Chapter 2: Subversive Behavior
Training Center VIII: Chikara Division
Africa, Earth
12 February, AC. 185From her hiding place behind a patch of flowering bushes Demeter studied the girl doing jumping jacks on the other side of a gnarled wire fence. Although obviously only four or five years old at the most, the girl was extremely well developed physically, a healthy specimen, she carried taunt muscles on an otherwise lean body, and there was an extremely smooth graceful quality to her aerobics. She looked and behaved very much like Demeter remembered herself when she had been that age.
However, the child's physical attributes were nothing when Demeter looked closely at the girl's face. The face was identical to someone Demeter remembered from her own childhood.
The girl looked exactly like her younger sister, Damia.
Demeter cocked her head to one side, intensely gazing at the child. This girl looked exactly like Damia as she had been at that age. Not just a passing resemblance, or some similar features, but entirely like her. Had she not known that her sibling contemporary was just as old as she was, Demeter would have sworn to the highest court that she had seen her sister at play-returned to life from whatever fate had claimed her and ready to take the world on again. Even the way this little girl here performed her exercises- quickly but smoothly, with full concentration on precision- reminded Demeter of her sister.
That Demeter had even found this place was two parts luck and a fraction of good detective work. It had been hard, but after three years of suspicions she had discovered that Romefeller had been conducting a massive genetic project in secret. As a scientist herself, and one well-respected and in fairly high demand for her skills at genetic manipulation and encoding for new traits, she had nevertheless been kept in the dark about this project. Even worse, in her own opinion, was that given what she had found out, the girl she was looking at was merely an extension of the experiments she herself had been subject to and had somehow survived.
This had all started when she had heard rumors and found traces of her own genotype in use in a laboratory in the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. Because those records were not supposed to exist she had immediately taken her findings to the governing body of the Romefeller medical hierarchy, currently in charge of that was one Dr. Barton. Her investigation had abruptly stalled as she came up against the usual mass of red tape and bureaucratic pitfalls. The official report said that at no time had there been any official genetic experiments going on and, even if there were such experiments, Demeter had no right or authority to question about them. She had countered by asking if that meant that there were secret programs going on; her superiors couldn't deny it without backtracking on themselves, so in pure political fashion, they threw more paperwork in her path to block her.
She had carried on regardless. Demeter had requested meetings with Dr. Barton, but each time the irritatingly sly man would find some new excuse to never show-even when she managed to catch him on his daily constitutional walk he told her that he could not speak with her then and hoped that they could set an appointment soon.
Demeter's search would have continued in that snarl of regulations and she would have eventually given up and put the whole matter out of her mind… However, one evening she had decided to go to the racetracks in a very brooding mood.
* * *
The race was over almost as quickly as it began and the winning horse, a gray dappled Arab-crossbreed, trotted to the winner's circle to claim it's winnings and rose blanket. Demeter was sitting back, watching the proceedings through the massive plate glass windows before her, and sipping a gin and tonic. She was not fond of alcohol in general, but it had been this or a Bloody Mary and Demeter had not felt like playing with celery and tomato juice at that moment. She had to admit though that the gin did taste good, much richer than what was in the gen-tech lounge, another perk of having demanding early on her freedom of movement from her superiors. She watched re-plays of the race and let the booze tickle her brain, in those rare times Demeter needed a break from her work and had to fuzz her mind a bit with something fermented the track was the best place to go.
She took another sip, wincing a little as the bite hit her, she looked at the glass in her fingers, 'I bet it's this strong just to loosen wallets,' she thought as she smiled, amused at the money schemes of the outside world. Since she was a scientist, she could pay on company credit and never owe a single red cent. She played with that properly, tweaking computers now and then, and so far had managed about ten years without ever having to pay for rent and utilities, it was extremely convenient having a tab in a big corporation… so dammed easy to hide too…
Someone came up and sat down beside her at the bar, ordinarily Demeter couldn't give a damn who came and went around her in a place like this, however, this time she glanced at the newcomer from the corner of one eye for a half-second and went back to her drink.
Apparently she had looked for a half-second too long. "Gin and tonic? Don't often see med-techs sipping on those." The newcomer said, it was a fairly old man, Demeter noticed. She also noticed that he had a surprisingly lilting voice for one who looked his age.
She chose not to look at the man, but she answered him anyway. "I was almost a soldier before I became a tech. Flushed out mid-way in the program, was there long enough to learn to like the taste. Pity for me I couldn't stay."
"Good thing for you, you mean. The soldier types around here are nothing to be proud of, truth be told. All that arrogant goose-stepping they do."
Demeter frowned slightly. "Leave off, I happen to respect the military. You should too."
"You were part of it. I was not."
In the long interval of silence after that last comment, Demeter listened for the sounds of her unwelcome company leaving. However, while she heard nothing over the racket as new bets were being placed, the smell of old age was still there...
"This might seem funny to you," the man said. "But in this poor facsimile of light you look like someone I used to know. Knew very well actually."
"Stop looking at me then, the feeling should wear off in a few moments." Demeter irritably noticed that her drink was starting to make her more sharp-tongued than usual.
"Sure, sure. But you do look very familiar. Just thought you might like to know that."
"Whatever…"and then, 'thrice damned curiosity', "Who do I look like?"
"Her name was Damia. I'm sure you-"
Demeter had to look then and what she saw was what she thought she would see. He was indeed an old man. In fact, while his wrinkles were not on top of other wrinkles they were pretty damn close to being that way. For a moment Demeter was given a chill that almost made her cough up her last sip. While it was common for people of her generation to react that way to anybody old, old people being quite uncommon right now, that was merely for someone fairly old, in their fifties kind of old. This man looked positively ancient, rather like a prune that had been left in some water for about a week. Yet beneath the hideous accumulation of age the face seemed vaguely familiar to her.
"You knew Damia?" Demeter suspiciously asked.
"Yep, and now that you're looking at me, I know why you reminded me of her. I remember you now, your name is Demeter and you were in that same testing group. I think the last time I saw you was when you and that scamp brother Ares of yours got into that scuffle that I had to break up."
Her memories of childhood, so long ago, and rather unpleasant, were filed back deep in Demeter's mind. She stared at the old man's face, carefully she mentally nipped and tucked, smoothing skin, removing the years from the face.
Head cocked to the side in slight uncertainty she looked very hard in the dim light. "You, you are… River?"
He smiled, even and only slightly off-color teeth showed in the light. "Congratulations my dear, you did have the best memory for eidetic details."
"I am a genetic scientist." Demeter said. "It comes in handy for me to know exactly how something should look and what something looks like when it's not right." She paused for a moment and cocked an eyebrow, "I had heard you were dead."
He smiled ruefully, "That's the story going around apparently."
For the next hour and a half Demeter and River exchanged both pleasantries and history since the last time they had met. River found out how Demeter had fared during those years after the project she and her siblings had been part of. Demeter learned of how River had been retired from his occupation as a manipulator, meaning he once handled genetic cuts and splicing by hand, because of rheumatoid arthritis, which had crippled his knuckles and wrists.
"I quickly proved myself quite useless in several other occupations because of the pain." He admitted. "I was eventually lowered to sanitation. Even hands that have lost their keen feel and touch and are extremely stiff and painful can push a broom or move cargo."
Demeter shook her head, "A waste of your talents, simply because of what you know."
"That is fairly arguable, Demeter." River answered.
Eventually River got around to asking her just what she was doing at a racetrack and, because she had been polite enough to drink two more gins to keep her companion company and that had been one too many, she told him what she was after. She did feel more relaxed afterwards, having vented all her irritation and suspicions against Barton. When she mentioned the hidden experiments she knew were happening River took on a quietly thoughtful look that Demeter instantly recognized as someone who knew something. She told him she thought as much.
"I always know something, no one pays attention to the cleaning staff, you know."
"Tell me."
River, in a highly direct but also highly embroidered style quickly described a compound not very far away from where they were that was run by many high-level scientists, all in Barton's pocketbook. Rumor had it that there were also quite a few military brass that made their way in and out of the compound at not infrequent times. The place was also both very large and very well guarded by several squadrons of Mobile Suits and foot patrols, all pretending to be instructors, and dressed in army drill sergeant uniforms.
"Most people with sense, stay away from that place." River said, then he chuckled. "But of course we have your types that think it's some kind of new Roswell and are certain that space aliens are being held there, you know, the usual bull."
"I know you know more than that little bit." Demeter attempted, without success, to guilt him into saying more.
"Of course." River said, after taking another pull of his drink. "They also a bunch of generals, who are all very interested and concerned with this project, make almost daily visits. Barton himself goes there at least once a week. I know a lot, but I don't know what their project is. I am sorry to say."
In another ten minutes, the combined amount of the alcohol Demeter and River had consumed was interfering with their ability to communicate productively. Demeter abruptly snapped herself out of a light, staring doze and found all traces of River gone, even the mug he'd been drinking his beer out of had vanished. For a while Demeter simply sat there, tried to work through the fuzz in her brain and wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing. That watery conviction solidified into something a lot more solid after she'd gone to ask the sanitation service if they had an elderly man named River in their employment. No one had ever heard the name and no one fitted the description she gave of him.
* * *
River had ended up giving Demeter just the information she had needed to find the base, slip into it undetected and find her hidden observation point. While she had been reliving these old, but still interesting memories, the Damia look-alike had finished her exercises and disappeared around a barracks building.
Everything was quiet for a while, until Demeter suddenly felt a presence behind her. Before she could turn, a tap fell on her shoulder. She looked back carefully and saw the child. She almost gasped when she saw that up close the resemblance was even stronger than she had thought possible. A terrible suspicion formed a hard knot near her stomach.
"You look surprised." The child, a girl, said evenly.
"I am surprised." Demeter said.
"Why is that?" The girl asked.
Demeter did not want to say it was because she reminded her of a supposedly dead sister, so instead she opted for a half-truth. "I wasn't expecting anyone to sneak up on me, that's what surprised me."
The girl looked into her eyes hard for a while. Demeter noticed they were a light violet in color. "You're lying," she said, "but it doesn't matter. You are not surprised, just afraid because I caught you."
Part of Demeter wanted to simply get into an argument about that, yet her curiosity, which was bigger, made the quarrelsome part shut up, she stayed where she was. "Now what then?" She asked. "Going to turn me in for some kind of reward?"
The girl shrugged. "Not yet, I have questions-"
'You and me both.' Demeter thought.
"-You look like me, I want to know why. You are my prisoner, spy, if you won't tell me I will torture you if I have to. Come with me."
This struck Demeter as both amusing and worrisome. "Why would we want to go anywhere? You can interrogate me right here if you want."
"With you looking for a way out to escape? I don't think so spy. I have a place, no one goes there. We're going there, on your feet."
To Demeter, this seemed like too-perfect a way to get the information she wanted, even if she was only playing within a child's fantasy. Even if the girl turned her in to one of Barton's little followers, with her rank and standing within the medical community she could talk her way out of any situation here. The very worst that could happen is that she would be sent off for a reprimand by Barton himself… at least that way she'd get her meeting.
The girl led her though some tall grass to a spot near the fence, where she was able to lift a section that would allow Demeter, interestingly, to walk through into the camp without doing more than dipping her head slightly.
"I disabled the alarm here months ago." The girl said by way of candid explanation. "I am good at that, so are most of the others, they just don't use it. It lets me sneak out, I figured I'd see something interesting eventually. I am Nine-Three-Four."
'Nine-three four, what does that mean? Are there nine hundred more just like her running around here?' Demeter's thoughts raced. "I am Demeter."
"You are very pretty Demeter. Like me."
Demeter slipped into the barracks perimeter, directly behind her 934 followed, letting the fencing fall softly back into place. Demeter made a mental note of where it was, she might need to use it herself if things got rough. She then allowed the girl, number 934, to lead her to the nearest building, a thoroughly abandoned trainee quarters.
"Go in there," 934 said, motioning towards the door. "I must go back soon, so we have to talk quickly. You talk, and maybe, if I like what I hear, I might not turn you in."