Chapter 4

A.D. 2009-2010

"Ah, there you are, Mr. Masters," the suit who had shepherded him through the application process said. "Don't get comfortable. We've got a car outside to take you to the airport."

The handler rode with him to the airport, but didn't get out. A rather large man in a black suit was waiting at the curb to take his bag. This one had a bulge under his left armpit that the suit didn't quite hide.

"This way, sir," he said, steering Will by the elbow.

"We're not going through the terminal?" Will asked.

"No, sir," the man said politely, not loosening his grip on Will's arm. "We've arranged a private flight for you, sir."

"Excuse me," Will asked the guy politely, "You know I volunteered for this program, right?"

"Yes sir."

"Then I would appreciate it if you would let go of my arm," Will continued. "I am not your prisoner."

The strength of the grip didn't diminish. "I can appreciate how you feel about that, sir," the guy replied, "but I have my orders. Apparently they're afraid some of you might get cold feet."

Will opened his mouth to say something further, but decided he was dealing with a bureaucracy that went far beyond the guy who had latched onto his arm and it wasn't going to do him any good to argue.

Passing around the end of the passenger terminal, his escort passed a keycard through the slot next to a gate that admitted them to an area where several small planes were parked. They walked out onto the tarmac and climbed into a Lear Jet with no markings except those required by the FAA, and no windows in the well-appointed cabin. The big guy was still in the process of closing the door when the jet began to taxi toward its takeoff point.

Will couldn't be sure, but he'd always had a pretty good sense of direction, and he got the impression that, while the flight path included several circling maneuvers, the plane flew mostly south and east.

His speculations were given further impetus by the view of a flat, desert landscape, and the blast of hot air that stole his breath away after the plane's air-conditioning as he deplaned on what appeared to be a private airstrip in the middle of nowhere. The 'flight attendant' led him to a ramshackle building, some distance away from the equally ramshackle control tower.

Will got more than a little worried, not to mention irritated, when the guy led him, with the same iron hand on his bicep, into what appeared to be a janitor's closet. In the darkness, he couldn't see what his guide was doing, but something gave a muffled click. The man in the suit stepped back out with an admonition for Will to stay put, and closed the door, leaving Will in the closet.

He had just enough time to wonder if he had been set up somehow, when the floor of the closet seemed to drop away from beneath his feet. The entire closet began accelerating into the Earth at an alarming rate. As it descended panels in the ceiling slid back to reveal concealed lights. Will had never been afraid of the dark, but he was grateful, nonetheless, for the lighting.

Will's knees almost buckled when the closet/elevator slowed as it approached its destination. When the car stopped, he tentatively opened the door, which still looked like the door to a janitor's closet. He was surprised to find himself in a long, well lighted corridor.

"Ah, Number Ten, at last!" The same woman who had questioned him in San Jose now stood before him, still clad in a lab coat, hand outstretched for shaking.

"I'm Doctor Robinson. Good to see you again. Before we meet the others, you should know that no one here is to know your name. You will be addressed as 'Number Ten, ' or 'Prototype Ten, ' or simply 'Ten.' If all goes well, and the experiments we conduct here are a success, this anonymity will help to protect your friends and relatives from unwanted publicity and even retribution."

Will shrugged. The relatives he would have wanted to protect most, he hadn't been able to, even when they needed it most.

The corridor, or tunnel, extended almost a hundred yards straight ahead, and then ended in a 'T' intersection. Dr. Robinson turned left, then almost immediately right. At a featureless door, she passed a card through a reader, then placed her hand on a flat stainless steel plate beside the door. After a pause of about a second, the door whisked soundlessly into its frame, admitting them to a small chamber. There were video cameras at all four corners of the chamber, and Will got the feeling that if whoever was monitoring the view from those cameras didn't like what they saw, neither door would open until the chamber's occupants were dead or incapacitated.

"Look straight ahead," Dr. Robinson told him, at least partially confirming his deduction. "The computers are doing an image scan."

"Dr. Robinson and Prototype Ten," She told the empty chamber.

Apparently, that was sufficient, because the inner door opened a few seconds later, admitting them to another long, empty corridor.

Their footsteps echoed loudly on the stone flooring, and Will wondered if the small openings spaced along the sides of the tunnel were firing ports for weapons, or gas nozzles, and if so, were they there to keep people in or out...

He tried to shake these thoughts out of his head. Too many spy novels, he told himself.

At the end of this corridor, Dr. Robinson took two right turns in a row, and then passed through another badge-and-palm-print operated portal.

"You will be issued a badge," Robinson said as they passed into what appeared to be a busy office area, "that gives you access to those areas where you work, eat, sleep, and exercise. It will not, however, give you access to leave this facility until your part of the program is completed."

Will shrugged again. "When do we get started?"

Robinson gave him an appraising look, then smiled.

"Since we're not dependent on daylight here, we pretty much set our own schedule," She replied. "Let's take care of your paperwork, and then I'll have someone show you around and introduce you to your physical trainer. We'll be taking blood samples for various tests throughout the program, as well as injecting various medicines, so we'll install a portacath in your chest to save time and minimize the risk of infection. After that, you'll begin your physical conditioning."

"What's a, what did you call it? A 'portacath?'"

"Oh, that's a venous catheter that we'll insert through your jugular until the tip is in the superior vena cava - that's the big vein leading to your heart. The tube will run from a small port embedded under the skin of your chest. It will be completely sealed under the skin and we'll just poke needles through your skin and the cover of the port when we need to extract blood or inject medicine."

"Sounds like a complicated procedure," Will said. "Do I have to wait 'til it's over to begin my workouts?"

"Well, it's not really that complicated," Dr. Robinson answered, "but I don't suppose there's any harm in you getting started with your workouts. We'll do the procedure tomorrow."

"Okay."

"When your trainer is satisfied that you have achieved the necessary level of fitness, you will undergo several rounds of surgery to implant the various enhancements and sensors into your body. These include reinforcing your tendons and muscle tissue with electro-active elastomers that will provide a 'power assist' to each of your muscles. In addition, a fine, flexible mesh will be implanted under your skin. This mesh is composed of a very tough material that will make it difficult for you to sustain more than a superficial wound. The mesh is also designed to be capable of acting as a collector or antenna for various types of electro-magnetic frequencies, and will be configurable by the microprocessor we will implant in your brain to act as part of your communication system and your sensor arrays.

"Speaking of sensors, you will have, working in conjunction with your eyes, an array of optical sensors that can see well beyond the normal visual spectrum in both infrared and ultraviolet, and can enhance your vision for better distance viewing and greater peripheral vision. You will, literally, have eyes in back of your head, or, at least, optical sensors."

Will's mind was taking a little time to correlate all this information, and as it did, he raised a hand to get the doctor's attention.

"You say that all of this will be done after the physical conditioning?"

"Yes, why?" Dr. Robinson replied.

"It seems bass-ackwards to me, is all," Will said. "I mean, with that kind of surgery, you're talking weeks of convalescence, if not months. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, you're pretty much going to have to skin me alive to put all that stuff in my body. During the recovery period, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting much exercise, so all those muscles are bound to atrophy."

Robinson smiled. "I'm glad to see that we have at least one in the group who can think! Not to worry though. We need your muscles developed to their operational level so that we can take measurements to properly fit the implants and the mesh. True, the muscles will atrophy some during recovery, though that will be minimized through electro-stimulation therapy, but when you get finished with the procedures, and get back to physical training, things will fit properly. If we didn't do it this way, the implants, which can't grow and shrink as readily as flesh, would be too small."

"Aren't you worried about drug dependency?" Will asked.

The doctor looked puzzled. "Why would we be?"

"Doc, come on," He answered. "You don't remove someone's skin and fuse a bunch of artificial parts all over a body without its owner having a great deal of pain during recovery. How are you going to deal with that?"

"Ah!" She said, smiling, "I see your point, but we have thought of that. First of all, we're doing the implants in sections to minimize the risk of infection and shock to the body's immune systems. This will also mean that the pain management problem is not quite as severe. For the first few weeks after each round of surgery, the patient will be kept in an artificial coma. This will ensure that the affected areas can be kept immobile to allow proper healing, and will insulate the mind and body against the pain. After that, the pain should be manageable with non-narcotic pain relievers until the body heals."

"So I'm guessing five or six separate areas to be implanted," Will mused aloud, "and at least six weeks per area for healing. That puts us out to eight or nine months, just for the implant process, if there are no complications."

Robinson smiled again. "It's refreshing to not have to explain this in such detail. Actually, we're allowing six weeks for the conditioning, and eleven months for implants and recovery, so you can expect to be 'activated' a little over a year from now. In point of fact, since this is all new, we've allowed a fifty percent cushion to deal with the unexpected. The activation, too, will be phased. We'll activate two at a time, in sequence, and observe the results to see if any adjustments or changes need to be made before activating the next pair."

"So, how good are your surgeons?" Will asked.

"The best in their fields, as are the engineers and technicians who designed the implants," Robinson replied seriously. "While this is a new field of endeavor, it does borrow heavily from experience gained in related experiments. In addition, every effort has been made to ensure that precautions are in place for every possible contingency."

Will gave her a skeptical look. As a software engineer, he knew about contingency planning, and just how few contingencies one could actually plan for. He decided, though, to keep his doubts to himself. He was in for the duration, and expressing doubt about the program would not help his cause any.

The next hour or so was taken up with filling out forms and submitting to the insertion of a temporary catheter into one of the veins on the back of his wrist.

Afterward, a white-coated orderly gave him a quick tour of the parts of the facility to which his badge gave him access.

"Cafeteria's here," he said, leading Will through an open doorway. "This is one of the few places you don't need a badge to get into. We're going to keep you so busy that you won't gain weight, and you'll need all the nutrition you can get. You won't find much in the way of sweets or junk foods, but the chow is pretty good and we run three shifts in the kitchen, so there's always hot food available."

"The gym is accessible to each of you guys on a timed program so that there's not too much overlap between you," the orderly swiped his card and led Will into a strange sort of exercise facility. "That means your badge will only let you in during your scheduled exercise hours."

"This half," his white-coated guide said, indicating an area filled with conventional exercise equipment and free weights, "is where you'll exercise until your trainer thinks you're ready for your implants."

"That half," he waved a hand at an assortment of machines that looked as though they might have been designed for the use of elephants, "is where you'll exercise once your implants have been activated. We expect a three- to five-fold increase in strength. Hence the heavy duty machines and no free weights."

"This is a lounge where you can relax, watch TV, read books, play cards, and so forth," the orderly explained as he opened another door. "This one only admits you during your off-hours. They believe in the old 'all work and no play' adage, but you only get to play during recess."

"TV?" Will asked. "You get cable or satellite down here?"

"It's all canned programming, I'm afraid," the orderly answered. "I guess they don't want to pollute your minds or something."

"This corridor leads to all the sleeping quarters. Since you're the last to arrive, yours is on the far end. Your badge will admit you, but only when you're not supposed to be somewhere else."

The orderly didn't bother accompanying him to his quarters, and Will was grateful. The guy's voice was wearing on him after that tour.

There were five doors along the right side of the corridor, and he assumed that the one labeled simply, "9-10" was his.

The program people apparently had some strange notions about the facilities, because, while there were separate restrooms for men and women, the sleeping quarters were allocated to pairs of prototypes in numerical order. This meant that number Nine, a reasonably attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, shared his sleeping quarters. Each had a separate bed, but no accommodations for privacy were made.

"I guess we're roommates," Will said, extending his hand. "I'm..."

"Prototype Ten," She said, saving him from the faux pas of telling her his name as she returned his handshake with a firm grip that stopped just short of being painful. "Wondered when you'd get here. Only been here a day, myself, but it already seems like a long time. I'm Nine. Some set-up, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess." Will looked around the room, noting that there were no separate dressing or sleeping areas. "Look, uh, Nine, the, uh, only co-ed situation I've ever lived in was my marriage, and I'm not real sure about the, uh, etiquette, so, if I get out of line..."

"Don't worry about it," Nine interrupted, smiling. "I just got out of the Army, and there ain't nothin' you can do that those horny bastards haven't already tried. If I don't like it, I'll knock you on your ass. If you keep coming, I'll make it hurt so bad you'll need help goin' to the latrine, okay?"

"Well," Will smiled, "Hopefully it won't come to that. I'm not really looking for female companionship. I just want to get through this program and go kick some terrorist ass."

"Suits me!" Nine laughed. "If I get horny, there's at least six other guys in this program, and I'm sure I can catch one of 'em in a moment of weakness! Which bed you want?"

"You got here first," Will replied, "so I guess 'first come, first served' ought to apply. I'm not particular."

"In that case," Nine grinned, "no offense, but if it's okay with you, I'll take the bed in the corner. It's a more defensible position."

"That works out well, then," Will replied, throwing what little stuff he had brought with him on the other bed, "since, if you get to feeling like you want to fight, I'm heading for the door, and this one's closer to the exit."

Nine laughed politely.

"Hey, I like you, Old Guy!" She clapped him on the back, almost sending him sprawling. "Maybe I should have taken this bed so I could trap you in the corner!"

"Wouldn't do you any good," Will replied, a smile cracking his face for the first time in months. "I'm probably too old to get it up."

"Maybe I'll slip one of those little blue pills in your vitamins," Nine joked, then snorted in disgust. "As if they'd have anything like that down here. This place promises to be worse than boot camp!"

"Yeah, well, it's been a while since I did boot camp, and that was Navy, which I understand is a lot easier than Army boot camp," Will said as he reclined on the bed. "Guess I'll have some catching up to do."

Nine was about to make another remark when a perfunctory knock sounded at the door. Before either could respond, a dark head bearing tight, close-cropped curls appeared around the edge of the opening door.

"Prototype Ten?" The head asked, glancing at Nine but settling on Will.

"I guess that'd be me," Will replied, getting to his feet. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Carlos," The guy said, his muscular body following his head into the room. "I'm your trainer. Dr. Robinson said you were anxious to get started."

"Yeah, I guess I am," Will gave Nine a semi-apologetic shrug. Nobody likes a suck-up, and he could see in her eyes what she thought about his eagerness. "At my age, I guess I need all the help I can get if I'm going to keep up with these youngsters."

"Hey, you go right ahead," Nine said. "I'm gonna take it easy until I figure out what the hell's going on here."

"Suit yourself," Will followed Carlos from the room.

A couple of turns and a few doors later, he found himself entering a door that he thought was around the corner from the one that led to the workout room. Carlos led him to a locker room and showed him the locker that that had been designated as his. It already contained army regulation P/T clothes that were close enough to his size.

Five minutes later, Will emerged from the locker room and entered the first level of this particular hell. Carlos was determined that his charge not hold up the schedule set for getting the prototypes in shape, and Will thanked his lucky stars that he had been pushing himself pretty hard in his own workouts.

For the next six weeks, he and Prototype Nine saw each other only in passing. Carlos held Will to a rigid twenty four hour schedule that started the moment he had knocked on Will's door. Prototype Nine was on a different schedule, and Will was usually sound asleep when she came in for her own sleep period.

About the only rest Will got outside of his sleep period was during the interminable medical and dental examinations. At this rate, he figured, by the time his physical training period was over, he'd be ready to die of radiation sickness or simply dry up and blow away, thanks to all the X-rays, CAT scans, and so forth. and all the blood drawn for reasons not made clear to him.

He met, at various times and places, the other eight prototypes, and got to know them about as well as he had his roommate, which was to say, hardly at all. They would chat over meals or in the communal shower, but it wasn't until the last two weeks or so that Will had energy to spare for such luxuries as watching TV or playing pool, chess, checkers or any of the other recreational activities provided for them.

Will was grateful for the busy schedule, as it kept his mind occupied and left fewer opportunities for Karen and Stacy to creep into his consciousness. Even his exhausted sleep was interrupted less frequently by the nightmare. It was a familiar one in which Will was forced to watch from some protected viewpoint as, over and over, the blast tore the flesh from the faces and bodies of the ones he loved. There were variations, too. Sometimes, he was there beside them, but somehow, miraculously escaped the blast. Other times, he had just entered the door from the corridor and had to stand and watch, clutching popcorn and sodas, as his life was ripped away.

All of the others in the program were at least ten years younger than Will and he found he had little in common with them. Number five proved to be a passable chess player, but he couldn't stand losing and refused to play with Will after the older man beat him at the game twice in a row.

The poker games they played for toothpicks were a fair diversion for a while, but without money to put on the table, they couldn't hold the interest of most of the players for long. The few times he played, Will wound up with most of the toothpicks, primarily by virtue of being able to read the other players better than they could read him.

Will did his best to fit in with the others, but his age and his habit of morose introspection set him apart from the younger prototypes. In the training classes that they took together, he found himself holding back on his participation after a while, because his experience gave him an advantage, and if he wasn't careful, he wound up dominating the discussions. It didn't help, either, that he and Prototype Eight were singled out for extra training in leadership.

In the days before the actual start of the procedures, they were subjected to a flurry of measuring, laser scans, and pattern fitting. This activity highlighted the immediacy of what had, until then, been an abstract concept in their minds. Suddenly, a bit to his surprise, Will became very popular.

"Hey, Ten," Seven said in a casual voice that belied the worry on her face. "What's happenin'?"

"Not much, Seven," Will answered, kicking a chair out from the table in invitation as he moved half a column of cards to another column. "Just playing Solitaire. Want to kibitz?"

"Never played that with real cards," Seven said, taking the offered seat. "I always played on a computer. Seems like it would take forever, that way."

"That's kind of the point," Will replied, grinning. "These games were invented by bored people a long time ago as a way of killing time. There's about as many variations of Solitaire as there are of Poker."

"Damn!" Seven said, not really interested. "Did you invent a solitaire game?"

"Nah," he chuckled. "Not enough light in the cave I grew up in, and the damn saber-toothed tigers kept interrupting me as I chipped the cards out of rock. Never did get a full deck made."

"Okay, okay!" Seven gave an appreciative laugh at having been one-upped at her own game. "So you're not that old. There - four of spades can go up."

"Yeah, I'm holding off on that one. I might need that four for a red three later."

"Ah! No wonder you won all our toothpicks!" There was real admiration in Seven's voice. "You're pretty smart!"

"Nah," Will answered, wondering why he was getting such a transparent buttering-up. He turned over a King and placed it at the top of an empty column. "I've just had more time for my mistakes to catch up with me than the rest of you."

Seven chuckled, and watched in silence for a few minutes.

Will could tell she had something on her mind, but felt that if he asked, it could put her off, so he waited.

Sure enough, as he gathered the cards to deal another hand, Seven asked, in a studiedly casual tone, "So what do you think is going to happen when they start cutting on us?"