Chapter 3

Having no one else to turn to, Will gave Katherine, the sister-in-law who had been so helpful during the funeral, power of attorney to handle his personal affairs. He paid off the balances on his outstanding bills, including the mortgage and equity loan on the house.

Since Katherine was pursuing a Master's Degree at Stanford, which was only a short drive away, she agreed to 'house sit' until he finished the program. He arranged to have the remainder of his money split between two accounts. He gave Katherine carte blanche on the first account so she could use the money to pay bills and maintain the place. The second account he put into a trust that, in the event of his death would revert to Karen's sister.

Two days later, he returned to the place where he had applied to the program and was promptly whisked away to the San Jose airport, placed on a private jet, and flown about three hours away. There were no windows in the cabin and the only other person he saw was the guy with the bulge under his jacket who pretended to be a flight attendant.

Will couldn't be sure, but he'd always had a pretty good sense of direction, and he got the impression that, while the flight path included several circling maneuvers, the plane flew mostly south and east.

His speculations were given further impetus by the view of a flat, desert landscape as he deplaned on what appeared to be a private airstrip in the middle of nowhere. The 'flight attendant' led him to a ramshackle building, away from the equally ramshackle control tower.

Will got more than a little worried when the guy led him, by an iron hand on his bicep, into what appeared to be a janitor's closet. In the darkness, he couldn't see what his guide was doing, but something gave a muffled click. The man in the suit stepped back out, closed the door, and the floor of the closet seemed to drop away from beneath his feet. The walls rapidly rose upward to reveal the stainless steel walls of an elevator, which seemed to be descending into the earth at an alarming rate.

Will's knees almost buckled when the elevator decelerated as it approached its destination. When the car stopped, he tentatively opened the door, which still looked like the door to a janitor's closet. He was amazed to find himself in a long, well lighted corridor.

"Ah, Number Ten, at last!" The same woman who had questioned him in San Jose, now stood before him, still clad in a lab coat, hand outstretched for shaking. "I'm Doctor Robinson. Before we meet the others, you should know that no one here is to know your name. You will be addressed as 'Number Ten, ' or 'Prototype Ten, ' or simply 'Ten.' If all goes well, and the experiments we conduct here are a success, this anonymity will help to protect your friends and relatives."

Will shrugged. The relatives he would have wanted to protect most, he couldn't, when they needed it most.

The corridor, or tunnel, extended almost a hundred yards straight ahead, then ended in a 'T' intersection. Dr. Robinson turned left, then almost immediately right. At a featureless door, she passed a card through a slot, then placed her hand on a flat steel plate beside the door. After a pause of about a second, the door whisked soundlessly into its frame, admitting them to a small chamber. There were video cameras at all four corners of the chamber, and will got the feeling that if whoever was monitoring the view from those cameras didn't like what they saw, neither door would open until the chamber's occupants were dead or incapacitated.

"Look straight ahead." Dr. Robinson told him, at least partially confirming his deduction.

"Dr. Robinson and Prototype Ten." She told the empty chamber.

Apparently, that was sufficient, because the inner door opened a few seconds later, admitting them to another long, empty corridor. Their footsteps echoed loudly on the stone flooring, and Will wondered if the small openings spaced along the sides of the tunnel were firing ports for weapons, or gas nozzles, and if so, were they there to keep people in or out...

At the end of this corridor, the good Doctor took two right turns in a row, then passed through another badge-and-palmprint operated portal.

"You will be issued a badge," Robinson said as they passed into what appeared to be a busy office area, "that gives you access to those areas where you work, eat, sleep, and exercise. Unfortunately, it will not give you access to leave this facility until your part of the program is completed."

Will shrugged again. "When do we get started?"

Robinson gave him an appraising look, then smiled.

"Since we're not dependent on daylight here, we pretty much set our own schedule." She replied. "Let's take care of your paperwork, then I'll have someone show you around and introduce you to your physical trainer. We'll be taking blood samples for various tests throughout the program, so we'll install a catheter on the back of your wrist to save time. After that, you'll begin your physical conditioning."

"When your trainer is satisfied, you will undergo several rounds of surgery to implant the various enhancements and sensors into your body. These include reinforcing your tendons and muscle tissue with electro-elastomers that will provide a 'power assist' to each of your muscles. In addition, a flexible mesh will be implanted under your skin. This mesh is composed of a very tough material that will make it difficult for you to sustain more than a superficial wound. The mesh is also designed to be capable as acting as a collector for various types of electro-magnetic frequencies, and will be configurable by the microprocessor we will implant in your brain to act as part of your communication system and/or your sensor arrays.

"Speaking of sensors, you will have, working in conjunction with your eyes, an array of optical sensors that can see well beyond the normal visual spectrum in both infrared and ultraviolet, and can enhance your vision for better distance viewing and greater peripheral vision. You will, literally, have eyes in back of your head, or, at least, optical sensors."

Will's mind was taking a little time to correlate all this information, and as it did, he raised a hand to get the doctor's attention.

"You say all this will be done after the physical conditioning?"

"Yes, why?" Dr. Robinson replied.

"It seems bass ackwards to me, is all." Will said. "I mean, with that kind of surgery, you're talking weeks of convalescence, if not months. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, you're pretty much going to have to skin me alive to put all that stuff in my body. During the recovery period, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting much exercise, so all those muscles are bound to atrophy."

Robinson smiled. "I'm glad to see that we have at least one in the group who can think! Not to worry though. We need your muscles developed to their operational level so that we can properly fit the implants and the mesh. True, the muscles will atrophy some, though that will be minimized through electro-stimulation therapy, but when you get finished with the procedures, and get back to physical training, things will fit properly. If we didn't do it this way, the implants, which can't grow and shrink as readily as flesh, would be too small."

"Aren't you worried about drug dependency?" Will asked.

The doctor looked puzzled. "Why would we be?"

"Doc, come on." He answered. "You don't remove someone's skin and fuse a bunch of artificial parts all over a body without its owner having a great deal of pain during recovery. How are you going to deal with that?"

"Ah!" She said, "I see your point, but we have thought of that. First of all, we're doing the implants in sections to minimize the risk of infection and shock to the body's immune systems. This will also mean that the pain management problem is not quite as severe. For the first few weeks after each round of surgery, the patient will be kept in an artificial coma. This will ensure that the affected areas can be kept immobile to allow proper healing, and will insulate the mind and body against the pain. After that, the pain should be manageable with non-narcotic pain relievers until the body heals."

"So I'm guessing five or six separate areas to be implanted," Will mused aloud, "and at least six weeks per area for healing. That puts us out to eight or nine months, just for the implant process."

Robinson smiled again. "It's refreshing to not have to explain this in such detail. Actually, we're allowing six weeks for the conditioning, and eleven months for implants and recovery, so you can expect to be 'activated' a little over a year from now. In point of fact, since this is all new, we've allowed a fifty percent cushion to deal with the unexpected. The activation, too, will be phased. We'll activate two at a time, in sequence, and observe the results to see if any adjustments or changes need to be made before activating the next pair."

Will spent the next hour or so filling out forms and submitting to the insertion of the catheter into one of the veins on the back of his wrist. A white-coated orderly gave him a quick tour of the parts of the facility to which his badge gave him access, ending up at the room that was to be his sleeping quarters.

The program people apparently had some strange notions about the facilities, because, while there were separate restrooms for men and women, the sleeping quarters were allocated to pairs of prototypes in numerical order. This meant that number Nine, a reasonably attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, shared his sleeping quarters. Each had a separate bed, but no accommodations for privacy were made.

"I guess we're roommates." Will said, extending his hand. "I'm..."

"Prototype Ten." She said, saving him from the faux pas of telling her his name as she returned his handshake with a firm grip that stopped just short of being painful. "Wondered when you'd get here. I'm Nine. Some set-up, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess." Will looked around the room, noting that there were no separate dressing or sleeping areas. "Look, uh, Nine, the, uh, only co-ed situation I've ever lived in was my marriage, and I'm not real sure about the, uh, etiquette, so, if I get out of line..."

"Don't worry about it." Nine interrupted, smiling. "I just got out of the Army, and there ain't nothin' you can do that those horny bastards haven't already tried. If I don't like it, I'll knock you on your ass. If you keep coming, I'll make it hurt so bad you'll need help goin' to the latrine, okay?"

"Well," Will smiled, "Hopefully it won't come to that. I'm not really looking for female companionship. I just want to get through this program and go kick some terrorist ass."

"Suits me!" Nine laughed. "If I get horny, there's at least six other guys in this program, and I'm sure I can catch one of 'em in a moment of weakness! Which bed you want?"

"You got here first." Will replied. "So I guess 'first come, first served' ought to apply. I'm not particular."

"In that case," Nine grinned, "no offense, but if it's okay with you, I'll take the bed in the corner. It's a more defensible position."

"That works out well, then," Will replied, throwing what little stuff he had brought with him on the other bed, "since, if you get to feeling like you want to fight, I'm heading for the door, and this one's closer to the exit."

Nine laughed politely.

"Hey, I like you, Old Guy!" She clapped him on the back, almost sending him sprawling. "Maybe I should have taken this bed so I could trap you in the corner!"

"Wouldn't do you any good." Will replied, a smile cracking his face for the first time in months. "I'd just lay there. You wouldn't enjoy it, even if you could make me get it up!"

"Maybe I'll slip one of those little blue pills in your vitamins." Nine joked, then snorted in disgust. "As if they'd have anything like that down here. This place promises to be worse than boot camp!"

"Yeah, well, it's been a while since I did boot camp, and that was Navy." Will said as he reclined on the bed. "Guess I'll have some catching up to do."

Nine was about to make another remark when a perfunctory knock sounded at the door. Before either could respond, a dark head bearing tight, close-cropped curls, appeared around the edge of the opening door.

"Prototype Ten?" The head asked, glancing at Nine but settling on Will.

"I guess that'd be me." Will replied, getting to his feet. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Carlos." The guy said, his muscular body following his head into the room. "I'm your trainer. Dr. Robinson said you were anxious to get started."

"Yeah, I guess I am." Will gave Nine a semi-apologetic look. Nobody likes a suck-up, and he could see in her eyes what she thought about his eagerness. "At my age, I guess I need all the help I can get if I'm going to keep up with these youngsters."

"Hey, you go right ahead." Nine said. "I'm gonna take it easy until I figure out what the hell's going on here."

"Suit yourself." Will followed Carlos from the room.

A couple of turns and a few doors later, he found himself traversing a well appointed workout room. Carlos led him to a locker room and showed him the locker that that had been designated as his. It already contained army regulation P/T clothes that were close enough to his size.

Five minutes later, Will emerged from the locker room and entered the first level of this particular hell. Carlos was determined that his charge not hold up the schedule set for getting the prototypes in shape, and Will thanked his lucky stars that he had been pushing himself pretty hard in his own workouts.

For the next six weeks, he and Prototype Nine saw each other only in passing. Carlos held Will to a rigid twenty four hour schedule that started the moment he had knocked on Will's door. Prototype Nine was on a different schedule, and Will was usually sound asleep when she came in for her own sleep period.

He met, at various times and places, the other eight prototypes, and got to know them about as well as he had his roommate, which was to say, hardly at all. They would chat over meals or in the communal shower, but it wasn't until the last two weeks or so that Will had energy to spare for such luxuries as watching TV or playing pool, chess, checkers or any of the other recreational activities provided for them.

Will was grateful for the busy schedule, as it kept his mind occupied and left fewer opportunities for Karen and Stacy to creep into his consciousness. Even his exhausted sleep was interrupted less frequently by the nightmare. It was a familiar one in which Will was forced to watch from some protected viewpoint as, over and over, the blast tore the flesh from the faces and bodies of the ones he loved.

All of the others were at least ten years younger than Will and he found he had little in common with them. Number five proved to be a passable chess player, but he couldn't stand losing and refused to play with Will after the older man beat him at the game twice in a row.

The poker games they played for toothpicks were a fair diversion for a while, but without money to put on the table, they couldn't hold the interest of most of the playersfor long. The few times he played, Will wound up with most of the tootpicks, mostly by virtue of being able to read the other players better than they could read him.

Will did his best to fit in with the others, but his age and his habit of morose introspection set him apart. As the time neared for the surgical procedures to begin, though, the others began seeking him out, one at a time.

"Hey, Ten." Seven said in a casual voice that belied the worry on her face. "What's happenin'?"