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“How’s my favorite daughter doing?”
At the sound of my father’s voice, I jolt, feeling guilty for all kinds of reasons, when it’s he who should feel such things, but is incapable of anything of the sort. My gaze lifts to find him standing in the doorway, a smile on his face, looking sharp as always in his well-decorated uniform, his gray hair trimmed neatly.
“I’m your only daughter,” I remind him, wishing he’d share that smile with the staff at Groom Lake who fear him far more than they should. Okay, maybe they should. He tricked the soldiers, lied to them, and changed them forever. “And that joke is older than you, Father,” I add, punching a button to clear Creed from my screen.
“The old ones are the good ones,” he says. “Remember that.” In tip-top shape and looking far younger than his fifty-five years, he personifies that statement. So much so, that some might think he injected himself with that serum, but his recent bout with the flu proves that theory wrong.
He is a charming man, who most believe to be the most respectful of servicemen. He plays the role of perfect father to perfection, and at times, I really want to believe it’s true.
“I don’t have to,” I said. “You remind me often.”
He studies me with a critical eye. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I’m a workaholic, like my father.”
“And if your mother were alive, she’d hang us both by our toes.”
Even now, almost two years after her car accident, the reference to her passing works a number on me, and my belly is pure acid. I’m not blind to the timeline here either. Almost two years since she died. Almost two years since he injected the soldiers with a serum that could give them eternal life. He always had a hunger for power, but mixed with grief, I fear it was a dangerous cocktail for him and the soldiers. And maybe the world.
“As an expert psychologist,” I comment, “she’d be as nuts as I am over the incomplete evaluations done on the GTECHs.”
“I have no doubt,” he says, “but before you dive in and try to conquer years of what you see as our deficiencies, I want you to focus on a specific list of ten soldiers of special interest to me.”
“What kind of special interest?”
He shuts the door. “They’ve all tested positive for a certain gene we’re calling X2. We have animals in the lab also testing positive that are showing aggressive tendencies we need to be certain don’t translate into our GTECH population. We need to rerun all baseline evaluations and whatever extra testing you deem necessary, then ongoing evaluation.” He fixes me in his silvery stare. “The animals and the soldiers seem to be showing the gene growth somewhere in the nine and twelve-month post-injection range.”
“Do the soldiers know?”
“No. And they will not be told until I deem that necessary and relevant. Why stigmatize men now considered heroes? Why freak them out for no reason?”
I grind my teeth. I do not approve. They have a right to know what is going on with their own bodies. My father has always been about protecting his country at all costs, and the truth is, I worked at NASA with the same ideas in mind, but science requires some ethical boundaries be crossed. It takes a strong moral fiber to never let that go too far.
“Are we any closer to me talking to the scientist who masterminded the serum and injected the soldiers without full approval?”
His jaw flexes and his eyes sharpen. “I told you, Roland Wiley defected to Russia. We’ve wiped all records of his existence for national security reasons. There is no one who wants to bring him back more than me.”
“And the rest of his team?”
“You know the answer.”
“They went with him. All of them, along with all the research documents.” It’s not a question. It’s me repeating what he’s told me.
“Yes. The Russians fear our Windwalkers, as they should.” He swipes a hand through the air. “Enough of this right now. Let’s have a father-daughter breakfast in the morning,” he orders rather than asks, but then it’s his way. He is a general through and through, and I’m rather immune to his commands at this point.
Knowing this, and seeing it as his form of affection, I smile despite all my concerns. I do love my father and I desperately want to believe Roland and his people did this, not him. “I’d like that.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he says, giving me a nod before disappearing out the door, but there is no denying the sense of unidentifiable dread I’m left with for no real reason. Dread that lingers well into the next hour.
Finally, tired and ready for food, I gather my things and pack myself into that elevator for the ride up instead of down, greeted topside by more than a hot, muggy Nevada night. I have a flat tire, which appears to be shredded by a nail. Does a drive flat work in this situation? I don’t think so. “Great,” I mumble, setting my files inside on the backseat.
