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I stare into a cage where several dead rats lie and then glance at Chin. “I’m going to need to understand how the two things correlate, but who else knows about this?”
“Just us,” Chin confirms. “We thought it best to find out how open you want us to be with the scientific staff on this unexpected progression.”
“Keep it between us for now,” I instruct. “Explain how the X2 aggression relates to the containment of the bonded couples.”
“We don’t know how a bond changes the couple, neither male nor female,” Chin explains. “We need to understand as much as we can before an X2-positive soldier bonds. And we need to try to force this process in rats as quickly as possible. It could be that the bonding process stabilizes the X2-positive soldier, or it could be they’d start a war for their lifebond. We simply don’t know. This would be a good time to talk about how we’ve worked toward the problem of limited serum supplies. I’ll let Ms. Lane explain our findings.”
“Of course,” she says. “As you know, miraculously Dr. Stein was able to recreate the marked process in a couple of geese. I then did a series of tests, which included a blood exchange. The female converted to GTECH.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I snap. “With all the same physical assets?”
“Some,” she states. “Longevity, immunity to human illness, but no added strength or gifts, as of yet. The process is in early stages, but we suspect the women that are marked could easily convert to GTECH.”
Which means they become unkillable distractions, I think irritably.
“But here is where it gets really interesting,” Dr. Chin adds. “One of the female GTECH rats who we completed the blood exchange with is now pregnant. This means the X2 females could, should they exist, in theory, become pregnant. Circling back to my prior comments, this is a dangerous proposition when we do not know the impact of the bonding process on those involved, particularly the X2 soldiers.”
“I just want to point out,” Ava interjects, “that three soldiers who’ve shown aggression do not create a scientifically accurate assessment of the X2-positive soldiers. The aggression may be wholly unrelated to that chromosome. We’re just moving quickly, and we have to make assumptions for safety reasons.”
Dr. Chin casts her an irritated look. “I have dead rats that counteract that statement.”
“Again,” she argues, “we don’t know the trigger involved.”
I’ve tuned out their bickering as the possibilities they’ve offered me burn with excitement in my belly. Ava has now claimed the X2 soldiers, who’ve shown to be the better-performing soldiers, might not be aggressive at all. And they can reproduce. “Let me be sure I’m clear on what you’re telling me,” I say. “In theory, any GTECH with a bonded female could reproduce GTECH soldiers?”
“One would assume yes,” Dr. Chin states. “We’re working through that hypothesis. But we can’t know if the offspring will inherit the GTECH skill sets.”
“What if the blood exchange was between a GTECH male and another male?” I ask, having lived with my wife long enough to have plenty of questions and possibilities to guide us toward.
“Tried and failed,” Dr. Chin states. “But I wonder if we get the X2-positive soldiers to bond if we could actually avoid the triggered aggression? None of the bonded rats reacted to this unknown trigger. None of the X2 rats that did were bonded. The problem is time, and it’s very hard to figure out how that mark is created to even test this potential outcome. There are only two bonded rats out of hundreds that have coupled together. There’s more to it than sex, and we don’t know what that represents in terms of conditions that must be recreated to allow the bonding process or the aggression to occur. It’s frankly near miracle we’ve done what we have in such a short time.”
“Fabulous,” I state, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “So now we can potentially breed X2 monsters. Or not. Maybe they’re a perfect fighting machine with a bonded female. We need Red Dart. Now. Today. Experiment on the GTECHs. Make it work.” Red Dart being a weapon, a dart, that enters the bloodstream, tricks the immune system into thinking it’s a normal part of the body, but then tracks the carrier and allows for torture from afar. “Then we can control them,” I add.
“Science does not take orders, General,” Chin snaps back, the insubordinate twat. “Nor will it be rushed. Again, as I’ve told you numerous times, Red Dart is a weapon that was designed for humans, not GTECHs. In humans, it’s killing the target rather than doing what it was designed to do.”
“These are GTECHs. They don’t die easily.”
“Death isn’t my concern—they heal too rapidly. It’s the application. Their immune systems destroy the tracking dart before it ever hits the bloodstream, which is necessary for it to function properly. It’s worthless until I figure out how to trick their immune systems into seeing Red Dart as part of its normal operating system.”
