Unremarkable (Anything But) (7 page)

The building was brown, large
, and abandoned. None of the Hilltop businesses had deemed it worthy to occupy once the furniture store went out of business a few years back. Rumors boasted of ghosts, flickering lights, and strange noises surrounding the place. No one wanted to touch the property. It was perfect to run an undercover organization out of.

Isaac parked his car two blocks down, careful to keep it on a back street, and walked briskly toward the rundown structure. Hilltop, Wisconsin was about a ten minute drive from Anderson Junction. It was a small farming community with a population somewhere around five thousand and a low crime rate.

He made a cursory glance of the buildings and trees around him, spotted nothing amiss, and released the steel door. He wasn’t naïve enough to think no one was spying on him, but as long as he wasn’t approached or attacked, he considered it a winning situation. The heavy door creaked upon opening, alerting those within that they were no longer alone. He didn’t see the guns trained on him, but he felt them. It was instinctual, the knowledge imbedded into his pores; he was being watched. The air crackled with tension as he slowly made his way into the grimy, empty room. Torn sheets covered the windows the length of the wall, broken furniture all that remained of the prior business. Though the sun shone outside, it was dark and gray inside the warehouse, dust flittering through the air in streams of soot.

The open area gave the appearance of disuse and of being uninhabited. It was a ruse, of course. There were two stories to the building, the upper used for housing, the lower, in a back room not seen from the front, for mostly unknown operations. Isaac headed for the back, brushing cobwebs away as he walked. His footsteps echoed and uneasiness lodged itself between his shoulder blades like two ominous eyes.

“Don’t come any closer.”

Isaac stopped with his hands up, holding in a sigh.

“Are you aware there is an unworkable tracking device on you?”

“
Yes. How do you know I have one?”

“
There is still activity associated with it that shows up on my radar—deactivated or not. Toss it over.” The voice came from around a corner, young and thick with bravado.

“
Is this necessary, James?”

“
Yes. I’m following protocol.”

“
The protocol
I
taught you?”

James sighed. “Okay. Come on back.”

Isaac fought to not roll his eyes as he turned the corner and entered a techno geek’s playroom. Electronics of varying sizes and shapes were set up on any desk, shelving, or space available—stacked upon one another, from the floor up. The blinking lights of red, blue, and yellow were a mockery of Christmas lights. Isaac got dizzy from staring at the display for too long. He averted his gaze, taking in the young UDK instead.

“
Any news?”

James nodded his shaggy dark head, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose with his index finger. “Oh yeah. Lots of news.”

The kid was sixteen, his intelligence level close to genius, and his views full of morality wasted by circumstances and fate. His face hadn’t lost its baby fat yet and the eyes behind his spectacles were large, brown, and soulful. Every time Isaac looked at him, he felt his insides twist. None of this should even exist for James, not a kid of sixteen. He should be playing video games, watching movies, and looking at girly magazines.  

Isaac leaned against an inch of desk not taken up with gizmos and trained his gaze on James as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Spill.”

With a sigh, the teenager sat on his swivel chair. “Can I have the chip?” Reaching into his back pocket, Isaac tossed the baggie at him.

James fumbled to catch it, grace not one of his gifts. “I’ve been hearing all kinds of stuff about the carrier of this chip.” He looked down, and then raised his head to pierce Isaac with his serious gaze. “Honor?”

Isaac nodded brusquely, stoic and still, a faint tick in his jaw the only clue that the name Honor even registered in his brain.

“
She’s okay?”

“
For the moment.”

James inhaled slowly, nodding to himself. “Okay. Let me take a look at it, figure out what all it does.”

“Where’s the rest of the gang?”

“
Making rounds. They should be back any minute.”

“
I think they're back. I was being watched from the roof.”

“
That was Charlie. He's new. He doesn't do rounds, but he never misses a shot. We keep him on the roof.”

Isaac acknowledged that with a nod. “What have you been hearing on the bugs?”

“Well, it sounds like most of the facility didn’t even know she was there. The testing…that is undisclosed. I haven’t been able to find out what they’ve been doing to her, not all of it anyway. I did hear mention of a DNA strand.”

Eyes narrowed, Isaac demanded, “What about a DNA strand?”

James removed his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes before resituating them. “Different strands play different roles in our bodies, right?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“You know scientists mess around with strands, study them, and try to reproduce them, stuff like that?”

“
Of course. Scientists like to screw with the proper order of things, alter them. They’re much too curious for their own good—arrogant. Some of them even think they’re gods.”

“
Right. Sort of. Anyway, I heard this DNA strand mentioned in a conversation between August and someone else. I didn’t catch much of it. He’s smart, suspicious. August doesn’t give any more info out than is necessary.”

When James paused, Isaac motioned for him to hurry up and explain what he was taking his time getting at.

“I don’t know for sure…but what if…what if this virus we’re carrying—what if it wasn’t some accident at a testing lab? What if it was planned? What if they purposely let it loose and then waited to see what it would do to people?”

His body went cold, still, as he ingested James’s words. Isaac lived in a world where nothing surprised him anymore, not really, but that—that surprised him. And even as it surprised him, the truth of it couldn’t be ignored. It made sense, in a way.

“I think it only affected certain people because of the way their bodies were made up, but I think it wasn’t by accident that it was let loose, and this strand, it’s called a Temene strand. I think they were thinking whoever showed signs of carrying it would be the ones chosen to go on, to be immortal.”

“
What are you talking about?”

“
This Temene strand? It naturally begins to fade out when a human reaches the age of thirty-five, which is why humans start aging faster after that point.” James paused to let that sink in.

“
What are you saying? Just say it already.” He thought he had it figured out, but he had to hear it to make sure.

“
I think the virus is an altered DNA strand they airborne administered all those years ago. I think they’re also injecting higher doses of it into UDs and maybe UDKs. They’re messing with mortality, trying to make it so humans don’t age, so we don’t die. I think our ancestors were the guinea pigs and I think it didn’t work out the way they’d hoped it would. Or maybe they thought only the strong would survive.

“
It kind of worked, I guess. I mean, it slowed the aging process for the UDs, but what did it do for us? Or, I should ask, what does it have the potential to do to us? There are always risks and benefits with everything. The UDs transformation may be a benefit, maybe the UDKs altered perception is a risk, or can be, depending on what else is done to them. Maybe not. This is all speculation. For now.”

“
Honor.” Isaac straightened and turned, gripping the edge of the desk, his head hung.

“
Exactly. I’ve been catching bits and pieces of what’s going on in the facilities, and Nealon, it isn’t good. What August did to her...”

He spun around, stabbing James with his eyes. “What did they do to her?”

Sadness pulled his features down and added a shine to his eyes.

“
Tell me now,” Isaac growled.

“
They’re trying to turn her into a UD. They’ve been injecting her, on a continuous basis, with UD blood. They’re trying to turn her into some kind of hybrid, a UDK turned UD.”

“
Why her?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because she was wounded and thought to be dead? She would make an easy test subject. Maybe simply because August doesn’t like her. I don’t know. And I don’t know all the details. That’s all I know, for sure. Whatever else they’ve been doing to her—no idea. And then there are the side effects of being a UD, the possible rage, the urge to kill. I don’t think they counted on that. Or maybe they did, but they thought they could control it. And with Honor…I don’t know what’s going to happen to her.”

“That’s a lot of I don’t knows.” Isaac looked down, blinking his eyes at the discomfit that news brought him. He met James’s eyes and wished he hadn’t. It was too late—he couldn’t look away now. “So you’re saying, with what they’ve been doing to her, there’s a chance she’ll turn into a monster? A UD bent on bloodlust?”

James swung his chair around so his back was to Isaac. It was a long moment before he replied. “Yes. It’s more than possible.” He faced him again. “There’s a good chance that will happen to any UD, but with Honor? She already had the virus or whatever it was and now they’ve infected her with the counterpart of UDK blood. Of course, UD and UDK blood is connected—it is blood affected differently by the same disease.

“Who knows what will happen when all those different DNA strands mix? Especially foreign, untested ones. So, yes, I also think they let her leave. Or August did. I don’t know if anyone else was in on it or even knew about it. They just knew a UD was escaping and they reacted.

“
But August, he knew you’d come, or someone would come, for Honor. I think he was hoping for it, planning on it. I think he knowingly unleashed her on us to see what she’ll do. I think he’s hoping she’ll kill. I think he wants her to. She would make the ultimate killing machine. Maybe that’s what he wanted all along, maybe he plans on making an army of them; an army of bloodthirsty immortals. Sounds like a good time, right?”

“
But if they’re not controllable—”

“
Do you really think he cares? He is so conceited he probably thinks he can control them somehow. He’s probably hoping he can point them in the direction to kill and they’ll mindlessly follow, not caring who they kill as long as they get to kill. That’s bloodlust, Nealon. You just want to kill, over and over, no matter who it is or what they should mean to you. You don’t care anymore. You don’t care about anything but the power of destruction you carry within you. I know. I’ve researched it. And I’ve been wondering…all those UDs that had to be put down due to bloodlust? What if…what if they were UDKs to begin with and reacted badly to the injections?”

Isaac stared at James.

Excitement entered his tone as he continued, “What if August has been doing this all along, and before him, other Superiors? Maybe the UDs aren’t really the enemy, maybe it’s us.”

He ran a trembling hand through his hair, the weight of his words dragging his shoulders down.

James finished with, “All this is circumstantial. None of it is fact, yet. But I don’t know; it kind of makes sense. Doesn’t it? Nealon?”

He looked up then, his brows lowered. “Yeah. It kind of does. I have to go.” He turned to leave.

“Wait!” James hesitated, and then blurted, “There’s something else you should know.”

Isaac sighed, rubbing his face. “What is it?”

“UDKs have a GPS chip in their necks too.”

He froze, his hands slowly lowering.

He wouldn’t meet his eyes when he said, “There’s one in you. Activated.”

“
Get it out.”

“
I—”

Crossing the short distance, Isaac shoved his face next to James’s and gritted through clenched teeth, “Get it out.
Now.
”

The boy slowly nodded, getting up. He disappeared around a corner, quickly returning with a scalpel, thread, needle, and bottle of vodka. Isaac stared at the dimly lit area of blinking lights, numbness coating him in a layer of acceptance as the boy played surgeon, cutting him open, removing the foreign device, and stitching him back up.

The sharp, burning pain kept him focused as he tried to sort out the riddle that was their existence and everything involved with it. It made sense, in a twisted way. The chip did so many things he was unaware of. It acted as a mask and also as a revealer. It worked on UDs one way and UDKs another. Honor’s eyes had been silvery when she had had the chip in, but once it was out, her eyes had been normal. So what did the chip do to UDKs if it did that to UDs?

James finished up, saying, “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear any more. I’ll study the chip some more; see if I can find anything else out about it.”

“You do that.”

“
Nealon,” James called after him. He paused with his back to him, the pulse in his neck in accordance with the throbbing of his freshly slit skin. “Be careful, okay?”

“
Always,” was his grim reply.