Then again, anything was better than this empty office.
THIRTY-ONE
WELL, WHAT DO you know, Daniel thought.
As C.P. led the way into a windowless, secured vault, lights came on across the ceiling, and he had to blink the glare away. After his retinas adjusted, he was able to focus on what was lying, in pieces, on the examination table in the center of the space. The android was so human-like, it was something out of the mind of James Cameron, the skin some kind of polyurethane that retained its peachy color, the face structure molded to perfection, the body dimensions exactly correct. And underneath the surface? So many stainless-steel parts, all connected and state of the art, a full set of artificial limbs that were coordinated by some kind of motherboard.
A warrior who needed no food, no water, no sleep, and no recovery or healing from injuries.
“Is this what you’re talking about?” she asked him as she went right up to the body.
“Yup.” He joined her at the table and focused on the eye sockets, which were empty. “And it looks exactly like the ones I killed. I always took the eyes.”
Leaning over, he took the head and angled it to him. The skull had been disconnected from the spinal cord, just like the arms and legs had been unplugged from the torso. As its vacant sockets seemed to seek his own stare, he thought, not for the first time, that this shit was straight-up Terminator, a biomechanical unit created to function among people while being controlled by directives that were programmed into its CPU.
“How long have you had these remains?” he asked.
“Since the spring. We found it out in the woods. Someone had hid it—”
“Yeah, this was my kill.” He pointed to damage on the skull. “These bullet wounds are mine. This unit came after Lydia and me.”
“We didn’t know what it was. But we were tracking the pair of you. I was aware things at the Wolf Study Project were unraveling and that the setup I had there for testing compounds had gotten out of hand. When my guards found the android body, it was quickly apparent there was someone else in Walters.”
He tapped the eye sockets. “I always took the peepers because these machines can be regenerated. Reused? Is that the word? And I wanted to slow down their return into service.”
“So whose are they?”
“We were trying to find out because they were getting inconvenient. More and more were interfering with our work—and I’ll be honest. When one of them turned up here? Tracking Lydia and me? I thought maybe they were a creation of yours.”
“No, I’m strictly research. Not… whatever this is. We took the thing apart because we wanted to understand it—but there are no clues as to who made it. The skin—is extraordinary. It’s bio-identical nearly. The circulatory system? The brain? It’s like no computerized anything—or mechanical, for that matter—that any of my men had ever seen. I keep it here because this is a lead-lined containment room. I figured that whatever tracker was on it would be neutralized, if not because it was functionally compromised then because of the insulation.”
“Smart.”
Daniel went down the table, inspecting the body. The skin had degraded a little, but nothing like a real human’s would have once its oxygen source was cut. The muscles were the same, peeling back from the stainless-steel joints, yet still rosy in appearance.
“So I’m about halfway through the F.B.G.’s database of reports,” he said. “And the thing that stands out is that there’s nothing current filed after this past spring. I don’t know where the staff went—or whether they switched their IT shit to a different platform. But something has changed in a big way.”
C.P. made a noise that could have meant anything, and given the way she was staring into the middle distance in front of her face, he knew he’d lost her attention.
“If this is not yours,” he said, “then I think there’s someone else out there looking for immortality.”
This got her to focus and her eyes shifted to his. “What do you mean?”
Daniel put his hand on the biomechanical soldier’s shoulder. “Whoever is making these has serious resources, and they’re not using them for medical research. This is about war—someone has developed and is testing a better-mousetrap soldier. So I’m curious, has Vita-12b or any of your compounds—do any of them have chemical weapon applications?”
C.P. recoiled. “No. I mean, we work with the immune system. Ten years ago, the original compound I was trying to develop was about reversing the aging process—or at least slowing it down. Through our results, we sidestepped into immunotherapy for cancer. That was when I hired Gus. I’ve been parallel processing the two strains of research ever since, but Vita was what took off. Mother Nature is stingy with her life cycle secrets, as it turns out. It’s not just about the length of the telomere.”
Daniel pursed his lips. “Okaaaay, I’m going to pretend I understood any of that. But my question stands. Are there any applications for warfare from your research?”
C.P. crossed her arms over her head physician and researcher’s fleece.
Former head researcher, that was, he tacked on.
Then one side of her lips lifted in a smile that absolutely did not reach her eyes. “Not that we’re aware of. But you know, just because you’re not looking for something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
* * *
As Gus hopped onto the pediway that progressed out to the remote parking lot, he had a hard time believing that it was the last time he was making this smooth, gliding trip. And in the manner of a final passage, he found himself absorbing details he’d never noticed before: From the tube-like nature of the corridor to the all-white, George-Jetson-techno-futuristic design of everything, it all made him think of what an airport in 2050 was going to look like.
One thing wasn’t new. At the end of the ride, as he stepped off and the double doors automatically opened for him, he once again felt as though he’d been shit out into the garage.
While the stainless-steel panels clicked shut behind him, he stopped and looked back, marveling at how you didn’t always know when you were going to do something for the last time. When he’d come into work today? After he’d gone home to his rental house for just a shower, a change of clothes, and a bowl of cereal?
He hadn’t known his work with C.P. Phalen was going to end.
Walking over to his Tesla, he remembered arguing with her about the damn thing. And then he thought about nothing in particular as he drove out of the garage, hooked up with the rural road, and eventually found his way to the Northway.
His commute back and forth to the lab was a good twenty-five minutes in each direction, even if you assumed he went eighty, which he always did because his version of rush hour was either crack-of-ass early or red-eye late. And as for why the distance was necessary? Walters, New York, where C.P. had located her lab, was in the middle of nowhere. If you wanted to live in a town where you could order Thai food and get it Ubered to your door? You needed to put in the miles.
The next thing he knew, his headlights were washing over the front of the condo he’d been in for the last three years. Thanks to renting the modest, two-story crib, he’d banked plenty of scratch—in the back of his mind, he’d always known he wasn’t staying permanently, so there was no reason to commit a bunch of cash to a real estate anchor. Good thing he only had two months left on his lease, not that it would have mattered.