Zero Recall (80 page)

The crying had not begun again, and Marie got the
eerie impression that Twelve-A waited for her in the darkness.  Realizing how
blithely she’d stepped into his trap, Marie’s pulse began to race.  Fear
paralyzed her.  Like a farmer standing feet from a tiger hidden in the
undergrowth, she had entered his realm, and her continued existence was solely
at his discretion.  Running was no longer an option, as much as her panicked
thoughts screamed at her to do so.

She made herself move deeper into the corridor of
cages.

Twelve-A was tucked into a fetal position on his
bed, knees to his chest, back against the corner where two walls joined.  There
was no drip-bag hanging from the stand beside his bed.  A wave of goosebumps
prickled Marie’s body in a wave, seeing that.

As soon as Twelve-A saw her, he stopped rocking. 

I know their fear before I kill them,
he said
in a whimper.

Self-loathing emanated from Twelve-A in a thick
mental wave that made Marie stumble against his cell.  Panting, she struggled
to keep from bursting into tears at the sheer
power
of the emotional
barrage.  Knowing that this was how he felt, that this was
him,
Marie
had to act.  Before she could talk herself out of it, she opened the gate to
his cell and went to sit down on the thin mattress beside him.

“It’s okay,” she said, touching his knee.  “You’ll
never have to do that again.”

The touch made Twelve-A jerk, and for the first
time, she realized that he had never been allowed to touch another human being
before, other than those he meant to kill.  Before Marie could correct her
mistake, he unfolded and threw himself into her arms like a frightened child.

There, the lab’s most dangerous creation cried into
her shoulder.

Marie froze, terrified of his presence, terrified of
what she’d done.  She felt Twelve-A’s body tremble against her, wracked by an
emotional torment whose very residues still left her weak and nauseous. 
Despite her fears, she felt tears coming to her own eyes and softly began
stroking Twelve-A’s shaven head.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

He shook his head against her chest and sobbed. 
Pent-up breaths exploded from him in tortured spasms.  His grip on her back
began to hurt.  Marie said nothing more and wrapped her arms around him.

Biologically, Twelve-A was a healthy
twenty-two-turn-old man.  Mentally, however, he was as vulnerable as a small
child.  They had kept every stimulation to the barest necessary for survival,
sedating him with drugs for most of his life, never speaking within hearing
range, never giving him a chance to
think.
 

The reason was simple; undrugged and unhindered—like
he was now—he could execute his keepers with a thought.  Unrestrained, his cell
open, he could cast Marie aside and simply leave the lab.  He could walk
through the open containment area doors, all the way to the reception area,
where it would be a small thing to get past the guard and escape, never to be
seen again.  Like with Carter and the drip-bag, he could probably even make
them all forget he had even existed.

Marie considered all these things as she sat there,
holding him, but found she did not care.  He needed her, and that was all that
mattered.

Thank you,
came his mental whisper in her
mind.  Twelve-A’s body had calmed somewhat, leaving only an underlying
shuddering, like someone who’d spent too much time in the cold.

“I’m going to help you,” Marie said, before she
realized it was true.  “I’m going to help you escape this place.”

Twelve-A looked her in the eyes and said,
I could
escape any time I want.

“Then why don’t you?” Marie whispered back.

The others,
he replied. 
If I took them
with me, they’d all be caught and brought back here.

She watched him closely.  “But you wouldn’t.”

He shook his head once, and it gave Marie chills. 
She wondered just how powerful their experiment was, just how much he’d been
hiding from them.

Tentatively, she said, “You know what’s outside the
complex, don’t you?  Can you actually feel beyond the walls?”

Twelve-A looked away.  His silence was answer
enough.  All of their precautions, all of their procedures, all their efforts
to keep him ignorant of his humanity…all had been for naught.  Twelve-A had
been in contact with the real world since the moment he’d been born.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Marie said.  “I
promise.”

#

That night, she drafted an anonymous letter to the
funding committee, to three separate civil rights groups, to eight government
officials, to six leading scientists, and to three different news agencies. 
She knew it would end her career.  She knew she and her colleagues would spend
the rest of their lives in prison.  But, after everything she’d done, it seemed
a fitting demise.

To Marie’s surprise, her letter was not published
the next day.  Nor the next.  Not even a whisper of it came in the weeks that
followed.  Her only indication that something had happened was the Colonel’s
increasingly terse attitude, his shortening temper.

“Get Twelve-A,” he snapped upon entering on the
final morning.  “He has another demonstration to make.”

“No!” Marie cried, stepping between the iron-faced
Lieutenant Carter and the holding area.  “You promised, Colonel.”

Codgson’s eyes were chipped obsidian as he said,
“Someone betrayed us to Congress.  Confirmed their suspicions.  Their ships are
coming.  The committee is here to decide which specimens to use in the fight
against the Dhasha commander.  They want to see Twelve-A in the Dark Room, to
see just how much they can do with him.”

“Let me do it,” Marie said, desperate, now.  “Let me
retrieve him.”

The Colonel glanced back to frown at her.  “Why?”

“He is like a son to me.”

“He is an animal, Doctor.”

It took all of Marie’s willpower to say, “It’s not a
crime to be fond of one’s dog, Colonel.”

He gave a bitter laugh.  “Make sure he’s in the Dark
Room in six minutes.”

Marie was shaking as she walked down the corridor. 
Congress was coming, and Earth would feel its wrath for ages to come.  She, and
every other scientist who worked on the experiments, would be killed.  The
experiments themselves would be murdered, the labs destroyed.  Their only hope
of avoiding the coming apocalypse was if the experiments could do what they
were created to do.

Defend them.

Defend them against a power so great it spanned the
entire universe.

Marie felt helpless as she approached Twelve-A’s
cell.  She’d tried to help, but she’d brought the aliens to their doorstep,
instead.

It wasn’t you,
Twelve-A told her, looking up
from his cot to meet her gaze with solemn blue eyes. 
I never let you send
that letter.

Marie clearly remembered sending it.  She remembered
checking her Sent files and getting Delivery Confirmation on the physical
drafts, just to make sure. 

Then Marie gasped at what the minder was trying to
tell her.  She had been in her own home when she drafted and sent those
letters, twenty miles from the lab.  His influence couldn’t possibly reach that
far.  But if it had… 

What was the limit?

Fearful, Marie began backing away.  Twelve-A watched
her soberly through the bars.

He was huddled in one corner, his lanky knees tucked
under his chin.  Once more, she felt like she was caught in the tiger’s stare,
but this time the tiger was debating.

After a moment, Twelve-A looked away.

Marie sank down to her knees in front of him, relief
washing over her.  Softly, she said, “I can help you get out of here.  I can
help you start new lives on the surface.” 

Twelve-A’s blue eyes flickered back toward her. 
We
can’t go now.  The aliens will kill us. 

Marie felt like she’d been struck.  “You know about
the aliens?”

I’ve been watching them.  They’re destroying the
other labs.  This is the only one they haven’t found.

Marie blinked at him, once again shocked by how much
he had managed to hide from them.

“We need you to fight,” she whispered.  “We need you
to stop the—”

I’m not killing the aliens.
 

“But you’ve got to help us defend the—”

No,
Twelve-A thought. 
I don’t.

Coldness settled in the pit of Marie’s stomach. 
“You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

I’m killing everyone who knows about this place,
Twelve-A said, his voice cold and final.
  It’s the only way the People are
going to survive.

Marie met the deep blue of his gaze and sweat slid
like ice down her back as she began to bargain for her life.  “Once we’re dead,
then what?  Where will you go?  What will you do?” 

Twelve-A swallowed hard.

“You don’t know anything about the real world,”
Marie insisted.  “I can help you create new lives for yourselves.  I can help
you
adapt.
  I’m your
friend,
Twelve-A.  I can help you.”

He didn’t answer her.  Looking drained, he got to
his feet. 
Come with me to the Dark Room.  I want you to watch something.

Reluctantly, realizing she didn’t really have a
choice, Marie did.  Once they stood outside the small green door, Twelve-A gave
her a gentle nudge down the hall, toward the observation booth.  Confused, she
went.

Inside, the occupants were milling in obvious
agitation.  Every face she had ever seen inside the lab was there, checking
their watches, grimacing at the blond experiment pacing in the Dark Room.  As
more staff filtered into the observation booth, Marie anxiously glanced from
Twelve-A to the group of observers and back, wondering what he planned for
them.  Her entire body trembled with fear and adrenaline.  She’d heard the
mental’s death was painless, like falling asleep.  She was terrified she was
about to find out.

“So what are we waiting for, Colonel?” one of the
generals finally demanded.  The group had become more and more aggravated as
nothing happened in the room before them.

“We’re waiting for your test subjects,” the Colonel
replied briskly.

The general’s face went slack.  “What test
subjects?  We’re here because you told us your famous Twelve-A could do
something that would save billions of lives.”

At Colonel Codgson’s frown, a man in a pristine
black suit bitterly snapped, “Do
not
tell us you brought us all together
to waste our time, Colonel.”

The Colonel stared back at them in complete
confusion.  “I never sent for you.”

A thin woman with short-cropped brown hair entered
the room and shut the door behind her on the Colonel’s last words.  Frowning,
she said, “You didn’t?  Then who did?”

In the center of the Dark Room, Twelve-A stopped
pacing.  He turned, his ice-blue eyes cold beyond the leaded glass. 

Me.

It was like a mental thunderclap.  Several members
of the committee screamed and staggered toward the door.  Only Colonel Codgson
remained where he stood, staring at Twelve-A through the glass with a queer
little smile.

Twelve-A looked at them through the glass, meeting
each of their eyes, though Marie knew he couldn’t possibly see through the
tinted windows.

I want you to know,
Twelve-A said in a
resounding mental boom,
that I killed them because they didn’t want to live,
not because you told me to.
 

Every expert and government  in the room screamed
and rushed for the door, throwing each other aside as they wrestled for the
exit.  Marie stayed where she was against the back wall, knowing that there was
nowhere to run, nowhere she could hide from the telepath’s mental barrage.

But with you
, Twelve-A continued,
it’s
because you deserve it.

Desperate men and women were making it out into the
hallway, and Marie heard their frantic footsteps on the tiles of the corridor
outside.  Back in the Dark Room, the telepath shut his eyes and inclined his
head slightly.  As one, the two dozen uniformed men and women occupying the room
around her collapsed in a silent, falling wave of flesh. 

Except for Marie.  She kept breathing, waiting for
it to happen, but it never did.  Minutes after her companions’ wide eyes began
to glaze, she was stunned to find herself still standing amidst the corpses. 
Alive.

She looked at Twelve-A.  Beyond the glass in the
center of the Dark Room, his body had slumped to the floor with his victims. 
He was now lying on his side, half-curled into a fetal position, arms pulled in
towards his chest.  Heart thundering, Marie went to see if he lived.

Put me back in my cell,
Twelve-A whimpered,
when she entered the room and knelt beside him.

Marie recoiled.  “Your cell?  Why?”

I want to die.

“No!”

Do it.

It allowed no argument.  In a daze, Marie drew him
to his feet and helped him back into the containment area.  As she settled him
onto his bed, Twelve-A said,
Please kill me.

The mental whimper was infused with so much
emotional agony that it left Marie’s chest afire.  Still, her eyes flickered
toward the IV rack they used to keep the experiments sedate.  “I’ll go get the
drugs.  They’ll make you feel better.”  She turned to go.

Twelve-A caught her hand, his blue gaze intense. 
You
should kill me, Marie.

“No,” she said, finding strength in the words, “I
shouldn’t.  I should get you and all your friends out of here.”  She patted his
warm, slender hand and Twelve-A released his hold.  She went to the labs, got
the drugs, and hooked them to the rack.  As she was connecting his IV line to
the bag, however, the minder stopped her.  His cerulean eyes were angry.