RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy)) (49 page)

As always, Linsey was strong for him and she reassured him that he was in good hands, and after all, John did it first and he was just fine with no side effects.  She was always there for him, he thought, she was truly a remarkable woman. 

Out in corn country near the small town of Lapel two scientists were working diligently at their high tech jobs.  No one in the little farm community was aware of the strange scientific things going on behind the weather beaten old doors of the run down dairy building at the farm.  Inside it was a high tech menagerie of life support systems, tool rooms, laboratories and a complete arsenal of weapons that would impress even the hardest core militia man.  It was surely the best kept secret in Indiana, and for good reason.

In the last 48 hours they learned that Cyrus Slade had weapons beyond their expectations.  They didn’t know the exact model, but an informant working for one of the Black Ops team members had through sources, which he couldn’t divulge, learned that Cyrus obtained and installed a missile battery in one of the old storage silos at the foundry.  The system had recently been brought online and was fully operational.  If Cyrus were to learn of the sting operation that they were running against him, he would no doubt destroy the farm and the homes of both John and Dodge without even leaving the comfort of his office. 

Dodges’ clone loaded up with no errors and had been awake now for most of the day.  He was the perfect physical specimen, strong, fast, and intelligent; he would no doubt be a huge asset for their cause.  He was loaded with Dodge’s complete lifefile that was up to date through the prior night.  Now he was briefed regarding everything they found out about the missile capability which Cyrus possessed.  With that complete, they began intense training for both John and Dodge.  This was certainly going to be a new and interesting situation. 

John and Dodge would not need to call one another for updates unless it was an emergency.  Every night when they both went through their sleep cycles, their lifefiles would be interlaced into one.  John and Dodge could talk to one another at the farm in great detail, sharing ideas, information, laying down the details of the plans for the attack.  Each night when they slept their minds merged with that of their clones, it was amazing.

Jason and Caitlin were very excited for Dodge, he was about to go to sleep in Indy and when he awoke he would experience this phenomenon which only few others had ever known.  They couldn’t wait until morning to see what he experienced, it was ground breaking stuff and this was only the second time for them to try it.  If it worked on Dodge as well as it did on John it would be a very good indication that their methods were reliable.

Earlier that day, back at the compound, Toby and Alice  finally found one another in the kitchen just before lunch time.  They sat and ate their lunch together but didn’t talk about the events of the day yet because there were too many  people around.  When they finished eating, they went down to the oven where Toby told her everything that he had done to it, but not before hugging her and giving her a kiss.

He showed her how the doors could be locked now from the inside and
couldn’t be opened from the outside.  She was impressed with his mechanical skills, and it seemed like it might work.  She filled him in on what had gone on in the lab that night with Cyrus attempting to get information out of the poor custodian that he believed to be Dodge and how Glitch had nearly caught her red handed logging into things that she wasn’t supposed to. 

They both agreed they would have to be more careful.  They decided they would go to his room for the night.  They wasted no time sneaking past the guards and slipping in.  She brought her
PC and they watched some old shows together and talked about what it was like back then.  Of course Toby was much older than her so he told her some stories of his childhood and teenage years from the 1980’s.
         “Do you really think you can make that oven a safe haven for people if Cyrus transmits the death signal?” Asked Alice.
         “Well I don’t know for sure, but it would have to at least increase our chances, I mean that big metal oven would have to be better than nothing.  I just need to figure out how to fill the gaps around the doors and a few holes.  If I get another opportunity to see John or Dodge before the take down, I’ll ask them if there is an easy way to do it.  I think we could round up as many people as we can trust and get them in there when the compound is under attack.  I’m sure if Cyrus has a chance he will launch the kill sequence to destroy us all.  Even if he didn’t do it manually, he has the dead man’s switch so that if he’s killed the codes are launched automatically.  He may be sick but ya gotta admit, he’s smart!” 

They talked for a little while longer and then drifted off to sleep on the little sofa in Toby’s room.  He woke up in the middle of the night and slipped out from under her.  He put her feet up on the sofa and covered her up with a blanket, and went on to bed. 

The next morning Dodge Kerrington woke up out of a dead sleep at 5:15 a.m. sharp, he sat straight up, gasping for air as if he had just come up out of water.  He was covered in sweat and his heart was pounding so hard he thought it would explode.  As he sat up abruptly he let out a yell that scared Linsey half to death out of a sound sleep.

“What! What is it Dodge?” she gasped,
Still trying to catch her own breath from being startled.  Then she remembered that he must be experiencing the first memories of his new clone.
         “Just go back to sleep dear,” he said, “I just a bad dream that’s all.”  He lay there but he couldn’t sleep after what he had just experienced.  It was the most lucid dream experience he had ever had but he knew it wasn’t really a dream at all.  He remembered being loaded up at the farm, he had seen Caitlin and Jason and John and spent the entire day with them.  He had been through a full workout, his body was so agile and strong.  He watched several martial arts instructional videos and would begin intense training tomorrow morning.    He took martial arts classes as a youth but this was much more serious. 

They also studied the floor plans of the compound together and now Dodge had a full awareness and knowledge of it all.  It was a very weird
moment, it was like someone had taken a huge bucket of knowledge and experience from a very full day of life and just injected it right into his head, what a rush! It was amazing! But it would certainly take some getting used to.  He was now aware of Cyrus having the armed missile silo and his ability to strike with it at will.  It was truly a terrifying revelation. 

At 7:00 a.m. he got up, he figured there was no point lying there awake just thinking about everything that he should be doing.  He would be leaving work early today for an appointment with Doctor Erickson for a referral to one of the two psychologists that Tim told him about; hopefully he would get his leave of absence granted quickly.  It was important for Dodge to get Ross up to speed at work before he took his leave.  He wanted to end this thing with Cyrus and he wanted to do it right.  He didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life, but he also
didn’t want to let anyone down at ESS, especially Tim.

At the compound Alice had just woken up from a very sound sleep.  The two times she fell asleep in Toby’s arms she had felt so safe and content.  Now she found herself on his tiny sofa, and in spite of being on a not so comfy piece of old furniture she had still slept better than she would have in her own bed.  She was always afraid in that place when she went to sleep.  There were some really creepy guys there that frightened her and she worried about them coming into her room while she slept.  The locks were good but she had heard tell of some guards that were willing to sell keys. 

There were some incidents before where one of the women accused two men of raping her; Cyrus had killed the accused with no investigation.  As sick as he was he still would not tolerate anyone abusing another person in his organization.  It was more of a sick jealousy really, if any abuse was going to take place it would be at his hands and none other.  Just after the incident he called everyone down to the old foundry floor.  The accused were brought before him.
         “This is what happens to you when you harm one of your fellow soldiers,” said Slade.  He grabbed them both by their necks.  One in each hand lifting them completely off of their feet, tightening his grip until their faces turned blue and everyone could hear their necks snapping. 

He was a freak of nature for sure, incredibly strong and seemingly incapable of feeling pain or fear or any emotion for that matter.  Since that incident she slept much better, but never as good as when she was with Toby.  Having him there made her feel safe.  After she woke, she went in to wake Toby, but he was sleeping so soundly that she decided not to.  She just slipped out and went back to her own room.  She had to get ready for work and grab some breakfast.  She was instructed to report to the lab today but didn’t know why. 

When she got to the lab there was a work order on a clip board lying on the bench.  She picked it up, and saw that it was assigned to her.  It was a detailed work order to begin monitoring Dodge Kerrington’s new clones.  They were already growing rapidly and the order included instructions for even faster acceleration to facilitate reaching the age of four, mature enough to speak clearly and basically experience full pain recognition. 

She was horrified.  At that moment she realized she would soon be forced to participate in the torture of a four-year-old boy with a middle-aged man’s lifefile loaded into him.  She went back and viewed the clones.  There were five started and much to her dismay they all survived.  They were now in suspension and were at about the two-year-old stage.  It would be only a matter of days until they would be brought out of suspension, hyper nourished for twenty-four hours and then loaded one at a time. 

One by one Cyrus would torture them to get as much information as he possibly could.  He would torture them to death and then move onto the next one.  In one case he had done this and succeeded by making the next clone in line witness the torture of the previous one, promising each one that they would get to live and be set free if they only cooperated. 

Even when they did, he still killed them anyway.  His promises were nothing but bold faced lies.  She started feeling sick to her stomach and had to run for the restroom in the back of the lab.  When she emerged from the restroom she sat and
stared at the precious toddlers suspended in the liquid.  They were all so perfect, so beautiful, how could anyone have such total disregard for human life? 

Some greater power out there, maybe God, maybe some superior race had given us this life, and even gave us the gift of intelligence to discover these great ways to preserve life and create immortality.  Yet that same power allowed people or things like Cyrus Slade to exist without intervention, it didn’t make sense to her at all that a creator that made such wonderful and beautiful things also allowed such ugliness to coexist with them.  Then she thought, that’s why we have to fight back against evil on our own, apparently that’s why we’re here.  I have GOT to do SOMETHING! 

She racked her brain, how could she spare these children the pain of torture.  Yes! She had it, she would simply ruin the process, she would keep it from working so that Cyrus had nothing to torture.  But if she killed the clones she would feel like she had murdered them and wouldn’t be any better than Cyrus. 

Then she remembered something, the first time Cyrus tried this he had used the wrong file to load them up and then tortured them to death before he realized what had gone wrong.  That error bought Dodge and John and their families some valuable time.  It was not likely he would make that mistake again.  What if Slade did have the right file this time and what if he tortured Dodge to the point where he cracked and told everything about the take down of the compound?  If that happened, they would all be doomed.  She had to sabotage this effort but how? 

She did her work as ordered until lunch time, she wanted to talk to Toby, he was a really smart guy, maybe he would have an idea.  When she went for lunch, he was waiting for her at the far corner table.  He was already eating something so she made herself a sandwich and got a bowl of chili that someone had made a big pot of.  It was a late lunch so most of the early crowd was gone and they nearly had the room to themselves.  The remaining group was on the other side of the large room and they were very engrossed in their own conversation. 

Alice kept her voice low and told Toby what was going on in the lab and how she needed to figure a way to scuttle the whole thing to buy Dodge and John and all of them more time. 

Toby said “Why don’t you finish that chili and take that sandwich to go.”  They left the kitchen and went down to the oven. 

Toby checked the area as they went along to make sure there was no one around.  When they got to the oven, they thought they could have some privacy, but when they went in, there was a couple inside kissing.
         “Whoops, sorry!”  Toby said, as he backed out of the oven and closed the door.
         “Well, I guess we’re not the only ones around here with those ideas, huh?”
         “I guess not” Alice said. 

They went to a much smaller oven and slowly opened the door while looking in, it was vacant so they went on in and sat down on a bench made of a plank and two five-gallon buckets.
         “Well it’s not the Hilton, but it’ll do.”
         “Okay, so they have these five clones and they’re planning to load them up and get information out of them.  Let’s see, well, you could poison them.”
         “No, no, Cyrus would suspect foul play and run tests.  I would be blamed and you heard about what a speedy trial those accused rapists got.”
         “Oh yeah,” Toby said, “That wouldn’t be good, it has to be absolutely untraceable back to you.  Toby thought.