"IN PULLUS VERITAS"
(IN CHICKEN, TRUTH)
Author: Gillian Slater
E-mail: LeoricGS@aol.com
Rating: PG -13
Disclaimer: As always, these characters do not belong to me, they are the property of the show's creators, and I'm borrowing them for my own sinister purposes...
PART TWO
"I've said 'no', Mr. Wiseman, and that's the end of it."
"You say that now, but you should know I'm not gonna shut up until I've got my way."
"Then I might just have to ready the OR."
"Huh?"
"I can perform a laryngectomy at short notice. It's messy and intrusive, but if you're determined..." he left it hanging threateningly, seeing Michael's face blanch.
"A what now...?" He backed away from the doctor, making his way quickly to the other side of the swimming pool. Morris grinned victoriously.
"Listen, don't you be readying anything. I think I've been under the knife quite enough for this lifetime. Let's wait until you decide to reincarnate me again."
"That might have to be the case if you persist in these attempts to visit your wife. There are enough smart people dying from tragic accidents to more than meet my needs for a new donor brain."
"Okay, okay!" Michael exclaimed hurriedly, trying to placate the scientist's obvious wrath. "Only let me stay home - here that is - for the holiday? Can't you post guards on me or something? 'Cause really, truly, I don't want to spoil your vacation. There's no sense in us both having our Christmases ruined by some congressman's security paranoia." Dr. Morris made no reply as he turned and gestured sternly to the chin-up bar.
Despite Michael's resolution to persuade the doctor round to his point of view, he knew when to let up, and continued the day's training without further pleas to his relentless taskmaster. As he slumped against the exercycle bars, exhausted, Dr. Morris slipped on his suit jacket and approached.
"So... I'm going to be gone for two days. Two days, Mr. Wiseman, during which you will not leave this facility or have any contact with anyone except the guard. The door will be alarmed and bolted..."
"Doc'!" Michael cut in, smiling widely, "Say hi to Grandma Pearl for me, huh?"
"Hmmm." Morris raised one eyebrow, the reluctance to leave Michael unattended and the nagging suspicion that somehow his resourceful prototype would manage to cause trouble playing evidently across his face. Michael put on his most earnestly innocent expression.
"Look, just go, have yourself a merry little Christmas, and I'll be caught up on my rest and ready to train my ass off the second you get back, deal?"
"It'd better be. Season's greetings, Mr. Wiseman." He smiled a little, then, his misgivings eased, and headed for the door, beginning a cheery rendition of 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' as he left.
* * * * *
The guard appeared about half an hour after the doctor left : a fresh-faced youth of not more than Michael's own age, or at least the approximate age of his reconditioned self. He held his rifle rigidly across himself as he made a thorough inspection of the facility, culminating in the bedroom, where he found Michael sprawled comfortably on the bed with his arms folded behind his head, still wearing the sleeveless sweat-top he'd been working out in all day.
The guard's eyes widened in surprise as he saw the prototype for the first time. He looked so, well, almost normal, but there was an alertness to his relaxed pose, an unspoken, deadly strength in the powerfully muscular arms which supported his head, and a shrewd intelligence in the eyes which looked somehow too old for the face they shone out of. The guard cleared his throat, and a look of wariness mingled with faint traces of fear touched his youthful features. Michael picked up on it immediately.
"What, you've never seen an artificially created human killing machine before?" The guard flinched slightly at Michael's sarcastically hostile tone but recovered quickly, his eyes narrowing minutely.
"I've, uh, been briefed... I'm aware of your capabilities..." the soldier began haltingly, then with some effort he forced the wavering in his voice to subside, continuing with more assurance, "And I'm authorised to use force if you decide to become... difficult."
Michael stifled a chuckle as the soldier obviously tried to make his tone menacing, but the nervous trepidation in his voice carried the threat with less-than-total conviction. Concealing his sympathetic smile, Michael regarded his determined young guardian, deciding to cut the lad some slack. God, he looks more nervous than I was the day I first walked into Grand Empire. He mused. He rolled off the bed and stood, holding up his hands placatingly and making no sudden movement which would startle the soldier, whose hand had already flown instinctively to his rifle.
"Whoa, there. Y'know, I don't believe we've been properly introduced here," He thrust his hand out in a friendly gesture, "Michael Wiseman." The guard eyes the offered hand a little suspiciously before removing his own hand from the rifle and clasping Michael's briefly.
"Steven Forrester. That's Corporal." He emphasised his rank with an assertiveness which belied his insecurity.
"Pleased to meet ya, Corporal." Michael echoed the emphasis as if in confirmation of the younger man's authority. The corporal seemed to be put a little more at ease by this. Michael continued on then, making polite but essentially meaningless small-talk in an attempt to direct the conversation to the position he wanted. When there a significant pause in the exchange, Michael hesitantly got around to his subject.
"So... do you have a cell phone in there?" He eyed Forrester's khaki jacket, where an obvious bulge in the inside pocket confirmed his suspicions. The corporal nodded his affirmative. "Can I borrow it?" Michael asked smoothly. Immediately the younger man's guard was up again, and he stared speculatively at his charge.
"I'm under orders, Mr. Wiseman..."
"So am I," Michael cut in earnestly. "Doctor Morris told you I'm not to leave the building, right?" Another affirmative nod. "Well, in that case I need to phone and cancel an important official appointment I made before the doc' decided to ditch me here and go holiday with his folks." The corporal's returning glare was sceptical. "He told me to. Come on, if I don't call there's gonna be some very federal people getting very pissed off at being stood up by an experimental subject."
He held his breath, watching the conflicting emotions parade across Forrester's face as he took a moment to weigh up Michael's argument against his own uncertainty before finally reaching inside his jacket for his cellphone and handing it reluctantly to Michael.
"You'd better be being straight with me..." Michael answered with his most innocent 'Would I tell a lie?' expression and accepted the phone gratefully.
"Listen, would you mind going and guarding the front door or something while I make this call, 'cause a lot of this is classified information, you understand... need-to-know basis and all that..?" Thankfully, the jittery young guard's ears pricked up at the mention of the word 'classified' and he was spurred into a hasty retreat. Michael grinned again. Military conditioning, he thought. So this is the future of America's defence force?
He shook his head and sighed, before the stray thought struck him that actually he was meant to be the future of the American military - others of his kind. He was never allowed to forget that he was just the 'prototype', the forerunner for hundreds more off the same production-line. Would they all look like him, he wondered? Thousands of Mr. Newmans in uniform fighting World War Three? It was a bizarrely disturbing image and he shook it off quickly as he turned his mind to the task in hand, grimly realising that this would be even more unpleasant a duty.
As soon as Forrester was out of sight and earshot, he dialled his old phone number, running through the possible excuses and explanations in his mind, each sounding more implausible than the last, and all the while hating himself and Dr. Morris for being the cause of yet another affront to his wife.
"Hello?" Michael caught his breath as Lisa's cheerfully casual voice replied.
"Hi, Lisa... uh, Mrs. Wiseman," He amended quickly, reminding himself that to her he was still only an occasional acquaintance.
"Mr. Newman! Hi!" The pleasure in Lisa's voice was easily discernible, and Michael felt all the more daunted by his task. "So, you're actually calling. That's a big improvement..." He winced as she slyly referred to his previous unreliability. "... But should I take this as a good or a bad sign?"
"Well," Michael steeled himself to say the abhorrent words, "I, uh, I'm afraid I won't be able to make it for dinner. I'm so sorry. Really, I feel terrible about this but I just... can't get away."
Lisa must have heard the remorse in his tone, Michael thought, but the bitter irony would be lost on her, since she could never realise how true that statement was. He held his breath as he waited for the silence on the other end of the line to be broken. He expected disappointment, anger maybe... but what eventually came across was a tone of calm detachment.
"Could you put Dr. Morris on, please?" Michael was thrown by that.
"Ah, I can't. He's not here, he's, uhh..."
"Hmm?" Lisa prompted.
"Well, he's gone to his sister's for Christmas, so..."
"A-ha! I knew it!" The anger and annoyance burst into her tone, "I just knew it! Who the hell does he think he is? He refuses to let you come out for a little holiday cheer and then takes off himself! I'll bet he's left you under a mountain of paperwork while he's enjoying his family get-together!"
The righteous indignation in her voice echoed Michael's own feelings on the situation exactly, and he was moved to hear her fight so vehemently for his cause, even if it was a lost one.
"Can't you just, I dunno, play 'hookie' just this once?" She implored, reasoning, "I mean, no one can say you don't deserve a little freedom." Michael smiled wistfully at her choice of words. He couldn't agree more.
"Oh, I wish. But it's not like I can just break out of here on a second's notice and hop a cab -- I've got my orders..."
Michael heard himself say the words and almost couldn't believe that they had issued from his own lips. Orders? Since when did this wayward lab-rat play by the rules? Lisa brought him back to the conversation, then, alarmingly picking up on Michael's one inadvertently telling phrase.
"Break out?! You're not saying he's got you locked in there?" Michael heard her incredulous tone change to fury once again as she ploughed ahead, cutting off his half-formed explanation. "That's just like him! I've seen the way he treats you - like a slave not an employee. He's just gotta play the dictator, well there are laws against that kind of thing. And you know what? I don't care what authority this guy's got over you - as of this moment I'm waving it!" Her voice had taken on a commanding tone of its own as she mimicked the militaristic quality of Morris' own habitual mode of addressing his subject.
"What are you suggesting?" Michael asked, his heart beating wildly now as he felt Lisa's fierce determination. The line was briefly silent as she formulated her plan.
"I'm coming over there right now to pick you up. You do whatever you have to do to get away -- just sweep all the IRS papers under the rug or something and meet me out front, okay?" Michael realised it would be more complicated than she imagined, but indicated his agreement.
"Fifteen minutes, right?"
"I'll be there." Michael snapped the phone shut, reeling from both the audacity of Lisa's plan and the ardent resolution in her tone. Given a cause, she would champion it with passion and tenacity. It was never her style to do things by halves, and Michael's heart expanded with pride at this display of her fervour, all for him, all because she felt the injustice that had weighed so heavily upon him since his redefinition as 'government property'.
Strolling out of his bedroom, he glanced around his spartan lodgings. To his amusement, he found that Corporal Forrester, so adamant about his own authority, had indeed taken Michael's hint and gone to guard the front door. He would have to be knocked out, of course. It was a shame to do that to someone who was essentially an innocent in the case - just following orders, but there was no other option.
I'll be gentle, Michael told himself, And I'll be back tomorrow night anyway - it's not like a day in this cage would destroy the kid. I've been stuck here for ten months. He smiled speculatively then, Huh, maybe Forrester makes a report on how unpleasant it is being locked up in here... maybe the project leaders think twice about my imprisonment and decide to compensate me... maybe with a wide-screen TV...
Wistfully he shook his head. Years in the insurance business had made him nothing if not a realist. The doc' had proved time and time again how much he cared for his creation, the endless physical examinations and psyche-tests his sworn affidavit to that effect. But indulgence? Concession to unsanctioned, counter-productive needs? That he would never receive from his suffocatingly attentive master. Theo had claimed more than once to be Michael's only friend, but he conveniently sidestepped all the emotional responsibilities engendered by the title.
But right now, there was someone who was on her way over, knowingly risking a clash with those she believed to be Internal Revenue officials, and unknowingly with forces much more sinister, all to rescue him from his 'paperwork' over the holiday. There was a true friend, just as she'd been for the previous eighteen years. A friend, and so much more. Michael remembered yesterday's encounter with a smile and his excitement renewed itself. The opportunity to spend Christmas with my Lisie again... his goal firmly in mind, he moved purposefully towards his young guardian with shamefully premeditative thoughts.
"Thanks," He handed the cellphone back to its wary owner. "Uh, you know, there's something I meant to do before the doc' left... boy it's a good job he didn't spot it or I'd be in hot water for sure..." The corporal looked suitably inquisitive. "...I, ahh, hung some mistletoe just above the door outside and I guess I'd better get rid of it before ol' Theo's Christmas lenience is exhausted, huh?" Forrester looked intrigued but made no move to take the hint. Michael knew just what would rectify that. "...Because it's totally against regulations, I mean, I'm not really supposed to know the date if you think about it, so..." He knew the corporal hadn't heard anything beyond the strategically placed 'against regulations'. Predictably startled into action, the soldier was nevertheless vigilant in his precautions, gesturing with his gun for Michael to turn his back while he entered the code to the doorlock.
The three short, high-pitched pulses were Michael's cue. He whirled to face the young man, aiming a blow to his temple which struck home with the precision of a laser-guided missile. Wonder if I have a built-in targeting system...? he speculated abstractly as his fist connected with unconsciously but meticulously calculated force. A blow to this sensitive area could easily kill, and while Morris would probably delight in his subject's 'graduation' from warrior to assassin, Michael swore he would never fulfil the Pentagon's twisted expectations of him in that area. He mumbled a belated apology as the soldier hit the floor and bent to retrieve the cellphone.
"No calling for help now, corporal. Never works for me."
"Wow!" A voice gasped from somewhere close by. Michael looked to the open doorway, recognising the red station-wagon rolling to a stop in front of him immediately, and the awe-filled eyes which were fixed on the inert guard.
"Heather!" Lisa silenced her daughter with an insistent hiss. They must have pulled up just in time to see him immobilise Forrester, and Lisa's eyes were also wide as she looked from Michael to his unfortunate victim. "Mr. Newman! Get in!" She threw open the front passenger door.
Michael nudged the unconscious Forrester further inside with his foot and pulled the door shut, hearing the resolute click as the lock re-engaged. Almost as an afterthought, he noted the corresponding keypad on the outside wall and slammed his fist into it, crushing the buttons. The corporal was going nowhere.
Diving into the car, he had barely closed the door when Lisa pulled away, obviously fearful of an attack. A stab of concern flew briefly through his mind. If she had latched onto his own anxieties about being caught through their phone conversation, it could set her to thinking about the true nature of his work.
Luckily, she didn't bring it up again, choosing instead to launch into a well-thought-out apology for her behaviour at Thanksgiving, after which she began tell him about the Christmas dinner she would prepare tomorrow.
In all the haste of his escape, it hadn't really occurred to him that he would be spending the night in his own house, and while the thought thrilled him, it also worried him. It would be awkward, he knew, and he doubted that even Lisa had really thought her audacious strategy through to the end. It was a spur of the moment plan to release him for the monotony of IRS work over the holiday.
Tactfully he brought the point up, saying that he didn't want to put her to inconvenience and that of course he'd stay in a motel. He studied Lisa's face as she countered his suggestion with her own, expressing her fervent hope that the couch wouldn't be too uncomfortable for him. Smiling in happy defeat, Michael sat back and enjoyed being chauffeured in his own familiar red car by his own wife, in anticipation of a blissful family Christmas, even if only he knew he was family.
"That was so cool, the way you punched out that guy!" Heather's enthusiasm carried from the back seat. Michael grinned smugly to himself under his daughter's praise, but almost immediately his paternal instincts kicked in.
"Uh, Heather, that was... very wrong of me, you know. I mean, violence isn't the right way to go... don't get any ideas, huh?"
"Ideas? Me? Why would I ever need to resort to violence?" Heather's purposefully innocent tone brought memories flooding back to Michael - it was her favourite ploy. He waited expectantly for the accompanying quip. "... After all, if I need anyone flooring in a hurry I'll get you to do it."
"Heather," Lisa quietened her daughter gently, glancing at Michael's knowing smile. A grin crept across her own face then.
"She does have a point, though. I know you're with the government, but I didn't think the IRS were so... hands-on. Every time we've run into you so far there have been casualties. Is this a pattern I see emerging? Should I be worried?" Michael coughed in mild embarrassment, but answered sincerely.
"I'd never hurt you, Lisa, you or Heather. I won't let anyone else either." Lisa fell silent then, touched by his words but somehow unable to find a response.
Dusk darkened smoothly into night as the journey continued in comfortable silence.
* * * * *
