“Just a moment ago.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“He picked up a knife and looked at his reflection.”
“Are you saying you could have prevented it?”
“He did have a knife.”
“Clear him away,” she said in a voice that could have been either angry or sad.
She came back to me and placed a warm hand on my shoulder, and she whispered, “Eat,” in my ear. “And be sure you drink the water and the juice. I don’t want you getting dehydrated, Wayson. I want you healthy and strong.”
After I ate, she took me to a bathroom. Then she took me to my cell and helped me into bed. She kissed me on the mouth, and said, “I’ll see you soon. Now sleep.”
I shut my eyes and did as I was told.
I knew where I was and what was happening to me. I was in a cell in Mars Spaceport. In a few minutes, my captors would pipe gas into the cell to disable me. It was supposed to knock me unconscious, but it would only paralyze me. My Liberator combat reflex was fighting the gas, pouring testosterone and adrenaline into my bloodstream, giving me more control over my thoughts than they wanted me to have. They could amputate the gland, but an operation would leave a scar, and they needed me whole.
They planned to brainwash me without using anything that might puncture my skin, not even a hypodermic needle.
Maybe if I broke a bone,
I thought. They could fuse the bones together again, but an examination would uncover recently fused bones. If I broke my forearm on the sink, what would they do?
I could…
I smelled the gas and sank back on my rack. The airtight door hissed and opened. In walked Franklin. He stood over me.
The combat reflex started immediately. It was strong. My head was even with his knees, but I found I could move my eyes enough to see his face.
He glared down at me, laughed, and said, “I came early today, Harris; hope you don’t mind. I thought we might have some fun together.”
I looked up at Franklin. I was paralyzed and helpless, but I thought,
One day I will kill you.
Then the thought of Sunny and her sexual-sadistic obsession entered my brain, and I amended my objectives.
One day I will kill you both.
The thought gave me peace.
I knew that without Sunny protecting me, Franklin could
kill me when he chose to. No one would stop him. I couldn’t even speak, let alone protect myself.
He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I suppose it took a little exertion on his part to lift me since he groaned slightly as I flopped over his shoulder. Then he carried me to the toilet and dropped me ass first into a sitting position.
I was his work in progress. He bent over and studied me from several angles, then he took a moment to fiddle with his hair before pulling my pants down to my ankles. He smiled, said, “Don’t get any funny ideas,” then pulled my underwear down as well.
He studied me as if he were a sculptor. I was like a doll or a mannequin that he could pose as he wished. He spread my legs so that my groin was exposed. Then he sat me up straight, and said, “You know, if I wanted to cut your balls off, I could do it. If I wanted to kill you and make it look like you committed suicide, I could do it. Without that dumb bitch to protect you, you’re just a toy, Mr. Liberator.”
I could not speak so I said nothing, but my thoughts centered on murder.
“One of your buddies died this morning. He had a death reflex. I hear he was sitting right next to you, and I bet you didn’t even notice. Some killer you turned out to be, Harris. The way I hear it, you sat there and watched your buddy die.”
I did not believe what he said about a clone’s dying. I could remember almost everything that happened. I now had a clear understanding about what Sunny did to me when she wheeled me into the operating room. I knew about the electricity and the gas.
Franklin said, “Sunny says you’re fighting the treatment. I think she’s making it up. She just wants more time with you…psychotic bitch.”
He thought for a moment, then he said, “You know what…Let’s see if you remember this.” He lowered his pants and urinated into my face, then he laughed. He was sitting on my rack, pointing at me and laughing, when Sunny arrived.
Franklin had posed me so that I faced the door. He probably wanted me to see Sunny’s reaction when she entered the
cell. So there I sat with my pants and my underwear down around my ankles, urine dripping down my face.
Franklin had the cruel laugh of a teenage thug. “Look at that, Sunny, I made a living sculpture.”
Without saying a word, Sunny turned and started to march out of the cell. Franklin grabbed her arm, and she slapped him hard across the face. He said, “You’re not going to tell anybody.”
“Like hell I’m not,” she said, and she pounded her fists into his chest. He was short but strong. Her fists bounced off him as if they were balloons.
“What do you think Silas is going to say when I tell him how you’ve been servicing the clone?” Franklin asked. “I watched you last night. It looks like you’re losing your touch.”
She started to slap him across the face, but Franklin caught her hand. He asked, “Do you do that with all the clones, or are you giving the Liberator special treatment?” He was still gripping Sunny’s wrist when she slammed her knee into his groin.
She said, “I have work to do.”
Franklin might have been strong, but he wasn’t ready for that shot to the balls. He slumped to the floor. He was still on the floor, when Sunny said, “I spoke to Silas this morning. I told him about the way you have been bullying my patients. He says I can do what I want with you.
“If you ever touch this man again, Franklin, I will have you flushed out of the moon pool. You might want to think about that.”
Then she rolled the gurney over to the toilet. She lowered the bed so it was below my knees and tilted me onto it. Sparing one last glance at the man sprawled on the floor, she raised the gurney and pushed me out of the cell.
Sunny pulled my shirt and pants off my body. “I hope you’re not shy,” she joked as she took out a hose and ran warm water over me. “I’m not sure how much you remember, darling, but I’ve seen every bit of you quite a few times.”
I lay helpless on the gurney as she toweled me dry, and said, “Look at this. Look at what that jackass did to you.” She paused for a moment, then she added, “I’ll make sure Franklin never comes near you again.” She rubbed my shoulders and hugged me.
I had that image in my head, Sunny’s face as I strangled her. I could see her lips darkening and her swollen tongue leaving her mouth as her eyes bulged. I saw myself kissing her forehead.
She was my protector, my sexual-sadistic protector. Franklin was a wolf waiting to snap me up, and Sunny was my shepherd. She led my kind to still waters, and shaved us, and butchered us for meat. If sheep had any brains at all, they would fear wolves and hate shepherds.
As she rolled me to the operating room, I tried to work my muscles. I could not sit or stand or run. I could not make a fist; but I had the ability to move my eyes and tense my shoulders. I could harden my biceps and forearms. I tightened the muscles in my neck and turned my head. I wasn’t able to hold my head up, but I turned my chin. It wasn’t much, but it was everything.
She wheeled me past the other clones and into the room where we were alone, then she began the process the same way she had before.
How many times have I done this?
I wondered
This time I allowed my body to react. I hated this woman, but she was my protector. I needed to keep her on my side.
She played with me until she was happy. There was very little difference between her and Franklin. He bullied me while I was paralyzed and helpless, and she seduced me. As far as I was concerned, I would gladly have killed either one of them…and yet my reaction to this woman went beyond that to somewhere disturbing. I fantasized about her gasping and dying as I strangled her at the same time I fantasized about holding her, caressing her, kissing her.
Maybe her psychosis was contagious.
“You are more cooperative this evening, Wayson,” she said. She kissed me on the cheek. I wanted more.
She stroked me, lazily running her fingers along the contours of my body. Then she brought out the clamp. She said, “You’ve been a good boy so I’ll be gentle.” She laughed, and said, “Gentle…genitals, there’s got to be a pun in there.”
She was more gentle than she had been the last time.
“It’s sad. You and I have tonight and tomorrow, then we set you free.” She sounded sad. She frowned as she strapped the hose to the bottom of my nose. The moment we had entered this infirmary my combat reflex had begun. Now that reflex went wild. I felt like I could handspring from the gurney, do a backflip, and run a three-minute mile, killing every person who crossed my path.
“I wish we could have met some other way, dear,” she said. “I think I would have made you happy.”
The gas came first, clawing at my sinuses, then my brain. It started with a whiff of ammonia, as I remembered it would. The shit flowing up my nose flew from one scent to the next. It was a series of chemical odors, some strong, some hidden behind others. I reacted to each scent differently. Some calmed me, most made me sick…and then came the first surge of electricity, weakening me, causing my muscles to contract and pull me into the fetal position.
Something in the gas made me so sick that I vomited onto my arms and legs. I could taste the bile in my throat, but the clip across my nostrils blocked the acrid fumes from my nose.
One of the gases was worse than the others. It seemed to bore into my skull like a laser drill, like a slow-moving bullet. I wanted to scream, but I could not work my jaws. My mouth hung open.
The scent ended, then electricity jolted me again, bending me and twisting me, making me roll on that gurney. I rolled back and forth in my warm puddle of vomit.
I cannot be reprogrammed…
I cannot be reprogrammed…
I cannot be reprogrammed…
I cannot be reprogrammed…
I focused on that phrase, telling it to myself again and again even though I had no idea where I heard it.
Man, not machine,
I told myself.
I am a man, not a machine. They cannot program me, I am a man.
In my head, I saw people and places from my past. Places that meant something to me caused me pain, caused me to convulse, came with chemical stabs and jolts of electricity. I remembered Orphanage #553, the place where I grew up, and the electricity turned my thoughts to the color of lightning. The electricity made my thoughts vanish into a silver-white sheath.
Anything that can be programmed,
I told myself. The chemicals and the electricity and the pain combined until I passed out.
I woke up knowing that the end of this adventure approached. If I did not escape before the chemicals wafted into my cell, I would not escape, not ever.
The mornings were always the same. I might have ten minutes or I might have an hour. Sooner or later, the gas would spill out of the vents along the floor of my cell, and I would lie helpless as Sunny came to collect me. She would kiss me and soothe me, and then she would torture me. Well, in the past she had tortured me. This time she would come as my executioner. She and some orderly would load me onto the gurney. It would not be Franklin; she’d fired the bastard. Sunny would talk sweetly and smile as she took me to my final reprogramming, and then only Legion would exist in my head.
I went to the toilet, rolled small wads of paper tight, and shoved them into my nose. Each of the plugs was wide enough to fill a nostril, but I crammed two plugs in each side. Maybe if I jammed enough paper up my nostrils, I would not smell the gas and would become immune to it.
I kicked the chrome fixture behind the toilet, smashing the ball of my foot against the pipe until it broke free. A foot-tall geyser of water spouted from the top of the pipe as I tore it from its base.
I expected guards to rush into the cell, but nobody came, so I sat on my rack and watched the water form a pool, then a two-inch layer on the floor of my cell. Maybe an hour had passed. I could not tell. I spent the entire time digging the jagged edge of the pipe into the side of my thigh, twisting and cutting, creating a three-inch-long gash that I hoped would need stitches. They could remove the scar with a cosmetic laser, but I doubted Mars Spaceport had that kind of equipment. If Cutter heard I had stitches in my leg, he’d ask questions.
The pain from the slicing was physical pain. It didn’t go straight to my brain like the chemicals from the tubes Sunny attached to my nose. That hurt my head. This pain remained in my leg, sharp and constant, and the combat reflex it set off remained constant as well. The pain and the reflex filled my head with the need for violence. I saw myself as if I were a snake, coiled, ready to strike, ready to kill. Blood ran down my thigh, but I didn’t care. As the jagged edge of the pipe cut deeper and deeper into my leg, the pain increased. So did the hormone in my blood.
This was my last chance. Whatever they had planned for me tonight, I doubted my original programming would survive it, so I twisted the pipe and I concentrated on controlling my muscles. When I went limp the night before, I still managed to flex and relax; this time, I would need to use them.
I had no idea how much time had passed when it began.
The nose plugs had been a bad idea. It didn’t matter whether I inhaled the gas through my mouth or nose; so long as I breathed, the gas incapacitated me. With the plugs in my nose, I did not catch that warning whiff before my body went limp.
I slumped onto my rack, and one of my feet dropped down into the layer of cold water covering my floor. The pipe, though, I managed to keep my fingers closed around it even as the strength vanished from my sagging arms.
The door hissed and opened. I envisioned myself rising from the bed, swinging the pipe, and striking Sunny. She would see the water on the floor. It would distract her, then she would see me struggling off the bed. She would be angry, then she would see the pipe; but it would be too late.