Chapter 12
Gabriel walked through the doorway only to be greeted by the taller civilian standing watch over a cleanup crew replacing wall panels damaged by the dual frag grenade blasts. The lights were on and the overhead recyclers hummed steadily, clearing the smoke. The stealth-suited body was gone, leaving behind a small dark stain where blood had pooled. A maintenance worker walked over with a bucket in his hand.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said as he edged past Gabriel and knelt to work on the stain.
The civilian looked back at Gabriel. “Hell of a mess. Hard to believe anyone survived.”
Gabriel turned away without answering and headed down the corridor, lost in his own thoughts. Yes, he had survived. Survived a test, which still gnawed at him. Was he that expendable that the Navy could throw him into a meat grinder of armed convicted felons? And a limpet mine to boot?
The walk back to the lab was over a third of a mile. In his mad dash to the target, it seemed to take merely seconds to cover that distance. Now, as he walked slowly past another cleanup crew — a man scrubbing blood off the floor in front of the elevator bay and a woman patching a mag pistol round hole in the wall panel — that same distance seemed to take days.
This had all been a test. A test to see if he was good enough to become a weapon, as Biermann had termed it — a weapon in the hands of the Federation. Jesus, that sounds ridiculous. It seemed like only yesterday he was graduating OCS in Newport, with DePalma and Cristoff at his side. Within months, they’d be dead, and he’d be reassigned. And now here he was, the product of some top-secret military procedure, walking back to the lab to get his shoes. Past the evidence of his handiwork.
The body of the woman — Erika Bustos, Biermann said her name was — was gone, but he could see where she had fallen. The cleanup crew hadn’t yet gotten this far down the corridor, and bits of burned armor lay in the middle of the floor. The remnants of his precise three-shot burst that had ended her life. He knew Biermann was telling the truth; he hadn’t needed to look up Bustos’s history. Something in the way he’d rattled off the names and crimes struck him as genuine.
So here she had fallen. A serial killer of over twenty men. Someone who was running at him firing an energy weapon, trying to end his life so she could extend hers. Could he blame her? No, not for the second part. For her crimes, she deserved the punishment. But for her efforts, did she deserve this fate? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he was responsible for the very end of her life, and again deep down killing a man felt different. It was something he couldn’t quite put into words or even a concrete idea, it was just… a feeling.
The two walls outside the lab were complete wrecks. The wall where the limpet mine was attached was shattered and cracked, but the wall on the opposite side of the directional charge was completely destroyed. The panels had warped and snapped, and the heavy steel bulkhead beneath them was exposed and blackened.
He walked up to the mess and ran his index finger along the edge of one of the burnt panels. If he hadn’t reacted to the memory of Gilly’s death on the asteroid and recognized the mine for what it was, his upper body would have suffered the fate of the panels in front of him.
The steel bulkhead was peppered with pockmarks, evidence of the force of the charge. It wasn’t meant to scare, or injure, or maim. It was meant to kill. He’d been tested throughout his life, from grade school through high school, from Basic through OCS, in the field and in the classroom. But never had a test been this… deadly. He gave thanks to whatever god was watching over him, or whatever nano machines were running through him, that he passed.
He turned and walked into the lab. The initial attackers were gone, as the civilian informed Biermann, and the lab appeared just as it had before the assault. His boots were under the lab table, and his water bottle sat placidly where he left it. The tank’s lid was still raised, and his soggy briefs sat underneath it where he’d thrown them. But the steel locker he left open was closed, the one with Knowles’s bloody pullover in it. She was in on the whole thing, and had apparently done this with many others.
“Lieutenant?” A voice came from behind him.
Knowles. He walked up to the tank without acknowledging her and stared inside.
“Evan,” she said. “We need to talk.”
He stared into the tank. It was still wet, small beads of water remained in the bottom. He looked at the nodules along the side, the injectors that had begun the process.
“Zero point,” he said.
She walked up to the tank and stood on the opposite side. “It’s a lot to take in all at once, I know.”
He looked up. “How do you know? How many procedures have you done? How many of…of us have died in this damned test?”
She looked down into the tank before replying, and when she did, her voice cracked slightly. “You are the seventeenth person to come through here. I can name each and every one of them. Fourteen men, three women. To me, you are not weapons, or tools, or hammers. You are people. Each one of you different and unique.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Six died during the test.”
He ground his teeth together and leaned his forearms on the edge of the tank. The broken skin on his right arm protested as it stretched and began to bleed again. “Six? Jesus Christ. How can you…”
“Because it works. Because this program can do far more good than harm. Because…”
“You’re a damned doctor,” he said sharply. “How can you allow patients to die like this, knowing what they have to face? How can you put people through this?” He looked up at the ceiling. “And how many prisoners have died on your watch? Can you name each and every one of them, Moira?”
Knowles dropped her gaze again and paused for a long moment. “Biermann is a bastard. There’s no other word for him. But he’s right, and he knows what he’s doing. In the long run, this program works, and the product of this program must be tested before it goes into the field and puts other people at risk.”
He laughed. “Do you hear yourself? Product. It. You’re contradicting yourself, doctor. Either we are people, or we’re tools. Which is it? Do you know anymore?”
He turned from the tank and stepped over to the table. He reached under it and picked up his boots and began putting them on. He felt a wetness under his shirt, and remembered the mag pistol wound. I’m a wreck, he thought. And this is a successful test?
“Evan, you have to understand. You of all people. You’ve been through death before, all the way back to your mother…”
He spun to face her. “Don’t ever bring up my mother,” he snapped.
She recoiled at his tone and posture. “I… I’m sorry. I only meant…”
“Forget it.” He bent over and fastened his second boot, then stood back up. “I know what I got myself into. And you’re wrong. I am a weapon, I suppose. A product that has to be tested. I get it. Don’t worry about your precious tools being damaged.”
“Wait,” she said. “Listen. I know what I do here is… controversial. But I do it for the best reasons. And you… you’re different than the others.”
He shook his head and grabbed the water bottle. “Don’t try to flatter me, doc. And by the way, doing it for the best reasons is an excuse some pretty damned terrible people in history have used to justify their actions. You might want to avoid using that phrase in the future.”
That stung her, he saw. Her face clouded and she wrung her hands. “I know,” she said, and took a deep breath. “I know. But what I said about you… I meant it. There’s something different about you. I’m not even sure what it is. You have a past, you’ve had your share of problems, but…” She took another deep breath. “Heart. You have a heart. I don’t even know how or why I’d say that, but… well, there it is. And I’m sorry.”
He rocked back on his heels and memories flooded over him like a waterfall. Her words, what she just said to him about heart, were almost exactly what his mother used to say to him as a small child. Words he remembered
all these years later. Images arose in his mind of Ekaterina Gabriel poking him in the upper chest. “This is your strongest muscle, Evan. You have a heart like no one else.” Words she repeated in the hospital, dying of cancer. Some of the last words she ever said to him. “Use it,” she had said. “Listen to your heart. It’s your strength.”
He looked down at his forearms, the first thing he noticed when coming out of the tank. Muscles he hadn’t had before going in, but superficial muscles. Not like what his mother had told him he had as a scrawny six-year old.
“Evan, are you okay?”
He looked up at Knowles. She was staring at him with a look of concern; he could see that in her eyes. The same look she had given him as the tank lid closed over him. Her feelings were genuine, and she genuinely was concerned for him, her job and its controversy aside.
He thought back to his brief conversation with Admiral Cafferty’s attaché during OCS. She had asked him why he enlisted in the Navy, and his answer was that he had nothing else, and thought he’d be good at it. And he was good at it. Thinking back to signing his original enlistment paperwork, he knew then he was following his heart. As he was when he expressed a desire to join Special Warfare, and as he was when he willingly underwent an experimental medical procedure to augment his abilities and turn him into an even more capable soldier.
“I understand,” he said. “And this is who I am now.” He held up a hand as Knowles started to speak. “I appreciate your concern. I really do. But this is the path I’ve chosen. I understood the risks, though not to this extent,” he said with a small smile.
Knowles walked over to the locker where the planted bloody shirt was. The blood drops on the floor between the table and the locker were gone; the cleanup crew apparently wanted to make sure everything was back in order. Maybe for the next test, he thought, grinding his teeth.
She opened one of the doors and reached inside, withdrawing a white box. She returned to Gabriel, holding it with both hands.
“Let me see the gunshot wound,” she said as she placed the box on the table.
“It’s fine,” he said, waving her off. “Bleeding stopped.”
“I’m sure it has. My nanites have added benefits all around. But I want to make sure.” She opened the box and picked up a small plastic device shaped like an old-fashioned turkey baster.
He frowned, knowing what was coming. He pulled up his shirt, and Knowles bent to peer at his wounds.
“Through-and-through. That’s good.”
“For you, maybe,” he said.
She smiled. “And for you. No surgery, at least until the medpack procedure tomorrow.” She used the device to squirt a grayish liquid liberally over both his entry and exit wounds. Gabriel stared at the far wall, knowing the biofoam would sting. And it did. But not like the auto-injectors did. Everything had changed for him. Everything was new.
Knowles pressed a self-seal patch onto each wound, then closed the box. Gabriel lowered his shirt, noting with a corner of his mind that while his wound may be have been cleaned up, his bloody shirt with two holes in it still showed he had a hell of a morning.
Knowles stared at the medical kit after she closed it for a long moment.
“What’s next for you?” he asked. “More tests?”
She gave a faint smile, then turned from the table.
“Something tells me this program will be winding down soon.” She looked around the lab. “I think some of the equipment may have been damaged in this last test. Plus, I believe I may be looking into retirement. I hear Jamaica is a beautiful destination.”
Yes, she certainly had read his jacket, he thought.
He was about to answer when an overhead speaker crackled to life with Biermann’s voice.
“Lieutenant Gabriel, if your mission to retrieve your shoes was successful, please report to my office on the double.”
Gabriel squeezed the water bottle until the top popped off. Knowles laughed softly and bent over to pick it up off the floor.
“Take care of yourself, Lieutenant,” she said, handing the cap back to him.
He looked back at her and saw that relief and satisfaction had replaced her apprehension and sadness. Maybe this was over for her. But it was only beginning for him; that he was sure about.
“Zero point, you say,” he said.
She smiled. “Make the best of your new beginning, Evan.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Moira. And you too.”
He turned and walked out of the room, purposely not looking back. Only looking ahead.