Vance steepled his fingers together. He looked as if he was searching for words. “There isn’t going to be another three planes.”
“Not tonight?” Cornelius asked.
“Not ever,” Vance said.
“Sir, I was told—” Stilwell began.
“Madam President, we had every intention to deliver our troops as promised, but after the attack on Banff, I’m afraid we realized that was no longer tenable,” Vance said. “We need every man and woman we can spare to defend our own country.”
Cornelius started to turn red. “We’ve been over this. Trying to survive this onslaught by hiding behind walls isn’t working.”
“The only way we’re defeating these monsters is with a concerted offensive strike,” Ringgold said.
“Our Prime Minister and Armed Forces Council disagree,” Vance said.
Ringgold clenched her jaw, trying to withhold the heat rising through her core. “You’ve been hit by one attack, and your entire country cowers.”
“All due respect, you brought these beasts on us,” Vance said. “Now you want us to abandon our homeland to help you fight them.”
Ringgold took a breath. As angry as she was, he was right. The Variants were a product of the United States government.
“I understand you’ve been hit hard,” she said. “We’ve endured battle after battle, and we’ve learned more in these past weeks about the enemy that will help us defeat them. But we can only do that by striking our enemy down together, not by hiding behind walls.”
Cornelius nodded. “The president is absolutely right. You have to tell your Council and the PM that they need to send the reinforcements they promised. Mexico is fulfilling their oath. Why can’t Canada?”
“I’m sorry,” Vance said. “We’ve sent what we can spare. If you want me and my people to pack up and go home, we will. You saw their faces. They don’t want to defend some foreign land while their wives and husbands and children and parents are back up north, unsure if they’re going to make it another day.”
“I don’t believe this,” Ringgold said.
“I really am sorry, but this is out of my hands,” Vance said. “Remember, you don’t fight with the army you want. You fight with the one you have. That’s what we’re doing—and that’s what you’ll have to do as well.”
Ringgold fumed at the last-minute change, but she understood Canada’s perspective. She should have seen this coming. “Cornelius, if we identify a target, does this change our tentative plans to destroy the Prophet?”
“It does,” he said. “We’ll have to consult with General Souza again, but by my rough estimates, any concerted attack, regardless of the Prophet’s location, will require at least another five-hundred troops to make up for what the Canadians aren’t sending.”
He shot Vance a look filled with daggers.
Ringgold knew that five-hundred troops could make or break their eventual assault. They needed the total number of armed forces properly trained and equipped for an all-out offensive. But she still regretted the solution that came to mind, hoping she would not come to regret it.
“General, you’ve been working closely with Captain Beckham to train our newest recruits,” Ringgold said. “How soon before you believe they’ll be prepared for an offensive strike?”
Cornelius was a staunch, confident man, but even he squirmed. “A few of their units have already seen action when we sent them to help reinforce Outpost Houston. They’ll be the best equipped in any offensive maneuvers. I can reassign them immediately and focus their training on offensive instead of defensive tactics.”
“Do it,” Ringgold said. “We might not have long. The final battle is coming, and we need every able-bodied person left to fight it.”
***
Azrael savored the smell of blood and antiseptic chemicals. This lab had kicked off his empire, from a single follower to an army on the verge of a decisive victory. Past rows of laboratory equipment was a space that Azrael had personally helped design.
The room used to be a special sterile environment suited for animal experiments.
Now it had been adapted for humans.
It was here, in this very room, where he had created VX-102 and started his initial human trials.
The formerly white walls were covered in a wallpaper of red tendrils from his organic communication network, another testament to the technological achievements he had accomplished with the help of his scientist cohort. Most of them had seen early on the success of VX-102, and they had chosen to elevate themselves to the status of Scions, like himself. He welcomed them into his fold.
Others who were not as mentally fit maintained their frail human bodies. The delicate, skinny fingers of humans were an abhorrent necessity to work with sensitive laboratory equipment, like some of the microscopes and analytical chemistry instrumentation that had been designed for their unevolved bodies.
Fortunately, the Scions’ clawed fingers were much better at other tasks. Especially the ones that Azrael cherished, like the one he was about to help with now.
Sporadic screams of horror and pained groans echoed from the test specimens behind the various partitions, all isolated by plastic curtains. The buzz of surgical saws cutting through bone and the slurp of organs sliding from bodies into metal pans was music to Azrael’s ears.
He peeled back a plastic blood-spattered curtain to reveal his faithful old doctor, Murphy, working over a humanoid body.
The wrinkled old man held surgical tools and prepared to replace some of the patient’s organs with transplants from a dead Variant.
“Is this him?” Azrael asked.
“Yes, this is the one we recovered from Katahdin,” Murphy replied. “The latest version of VX-102 has worked extraordinarily fast in him. I believe that with these final surgeries, he’ll be complete.”
“And his brain?”
“Fully intact, Prophet,” the doctor said. “When he isn’t passed out from the pain, he can talk coherently. He’s very, very angry about something, although it usually doesn’t take long for the pain to make him pass out again during my operations.”
Azrael traced his own clawed fingers over the long claws jutting from the patient’s fingers. “These transplants from Variant donors are truly improving the development of the Scions.”
“Yes, you made
