The Seven (38 page)

"My biggest fear was being alone, that no one would ever love me and that I would be forced to withdraw from everyone everywhere."

"And?" prompted John. "You know you will most likely have to withdraw. You can't just go to the grocery store or what-have-you."

"And I realized," said Posey ignoring John, "that being alone was what Cormair did his whole life. He lived a solitary life despite having people around him at all times. He was utterly alone. If he did that for so many years, I realized I already had it better than he did: I have Holly, and you, and the others. I might be ugly, but at least we're all freaks in this together."

"I don't see ugly," said John. "Only Posey, the same girl I grew up with. That will never change."

"I guess I'm going to have to come to my own terms with how I look," she said. "It's not going to be easy. I'm not happy with this."

"I know," said John. "I think it will get easier over time. Are you going to be okay with the...you know, the..." John made a half-hearted gesture toward his neck. He didn't want to just blurt out,
Are you okay with slicing open a man's jugular veins and watching him die?

Posey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I never killed anything before and I never thought I would. Well, spiders and mosquitoes, but they don't really count, do they?"

"It's not easy," said John. "I'm programmed to do it if necessary, and I would have if Tucker hadn't tasered me, I was prepared to do it, but you..."

"They made me this way for a reason. They gave me talons, John. Big, wicked daggers on all of my toes. They must have expected me to have to kill someone eventually, right?"

"Doesn't mean you have to like it."

Posey smoothed out the feathers on her forearm. "You know, what scared me the most is that after it was over and I was able to process it, a part of me enjoyed it, and it was more than just revenge or saving my friends. There was something else behind it that I don't know how to describe. It felt right. When I felt his flesh tear open...I felt...good."

Before John could speak, Posey turned and ran to the edge of the bluffs. She leapt into the air, throwing her arms out and snapping her wings to their full span. She flapped once, twice, and then caught a thermal. She rose quickly, spiraling into the sky, and disappearing into the clouds.

John watched until her ivory wings winked out of sight. The wind began to pick up slightly and John noticed the ash leaves were beginning to show silvery undersides. A storm was coming.

He hoped it wasn't an omen.

In the Washington D.C. office of Senator Abraham Uriah, the honorable Senator from the great state of Ohio was concluding a meeting. The meeting was about a construction company looking to circumvent a D.N.R. order to cease plans to build on a protected wetland site, and a small suitcase full of cash. Uriah glad-palmed the developer's hand and smiled a wide, cheesy grin. "George, I think we can easily come to an agreement on this matter. Now what say we have a drink and a cigar?"

With a practiced move, Uriah gestured to the expensive leather couches in his office where a cut-glass decanter of an extremely pricey Armagnac and a pair of snifters waited on a silver tray alongside two hand-rolled cigars. They were extremely fine cigars, but they weren't the prized Cubans, although Uriah did have a few of those stashed away for extra-special occasions.

Uriah poured his guest two fingers of brandy and poured another for himself. He sat back against the couch and used a beautiful, brushed-silver Zippo to light his cigar before tossing the lighter to George.

"This is a pretty nice bit of hooch you got here," said George. "I've never tasted anything better."

"It's from a vineyard in France that I know. The proprietors and I are on good terms. Every time I get over to France, I make certain to buy a few bottles of their best and mail it back home."

"Now, about those D.N.R. orders..."

"George, you don't have to worry about a thing," said Uriah waving a manicured hand dismissively. "When you get back to Ohio, there will be a federal order overturning that mandate from the D.N.R. Your project will go ahead. After all, what are a few ducks and geese compared to a country club convention center that will bring in millions in revenue and provide jobs for the good men and women of Ohio?"

"I'm glad you see it my way, Senator," said George. "The D.N.R. doesn't seem to think the same way you and I do."

"Unfortunate. Progress is vital to this nation's success!"

There was a knock at the door to the Senator's office. A ruddy-faced young man stuck his head in the room and waved a small sheet of paper at the Senator. The man had a fresh sheen of perspiration across his forehead. "Sorry to bother you, Senator Uriah. I have some news about your Aunt Sarah."

Uriah's brows furrowed. "What did you say, Peterson?"

"Your
Aunt Sarah
," Peterson said with particular inflection. "There's been a development in her condition, sir. A drastic change."

Uriah stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray on the coffee table. "George, I'm sorry to cut our meeting short, but this is important, a family thing---you understand, don't you?"

"Oh, absolutely," said George. He stood and stuck out a hand. "I appreciate your time, Senator. I hope the next time you're back home, you'll swing by the site and see how it's coming along."

"I'll do that, George. I will be sure to do that. Look forward to it."

Uriah's assistant showed the developer to the door then bolted it closed behind him. He dropped his voice, "Senator, I have some bad news."

"What is it?"

"The Amboy base is in ruins. Project Evolve is a wash---the experiments have escaped."

Uriah's face flushed with anger, his usual tanned and toned skin flaming to a vibrant crimson. "Damn, damn, damn. Get Tucker on the phone immediately. I want his head on a platter!"

"Tucker's dead, sir. From what Captain Krantz told me, it looks like one of them tore out his throat."

"What about Cormair?"

"Dead as well. Heart attack."

"Why didn't they call sooner?"

"The binary telepath destroyed all the communications equipment in the compound. The overload of power at the base shorted out all of Amboy, as well. Krantz had to drive to a spot a few miles from the base just to get the cellular signal to be able to call."

"Did any of them get stopped? Do we have any bodies?"

"No sir. From what Krantz tells me, he thinks they all got out alive."

The brandy snifter in Uriah's hand shattered under the force of his grip. Glass cut deeply into his palm but he didn't notice. He threw the remnants of the glass at the wall and kicked the coffee table as he stood up. The decanter tipped over and cracked. Armagnac slowly pooled on the expensive oak.

"Tell me something, Peterson---What the hell good is a hired army that can't stop seven snot-nosed kids? They had everything they needed. We spent billions! Billions, Peterson! No expense was spared, nothing was held back. Do you have any idea what the Trust is going to do when they hear about this?"

"I know, sir. It's bad."

"Bad? Bad, Peterson? Bad is an understatement. Bad is only the tip of the iceberg!" A vein bulged on Uriah's forehead.

"What would you like me to tell Captain Krantz?"

Uriah strode to the window and stared into the distance. His lip curled in anger, but he inhaled deeply and his face became impassive. Some of the color in his cheeks faded. "Tell Krantz to disassemble the Amboy base. He is to break the town down, leave no traces---at least nothing that can be discovered too easily. Use explosives to collapse the underground structures. Tell him to salvage what he can, but destroy what he can't. And give Krantz a field promotion. He is now Colonel Krantz."

"You're bypassing Major and Lieutenant Colonel?"

"I am, damn it. He was Tucker's second-in-command at the Amboy base. I want him to be in charge now! He'll have the most intelligence about the experiments."

"Understood. I will tell him to disassemble the base, sir. Anything else?"

Uriah rubbed the bridge of his nose with the hand that wasn't bleeding. "Contact the McKinley Base. They are to get phase 2.0 online as fast as possible. I want those projects ready to go inside of a year. Six months if they can."

"A year, sir? I don't know if that's even possible."

"They're still a little young, but we're going to need them sooner than later if we're going to maintain anything even resembling the Trust's original time-table. Their evolutions will have to be artificially accelerated."

Peterson paused, "Uh, Senator, won't that cause problems with their development? Dr. Cormair's files were very clear--"

"Do you see a lot of options here, Peterson?"

"No sir."

"Then I guess you had better just carry out my orders now, shouldn't you! They are to artificially accelerate the evolution!"

"Yes, sir. I'll start making phone calls right away." Peterson rushed back to the door and unlocked it.

"Peterson?" Uriah turned away from the window.

"Yes, Senator?"

"One more thing: Tell Krantz that I want him to form a commando unit. I want him to find the nastiest, most lethal, savage, inhuman animals we hired and I want him to put them on a seek-and-destroy mission for the seven."

"Yes, Senator," said Peterson. He slipped out the door and shut it noiselessly behind him.

Uriah plucked the small shard glass out of his palm and wrapped his silk handkerchief around the wound. The white silk stained to red. He strode to the window behind his desk and looked out over the Washington skyline. He could see the White House in the distance.

He would still get there, he told himself. It will take patience, that's all. He would still get there. It would happen, all in good time.

John sighed heavily and did a belly-flop onto the mattress in the corner, the only furniture in the room, save for the folding chair that served as a television stand for a thirteen-inch Dynex. The cramped, single-room efficiency apartment was dingy, and the neighborhood it was in was horrible, but the landlord took cash and didn't check references or credit. It was all John could find. Kenny lay suspended in the womb in the opposite corner. His body was technically still alive. The womb monitored an extremely slow, but steady heartbeat. The bullet holes had healed nicely in the first four days, even after John's ham-handed removal of the metal slugs from his friend's chest. Kenny had been in the gel for almost a week. He was showing no signs of waking. John had been on a near-constant vigil, hoping that Kenny would suddenly open his eyes and tap on the glass front of the coffin-like hyper-womb.

John picked up the laptop computer he'd purchased at a department store not too far from his apartment. He was piggybacking on someone else's Wi-Fi. As soon as he could find a way to get broadband without having to give a social security number, he would get his own; he didn't like to steal signal from others. He logged into his web-based email account and checked for messages. Other than a few spam emails for Viagra and cheap airfare and hotels, there were no waiting messages. He tried to tell himself that the others were still looking for a place to live, still settling into routines. Maybe they hadn't had time to get a computer yet, or if they had, maybe they were having problems getting to an internet connection.

John put the computer down and rolled onto his back. He draped an arm over his eyes and yawned so hard it felt like his skull was going to split into two. He needed sleep. A good night's sleep and then maybe he'd feel better. He'd been awake for most of a week, save a nap here and there. His body couldn't do that. He needed to rest and recharge. In seconds, John's breath deepened into the slow, rhythmic cadence of sleep.

The screen-saver on the laptop stopped its scrolling and the desktop appeared. A progress bar popped into in the center of the screen as an instant messaging program downloaded onto the computer. The IM program opened and ran through set-up protocols. A message window opened in the middle of the screen with a loud, somewhat melodic
ka-chunk
sound.

John's head jerked up and he glanced over at the screen confused and disoriented. A line of text was in the box.

Ps1ber:
John? Are you there? Can you read this?

John looked at the handle of the user trying to contact him. Then, he looked over at the hyper-womb. Kenny's body still floated in the fluid. Another line of text suddenly appeared beneath the first one.

Ps1ber:
John, you have to type. I can't hear you if you're speaking. Just type. I already set up everything for you.

John keyed in a response.

Elite:
Kenny? Is that you?

Ps1ber:
Who else would it be?

Elite:
Are you all right?

Ps1ber:
Never better.

Elite:
Are you accessing the internet from the hyper-womb?

The last line of text gave John a chill.

Ps1ber:
John, I
AM
the internet...

About the Author

Sean Patrick Little grew up in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin and now lives in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. He has wanted to be a novelist and a comic book artist since second grade. His love for the graphic novel genre began at an early age with an addiction to
X-Men
comics.