Melissa’s dark eyebrows dropped into a sharp V, as if she were choosing her words carefully, “Do you know why you and your men did those horrible things?”
“Because that’s who we are now. You, Winters, Mankel, and the general made sure of that. You turned us into cold-blooded killers. How can we ever go out on a mission not knowing if we are going to simply kill the bad guy or if all the innocent women and children may get in our paths?”
Melissa sat back on her haunches, less than a foot away from him. Despite knowing she’d taken part in Project Mayhem, a small part of him was glad she was in here at the end. At least he didn’t have to die alone.
“No, it’s because Winters implanted a trigger in your spinal cord that turns off the control centers of your brain. She activated the devices that day. The only reason you and your men lost control like that was because she made you.”
Reaper sucked in a large gulp of the precious little amount of oxygen left in their enclosure.
“That sound.” Melissa nodded. “The controlling device is triggered by a frequency beyond normal human hearing range. It turns off your inhibitions and stimulates the subcortical regions where violence is housed. You had no choice. You and your men were as much victims of this experiment as Caroline.”
Reaper should have felt some measure of comfort at being relieved from the burden of not knowing whether or not his men would snap for no reason. But he didn’t. In control or not, their blood was still staining his hands. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. My men and I will be put down like the animals we are.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. At least he could die knowing he’d done everything he could to save Caroline.
Melissa kept quiet for so long he thought maybe she’d given up. And then, in a quiet calm tone, she said, “Your men aren’t animals. They still want to do good, just like you. An animal would’ve never come back for Caroline. It wouldn’t sacrifice its life for hers. You have no idea what Ranier has done, do you?”
Reaper’s lips stretched into a sardonic smile, even knowing Melissa couldn’t see it in the pitch black. “Believe me, I know exactly what he’s done, I am what he’s done.”
The air particles around them vibrated, Melissa was shaking her head. “No, there are others, others they picked because of their natural propensity for violence. I’ve seen what they can do, and what they have done without the auditory stimulation.”
Reaper heaved out an exhausted sigh. She was wasting air, but then again what did he care? The more she talked the faster the end would come. “Whatever they’ve done, it’s not worse than what we did.”
“You’re wrong.” Her whispered response made him open his eyes.
“Ranier and Winters personally selected men with a psychological profile bordering on psychotic. The drug not only enhances your strength and vision and hearing, it also enhances your natural propensities. You and your men are programmed for good, the general’s hand-selected team is wired for evil, and without other enhanced soldiers out there to stop them, they’ll be free to wreak havoc without restraint. If you’re looking for some sort of penance from inadvertently killing those scientist, I’d rededicate your life to hunting down those who would do harm to the innocent.”
Shock laced with rage sped through his veins and Reaper shot to his feet, his hands clenched and grinding fists. “I knew that bastard wouldn’t stop with my team.”
“You weren’t the first, and you won’t be the last. Just because you got Caroline out, doesn’t mean you saved her life. You and I both know the general probably has her surrounded right now and without someone like me on the inside to baby him as much as possible, he will be completely free to create as many murdering enhanced human being as possible.”
Reaper shook his head in denial although the ring of truth in her words could not be disputed. “I gave Caroline the tools to get away.
“Even if she does somehow manage to miraculously survive, the general has his own personal store of serum. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to find someone smart enough to clone the sequence and replicate a completely new strain,” Melissa paused, and then said, “and everything you and your men sacrificed would have been for nothing.”
His veins throbbed, his pulse thudded in his temples. “You can’t do that.”
Melissa shrugged, “Probably not. But I’m almost ninety-nine percent certain the general would have had men waiting at the exit to capture us. Face it, big boy, you probably just threw Caroline right back to the sharks.”
Reaper had absolutely no argument against the cold hard truth. Now, he was trapped. He couldn’t move this wall, there had to be tons of rock and granite pressing down the earth. He’d need a commercial grade jackhammer just to make a pinhole for air, and even then, if he did manage to somehow topple the rock, the rest of them might fall and crush them anyway.
“No!”
Images of Caroline like he’d found her, pale and unconscious strapped to a gurney with dozens of wires and lines going in and out of fragile body filled his mind. Without him, there would be no hope of ever finding her again. She’d spend the rest of her life a vegetable.
“Don’t give up on her, Reaper. Don’t give up on yourself. Move one of those damn rocks!” Melissa finished her order with a wheeze. Her oxygen had begun to reach its limit.
But he had to try. He couldn’t give up on her; he couldn’t give up on Caroline. Reaper searched the wall quickly, finding a rock just above his right shoulder that was pressed a few inches more outward than the rest. It was possible that if he were able to push hard enough, that rock would give way. He put his shoulder against the wall, bent his knees, and shoved with all his strength.
Suddenly, a loud explosion blasted and Reaper was thrown back, rubble and rocks falling over his legs and hips and chest. Dust clouded their precious shrinking storage of air. And then Reaper saw something he thought he’d never see again.
Daylight.
He tried to sit up, but there were too many rocks pinning him to the ground. With concentrated effort, he began to roll and rock his body, just barely at first, but after a few moments, he managed to shake some of the weight. Within minutes, he was sitting up and shoving the boulders from his legs. Blood saturated his pants, and he was pretty sure his left foot was shattered. But he shoved the pain to the back of his mind, got up on a knee, and surveyed his surroundings.
Severed legs and arms, split torsos and body parts were scattered just beyond the entrance. Someone had dropped a grenade.
Had one of his soldiers managed to find him? Or maybe there was someone else working from within to free Caroline.
