Banshees
The night was quiet, just like all other nights in District 12. Nothing disturbed the darkness, certainly not the two trucks on the side of the road full of agents of District 13. They had stolen the trucks and parked them right outside of a tall two-story wooden home without even a close call. Marcus and Remu were in front of the first truck, dressed all in black. Remu was studying two displays in his lap. On one display in false color he could see every living thing moving outside for two blocks, and in the other he could watch the people stirring in the house. While he couldn't see faces, he could easily make out the young girls brushing their teeth and crawling into bed, and then the two adults climbing into theirs.
Marcus sat there amazed at how lax the district's Peacekeepers were. In any other district their plot would be impossible, but it was so easy in Twelve. It made him wonder how long it would take the Capitol to even notice if they took over the whole district.
Remu put away the displays and turned to Marcus. "Why are we here?"
Marcus looked puzzled by the question and answered, "To get information from these people."
Remu shook his head. "No, I mean this whole mission. The story you gave at camp wasn't very believable. What are we doing here?"
"I will give you an answer, but it'll cost you. They didn't give me an exec—how would you like that job? There will be no extra pay, and if we get caught you must die, but on the plus side everyone will have to call you 'sir,' and you'll get to know how deep the shit we're in is."
Remu smiled widely and said, "If we get caught, do I get to shoot you before I shoot myself?"
Marcus became a little upset at the thought of dying, but he played along. "Sure. Why not? Someone will have to do it." He pulled a small tablet from his shirt, pressed his thumb to its front, and began whispering to the device.
"Okay, your turn," he murmured. "Put your thumb on the red spot so it can sample your DNA, and then whisper two things to the device, one true, one untrue. What you say must not be verifiable or guessable by anyone, including me. The true statement will be your login from now on; if you ever say the false statement to the device again it will self-destruct. If I die you must take my ring and the tablet—the ring must be worn by a living registered officer and within 10 meters of the tablet at all times. I gave you a battlefield promotion and upgraded your security rating. After you log in ask for the file Götterdämmerung."
"Sir, this report refers to Banshees and Surans," Remu pointed out after he read the report's contents. "What do they have to do with one another?"
Marcus slowly shook his head. "Really! They don't teach anything about history in school anymore, do they? You know, after the war I think I'll spend the rest of my life as a history teacher—God knows this country needs history teachers."
"Sir . . ." Remu muttered, again demonstrating his lack of tact.
"They are two names for the same thing. Back in the old world there was a group of people who called themselves 'Surans,' because they had medical devices made by the Suran Medical Industries, Inc. Other people called them Banshees because of their nasty habit of screaming."
"Screaming?" Remu queried.
Marcus took a big breath and said, "Okay. When they screamed, it was a psychic scream. People for miles around would hear the scream with their heads, not their ears, and it would stun and frighten them so that most people would run away in fear."
Remu's face lit up. "Wow, now I remember something about that. When I was a kid, other kids would tell stories about screaming monsters. I thought they were full of crap."
Marcus continued on in his teacher's voice, "The story goes like this: Long ago, back in the old world, back when the world was filled with billions of people and technological wonders beyond our dreams, the Suran Medical Company created a series of microscopic robots, nanobots, to operate on individual cells. These nanobots could fix most any problem a cell was having, up to and including reanimation of a cell. There were other companies doing the same thing at the time, but the Suran Company added a wrinkle, a sentient computer they would add to a person's body to direct the nanobots: the InterDoc. The InterDoc was specifically designed for brain injuries. When someone had severe brain damage, they would insert the InterDoc, and it would find all the damaged brain cells and fix them all up; then people had to have half their brain blown away before things got serious."
"Sounds great! But something went wrong, I'm guessing," Remu said.
"Yeah, the InterDoc worked great—too great. It didn't stop after fixing all injuries: it started to find inefficiencies it could fix and improvements it could make. Soon the people with the device were smarter than anyone else. Then the InterDoc found underused abilities in the brain, psychic abilities it could improve on. So now these people were smarter than everyone else and possessed psychic abilities. After a while they learned to hijack other people's minds and make them see things."
"Wow," Remu mused, "so that is how the old world ended!"
"No, the human race at that point split into two camps, humans and Surans, but for a while the peace held. We don't know who or what started the Great War, but when people started dying by the billions, the Surans decided that if only a few were to survive, it would be them. After the Great War, what was left of humans was halved again by the war with the Surans. When we fought the Surans we depended on mass attacks over long periods to overcome their abilities. In other words, we let them kill us all day until they got really tired, and then one huge push. Since they could make our soldiers see whatever they wanted, we had to train our soldiers to throw down their weapons as soon as they saw anything weird, like their mother with a birthday cake. They were trained to sit there and wait for death; if they picked up a weapon they would just be fooled into killing a fellow soldier. At least while they were sitting there they were keeping a Suran's mind busy."
"And what does that have to do with us and Peeta Mellark?" Remu asked.
"All use of nanobots or InterDoc have been banned since the war. No one, not even Snow, would dare to get near that stuff until Doctor Lucus came along. The good doctor was convinced he could cripple the nanobots and InterDoc to the point where they would fix the person's brain and go to sleep. He convinced some in the government to let him do animal research on his theories, I am confident without President Snow even knowing about it. At the end of the last Hunger Games a series of things happened that I won't go into now, and low and behold, Peeta Mellark gets an InterDoc."
Remu began slowly, "So you think Peeta Mellark is the last Suran . . . or should I say Banshee. It may not be a bad thing. Hell, maybe the doctor is right and it did no more than fix his brain, or even if he becomes a full Suran, he seems like a nice kid—he might be a real help."
"The last war with Surans almost caused the extinction of humans," Marcus said grimly. "I don't believe that just because they have special powers they are evil; I believe because they have special powers we will never be at peace with them. The Surans might have been better than us in many ways, but all the evil in us is still in them. Peeta Mellark is the first, but as soon as people know it's an option, every overly ambitious parent will want their child to have that advantage. They will naturally beat us at everything they want to do, and we will hate them for it. For their part they will totally distrust us. Sooner or later there will be another war, and given the numbers, the end may leave the earth to the apes."
"I wonder how well the apes will do?" Remu joked before squinting at the records. "What is this section about Katniss Everdeen doing here?"
"Peeta believes that the female tribute, Katniss Everdeen, is a ghost and visits him. We stole a report on him and his psychosis. It is full of observations made by the doctors of him talking to her during his recovery up to the time he returned home."
Remu interrupted with, "Oh my God, he's insane! Poor kid. I guess it's too much to ask of anyone to come out of those games whole. Or are you going to tell me Surans can talk to the dead?"
Marcus looked a little sad as he said, "No, dead is dead. But Surans can make you see anything they want. I guess you won't be surprised if I told you half of the nurses tending to him were on anti-psychotics by the time he left."
"So when you were about to shoot Peeta Mellark earlier, you were trying to kill a psychotic Banshee who you believe will cause the end of mankind? Is that a fair statement?"
Marcus paused, considering all the things he could say, and then muttered, "Yes."
"Then why didn't you do it?"
Marcus paused, wondering how honest he should be. "Maybe because my orders are to co-op Peeta Mellark. Maybe because he really is a kind boy and none of this is his fault. Maybe I started to doubt myself when I came face-to-face with Katniss Everdeen. Something in my gut, not my brain, said she's real. Enough of this for now—I think it's time we visit these people."
Remu pushed the button, notifying everyone to get ready. "Sir, don't forget your nose plugs—this is really going to stink!"
Marcus wore a sad grin as he said, "I'm the only one who won't get that luxury."
Remu laughed openly at his commander's troubles.
They both donned their black hoods, and Remu alone put in his nose plugs. The two trucks were emptied silently. With sure, fast motions the two groups split, one to enter the back door and another through the front.
ns 15.158.61.54da2
