Prototype

Reggie awoke in the middle of the night to a foreign sound. She instinctively reached for her firearm, but she didn’t have hers. She remembered she wasn’t in NexGen; she was in Paul’s house. She decided to reevaluate the situation; she could see the door from her present location and the lock remained tricked. The noise was coming from somewhere within the dark and still apartment.

Paul’s computer was off, and he was in bed. Appliances were softly humming, but electronic noises weren’t that distinctive or loud of a sound. She headed back to the room she was sleeping in and found the source of the sound. The sound was coming from Nathan’s respiratory tract; he was snoring.

She watched him in his sleep; he was comfortable and his face was relaxed. His eyes were obviously moving under his eyelids. He smiled in response to something in his dreams; tattooReggie wondered what could elicit such a response.

She wondered why she didn’t dream; she knew realistically she would have to because dreams were reality induced by Rapid Eye Movement sleep, but she retained none of them.

She took a seat and continued to watch Nathan. Many thoughts crossed her mind; he was trained in a similar manner as her, but he was socially integrated into society.

Her mind went back to Phil, and how his last act on this planet was to ask Reggie to deliver a message to his family. It seemed he was normal in caring for his family. This is what it meant to humans – to care, to love, and to connect.

Why was she so isolated? Was it to ensure an infantile interaction with anyone who issued orders?

Being in the outside world meant she was seeing underlying motivation, complexity of relationships, and the dynamics involved with day to day human interaction.

She glanced down at her shoulder, at her tattoo.

“I’m a weapon,” she realized, “nothing more, nothing less.”

She could feel her blood boiling with some emotion. It was still nothing she was familiar with, but she remembered feeling it when she attacked NexGen’s guard after realizing the company sacrificed Phil.

She was tempted to raid Granat’s office tonight and destroy him before he knew what was coming.

My shoulder, she thought of suddenly. She was implanted with a chip to take data on her vitals during combat; it noted everything from how her breath when she used a firearm to how many times a day she needed to relieve herself.

I need to do something about this, she told herself.

She went to her boot and pulled her switchblade out. She took a deep breath and pressed the blade into her shoulder.

* * *

Paul awoke to an unusual sound; it wasn’t a scream, but it was too loud to be a groan. He got out of bed quickly to go looking for the source of the weird sounds in his apartment.

He searched quickly through his apartment to find the television on, and the sound was being emitted from the screen. Reggie was in pain in the bathroom, seated on the floor.

He noticed her shoulder was bleeding; she already dressed it and was lightly stroking it to ease the pain.

“What did you do?” he asked, inspecting the wound.

“Granat was continually accessing data from me; possibly GPS as well. I opted to remove the microchip from my shoulder.”

“That’ll interfere with your combat skills, won’t it?” he asked, but he could have cared less about combat.

“I would rather have difficulties firing than continue to be monitored,” Reggie told him.

“I realize you’re taking a great risk coming to my assistance. I will distance myself from you as quickly as I can,” she spoke softly. “The microchip has been destroyed.”

here; I would like to keep you safe as long as possible.”

Paul opened the cabinet and retrieved pain medication for Reggie, and poured her a glass of water.

“Take this,” he instructed her.

He watched as she did as he instructed.

He wondered how much pain she could tolerate. All the information he found in NexGen’s servers indicated she was trained to endure tremendous amounts of pain. The training was not different from special forces, but she didn’t have the choice.

Paul realized Granat designed the perfect soldier, the perfect weapon. A weapon trained to exhibit no emotional connections to anyone or anything. She obeyed missions given to her, but lacked a team mentality; she could effectively change tactics at will.

“You watch me often,” Reggie informed him, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Why?”

“I just wonder what you’ve seen and been through,” Paul told her. “You have so much more to you then Granat’s use of you. Have you thought about what you’ll do once this is over?”

“Perhaps when all is said and done, I will have the opportunity to research the bloodline of the woman whose ova were harvested to create others like me,” Reggie admitted.

“She was…?” Paul asked, afraid to voice the rest of the question.

“She was kept in a vegetative state solely for ova harvesting until very recently. I believe Project Bathos was successful enough that further experimentation was unnecessary. I have been deemed a success; my cell line is duplicable now.”

“How did you learn this?” Paul asked in horror.

“NexGen employee Phil Montgomery; he was issued an order to terminate the life support of the coma-patient Samantha Parkhurst. Her statistics were confirmed as deceased. Phil told his wife about it and begged that she would forgive him.”

Paul fell into a silence at the information. Reggie had no emotional ties to someone she shared a blood connection to. But even more, he wanted to grieve the loss of his mother; he’d believed she died years before, but now knowing for sure was even more devastating. Before, he could cherish false-guided hopes that one day she’d call him out of the blue. But now, it is gone.

Maybe Reggie was better off not feeling mental anguish at the loss of a loved one. Maybe it was easier for one not to have any emotional ties to anyone in their world.

Reggie saw him fall into his silence, mulling over some unknown pain. Somehow she felt responsible for this pain, but she wasn’t sure why or how she hurt him.

“Was she special to you?” Reggie asked, again having her voice pull him from his thoughts.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” Paul asked softly.

She knew she lacked a critical piece of information, but she understood the concept of justice.

“NexGen and Granat will be brought to justice,” Reggie told me, trying to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Paul needed to change the subject, “Shelby’s updates are complete; she’s operating free of NexGen’s network now.”

“How about your suggested starting point? The psychiatric hospital?”

The abandoned psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of the next city was shut down years ago due to public awareness of isolation of mentally ill individuals. The property was sold as a foreclosure and purchased by a woman named Regina Ramone.

The hospital was identified shortly after by local children looking for weekend thrills as haunted; at night, screams could be heard from the third flood, but no one was brave enough to venture past the second floor where there was supposed to be blood and dismembered bodies.

No one could confirm any of the rumors; the facility was registered as vacant and there were not enough suspicions for the police to investigate the stories surrounding the strange old building.

The purchase record stated “Project Bathos” – the information wasn’t as reliable as Paul would have liked, but it seemed connected.

“I’ll wake Nathan and we’ll begin our investigation,” Reggie informed Paul.