AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Electra is the product of an experiment by the same name,” she says. “She was engineered to be the perfect soldier, grown inside a laboratory, and conditioned, rather than raised. She never knew a mother’s touch, or a father’s embrace. Until a matter of months ago, she lived inside a top secret facility outside United States borders. I managed to retrieve her with the hopes of using her…”
The Head pauses long enough to let me judge her, as if she is expecting me to do so. I do not disappoint her. The words themselves are cruel, using her. She thinks of Electra as a tool. I do not know how it is possible to dehumanize somebody to that extent, especially someone as superficially appealing as Electra. Her design, as the Head would put it, was clearly made to be appealing. She’s adorable. But the Head cannot see that. All she cares about is how much use she’s going to get out of her.
“You can save your outrage, Doctor Ares,” the Head drawls. “And you can put aside any gallant notions of saving her. She has already been saved. This is where she belongs. This is where she will flourish and reach her full potential.”
“Killing people for you,” I say, flatly.
“Exactly.” The Head’s eyes glint at me. “You do know where you are, Doctor Ares. You do know why people come to you terribly injured. You are not separate from the world Electra was created in, you are part of it.”
She’s trying to draw me in, make me feel ownership, maybe even guilt. That would be convenient for her if I fell all over myself to do her bidding, believing that I myself had become evil. The Head manipulates everybody she meets. I don’t believe she can help it. At this point, it is an ingrained habit. I have to remember that everything she is telling me could be a lie.
She could have told me this in the first place when I asked for information, but volunteering information is not the Head’s style. She keeps everything close to her chest. Even her name is a secret unknown to the people who work here.
“This is so much worse than I expected,” I growl. “She’s not just some specially trained rebel agent. She’s a girl who has been brutalized her whole life, denied basic education. She can’t read!”
“It is unfortunate,” the Head agrees. “You have a great deal to rectify.”
“I’m going to start by asking you what role you played in this. Are there others like her? Are there more being made?”
I’m going to keep asking questions until I get some semblance of an answer out of this woman. It is not good enough for her to give me a broken-souled girl and expect me not to care.
“Electra’s program was shut down recently. Since that time, I have attempted to have her rehabilitated, but the agents here are hardly suited to the task. I think you will succeed where they failed.”
“I’d have a much better chance if you told me exactly what was and wasn’t done in the first place. What was her life like where she was? Why didn’t they teach her anything useful?”
“They taught her many useful things relevant to her purpose. From the time she could walk, she was drilled in physical exercises. Mental conditioning was rigorous, involving resistance to pain, and desensitization to violence. They did what they could to take the human component out of the human. I think Tyko would say they succeeded. But you have already brought something out of her, Doctor Ares. I think you might be able to help her.”
“I can’t fix a lifetime of abuse and neglect in a pretend apartment in the middle of what amounts to another prison,” I say, spreading my hands out in despair. In medical school, we did plenty of work on early development. There are some things, which once broken, stay broken.
The people who made Electra damaged her on purpose, and there may not be any way to put her back together. She may never be able to feel love or make a meaningful connection with a human being. She may truly be fated for a short, brutal life as the Head’s pet assassin.
The Head fixes me with her steely, inimitable look.
“Try.”
Together
Tom
I have to try.
I leave the Head’s office with no real specifics, but a confirmation of my suspicions. What I have in my care – who I have in my care, is a super soldier. A young woman designed by the government to have the traits of a specialist killing machine. She knows nothing about what it means to be a person, not really. I am going to have to start with the absolute basics. The one thing I do have going for me is that she does seem to trust me. I think she’d trust anyone who showed her kindness. She’s starving for it.
