A/n: Thanks again for your reviews, guys. This is a short, plot heavy chapter to balance out the fluff. Hope you like it…
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Chapter 21: The Why of Sky
Lydecker sat down in his office and logged into his computer. He pulled up the files on the X8s; 313 was still bothering him. The colonel could have sworn he'd seen those eyes somewhere before, but he couldn't for the life of him place where. He opened Sky's records and began to read. Lydecker couldn't find anything out of the ordinary at first glance, but then a note at the bottom of the page caught his eye.
'Templated from Maple Project - Subject 820.'
That's interesting, thought the colonel. Maybe this Subject 820 is who I'm seeing in the boy. He brought up the Maple files too, browsing through them until he found what he was looking for.
"Well, well," he said aloud, as he surveyed the information. "So that's why he looked familiar."
"Hello, Deck," said Renfro, stalking in.
"Director," said Lydecker, swiftly closing the Maple screen. "Had any success with catching our hacker yet?"
"Not yet," she said, "but we will soon enough. I hear you're taking an interest in some of the X8s."
"A limited one, yes. It seems they are giving each other names like the X5s did."
"Really? I wonder what psy-ops will make of that." She leaned over his shoulder to read Sky's file. "Oh, one of the Maple group. I worked on Subject 820, as I recall. Fascinating little boy."
"What was our interest in him?" Asked Lydecker.
"He was totally resistant to psycoactives. It was like he could disconnect his brain so they had no effect on him. Wonderful research project; it took us six months to work out which gene sequence was responsible."
"That is intriguing," remarked Lydecker. "What was the child's name?"
Renfro frowned. "I forget. It's in the notes somewhere." Her cell phone began to ring. "I'll be wanting updates on those X8s, Deck," she told him, leaving his office to take the call.
Typical Renfro, Lydecker thought, looking 820 up again. Works on a child for six months and remembers his number but not his name. It's not as if Logan Cale is easy to forget…
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So did you like the Maple subjects being referred to by numbers as well?