The Seven (11 page)

"How do you feel?" Sebbins asked. She started pulling dull blue surgical gowns out of a drawer and tying them together to make some makeshift clothes for someone Andy's size.

Andy was sputtering and coughing up serum. "I feel okay," he grunted. His voice was thick and hoarse. It was a stark contrast to the mellifluous tenor voice he had before the change. "Let's get out of here."

Dr. Sebbins started draping him with the gowns. "I don't know that we're going to be able to hide you. I think we have to make a break for the hidden corridor in the lab."

"Soldiers won't be there?"

Sebbins frowned. "I don't know. Stay behind me and I'll go check." She opened the door to the auxiliary lab and glanced down the hall. A guard in gray camouflage holding a Kalashnikov rifle was pacing the intersection of the main corridor and the hall to Cormair's living quarters just outside the door to the lab.

"Everything all right, Doctor?" he called.

"Everything is fine. I could use a hand, though." The soldier slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked down the hall, moving quickly. Before he could turn the corner into the lab, Sebbins had injected him with a sedative in the upper shoulder. He had just enough time to see Andy, comprehend what was happened, and start to draw his weapon before he passed out. Andy took the end of the rifle in his hands and bent the end like it was rubber.

"I'm strong," said Andy.

"Very much so," said Dr. Sebbins. "You were engineered to be a human tank."

"Are we going to escape?"

"We're going to try."

"How strong am I?"

"I don't know. I couldn't tell you. You might be able to bench-press a Greyhound bus. Follow me."

Sebbins moved quickly and quietly down the hall, each step with the light touch and grace of a trained dancer. In contrast, Andy took earth-shaking, thundering steps behind her. Each time his foot fell, she could feel the vibration through the floor. Sebbins knew that Cormair had compensated for his mass by giving him a squat, powerful, unbreakable skeleton, but Sebbins worried about the boy's joints. How could his knees continue to hold up?

"Doc?"

"What, Andy?"

"I think we're going to have a problem."

"What's that?"

"I saw the escape door when they opened it earlier."

"And?"

"I'm not going to fit."

The door had been made to fit a normal human being. The tunnel behind it was not much larger than the door. Andy's body, wider and thicker than any human, would never make it to the end of the tunnel. Sebbins began cursing silently and searching her mind for an alternative escape route.

"The only other way is the front door, isn't it?" said Andy. "This lab is below ground. There are no fire escapes. We can't jump out any windows."

"Andy, how fast do you think you can run?"

"Doc, have you looked at me? 'Run' just ain't in my vocabulary anymore. 'Stagger' maybe. How about 'Galumph?' 'Trudge?' 'Lumber?'"

"Will you be able to lumber, then?"

"Not very fast. I was never very fast. I'm probably ridiculously slow now."

"Did I ever tell you I ran track in high school?"

"Nope."

"State Champ in the four hundred meters. Let's go through the front door."

"It's probably going to be difficult. If there are soldiers here, they will probably want to stop us. I don't think I can hide behind a tree."

"Walk while we talk. I'll tell you what I know about your abilities. You are exceptionally powerful. Your musculature has been artificially enhanced making you incredibly strong. Your muscles are so tightly corded that they can stop bullets Your bones are unbreakable. Your skin will still bleed, you will still feel every bit of pain that comes from skin damage, but you will heal at a slightly higher rate than anyone else."

"I like this so far."

"I have no idea how strong or powerful you will be. Dr. Cormair was anticipating you would be able to exert maybe twenty thousand PSI in a punch, maybe more. We won't know until we test you. To put it in perspective, a heavyweight prize fighter only punches in the high three thousand range."

"Whoa."

"Of course, Cormair was being conservative in his estimates. You may be able to produce much more than that. One thing you have to know, Andy: If you hit a person full-force, you will kill them. The human skeleton will not be able to take it. You will shatter their bones into rubble and rupture all of their internal organs. They will be dead before they hit the ground." Sebbins glanced over her shoulder to make sure Andy knew she was serious.

"Sounds like I'm a beast, then."

"You were built to be a tank, Andy. They are vehicles of destruction, and so are you now. You are no longer going to be capable of being lax in your actions. Everything you do is going to have consequence because of your strength. You can't even flip a pencil at someone without making sure you check yourself because if you don't, you could turn that pencil into a dart."

"I'll be careful," said Andy. His face was somber. He was looking at his cartoon fists, each inflated and unreal. One of his fists was almost the size of Sebbins' torso. His forearms were as big as her waist.

The elevator was unoccupied and a few Luna moths were still clinging to surfaces. "Holly's work?" Sebbins asked brushing a moth away from her lapel.

"Of course."

Getting into the elevator was a tight squeeze. Andy had to go in sideways and Sebbins squeezed into the corner by the buttons. The doors closed and the elevator began the upward journey.

"Is this going to hold me?"

"It's a freight elevator. Dr. Cormair requested that it be able to move ten tons."

"Will it hold me?"

"If it doesn't, we'll know how much you weigh."

The cables strained, but the elevator moved normally. "I'm less than ten tons, I guess." His breath began to get labored. "The pain is coming back, Doc."

"You need more serum. Cormair said it's the only thing that will help you get through the change. I have to keep you injected with massive quantities of serum."

"So do it," Andy's fists suddenly tightened into boulders. "I'm starting to not feel my arms or legs."

The door opened and they were suddenly face-to-face with several soldiers. Andy shoved Sebbins behind him and blocked her body with his own. No one moved. Sebbins reached into her pocket and slowly withdrew another heroic dose of serum. She reached up and pressed the end into Andy's neck and injected it. "Don't punch them, but you can still throw them, as long as you're careful."

A slow smile spread across Andy's broad chin. "Done."

The soldiers reached for their guns, but the one nearest to the door was lifted off the ground like a child's toy and thrown into the rest sidelong toppling them like bowling pins. Andy thundered out of the elevator. He grabbed a handgun from the soldier on top, ripping it away from him and dwarfing the pistol in his massive hand. He squeezed and opened his hand, dropping a lump of useless metal onto the ground.

Dr. Sebbins rushed for the front door. "Andy! Let's go!" She flung open the front door and froze in her tracks.

An armored personnel carrier and a large, off-road truck with a mounted machine gun in the back were parked on the lawn. A few dozen soldiers, holding various rifles and assault guns were milling around the vehicles. A helicopter buzzed overhead, sweeping a painfully bright searchlight across the ground. Two soldiers, each leading a barking and excited Belgian Malinois at the end of a leash, were making a sweep down the road leading to the front door of the Home. From the sounds in the distance, there were more vehicles and soldiers surrounding the Home.

Andy looked at the fiasco over Dr. Sebbins' shoulder. "I guess this wasn't supposed to be that easy."

"Let's go back."

"No," said Andy, his blue surgical gown kilt flapping in the wind. "Let's test out these bulletproof muscles of mine. Just get behind me, Doc. Hit me with another spray of serum and keep low. I have a feeling this will be ugly."

John snuck out of the tunnel when he was sure the helicopter wasn't overhead. He hunched in the darkness by the trunk of a rotting oak, staring down at the Home. From his vantage point he could count at least fifty soldiers and four vehicles; there were probably more that he couldn't see, more crawling through the darkness, looking for them. Every soldier was armed of course, and three of the vehicles had visible guns.

It was a deathtrap. They would not be able to rescue Andy. John couldn't see how it would even be possible, yet something in his brain was thinking independently of his common sense. Something in his mind was putting angles together, highlighting points of weakness and places where he could get through them undetected. His mind was calculating probabilities and looking for things that could be used as weapons. He noticed a good, sharp stick, straight and thick, with a nice heft. The programming in his brain told him that stick would make a weapon if he had no other choices. He could calculate in his head exactly how long he would have to make a break for the Home from the relative safety of the forest tree line. He could look at the soldiers posted around the perimeter and knew how fast they would react, what angle they would have to shoot from, and he could mentally project the telemetry of the bullets, so he would know how to jump, turn his body, and avoid them all together. These were calculations that no human should be able to make, yet his mind was putting it together as fast as his eyes could take it in. Was he always able to do this? It didn't feel like it was a new experience. His mind wasn't rebelling against the information. He wasn't shrieking in pain. Instead, it felt like he was actually
living
for the first time in his life, tingling threads of excitement crackled along his brainstem as this information brimmed in his skull.

A cracking stick behind him brought him out of his trance. In the dim light of the forest, John could see Sarah's golden hair poking out of the tunnel.

"I just gave Posey another sedative. She was starting to moan in her sleep."

"How many more do we have left?"

"Only two."

"Well, let's hope it holds out long enough."

"I think we've maybe got enough for four hours."

"It's going to be light by then," John said. The eastern sky was beginning to become lighter, but it was still a dark gray without a hint of rosy hues. "We're not going to be able to escape in broad daylight and if we stay in this tunnel too long, we're going to get caught, too. I can hear dogs. You think they're going to find us?"

"Maybe," said Sarah. She hunched down next to John and peered into the yard. "Is it hopeless?"

"I don't know." He was surveying the soldiers with a grim look.

A niggling thought twitched in Sarah's mind, a warning alert that what she was witnessing had some sort of issue about it. She was drawing a blank as to what, however. "Something isn't right down there," said Sarah. "I can't put a finger on it, but something about that scene bugs me."

"I know," said John. "I spotted it first thing. I think Indigo was right: I'm hard-wired to be a perfect soldier. I instantly sum up a situation with a militaristic intelligence. I didn't even know I knew how to do that."

"Well, what isn't right?"

"Look at the vehicles and the soldiers."

"Yeah?"

"No flags. No insignias. No emblems of any sort."

"What?"

"There are no American flags anywhere. Not on sleeves, not on the vehicles, not anywhere. There are no markings to identify any country anywhere down there."

"So?"

"You've seen the same movies as I have. I don't think the U.S. Military goes anywhere without designations or flags flying. I'm too far away to tell if the writing on the vehicles is English or not. I don't think it is, though."

"You think we're in some foreign country?"

"Maybe," said John. "That might make sense. We were only allowed to watch television brought in from a satellite dish. We were never shown where we were on a map, not even when our tutors were teaching us geography. We were never allowed to see a newspaper. Indigo never saw a newspaper or a town name sign when she would go to the town down the road."

"So?"

"It doesn't make sense," John's mind was wheeling, trying to put pieces of a puzzle together. The picture he was getting was fuzzy, but it was the base idea of a theory. Non-American military, strange vehicles, a remote location...What for? Something clicked in John's head.

"This is going to sound stupid, but I think that maybe town was a set-up. I think it might be a military outpost made up to look like a town."

Sarah shook her head. "You sound like some crazy conspiracy theorist. We rode here from our
American
homes on a bus. We have four seasons with wicked cold winters, so if we're in another country, we're in Canada. Big whoop."

"We might be," John agreed. "But, I still don't think this is any sort of
American
government military. Look at the weapons."

Sarah glanced at the soldiers she could see. She could make out the black steel rifles with the wooden stocks and the graceful, curved clip sticking out of them. She shrugged and looked at John quizzically.

"Kalashnikov's. AK-47's. They're not American weapons. Russian, originally. They're favored by paramilitary groups because they're cheap, light, and accurate. They're also easy to pick up at gun shows or on the black market. This has to be a militia outfit. It's not the official army of any country."

Sarah's brain was trying to follow John's train of thought. "We're not American?"

"I don't think we are anymore. I think America doesn't know what's been going on here. We might be in America, but if that's the case, then these guys are underground. The government probably doesn't know they exist. A military group like this, with massive funding, a full arsenal of weapons, and fleet of vehicles that's still hidden from the government has to be paramilitary, and what do paramilitary groups try to do in third world countries? We read about it online every so often, usually in smaller African nations."