The Army was a choice made out of desperation and convenience. My father didn’t have the money to send me to college, so the only way I would have been able to pay was by selling my body to the government. Shipped out to a country we had no right to be in; all I did was shoot at the sand. I’m probably one of the luckiest sons of bitches alive because, for some reason, they offered me a position at a black money compound back stateside. I didn’t know that it was so they could make me a ghost to the system. I officially died on May 3rd, 2028, during the return to Afghanistan.
Only one group of pioneers ever died in Death Valley, but everyone just assumed it would be their end. It was a simmering 95 degrees in the October sun of 2 and a half square miles of a fenced-in compound in California. There was no official designation for it, strictly off books. We called it the Pan, and we were the eggs. Our unit had the honorable assignment of being roaming guards on the fence. The small jeeps they offered did come with a dashboard fan for A/C. The only problem was that the Jeeps had no roofs, so the fan would blow the same air outside.
Shift change meant we’d have a few hours of conditioned climate before lights out. We shuffled like corpses into the barracks. We shed our stinking clothes and then trudged to the showers. That’s where we started to get our life back; the ice-cold showers always cleared up the fog in our heads. Our table was in the far corner of the mess hall. What little life the shower put into us went to eating the slop food they fed us. We’d shovel it into our mouths silently at the table, choking down the chunky soup to keep our strength.
That day I seemed to have more energy than average. But, I couldn’t quite keep my eyes still at dinner. I had already chewed the fingernail on my thumb down to the nub, a habit that I hadn’t been able to kick since grade school. I felt wired, like 1000 volts of electricity were running through me. That’s when I noticed him. The head researcher of the compound, Dr.Hans, spoke with the head of his personal security. Doctor Hans was rail thin and nearly as tall as the facility's doors. Duroc was the shorter man, gruff looking in the face. He had a five o’clock shadow stubble, but it never seemed to get past that stage. His unit consisted of 7 members called the Virtues. Duroc had the codename Temperance. The Doctor was usually already out of the building by the time I had gotten back from patrol. They left deeper into the complex, away from where we were allowed to go.
At lights out that night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned in my bunk, my eyes squeezed shut, but I still felt like a current was flowing through me. I had counted the grain in the top bunks' slats a few times when I decided I needed to look around the compound. I pulled on my pants and boots, placed my sidearm in my waistband, and pulled up the back of my shirt to cover it. I snuck out of my barracks, carefully walking down the bright halls of the complex.
The facility was a sanitized white. The fluorescent lights reflected off the tile floors, making small waves of yellow that broke up the uniformity. I made my way into the mess hall, pushing past doors labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONAL ONLY. I made my way through these back halls. They looked the same as the ones that had come before them. I moved with an unknown purpose. A split in the path had a directory labeled with arrows and room numbers on the wall. I made a right, following the hallway to two swing doors with small circular windows.
I peered through the windows into an operating room. Like the rest of the facility, it was white, but the only thing that broke up the monotone was the equipment. A strange machine was in the far corner of the room. It was a cylinder that rested on a broad base; large tubes sprung from it like branches. They snaked down into the floor and the ceiling. There was a door on the front with a small viewing window. Then, looking directly across the room, I saw another pair of doors like the ones I was peering through.
In the center of the room was an operating table. On each side was a table with various medical equipment on it. I had placed my hand to push the door open when the doors on the opposite side were flung open. Into the room strode a team of people in medical grab flanked by armed guards. I ducked quickly behind the door, not wanting my snooping to be discovered. I’m sure my mother would love to know I died fighting overseas, but I wanted to stay out of the grave. I could tell from his height and skinny frame that the primary doctor was Hans and that the operators were part of the Virtues. I could tell from the symbols on their chests it was Justice and Courage.
I stood back up, cautiously peering into the room. Two more of the Virtues were dragging in a smaller person. The subject was malnourished, just skin and bones. The top of his head was shaved close, but I could see that his hair was brown. Straight pale pink lines crossed the person's exposed skin. They looked like a patchwork person, some of the scars fresher than the rest. Their face followed the same pattern as the rest of their body. One large scar started at the top of their hairline, cut straight down through their left eye, and stopped at their jawline. Another crossed the exact middle of their face. The two guards lifted them onto the table before they disappeared out the same doors they came in, followed by Justice and Courage.
The nurses in the room helped the person pull off their surgical gown, then the nurses laid them down, facing away from me. Fresh stitching was at the base of their close-cropped hair and down their spine. The scars on the rest of their back differed from the rest of their body. It was jagged, cutting down at odd angles and sprouting branches. I could see the doctor’s mouth moving behind his surgical mask, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. One of his assistants handed him a pair of small scissors. I watched as they cut the stitching on the person's back. Once they started pinning the skin back, I realized it was a child. I knew what a child in pain sounded like. The now exposed spine had obviously been operated on before. Large pieces of metal with tiny blinking lights had been attached to the vertebrae.
I watched as the doctor examined the tech, attaching a cable to a port near the base of the spine. It was attached to a small tablet one of the nurses was holding. He spent a few minutes reviewing whatever readings before returning to the spine. They unplugged the cord and walked away from the table. While I watched Hans's movement from the corner of my eye, I saw a small flash of light. When I glanced at it, I noticed that one of the small lights on the kid's spine was blinking quickly. The reactions of the doctor and nurses told me this wasn’t good. The lights in the room and hall started to flicker as more lights began to flash in rhythm.
The Doctor whipped his head around as he looked at the flickering lights. He made his way toward the table, and I saw that he was speaking. His body language was trying to calm the kid down. I moved my hand back to the gun in my waistband, gripping it as I prepared to push into the room. One of the lights in the Operating room popped, and a nurse screamed. I felt my hair stand on end when I was suddenly blown back. The door collided with me as it was thrown open, pressing me into the wall. It was a similar feeling when you fell too hard as a child. All the wind was knocked out of my body.
I slid down the wall landing on the ground. I sucked in air to try and reinflate my lungs. Once I could breathe, I pulled myself up the wall. I heard the alarms as the ringing in my ears returned to its normal levels. I was blinking the stars out of my eyes as I looked into the operating room. The medical equipment was scattered across the room on the ground; stainless steel tables were wrapped and bent. The doors on the opposite side of the room were gone, blown further down the hallway. Where the Doctor and Nurses had stood were black streaks on the ground that smeared into the far wall. The kid was curled up on the operating table, which was so distorted that the legs curled upwards.
Their back had healed, the prongs of the metal peaking out from under their skin. I limped around the table, keeping my hands in front of me. I talked to the kid, keeping my voice level and calm. They were scared; that was obvious; their eyes kept moving across my entire body. I offered my hand to them, and they cautiously reached out and took it. I helped them off the table, looking down at them. I pulled off the shirt I was wearing, pulling it over them. It stopped right above their knees. I took their hand as we walked from the hall I’d come from.
We didn’t speak; the alarms would have forced us to yell. At a certain point, I’m not sure who was leading who, but eventually, we made it to the mess hall. The rest of the facility had positioned an offensive front there. They had turned the tables to use as barricades. The black barrel of rifles was pointed toward us. Duroc stood in the middle of it all. He looked at me, talking about how this child was the property of the US government and that I was committing treason. I pulled the sidearm from my waistband and pointed it at his head. There was a pregnant pause in the room. I didn’t notice the lights flickering as I pulled the trigger. My bullet found its mark and came out the other side of the pig's head as lightning streaked from the kid’s hand. It ran through every person there and fried their hearts. I broke into the Jeep office by smashing my sidearm through the door's window.
I got into my jeep, and we drove toward the fence using the stolen keys. It took 10 minutes, but we made it to the edge. Placing my foot on the gas, we accelerated towards the gate. The jeep shook in my hands as we neared 70 miles an hour. The sparks flew as we crashed; I put my arm across the kid’s chest to keep them from shooting forward. We fishtailed and almost flipped the jeep. I jerked hard on the wheel as we turned towards the facility. When we stopped, I breathed heavily, my eyes wide as I looked down at the Pan. Then I looked down at the kid next to me.
“So…where to now?”