So this is where the modern Nazi scientists are housed; our very own mad scientists toiling away to assure our global domination.
Really, would you rather work for some second tier power?
I am going to get to the bottom of this.
It is so nice finally being cleared for this facility.
Just walking though here makes you classified property, Joan. How is that going to fit with a private career?
I can’t worry about that. This is too big. I have a sick giddy feeling about Tina’s involvement.
Could this Jay Bracken really be the husband that she talked about?
No, that’s too coincidental.
No, that’s it. She didn’t have to tell me she was even married let alone drop his name. She wanted him found by you or The Agency.
Why?
Maybe it was a way to cut loose some muscle that she had become attached to?
She certainly views men as disposable assets.
Aren’t they?
She had finally passed the fifth checkpoint and was admitted to the fifth level. It was a fact that the security operatives on each level knew nothing about the lower levels, not even how many there were. The man in the hazmat suit that checked her through with a metal detector was looking at her like he wished he had been the army dyke on Level One that had strip-searched her.
The body cavity portion of the search is only supposed to last five seconds sister, with no manual procedures—not ten minutes!
Yes, that was flattering. Finally at age 48 I have become a sensual person.
More like a sex object!
I guess it is all a matter of perception.
She pushed by the hopeless male in the hazmat suit in such a way that his complete inadequacy would be remembered the next time he looked into the mirror.
Yes, I am bitch! Hear me roar!
She walked for five minutes along a circular perimeter corridor equipped with airlocks, gas ports and audio visual ports, and finally came to a command center which was welcomingly open. Doctor’s Wong and Irvine, the Human Resource development specialists at Black Ops, were the men at whose disposal she was to be. Her investigation was secondary at this facility, and she could leave with nothing other than what was in her mind.
So these are the stooges that are going to build the Six Million Dollar Man? How long have these dreamers and the idiots that retired in the ‘90s been working on that fantasy?
Wong was a smug arrogant scientist with an inventor’s childish zeal.
It would be so much simpler if this guy was not good looking. He looks like the guy that everyone would want doing their brain surgery. But he is a heartless prick.
Irvine was a sensitive introspective type who had apparently fallen into this program more through curiosity and circumstance than through any drive.
A poor sap you are. I hope you are gay. Otherwise you will never get any comfort.
They greeted her almost as one voice with Wong leading off and Irvine providing the soft consonant at the end, “Good afternoon, Joan.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. How is Jay Bracken doing?”
Wong seemed almost hurt. “How could you possibly know who our subject is? His identity remains undetermined.”
What a jerk.
“Okay, Wong, he is John Smith from Planet X. What do you have for me?”
Irvine pulled up live video feed of the naked skinhead super jock doing insane repetitions of exercises in his slot cell, even running up the walls. Wong then narrated, “We have had him for nineteen days. He regulates his sleep and activity based on the amount of nutritive paste we dispense. He seems to be beyond the normal human range in every physical aspect. He even has the ability to intuit his caloric intake. He is rebuilding his body within the limits imposed by the food dispensed.”
Irvine cut in, “He is psychologically resilient beyond anything our special ops programs have been able to measure in our top soldiers.”
Wong seemed thrilled. “Joan, your colleague, Brenner, was nice enough to interview our subject. He returned a report that the subject would resist any extraction measures and recommended gassing him prior to removing him for examination. I however, am very interested in this individual’s combative capacity. He did maim and kill corrections staff at a Baltimore area facility. However, the extraction team we are sending in is a highly-trained and body-armored federal unit. In a few minutes you will be able witness the subject in action.”
Brenner?
We don’t have anybody named Brenner.
They have infiltrated this facility?
Set this idiot straight.
“Doctor, I am the first Agency asset assigned to this case. There is no Agent Brenner.”
Wong began to protest as they were watching the man she believed was Jay climb the walls of the concrete slot cell and look into the lens, just before he tore the camera from its housing.
Irving cut in, “Doctor, he has disabled the video and the team is at the inner door. Should we call them off?”
Wong sounded perplexed, “Just radio for them to use minimal necessary force. We need to examine him in the Surgical Round. If we leave him isolated any longer he may develop aberrations. I don’t want any risky interaction that could damage him unless we are certain to generate study footage.”
Irvine was tense as he relayed the message and then turned to Wong. “They are breaching the inner door…now.”
Wong turned to Joan. “Joan, Agent Brenner was granted no special clearance—no one is. Even your Director, even the President, is subject to the final three checkpoints.”
A week in the field in any third world country and this fool would be food for the feral dogs at the landfill.
Make nice.
“As you say, Doctor. Please, let me know when I can be of service. Until then I shall observe.”
Wong gave her the wide grin of a patriarch that has just received the submission of a senior daughter before dinner. He then turned with a start as Irvine dialed up the audio feed and the three of them sat listening to what could have been the soundtrack to a werewolf film.
Good God! What the hell is going on?
Was that a slurp or a snarl?
Joan sat back uneasily listening to what sounded like a grisly feast, complete with the panicked cries and screams of terror voiced by the still-living main course, as Wong sat like an unbelieving stone and Irvine began to shake and sweat in his seat, and finally, with squinting tear-leaking eyes, covered his ears with his shivering hands.
