The Last Bastion of the Living (The Last Bastion #1)(33)

“Trying to see how human I am?” Maria asked wryly.

“Honestly, yes. The virus reanimates a human brain and body at a base level. We altered the virus in order for our test subjects to retain their cognitive skills and personality.”

“Test subject,” Maria echoed tersely.

Beverly pursed her lips slightly then said in a rather tired tone, “A wrong choice of words.”

“But that’s what I am. A test subject. You said I am the first one that has received this virus. So all these tests are to see if it’s safe to give to other soldiers. Am I right?”

“Yes, you are.”

Beverly’s admittance of the truth was not any sort of comfort to Maria, yet she was satisfied to some degree to be conversing with the scientist openly.

“Will the others have a choice?” Maria asked.

“A choice as to whether or not to take the serum?”

Maria laughed darkly. “No, no. Let me rephrase my question so that I am very clear and you can’t twist my words around. Are you going to tell the other people who volunteered for this mission that you’re going to kill them and revive them as a thinking, talking Scrag?”

Beverly sank back in her chair and regarded Maria thoughtfully.

“I take it by your silence that you weren’t considering that as an option.”

“You’re a soldier. You take orders.”

“That’s true. I did vow to give my life to The Bastion, but that life has been given. You took it from me. I think it’s only fair that if you’re going to be taking our lives, you let us know what you’re giving us in return. I want to help defend The Bastion and its people, but your actions have f*cking pissed me off!” Maria wished she could pound her fist on the table, but instead strained at the end of her restraints and glared. “If you want me to cooperate with you with all your tests, I want to know that the others will know what you’re doing to them before you kill them, too!”

The scientist remained impassive. She set her stylus down and stared directly into Maria’s eyes. “Is that what it will take for you to cooperate?”

“Yes. And I want to hear it from Mr. Petersen. Not you. I know he’s the higher ups’ lackey and I want to hear it from him.”

A slight smile quirked onto Beverly’s lips. “Very well.” Collecting her things, she strode out of the room.

Maria found the resulting silence in the room unnerving. She studied the room, wondering where the observation window was located, and settled on an area apart from some blinking equipment. She glared at the empty spot on the wall, hoping the weight of her gaze would have some impact on the men and women who controlled her fate. Maybe she had overplayed her hand. Maybe she had assumed too much when it came to her worth in the program. But she had to believe if she was their first test subject she had to possess some physical or mental attribute that had made her a perfect candidate. Flexing her fingers, she stared at the blank wall, hoping that the powers that be would heed her words and do the right thing.

In silence, she waited.




*




Consciousness snapped her back into reality with a disorienting overload of sensory information. Maria shook her head, trying to focus her thoughts. She didn’t remember falling asleep. Her last memory was of staring at the wall, hoping that the leaders of the SWD project would see reason in her words.

“I see you’re back with us,” Mr. Petersen’s voice said pleasantly.

Maria lifted her eyes and saw Mr. Petersen sitting across the table from her. Beverly stood behind him clutching her pad. Her expression was stoic and Maria couldn’t discern if her situation had worsened or not.

“Why does that keep happening?”

“Care to explain, Dr. Curran?”

Beverly sighed and set her pad down on the table. Using her stylus, she pulled up several blocks of information, including a vid of Maria staring at the wall. “Watch.”

Maria leaned forward and recognized that one bit of information was showing her brain activity while another was measuring the stimuli in the room around her. Light, sound, and movement were all being recorded. Maria watched as her image on the screen slumped in her chair just as her brain activity dropped to a startling low. The vid sped forward, then showed Dr. Curran and Mr. Petersen entering the room. Mr. Petersen took out a small electroshock device and pressed it against Maria’s chest. Maria’s brain activity spiked and she came back into consciousness.

“What does it mean?” Maria asked. The vid was disconcerting to say the least. She had looked like a corpse sitting in her chair.

“The Inferi Scourge have one basic need: to spread the Inferi Scourge Plague Virus,” Dr. Curran said. “It’s their sole purpose for existence. We removed that need when we modified the virus. Therefore, you’re not spurred on by the desire to spread the virus like they are. You don’t have their aggression, their need. In the historical vids there is footage of millions of Inferi Scourge standing perfectly in place once the entire city was infected by the virus. They only began to move once they sensed that there was an uninfected human nearby. In other words, the Inferi Scourge become dormant when there are no humans nearby to infect. At first our predecessors thought this would enable us to wipe them out. They left infected cities alone, quarantining them, hoping the Inferi Scourge would remain in their dormant stage. They even attempted to bomb the inert creatures a few times only to rouse the Inferi Scourge and send them on a march in the direction the bombers took on their return flights. That tendency to fall dormant is one of the drawbacks we have discovered in giving you the modified virus.”