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“If only that were true, Paul. What we’re doing now is mundane and unimaginative and, quite frankly, dull. Exoskeletons? Nano–muscle fiber for a paltry thirty percent strength boost? We more than quadrupled your strength metrics. And exos are cumbersome, heavy, severely limited. Better NV goggles? Who really cares? Now, the liquid armor concept is something different, but not that terribly innovative. With bionic boots we get past the limiting factors of the spaghetti strap we call our Achilles’ heel, but, again, that’s not a game changer.” She rubbed her hand over his immobile arm. “Nothing comes close to what we did with you, Paul. You fulfilled our mission of creating a meta-biologically dominant soldier.” She removed her hand. “But the Pentagon shut down the whole program. It really was the most misguided decision and has set us back decades. The wars in the Middle East would have been far different if we’d had a division made up of soldiers like you. Far different.” She reached up and touched the spot on his head. “And this, this was the crowning achievement. This made everything else we did to enhance you secondary.” She paused and then added in a reverent tone, “A fighting machine who has no fear. It was the greatest attribute one could bestow on a soldier.”
“Fear is necessary in a war, if you’re the one fighting it,” said Rogers through clenched teeth.
“Nonsense. Fear makes one weak. A soldier who feels is not a real soldier.”
“I wasn’t aware you knew what it was like to be in combat.”
She shook her head again, her expression now one of disappointment. “That’s hardly the point, is it?”
&n
bsp; She looked back at her notebook. “Two people were found murdered in an alley near the depot where the bus you took from prison dropped you off. We also found your parole papers in the trash can. Then you no doubt made your way across the country. Stolen cars, probably. And then we come to West Virginia.”
She turned the page.
“A gun dealer, Mike Donohue, was murdered in West Virginia. The police report said that a knife had been driven through his chest with such force that it had pinned him to the wall of his trailer. An astonishing feat of strength. Donohue was a large man with a deep, thick torso.”
She reached over to a table and picked up the M11-B. “And this was the only thing the police could find that was missing from Donohue’s truck. I take it you were going to hold it against my head, as I did you that one time. Revolver versus semiautomatic. You obviously didn’t want to leave my death to the whims of chance.”
Rogers said nothing. He just stared at the ceiling.
She put the gun down and turned back to her notebook.
“The one thing that truly disturbed me, Paul, had to do with the boy. Donohue’s son, Will.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“That’s what disturbs me.”
With a roar of rage Rogers managed to flip himself off the table. He landed at her feet but couldn’t move an inch after that.
She stared down at him. “Now what did that accomplish? Really?”
She pulled a phone from her pocket, made a call, and four men arrived. They lifted Rogers back onto the gurney and this time strapped him down. With a wave of her hand she dismissed them and they were alone once more.
“Are you able to have a civil conversation now?”
“What the fuck do you want with me?”
“I already told you. Testing. I can’t stress enough how critical this is.”
“Why? You’re not building freaks like me anymore.”
“Granted, we’re not building soldiers like you now, but I strongly feel that we should. And you will help me to make others see that.”
“I went out of control. I murdered people.”
“That was unfortunate. But every grand vision has sacrifice.”
“Those women? I was murdering you over and over. Because I couldn’t get to you.”
“I’m well aware that the killings were symbolic. But those women were all doing their jobs, Paul. We lost a lot of talent. I was very disappointed that you did that.”
“You were disappointed!” he screamed. “You made me a fucking killing machine!”
She put a calming hand on his shoulder. “You’re right. It wasn’t your fault. It was an error on our part. But we were in brand-new territory. That comes with risk. Look at the science of flight. Do you know how many pilots died so that we can now safely travel from one side of the world to the other in a matter of hours?” She paused. “But now, with you back in the fold, we can find out where we went wrong. If we find the right answers and make the required adjustments, then we can restart the program and do this the right way. You know, for the longest time I thought you were dead. And then to find you in prison, well, it held a lot of potential. We just had to get you out of there.”
“I was paroled. I got me out.”
“Well, that’s not exactly how it happened. Your first two parole hearings did not go well, as I understand it. But we pulled a few strings and made sure the third time did the trick.”
He stared over at her.
“We really wanted you back, Paul. But then we lost track of you. After you escaped you must have gone underground. And it’s not like we had the resources back then that we have today to find you. And we couldn’t very well call the police and list you as a missing person.”
“I got as far away from you as I could.”
“I didn’t realize you were working at the bar as a bouncer until very recently.”
“You sent those men to kill me.”
“No. I sent them there to bring you to me.”
“They were trying to kill me!”
“No, at least not at first. One of them managed to get away. He later told me that things got out of hand. Someone tried to stop them before they got to the bar, a very large older man.”
“His name was Karl.”
“Yes, Karl. Then when they got to you, well, you started killing them. And then it was kill or be killed. I thought I had sent enough men, but I was wrong apparently. His description of your fighting prowess was quite detailed. If this had been a test, you would have passed with flying colors. It was quite exciting.”
“Innocent people died,” he snapped. “Because of what you did.”
“Yes, well…as I said, sacrifice.”
“Go to hell!”
She patted his shoulder again. “I want to understand how you came to control the impulse to kill, Paul.”
He looked away from her.
“Please, this is very important.”
She waited but he said nothing.
“How did you not kill the boy, Will Donohue? If you can explain to me your process for doing that I believe that we can make the necessary adjustments that will ensure we will never have that problem again.”
He looked at her. “A super soldier that doesn’t want to kill? How exactly does that work?”
“You misunderstood me. I meant programmed to kill only the enemy.”
“And who exactly decides who the enemy is?”
“That’s not part of my mission. Others decide that. Political leaders.”
“That makes me feel much better.”
“It needn’t be complicated, Paul. Just tell me how you did it.”
Rogers suddenly moaned, and if his limbs hadn’t been useless he would have clutched at the spot on his head.
An excited Jericho rose from her seat, raced across the room, and rolled a monitoring machine over to the gurney. She hurriedly attached electrodes to Rogers’s temples, and then opened his shirt and placed sensors on his chest and one at his neck.
She turned on the machine and studied the screen. She clicked some buttons on the attached keyboard and studied the results. All the while Rogers moaned and screamed. Then he turned his head to the side and threw up.
Jericho did not appear to notice.
“Fascinating,” she said. “But we really need to hook you up to 3-D imaging, body scanners, that sort of thing. The equipment we have today is light-years ahead of what we were using thirty years ago. That will give us the clearest picture of what is going on. And a full blood workup, of course. It will take a long time, but I’m going to get this right. I promise you that.”
