Brain Storm (US Edition) (36 page)

Carla asked the question, "What is project Brainstorm?"

              The male speaker hesitated only a moment before answering. "I would have thought you could have guessed that by now," he said. "You are project Brainstorm.

"You, and those others like you who we have trained up and put out in the field."

Whether Carla was getting used to shocks or whether she had indeed already guessed Sara didn't know, but, whichever it was, the younger woman coped better with this revelation than Sara would have guessed.

"And what are we supposed to do for you that is so important? That is worth all this, worth killing for."

Maybe it was her anger that gave her the strength. Sara kept listening as she slowly lowered herself down onto her stomach and crawled around trying to get a look at Carla and whoever she was speaking with.

"Project Brainstorm will give me control of every government and every major government agency in the Confederation. As we speak dozens of others like you are in place amongst the trusted staff of the heads of state of every member nation of the Confederation. They are at work on the leading members of the Confederation's Parliament and on the directors of all of the major law enforcement agencies, official or otherwise. You see, using their abilities they are able to control
some very influential people, and since I am in control of them,
I
am in control of some very influential people."

Sara had heard enough. She had enough information now to initiate an investigation that would clear Carla and herself and get whoever the speaker was locked away for a very long time.

Sara pushed herself to her feet getting a tactical machine pistol in each hand and stepped out of cover. She held both her weapons on the man who had been speaking and the woman, Christine, who was with him. The two guards behind the pair and the security chief with Carla went for their weapons instinctively and then froze with their hands still not on them.

"Very good," Sara told them. "I'm sure you all know the drill. Make any further move towards your guns and I fill these two with holes."

"Sara!" Carla's relief at seeing her there was tangible.

"I said I'd come after you," Sara told the younger woman. "Now leave that guy and come over to me where it's safer."

Carla walked away from the security chief to stand behind Sara. "That man, he told me . . ."

Carla faltered off but Sara nodded. "I heard," she said as softly and comfortingly as she could. Then, speaking louder, she said, "I heard enough to know that this guy is guilty of some pretty major crimes, unlawful human experimentations, murder, conspiracy, coercion the list goes on but I don't want to bore everyone here with it since you all already know about them. Suffice to say Carla and I have enough to go to the authorities and get ourselves cleared and send you down in our places."

The man didn't flinch, gave no sign that he was the least bit intimidated by Sara's threats. "Do you know who I am?"

Sara looked him over again, he did seem familiar. Then she got it. "You're Josh Barret. You founded Omnitech."

Barret nodded. "Very good. But that was an easy one, try this. Who are you?"

Sara blinked, that was a stupid question. "That's a stupid question."

"I don't think so, you see whoever you think you are, you are not."

Barret started to pace in a small circle as though he was lecturing her. One of the guards started to move his hand slowly closer to his weapon and Sara waved her pistol to warn him off.

Barret continued, "You heard what I told Carla about where she came from?"

Sara nodded. "You aren't about to tell me that I'm the same as her?" she said incredulously.

Barret shook his head. "No, I'm not, you are something different. Carla and the others we created for project Brainstorm were something I was working on for myself. You were a fully sanctioned projected initiated at the request of the Confederation."

"Of course I was. And what special powers did they want to give me?
Am I bullet proof, of perhaps I can fly?"

"Sarcasm is seldom an endearing quality my dear. I don't expect you to believe me any more than I expected Carla to do so but it doesn't make what I tell you any less true. You, Sara, are the only surviving prototype of our 'super soldier'. Your attachment to ECSIS was supposed to be the crowning achievement of your field testing. None of what you remember before a few years ago is real. They are memories that we gave you."

"I don't believe you."

"As I said I didn't expect that you would. But you will."

Barret nodded to Christine. The woman who claimed to be Carla's genetic mother focused her eyes on Sara. Sara tried to look away but she could not. Her eyes remained locked on the older woman's as mental claws scraped away a curtain in Sara's mind.

She remembered it all. The pain, the fear. The experiments and training. She remembered it all and it threatened to overwhelm her. Her vision blurred as her sense of self was torn from her.

"You met all of our expectations for your physical skills. We will have to do a little work on behavior modification before we are ready to go into mass production, but not as much as you might think. As we did with you we will install a back-up control fail-safe that our Brainstorm agents will be able to activate. Since you were the first prototype your fail-safe is controlled by Christine here. You can feel it, can't you? Your will is being stripped away as she works her way through your mind."

Sara heard him through a rush of blood as she struggled impotently to defend herself. This was an attack against which she could mount no
defense. It took a huge effort of will that Sara didn't feel she could maintain just to keep herself on her feet and her arms raised.

"Fight it." The voice was closer and louder but no clearer to Sara's ears.

"She can't fight this. She was designed for physical strength and agility not for a battle like this."

Sara's vision darkened at the edges and her arms started to droop.

"But I was." Carla quietly intoned.

Like someone had snapped on a light in a dark room Sara's mind became clear. She brought her arms back up. Beside her Carla had her eyes closed deep in concentration. Beads of sweat formed on her lined forehead. Across the room Christine similarly had closed her eyes and was concentrating. Beside her Carla started to shake.

"I can't keep her out," Carla's words came as little more than a strangled gasp.

"Stop this," Sara told Barret.

The founder and owner of Omnitech just looked at her.

"Stop this, or I will."

Still Barret made no move.

Carla started to shake more violently and cried out.

Sara fired a short burst that took Christine down in the centre mass.

Carla collapsed.

Sara had no time to check on the younger woman. Now that Sara had already started shooting the security men in the room had nothing to lose by going for their weapons. Sara threw herself forwards, away from Carla so that the younger woman wouldn't take an errant shot that was meant for her. Barret took care of himself, scuttling away to cower in the shadow of a large horizontal bed.

Again her world went into slow motion. She went into the splits as bullets flew past over her head. She leaned back and watched bullets cutting the air in front of her face as she bent backwards to lay with her head alongside her back leg. She had her arms stretched out at either side and with an unfaltering aim put a trio burst of bullets into each of the three security men's heads.

It had taken her less than three seconds to end the fire fight. She came back up to her feet and marched over to Barret. She placed the hot barrels of her machine pistols to his head. He tried to back away as they burned his skin but Sara pushed forwards and applied more pressure.

"You've got a lot to answer for."

Sara pulled her weapons away from him and then cracked him around the sides of his head to send him into unconsciousness. Sara left him where he lay and rushed back to Carla. The younger woman was breathing heavily and trying to push herself up. Sara dropped her weapons and went down to cradle the younger woman's head. Carla rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes as though they were weighted down with lead. Her eyes became sharp and clear as they focused on Sara.

"Does this mean it's over?"

Sara smiled and stroked Carla's hair, she nodded. "It's over. I'll put in a call and get some people down here to sort this mess out. We are going to have to go with them and answer some questions but there should be enough evidence in this place to back us up."

"What about the others like me?"

"I don't know," Sara said sincerely. "It will depend on whether they can be rehabilitated. Of course first we will have to find them."

Carla closed her eyes as though keeping them open was too much of an effort. "I'll help with that if I can." Carla's voice went so that it was barely audible. "I can't believe Karl was involved in this."

Sara continued to stroke Carla's hair. "In the end he was trying to do the right thing. He got you out of there." A memory flashed unbidden to her mind, a much younger Karl Grosset looking at her through the glass of a door with tears in his eyes. "I think he tried to help me as well but he couldn't. He risked a lot when he realized what he had become a part of. He was a good man."

Carla nodded slowly her red bleary eyes starting to fill with tears.
"Where do we go from here? After we are turned loose by whoever questions us? We have nothing left. Our whole lives we have been manipulated. We were designed to be tools.”

Sara moved a hand down and took hold of Carla's
, squeezing gently.

"
How does anybody decide what they do with their life? Where we come from isn’t as important as where we are going. And wherever that may be, whatever the future holds, we can face it together.”

Epilogue

             
“The original facility has been severely compromised. Barret has been taken into custody.”

             
“Is there anything to link the facility or any of the projects to us?”

             
There was a moment’s hesitation. “Negative.”

             
“Then Barret is the only link. Have him taken care of.”

             
“What about the subject?”

             
“Keep her under observation. Barret may have talked already, if he did she will have already passed on that information. If we eliminate her at this point we will achieve nothing other than confirm the veracity of her information. We cannot risk an investigation that would compromise any of our other projects.”