The Game (8 page)

Just when he believes that Singleton has taken
it too far, Potter raises his hand and Singleton’s mouth clamps
shut in mid-sentence. “Stop, please.” He takes a deep
breath.

Here it comes
, Rob thinks. Paul nods
mentally, ready to act if Potter decides to put his focus back to
his gun.

After a few more heartbeats of silence, Potter
says, “What do you need from me?”

Singleton’s surprised eyes dart to Paul, then
immediately back. He clears his throat. Paul straightens in the
doorway and tenses his body, ready to leap to action if things turn
bad. He can sense the nervousness spilling off Singleton but
continues to hope that Potter remains oblivious to it.

“
We need access to your research
facility.”

Potter leans back. The gun sits on the table in
front of him and his fingers caress it absently. “When?” he
asks.

Singleton’s shoulders straighten as if he’s
found new courage. When he speaks, his voice regains its
confidence. “Now. As you know, General, I’m no longer in the
program and Paul here is no longer in the military. We don’t have
the clearance nor the means to do this without your help. You have
access to everything we need—and to take the chance to see if we
can reverse the process is a risk both Paul and Rob are willing to
take.”

Potter is wide-awake now. To have the only
successful
test subject (and he knows he’s using that word
loosely) standing right before him—volunteering, no less—to step
back into the project…it’s the one thing that might help save this
experiment. The last couple of years were the hardest. His fight
for budgeting from both the government and private entities is on
the verge of elimination. At first, the tiny successes were enough
to keep everyone hopeful that all the bugs could finally be worked
out of the system, but after years of no progress, even the
government has become more anxious about relinquishing any more
funding.

On many occasions, he mentally kicked himself
for not going after the boy, Paul. However, it had been the right
decision. To illegally bring in a child for this type of project
was already pushing the envelope—he’d been able to get away with it
then, and to continue pursuing the boy after he fled Singleton’s
warehouse would have more than likely brought a lot of unwanted
attention to his secret project. As long as the boy stayed quiet
(which he did), Potter was more than satisfied at the glimmer of
hope the boy provided for the project. That mini-success was enough
to solidify funding for two more years. However, the project’s
success stalled and each year, from then to now, he saw his funding
decrease exponentially.

That’s when his thoughts turned back to the
boy. By this time, Paul would have been nineteen or twenty years
old—an adult without the potential legal ramifications that might
have plagued Potter.

Yes, he thinks. Leaving the boy alone was the
right decision at the time.

Now his luck is changing for the better: a
future, so dark and gloomy these past few years, is now beginning
to brighten. If they can successfully remove Rob’s consciousness
from Paul, and place it back in another host—the scientific
potential is more than he can imagine. The silence draws out.
Potter suddenly pushes his chair away from the table. The noise of
the chair legs against the floor is startling. He stands, grabs his
gun, stuffs it into his waistband, and says, “Let me get
dressed.”

Paul shares a silent glance with Singleton as
Potter hurries from the room. He can’t believe how smoothly this is
going. It’s almost too good to be true. He reaches into his back
pocket and shows Singleton his phone.

Singleton nods.

Paul types out a two-word text message, “Get
ready.”

A few minutes later, Potter joins them back in
the kitchen and says, “Who’s driving?”

Singleton stands, car keys jingling in his
hand, “I guess I am.”

The possibilities still tumble through his
mind. Successfully moving a consciousness from one body to
another…now that would be a life changing—no, a
life-extending—event. What would a person pay for such a service?
To potentially live forever? They’d pay a hefty sum.

He follows Singleton and the boy outside, locks
the front door, and heads toward the waiting car parked at the
curb. He addresses Paul snarkily, “So, how does it feel having two
personalities in your head?” As they approach the car, Singleton
holds the back door open for him.

Paul doesn’t answer, but rounds the front of
the car and approaches the driver’s door. His face, hidden by heavy
shadows, looks like a dark skull to Potter.

For the first time that night, a chill of
unease tingles up Potter’s spine.

He slides into the back seat.

He doesn’t notice there is no interior light in
the car.

He also doesn’t notice the other person sitting
behind the driver’s seat until he is already seated.

What he does notice is the sharp pinprick of
pain in his leg. He looks down, takes note of the delicate hand
holding the syringe pressed to his leg, then finally notices the
figure sitting beside him in the dark shadows. “What the hell is
this?”

A thin arm rises to the ceiling and light
suddenly fills the small interior.

“
You!” he says, recognizing the
other person immediately.

A crooked smile plays across Georgia’s lips.
She roughly extracts the needle from his leg. “Well hello there,
General. I’m surprised you even remember me.”

His vision begins to blur. He tries to focus on
her face, on that condescending grin, but can’t seem to get his
eyes to work. Singleton slams the door and it crunches against his
right elbow, but he doesn’t notice the sharp pain—his body passed
beyond the ability to feel pain about two seconds ago.

“
Nighty-night, General.”

His eyes close and he slips into
darkness.

Georgia wipes a drop of sweat from her left
eyebrow before it can drop into the surgical opening at the back of
Potter’s skull. They are nearing twenty-four hours since abducting
the General and she has only slept a couple of hours. Thankfully,
her part of the task is almost complete. She was nervous at first,
not having done anything like this in several years—since being
forcefully removed from her position. However, the longer she
worked, the more rust fell away and by the end of the surgery she
was back in that old relaxed rhythm. Just a few more stitches to
close the incision around the fiber optic cables and she’ll be
done.

Paul stands sentinel in the corner of the room,
ready to assist her if she needs anything. He’d been at her
disposal throughout almost the entire process—the only time he left
was when she fired up the saw that would cut through the general’s
skull, exposing the pinkish-grey brain beneath. No, he couldn’t
handle that part of the process and had to leave the room. She
didn’t blame him—most people couldn’t stomach seeing
that.

“
Tell Singleton I’m
done.”

Paul slips out of the room and walks quickly
down the hallway to a door marked
Security
. While she waits,
she stares down at the man who singlehandedly ruined her
credibility in cybernetics. She glances around the room. She
developed most of the tools and techniques used in this research
facility and Potter took it all away from her. These past few
hours, on more than one occasion, she was tempted to let her hand
‘slip’ and plunge her scalpel deep into the man’s brain.

In the end, she refrained from taking his life
by her own hand. The last thing he deserves is to die peacefully in
his sleep. No—a sinister grin transforms her pleasant face into
something ghoulish—Paul, Rob, and Singleton’s way is going to be so
much better.

She fingers the ends of the cables, checking
the connections for drops of dried blood, flakes of bone, or pieces
of skin that might interfere with the electronic signal once the
power and information supply components are attached.

Paul returns with Singleton in tow. The older
man’s eyes are heavy. His feet drag the floor and his eyelids
flutter dreamily. He’s a man in dire need of rest and Georgia
wonders just how much help he’ll be to her.

“
You going to make it?” she
asks.

He nods. “Let’s just get this over with and we
can all get a few hours of sleep.”

Paul, back in his corner, leaning against one
wall with his arms crossed in front of him says, “Amen to
that.”

Singleton steps up to the table, opposite
Georgia. Potter lay face down between them. Scattered between his
legs are an assortment of metal components and circuits. “Hand me
the skull plate?”

He picks through a couple of items and finds
the concaved piece of metal near Potter’s ankles. He hands it to
her. She holds it above his head while Singleton carefully threads
the cables through the two-inch by one-half-inch slit in the center
of the metal.

“
Screws, please.” He hands over four
screws. Normally, she would have insert four threaded posts into
the skull and the curved plate would fit over them with lock nuts
to secure it to the back of the head. Since they are pressed for
time, she has to turn to a more barbaric means of
attachment.

Using a cordless drill, she attaches the plate
to Potter’s head.

Over in the corner, the grating noise sends a
shiver creeping up Paul’s spine. The sound reminds him of a dentist
drill boring a hole into his tooth. Then there’s the faint smell of
burning bone. It fills the room and he pinches his nose in an
attempt to block the smell.

You, okay?
Rob asks.

Yeah, I’ll be all right.

Just hang in there. This will all be over in a
few hours.

In the center of the room, Georgia and
Singleton work methodically at attaching all sorts of components to
Potter. She’ll ask for something and Singleton will search for it,
then hand it over for her to attach.

An hour later, he hears a collective sigh from
the center of the room. He perks up. Had he been dozing?
Probably.

Georgia and Singleton stand there admiring
their efforts. Paul crosses over and joins them. He looks down at
the man on the table. Polished metal, wires, and computer circuit
boards cover most of the man’s head. More components cover the area
across his shoulder and spine. Between his shoulder blades is a
thin, black box with a small slit in the side. It looks to Paul
like a computer disk drive. As if to answer the unasked question,
Georgia produces a silver disk and slides it into the
slot.

The body jerks, startling all three of
them.

Singleton asks, “What the hell was
that?”

“
Just the uplink initiating contact
with his brain. Reflex, that’s all.”

“
Creepy as hell,” Paul ads. Inside
his head, Rob uses some decidedly harsher language to describe what
they’d just seen.

Singleton yawns. “I vote we get a couple of
hours of sleep now.”

“
I’ll second that,” Georgia
adds.

There are several offices with either a small
couch or leather recliners, so none of them had trouble finding a
comfortable place to sleep. Paul sets the alarm on his phone for
three hours but spends each hour tossing, turning, and unable to
sleep. He and Rob are too excited—the end to Potter’s empire is in
sight—and with it, the end to Potter as well.

Singleton is in the next office. Paul can hear
his heavy snoring through the thin walls but even if he were in his
own bed with familiar pillows, he still wouldn’t be able to
sleep—even if there is complete silence.

Finally, his phone vibrates. It’s six o’clock
on Sunday morning. He steps into the next office and gently nudges
Singleton’s shoulder. The older man’s eyes flutter open.

Paul says, “It’s time.”

Singleton yawns and pushes himself out of the
recliner. They wake Georgia and the three of them shuffle tiredly
into the room where Potter still rests facedown on the
table.

Paul asks, “Are we positive this is going to
work?”

Georgia responds, “In theory, yes.”

“
At any rate,” Singleton adds,
“We’ll be rid of him for good.”

The two men unlock the wheels of the gurney and
roll Potter out of the room and into the hall. At the far end is a
set of double doors. They wheel the General through the doors and
into a large room. In the center of the room is a giant,
milky-white sphere—almost identical to the one Paul used all those
years ago. The sight of it makes him want to throw up.

“
You okay?”

Paul tears his eyes away from the sphere. He
nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

They continue into the room. The door into the
sphere is already open so all they have to do now is carry the
unconscious General inside. Advances in the technology have
eliminated the need for the silky black shirt Paul had worn years
before. Now the simulator feeds right into the central nervous
system, directly triggering the nerves within the body. The gun
lies on the floor of the simulator and they set the General down
next to it. Paul places the gun near the General’s hand and then,
using a long cable with locking connectors, attaches it to the
computer components hardwired into his spine.