Transparent dividers were suddenly replaced by thick concrete walls.
They’d engineered humans with utterly different neurological functioning? Oliver couldn’t quite buy that. It just couldn’t be right. He kept expecting Five to weigh in, but Five stayed silent.
They slowed to a stop; the lift door opened.
Oliver clutched the wall, his knees jelly, his heart hammering fiercely.
They couldn’t possibly be real.
“They won’t hurt you,” Wiewall said. Her voice seemed to be coming from a distance, although she was still right beside him.
They were sixteen feet tall at least, walking on three legs, ghost white, their huge faces obviously inspired by the statues ringing the island.
“How is this possible?”
The creatures were engaged in a training exercise in an enormous space that must have been a half mile square. Their movements were fluid, athletic, assured; the third leg allowed them to run incredibly fast—faster than a Luyten.
It’s not a footrace, Five said. There was something in his voice. It was tentative. Afraid, even. They wasted their time bringing me here.
Why had they brought Five? Oliver had been too mesmerized by the giant warriors to consider the question until Five brought it up.
They want to find out if I can read them.
“Can you?” Oliver asked aloud.
Wiewall glanced at him. “Can I what?”
“Sorry. I was speaking to the Luyten. I don’t know why I do it out loud.”
“It’s speaking to you right now?” Her voice held a tinge of awe.
“That’s right.”
The giants were carrying standard weapons: bayoneted assault rifles, grenade launchers, all enlarged to match their massive scale. On top of this there were what appeared to be blades running down the sides of their arms and legs for hand-to-hand combat. Other hardware was attached to their skintight black uniforms at their forearms, like it was a part of their anatomy. In that regard, it reminded Oliver of Luyten weaponry.
“The weapons bulging from their forearms…” Oliver began.
“Their arms and legs are artificial, from the joints down. That not only made them simpler to design from a genetic perspective; it makes them stronger and faster. They control their artificial limbs entirely through thought.”
Oliver watched them for a moment. “Their movements are so fluid.”
Wiewall smiled like a proud parent. Then the smile was gone, and she was all business again.
“Notice they only have three fingers. Our ergonomics team determined that was maximally efficient for handling weapons.”
Their fingers looked like powerful claws, thick and long. And they were fleshy—not at all mechanical-looking. “Are these all of them?” Oliver asked. He counted twenty.
“So far we have two thousand. If they’re effective against the Luyten, the plan is to produce several million at facilities already being constructed under cities around the world. No one involved in building the facilities has any idea what they’re for; they’re working from blueprints.”
Oliver nodded. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking. The cities involved must be diverting a substantial percentage of their resources to the construction.
Do you know what she’s thinking about you right now? She thinks you’re bizarre. You never make eye contact. You fidget. Just now, you were digging at your scalp with a fingernail while speaking to her.
Willing himself to ignore the comment, he turned to Wiewall and asked, “How will you convey battle instructions to the—what are they called?”
She wonders if you’re autistic.
“Defenders. That’s the point—humans can’t know the defenders’ intentions; otherwise the Luyten will as well. They fight independently. They develop their own battle plans.”
He gawked at Wiewall. “You’re kidding me.”
“They don’t look it, but they’re extremely intelligent. They’re epigenetically primed to learn extremely rapidly. They learn to speak in a matter of weeks. Then, when they’re not here training, they’re in a classroom studying warfare. All they know is military strategy and tactics. They don’t sleep, so their training is almost nonstop.”
Oliver didn’t know what he’d been expecting. An airborne virus that affected Luyten but not humans. A new superweapon. He hadn’t expected this. If the Luyten could read the defenders’ minds, though, they’d be nothing but bigger targets.
“You said your medical people think the Luyten’s ability won’t work without serotonin present. How confident are they?”
Wiewall paused, then, in a careful, deliberate tone, said, “Some are more confident than others.”
You just scratched inside your nose. Yes, it was just barely inside, but it doesn’t matter. Do you know how uncomfortable you just made her? Do you see how she’s averting her eyes? It drove Vanessa crazy when you did things like that in public.
Oliver squeezed his eyes closed, knowing that would only make him seem odder to Wiewall, but needing a moment to regain his composure.
“Five isn’t going to help you,” he said, opening his eyes. “He understands what the stakes are. He’ll die first.”
The young scientist’s expression did not instill confidence. “I was told that wasn’t my concern.”
“Whose concern is it? Mine? Because I’m telling you right now, Five may talk to me, but believe me, he doesn’t say anything useful.”
Dr. Wiewall swallowed. She was blinking rapidly, clearly uneasy. “I’m not sure what to say. If there’s a plan, there may be a good reason no one in the Luyten’s range is aware of it. Or maybe they’re just hoping the Luyten will slip up. I don’t know.”
Chuckling morosely, Oliver looked at the ceiling. “If that’s the plan, they don’t know Five very well.”
14
Oliver Bowen
March 12, 2030. Easter Island.
Hands on hips, his breathing slightly labored from the walk up the sloping field, Oliver took in the line of statues. Moai, the locals called them. They were watching the horizon, their faces resolute. Waiting. At least that’s how it looked to Oliver, now that he’d seen the defenders. The resemblance was uncanny. How the geneticists had engineered that resemblance, Oliver could not imagine.
“What do you know,” Oliver said aloud. “Maybe the Hulk and Spider-Man showed up after all.”
No response. Oliver thought he knew why Five had gone mute: He didn’t want to risk tipping off Oliver about whether he could read the defenders.
So much had changed since Oliver learned of the defenders. Five had been right—before, Oliver had had very little hope. There had seemed no reason for hope. Humanity had been whittled from seven billion to under four in a matter of three years. They were surrounded by the Luyten, crowded into the cities, starved of food and resources. All that seemed left was for the Luyten to wipe out the cities.
“Dr. Bowen.” It was Wiewall, on the comm he’d been provided.
“Yes, ma’am?” he replied, then winced as he heard how stupid he sounded calling her ma’am. His attempts at levity usually fell flat.
“You’d better start heading back. They’re bringing the Luyten down in a few minutes.”
“On my way.”
Oliver took one last look at the Moai, and realized some were the same height as the defenders.