Andromeda

Chapter Eight

“Here we go again,” Park muttered to himself.

Several weeks had gone by since Park had been summoned to the Pentagon by the government heads behind Project Machina. The only upside to being held here against his will by both the military and the CIA was the living quarters. General Melsom had provided Park with a private lab space to continue his work with the M-Gene and assist with the efforts to track down the missing assets. Since he lived, slept, and worked in the same lab, he had yet to leave for any reason, and no amount of relative luxury he was given made it seem any less like a prison sentence.

If it was not for the massive digital clock suspended on the wall above the door leading out of the lab, he would never have known what time of day it was since he had not seen the sun in weeks. Right now, it read, “19:26:45,” with the seconds counting up one after another. Sometimes he would just sit in his wheelchair or lie on his cot and watch the numbers for hours, as if to convince himself that he had simply gone mad this entire time, but tonight he had other matters to attend to.

“Alright,” he continued. “Let’s try this one more time before we call it for the night.”

Park’s wheelchair sat next to the table positioned in the center of the lab, where normally he would be experimenting on various new applications for the M-Gene, mainly potential cures for diseases. He reached over and typed into the laptop sitting on the edge of the table.

“Remote stabilization test 17-C,” he spoke into the headset he wore over his ears. “Commencing calibration.”

Park turned away from the laptop and stared down at his legs, which were now encased in a cybernetic exoskeleton that enveloped his entire lower body, ending in a strip that extended up the full length of his spine. He had spent much of his down time in the lab developing this configuration, inspired by the transformative properties of the M-Gene as displayed by the subjects of Project Machina.

Park took several deep breaths before, slowly and with great strain, he raised himself up from his wheelchair. He grunted as he put all his focus on moving his legs, which miraculously shifted in a shaky manner. He planted his right foot on the floor in front of him, followed by the other in careful succession.

“Okay.” Park heaved in one last breath as he pushed himself into a standing position. It had been over a year since he had been able to stand on his own like this. “So far so good. Just don’t overdo it. One step.” He moved his right foot forward in a small stride, barely taking it off the floor. “And again.” His left leg followed in the same motion.

“Yes!” Park exclaimed. He attempted to bend his knee to raise his right foot higher off the ground, but the exoskeleton suddenly began to buckle under the immense pressure of his weight. “No, no, no!”

Park collapsed, barely catching himself on the end of the table. “Dammit!” he cursed as he pulled himself up with great effort and guided himself back to his wheelchair. He took a moment to catch his breath before speaking into his headset again. “Stabilization test 17-C results: negative. Again.” With that, he removed the headset and tossed it angrily onto the table. He had been at this for many long hours, sometimes well into the night, yet it seemed that his attempts to walk again refused to progress beyond this one point. He was so frustrated with the latest failure that he hardly registered the pounding against the metal door behind him.

“Enter,” he called out loud. He heard the secure locking mechanism of the door being released from the outside as the door was pulled open.

“Thank you, Agent,” a female voice spoke. 

Park pulled himself up to lean against the table. His eyes fell on the door as it closed behind his visitor. A young woman was standing in front of the doorway. She had blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, a thin pair of glasses and was holding a brown leather tote bag in front of her. Her eyes moved all around the lab she had just entered with a sense of fascinated curiosity.

“And who might you be?” Park addressed her as he grabbed his jacket off the table and put it on over the augmentations he had attached to himself. The woman’s attention snapped forward.

“Dr. Amelia Polinski,” she introduced herself in a cheery tone. “It’s such an honor to meet you, Dr. Park! I couldn’t believe it when they assigned me to work with you!”

“Is that so?” Park’s cold expression never shifted as he eased himself back into his wheelchair. “You seem quite young. How old are you, if I may ask?”

“28,” Amelia answered on cue. “I just got my PhD in May. Cornell University, neuroscience. I did my thesis on your development of the biomolecular metamorphosis gene, or the M-Gene as I know you call it. It was by far the most fascinating thing I’ve ever read!”

“Well, glad to hear it,” Park mumbled. “28, you say? How did you get into the Pentagon?”

Amelia’s eyes perked up as though she was put on the spot. “Oh, well I submitted a grant proposal at Cornell for research regarding the possibility of extrasensory communications between test subjects, you know, based in part on your work with the M-Gene. I don’t think I’m ever gonna get that grant, but the government must have thought it was sound in principle because about a week later, I got a call from Washington requesting to bring me on board to assist with your efforts to find your missing subjects.”

Park raised his eyebrows. This woman’s tendency to talk a mile a minute was already making him miss the solitude of the lab, but he could not help but be impressed by her apparent familiarity with his line of work.

“So might I assume they’ve already filled you in on the situation?” Park asked.

“They did, yes,” Amelia nodded. “I have to say, when I heard half the things they told me about this Project Machina, I almost threw up. In a good way, of course - or, I guess, not really a good way, but-” She trailed off as she began tripping over her words. “What I mean is, it’s beyond anything I could ever have imagined and I’m ready to help in any way I can.”

“Hm,” Park uttered as he repositioned his chair. “Then I guess I better fill in the blanks for you.” He picked up a remote from the table next to his laptop and pointed it toward the wall to his right. A series of lights flicked on as a holographic display sprung to life along the wall. Amelia approached it with wide eyes, uttering a few “wows” to herself. In the center of the display was a line of what appeared to be the specs of nine human figures.

“So is this them?” she asked.

“Yes,” Park said as he wheeled up to join her.

“I have to ask,” Amelia continued. “How did you manage to get the M-Gene to adapt to cybernetic transformative capabilities? I didn’t think something like that was possible.”

“Well, therein lies the biggest question of all,” Park replied in a low voice. “When we started, the idea was simple: to provide the subjects with enhanced physical and restorative capacity. That was Subject One.”

Park aimed the remote and pressed another button. The first figure in the lineup appeared front and center along with a physical profile. Amelia found herself looking at the face of a young African-American man. He looked to be around her age but carried an intense expression of battle hardened vigor, and she guessed that he might have been a military vet. Just above the man’s headshot was a caption that read, “Subject One: Cerberus.”

“He was the first volunteer,” Park explained. “We were testing the effects of the gene’s physical enhancements following administration. That was when we learned that their capabilities were not as limited as we thought.”

Park initiated a video replay on the holographic display. Amelia stared in awe at the imposing stature of the subject dubbed Cerberus. As if fully familiar with his newfound abilities, he raised his arm as what appeared to be a series of metallic appendages emerged from his flesh like mechanized veins. Upon reaching his elbow, they came together as his entire forearm began to transform entirely. Even throughout years of postgraduate research, Amelia could not believe what she was seeing. In a matter of seconds, Cerberus’ arm had vanished and was replaced by a formidable bladed weapon that gave off a deep red, mechanical glow.

“That’s unbelievable!” Amelia gasped.

“Indeed it was,” Park affirmed. “If anything, we thought it was just a fluke, but once we moved on to the second subject, we realized it was much more than that.” At Park’s command, the profile for Cerberus was replaced with another. This one appeared to be a Korean male, a little younger than Cerberus and significantly smaller but no less impressive in his presentation.

“Subject Two,” Park said. “We called this one Chimera. Not only did we learn here that all of our subjects would display the same capabilities, but we also discovered that they could adapt to their own unique, shall we say, interpretations of their newly gifted abilities.” 

Amelia directed her attention back to the video footage. Chimera raised his hands up toward his head, his eyes giving off a glow like a ring of light around his irises. He lowered his hands back down to his side, and as he did so, a holographic projection appeared as if generated from the glow in his eyes. It traveled down the length of his body, and once it had stabilized, Amelia exclaimed in surprise as Chimera took on the form of an entirely different person.

“Needless to say,” Park began, “the benefactors were intrigued by this concept. Unfortunately, it seems the subject’s capacity to disguise himself with these holographic projections is limited to identities within his proximity. Still, the application shows tremendous potential in combat operations.”

“Right,” Amelia muttered. “But are you certain you could control them?”

Park gave a cold sigh. “If recent history is any indicator, that remains to be seen.”

“Are they able to act independently?”

“Of course, no different than any soldier,” Park answered. “However, the military wanted the subjects to follow any command without question. Just another item on their wish list.”

“So do they?”

“Given the proper stimulus, yes. We saw this firsthand when our last subject escaped. But it has been a complicated endeavor to get them under some degree of control. You see, the gene had a few side effects we didn’t anticipate, namely altering the characteristics of the hosts’ personalities, sometimes only slightly, and sometimes quite radically. Take Subject Four, for example.”

Park brought up another profile, this one showing a caucasian male with a hostile presentation about his face and posture. “Designation: Damocles. By far the most aggressive and dangerous of the M-Gene’s hosts, Damocles adapted to a mentality of complete annihilation.”

As the video profile began to play, Damocles displayed the most impressive demonstration Amelia had seen so far. After altering his arm into a cybernetic blade, similar in appearance to Cerberus’ but giving off a green glow instead of red, Damocles spun around on his feet with the agility of a master martial artist. As he swung his blade with his movements, the green light glowed brighter until it emitted a wave of energy that traveled with blinding speed toward the camera. Amelia jumped as the footage came to a sudden end.

“It wasn’t easy to come up with an alibi for the family of that camera operator,” Park said somberly. “Not one that would explain the absence of his body, that is.”

Amelia swallowed, finding herself exposed to more than she bargained for. She stepped closer to the holographic display, walking alongside it until she came to the profiles of the last two subjects in the line up. “So,” she pointed to the icons, “are these the ones?”

“The missing assets.” Park clicked the remote to open the profile of Subject Eight. This was the youngest one Amelia had seen so far. He looked to be no older than 18, Hispanic with the toned figure of an athlete. “We called this one Ajax, and it’s a matter of great frustration to me that he disappeared from the facility right under our noses.”

“How did that happen?” Amelia asked.

Park’s eyes shifted for a brief second, as though he knew something about the incident, but then he shook his head. “I’m not sure. All I know is that his connection to the uplink was corrupted, making it certainly impossible to track him. We believe he was exposed to the Antithesis program, which means the memories of his life before the gene may have been restored.”

“Restored?” Amelia repeated with curiosity.

“Yes,” Park said, sensing her thoughts. “All subjects had their memories wiped upon admission to the project, as well as their legal and societal profiles. The government wished it so, to keep Project Machina entirely in the dark. It’s as though they never existed.”

Amelia was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. “So if I may ask, where did all these subjects come from?”

“Most of them were taken from the database of the terminally ill,” Park replied. “I’ve had my aversions from the beginning about allowing my research to be used for military applications, so I guess I thought this was my way of doing some good. I believed it was the perfect way to test the M-Gene’s restorative properties on human subjects.”

“And it worked?” Amelia perked up again.

“Of course it worked! Healing the subjects of their terminal ailments was the first thing we tracked. The trick is getting around the side effects.”

“You mean the augmentations,” Amelia finished for him.

“And the psychological instabilities,” Park added. “It’s too early to say for sure, but I fear there is little time before each of the hosts ultimately succumbs to the effects of the gene, whether physically or else driven to madness. The military doesn’t care, though, as long as they get what they want.”

“Right,” Amelia uttered, turning her attention back to the display. “That last one - is she the first female subject?”

“The first and only,” Park answered. “Andromeda, we named her, and her escape haunts me to this day. It was the day I saw the true power of the hosts of the M-Gene.”

Park activated a security recording on the holographic display. Amelia watched the footage that showed the subject known as Andromeda going on a violent rampage throughout the facility in the Rocky Mountains. Her ears were filled with the constant rattling of automatic fire. She could see dozens of bullets ricocheting off her as she hardly flinched.

“Even now, I wonder if we ever so much as scratched her,” Park said as the footage came to an end.

“So security’s weapons didn’t work?” Amelia asked.

“They didn’t even faze her,” Park shook his head. “I’ve tried emphasizing to Melsom the need to develop weapons specialized to subduing our subjects.”

“You mentioned that Ajax was stolen - or kidnapped, would it be?” Amelia said. “Do you have any idea who might be behind it?”

Park’s eyes lowered as if he was contemplating the answer. Amelia waited quietly for him to answer, curious as to the possibility that once again he might know something he was not saying, but at that moment, the silence was broken by the sound of the door unlocking behind her. Amelia spun around and Park’s eyes shot up as his handler, Agent Nichols entered the lab.

“Dr. Park,” Nichols said in his usual low, monotonous voice. “General Melsom is requesting your presence.”

“What is it this time?” Park asked in a disinterested tone, but his expression quickly perked up when Nichols answered his query.

“We may have found Andromeda.”