Janice had experienced a great deal in her life. There had more times than she could count when she was sure she was going to get killed. Nothing had prepared her for the feeling of falling over a sheer ledge in the arms of a genetically engineered solider, counting on a fifteen year old telekinetic to keep them from splattering all over the rocks below. She had to bite her lip to keep back a scream of terror, something she had not done in years.
Cole had thrown them headfirst off of the cliff's edge, his body locked rigid. She forced herself to stay against him, and not fight when they were jerked sharply forward. But they weren't falling fast enough. Janice had done skydiving before, and knew what a freefall was like. This was way too slow. Suddenly whatever was holding them released, and they tumbled to the ground. Now Cole was taking over, flipping them around so that they landed feet first. He hit the ground, her weight jerking him off balance. They both tumbled to the ground, rolling a couple of time, Cole ending up mostly on top of Janice.
"You okay?" Cole asked, looking a little surprised himself that they were both alive. She nodded. He glanced up to check Heather. Janice could see the near panic on his face as he jumped off of her.
Heather had collapsed in the snow. Cole landed beside her, and picked her up the upper half of her body. "Heather?" he called to her, slapping her face lightly. "C'mon Little Bit, talk to me." She'd held on to them too long.
Heather's eyes flickered for a second, and she whimpered. "Hurts," she sobbed, and then passed out again.
Cole was almost relieved. Migraine. She needed to sleep it off. She could do that in the caves. Janice was on her feet and over by them. Good. They needed to get out of there.
"Is she going to be okay?" Janice asked.
Cole nodded. "Gives her migraines," he explained. "She needs to sleep it off." He took a deep breath, and then straightened his right leg, locking it. They had landed hard, and his right knee was out of socket. He wrenched it hard, flinching as it popped back into place. He stood, scooping up Heather. His knee hurt, but it was bearable. He'd had worse.
Janice was pretty amazed at that. She'd had a knee go out before, and it hurt like hell to get it back into place. She wondered if his tolerance to pain was personality or Manticore. "Let me know if you need me to carry her," she told him.
"I'm fine," he snapped. Looked like he still had some regular male traits.
Cole had a flashlight in his bag, and Janice used it to lead the way. She had gotten around there before in the dark, but it was much easier to use the light. The caves twisted, sometimes doubling back on themselves, coming out near the entrance, or going straight for a wall into a dead end. They formed a maze as designed by a lunatic. Janice knew almost every inch of them.
Cole knew he was lost after about ten minutes. He thought he could get out, but pretty sure didn't count. Janice seemed to know where she was going. He was going to have to trust that she was leading them to a good place, and not setting them up for a fall. She might think his knee would slow him down, but if she double-crossed them, she'd learn quickly that physical pain could be ignored easily.
Heather wasn't moving and that worried him. Alicia had sent him to save her daughter, not hurt her while she rescued him. But, not all of the omens were bad. The weather was getting worse, and that would slow down their pursuers. Whoever was after Heather was going to know that her parents were going to show up soon enough. They knew he was there, and they would not want to attempt to tangle with three Manticore soldiers. Maybe having Heather down for a little while would be a good thing. He doubted she would have the patience to be still long enough for their pursuers to decide to leave. He knew that laying low was sometimes the best way to fight a battle.
It was marginally warmer in the caves being out of the wind, but Janice was still freezing. Cole didn't seem to be bothered, and that was annoying on its own. She hoped everything was still where it had been the last time she'd been here. After about forty minutes, there was a jag in the rock. The shadows made it look like a solid wall, but in the corner, there was a break. She slipped through it easily, wound down another corridor, making lefts and rights seemingly randomly, and then came out in a circular area that was completely closed off except for an entranceway on either side.
Cole looked around carefully when they went in. Janice immediately went to one side, knelt, and started brushing at the dirt. The "room" was about forty feet in diameter, a natural bubble in the rock. There were only two ways for someone to get in, and they were barely wide enough for a person to pass through. If someone tried to sneak up on them, they would have to go through what was nearly a perfect trap.
"Bingo," Janice said. Cole went to her and saw what she had. There were some start sticks for a fire, and some fuel. There looked to be some other supplies there, including a first aid kit. Janice was glad to see the first aid kit. The last thing she needed was her shoulder getting infected or something, and it was still bleeding. Not as bad, but she needed to bandage it.
Cole put Heather down. "Take care of your shoulder," he ordered Janice. He grabbed the start sticks, and the can of LiquiWood. All you had to do was pour it on the ground, use a start stick, and the stuff would burn like a wood fire. Much handier than trying to get a fire going in a conventional manner, and it didn't give off smoke so it could be burned in a closed environment. It had been designed for the specific purpose of being able to light a fire where the ventilation wasn't that great. As long as there was a source of some fresh air, like the entranceways, the stuff could burn forever.
Janice reached into her pocket, and pulled out her trusty Bic. "You need a lighter?" she asked, looking up at him. She had to laugh when she saw the lighter in his hand. It was even the same color as hers. Even Cole grinned. "I guess we were both taught by the same manuals," she said with a smile.
He had the fire going within a few seconds, and Janice wrapped her injured arm. She had really gotten lucky that the bullet only grazed her. A little further up on her shoulder was the remnant of a time she wasn't quite so lucky. At least that time she wasn't trapped in a cave with a couple of science projects. May you live in interesting times, she thought. It was an ancient Chinese curse that didn't sound so bad until you thought about it. Times were getting pretty interesting again.
She sat back against the rock, the fire already warming the room. Cole was sitting a few feet away next to Heather. She was still out, but he had her head propped on his leg, stroking her red hair. His adoration of his niece was evident. She watched them for a minute, trying to figure out the family dynamics. Obviously Heather shared some genetic traits with Cole. One of her parents had to be his brother or sister, or maybe both of her parents were in the same experimental group as Cole. Janice had referred to the others in her unit as her brothers. It could be the same with them.
"How long were you in the military before you went into research?" she asked Cole.
He looked up. "What?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's pretty evident you're not exactly a normal person," she replied. "From everything I've seen, it's rather easy to figure out that Manticore is short for Project Manticore. Sounds like a black ops project to me. What did they do, like injections to cause the genetic changes after you went in there?"
"It's all classified," he finally said.
"My clearance is level A-9."
"It's all ancient history," he said. "It doesn't need to be brought up anymore than it already has. Heather is a normal girl despite what happened to us. I don't want anyone to think of her as a freak."
"I know she's not a freak," Janice responded a little hotly. How dare he think she would hold it against Heather for what her parents did? "But I think I have a right to know what I'm risking my life over. Was Manticore something the US government did, or was it someone else?"
"U.S.," he replied, looking back down at Heather. Why was he evading the truth? Anyone with an "A" level clearance was high enough to know about Manticore. He knew why. He didn't want to hear her response. Anyone who found out was first shocked, and then horrified that he even existed. They didn't want him anywhere near them after that. They couldn't deal with something that he'd had no say over. Cole didn't care what Janice thought about him personally, but he didn't want Heather to get hurt.
"I get it now," Janice said, trying to piece everything together. "Heather's parents were part of your group. They did the unthinkable and ended up having a couple of kids together, and now someone wants to get their hands on the product of genetically enhanced parents."
"Heather's genetically enhanced," Cole said, looking at her with cold eyes. "Her parents, and me, are genetically engineered."
"What's the diff…" Janice began, and then it hit her. Engineered? As in built from the ground up? Manticore wasn't there to train soldiers; it was there to breed them. The United States had allowed people to be bred like that? She thought about some of the more sinister things she had been called upon to do. It was possible. There were people who would love to do that.
"You were born there, weren't you?" she asked softly.
He nodded. "Taught to be the ultimate solider from the time I could walk. We are in fact human-animal hybrids." He waited for the disgust.
"What animal?" He looked back up at Janice with that question. She wasn't sickened. She was curious.
"Depends on the X group," he replied. "Heather's father is X-5. He's a cat hybrid, but there may be some other animal DNA mixed in there with a few of them. Her mother and I are X-6 which is still cat, but they threw in some lizard DNA to the mix." Janice was still looking fascinated. "This doesn't freak you out in the slightest?"
She thought for a minute. "It's rather sickening that our government would do that to innocent children, but I've seen some hideous black ops things go down. I can think of a dozen men in power now that would love to have a bunch of genetically engineered soldiers." She paused. "So why are you a pilot and not off assassinating people or something?"
He wasn't sure how to explain. "It's a long story," he said. "Manticore collapsed under its own weight, and the soldiers were assigned to different branches of the government. I wanted to fly."
"And Shadow wanted to be a medic?"
Cole smiled. "Shawna wanted to be a doctor, but she wouldn't have been able to deal with being around regular norms all of the time. One of the men who she works with had seen another X-6 in action before, and knew how to deal with Shawna. So she was put with norms, but they weren't the everyday type. They were closer to us, and it was easier for her to adapt to that lifestyle than working in a military hospital. She was mad at first, but she loves it now."
"I heard that the South Africans tried genetic engineering and using mechanical implants, but it blew out years ago," Janice commented. Cole looked a little smug. She was willing to bet that Manticore had something to do with the failure. "Has anyone else ever managed to…" how did she word without being offensive, "duplicate Manticore research?"
Now he grinned. He could see her running through the right words there. Build another solider, engineer something like you…those just were rude-sounding. Not that he'd never heard them before, but it was funny she was trying to be delicate about it. Most of the people he'd dealt with were not polite about his genetic code. When the sixers were together, it was easy to blow off rude comments, but without them as backup, it was tougher.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he replied. Janice caught the humor in his voice. She wasn't sure what was so amusing, but she did notice that he was rather good-looking when he smiled. How old was he anyways?
"You mean there's something more fantastic than the US genetically engineering the perfect soldier, and one of their offspring is my student?" she tossed back at him.
"The Chinese managed to build the body," he said, "but they knew from Manticore that an independently thinking soldier wasn't the best idea, so they tried to make them into living automatons." Janice winced thinking of the possibilities of that. On assignments, you had to be able to think fast on your feet. "It didn't work in a most spectacular way," Cole continued. "The only people who were ever successful other than us were the Canadians."
Janice stared at him. "The Canadians? There's the Russians, and the European States, and the British, and you're saying that out of all of them the Canadians figured it out?"
Cole let out a little laugh. "Let's just say, before the Pulse, they had everyone fooled into thinking their military strength was weak. Most people thought if attacked they would use flying hockey pucks as defense. In reality, their R & D in this field was years ahead of everyone except Manticore."
"So did they join the Manticore fold too?"
Cole shook his head. "The Pulse killed Project Hades. Literally. There were equipment failures or something like that and the researchers and most of the prototypes were destroyed." He paused. "Manticore was the only group with the ability to take down anything they had left alive, so they did some clean up on Hades."
"They killed their prototypes?" Janice had to ask. That was sickening. The Hades prototypes had to have been children at the time of the Pulse.
"I wasn't there when they did the clean up," he replied. She looked a little doubtful. 'I wasn't there' was a standard lie in the CIA. He grinned at her. "I was seven when the Pulse hit. That's a little young even for Manticore standards. I think some of them survived. Nothing was found in the research facilities, and there were a lot of things missing from there, including some genetically engineered children."
Janice let out her breath. She hadn't realized that she had been rooting for the kids to escape until she heard they had. She laughed. "My horoscope said I would meet an interesting man today," she said.
"Interesting?" Cole said, amused. "Lady, I'm about as interesting as they get."
