Unleashed

  “I would never—”

  His nails dig into my flesh. It doesn’t hurt but the urgency surprises me. “Listen to me,” he growls. “She will tell you things—things that will make you feel conflicted. Things that will make you question what you know to be true. She will use whatever means possible to sway you from your mission. But you must remember, whatever she says is a lie. It’s a manipulation. She is broken, and broken people lie.”

  “Broken people lie,” I repeat mindlessly.

  “Be careful. You are the most powerful weapon Diotech has now, but she will try to convince you that I am the enemy. She will try to turn you against me.” He pauses and his next words are weighted and purposeful. “Because she wants to hurt me.”

  Instantly, I feel fire ignite in my chest. Red, hot rage burns me from the inside. My fists involuntarily tighten. My teeth gnash together. The sensation confuses me and fuels me at the same time.

  “I will not let her hurt you,” I vow through my clenched jaw. “I will protect you.”

  His fingernails loosen from my shoulders and he pats my head affectionately. “Very good.”

  “When do I leave?”

  “As soon as we locate her.”

  “I can help,” I say eagerly. “I’ll transesse wherever you want. I’ll search everywhere.”

  “That would be a waste of your skills. The historians are working on it. Tirelessly. She’ll show up. She’ll make a mistake. And when she does, we’ll be ready. You’ll be ready.” The last word barely makes it out of his mouth. It gets strangled by a wheezing sound that convulses his entire body.

  I twist my neck to look at my creator. His face is pale and his eyes are watering. A small droplet of blood drips from his left nostril.

  “Sir?” I ask in concern.

  He walks uneasily toward the door. As he reaches out to press his fingertip to the panel, I notice his hand trembling. The heavy synthosteel that shields me from the outside world slides open, revealing a hallway I’ve seen but never entered.

  As soon as he’s through, the door begins to retract again. I hear the sound of Dr. Alixter retching just before the door seals shut, locking the acidic smell of bile inside the lab.

  4: Disruptions

  Today I am in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, fighting off a clan of armed poachers. I have no weapons save for the ones programmed into my DNA. I’ve been able to fight them off with my bare hands up until now but the simulation is changing, adapting to my skills, increasing in difficulty the more poachers I disarm.

  I hear a crackling around me. They are encroaching from all sides. A swift glance gives me an estimate of twenty. No, thirty.

  I can’t take on thirty. Not at the same time. I look up, my perfect vision observing a canopy of leaves above me. Five poachers dive toward me at once, their machetes slashing inches from my face. Thinking fast, I leap into the air, grabbing on to a tree branch and wresting it free. As it snaps, I start to fall to the ground, holding the newly forged weapon in my hands. I land deftly on two feet and begin swinging. The first three go down instantly.

  I watch their fatality meters in the corner of my vision as they tick down to zero.

  But more arrive instantly.

  I swing my branch, catching one in the neck. His vein bursts, sending a splatter of blood toward me. I wince in anticipation of the droplets hitting my face, but they never do.

  All of a sudden, the simulation pauses. The poachers are frozen around me in varying stages of attack. The tiny droplets of crimson hang in the air like rain that forgot which way to fall.

  Then my surroundings fade and I can see the transparent walls of the simulation chamber. The adaptive floor beneath my feet that spins and pivots with every move I make is now still.

  Just outside the chamber, standing with his hand on the control panel, is Director Raze—the head of Diotech’s security.

  His face is grim and I immediately think he’s come to tell me about Dr. Alixter. He must have taken a turn for the worse.

  He has been on bed rest for the past week, locked inside a restricted ward somewhere else in the sector. I haven’t been allowed to see him. My presence would cause too many questions from too many people and the Memory Coders are overwhelmed as it is. The doctors have been working day and night trying to diagnose his illness, but they’ve had no success as of yet. And until they do, they will not know how to cure him. Whatever is killing him is killing him fast.

  The chamber unseals and I step out, keeping my wary eyes locked on Raze.

  “We need to talk,” he says.

  “What is it?” I am breathless. Not because of the effort exerted in the chamber, but because of my fear.

  “Sit down,” Director Raze says, motioning to the nearby table where I eat my morning and evening meals. I lower into a chair and Raze takes the seat across from me.

  I silently beg him not to keep me in suspense. If Dr. Alixter is gone I want to know. I can already feel his death fueling me. The wrath building up inside.

  The girl is responsible for this. Her absence—her betrayal—caused him so much stress and grief. If she hadn’t run away, if she hadn’t succumbed to her own defect, he would be safe. He would be alive.

  “Is he … dead?” I can barely get the word out. It hangs limp on my lips.

  I understand what death is. I even know what it looks like from the several uploads I’ve received on the subject—each complete with graphic depictions of various human demises. Plus, I’ve killed plenty of people in my training simulations. But the thought of it happening in real life to someone I actually know is causing my throat to constrict.

  “No,” Director Raze answers, putting an end to my misery. “There has been no change in his condition.”

  I try not to let my relief show. Even though I care about Dr. Alixter, I am still a soldier and soldiers don’t show emotion. Especially not in front of their superiors.

  “What is it, then?”

  “How is your transession training coming along?”

  I blink in confusion. My transession training? He came in here and disrupted my simulation to ask about that?

  “I’m able to hit my location mark every time now. Without any margin of error.”

  He nods. “Good.”

  “Why?” I ask warily.

  He pulls a DigiSlate from his pocket and unrolls it, spinning it around for me to see what’s on the screen. At first I can’t make sense of what I’m looking at. It appears to be a crude, hand-drawn depiction of a young woman, sketched onto a yellowed, decomposing surface that resembles old-fashioned paper. Above her face, written in large block letters are the words, WITCH TRIAL, and below it, a date.

  A date so deeply buried in the past, my mind struggles to comprehend it.

  Raze lets out a long breath, one that it seems like he’s been holding all his life. “We found her.”

  5: Collection

  I stare in wonderment at the date scrawled on the image that fills Raze’s Slate:

  October 6, 1609.

  “1609?” I say in disbelief. I knew it was only a matter of time before she slipped up and made her whereabouts known but I never expected her to appear in the seventeenth century. “Why would she transesse to 1609?”

  “We don’t know,” Raze replies with a sigh that tells me it’s a question he’s asked himself more than once. “Apparently she thought it would be a safe place to hide. No satellites, no cams, no technology. But her face appeared on this witchcraft-trial pamphlet that our historians found in the archives earlier today.”

  They’d been searching for months. Dr. Alixter hired a team of over twenty researchers whose sole job is to scour every news article, every historical tomb, every Web site for the past five centuries looking for someone who resembles her or an account that describes her unique abilities. And their efforts have finally paid off.

  “What is witchcraft?” The two words make sense separately, but when I search my brain for a joint definition, I come up empty.
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  “I’ll have Sevan give you an upload on the subject,” Raze offers. “But essentially, the townspeople of London think she’s evil because of what she can do. According to the records we found, her unique abilities surfaced and the people of seventeenth-century London—who have virtually no knowledge of advanced genetics—didn’t take it lightly. She was put on trial for her life.”

  My stomach turns. “Did they convict her?”

  Director Raze fidgets uncomfortably. “Yes. They burned her at the stake the very next day.”

  I launch to my feet, pounding a fist on the table. “We can’t let that happen. Dr. Alixter wouldn’t want it. She’s too valuable to the Diotech agenda. We must rescue her so that she can be fixed. So that her defect can be repaired. I will go now. I will change the course of these events and bring her back before they have a chance to burn her.”

  “Now, now,” Raze cautions me. “We must act wisely and prudently. Impulsive decisions such as that will only lead to more trouble. You are thinking like a child, not a soldier.”

  I ease back into my seat, feeling foolish for my rashness.

  “We have developed a strategy that we feel best serves the company,” he assures me. “You will leave tonight.”

  I start to stand again, but one look from Raze and I lower back down.

  “You are not going to save her.”

  I blink, certain I’ve misunderstood him, even though my hearing is twenty times better than any human being’s.

  “What?” I ask. “Surely, you should consult with Dr. Alixter before deciding that—”

  “Dr. Alixter and I have spoken. We are in agreement.”

  “You are going to let her burn?”

  It doesn’t make any sense. I have the same animosity for the girl and her betrayal as Dr. Alixter does, but letting her die seems excessive. And a waste of Diotech resources.

  “I didn’t say that,” Director Raze counters.

  “You said I’m not going to save her,” I argue. I know I should back down. I’m speaking out of turn and challenging my superior, but I can’t help it. His actions seem ludicrous to me.

  “You aren’t going to save her … yet.”

  When I tilt my head in confusion, Raze removes a small box from his pocket and slides it across the table toward me. He gives me a permissive nod and I flip open the lid. Inside is a pair of Diotech-issued nanoscanners and a small cube drive. I study them curiously.

  I first learned about nanoscanners from Sevan, the head Memory Coder on the compound. They’re used to scan the cerebral cortex and transmit the memories that are stored there. They’re constructed using a thin, translucent substance that fuses to the skin, making them virtually undetectable.

  “We have reason to believe she’s been contacted by a sworn enemy of Diotech and that she might have information we need,” Raze explains.

  “What information?”

  He purses his lips, as though he’s trying to decide how much to divulge to me. “We won’t be sure until we learn what she knows.” He motions to the box.

  I pull it toward me and remove one of the scanners, pressing it against my fingertip. It tickles as it fuses to my skin and disappears into my flesh. “You want me to transesse to 1609 and scan her memories,” I say in sudden realization.

  He nods.

  I shake my head. “Nanoscanners require physical contact to operate. How am I supposed to get close enough?”

  Raze smiles. “Don’t worry. We have a plan.”

  6: Imprisoned

  Transession three feet across a lab is one thing. Transessing five hundred years into the past is another. I was warned by Director Raze that I would feel disoriented, maybe a little dizzy. But when I arrive behind the church next to Newgate Prison, I have to lean against the stone structure to support my failing legs as I gag and retch up half of my morning meal.

  My stomach is looping and convulsing, my head is aching, and every time I try to focus on something, my vision blurs. It takes about an hour for me to feel normal again. Fortunately I left myself enough time to orient to the temporal relocation and the sickness that comes with it

  Did Dr. Alixter really do this when he went to find the girl?

  My body is strong and advanced and built to withstand almost anything. I can’t imagine what transession would do to a frail, normal body.

  Once the nausea has died down, I brace myself for another jump and transesse into the private chambers in the back of the church. These are the offices of Pastor Thomas, the priest assigned to hear the girl’s last confession, according to the historical archives.

  This jump is small and doesn’t require a time displacement so it’s significantly less debilitating.

  The priest is sitting at a rich mahogany desk, scribbling longhand into a thick leather-bound book that lies open on his desk. The floor creaks beneath my sudden weight but he doesn’t lift his head when he hears it. “Yes, my child?”

  A part of me wants to study his movements, his speech, his choice of words. If I’m going to replace him, I’ll have to be convincing. But the other part of me—the impatient part—wants to get this over with quickly.

  My impatience wins.

  In less than a blink, I am behind him. My legs move faster than he can register. He barely has time to look up before my elbow is crushing his windpipe. The air wisps out of him as I squeeze. My muscles are tempted to finish him completely, as they’ve been built to do, but I can hear Director Raze’s voice in my mind: “Don’t kill him,” he warned me before I left. “We don’t want to set off a disastrous chain of events by altering history.”

  I release the pressure and his body wilts. He falls headfirst against his desk. I feel his pulse. It’s weak but there. He will wake up in a few hours with a horrific headache, made worse by the distorted, choppy recollection of what happened to him. Not to mention the confusion of being mysteriously disrobed.

  I close the chamber door and bolt it with the lock. Then I get to work undressing him. I don his long, white-collared black robe over my clothes, pulling the sleeves down to cover the genetic implant on my wrist and the hood down to block my face. The less anyone sees of me the better. I check that my nanoscanners are secured to my fingertips and then place the cube drive in the pocket of the robe.

  I access the memory of the prison blueprints that Sevan gave me in an upload. With a breath to steel myself against the imminent disorientation, I close my eyes and focus on my next location: the inside of Newgate Prison, where the girl is awaiting her execution. I reason it’s best to bypass any guards or security checkpoints. Not that I can’t handle myself against a few archaic weapons, but Raze warned me to keep things clean. Minimize my body count.

  I transesse into a long corridor. It’s dark, lit only by torches mounted to the walls. There are no windows. The single guard standing watch jumps in surprise when I appear, trying to make sense of my sudden presence. He looks me up and down, taking in my black hooded robe.

  “Father,” he says haltingly. “My apologies for startling you. I didn’t see you enter.”

  I give him a curt nod, choosing not to speak.

  “Come to hear the prisoner’s last confession?” he guesses.

  Another nod.

  He snorts as he beckons for me to follow him down the corridor. “Won’t do her much good,” he calls over his shoulder. “She’s beyond even God’s help.”

  We arrive at the end of the hallway and the guard bangs his sword between two of the metal bars, making a horrendous clanging sound. Inside the tiny cell, I see the murky shadow of a person lying on the ground. The form rouses at the sound of the clanging and pushes itself up.

  I suck in a sharp breath.

  This is it.

  After all this time, I’m finally going to see her.

  The loathsome girl who defied Dr. Alixter and betrayed Diotech.

  “Last confession,” the guard announces, and I nearly cringe at the edge in his tone. The girl looks pathetic in this cage. She’s so
clearly beaten down and disheartened.

  I can hear Dr. Alixter’s voice in my head. “Sera is unlike you and me. She is dangerous … She will say anything she can to turn you against me.”

  I push away the pity I feel and stand up straighter.

  “What?” The girl rises and turns toward us. Her face is filthy. Skin caked with dirt and tears, hair so dirty, it looks black. The stench of her is toxic. She wipes uselessly at her cheeks, doing nothing more than smearing the grime around.

  Right now, she is not the beauty she was created to be. She is not extraordinary. She is not superhuman. She looks about as broken on the outside as she is on the inside.

  And yet something happens to me in that moment. Something I will never be able to explain no matter how many uploads in advanced vocabulary I receive. It’s as though someone has suddenly siphoned all of the oxygen out of this prison. Out of this country. It’s as though someone has reached inside of me and is stirring my organs with a wooden spoon.

  The sensation quickly becomes too much to bear and I cast my gaze downward. But I can feel her looking at me, studying me. I’m thankful for the hood that shrouds my features. It was donned as a thin veil. Now it feels like armor.

  “The priest has come to hear your last confession and bless your soul,” the guard explains.

  I brave a quick glimpse from under my hood. She is no longer looking at me. She is focused on the guard and his words. She can’t follow them. I don’t blame her. Yesterday I had no comprehension of the words either. Not until Sevan gave me an upload on seventeenth-century society, religion, and language.

  The guard sticks his sword through the slats once more and waves it menacingly at her. I know she could destroy him if she wanted. If she has even half my strength, his sword would be no match for her. But she dutifully retreats to the far back corner of the cell while he fumbles with his key in the large iron lock and slides the door open for me.

  I hesitate for a moment, eyeing the distance between her and me.