was doing this. Trying to think as hard as possible, to concentrate as much as
he could while the distractions of searing lungs and tearing muscles pulled at
the edges of his mind, Dean knew that something was wrong.
Was it a nightmare?
No, not that… Dean didn’t dream with such clarity. His muscles never ripped and
tore in his dreams, and his lungs never felt as though they would explode in his
chest as if someone had rammed a gren down his throat.
Vaguely, plucking at the corners of his mind, he could remember the redoubt and
what had followed. When he reached the point where the trank darts were fired at
him, everything descended into blackness…
Until now. So how did he get here? It certainly wasn’t an ordinary dream.
“HIS REM IS GOING totally crazy, Gen. I think we should pull him out before the
kid ruptures something.”
Gen Wallace fixed the tech with a gaze that spoke of barely suppressed fury.
Murphy, watching from a few paces back, noted the way that the small man quailed
at the Gen’s stare. He seemed to visibly shrink. It was something in the way
Wallace looked at you. There was a mixture of ice and fire in that gaze, like
the barely controlled impassive skin over a raging volcano of fury. The thought
of being the agent that unleashed it wasn’t pleasant. Murphy screwed his face
into a wry grin, or something close. A genetic problem had resulted in numb
facial muscles, so they didn’t respond too well. Inbreeding. At least it was
minor compared to many.
Murphy switched his attention from Wallace and the tech to the kid on the couch.
He suppressed a shiver as his view took in the boy, stretched naked on the
PVC-covered foam rubber that molded to the contours of his body. Not that you
could see much of him under the trailing mess of wires and electrodes that
covered his body, attached to the skin by guar-gum pads that occasionally
slipped on the sweaty surface of the boy’s twitching skin. The wires entwined
across the floor until they reached the opened back of a small comp console that
sparked ominously with faint crackles.
This part of the old R&D facility was populated by some of the geekiest
specimens Murphy had ever seen. The tech who had just been stared down by the
Gen, for example. He was a small, hunchbacked man with a squeaky voice—whiny and
irritating even after a few words—who stood at barely four feet tall. His white
coat trailed across the floor, and the sleeves were turned up several times so
that his tiny hands could poke out of the ends. But worst of all from Murphy’s
point of view, the geek tech was wearing thickly lensed glasses that still
didn’t seem strong enough for his vision, as he squinted heavily when he stared
at Wallace.
That could account for the sparking and crackling terminals. Although it was
almost sacrilege to think, Murphy felt certain that the techs weren’t learning
anything new, and whatever was supposed to be passed down the family lines was
somehow going astray.
Murphy doubted that Wallace would get whatever he wanted from any of these
outsiders. Chances were that they would be killed on these machines before the
Gen learned anything.
Murphy looked at the kid, jerking and twitching underneath the skein of wire.
He wouldn’t last long.
IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE of strength, stubbornness and sheer determination that Dean
had, but he finally crossed the swampy grasslands and reached firm earth that
felt as hard and smooth as metal beneath his feet.
So far, so good. Dean had no idea why he was doing this, but he was driven by
some inner message that pushed him on by instinct.
The night was cold and still, and he could almost see the steam rise from his
hot, sweating body by the fallow light of the shrouded moon as he made his way
across the earth toward the three-story blockhouse that constituted the girls’
dormitory. A veranda ran around the length of the building, with stanchions at
each corner that would allow him a swift and easy ascent. Even with the pains