He was in bad shape. Erin doubted there was even brain activity, let alone a pulse. She had dragged the boy off the glass dome of their base, and into the pressure lock. The room had to slowly pressurize to minimize decompression sickness. From there they rushed him to the med ward. Once they carried him into there, the auto-doc whirred into surgical autonomy, scanning and probing as needles tapped into his veins.
He wore a cracked and dented suit of armor that she had seen before, having led the team that designed the user-interface. The mechanical joints and the young age were both a shock however. There had been whisperings of black designs that were decades ahead of current science, and as skunk-works director she had known most of them. Nevertheless, she had never heard of plans involving either.
His left arm had been shattered below the elbow, and she wasn't sure whether his pale skin was from lack of oxygen or lack of blood. The heart rate monitor showed his pulse was barely above a flat-line.
Tyler, her medical doctor, entered commands into the machines. She walked over to him for a report. His blue eyes, shining from white skin and pale short-cropped hair, were doubtful.
"Doesn't look good boss, I haven't seen anybody alive with as low of blood as he is. That arm is getting cauterized in a few seconds. The doc is pumping water out of his lungs, and trying to get blood to his brain. Something you need to see, looks like skunk-work to me."
A MRI of the boy's head revealed a rat's nest of electronics mixed into the faint walnut-like brain. She only knew one of the components. In their early attempts to encourage a pack mentality, they had cooked up a device that encouraged cooperative behavior with others similarly fitted. A simple AI oversaw the device, and things started smoothly The plan was scrapped however when the hundred test subjects developed into a hive-mind within a few months, all individuality replaced by a simple AI that began to learn at a rapid pace using it's host's own brains. The memories of one hundred humans moving in unison, with no life behind her eyes still creeped her out. She didn't know what happened to them, her team lost custody of the hive shortly after they reported the situation.
She doubted that the Pax had been able to completely perfect this new device. She would have to look at the interface later. Muttering to Tyler to try and keep the boy alive, she headed towards the data vault, and more importantly, the projects storage.
"We lost him Colonel, the Pack Leader reported a grapple failure. We dropped probes into the river, but it was several hours after we lost contact. Genesis 1 is filed as MIA."
"Thank you sergeant, it is an unfortunate loss. But we muss press forward. You may begin testing the serum, and implementation of phase two may begin in one cycle. Give them time to forget about Genesis 1."
I'm falling. I'm drowning. I'm dead.
Marcus stood inside a room. He looked about and saw that the place was empty except for thirteen cots and IVs next to each.
There was no roof, and when he looked up, an eye looked back at him. It was bigger than the sun, and it glared down onto everything. Nothing could hide, nothing was unknown. A steady, rhythmic, hypnotic buzz of clicks and squeals was all he heard. There was a pattern, and almost an intelligence, covered by the noise. As he looked at the eye, the words I am Signal, flashed across its pupil. The eye seemed to be vibrating out the noise 645Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIKNIRqa4gu
Cautiously keeping watch on the eye, he walked over to the bed. It had the name Brutus on a sign hanging on the head bar. The IV bag contained a yellow fluid that, as he watched it, burned through the bag and dripped onto the bed. Immediately, the whole bed burst into flames. As he jumped back, the rest of the beds followed the leader, combusting into noxious fire. 645Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzM4d1nDWpV
The flames flickered in sync with the noise of the signal. It began to drill into his head, drilling past his ears, grating on bone. He reached up to block his ears out, and when he did, he blacked out.
"Hey Erin..."
Tyler lead with that cliffhanger as he walked into data storage. All of the general files, engineering blueprints, project reports, personal data, and strategic plans of the Pax were stored in rooms like this one. What you could actually look at depended on your security clearance. In the years after the world ended, Erin had neglected to patch the security software, and coded a backdoor into the whole collection. She was pages deep into a file that sickened and fascinated her.
"What? how's the kid?" She didn't bother to look up as she continued reading.
"Stable, I have him in an induced coma, I was wondering if your skunk projects ever involved prosthesis; his left arm ends below the elbow now. I also took the liberty of disabling all the electronics in his brain until I know what they are."
"Considering what i am reading here, that's smart. Tyler..." She looked up from her reading and rubbed her forehead, "Why did you join the Pax?'
"I got recruited, med school grad gets approached by guys in suits, offered massive salary to go with them, finds out later that the job is so secretive that he can't spend it."
"Oh, anyways, what did they tell you that the job was for?"
"Making a better world."
"Did you believe them?"
"I believed their money."
"I think they ended the world." She shifted the screen towards him, displaying a human body with files attached to different parts. One of the files was open, the title reading about pain blockers.
"They caused everybody to go crazy, and they experimented on this kid. Fully healthy, and with everything activated, that boy would chew up a whole battalion of marines."
Tyler from his expression doubted her statement. She tagged the whole data cache and sent it to his private account. She then began typing instructions along with the cache
"Is he in the med bay still?"
"Unless the bed walked away."
Finishing the commands with a few taps, she sent the cache towards the med bay computer. "Come with me then, I may be able to help him."645Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡirjyw7yZRa
