POSTHUMAN

Chapter Twenty-One

The lift Morgan occupied pinged to a halt in MIC's sub-basement. A startlingly enthusiastic agent greeted him as the doors slid open. His friendly guide led him through labyrinthine, dull but amazingly clean corridors. The whole place smelled rather like a hospital, when a government building which isn't a hospital reminds you of one then something unspeakably horrible must be happening. Morgan's guide stopped and ushered Stern into a room he recognised as being an interrogation suite, though with a few obvious discrepancies.

        An opaque glass cylinder stood in the middle of the suite on a chrome pad, frosted in such a way that it was impossible to make out its contents. Dozens of silvery tubes ran along the walls and ceiling into its metal lid.

        The clicking of a fine shoe caught Morgan's attention, not a woman's heel but a man's dress shoe. Probably whoever was on the other side of the one-way mirror which divided any interrogation suite. The owner of the shoes, quarter brogue Oxfords, appeared in the doorway: Dr Ronald Barnes. The doctor wore a navy blue pinstripe suit over a brilliantly white shirt and a sky blue tie; his deep burgundy hair styled into a neat side-parting. Barnes' nodded to Morgan, "Agent Stern."

        "I believe you have something to share with us?" Stern never took his eyes off the cylinder. Ronald strode into the suite-cum-laboratory and circled the cylinder until he was completely obscured from view.

        "Agent Stern, you are about to witness the future of daemon-kind. Mark this moment Morgan, this is history in the making," as Barnes finished speaking, the frosting on the glass vanished, nanomachines embedded in the glass shuffled around to bring the structure into clarity. A young man was suspended in a blue solution, catheters and wires ran from him into the cylinder's lid. Barnes was next to a panel bolted onto the wall behind the cylinder. Wires ran from the panel and joined the mesh of technology which slotted into the cylinder's lid.

        "This is Legacy. He's a psionic and the only success of Project Pandora. Think of him as the son Aaron Albion always wanted."

        "How old is he?"

        "I don't know, nineteen maybe, we've had him for seven years. We have to wake him up. You should probably stand back from the glass," Barnes gave Morgan a pointed look, the agent stepped away from the cylinder.

        A group of balaclava-clad, goggle-sporting soldiers in black garb entered the room. These were DIGA agents, they had to be, the sort who had been with him in the Congo years ago.

        The doctor keyed a command into the panel. A buzzing began. Electricity arced brilliantly through the fluid of the tube. Then the fluid drained slowly way into the base of the cylinder. Legacy was deposited gently on the base, he had curled into the foetal position by the time his cylinder had emptied. A section of glass lowered into the base so that he was exposed to the open air, he shivered.

        The DIGA agents around Morgan swiftly levelled their guns on the pathetically vulnerable creature. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times, his vision adjusted to the light – and then he screamed. And as he screamed the room, its contents and its occupants shook.

        Legacy bounded to his feet and tore at the intrusive tubing all about his body. The boy was frantic, manic even, he did not stop until every last alien object had been dislodged from his person. The room still shook. He began to step forward, away from the cylinder's base, uneasy steps, a child unsure of their own legs. "Subject 324!" boomed Barnes. The shaking stopped.

        The boy froze.

        Barnes approached him coolly and the boy flinched ever so slightly every time the doctor's heel met ground. Dr Barnes stood in front of his test subject, "324, do you remember anything?"

        "I remember you," it was angelic, Morgan was not someone inclined to religious thought but that was the only way to describe the boy's voice. Innocence, Stern mused, was a trait so rare amongst his peers that perhaps they should preserve this boy's precious mind. Morgan did a mental double take; those thoughts belonged in the head of someone like Marcus, he forced them away.

      "Good, I am all you know 324, am I not?" Barnes' tone told everyone this question had an obvious reply.

      "Yes, you are Ronald Barnes. Are you my father?" Legacy had the bluest eyes Morgan had ever seen, bluer than his own piercing orbs. Not even the boy's shaved head detracted from the pity Morgan bore him in that moment.

        Barnes blinked once slowly then said: "324, forget your number, your name is Legacy."

       The boy's face conveyed his confusion but this flitted away, "Yes, father." The tiniest smile graced his features, Legacy had nothing of a street urchin about him. Morgan was sure The Providence had to have kidnapped a chorister.

        Morgan patted Ronald on the back and shook the doctor's hand, "I hope to see what he can do in time, Dr Barnes. In the meantime, I want a report summarising how you achieved this." Barnes mumbled some non-committal reply as he gazed on his creation.

        "One thing puzzles me though, doctor," Morgan managed to draw Ronald's gaze away from the psionic.

        "And that is?" Barnes came back to himself.

    "Can we not just molecularly clone Legacy now? Create more like him?" Morgan gestured irreverently towards the boy.

      "Each psion sequence would be different after each success. Military and intelligence applications would be unrealistic because of timing complications. If we can finish copying the entirety of Angelene's psion sequence then we can use that information to stabilise gene expression. Their powers would still be different but without the need to expend 329 subjects," Barnes looked back at Legacy, "At least it wasn't 330."