The Human Forged Read online

  Nick’s mouth fell open, his eyelids withdrew, and his fingernails dug into his palms as his fingers curled. “What...” His voice fell flat and weak before the adrenaline surged through his blood vessels, coursing into his tissue. His pulse pounded in his ears and his breathing quickened. “What the hell? What are you doing? You can’t kill me. Don’t kill me! Please!”

  Blue Gloves sauntered over and pressed his hands hard against Nick’s shoulders. “Quiet. You are annoying me.”

  The black plastic tray behind him beeped and the progress bar showed 100% completion.

  Examining the device, the man smiled. “We will keep you, American.”

  Nick struggled against the straps holding him down. Yelling, he writhed on the table. Blue Gloves filled a syringe with a clear liquid, his movements slow and deliberate. Focused, he injected the liquid into Nick’s arm.

  Panic dissipated and his limbs grew numb. His movements slowed. Once again, he fell into a black void.

  Four

  When Nick awoke again, his headache had vanished. Instead, his fingers stung as though hundreds of needles pierced his skin. At least he could feel his hands as he clenched his fists and blood returned to his digits. Moving his wrists, he found the straps no longer bound him to the table. He rotated his feet. No straps around his ankles, either. He sat up on the table and swung his legs over the side, his joints stiff and uncooperative. He huffed as he placed his feet flat on the floor.

  The LED lights still glared, but his captors did not jump to stop him. Their equipment, the black plastic trays and blood-collecting devices, lay on the folding table where his blood had been analyzed. For a moment, he shook his feet until the numbness subsided and he could move his knees without feeling as though they would break. Three more men lay unconscious on tables similar to his. All were breathing slowly, with muscular chests rising and falling. Plastic ties bound each man’s wrists. Small injection sites, smeared brown with dried blood, marked their arms like his.

  The sound of a door opening brought him back to his senses as his captors squeezed through a rusted, barred door on the opposite side of the room. Blue Gloves held an extra pair of wrist ties, evidently for Nick. Both of the men stopped and stared.

  Nick raced to the door and tugged it open. He sprinted down the hall, past empty cells and doors welded shut, dodging lone bricks, pipes, and beams fallen across his path. His heart pounded. Footsteps echoed after him.

  He needed help. He didn’t know where he was going. The heavy thumps of music resounded throughout the complex and he couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. If he could lose the two men in the crowd, he could escape. He could call for help.

  He jerked open a stubborn door and reached into his pocket. Between his fingers, he pinched the small plastic receiver. He jabbed it into his ear as he ran. The two men’s voices bounced off the walls as Nick attempted to place an emergency call.

  The receiver did not respond. He pushed it deeper into his ear and tried again. It still didn’t work. He pulled the plastic device out, wiped it with his shirt between strides and placed it back in.

  He could not place a call.

  “What the hell?”

  He lunged up a series of metal stairs and tugged on the handle of the door when he reached the top. The clanging sounds of the two men chasing him grew nearer. With all his strength, he tugged on the door. It would not budge.

  Melding the door to the wall, welds traced the doorframe. He slumped. The footsteps grew closer and his pursuers appeared around the corner of the winding stairs.

  His muscles still sore, he held his hands up in front of him in a fighting stance. Then he saw it. The gash on his forearm. Small, but scabbed over. His Chip. His identity. His connection to the Net, to the world, to Kelsey. It had been excised. No receiver, no AR lenses, no GPS functioned without it.

  “No, no, no, no.” He set his jaw and charged as Mohawk appeared. Nick pummeled the man. Blue Gloves cursed and pounced, plunging another needle into Nick’s skin. Mohawk caught Nick’s swinging arms and pushed him to the ground.

  He twisted and writhed as the strength dissipated from his body.

  “No more running,” Blue Gloves said.

  The two men argued and cursed at each other as they secured Nick’s wrists with plastic cuffs. He tried to move, tried to yell, but his entire body locked up as that familiar darkness crept into his mind again.

  Five

  The humid air sucked the breath out of Nick. His mouth felt dry with the gag pressed between his lips, and the plastic cuffs secured around his wrists cut off the blood to his fingers. He squinted as he stepped out into sunlight, its heat beating down on him as his pupils adjusted.

  Now, a cadre of other camouflage-clad men joined Blue Gloves and Mohawk. They barked orders at Nick and a few other gagged captives and forced them out of the cargo plane. Their hands bound and their ankles restricted by chains, the detainees shuffled onto a grass clearing surrounded by trees.

  Nick swallowed hard. He realized he was far from Estonia. His head hung low and his headache returned; the guards shoved him into the back of a military transport truck, locking the captives’ ankle restraints into latches underneath wooden benches that sat along the truck bed.

  The thump of tires over rocks drowned out the whine of the electric motor until they came to an abrupt stop. He slammed against the man sitting to his left. More soldiers with holstered pistols jumped up onto the back of the truck and unlocked the men. They commanded the captives in their unfamiliar language and motioned for the prisoners to exit back onto the jungle floor.

  Above them, a canopy of leaves and branches blocked out the sunlight. His stomach lurched as the guards shoved the prisoners through the door of a low concrete structure with a thick reinforced-steel door. The clang of their ankle restraints against the steel scaffolding rang out and echoed as he stepped in line, following the winding staircase underground. Each captive appeared confused and worried. Offering minimal guidance, meager lights dotted the silo-like walls as they descended. The stairs ended at a hallway.

  From the hall, they passed through a doorway and filed onto a catwalk high above a brightly lit cavern. The guards escorted them onto a massive, shuddering lift.

  Once on the ground, they marched between a dozen bodies strapped onto tables. Clear plastic tubes ran into their nostrils. IV lines protruded from their wrists, pumping blood into and out of the bodies after passing through the silver machines behind them. Bright holograms displayed various graphs, numbers, and shapes. He squinted at the displays until he recognized the zigzag of EKG lines.

  Blue Gloves elbowed him in the ribs. “Welcome to your new home, American.”

  He fought against his gag to ask where he was and what this place was, but it only came out as a shrill gurgle. His body erupted into uncontrollable shivers. He pictured Kelsey in his mind, her bright green eyes and button nose. His eyes watered as he prayed that she had noticed he’d gone off grid, for once thankful for her paranoid and prying ways. She would have called the authorities, reported him missing, done something. On his left arm, the scabbed but healing wound now appeared like a simple, innocuous cut. Even if Kelsey had told someone, even if they had listened, they wouldn’t be able to find him. His Chip was gone, probably destroyed or discarded somewhere far from this underground hall of terrors.

  “We made a special bed for you.” Blue Gloves sneered. “Five star hotel.” He grabbed Nick and slammed him against one of the silver machines. The man strapped Nick’s wrists in and forced the tubes up his nostrils.

  Nick choked and repressed the violent urge to sneeze the tubes out as his captor jabbed a needle into his forearm.

  “You and your friends will make good soldiers, American. You were a good soldier before, no?” He grinned. “Very good specimen.” With one thick finger, the man prodded Nick’s chest. “Very nice genes, too.”

  His captor ripped the gag from Nick’s mouth. “What the hell are you doing to us?”

  B
lue Gloves laughed. “Good night, American.” He made a couple of gestures over the holodisplay next to the machine. It buzzed on.

  Already, his eyelids grew heavy. He fought against their weight, unwilling to let these men imprison him in that dark void of induced and indeterminate slumber.

  He failed.

  Six

  “Do you regret it?” Kelsey plopped her head down on the pillow next to Nick’s. She stared at him with an intensity that had always unnerved him.

  “Regret it? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms over her bare chest. “I just always wondered if you joined the army because you felt like you needed to, like it was your only choice, or if you wanted to be a part of it all.”

  “If I knew then what I know now... No, I probably wouldn’t have. But I did it and I’m glad I did.” He pulled her into an embrace. “If I hadn’t joined, I wouldn’t have stopped in Frankfurt after my deployment and met you, would I?”

  Kelsey laughed. “God, you’re so corny.” She kissed his cheek. “But I’ll allow it.”

  Leaning in closer, he sucked in her scent, the sweet perfume mixed in with the sweat beading on her body. He pressed his lips against hers.

  “This is you, Nick,” she said.

  He pulled back. “What?”

  “This is you.”

  Her voice sounded muddled and deep. The perfume gave way to acrid body odor. “This is you.” What he heard was no longer Kelsey’s voice, nor her Midwestern accent. Instead, it was something foreign and threatening.

  The stink of halitosis washed over his face as Blue Gloves peeled open one of Nick’s eyes. “Do you see yourself, American?”

  His captor shoved him to the ground, his hands bound behind his back. His muscles felt stiff and dry crust flaked from around his eyes. He positioned himself up to his knees, wobbling as he regained balance. Before him stood another man dressed in plain gray pants and a gray long-sleeved t-shirt. Nick’s mouth fell agape and his skin erupted in goose bumps. He scrambled backwards until Blue Gloves kicked him.

  Nick fell forward again. When he straightened, he looked up at the man in gray and stared into his own brown eyes, his own face, his own slightly crooked nose.

  He squinted, leaning toward the image of himself, expecting it to fade away when he broke the illusion of the holoprojection with his shoulder. Instead, his shoulder touched warm flesh. The man, the other Nick, recoiled from the touch but otherwise stood at attention.

  “Ah, he is very good, is he not?” Blue Gloves said. “Growth chambers have done very well with your genes.”

  “What is this? A trick?”

  “No, American. This is you.”

  Nick bit his quaking lip. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. He curled his fingers and flexed his arms, trying to squeeze out of the wrist bindings. “For once, tell me what’s going on, you piece of shit.”

  Blue Gloves laughed. When his throaty guffaws ceased, he shrugged. “Come with me.”

  “No.” Nick’s face grew hot. Nose scrunched into a snarl, he lowered his shoulder and prepared to charge at his captor. Blue Gloves’ hand moved to the pistol holstered at his side as Nick lunged forward. With a sidestep, Blue Gloves dodged Nick and he crashed into the floor.

  “Pick him up,” Blue Gloves said to the clone.

  The clone nodded and hoisted Nick to his feet. Blue Gloves led them out of the small gray room and up a set of stairs. As they climbed, Nick’s thoughts turned to Kelsey again. He wondered how long he’d been unconscious. Had she given up on him? Did she think he was dead—or worse, that he had abandoned her, run away from their upcoming marriage? His heart sank and his head hung low.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Blue Gloves opened an iron hatch that let in the night air. A cool breeze made Nick shiver. He grimaced when the clone’s grip tightened on his shoulder, still tender from his stumble.

  “Is there a problem, American?”

  He glared back, silent.

  “Come meet our friends.”

  His captor held the hatch open as Nick and the clone exited. As Nick stepped down, his feet almost slid out from under him on the wet grass. His pupils adjusted and he discerned the massive structures around the open area. Crude camouflage was draped over each gigantic tentlike structure, giving them the appearance of the jungle canopy. Leaves and branches protruded from the tops of the tents in thick layers, casting ominous shadows over the small open area the group now stood in.

  Blue Gloves led them closer to those massive tents as four shapes materialized out of the darkness and drew near. One of the figures used a hand to indicate Nick, speaking in broken English. “This is original.” His voice sounded familiar. “His genes make our replication very good for soldiers.”

  The other three unfamiliar men nodded.

  A proud smile plastered across his face, Blue Gloves appeared like a schoolboy standing beside his science fair project. Mohawk seemed to be appealing to the man in the center who wore a green paramilitary jacket emblazoned with a menagerie of colorful patches. Nick recognized the uniform as belonging to the Congo Resistance Movement, one of the many militias still raging across the Democratic Republic of Congo. In his military days, he had come across plenty of these men. Oftentimes, he had been close to them only after they died. He had preferred it that way.

  “Let me see how good the other is. No tricks.” The officer stepped forward. “Take your clothes off.”

  The clone did as commanded. Both he and Nick stood naked, unprotected from the bite of stubborn mosquitoes and other insects unperturbed by the chilly night.

  “They appear very similar. But do they hold up the same? Are they as strong?” The officer opened a knife and pointed to Nick’s bound wrists. “May I?”

  Blue Gloves appeared hesitant, his hand resting over his holster, but Mohawk nodded.

  After cutting the bonds, the paramilitary officer lifted Nick’s arm, then the clone’s. “You were a soldier?”

  Nick said nothing, his eyes narrowed. He tensed his arms.

  The officer leaned in closer, his rotten yellow teeth bared. “Answer me, boy.” He flashed the knife again and drew it up to Nick’s neck.

  “I was,” he said through gritted teeth.

  The officer let out a sharp laugh and addressed his two compatriots. “This naked man thinks he is a frightening soldier.”

  With the man’s back to him, Nick lunged and grabbed Blue Gloves. He pulled the Glock from the man’s holster. He pointed it at Blue Gloves, then the officer, and scooped up the clone’s discarded clothes. Both men froze. When one of the paramilitary men reached toward his hip, Nick shot him. He retrained the muzzle on the officer as he pulled on the clone’s pants and tucked the shirt into his waistband. In the distance, shouts rang out. He couldn’t see any movement yet but worried that would soon change.

  Leaping forward, he wrapped his left arm around the officer’s neck. The man thrashed. With his right hand, Nick pressed the pistol into the officer’s temple.

  “Don’t any of you fucking move.”

  Mohawk furrowed his brow. “We do not need this man.” He reached toward his holster.

  Nick shot his abductor twice in the chest and the man fell backwards. The muzzle flash and blast echoed across the open ground. Now, more shouts called out and flashlights illuminated swathes of grass in the distance. Nick thought of the others that would now be scouring the area with AR lenses. He had no way of knowing whether or not they could see him in the darkness with their enhanced vision.

  He towed the officer with him as he made for the edge of the jungle, watching to see if Blue Gloves and the remaining militiaman were in pursuit. When Nick entered the tangle of roots and tree trunks, he pushed the officer in front of him and held the man by the collar. Mohawk had said they didn’t need the militiaman anymore, but a paying customer’s life might be important to someone else. Nick needed a bargaining chip in case they caught up to him in this mess of unfamiliar foliage. A silve
r glint, unnatural and metallic, caught his eyes as they ventured deeper. A chain-link fence stood tall, towering above the trees around it. Coils of barbed wire graced the top of it. He thought he might be able to scale the fence. Hearing a low hiss crackling in the air around him, he hesitated.

  Sensing his panic, the officer kicked Nick in the shin and grabbed at the pistol in his hands. The man sunk his teeth into Nick’s wrist.

  He yelled and shoved the officer. His hostage fell into the fence and seized up as sparks jolted from around his body. The smoke from his skin illuminated by the moonlight, the officer slumped onto the ground.

  There would be no way to climb over, and Nick had lost the protection of his hostage. He looked up and down the length of the electrified barrier. The trees had been trimmed so as not to allow anyone to jump from a tree and clear the deadly obstacle. Once again, he thought of Kelsey waiting for him. Don’t give up.

  He ran along the fence and periodically glanced up to see if the tree limbs would offer him any opportunity of escape. Voices cut through the dense ferns and tree trunks that stood between him and the rest of the complex. Adrenaline surged through him as lights pierced through the darkness. He feared he would be found running in the open space between trees and fence, so he plunged back into the forest. A couple of flashlights appeared to be closing in on him as he jumped over scraggy roots. He ignored the pain as one foot landed on something sharp, continuing on. The lights drove him to the other side of the camp, where he had seen several large tent structures earlier. In front of him and behind him, the voices grew louder. He was cornered.

  He sprinted toward one of the tent structures. He pushed through a flap and froze as the canvas whipped behind him. There he was, everywhere. His eyes, his hair, his thick square jaw, that same stolid expression he so often wore. Clones, all of them. All staring at him.

  The clone nearest to him cocked his head. “What are you doing?”

  Nick hesitated. “What are you doing?”