Chapter 36

Close Call

We all dashed into the building and closed the door behind us.

I don’t think I was ever more grateful to see Hakim. His friend, dressed in tattered slacks, a grimy business shirt with brownish-yellow streaks, and scratched up fancy shoes, I didn’t recognize.

“Hakim!” yelled out Jake. “You saved our skins! We thought we’d never see you again,” Jake cheered. “Your daughter. She okay?”

Hakim lowered his gaze and nodded his head.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry…” said Jake, leaning in to embrace him.

“My wife? Where’s my wife Fatima and my daughter Anik?” asked Hakim.

There’s was nothing but silence. None of us could speak. How could we tell him? Tell him that they were gassed by Swarmers. That one of them was suffering. That Stryker had to put her down like a dog, because she was in so much pain.

Jake nodded his head and lowered his gaze, before reaching over to pat the top of his shoulder in an act of comfort.

Stryker placed his foot against the wall and leaned back, dropping his head down to the floor. He couldn’t look him in the eye.

Captain Nash leaned in and shook his hand forcefully. “When you didn’t return from your bus route, I thought I’d never see you again, my man,” he said. Then looking over at Hakim’s partner from top to bottom, he asked, “Who’s the suit?”

The suit shifted his weight from side to side looking a bit uncomfortable but extended his hand. “My name is Rupert Ellison,” he said.

Nash looked at his hand but didn’t reciprocate. The man trusted no one, especially anyone new.

The suit nodded. “Look, I’m sure you all have a lot of questions, but we gotta leave this place, now. The EMP rifles stopped the first group, but the AI’s can detect when a signal drops off. They’re going to send in another team soon to find out what happened.”

“How do you know so much about this?” I asked.

He took a slight step back and paused, looking down to the floor when he spoke. “I was head of scientific marketing for Tesnic.”

I swear I could hear everyone gasp. Captain Nash flew towards him, reached for his collar and slammed him up against the wall, now grasping him by the neck. Hope screamed for him to stop, and I instinctively grabbed her and held her back.

 “So, you’re the moron who convinced the entire nation that integrating these things into society was a good idea, huh?” Jake and Stryker reached for Nash’s biceps, each exerting themselves to pull him off as Ellison turned blue. They struggled under the weight of his arms, which acted like logs rooted to the ground, sturdy and unmovable.

Nash’s face turned beet red. He could go from A to Z at the flick of a switch, but it was always measured. I had never seen him actually go into attack mode to the point of threatening someone’s life.

“Let him go!” I could hear Miss Williams wail.

Hakim wrapped through his arms around Nash’s waist trying desperately to pull him off his newfound friend. “Stop! Let him explain,” he yelled.

Nash released his grip, took a step back, and pointed his gun at his face. Ellison gasped for air and then drew in some large breaths to steady his breathing.

“Go ahead, you got three seconds to start explaining before I pump you full of lead.” The suit didn’t know that he was out of ammo, but Nash knew how to make it sound very convincing.

Ellison doubled over, placing his palms on his knees, then lifted one palm in the air. “Yes,” he paused to catch his breath… “I am the one who marketed their products, but I swear to you that I had no idea that things would end up like this. This was going to cure the world of diseases, violence, crime. All of it. We were on the cusp of ending sterilizations through surrogacy. It was going to create the perfect human that was going to fix all the wrongs in the human gene pool.

“And creating the Reapers was the right solution. Didn’t your first protocol give you any indication that this wasn’t going to work, jacka**?” retorted Nash.

It was a testing failure, or so we thought. The science was still very new, but we thought we had that fixed with the second one.  It was supposed to be the one that would improve everything.

“And I suppose that oversized, violent giant back there was your second prototype?” Nash smirked as he signaled to the sleeping giant wedged between two walls.

 He nodded. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

“Well, it did, a**hole. There are rules for everything, natural laws that we were given not to violate. They have been there from the beginning, and they will still be there all the way to the end. You all decided you knew better and could tamper with them just because you could, and now, it’s come to bite everyone in the a**. Don’t cry me a giant f**king river, pretending that all this was for the good of humankind. You liked the money, d**khead, so you put the blinders on and turned the other way, even when...”--

“There’s more…” Ellison said, shifting his eyes from side to side.  

I didn’t like people who couldn’t look you in the eye, and like Nash, I didn’t trust him, either.

“Oh, oh joy. There’s more. Nash crossed his arms, holding his weapon over one forearm. Well, genius, please… how rude of me to interrupt you.”

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