Max Collision
The non-descript white bus pulled up outside the huge facility, apparently unnoticed for the moment, but Jeb new that there would be a flurry of unseen action as their arrival was signaled in the control room. The ground outside was still hidden beneath a thick layer of snow as was common for this time of the year in Gillette, Wyoming. A buzzer went off and the gates moved smoothly open to the left, closing again moments after the bus had driven through.
A beam of torchlight, unnecessary for this early in the evening, swung across the gray and faded stenciled letters, 'The School for the Young and Mentally Disturbed' which ran the length of the bus. Twelve children, all under the age of nine, sat towards the back of the bus, their hands cuffed to the chairs in front of them, their eyes staring jadedly at either the man standing at the front or at the unfamiliar surroundings outside the dark grime-encrusted windows.
Another ten older children – these ranging from ten to fifteen years – stared blankly ahead, their hands and feet cuffed and a nervous guard watched them carefully, behind which a young intern sat nervously fiddling with his case of syringes and making complicated calculations in his head, hoping beyond hope he'd gotten the doses right. Reilly was a genius, they said, Reilly never got it wrong, all the good it did him when they didn't follow his instructions. So here he was, stuck doing everything himself when he never even wanted to be involved with the damn mutants in the first place.
Behind the driver sat a sweet looking two-year old boy, swinging his feet as he stared back adoringly at his friends. He didn't wonder why he didn't get to sit with them; his dad had told him they were special and couldn't play with him, but Ari didn't much care. After his mom had to go away and dad wouldn't play with him, so he didn't have much choice over who he was friends with. They didn't really include him, but that was okay, because they were special and he wasn't. Sometimes he wished he were special, but mostly he just wanted to play like he did when his mom was with him.
Jeb looked past his son, ignoring the boy for the most part, as he surveyed the row of four seven-year old boys. These latest creations were meant to last longer than the last batch, but he wasn't sure he'd made the right decision bringing them here. He didn't know if he was making a mistake coming here at all, but as the bus approached the main building and the sign declaring this a training and medical facility came into sight he knew the chance to turn back was long gone, along, almost certainly, with his professional reputation.
The bus rolled gently to a stop and Jeb stepped down onto the hard frosted snow, looking up to smile at the man who greeted him. Jeb Batchelder was ultimately a scientist and nothing more. A father, yes, a husband, for a time at least, yes, but foremost he was a man of science. The man crossing the icy parking lot was decidedly not, if appearances were anything to judge by, Colonel Donald Lydecker was a military man through and through. The man looked over the bus steadily but said nothing. Jeb hesitated, considering introducing himself, but this man obviously knew who he was and what he did. They'd spoken over the phone a number of times but still, Jeb felt like this man knew much more about him and his experiments than he did about the Colonel and whatever operation he was running here.
Ari, unrestrained by any conventional – or nonconventional – means, raced down the stairs and into the snow, collapsing to his knees and grinning. Lydecker's face clouded and he raised a questioning eyebrow at Jeb as he scooped the boy up.
"My son, Mr Lydecker, he hasn't been altered," Jeb said shortly, indicating the bus with a gesture. The intern, Reilly, made his way down the aisle, turning every few steps to look back at the experiments. The mild sedation he'd worked up had worked wonders, keeping them quiet and from putting up a struggle without having a bus full of unconscious children trying to travel north.
"Dr Batchelder, would you like me to unload them?" Reilly asked, not bothering to hide his distaste. Jeb felt a pang of sympathy for his young nephew, but nodded briefly, watching him go back to the things he hated. The Director had been putting pressure on Jeb since he'd sold part of his company to her and he was making a last ditch attempt to keep The School under his control and supervision. Filling it with people he could trust was one thing, but he doubted he could keep the place from her clutches much longer. The tendrils of her control extended ever more with each piece of equipment she provided the funding for and more and more Jeb was starting to realize his folly in trying to keep his experiments from her influence. Improving the human species illegally didn't bring in money, creating super soldiers did – or would, if they could get it right.
The experiments stepped off the bus and into the snow, not even flinching as their bare feet crunched into the skin of ice that had formed over the snow, their blank staring eyes focused on some point ahead of them, fixed in the distance. Jeb hoped that some of them would survive the exercise planned.
"The barracks are this way. We've cleared cell block E for them." Lydecker turned and started for the building, the expectation that Jeb and his 'soldiers' would follow obvious in the man's confident stride. Jeb looked at the children, the youngest a pair of skinny toddlers, whose twin stares tore at him with their blue mournful eyes. He shuddered at the idea of these beautiful children being left broken and beaten by whatever monsters this Lydecker fellow had created. What had he done?
"Come on, Reilly, you heard the man, let's get the experiments out of the cold," he announced, feeling the full burden of selling his soul for his company to remain intact. His nephew nodded wearily and he looked down at his son pulling at his hand. His dreams had lost him his wife already, his nephew's happiness, and if what the director planned was true he may have already lost his son. Was it all worth it? He'd brought these children here to fight trained killers. He'd brought them here to die. It was no longer a question of whether it was worth 'it,' because what he'd strived to save were all about to be destroyed.