Chapter Three: Secrets
Kito moved into the adjacent hallway feeling nervous and edgy. There was no sound save the whir of the air conditioner, thrumming loudly in his augmented hearing, and nearly masking all other sounds. The hallway was hospital clean, the tile immaculately waxed and the walls extremely white under the bright florescent lighting. Kito paused briefly at each door as he moved down the hallway trying to discern what was so special here.
Each room he came to was empty and dark, and each time he became a bit more disappointed. Was he wasting his time here? There was nothing in so far that would warrant the kind of attention Lydecker seemed to be paying to it. But he kept moving sure that there was a reason, there had to be.
He turned left down the next cross-hall working his way steadily and systematically through the rooms. After about ten minutes he finally came to a room that piqued his interest. As he looked in he found himself staring at what seemed to be a hospital nursery. There were six cribs each holding a child, and each of those had a bar code emblazoned between their eyes. Kito's eyebrow raised as he looked over the children. OK so there was another generation of kids here in Seattle, that was mildly unusual, but a lot had changed in the past ten years forcing the dissemination of the Manticore project to several smaller installations, rather than one central installation that had been in Wyoming. So while it was unexpected it was not out of the realm of possibility.
Shrugging he moved on, knowing in his bones that could not be the reason for the secrecy. As he continued on he found each successive room contained another group of kids each progressively older. He was no expert but they ranged from mere months old to nearly six or seven. He wondered where the training facility was that he had not run across it before. The rooms that he had seen so far had all been pretty much barracks rooms holding ten to twelve individuals. Logic suggested that the training facility was elsewhere.
He continued on curiosity egging him to continue. He found himself disappointed yet again as the next section of hallway was dark just as the first section had been. He checked his watch again, it was no working on two O'clock and he was going to have to turn back soon. But not quite yet he wanted to search just a bit deeper into the facility, still not satisfied that this was all there was to this buildings secret.
He turned down another section of hallway finding himself moving through the dark to another section of lit hallway. About halfway down the stretch a door to the lit section opened and Kito hastily threw open a door entered it and as inconspicuously as possible shut it behind him. Kito then plastered himself against the edge of the doorway so the person coming from the room would not see him.
He watched the small window in the door intently as the individual passed by. Kito already had a clue who he would see but he still held his breath as Lydecker's sour face passed by the glass. He counted to 100 before opening the door and looking both the direction Lydecker went and the direction he had come from. Kito skirted toward the direction Lydecker had come from, already knowing which door he had come out of. That part of his brain that memorized details in a split second giving him an edge now.
Kito's heart was racing, somewhere deep down he knew that this room, and what ever was in it was the secret he had been looking for, that he had risked discovery to figure out. Taking a deep breath to calm himself he sidled up to the door and peered in.
There was not that much to see. The room was completely dark, with the exception of a spotlight that illuminated the very center of the room. There was a heavy metal chair lit by the light that was bolted to the floor with some heavy-duty hardware. Strapped securely to that chair was a woman. Kito's brows furrowed as he looked at her. This was Lydecker's Secret…a woman?
Still curious, Kito opened the door, one that he half expected to be locked, and stepped inside. He approached the woman in the chair cautiously, head tilted to one side as he focused and refocused on her details.
The woman had not moved at all since he had come in. She looked like she was in a bad way, if she was even alive. Her dark wavy hair was disheveled and plastered together in wet strings, her head was hanging down and to one side, which meant that she was either unconscious or asleep. She was dressed only in a dirty white tank top and a pair of underwear. Either arm was strapped tightly to the arms of the chair with what looked to Kito like the same material that fire hose was made from. Her ankles were much the same. She was also strapped securely at the thighs, waist and chest. Who ever did this to her didn't want her to go anywhere.
There were scars over much of her body, had Lydecker been torturing her? If so what for?
Kito looked around into the darkness refocusing to see the tools of her torture not too far from where she was, but far enough out of reach that she could not use them. What were they trying to accomplish with her?
Kito had a thought… and raised her slack head to try and confirm it. He parted her damp thick hair looking at her forehead. But no, there was no bar code between her brows. Well she wasn't Manticore, so what could Lydecker want with her? Could she be one of the surrogates? That didn't make much sense to him either. Surrogates were always returned to the outside world, either with substantial compensation, or to a loony bin when they would not remain silent about the project.
She had a soft-featured face that was most probably of Mexican heritage. Her lips were very full, but he could not tell if it was natural of a byproduct of whatever torture that she had endured, for there were several bruises in varying stages of healing. He could only guess through the mask of black and blue but she looked to be in her early thirties.
Something dawned on Kito as he lowered her head gently… only X-7 and up were coded between the brows. He looked at the floor a moment, what had he been told about those before X-7? They had been coded in a different place but it proved easily hidden so it had been changed. She was old enough that she could have been an older generation of Manticore.
Kito snapped his fingers as he finally remembered where the bar code had been placed pre Gen 7. On the neck, that was where they had been tattooed. It had originally been that way so that the Manticore's could pass for "Norms" and it worked only too well. X-5 had broken free and the twelve that had remained free had easily blended into normal society and evaded their pursuers for years, there were still some that had yet to be caught. Wanting to confirm his self-revelation he stood and moved around to the back of the chair. Easily he moved aside her matted hair, sucking in a shocked breath as he revealed a Manticore bar code, "Oh my God," Kito whispered, and he was not a religious man.