Chapter Eleven
DISASTERPIECE
JULY 23RD 2369
Irene sits in the room she had taken for herself after arriving. She’d had Ivor and the House Bots remove all the boxes, and install a bed, wardrobe and dressing table. Over the last few weeks, it had become her home, her own room.
But not for much longer.
The military are due to arrive soon, and she has yet to get ready, still sat on her bed, hugging her knees. Felix hadn’t come to see her, to speak to her or apologize for last night.
She didn’t even know if he had spoken with the Nano-Union or not.
At some point during the morning, she receives a call.
“Dr Graves, we our five miles away and commencing landing procedures.”
The deep masculine voice projects from the speakers in the wall, the sound of wind hums in the background.
“That’s great Mike, thanks for doing this.” Irene says.
“It’s my duty Ma’am, be ready to leave as soon as the demonstration is over.”
“Leave? But I’m not done here.” She says, her legs going down as she sits forward, “On whose authority?”
“Captain Loway’s, a request from Doctor Frakes.” The solider says.
“I never agreed to such a thing.” She says, getting to her feet.
“I’d tell you to take it up with them, but as we’re almost here I doubt they will change their minds, the Shadow Troops are needing to depart.”
“Shadow Troops?” She says frowning, then going over to the window she looks out in to the small forestry that surrounds the building. “Has Johnathan had them spying on me this whole time?” She asks.
“They were deployed for your protection, which I support, as I do not trust Dr Eisenmann.”
She continues looking through the trees but see’s nobody there. “Thanks for calling Mike, I need to make a call myself now.”
“See you soon Irene.” He says, before ending the call.
“Ivor, call Johnathan.” Irene says, and as the call connects she heads over to the dressing table and sits down.
There is no answer Mrs Graves. Ivor says.
“Of course there isn’t.” She sighs, “Try Bart then.”
Sorry but I don’t not have a line to the Captain. He says.
She stares at her reflection, she wasn’t going to leave, not yet, she wasn’t ready, she needed more time to save the world.
First they needed to get this demonstration over, and there was no time left for sulking. Have to be professional, she told herself.
***
Irene joins Felix on the veranda after applying a light amount of makeup, he’s still in his stained lab coat and sporting the usual unkempt hair. The two soldiers had arrived and were talking to Felix about the suits and their capabilities. Their erect posture, ripped arms and shaved heads show clear their history of a military career.
“Hey.” She says, interrupting them.
“Oh guys, this is Dr Irene Graves, she’s been helping me, and will be overseeing the experiment today.”
The two men nod and smile, “Ma’am” they chime.
“We’ve met before,” She says to Felix, then turning to address them, “we have good weather today gentlemen, but as I’m sure Dr Eisenmann has explained, we will be subjecting you and the suits to a variety of hazards to test their capabilities, any questions?”
“No Ma’am,” says Mike, the slightly taller of the two, “we’re here for our country, our planet Ma’am.”
“Good to hear. Shall we begin?”
They group head down to the lower area of the veranda. Felix taps on a console and two of their survival suits rise out of the floor, their backs open to the waiting soldiers.
“Good luck, and may Mother Earth be with you.” Felix says.
They climb inside their suits, which close up behind them. Irene is at her console and checking over their vitals.
“Suits are online, and we have a stable connection,” She looks over at Felix, “Everything’s green.”
Their eyes meet, the first time since she’d stormed out. He gives her a smile and nods, then turns back to his console.
“Alight ladies,” He says into a small microphone, “get up in the air and race to the checkpoint as fast as you can, check in when you’ve done this.”
“Yes Sir.” They reply.
There is a loud hiss as their boosters ignite and the two streak off into the air. The scientists monitor their progress for a minute before they reach their destination and report back.
“We are at the check point, but wow, I have never flown in a suit that is so fast and agile.” Says Mike.
“Oh the fun hasn’t even started,” Says Felix, “there are now multiple drones in your vicinity, perform evasive maneuvers and take them out.”
From their distance the shooting is only a faint rattle in the sky, but over the radio the soldiers whoop with excitement.
Mike shouts over the airwaves. “These are amazing Doctors! A massive improvement over our current hardware.”
“Both suits have sustained damage,” Irene says, “Nanites are responding and repairing.”
“Fantastic.” Felix murmurs, as he types further commands into the console. “Well done gentlemen, now I’m using other drones to subject you with various types of radiation.”
“Confirmed.” They respond.
“Vitals are remaining constant,” Irene says after a minute. “The suits are protecting them.”
After another minute Felix taps into the console, “Alright guys, new destination, 4,000 feet bellow sea level, first one there gets a cold one on me.”
In the distance they see the flash of their boosters and a splash as they enter the water.
“Pressure is rising, internal pressure is remaining constant.” Irene reports.
The pair reach their new destination and hold their position.
“How are you guys feeling?” Felix asks.
“Totally fine sir.” They respond. “As long as no monsters from the deep get us.”
“The waters too warm for them.” Felix mutters, “Now return to the veranda and we’ll carry out some inspections.” He turns to Irene, a smile painted across his face. “We did it!” he says.
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“We’re not out of the woods yet.” She says, “there are still more tests to do.”
“Yeah… of course, but this is amazing, they have a self sustaining environment in there, I was never able to get one suit to handle all of these variables before.”
“Well, I’m sure you know who to thank for that.” She replies.
He says nothing.
A hiss announces the test subjects return back to the veranda. The scientists leave their posts, carrying hand held devices, from which they slide out a small pen like device, which they use to scan the suits.
“Everything appears fine.” Irene says, “Can you remove your helmets please?” she asks.
Their hands move up, but stop just before they grip the helmet.
“I… can’t.” One of them shouts, “I can’t move my hands any further.”
“No….” Felix gasps, changing the filters and scanning them again.
“Let me out!” The other screams.
Felix grabs at the neck of the closest one and disengages the lock. But as he tries to force the helmet off, the soldier inside screams with such intensity that Felix lets go of the helmet and stumbles backwards.
“Felix!” Irene shouts pointing at the neck of the soldier, where red is now oozing out of the gap.
“Argh!” Howls the other, dropping to his knees as he fights against the suit.
“What’s going on?!” Irene shouts at Felix as he runs back to the console.
“Please help us…” Both soldiers are on their knees now and both are gripping a hold of her. “The pain is too much!” She stares down at their vacant metallic faces.
They both scream again, louder than before, then they let go, collapsing to the ground. She turns to look at Felix, who is sweating over his console.
He looks back at her, pale and shaking, then presses a button on the console.
“First and second experiments, failed.” He croaks.
Irene turns back to them, fumbling to keep her hands steady as she scans them again, but their screams fade to nothing, their bodies refusing to move.
Her heart sinks and she turns to look back at Felix.
“They’re both dead.” Irene croaks, “Felix, what the fuck happened?” Tears trailing down her face.
He shakes his head and turns to go back inside, leaving Irene to stare down at the two motionless suits. She knells next to them and places her hands on each one. She looks at the helmet of the one Mike had been inside.
“I’m so sorry Mike, I don’t know what went wrong, but I will find out…”
The suit makes no reply.
She finds she can’t stand, not wanting to leave their sides.
“I hope you find peace, where ever you are now.” She says to them.
After a few minutes, the cold-hearted, rational scientist inside her moves to scan them again with the device she still holds in her hands.
She needed every piece of possible data. She was not going to let this happen again.
What will Bart and John do when they find out?
“Fuck.” She cries.
***
Irene finds Felix sitting in the main room, a large glass of something amber in his hands. She follows suit and collects herself her own drink before sitting next to him. Hob follows her in and rests on the arm of the chair like it was a cat. Felix swipes the screen in front of him away.
“Mike was my friend.” She says after a moment.
Felix frowns, “Mike?”
“One of the men you just killed.” She snaps back at him.
“I didn’t mean for them to die!” Felix snaps. “It’s not my fault, I don’t know what the fuck went wrong.”
Irene stares at him, not believing what she is hearing.
“Seriously? You came to me yesterday begging to post-pone this, you knew something bad was going to happen.”
“And I thought I had sorted it.” He retorts.
“You spoke with them then?” Irene asks, eyes narrowing to watch as his eyes dart away, his feet shift to point away from her. “For fuck sake Felix! How can you try and say this isn’t your fault when you can’t even face-“
“Will you just drop it!”
“No I will not drop it! I thought you wanted me to stay…” She trails off, thoughts click together, “You knew… You knew that I was leaving, didn’t you?”
“You said you were.” He says.
“No, you knew they were going to make me leave with them and you killed them to stop-“
“I didn’t kill them!” He shouts over her, “The bloody bots did.”
“What?” she stares at him, “No, you-.”
He waves a hand in front of him to pull back up the projected screens.
“These are the processes of the Nanites during the test.”
Irene looks over the data, “It all seems to be fine.” She says.
“Yeah,” he swipes to another page, “And this is what they were doing after they had landed.”
Irene’s eyes grow wide, her eyebrows scraping her hair line.
“What is that?” She gasps.
“I still don’t know… They started breaking down the body, at a cellular level.”
“But… That’s the opposite of what they’ve been programmed to do.”
“They’ve gone far past anything my programming could do… They’re a species unto themselves now, I have no control over them.” He says.
Irene moves the screen towards her, and looks through the data. “It seems that when you attempted to remove the helmet, the process became accelerated… Do you think their pain, or emotions affected them?”
“Could be anything at this point” Felix says, knocking back another swig, then after a moment of thought he says. “I’m sorry about your friend, I didn’t expect anything like this to happen. My worst case was that they refused to work.”
“I don’t think if we can call it working.” She says. “What was it you did, to stop them screaming?”
He doesn’t look at her when he speaks, only swiping the screen along to show the last of the gathered data.
“I didn’t do anything.”
On the screen, Irene can see that the emotions and pain the soldiers experienced were off the charts.
“It’s as if their bodies shut down, to stop feeling.” She turns to him, “What can we can do to prevent this?”
“I… I don’t know… maybe blocking their emotions, or giving the bots other commands, but I don’t know if anything is going to be successful.”
She puts a hand on his. “It’s OK, we’ll figure this out.”
“No. I… I don’t know if I want to anymore. I want to save people, not kill them.”
“Lets review the data and see what we can change in the simulations.”
He doesn’t move.
“Come on,” Irene continues, “we can’t let their deaths be in vain, their sacrifice needs to mean something, and we still need to finish the other projects.”
He still makes no move.
“Felix?”
“It’s over Irene… I have no idea how we can stop this from happening again, I still don’t really understand what happened to them… and the military…”
Irene’s heart sinks.
“They’re going to be pissed.” She says.
Felix nods, “They’ll probably try and bomb the place in retaliation.”
“Don’t joke about that.” She says with a serious tone.
She looks at him when he doesn’t respond, reaches out and places a hand on his knee.
“Felix, we can’t let their deaths be in vain, the cost of their lives could potentially save everyone. We can’t give up on humanity now, just ‘cause of a few set backs, hell I’ve been dealing with set backs all my live and I’ve never given up.”
Felix can’t help but smile at this, “Neither have I.”
“Then it’s settled, lets get off our sorry buts and fix this shit.”
Felix stands to leave, and then reaches out to grab her arm.
“What are you going to do?” He asks.
“I have to call Johnathan, let him know the outcome.” She says, ”If I wait any longer the shadow forces might move in.”
“Those jokers?” Felix chuckles, “They’ve been trying to break in ever since you got here, this house has it’s own personal security system, so no one’s getting through.”
“Still… I need to tell him. What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea” Felix admits.
Irene grabs him by the shoulders, shaking him a little and forcing his face to meet hers.
“You are going to march in there and you are going to talk to those little bastards who killed Mike, you are going to find out why they did what they did and you’re going to work out a solution!” Irene almost screams the words at him.
“I am?” Felix asks, stunned.
“You are, or I’m fucking leaving.” Irene pulls her hands away as he tries to grab them, “No.” She locks her eyes on his. “My friend died, because you were too scared, if you can’t get over yourself to face them, then we’re done.”
Irene spins and storms off out of the room.
Felix looks over the data still hovering in front of him. Everything he’d worked towards, his whole life, was for this. Was he really just going to lie down now and give up?
He feels a stab in his heart at this thought. To give up now would be an insult to himself, all those years of hard work would have been for nothing.
Felix stands, he can’t let this be the end, not now they were so close.
He swallows, and goes to the lab to talk with the Nanites. He is pissed, pushed to the breaking point, and he is going to make them obey him.
If they didn’t… Felix feels justified in exterminating the lot of them, genocide of a new species, if they weren’t going to work, then they were just another failed experiment to be disposed of.