biggest contract yet, with Industrial Tech Corporation’s biomedical division. This will allow us to take our research a step further, using animal-machine hybrids that will help us in our goal of increasing the quality and length of human life.”
He raised his glass again, and the rest of the team followed suit.
“Interesting,” Timothy said as soon as the video ended. “I have just completed a scan of some other files and discovered that Dr. Diaz’s team was using tardigrades and wood frogs in its research on stabilizing cells to survive harsh conditions such as freezing.”
“ITC was working to extend biological life spans,” Layla said.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “Like, trying for immortality.”
Les shook his helmet in dismay as he looked at the wizened old half man, half machine on the table. “If you call the singularity ‘immortality.’ I don’t call that living if you take away what it means to be human. I mean, come on, this guy doesn’t even have a heart.”
“It’s just more evidence that humans created the world we live in,” Michael said. “We created these things, the defectors, and the virus that caused the blackout during World War Three.”