Chapter Five
"So, explain to me what Project Manticore is." Logan asked, leaning back in one of the chairs situated in front of Lydecker's desk.
Lydecker glanced down at the framed photo that sat on the left corner of his desk. From left to right, Tinga, Zane, Jondy, Zack, Max, Syl, and Krit stood together, all but Syl grinning like idiots about whatever they had been talking about at the time. The picture managed to capture each one of their personalities perfectly. Syl being the resident goddess, Zane being to sophisticated for all of them, Krit rolling his eyes at all of them, Zack being way to serious, and Max being the center of attention. If any other person was to see the picture, it would look like any average group of college-aged kids, the oldest being Zack at twenty-five, the youngest Max at twenty-two.
"Project Manticore was started in the late nineteen nineties by a genetics lab in Wyoming. I came aboard around the last stages of X3, but X4 was my real first group. Group X1 was a failure, they all were so severely deformed that they were not even recognized as human. They had to be destroyed if they didn't survive the first two weeks, which many of them didn't. Then there was group X2, they seemed to be relatively successful until the age of four when they developed severe anomalies. We kept four for research, the rest were also destroyed."
Logan raised a hand to cut Lydecker off. "There seems to be a lot of destroying going on here."
"What? Would you rather we had kept them alive, to suffer in the case of the X1s, or chained in some cell so they wouldn't go on a killing rampage in the case of the X2s?"
"You knew after the first group that these things would happen, why didn't you research them to prevent it?" Logan shot back indignantly.
"But we did." Lydecker explained bitingly. "The X2s, out of a group of twenty five, only two had deformities, and they weren't nearly as severe as the X1s. With X3, there was only one deformity, and three anomalies."
"So the X3s were the first success." Logan asked, wishing for a pen and paper to take notes with, although he knew everything his was learning he would never forget no matter how hard he would try.
"No, the X3s proved to be incapable of learning basically anything at the rate that the X2s had before they developed the anomalies. Eventually, we terminated the X3s."
"By termination you mean you killed them too." Logan asked somewhat wearily.
Lydecker stared at Logan over the rims of his wire-framed glasses. "We aren't monsters." He said in a low voice. "We induced them with amnesia and put them into the foster system. As of now they are all leading normal lives. We know because we do keep track of them." He said slowly, with bitterness lacing his words.
Logan nodded. "So the X4s were your first project."
"Correct." Lydecker said as he propped his feet up on his desk. "I joined in early 1996 when they were first invtro-ing the surrogate mothers with the X4s. The X4s were the first success that Manticore had ever seen. Out of the twenty-five chimeras, nine of them survived to the age of five. The other thirteen developed either severe seizures or a disorder where they would spontaneously age thirty or so years in just under an hour. Of the twelve that survived that three of them made it past the first ten years of training. Those three died when their plane was shot down over the English Channel during the French Revolution of 2019."
"That brings you up to X5s."
"The first X5 was born in February of 1997, the last in July of 2000. We finally go it right with the X5s. They excelled in every single area of combat, explosives, recon, espionage, hand-to-hand combat, and artillery, even transport. They could run faster at the age of 4 than the X4s could at age 10. They could jump higher, swim faster, hold their breath longer, learn quicker, and all around fight harder than any of the previous attempts. Out of the twenty-five, we saw the highest success ratio. Only one died, X5 482 of complications from her seizures. The rest were split into three groups, eight --" Lydecker was cut off as the phone sitting on his desk shrilled.
"Lydecker." He snapped into the receiver.
Logan took this moment to absorb the information that he had learned in the last fifteen minuets. When Lydecker got done with his phone call, he was going to ask if he knew of any other organizations that had produced these enhanced human prototypes that he knew of. He wanted to know how a prototype had ended up in his godfather's office, when it was obvious she wasn't of military background. What would the military want with Phillip Costello?
Lydecker stood as he hung up the phone. "Well, it is your luck day, Mr. Cale. Our two commanding officers of Group X5 are have just gotten back from their mission. Their helicopter has just entered base perimeters. Stay here and let me talk to them before you meet them. It is safe to say that they aren't going to react well to you, especially not Ma-- er, X5-452." He said as he rounded the desk and walked out into the hallway.
Max shook her head, flipping her hair over her shoulder, which proved to be pointless as the wind blowing through the open windows of the small helicopter whipped her hair right back in her face. She tapped her foot lightly against the floor as she looked out the window to the approaching base below. Zack sat next to her, rolling his eyes at Max's constant fidgeting. When she reached up to toy with the dog tags she wore around her neck, a present from Krit on her last birthday, Zack pulled off his sunglasses and turned in his seat to face her. "Would you sit still?" He projected his voice over the loud chopping of the helicopter blades. Max smiled winningly. "I'm just glad to be back. I haven't been on base for about a month, with Mission 945 starting right after I finished 760."
"Well, your constant moving around is making me even more tired than I already am. You do realize that because I had to go retrieve the Costello information that I haven't slept in over four days?"
"Not my fault, don't blame me that you didn't get the shark DNA that I got." Max said, her eyes glinting mischievously.
Zack just rolled his eyes again, pulling his sunglasses back on and leaning his head against the back of the seat as the pilot began to lower the helicopter onto the helipad on Manticore's roof. Max leaned forward, using her telescopic vision to see Lydecker step out of a door, standing on the outskirts of the helipad as the skids touched down. As soon as safe, Max slid open the door and stepped out, the jacket of her black pant suit snapping in the wind behind her as she turned to accept the bags that Zack handed down to her. Together, they jogged across to Lydecker, Max's heeled boots clicking as she easily kept pace with her brother.
"X5 599 and 452 returning from Mission 945, sir." Zack said as they both came to a stop in front of him, saluting stiffly.
"Status of mission?" Lydecker asked firmly.
"Mission objectives complete. After a mishap on the first attempt of the retrieval of the Costello disk, X5 599 was able to gain access to the residence and get the disks." Max rattled unwaveringly.
"At ease." Lydecker commanded on an afterthought. Both Zack and Max relaxed, Zack crossing his arms, and Max leaning back on her heels. "What was this small mishap and why wasn't I notified of it?"
"It was nothing we couldn't handle. A relative of Costello entered the office while Max was in the process of cracking the safe. She overpowered him then Zane flew in and she left." Zack explained quickly, coming to his sister's defense. "I broke in last night when Costello left for a meeting and got the disks and was out in a matter of minuets."
"Fine, Zane and Syl got back yesterday afternoon, they are waiting to run the hand to hand combat practice against the sixers as soon as you two are ready." Lydecker spoke as he turned and the small group started to walk into the building.
Max and Zack waited patiently for Lydecker to dismiss them, anxious to go see their siblings and run the HH training exercise.
When Lydecker continued to walk down the hallway towards his office without dismissing them, Max and Zack subtly glanced at each other. "Sir?" Max asked tentatively. "Should we go get ready for hand to hand?"
"No. We have a situation that you to need to know about."
Zack and Max followed Lydecker down the hallway, utterly confused about Lydecker's vagueness.
"We are allowing a journalist access to the base. He is going to do an article on the X5s."
Max and Zack skidded to a stop. "What?" Zack asked amazed.
"A journalist?" Max echoed.
"He somehow was able to find me, and the only way the committee saw to control the backlash of the article he planned to publish was to allow him access then censor the hell out of him."
Max and Zack followed Lydecker into his office. "Logan Cale, meet the commanding officers of the X5s, X5 599 and 452, otherwise known as Zack and Max."1
Logan turned himself in his chair and found himself face to face with the woman that he had been obsessing over for the past week.
Max stood, stunned, as Logan turned around. There was no way. No way at all that Logan Cale, guerilla journalist, and pain in her ass was the journalist that Lydecker had been referring too. When he smiled cockily at her, Max jumper forward, lifting him easily out of his chair and throwing him against the wall.
"Whoa whoa woah!" Lydecker shouted, but didn't make a move to help Logan.
Max's hand closed painfully around Logan's throat, holding him against the wall. Logan's hands came up to claw at Max's choking grip. With a feral growl deep in her throat, Max glared unwaveringly into Logan's startled blue eyes. "Max, stop." Lydecker ordered. Lydecker flicked his hand in Zack's direction, which was all the signal he needed to jump forward and pull Max off of Logan. Logan fell to the floor, coughing violently as he gasped in air to his deprived lungs.
Max rushed forward again, but Zack swung her around, pinning her arms behind her back. Max took a step forward, and winced as Zack tightened his grip, then thought against it. She stilled, but Zack kept her arms behind her back, knowing all to well Max's little issue with her temper. He still had the scars along his back when she knocked his ass through the window of their house last year. All he did was borrow her car and bring it back with a scratch in the paint.
"This is your journalist?" Max shouted at Lydecker. "Do you realize that this asshole is the reason that mission 945 got screwed up? He tripped a silent alarm on me! Almost got my ass shot! And your letting him do what could be the article of the 21st century on us." Max continued to rage. "No, you get someone else."
"I'll remind you, X5 452, that I am your commanding officer, and you will mind what you say to me."
Max immediately shut up. It was very seldom that Lydecker pulled rank, but when he did, you listened and you listened closely. "X5 452, I don't know what history you have with Mr. Cale, and really, I don't care. I am sure I will read all about it when I get your report on mission 945. But you are now going to be working with Mr. Cale for an undefined amount of time." Before Max could protest, Lydecker held up a hand to cut her off. "Yes, that is a direct order, the decision has already been made and finalized by the committee."
Logan was finally breathing semi-normally again, standing to watch Max's expressive face as Lydecker explained that he was going to have unrestricted access to every aspect of his life. He really wanted to gloat, and grin, and laugh, but getting thrown into walls was quickly getting old.
"I'd like to express my EXTREME dislike of the arrangement. It is severe tactical exposure." Max said stiffly.
"So noted." Lydecker shot back. Lydecker and Max competed in a thirty second staring contest before Max spun on her heel and marched out of the room, not before glancing momentarily at Logan, then slamming the door behind her.
Zack glanced from Lydecker, to Logan, back to Lydecker again. "Permission to speak." He asked quietly, but firmly.
"Granted." Lydecker said wearily, sinking into the chair behind his desk.
Zack turned to Logan. "Max will kick your ass if you touch her stuff, and she really doesn't like people shooting at her. If I were you, Id stay the hell out of her way." Zack turned back to Lydecker. "I'm going to go get ready for the hand to hand with the sixers."
"Dismissed." Lydecker said almost as an afterthought.
Zack walked out of the room, leaving Lydecker and Logan alone. "Well, I'd like you to watch this training mission. I want you to see exactly what these kids are capable of, so that you know that you can't fuck with us and get away with it."
"So, explain to me what Project Manticore is." Logan asked, leaning back in one of the chairs situated in front of Lydecker's desk.
Lydecker glanced down at the framed photo that sat on the left corner of his desk. From left to right, Tinga, Zane, Jondy, Zack, Max, Syl, and Krit stood together, all but Syl grinning like idiots about whatever they had been talking about at the time. The picture managed to capture each one of their personalities perfectly. Syl being the resident goddess, Zane being to sophisticated for all of them, Krit rolling his eyes at all of them, Zack being way to serious, and Max being the center of attention. If any other person was to see the picture, it would look like any average group of college-aged kids, the oldest being Zack at twenty-five, the youngest Max at twenty-two.
"Project Manticore was started in the late nineteen nineties by a genetics lab in Wyoming. I came aboard around the last stages of X3, but X4 was my real first group. Group X1 was a failure, they all were so severely deformed that they were not even recognized as human. They had to be destroyed if they didn't survive the first two weeks, which many of them didn't. Then there was group X2, they seemed to be relatively successful until the age of four when they developed severe anomalies. We kept four for research, the rest were also destroyed."
Logan raised a hand to cut Lydecker off. "There seems to be a lot of destroying going on here."
"What? Would you rather we had kept them alive, to suffer in the case of the X1s, or chained in some cell so they wouldn't go on a killing rampage in the case of the X2s?"
"You knew after the first group that these things would happen, why didn't you research them to prevent it?" Logan shot back indignantly.
"But we did." Lydecker explained bitingly. "The X2s, out of a group of twenty five, only two had deformities, and they weren't nearly as severe as the X1s. With X3, there was only one deformity, and three anomalies."
"So the X3s were the first success." Logan asked, wishing for a pen and paper to take notes with, although he knew everything his was learning he would never forget no matter how hard he would try.
"No, the X3s proved to be incapable of learning basically anything at the rate that the X2s had before they developed the anomalies. Eventually, we terminated the X3s."
"By termination you mean you killed them too." Logan asked somewhat wearily.
Lydecker stared at Logan over the rims of his wire-framed glasses. "We aren't monsters." He said in a low voice. "We induced them with amnesia and put them into the foster system. As of now they are all leading normal lives. We know because we do keep track of them." He said slowly, with bitterness lacing his words.
Logan nodded. "So the X4s were your first project."
"Correct." Lydecker said as he propped his feet up on his desk. "I joined in early 1996 when they were first invtro-ing the surrogate mothers with the X4s. The X4s were the first success that Manticore had ever seen. Out of the twenty-five chimeras, nine of them survived to the age of five. The other thirteen developed either severe seizures or a disorder where they would spontaneously age thirty or so years in just under an hour. Of the twelve that survived that three of them made it past the first ten years of training. Those three died when their plane was shot down over the English Channel during the French Revolution of 2019."
"That brings you up to X5s."
"The first X5 was born in February of 1997, the last in July of 2000. We finally go it right with the X5s. They excelled in every single area of combat, explosives, recon, espionage, hand-to-hand combat, and artillery, even transport. They could run faster at the age of 4 than the X4s could at age 10. They could jump higher, swim faster, hold their breath longer, learn quicker, and all around fight harder than any of the previous attempts. Out of the twenty-five, we saw the highest success ratio. Only one died, X5 482 of complications from her seizures. The rest were split into three groups, eight --" Lydecker was cut off as the phone sitting on his desk shrilled.
"Lydecker." He snapped into the receiver.
Logan took this moment to absorb the information that he had learned in the last fifteen minuets. When Lydecker got done with his phone call, he was going to ask if he knew of any other organizations that had produced these enhanced human prototypes that he knew of. He wanted to know how a prototype had ended up in his godfather's office, when it was obvious she wasn't of military background. What would the military want with Phillip Costello?
Lydecker stood as he hung up the phone. "Well, it is your luck day, Mr. Cale. Our two commanding officers of Group X5 are have just gotten back from their mission. Their helicopter has just entered base perimeters. Stay here and let me talk to them before you meet them. It is safe to say that they aren't going to react well to you, especially not Ma-- er, X5-452." He said as he rounded the desk and walked out into the hallway.
Max shook her head, flipping her hair over her shoulder, which proved to be pointless as the wind blowing through the open windows of the small helicopter whipped her hair right back in her face. She tapped her foot lightly against the floor as she looked out the window to the approaching base below. Zack sat next to her, rolling his eyes at Max's constant fidgeting. When she reached up to toy with the dog tags she wore around her neck, a present from Krit on her last birthday, Zack pulled off his sunglasses and turned in his seat to face her. "Would you sit still?" He projected his voice over the loud chopping of the helicopter blades. Max smiled winningly. "I'm just glad to be back. I haven't been on base for about a month, with Mission 945 starting right after I finished 760."
"Well, your constant moving around is making me even more tired than I already am. You do realize that because I had to go retrieve the Costello information that I haven't slept in over four days?"
"Not my fault, don't blame me that you didn't get the shark DNA that I got." Max said, her eyes glinting mischievously.
Zack just rolled his eyes again, pulling his sunglasses back on and leaning his head against the back of the seat as the pilot began to lower the helicopter onto the helipad on Manticore's roof. Max leaned forward, using her telescopic vision to see Lydecker step out of a door, standing on the outskirts of the helipad as the skids touched down. As soon as safe, Max slid open the door and stepped out, the jacket of her black pant suit snapping in the wind behind her as she turned to accept the bags that Zack handed down to her. Together, they jogged across to Lydecker, Max's heeled boots clicking as she easily kept pace with her brother.
"X5 599 and 452 returning from Mission 945, sir." Zack said as they both came to a stop in front of him, saluting stiffly.
"Status of mission?" Lydecker asked firmly.
"Mission objectives complete. After a mishap on the first attempt of the retrieval of the Costello disk, X5 599 was able to gain access to the residence and get the disks." Max rattled unwaveringly.
"At ease." Lydecker commanded on an afterthought. Both Zack and Max relaxed, Zack crossing his arms, and Max leaning back on her heels. "What was this small mishap and why wasn't I notified of it?"
"It was nothing we couldn't handle. A relative of Costello entered the office while Max was in the process of cracking the safe. She overpowered him then Zane flew in and she left." Zack explained quickly, coming to his sister's defense. "I broke in last night when Costello left for a meeting and got the disks and was out in a matter of minuets."
"Fine, Zane and Syl got back yesterday afternoon, they are waiting to run the hand to hand combat practice against the sixers as soon as you two are ready." Lydecker spoke as he turned and the small group started to walk into the building.
Max and Zack waited patiently for Lydecker to dismiss them, anxious to go see their siblings and run the HH training exercise.
When Lydecker continued to walk down the hallway towards his office without dismissing them, Max and Zack subtly glanced at each other. "Sir?" Max asked tentatively. "Should we go get ready for hand to hand?"
"No. We have a situation that you to need to know about."
Zack and Max followed Lydecker down the hallway, utterly confused about Lydecker's vagueness.
"We are allowing a journalist access to the base. He is going to do an article on the X5s."
Max and Zack skidded to a stop. "What?" Zack asked amazed.
"A journalist?" Max echoed.
"He somehow was able to find me, and the only way the committee saw to control the backlash of the article he planned to publish was to allow him access then censor the hell out of him."
Max and Zack followed Lydecker into his office. "Logan Cale, meet the commanding officers of the X5s, X5 599 and 452, otherwise known as Zack and Max."1
Logan turned himself in his chair and found himself face to face with the woman that he had been obsessing over for the past week.
Max stood, stunned, as Logan turned around. There was no way. No way at all that Logan Cale, guerilla journalist, and pain in her ass was the journalist that Lydecker had been referring too. When he smiled cockily at her, Max jumper forward, lifting him easily out of his chair and throwing him against the wall.
"Whoa whoa woah!" Lydecker shouted, but didn't make a move to help Logan.
Max's hand closed painfully around Logan's throat, holding him against the wall. Logan's hands came up to claw at Max's choking grip. With a feral growl deep in her throat, Max glared unwaveringly into Logan's startled blue eyes. "Max, stop." Lydecker ordered. Lydecker flicked his hand in Zack's direction, which was all the signal he needed to jump forward and pull Max off of Logan. Logan fell to the floor, coughing violently as he gasped in air to his deprived lungs.
Max rushed forward again, but Zack swung her around, pinning her arms behind her back. Max took a step forward, and winced as Zack tightened his grip, then thought against it. She stilled, but Zack kept her arms behind her back, knowing all to well Max's little issue with her temper. He still had the scars along his back when she knocked his ass through the window of their house last year. All he did was borrow her car and bring it back with a scratch in the paint.
"This is your journalist?" Max shouted at Lydecker. "Do you realize that this asshole is the reason that mission 945 got screwed up? He tripped a silent alarm on me! Almost got my ass shot! And your letting him do what could be the article of the 21st century on us." Max continued to rage. "No, you get someone else."
"I'll remind you, X5 452, that I am your commanding officer, and you will mind what you say to me."
Max immediately shut up. It was very seldom that Lydecker pulled rank, but when he did, you listened and you listened closely. "X5 452, I don't know what history you have with Mr. Cale, and really, I don't care. I am sure I will read all about it when I get your report on mission 945. But you are now going to be working with Mr. Cale for an undefined amount of time." Before Max could protest, Lydecker held up a hand to cut her off. "Yes, that is a direct order, the decision has already been made and finalized by the committee."
Logan was finally breathing semi-normally again, standing to watch Max's expressive face as Lydecker explained that he was going to have unrestricted access to every aspect of his life. He really wanted to gloat, and grin, and laugh, but getting thrown into walls was quickly getting old.
"I'd like to express my EXTREME dislike of the arrangement. It is severe tactical exposure." Max said stiffly.
"So noted." Lydecker shot back. Lydecker and Max competed in a thirty second staring contest before Max spun on her heel and marched out of the room, not before glancing momentarily at Logan, then slamming the door behind her.
Zack glanced from Lydecker, to Logan, back to Lydecker again. "Permission to speak." He asked quietly, but firmly.
"Granted." Lydecker said wearily, sinking into the chair behind his desk.
Zack turned to Logan. "Max will kick your ass if you touch her stuff, and she really doesn't like people shooting at her. If I were you, Id stay the hell out of her way." Zack turned back to Lydecker. "I'm going to go get ready for the hand to hand with the sixers."
"Dismissed." Lydecker said almost as an afterthought.
Zack walked out of the room, leaving Lydecker and Logan alone. "Well, I'd like you to watch this training mission. I want you to see exactly what these kids are capable of, so that you know that you can't fuck with us and get away with it."
