Recap: Brandon snuck on board a plane with Agent Corrales that was bound for Groom Lake (a.k.a. Area 51). Corrales tried to explain why EDI was justified in what they did, but Brandon wasn’t buying it. As they landed Brandon knocked out Corrales and had to decide what to try and do while he had the element of surprise.
Winning Choice: “I need to find Mandeville. I don’t like the guy, but I need to get him out of their hands, and if I can get to him before they lock down the base I’ll have a better chance of getting him out alive.”
“I’m going to get Mandeville out of here. He knows too much, and these guys will eventually get it out of him,” I tell Tyler, keeping my voice down so the pilots don’t hear me.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Tyler says in my ear. “I can’t wait to see how the suit holds up.”
“Tyler,” I prompt.
“Yes?”
“I need to know where to find him. I haven’t been to Area 51 before, and there aren’t any tourist maps here on the plane!” Tyler’s a genius in some areas, but he has a gift for missing the obvious sometimes.
“Oh, right! Susan’s been looking into that.”
There’s a small click and Susan chimes in. “It’s hard to tell exactly where everything is on the base, but we can make a pretty good guess.”
Through the window I see a ground crew approaching the plane. “I need that guess really quick,” I tell her. The plane’s at a full stop, so I step to one side and open the door. It flips down, deploying the stairs and locking into place.
“Squat gray building, just northwest of you. That has to be the brig,” she says.
“Brigs are only on ships,” I tell her, my old librarian instincts kicking in. “This is just going to be a jail, or maybe the stockade.”
“Well, I’ve never been arrested by the military,” she says, sounding a bit miffed.
“The day’s not over yet. Just get me to the right building and you’ll get a gold star in my book.” I back up a step into the plane to get a running start. My heart’s hammering at the thought of getting back into action.
Rocketing out of the door at full speed, I leap over the stairs and head for the squat building I’m pretty sure Susan’s referring to. The sun’s starting to go down so I can tell directions easily. It would be rather awkward if I had to stop and ask.
Very few people are armed as I streak past, but I’m sure that will change as soon as they get a good look inside the plane.
Air Force bases are a lot of things, but colorful isn’t one of them. Every building looks alike, and I think without the “Military Police” sign out front I wouldn’t have been sure I had the right one. I stop at one corner of the building, crouching behind a jeep. The front doors have a badge reader next to them which means they are locked. Ripping them off their hinges would blow my cover right away, which I’d hate to do. Fortunately I’m saved from that decision by two very serious looking uniformed men exiting right at that moment.
I speed through the door before it closes. Inside two people are typing away at computers, but I don’t stop to see what they’re working on. I rocket down a hall and duck into an empty office.
I’m nervous. I respect the military a lot. I never viewed them as I do police officers, who I grew wary of after my arrest. Still, they’re going to be coming after me and I can’t afford to take it easy on them.
“I’m inside,” I tell Tyler. “Any idea where I find the cells?”
“Can’t help you on that one,” he says. “But the place isn’t that big.”
The place isn’t very busy, and I don’t have to dodge many people while I search. The cells are in the back of the building, and only one is occupied. I stop in front of it and regard Mandeville through the bars. He’s sitting at a small table in his cell, reading a book.
“Hello, Mandeville,” I say.
He glances up, looks back down, and does a double-take. “What the hell…” he trails off, gaping at me.
“You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?” I ask.
He squints at me, cocking his head. “Brandon?” he asks, out of sheer disbelief.
I give a small bow and he throws his head back and howls in laughter. “What on earth are you wearing?”
“We can compare fashion notes later,” I tell him. “I’m going to get you out of here, but as soon as I pop this cell door open an alarm will go off. Actually, there’s going to be a lot of alarms all over the place here in a minute, so get ready to go.”
He stands up his mirth turning into a scowl. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s way too dangerous. They’re not getting any information out of me.”
“We’re not having a debate,” I tell him. A klaxon sounds outside, its howl carrying through the walls.
Mandeville glances towards a window. “What have you done?”
“What I do best: making friends. Stand back.”
He steps back and I grab the bars and tear open the door. As I expected another alarm sounds, this one inside the building.
“No, wait!” Mandeville says, but I’m done waiting. I pick him up in one arm and speed back out the way I came. We race past guards springing into action and heading past us towards the cells. I kick open the front doors and race out into the twilight. I have no idea where I’m headed from here, so I find some cover behind another boring looking building to get my bearings.
As I pull to a stop, Mandeville wheezes, catching his breath. I set him down. “Fun, isn’t it?” I ask him. “Don’t try anything stupid. We can do this with you unconscious just as easily.”
He leans against the wall. “Incredible. It’s one thing to see you move that fast, it’s something else entirely to be doing it myself.”
“Guys, what’s the best way out of here?” I ask into my radio.
“We’re working on that,” Susan replies in my ear. “There’s not much nearby, which is why they put the base out there in the first place. There’s a tiny city called Rachel to the northeast, and I mean tiny. Lots of mountain ranges. The nearest big city is Las Vegas, but that’s a ways away.”
Mandeville is examining my suit up and down, nodding approvingly. “That’s a nice carbon mesh you have there. Looks good, too, I have to admit. I bet you gave EDI a heart attack when they saw it.”
“They haven’t seen it yet. You’re lucky to be here for the unveiling. But why will they care?”
The klaxon continues to wail, and I peek out to see what’s going on. Bright lights are flickering on all over the base, so we’re not going to have much darkness for cover.
“It means you have help. Smart help. People with connections and resources. And now that you have a uniform it means you stand for something, just like their uniform does. You’re choosing a side.”
“I’m not choosing a side; I’m doing my own thing,” I tell him. Air Force security personnel are heading towards the jail from every direction. We need to get out of here.
“That’s not a side?” he asks. “Before we go we need to destroy their lab. They showed it to me trying to convince me to work for them. It’s more advanced than I thought and I don’t want them using it.”
“That’s going to be real difficult with the whole base on alert. I just want to-“ but I’m cut short by the pounding of incredibly heavy feet headed our way. I know that footfall.
I step away from the building just as two giant figures lumber into view: the same two hulking, genetically modified soldiers I fought once before. There’s something different about them, though. They’re wearing nothing but tight-fitting pants, clearly custom made for their immense size. They seem even larger, even more muscular than before. And faster.
“Get back,” I tell Mandeville, as the slightly larger of the two behemoths rumbles towards me, snarling.
“We’ve been waiting for a rematch,” he says, swinging a wide right hook. I dodge under the massive arm and hop back a step. They’re strong enough to hurt me, but only if they can get their hands on me.
“And here I was hoping you learned your lesson the last time,” I told them. “You don’t look well. Has someone been juicing your corn flakes again?” The smaller of the pair moves around the side, trying to flank me and keep me up against the back of the building we were hiding behind.
“You were lucky last time, and you don’t have your friend to help you,” says the smaller one.
“I have no idea who that was,” I admit. “But I don’t think I’ll need their help this time around.”
“Oh no?” asks the larger one, charging at me, his arms wide. I feel things slowing down as my senses and reactions kick into high gear. Last time I was weak and sore from having my nanobots jammed. This time I feel like a machine, calm and in control.
I duck under his huge arms and grab the beast around his waist. I pull down, rolling backwards, and flip him over me as hard as I can right towards the building. As we tumble I brace my feet against his chest and kick off as hard as I can. Which is pretty hard.
The kick sends me sailing out into a grassy area between the buildings. As Isaac Newton discovered, every action has an equal an opposite reaction. In this case that reaction involves the giant I kicked smashing upside-down right through the side of the building. There’s an enormous crash as part of the walls and ceiling cave in behind him.
The smaller giant lunges for me, trying to catch me in a bearhug. I flip up through his arms, over his head, and land behind him. The last time we fought I was in so much pain and was so exhausted I couldn’t move like I wanted to. This time is different and they can’t hurt what they can’t touch.
The giant wheels around to grab for me again, but I crouch low and clasp my hands together. As his hulking arms pass over my head I leap, swinging at his chin. The two-fisted blow sends him hurtling through the air. He flops to the ground a good twenty yards away.
The super-steroid twins are tough, and the one in the building is already digging himself out of the rubble. There’s also now a rather large number of military personnel in full SWAT-type gear moving to surround us. I turn to grab Mandeville for an escape, but he’s gone.
I panic for a second, then see the stubborn fool running off across the base. How he thinks he’s going to escape through the approaching crowd of airmen, I have no idea. I speed over to him.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “We need to leave! Hold on and I’ll-“
“No!” He pushes away from me. “We need to destroy that lab. Those two freaks you just fought are the least of what they can create. You distract them and I’ll do it myself. Or just fly off and they’ll all follow. Just go!”
He can’t make it. There’s no way. Even with things getting dark, the base is very well lit and literally every person here will be on the lookout for him. Mandeville is a long way from being on my Christmas list, but on this point I think we agree: EDI having a lab to do more genetic experiments on people is a really bad idea.
Fine.
I grab his arm, and he tries to pull away but this time I have a solid grip. “Which building has the lab?” I ask, as the ring of armed airmen raise their guns.
He nods towards a two-story office-like structure across the base. “There,” he says. “All of the research facilities are in that section, separate from the military operations area.”
I pick him up. “Hold on,” I tell him, but don’t wait for him to actually do it.
I speed past the airmen, over to the building, and smash through the front door with my shoulder. I saved Mandeville from the worst of the impact, but he looks a little wobbly when I stop and set him down. As he’s regaining his bearings two people in civilian clothes race into the room, guns drawn. I knock them out before they can fire.
“Researchers,” says Mandeville, stepping over their prone bodies and striding down a hall.
“Is everyone here armed?” I ask, a little surprised.
“On this base? I’d be shocked if even the cleaning crew wasn’t armed,” he says.
Fair enough, I guess. Mandeville heads deeper into the building, and I toss some desks and cabinets in front of the open doorway. It won’t slow them down much, but every bit helps. When I catch up with Mandeville I see he’s carrying one of the researcher’s guns.
“I’ll take care of anyone we meet,” I tell him. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
He shakes his head. “You’re an idealistic idiot,” he says.
“Hey, you’re the one who chose me,” I point out. He glances my way, frowns for a second, and puts the gun in his waistband.
I take out a few more researchers, but the place is mostly empty. I’m guessing they were either winding down for the evening or the alarms caused most of them to evacuate.
It doesn’t take us long to reach the lab; it takes up most of the building. There are huge observation windows all along one wall so you can see pretty much the entire lab from the hallway we’re in.
There’s an airlock of sorts to get into the lab, where there are surgical gowns and a station to wash up. Mandeville buzzes into the airlock using an ID badge he must have also lifted from the researcher. I follow, trying to take the place in.
It’s enormous, bright, and sends a chill down my back. Everything is clean and sterile, like an operating room out of a movie, and it takes me a moment to realize that’s exactly what gives me the creeps. In a real operating room, in a real hospital, there’s still a sense of humanity. It’s a place where, for all the scalpels and needles, they’re trying to save people’s lives.
This place isn’t where lives are saved. Humanity isn’t here.
Empty animal cages against the far wall sit silent, but I can almost smell the fear and pain that was once inside. Refrigerators with clear doors house vials and bottles of chemicals of every color. An operating table near the center of the room is ringed with IV hooks and long tubes with needles by the score. Powerful looking machines mounted overhead extend long arms over the table that end in what looks like some sort of radiation projector or laser. Metal restraints on the operating table would have held the occupant in place, and from the dents and bends more than one very strong patient didn’t want to be there.
There is a separate examination table against a far wall, near some sinks. It’s wider than the operating table, and laid out on a shelf nearby is a large range of scalpels, knives, and saws. The center of the examination table is raised, and thin grooves run along the edges. The grooves in turn drain through holes in the tables that feed down to a large grate in the tile floor.
Anything that goes wrong in this place is washed down the drain.
I realize Mandeville is talking to me but I have no idea what he just said. I’m cold. Numb. I look over and he’s examining a small device he found by one of the operating tables.
I gesture to the room. “This… some of this is what you did to me.” That started as a question, but I realize I know the answer. Mandeville shoves the small device in his pocket.
He pauses, and takes a deep breath. “Not like this. The genetic changes we made to you were never this brutal. This is what happens when you take away the reason for what we did and just try to catch up as fast as possible by any means necessary.”
The restraints on the operating table are incredibly strong. I’m not sure I could get out of them myself. I touch the arm cuffs where they’re bent from someone straining to get free. I shudder. “This is where they created those two giants, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Mandeville says. He’s moved over to one of the refrigerators of chemicals and is scanning through the names on the vials and containers.
“And what about those cages?” I ask, gesturing towards the animal pens along the back of the room.
Mandeville looks up at them for a moment and scowls. “I’m honestly not sure,” he says. “What we did to you was tailored to human genetics. It wouldn’t work on any other species.”
I wonder how much blood of animals and humans mixed going down that drain. My numbness fades and I’m hit with a wave of fury that I can barely contain. “You need to get out of here,” I tell Mandeville.
Mandeville apparently found what he was looking for in the refrigerator as he takes out a small vial and stuffs it into another pocket. He cocks his head to listen. “Are they coming?” he asks.
“Not yet. I just don’t want you hit by shrapnel,” I reply, unclenching my fists. I step up to the examination table and sink my fingers into the metal frame at one end. Mandeville gives a quick nod and hustles towards the airlock we came through. I don’t wait.
Tearing the examination table from it’s footing, I hold the end in both hands and swing it around the room. The knives and saws go flying as the entire shelf they were on, and part of the wall it was mounted on, are demolished. The refrigerators shatter, spilling their hissing and bubbling mixtures out over broken glass and tile. Computers spark and go dark as they sail across the room to shatter into the far wall. The devices in the ceiling come crashing down, taking out some of the overhead lights. The animal cages are crushed and mangled, never able to hold anything again. I can almost feel the nanobots sing inside me as I destroy everything I can reach. I hold nothing back.
Finally I reach the reinforced operating table. I drop my now bent and mangled bludgeon and squat down below the operating table. It’s supported by a massive column that allowed it to swivel and tilt. Wrapping my arms around that column I heave with my legs, and in a thundering crunch of metal the entire thing tears free of the floor.
Mandeville yells, “Reinforcements have arrived.” He’s come back in the lab is and is typing furiously at the keypad next to the airlock door, probably to try and lock it. The hallway outside the huge windows is filling up with guys in full SWAT gear. One takes aim at Mandeville and fires.
Mandeville dives to the floor as bullets hit the glass. Large spider-webs of cracks appear, clouding the glass, but it holds. It’s not surprising they used bulletproof glass in this place, but I doubt it will hold long against that much firepower.
My anger isn’t anywhere close to subsiding, and I’d been about to throw the operating table at them, but now I have a new idea. The side wall of the lab appears to be one of the exterior walls of the building.
“Get up,” I yell at Mandeville. “We’re going out the side door.”
I heft the table over my head, angle it forward, and run towards the wall like a linebacker. The wall is strong but it gives way under my charge, exploding outwards into a small parking lot beyond. My momentum carries me outside and I hurl the now mangled table a few dozen yards away. There’s a few guards in sight, and they immediately call into their radios. As I turn to check on Mandeville I hear a deep yell coming from overhead and growing louder.
I look up. One of the giants is leaping through the air at me, sailing up higher than the building, and descending towards me with an incredible look of rage on his face and a massive fist raised over his head.
My whole body sings with power, fueled by my rage over that lab, and instead of dodging I brace myself. I haul back with my fist and I wait a heartbeat until the giant is almost on top of me. His reach is longer than mine, but I lean inside his swing and connect into his snarling face with a blow that would have broken a dump trunk in half. The crack as his face shatters is as sickening as it is loud, and blood splatters across my costume.
The giant crumples to the ground, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. He’s out cold, and I roll him onto his side so he doesn’t choke on his own blood. There’s no sign of his friend at the moment, but that could change at any second.
The sound of helicopters taking off elsewhere on the base tells me they’re trying to get some air support to take me down. More guards will be here any second. The whole base has to be mobilized against us by now, but I don’t care. I know I’m not invincible, but I sure feel that way right now. My heart pounds and the nanobots hum in my blood. My muscles strain against my costume, and the smell of sweat and blood fills my nose.
Mandeville touches my arm and I nearly take his head off before I check myself.
“Get back inside,” I yell at him.
“No, you can’t win this,” he yells back. “We need to leave while we can. You already set them back years by destroying that lab.”
“I can shut down this base and set them back a decade!”
“It’s not worth it,” he says. “We should either hide in the mountains to the north, or get down to Las Vegas. It’s a longer trip but they wouldn’t dare follow us in force somewhere that public.”
I stare at him for a moment, torn on what to do.
1. “No, I’m going to stay and fight. I’m feeling more powerful than ever and I may never get a chance like this again to hurt them this thoroughly.”
2. “You’re right, let’s withdraw before we get overwhelmed. We’ll head into the mountains. They’re a lot closer than Vegas, and we can ditch the Air Force there.”
3. “You’re right, but I don’t want to play hide and seek int he mountains. Let’s get down to Las Vegas. It’s a longer trip, but it’s too visible for them to attack and we’ll have more resources to work with there.”
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