The Siren Project (48 page)

McNamara suppressed his irritation. “Let’s
hope he doesn’t get here until tomorrow morning, and then he can have her.” He
turned to Christa. “After you've answered all of the general’s questions, your
first assignment will be to eliminate John Mitchell.” He grinned humorlessly at
the irony of his plan, even as Christa’s face reddened with revulsion, then he
motioned for Caroline to follow him outside.

When the room was empty, Christa calmed
herself, gently focusing on Mouse, hoping he might be brought out of his sleep.
She quickly realized he was unconscious and unable to help either of them. A
few minutes later, the nurse returned and activated the motor that lowered
Christa’s table back to the horizontal. She pulled Christa’s gown aside and
injected her with the preoperative tranquilizer, then replaced the gown and
left. In the minutes that followed, the drug began to take effect, easing her into
a relaxed, drowsy state. Christa lost track of time as she fought to remain
conscious, but the quasi sleep forced itself upon her.

After an interminable dream, Christa heard
doors opening and footsteps approaching. She tried opening her eyes, but lacked
the power to command her eyelids. The rumble of wheels on tiles sounded distantly
through the fog of her drug induced half-sleep, as a trolley table was rolled
to her bedside. Numbly, she felt hands at work, releasing the straps and
struggling to lift her. Christa rolled sideways, then immediately felt a hand
guiding her head gently, guarding the base of her skull where the implant had
been removed. She tried to reach out with her inner sense, but her power to
concentrate in that way was gone. Her mind floated like a feather on a breeze, drifting
aimlessly through an endless cloud. She tried to speak, but could not form
words. Christa felt herself forced upright to a sitting position, then slump
forward into embracing arms. A wave of love, tinged with sadness, flooded into her
mind. Through her drug induced stupor, she recognized the presence of her
mother, and the effort Caroline was making to release her feelings from their
mental chains, if only for a moment. Christa tried to respond, but her focus
was too diluted to impel thought. She felt herself lifted from the surgical
table and gently placed on the trolley with a pillow carefully positioned under
her head.

Caroline placed a small bag at Christa’s
feet, then wheeled the bed cautiously to the doors and stole a quick look into
the darkened corridor. This late, only the surgical team was active in the
medical section, and most of the corridor lights had been powered down. Seeing
only a robotic janitor monotonously scrubbing the floor twenty feet away,
Caroline pulled the trolley through the doors. The robotic janitor rotated
slowly, directing its optical sensor after her as she wheeled the trolley bed
toward the deserted laboratories. It retracted its floor polishing brush and
followed Caroline from a distance, speeding to catch up when she rounded a
corner, but always lurking in the shadows.

Caroline removed a key from her pocket and
unlocked a plain white door. She wheeled the trolley into a narrow room filled
with odd pieces of surplus and aging equipment, the legacy of years of
experimentation. She knew the storeroom was barely ever used these days, which
was why she'd selected it. Caroline closed the door behind them, took a moment
to strengthen her self-deception, scarcely realizing how firmly her teeth were
clenched, or how white her knuckles were from gripping the trolley.

She is more use to them
unconditioned . . . more use to them unconditioned! . . .

She repeated the deceptive thought like a
mantra. When its influence weakened, she switched to a new, more powerful
mantra.

I am incomplete. I am a
danger to them. I must be fixed! Fixed! Fixed!

She kept the thoughts moving through her
mind, concentrating on how she would serve the Project better by what she was
doing. She used her telepathic powers to deceive herself, not venturing to
think about the need to protect her daughter or about the maternal love imprisoned
in that unknown place. She turned her back to Christa, not daring to look at
her, and undressed quickly. Naked, she removed an electric shaver from the
small bag at Christa’s feet and shaved her head, letting her hair fall to the
ground. When finished, she left the shaver on the floor, took some white tape
and an antiseptic pad from the bag and made a duplicate of the dressing that
covered the base of Christa’s skull. Carefully, she taped the dressing in
place, then pulled on a white theater gown that was a copy of the one Christa wore.

Caroline wanted to turn and kiss her
daughter goodbye, to say the words that were locked away inside her mental
prison. They were words she feared, once formed, would allow her conditioning
to overrule her self-deception. Somewhere deep inside, she knew the very
qualities that made her unique from all others save her daughter, gave her an
exceptional capacity to deceive the artificial strictures on her mind. She'd
always known the conditioning process had never been designed for one like her.
While the conditioning seemed perfectly adapted to her mind, her mind was more
than they realized. They'd never understood her difference, just as they would
not understand Christa’s difference.

I must be fixed!

Caroline felt herself tiring, the peculiar
emotional-mental-intuitive effort required was not something she could long maintain.
Knowing she must hurry, she removed the powerful sleeping pills from the pocket
of her shirt and swallowed them, hoping they would duplicate the effects of the
preoperative injection. They'd been prescribed in case she suffered headaches
after the conditioning process, but had never been intended to be taken all at
once. Caroline had suffered no headaches, but had kept the pills.

Not daring to look back at her daughter and
dressed only in the theater gown, she stepped into the darkened corridor and
locked the door. It was then she noticed the robotic janitor parked beside the
wall, its optical sensor directed toward her. She was struck by the feeling it
was watching her, but she knew that was impossible. Its sensors were designed
to allow the automated cleaning system to guide the robot through the building,
not to conduct internal surveillance. For an instant, she wondered if it was
the same robot she'd seen as she left the recovery room with Christa, then
discounted the thought, knowing they all looked alike. She slid the key under
the door, then ignoring the squat little machine, hurried back through the maze
of corridors to the recovery room where she climbed onto the bed, telling
herself with diminishing certainty she was complying with the artificial
compulsion that fought to dominate her mind.

I am incomplete ... I
am a danger to the Project ... I must be fixed!

Only by submitting willingly to the
treatment, could she avert the danger. She tied the straps loosely, then slid
her legs and arms into place, before lowering her face onto the pads which
would conceal her identity. The gown covered almost all of her body and the
bandage covered the top of her spine and most of her neck, concealing the lines
of age. Only the top of her shaved head was visible, which of itself did not
reveal the switch.

Lying on the table, she relaxed physically,
keeping her self-deceptive psychic mantra going until sleep pressed itself upon
her. Her concentration faltered momentarily, allowing the conditioning force to
surge upward for an instant, before she drove it back down. The battle raged
until her power to project thought from her inner intuitive self collapsed,
stripping away her ability to disorient the conditioning.

She was driven by a wild urge to warn them,
to tell them what she'd done. The cold, logical aspect of her mind that was the
instrument of the conditioning process knew she'd achieved the unimaginable,
she'd broken the conditioning. She had to tell them how she'd done it, so they
could improve the process. She knew Christa would also be able to break it. She
tried to move, but the overdose of sleeping pills had almost paralyzed her muscles.
She tried to speak, but could only muster an inaudible moan.

The double doors opened as the two
orderlies returned and released the wheel brakes on her bed, then carefully
wheeled her out of the recovery room and along the hall in the opposite direction
from the storeroom where Christa slept peacefully. Through the sleeping pill
induced fog, she noticed a robotic janitor swivel as the orderlies wheeled the
bed past it, keeping its optical sensor aimed toward her.

It is watching me! The
traitor is watching!

The orderlies guided the bed away from the
robotic janitor, into the ENP lab, where the most advanced version of the
particle accelerator stood, with twelve different emitters capable of working
in perfect synchronization. The three doctors were busy setting the final
parameters on their equipment, paying no attention to Caroline as the orderlies
placed the wheeled bed in the required position.

“Does it matter that she’s face down?” One
of the orderlies asked. “Do you want us to flip her over?”

“No, she’s fine inverted,” Dr Nautern
replied without looking up.

The orderlies departed, while Caroline
struggled to speak.

The anesthetist heard her stifled moan. “She
should be out by now. I’ll increase the dosage two milligrams.” A few moments
later, she felt the pin prick as the needle penetrated her skin and the anesthetic
began to flow.

Caroline cursed herself for betraying the
overwhelming compulsion that dominated her being. She was wracked with the
guilt of her treachery. She was consumed with anger at herself for not doing
what she knew to be right. The girl Christa, who was her daughter, should have
been in her place. There was confusion in her mind as she tried to understand
how she could have been disloyal to all she was devoted to. Above all the
guilt, all the anger, all the regret, there was fear. She knew each neural
patterning was unique, carefully calculated by the base’s super computer. The
doctors were about to unleash the patterning required to condition Christa’s
mind, not hers. It meant her brain was about to be bombarded with billions of destructive
electrons.

She knew her mind would be utterly
destroyed.

The anesthetic took hold and everything
began to fade, ending the internal war of self reproach. The strictures that
held her mind relaxed, and for several precious moments, she had clarity and
self awareness, feeling the full force of her love for her daughter. She
remembered their lives together in every respect, their telepathic merging of
minds that brought instant and complete understanding, the happy times. She
knew it had been the wave of love she'd felt from Christa in the recovery room
that had finally given her the strength to break free, if only for a short
time.

Caroline remembered the realization she'd
received from Christa in the recovery room during McNamara’s interrogation;
that someone was coming for her daughter, someone who would care for and
protect her, someone who would not be stopped. It was the last gift of a mother
to her daughter, the gift of time, the time needed for him to come for her. As
infinite sleep engulfed her, she had her last free thought.

Goodbye, my darling.

Mitch shivered while Gunter studied
the nearest body in the refrigeration room, noting how sections of the exposed
brain had been neatly sliced away.

“It is a brain autopsy,” Gunter concluded.

Mitch cast a distasteful look at the dozen
bodies lying on metal tables, then wiped a small line of frost from the window,
and peered outside. The Apaches were now far to the south, dropping the last of
their flares as they made their final sweep before landing. He turned and
approached Gunter, who was gently probing the brain tissue.

“Hmm, it is spongier than I thought it
would be. See. Try,” Gunter motioned for Mitch to touch it.

“I’ll pass,” Mitch said, repulsed.

Gunter looked up surprised. “He is quite
dead. He feels nothing.”

“It’s not what
he
feels I’m worried
about.” Mitch glanced from the array of bodies to the microscopes and assorted
analytical equipment neatly aligned along work benches fixed to the opposite
wall. “What’s your best guess?”

“They could be the failures, the people who
did not survive the conditioning process.” Gunter moved slowly from body to
body, inspecting each. “And the autopsies are trying to find out why.” He
paused at the body of a woman with a shaved head and an intact skull. “Hmm, this
is unusual.”

Mitch followed Gunter’s focus to a metallic
plate that was molded over the top of the woman’s head, reaching down the rear
of her skull. The top of the plate was covered with thousands of tiny metal
needle points.

Gunter tested the plate. “It seems to be attached
to her skull. She might be new, waiting for her autopsy to begin.” He moved to
another table where a young man’s body lay face up, with most of his forehead
bone structure removed. There were six small holes in the man's shaved skull
and a large circular cavity in the center, all filled with a clear plastic substance
sealing the brain safely inside. “This one appears to have had his metal plate
removed and the holes filled.”