“I had celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday three days before we were called down. We were a secret unit, you know. An elite unit. They tried to play it cool, but after we ended the Pakistan Insurgency without a single casualty—dropped in the ‘bots, keyed them to target human energy signatures, knocked ‘em all out and sent in the ground crew to gather ‘em up like apples off a tree. Well, we knew we were it then. The next generation.” Sam smiled. It was wistful, and it faded quickly.
“We didn’t go to the sites. Cloud servers don’t have to move. We stayed here, actually. The scientists were the ones who went out to the sites with the bots. They were the ones who burned when it all went up a day later.” He fell quiet for a moment. “We lost a lot of the country that day. We got it all under control as fast as we could. We found what we hoped was a solution, but we were operating under pressure.” He smiled thinly. “It wasn’t perfect, but the explosions stopped. The fires died back, from infernos to slag.” His voice drifted off as he remembered.
Lena sat quietly, watching the pain move across his face.
“And then everything stopped. We didn’t have any information, but we could figure it out. It was dark for a long time.” She didn’t think he meant only the lack of power and lights. “The first winter was brutal. No heat. No fire. Nothing. It was hard enough to make it where we were out west. I don’t want to think about what it must have been like for people up north. But we did think about it, all of us who stayed to keep working. We knew people were dying out there. We wanted to get it all back. All we managed to get back was external combustion. Fire. Steam. And it took us most of a year. By then, we were falling apart.”
He fell quiet again. It took a little longer for him to start again this time.
“I made my way to Canev Relocation Center. Tried to help, but I barely stayed alive. We had no hope. No reason to go on. By the time I noticed everyone else getting older and I wasn’t, I just moved on.”
Alex returned then, moving quietly into the room. He carried a chair in one hand and balanced a tray with a pitcher and cups with the other. He set the tray on the bed and poured Sam a glass of water. He brought it over, setting it in Sam’s hand and wrapping his fingers around it. Then he set the chair beside Sam. “Sit,” he told Lena as he sank onto the floor. He stretched his legs out and settled his hands across his lap.
She moved into the chair.
Sam sipped at his cup. He flashed a smile of gratitude at Alex and raised the glass to him. “It was a long time of just wandering then. I saw a lot of things. Some good. Most bad. One day, one of Peller’s recruiters found me.” Something in the way he said the word ‘recruiters’ told her Sam regretted that day. “I joined up. I was happy to. I wanted a chance to put right what had happened. I was ready. Ready. Some of the older guys, they weren’t so sure. They told me Peller had been CIA. He’d been bounced from the program for some unethical behavior. They didn’t know what. I didn’t listen.” He dragged in a long breath and let it out. “He knew what we could do. And he had big plans on how we’d help him fix it all.” He nodded his head again. “And he did. He fixed it all.” He raised his face to Lena. She could see it still angered him. “Except he didn’t. We did it. He took the credit. We all felt so guilty about what had happened that we let him.”
He fell silent. Alex watched him. She waited.
Eventually, Sam sipped then he took a ragged breath. “I don’t want to talk about the breeding programs.” His head dipped as he hid his face.
He’s ashamed.
“It’s okay,” Alex told him, “You don’t have to.”
Sam nodded, head bobbing in decreasing arcs. “The program led to all of you, of course, and to this school. I retired here, to help teach the strongest of our descendants. So many children….” His voice drifted off. His head lifted, and his gaze moved over her face and hair. “You could be one of mine, you know? With those freckles and eyes. You could be one of my…great grandchildren? Great-great?”
His forehead creased as he pondered the generations. He shrugged, and then his face split in a mischievous smile. He pointed to Alex with a shaking hand. “Not this one, though. He looks just like that bastard Castillo. Bred true, without a doubt. You never met a vainer, more egotistical sumbitch in your life.” The huffing laugh had moved into a wheezing cackle.
Alex grinned. Apparently, he’d heard this before. Lena sent him a questioning look, but he merely rubbed his chin and winked at her. She turned back to Sam.
He settled back, moving his hips slightly to find a more comfortable position. “Peller always meant us to serve them. We were tools. Peller’s Pistons.” His voice was strong again and angry. “From the beginning, it’s what they intended. We started willingly, but when some of us tried to walk away—” He shook his head and lifted a hand, one finger raised. His lips tucked back into his mouth as he tried to compose himself enough to continue. “Then the prisons started. And now the collars. Did you tell her about the collars?”