After their initial MAJESTIC-12 briefing, the four “Variants” — what an anemic name that was! — settled into their new digs. Everyone had their own small quarters separate both from each other and from the rest of the base. That large mess hall area was used for meetings and meals, which they shared with about twenty-five other base personnel, including their personal physical trainer, a Marine captain named Anderson with piercing blue eyes, a blond buzz cut that could serve as a carpenter’s level, and a voice that could shake mountains. There was also a cook named Smitty and a sorry-ass Air Force grunt who basically did all the shit jobs and whose name nobody bothered to learn.
The rest were Air Force military police, guarding the little complex as if it were a prison. Hell, maybe it was.
Frank fit in pretty well, of course, given that he was the only Variant with any extensive wartime experience. But that also meant he continued to build his situational awareness each and every day, getting the lay of the land, looking for patterns, and evaluating everyone he came in contact with. And whatever he missed, deceased general Sam Davis’s voice would kick in to add pertinent information.
Their little encampment at Area 51, set at least a couple miles from the landing strip and, presumably, the main base, was comfortable, but there was no mistaking it — it was a prison. There were two guards on a mobile patrol around the small cluster of buildings, which were surrounded by a barbed wire perimeter fence eight feet high. There was a watchtower on top of the guards’ barracks, with solid sightlines over the entire base, always staffed by at least one MP. At night, the fence was pretty well lit with a series of lamps atop high posts. There was a single gate into the complex, with a third guard posted by it 24/7. That meant there were four MPs on duty at any one time, with at least twelve others ready to go at a moment’s notice.
It had only been a few weeks, but at least a quarter of the guards had already rotated out, their replacements ushered in by jeep from elsewhere at Area 51. Every day, a small group of white-coated civilians and mid-level military officers would come to observe or assist in training — both physical and otherwise.
The first order of business was to whip the Variants into shape physically. There was a lot of running, a lot of push-ups and jumping jacks, even some dumbbells (the weights, not the MPs) in a small, makeshift gymnasium. Anderson seemed to go at Ellis the hardest, as he was the youngest and seemingly the least accustomed to physical exertion, protests about his college football days notwithstanding. Anderson didn’t cut Maggie a lot of slack, either, but Frank had to admit, the girl was keeping up well with the boys. As for the old man, Cal, they were taking it pretty easy on him — understandably, since his Enhancement wasn’t too kind to his physical well-being. Yet even though he could have used his long recovery as an excuse to get out of training exercises, Cal still insisted on working as hard as he could. When Frank asked him about it, he just smiled and said, “Twice as good, just as good.”
Aside from the physical exercise, the Variants underwent daily individual testing specifically related to their unique Enhancement, usually with some sort of pencil-necked science guy and an officer. Danny Wallace rotated through regularly, keeping tabs on things — Frank had him pegged as the one who designed the Enhancement testing and training, though he really didn’t know what had qualified him to do that, because who the hell would even have insights into this kind of thing? The more time he spent around him, the more it felt like the Navy guy was really playing it by ear, though it was pretty obvious the kid was smart.
Anderson was not only in charge of the physical training but had promised a thorough course in covert action and spycraft. On their first full day at Area 51, he’d gathered them in the mess hall for an introduction — he was former OSS, had worked with the Reds in Greece and the Balkans during the war — and a warning.
“This isn’t going to be like anything you’ve done before,” he said, staring coldly at each of them in turn. “Not even you, Lodge, with your experience. You‘re going to make split decisions, lie your ass off, and kill people who may not deserve it. You’re going to make tough calls, and worse, you’re going to have to live with them. Now let’s get started.”
And then suddenly, a guy in civvies burst into the room, followed by two MPs. The civilian raised a gun, and Frank immediately hit the deck, grabbing Maggie’s arm and pulling her down with him. The guy traded a few shots with the MPs across the mess hall, then dashed out the back, the soldiers in hot pursuit.
When Frank looked up to see Anderson unsuccessfully trying to stifle a smile, he knew he’d been had.
“Everybody come get a pencil and paper,” Anderson ordered. “You are to write down every detail you can think of about what just happened, from the descriptions of the individuals to their individual actions. You have twenty minutes.”
As it happened, Ellis Longstreet recalled the most, followed by Cal; to Frank’s embarrassment, he’d done the worst, but consoled himself by noting he’d been the only one with the foresight to hit the deck when the bullets flew. Turns out it was an old OSS training exercise used at Camp X, the Canadian outpost used by the Americans, English, and Canadians to train their spies.
With the focus on physical education and Enhancement testing, they hadn’t gotten back to spycraft again, but Frank had to admit that he was looking forward to it — if nothing else, it could help him figure out the rest of Area 51’s secrets.
The Camp X exercise provided a kind of instant bond between the Variants; Frank had seen it during the war, how new soldiers would quickly and suddenly bond after their first firefight. From the first night’s how-do-you-dos over Army-standard grub, it hadn’t taken them more than a week to begin sharing everything else about themselves. They were, after all, Variants — different from everyone else by definition. Two weeks in, they were already talking about their abilities and testing, and to Frank’s surprise, nobody seemed to mind — odd, given the secrecy all around them — though they were always under the watchful eyes of at least two MPs during training and meals. Maybe MAJESTIC-12 saw the four as a team already, and wanted them to get along. Maybe it was an oversight on Danny’s part. But either way, Frank knew it would be valuable, and encouraged the information sharing, especially about their abilities.
Maggie was working to fine-tune her ability; she remained pretty heavy-handed in manipulating emotions. She described one test where she had been charged with making a test subject — the scientist monitoring her, in fact — slightly nervous. She laughed as she described the man pissing himself — so much for subtlety. Frank laughed too — but he noticed the edge in her eyes and wondered if she was enjoying herself a bit too much.
Ellis’s weakness was turning his ability off when he didn’t want to use it. Occasionally, he’d pick something up — a salt shaker on the mess table, or a jump rope in training — and it would turn into water or stone. He was making progress, though, and on a few occasions had actually succeeded in making the end result something he actually wanted, like turning a stone into soft clay. Frank knew that would be a handy thing to have going, if Ellis could get a grip on it. If was the keyword there — there were still too many spontaneous manifestations to really trust him, and Frank wondered how that would go over in the field. What if Ellis’s gun turned to butter in the middle of a firefight?
Cal was a different story. He was on a pretty strict regimen of not healing people, but they were busy drawing up plans for him for when he got stronger. To hear Cal tell it, he needed to figure out how to expend just enough of his own health to heal someone else without suffering too much damage himself. He had to differentiate between healing a cut and a bullet wound. Not that anybody was shooting anyone at Area 51 — the day-one exercise had used blanks. They were also busy codifying Cal’s recovery rate, to determine how long it would take for him to get his strength back, depending on how much he healed.