Rennin feels a light stab of anger in his throat. He feels affronted and takes incident with her words. To him, Saifer Veidan was the best he’d ever seen. He was strong, brave, and protected his troops whether human or android. He finds it difficult to swallow that Antares would dismiss him so easily. Though he can’t deny the truth in her words.
Caufmann can’t bring himself to cry. He would never cry and right now he envies Antares bitterly. He will never feel value as she does for anyone. The closest he’s come is a creature branded an abomination by most that is now dismembering contaminants far and wide across the city.
The doctor reaches into his pocket and pulls out the envelope containing the picture of the very much alive Forgal Lauros. Part of him doesn’t want to show her now that she’s chosen to die. He wishes he had found the time before she made her dash into an impossible fight, only to be cut down by friendly fire, of all things.
Maybe it would have given you hope.
“I can save your life if I get you to the lab. Your tomb will repair some of the damage and keep you alive well and truly long enough for me to get a proper surgery organised. But if I move you, it might kill you.”
“I’ve already told you, Nex, I want to… stay here. No more surgery. I don’t want to live as this thing anymore.”
Caufmann’s hand is trembling as he fumbles with the envelope and removes the creased picture of her husband. “I don’t even know if I should show you this. It could mean any number of things,” he says holding up the photo.
Her glazed, wet eyes, stare at it for a moment and it doesn’t seem to register but suddenly she holds her breath. Her eyes sharpen in an instant and focus intently. She looks to Caufmann, “He…”
“Yes,” he nods. “When I told you he was dead, I was absolutely sure he was. When I received this picture,” he says not glancing at Rennin. “I didn’t know…how to tell you. I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t.”
“He’s still a slave.”
Caufmann blinks. “Perhaps. He could have been repurposed. Or it could be even worse.”
Antares spears the doctor with a piercing glare despite her condition. “He’s not a traitor. He doesn’t know how to be.”
She reaches for the picture and Caufmann passes it to her. She stares at it for a long moment even though the image is permanently written into her mind. Antares scans over it again and again, especially the face, trying to read his eyes. After being silent for a long while she drops the picture on the floor.
“He doesn’t know who he is,” she says wearily but her eyes remain focussed. “All right, Nexarien, take me to the lab. I’m going to burn Iyatoya base off the surface of the moon.”
Caufmann turns to Rennin. “Do you think Dead Star can still fly?”
Rennin nods. “There was nothing wrong with it, we just couldn’t risk flying after Desolator fired at us.”
Caufmann nods to himself. “We can’t bring it here or we’ll cause a mad riot to board it. Get a few people to help us take Antares to it. Leave Drej here, the fact a HolinMech is stationed here is helping morale enormously. Pick just two because they’ll be leaving Raddocks Horizon with you after we get Antares to the lab.”
“With me? You’re not coming?”
“No. I received an encrypted communication from Doctor Roths. The HolinMech Warrior squadron has been called and they’ll be sent here. She was to report to Iyatoya but she and Rethrin went to take command of the medical pavilion outside the city. They were afraid of the immune being used as test subjects. Rightly so,” his eyes turn distant. “I would have.”
“Why pick only two others? Many of us thought we were all leaving.”
“The smaller the team, the greater the chance of passing unnoticed. You also have all the tactical data and information that those outside need to know.”
The two Rennin picked to leave with him were an obvious choice. Caufmann knew who’d he’d pick, and that’s why he suggested just two. Mia and Drake. He did so predictably. Caufmann still feels glad when he thinks of Rennin flying off on silent mode towards the borders of Raddocks Horizon. The gravity repulsor technology in the gunship could run so close to silent it’s almost inaudible. Though, the engineers haven’t worked out a way to make it very fast just yet. It’s good for patrols, but not tactical engagements. And unfortunately, silent running does not equate with invisibility to lidar scans.
A saved life. A definite saved life. Finally.
William Caufmann is walking around in the basement of the half destroyed Godyssey Laboratory. He’s activated the defence turrets around the complex and has kept his movements quiet. It is a massive risk returning here but Prototype doesn’t seem to be keeping an eye on it at the moment. Caufmann wonders if Prototype thinks he died when Desolator opened fire. Or perhaps since the city has fallen he’s no longer a threat to the progenitor-class. Or maybe it died after Del very nearly tore it to pieces.
First thing’s first.
Antares is entombed once more, though this time in Saifer Veidan’s pod since it’s never been used. Caufmann decides that his own tomb being empty doesn’t sit well with him. If another agent enters the lab and finds the CryoZaiyon Tomb it’ll stand out plain as day that there’s nothing in Nexarien Decora’s pillar.
He moves up the corridor to Room V, where the last three members of the CryoGen Team are kept. Timothy Fowl, Warwick Balkan and Jonathon Holin.
Caufmann needs a body for his pod. It doesn’t have to be an android, just something with organic life signs. John Holin is the man for the job, he surmises. The man that designed and built the first HolinMech systems. The man who sold the soul of CryoGen Industries to the venomous claws of Godyssey.
Caufmann initiates a crude rapid thaw that results in death eighty percent of the time. It doesn’t matter now if Van Gower picks up readings of a thawing stasis tube; with the city’s blackout it could be a malfunction for any number of reasons.
The block of ice is saturated in an oozing pink liquid that eats the ice away at an accelerated rate. Again the question crosses his mind: who stole the bodies of Nordoth and Straker? Who knew where they were and how did they get them out without anyone noticing?
A thaw that should usually take a week takes just over a day and all the while Caufmann stands there watching, patiently. He has read almost every document about the HolinMech program and the slaves it was to make. Is making, in fact.
Over the day of the thaw Caufmann has grown to hate him. This ‘man of science’ condoned and even patented the transmogrifying technology that turned human men and women into cybernetic thralls of incredible power. This man signed off on men and women being taken from their homes and their families to be experimented on, to have their very identity and soul taken from them. This man was the pioneer of the entire conversion program, the forebear of the Embryon Protocol through Candidacy and beyond.
Caufmann takes his lab coat and shirt off, baring his sea of scars. Surgical scars, blade wounds and bullet holes, all visible, all exposed. He wants Holin to see him when he wakes up. He isn’t sure if he’ll recognise him but he doesn’t care.
When the pink fluid has dissolved all the ice, the naked body of Doctor Jonathon Holin, author of the HolinMech Program, is left shivering on the floor. Caufmann remembers waking up as Nexarien Decora in a very similar fashion. Confused and weak.
Holin isn’t reacting to the rapid thaw very well. He is showing most of the symptoms of hypothermia. He’s shivering and convulsing, almost fully aware now. As he reaches full consciousness, he rolls from the foetal position onto his back keeping his arms across his chest, squinting up at Caufmann who’s standing like a statue over him clutching a V6 Liston knife. It’s nearly a foot long with a razor edge on one side and jagged teeth up the back.