Washington, D.C.
Monday, 23:23 EST

William Boone was dead.

He had reached that conclusion months ago. He might carry Boone's memories, his experiences, but that was not enough. He was a Taelon creation, their latest experiment, nothing more. Boone's memories were nothing more than a sort of template; he had to have them in order to be anything more than a walking robot, but that wasn't to say he needed to be aware of them.

For months, he had been slaved in the Moonbase, overseeing the establishment of the Taelons' newest ways of playing with human souls. Second Chances, Forge, para-Mneme...he had handled the day-to-day logistics for all of these, reporting directly to Sandoval. In a strong sense, he had made those projects happen. All done blindly, without any true knowledge of what he was doing or what effect it would have.

Then, he had been taxed with the one job he simply could not stand. He had been instructed to reactivate the ID Filter project, the term the Taelons used for selectively abducting ID portal users and experimenting on them. He would like to think that his conscience finally caught up to him, but the truth was much simpler. Boone's sister had once been subjected to the process, and the feelings he bore regarding this finally managed to break through the mental barrier the Taelons had created.

And there he had been. The demon with a soul, aware of his own deeds, and aware that he had consented of his own free will. If it could be called that. The shock of this realization quickly evolved into a blinding rage at the beings who had done this to him. He had resolved right there that he would make the Taelons pay. Not for the deeds themselves; that had never entered his mind. Rather, for forcing him to take a part in them. His goal was vengeance, plain and simple. He didn't care what happened to himself; as far as the world was concerned, he was long dead and forgotten. And he lived his own private hell every waking hour.

The Taelons had called him Aside from the irony of Taelons reading the Bible, the name had seemed appropriate. William Boone, who had died in the service of the Taelons, was resurrected by them, to serve them once more. Perfect sense.

Except that Boone had never returned. The Taelons had made sure of that. They didn't want him back. Probably for the same reason they had killed him in the first place, whatever that was. All they wanted was a nice, loyal servant to do their bidding. Boone's memories just made him the perfect subject for their little experiment. And then again. Make Your Own Slave; what better way to describe the biosurrogute program. You create subjects who look, act and smell human, and can even be made to think they were, but are in reality, simply a complex machine.

Boone had wanted to move out to the Midwest with his wife and start a family. Away from the world, away from the Taelons, away from the conflict. A nice, big house with just him, her and the kids.

But Boone was dead. His wife was dead. Any chance for that life was long gone, no matter where his memories were stored. Peace was a concept as alien to Taelon protectors as their masters. Boone's life had ended the day he had been called to the Taelon Embassy. Nothing could change any of that now.

Lazarus wasn't trying to change anything. He wasn't operating under any pretense of having humanity's best interests at heart. He was out for vengeance. He wanted the Taelons to suffer. To endure just a fraction of what they had forced upon him. That was his only goal. And he didn't have to plan what to do after this goal was accomplished, because he was absolutely certain that he would die in the process.

Prisoners who had been placed in sensory deprivation tanks called themselves They had no sense of right or wrong, and would do anything for a price, simply because they didn't care about anything. Boone had hated the concept of SenDep for this reason, had hated what became of those people. Ironic that, two years later, he would become one.

But then, irony was nothing more than cheap humor.

Lazarus gazed across the water at the Taelon Embassy, then up, at the moon, and the tiny blue dot that was the Mothership. If they hadn't known his identity before, they certainly did now. He would have liked to have seen Zo'or's reaction to the news that his own experiment was the the one taking his operation apart.

Well, one couldn't have everything. And some considerably less than others. He silently turned and strode back into the city.