“Yes, that’s true,” Barnes admitted. “Stroke of genius, really. A completely eco-friendly way of destroying one’s enemies. I wish I would have thought of it.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. They brought me in later to fix their mess.” He shook his head. “Typical.”
“What was their mess? Exactly.” Micah crossed his arms over his chest.
Barnes shook his head. “The idiots thought it would be a grand idea to test their new weapon. So, they let loose a couple of dragons on some village in the Middle East. Stupid idiots didn’t bother to insure they had any sort of safety measures in place.”
“I take it the drags didn’t just kill who they were supposed to.” Rain piped up.
“Of course not. They’re wild animals, essentially. Reptilian, to be specific. They destroyed the village and moved on to the next. Of course the locals were a bit up in arms and tried using missiles on them, to no avail. Next thing we knew, half the continent had been destroyed by dragon fire and the other half by nuclear weapons. It was a disaster. And then the dragons did another thing they weren’t supposed to do.”
“What was that?”
“They started breeding.” Dr. Barnes took his glasses off, polished them on his tattered lab coat and popped them back on. “The original team of scientists had the brilliant idea to add a specific instruction into the dragons’ DNA sequence, one that forced them to mature at an accelerated rate. In a matter of months we went from two dragons to dozens and with drags nearly impossible to kill with conventional weapons...” He shrugged.
There was no need to finish the thought. They all knew what had happened.
“The only reason the world wasn’t overrun by dragons was that future generations of dragons matured at a normal rate giving humans a fighting chance. Lucky break, I suppose.” Barnes said.
“So they brought you in to stop the drags?” Micah asked.
“Oh, no. It was far too late for me to do anything about stopping the dragons. They brought me in to create someone who could.”
Micah frowned. “Who was that?”
Barnes beamed at him. “Why, you, of course.”
Chapter 18
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” Rain slipped her hand into Micah’s, giving it a small squeeze. “What did you do to Micah?”
“We were losing the war. The entire military had been decimated. Even nuclear warheads had no effect on the drags. We needed a new kind of weapon and a new kind of warrior, so they hired me to do just that.”
“And how ... how did you do it?” Micah’s voice cracked with emotion.
Barnes shrugged and sank down onto a nearby stool. “The one thing on the planet that could cut through dragon scale was diamonds. Some D & D yahoo made a sword based on the old claymores the Scottish Highlanders used to carry in battle. Only he edged the thing in diamond shards. Worked like a charm. Problem was an ordinary man couldn’t wield the thing long enough to be effective without getting himself killed.”
“But you obviously solved the problem,” Rain said.
“Of course. What we needed were Super Soldiers. Men strong enough, fast enough and with enough stamina to wield the diamond blades against the dragons. Not to mention smart enough to stay alive. So, we did a little gene splicing here and a few hormone injections there and some chemical brain surgery and voila!”
“Brain surgery?” Rain was truly horrified. They’d messed with Micah’s brain?
“Well, yes. In a way. In order to be effective, the soldier had to be fearless and free of past loyalties, focused entirely on destroying dragons. The only way to do that was to erase all memory and replace it with the drive to kill. The most effective way of achieving that was with a combination of chemical and physical brainwashing, if you will.”
The thought made Rain sick. She glanced at Micah. He was pale as a ghost. She couldn’t blame him. “What about this gene-splicing thing?”
“Ah, that,” Barnes looked pleased she’d asked. “That was easy enough. We’ve been playing with genetic manipulation for decades. After several disasters I finally found the right method. They provided a brilliant specimen, a real hero.” He nodded at Micah. “I simply added a bit here and there to make him perfect.”
“You mean you added parts of other people?” Rain couldn’t help the tone of horror that crept into her voice.
“Well, the DNA of other people, yes.”
“Was one of them named Jones?” Micah’s voice was hoarse.
Barnes thought for a moment, tugging slightly at his lower lip. “Yes, now you mention it. Intelligent young man. Unusually fast reflexes. Terrible nicotine habit. He was killed in action nearly two decades ago, but not before I was able to harvest his DNA.”
He beamed at them as though he’d done something spectacularly wonderful. Rain just felt sick. And if the look on Micah’s face was anything to go by, so did he.
Barnes rubbed his hands together. “And now you’ve returned him to me, I can finish what I started.”
“Excuse me?” Rain couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
“He’s good, of course, our Micah, but he’s not the perfect soldier. Not yet.”
“I don’t think so, Barnes. You’re not getting anywhere near my DNA. Not again.”
“Oh, my dear boy, you don’t have a choice,” Barnes explained, as though to a child. “You don’t honestly think the radio is the only way I can signal the meatheads, do you? Goodness, I wouldn’t have believed you two quite so dimwitted as that. Corporal!” he raised his voice on the last.
The door swung open revealing three very large Marines. Rain thought they looked familiar, but then all the Marines pretty much looked alike to her. She glanced at Micah. His face was expressionless, but his jaw was clenched tight and a vein throbbed in his temple. He was pissed as hell.
“Do you think we can take them?” Rain kept her voice low, her eyes locked on the Marines. She’d taken down two of them last time she was here, but
