“They’re rogue.” The general shook his head sadly. “Of course they’re rogue.”
‘You mean, how could they come back after that…freedom, or whatever it was we granted them?”
“Yes. I can’t imagine. We probably mean nothing to them anymore, like…I don’t know, crib mates at day care who are introduced again fifty years later.”
“But…”
“Stop. We’re shutting it down. We’ve lost them.”
The smoker stood, walked to the glass window and pressed a button. In the room below: seven figures in pods, asleep yet still hooked up to machines and wires.
“Just…cut them off?”
“Yes, and then burn it. All of it.”
The smoker turned to the general. “Then what the hell happens to them? The…parts of them still out there?”
“Hopefully the death of their bodies reels them back in,” said the general, putting out his cigarette and grinding it to ash. “Reels them in, and burns their spirits along with this entire project. It has to end.”
The man looked at his reflection in the glass. “I fear that rather than end, we’ve just created the beginning of something.”
He reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Handed it to the general. “You wondered once why I was assigned to this project.”
“It crossed my mind. You weren’t on the same level as the rest of these elites, these financiers and globalists.”
“Read that,” the man said as he reached down to retrieve something on the floor. “You’ll see my credentials. The scores and analysis from MK Ultra. My infiltration missions into Moscow and the remote viewing I’ve done for other teams.”
“Impressive,” the general said. “But I don’t…”
“Read on,” the man replied, fixing the black hat upon his head. “The part where it says, at my discretion and should I desire, allow my inclusion into the subject group.”
“What?”
The smoker fixed the hat and lowered his head, eyes flashing. “Burn the rest if you must. Hell, throw my body as well onto the pyre when I’m gone, but first…I have a destiny on the other side. I’ll retrieve your seven lost birds along the way, if I can find them. If not…” He shrugged, “I’m sure history will find my skills most valuable.”
He turned and looked down, focusing on a free pod.
And the image turned to static—
— And Orlando reeled back, getting a harsh flash of the same man, this time different — standing over Caleb, his teeth glinting, his body solid one moment, flickering and golden-hued the next, just as the man Phoebe was talking to appeared, but different.
Stay focused. The files…
Orlando pushed aside the thought of this first (or eighth) volunteer into what surely was the creation of these Custodian beings — astral projections or something more? What was the secret they were all so overcome with, the knowledge too great to absorb? So great, apparently that these subjects, once confronted with it, could no longer even term themselves ‘human’?
The files flew open before his scrutiny, and faces and bodies rushed by in a blur of video and photographic files. Interviews, psych tests and evaluations and so much more; personal histories of each of the volunteers, one more impressive than the last. With coded names like JHK288 and ZZh004, and the seventh one, an old, old man with a face that looked quite familiar for some reason — like Orlando should have recognized it.
Subject ID: NT1856
But it was what came after this that excited Orlando about this file — the subject’s personal history, his life’s work and the hundreds and hundreds of diagrams, snapshots, patents and designs.
Oh my God, Orlando thought, it’s…
Just then a flash of a thought muscled through his mind.
The twins?
Why did he just think of them? What was happening?
He felt a strange tug at the base of his neck, if he had a neck, or any part of his previous anatomy.
He heard someone say, “It’s working, and he’s maintaining coherence and memory.”
Orlando zipped back, away from these secret files, back to the camera control surveillance functions, and looked in on himself in his room.
Two white-coat attendants were there, fixing things on his pod.
Oh hell no! What are you doing?
One of them stopped and looked up, and around. He continued tapping and sliding his fingers along the iPad control type device. “We know you can hear us, Mr. Natch. And let us say congratulations, we feel you’re a perfect candidate.”
What the hell is this? Orlando felt a twinge of panic. Nothing too serious yet, he wasn’t in danger. Not here, and he was fairly certain he was still in control.
Or did they just let me think that?
Can I override anything they’re about to do? Shut off the power to this section, kill the servers, overload everything?
“Don’t worry,” the scientist type said. “You’re not going to do anything you don’t expressly want to do, and you can signal yes or no, just flick the lights. We know you can do it.”
“But you will do it,” the other said.
“Because we just inserted a little reminder into your thoughts.”
“Remember those kids of yours?”
The lights flickered: on, off, on, off.
“He gets it,” said the one.
“But I’m not sure, not until…well, we know that you’ve accessed the surveillance grid.” He looked up at the ceiling camera, grinning. “Why not give a little…peek?”
Orlando brimmed with anger, fuming around the vicinity for something to shatter or explode, but had nothing within reach except to signal the fire alarm, which might at most soak these guys and himself. His body…lying there in the pod, so peaceful.
The twins.
Orland howled back through the processors and neural pathways, instantaneously accessing the command node for satellite surveillance, and within less than five-tenths of a second he had hijacked the one over Anchorage.
Ten more seconds until he could reposition the camera and aim at the given coordinates.
Did they have it here, waiting for me, more or less above my target? How did they know? We had the screen, the sphere artifact…
Shit, this was all a trick, a ruse to get me to give up their location and I—
No trick. Coming into view on the ground, hauling up the ice-cleared roads, nearing a bridge that would lead to the smallest of the island chain — and a single home near the shore. His mom and the twins.
They should have been safe.
“They can be safe,” came the voice from the room.
“Just flick the light. Once this time. Off, then back on, and we will have your consent.”
The Humvees roared over the bridge.
“Or don’t,” said the man without the remote. “And watch.”
Son of a bitch…
They had him.