The Samantha Project (20 page)

His tone was thick with defeat as he continued. “GlobalLife has infiltrated all places of power. They have people hidden in the local police, the state patrol, the local government, the state and federal governments. We wouldn’t have even made it out of the county. But you—” He looked up at me, his eyes showing a glimmer of optimism. “Soon you’ll have abilities. And you can use them to escape on your own. I’m sure of it.”
 

I had no idea what he meant, and I was starting to doubt the whole story again. “Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you do something sooner?”
 

“I tried. A couple months ago, when I found out what they had planned for you. I swear, I was going to tell your parents and have them get you as far away as possible, off the grid, so GlobalLife would never find you. But then . . .”

“What?” Looking at Dave again, I suddenly felt his fear like it was my own. Overwhelming panic washed over me and I didn’t know why. I just knew that it was bad.
 

“Then what?” I whispered louder now, racing to get answers. “I know you, Dave. If you really thought I was in some type of danger, you would have told Mom and Dad.”

Dave shook his head. “I tried, Sam. I told your Dad on Thanksgiving that I had to talk to him and your mom about you. I told him we would talk that Saturday. But I should have just told him that night! It was so stupid of me to wait! I didn’t know the house was bugged. I didn’t realize they were listening.”

“I’m confused. I don’t know what— ”

“You don’t understand how bad these people are, Sam.” He took a breath to calm his shaky hands, then began writing on the pad of paper again.
 

They threatened me. Repeatedly. They told me to keep quiet. Act like everything was fine. And if I didn’t, they threatened to hurt the only people I cared about.
Then they heard me talking to your dad on Thanksgiving. They knew I was about to tell your parents everything, so they showed me their threats were real. They PROVED their threats were real, Sam.
 

He tapped the pen on the paper to emphasize the final statement. He looked up at me as though I was supposed to know what it meant. His face pleaded with me to figure it out.

I grabbed the pen from him.
I don’t know what that means!!!
I tapped the pen back on the paper, just as Dave had done.

He grabbed the pad of paper from my hands and tossed it, and the letter he had written me, into the burning fireplace.

“What are you doing?” I got up. Dave grabbed me to get my attention.
 

“Listen to me! The threat they used was your parents, Sam.” He spoke in a loud voice now. It was as if he had given up and no longer cared if they heard him. He wanted me to know the truth about these people, no matter what that meant for him.
 

“They made good on their threats!” he yelled. “Do you understand now? Your parents’ deaths were not an accident!”

Before I could respond, a small gray object shattered the glass in the window next to the front door. A second one quickly followed. Smoke came billowing out of the objects, filling the room with a dark haze. My eyes burned and I struggled to breathe. Dave tried to grab me but lost his grip and fell to the ground. I stumbled to find the sofa but could only find smoke.
 

Within seconds, the front door came crashing down. A bright light shined like a laser beam through the smoky room. Where the door used to be, I could see two large figures in head-to-toe riot gear wearing large black helmets that covered their faces. The helmets had some type of breathing device that altered their speech and filtered whatever chemicals they had used to create the smoky air.
 

“I can’t see her. Go to other side,” I heard the first man say to the other man, who had now moved closer to me.
 

“What’s going on in there? Talk to me. Did you get her?” The voice was coming from a speaker on the shoulder of the man next to me.

I froze, still unsure where I was in the room. A heavy hand pushed me to the floor. “Yeah, I got her,” I heard a voice say.
 

When I hit the floor, I felt the pen I’d been using. I grabbed it and shoved it as hard as I could into the man’s foot but his boots were made of hard rubber and steel.
 

I heard the other man laugh as he yanked me up by one arm. Before I could swing at him with my free arm, I felt a sting in my neck. It was a needle; soon a cold liquid quickly flowed through my veins. My body went numb and then the room went black.

“So you just had to tell her about her parents.” Dr. Alden Worthings stood over Dave, who was lying in a sterile metal bed, tubes hooked up to his arms. “I see what you were trying to do. Make her hate us so she won’t cooperate in the training. Well, we have other ways of making her cooperate. So why’d you tell her, Dave? Just had to relieve the guilt you’ve felt all these years?”

Dave just listened as the sounds from beeping medical monitors filled the room.
 

“Don’t worry. We aren’t going to kill you just yet. You’re too damn good at what you do. If we could just figure out a way to bottle your brain.” The man smiled to himself as he made a mental note to follow up on that idea later.

“But until we’re able to do that, we’ll just have to keep you around a little longer.”

“I’m done, Alden,” Dave mumbled, groggy from the medication. “I’m done doing your dirty work. You can’t control me now. I have nothing left. You took Stephen and Ellie from me. You took Sam. You took my software, my company. There’s nothing left to take. I’m done working for you.”

“You think it’s that easy, Dave?” The man paced back and forth beside Dave’s bed, then stopped suddenly to look at him. “You know, you’re brilliant in some ways, yet so stupid in others. You see, we still need you. And if we need you, then we obviously have a way to keep you doing what we want you to do.”

“And what could that possibly be?” Dave sat up to look at the man.

“Let’s just say that Samantha isn’t as safe as you think she is. Sure, she’s proof that the technology works. But once we’ve shown her off at the meeting and get buy-in to move the project forward, we can simply take the technology and dispose of the . . . what should I call it . . . shell.”

“That wouldn’t work. I know it wouldn’t. I’ve studied those scenarios many, many times. You have to keep the technology inside a living subject.”

“Living subjects don’t have to be human, Dave. We can put the technology into a lab rat or a monkey.”

“No, that wouldn’t work. It has to be human. It’s built for human DNA.” Dave was quickly trying to review his research in his head. Maybe he had missed something. Maybe there was a loophole somewhere. Maybe they
could
kill Sam. “If your theory is true, then why wouldn’t you just kill Sam now? Why wait?”

“Yes, why wait? Such a good question. We’re going to let you decide that, Dave. Keep working for us, Sam stays alive. Leave us, and who knows what will happen. Oh, we do know what will happen, now don’t we?”

Dave couldn’t stand the smug look on the man’s face. Worthings knew Dave couldn’t take a chance again. He couldn’t call their bluff. Doing so would mean another death. This time Sam’s death, the only person left that he cared about. The girl who was like his very own daughter. The girl he had watch grow from a tiny infant. The girl he was yearning so desperately to see just one more time.

“So what’s it going to be? Stay or go?”

“Stay.” Dave turned from the man, avoiding his sickly grin.

“I thought so. You should be better in a day or so. I’ll be traveling overseas for the next couple weeks, but I’ll see you back here for the meeting with the Founders.”
 

I woke up suddenly, searching for light. “Uncle Dave?” I tried to talk, but my throat was burning and my voice was hoarse. “Dave are you there?” I opened my eyes more but could only see a small sliver of light. I tried to sit up, but my body was numb, unable to move.
 

I heard clicking footsteps walk briskly to my bed. “She’s starting to wake up. Tell Dr. Worthings.” A woman was speaking next to me. She was talking into something on her shoulder. She grabbed my arm and shot something in it. My eyes immediately gained focus and I could feel a warm liquid flowing through my veins. As it did, I started to gradually feel my limbs again, first my arms and then my legs. I tried to lift my arms, but my wrists were stuck in metal clamps on each side of the bed. My legs were also in clamps.

I looked around to see I was in a hospital bed in an all-white room. The walls, the metal window blinds, the floor tiles, the bedding, my hospital gown—all white. I was hooked up to several machines, all beeping in harmony. The woman beside me was young, small, and thin with bright blond hair and deep blue eyes. She spoke with a slight accent, from somewhere in Europe, but I wasn’t sure what country.
 

“What is this? Where am I? Why am I tied down like this?”

The woman ignored me and went to record something on what appeared to be a thin tablet computer.
 

“Hey, did you hear me?” My voice was starting to come back.
 

She glanced over from her tablet for a second, then went back to work, ignoring me again.

“I’m talking to you. Listen to me. Where am I and why am I tied down like this? Are we at GlobalLife?” It didn’t look like GlobalLife, but hadn’t Dave said that GlobalLife would try to take me? I couldn’t remember now. Had the events at the cabin really taken place? I wasn’t sure.

“Here, look this way.” The blond woman pointed straight in front of me as she raised my bed to an upright position.

A 3-D holograph of a man’s face appeared in front of me—dark tan and spiky blond hair. “Well, hello there, Samantha. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Sorry we have to meet this way, but I’m traveling on business and couldn’t be there in person. How are you feeling? Rested, I’m sure.”

“Why am I here? What do you want? And where’s Dave?”

“So many questions. All in good time, Samantha.” He paused to take a drink from what appeared to be some type of alcohol in a short, fat glass.

“My name is Dr. Alden Worthings. I have the privilege of running GlobalLife Genetics. It’s a privilege because the job entitles me to do great things for the world—to make a mark on mankind. Few people get to have such an impact. In that way, you’re just as fortunate as I, Samantha. You see, you, too, get to have an indelible mark on future generations. Do you realize that?”

Worthings. The man who had held Dave hostage to GlobalLife for all those years. The man who had threatened him. The man who had probably made the decision to have my parents killed.
 

“Where am I? Tell me why I’m here!” I banged my shackled hands against the metal bed, shaking it from side to side.

He stopped to take another drink. “We’ll get to all of that, Samantha. First and foremost, I need to make it clear that your cooperation from here on out will only make things easier on both you and Dave.”

My thoughts suddenly raced to Dave and my dream of him in a hospital bed just like mine. “What did you do with Dave? Where is he?”

“Oh, he’s back at work. He really had you fooled, didn’t he? Pretending to be your caring uncle all these years, attending your school events, showing up for holiday gatherings. He did a splendid acting job, I must say.”

“You’re lying! He wasn’t acting. And he wouldn’t work here. Not anymore. There’s no reason to.” I still wasn’t sure if my dream about Dave was a real event or just a nightmare brought on by the drugs they gave me. “You can’t threaten him anymore. You got what you wanted. He told me everything.”
 

“You’re so naive, Samantha. Dave has been working on this project since before you were born. In fact, he named it for us: The Samantha Project. Not very clever, I know. Anyway, he helped make you what you are today. All of these years, he was simply waiting for you to get to this point so we could move forward with our next phase of development.” He waved for the female attendant. “Hannah, will you turn on camera 8?”

Hannah swiped something on her tablet and suddenly Dr. Worthings’ holograph was replaced with an image of Dave working in his lab.
 

“You see? There he is working away, just like nothing happened.”

“That’s old footage. You could have recorded that months ago.”

I could still hear Worthings’ voice. “Hannah, zoom in on Dave’s face.” As the camera zoomed in, I could see bruises on Dave’s face and a black eye. “Dave was injured when my men retrieved you from the cabin. He was in our clinic a few days after the incident, but he’s fine now.”

The image reverted back to Worthings. “Enough about Dave. I don’t have much time, so let me tell you what we have planned. It’s been almost a week since you arrived here. We’ve been able to download the programs you’re currently running and analyze how they’re affecting your genes. We have a few adjustments to make but overall, everything . . .”

Out for almost a week? My mind starting racing, trying to imagine what they had done to me while I was unconscious. I wondered why nobody had found me. Weren’t they looking for me? What about Colin and Allie? They had to be worried.

“You can’t keep me here,” I interrupted before he could continue. “People will ask questions. People will look for me. They’ll go to the police.” I felt hopeful just saying it aloud.

“I don’t think you understand. This thing that you’re a part of—it’s bigger than GlobalLife. It involves some very important people. A select group of people from around the world who are in charge of shaping our future, making it a better,” he paused to think, “more peaceful world. And because of that, we can’t let local police officers or curious reporters get in the way of our plans. When someone goes missing, we have people on the inside who handle whatever problems may arise. To answer questions. Dispel rumors. Clean up messes. And take care of things that get in the way.”