Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
“When Vanguard is injured—which happens more often than the press knows—we can repair him at the cellular level,” Julia explains. “He heals fast, no doubt, but injuries can take their toll over time. Here, we can grow replacement tissue matched perfectly to his genetic profile. Skin, bone, muscle. Anything the human body can produce, we can replicate and improve upon.”
“Um, where do you get the base genetic material?” I ask, keeping my voice neutral despite the chill running down my spine.
“Various sources. Volunteers, primarily.” She pauses by one of the tanks, watching something pink and glistening pulse with artificial life. “The enhanced program requires a significant pool of biological data. Tissue samples. Genetic profiles. The more diverse our database, the more effective our treatments will be.”
Volunteers. I think of Kozlov at the gala, shaking hands with Matthew Webb. I think of the Prometheus files and their horrifying failure rates. I think of refugees and migrants and people desperate enough to sign anything for a chance at a better life, because they were told things in the US would be better now.
“That must require quite a recruitment effort,” I say carefully.
“It does.” Her eyes meet mine, narrowing just a little. “We have partnerships with various organizations around the world. Medical facilities. Research institutions. Immigration services.”
Immigration services.
“Shall we continue?” Julia gestures toward another door. “I’ve saved the most interesting part for last.”
The final room is the largest yet, a circular space lined with screens, dozens of them, all displaying streams of data I can barely parse. Numbers scrolling, graphs fluctuating, images cycling—and at the center of it all, a massive holographic display showing what appears to be a human body, rendered in blue light, rotating slowly.
It takes me a moment to recognize the figure.
Vanguard.
“Our biometric monitoring center,” Julia says, and there’s no mistaking the pride in her voice now. “From here, we can track our enhanced assets anywhere in the world. Every vital sign. Every movement. Every fluctuation in their physical and psychological state.”
“Assets?” I say. “Plural?”
“Well, Paragon makes two,” she says.
I step closer to the holographic display, watching data cascade around Vanguard’s rotating form. Heart rate: 58 bpm. Blood pressure: 118/76. There are numbers for his cortisol levels, adrenaline, testosterone. Brain activity patterns I don’t understand but that seem to pulse and flow like weather systems across his skull. It’s strangely beautiful and bloody disturbing all at once.
“This is all from his watch?” I ask. My smart watch could never.
“The watch is part of it.” Julia comes to stand beside me, her reflection ghosting over Vanguard’s blue-lit form. “It’s quite a sophisticated device. Monitors his vitals, tracks his location, even measures his emotional state through galvanic skin response and heart rate variability.”
I look at the data streams more closely. Sleep cycles. REM patterns. Hormone fluctuations during dreams. Micro-expressions cataloged and analyzed.
“A watch can tell you what he dreams about?”
“You are looking at the technology of the future—but now.”
But she doesn’t explain further, doesn’t specify exactly how a wristwatch could possibly capture the kind of neural data I’m seeing on these screens, like the brain activity patterns or the emotional mapping that goes far beyond heart rate and skin response. The data is too detailed, too intimate. It’s the kind of information you’d need to be inside someone’s body to capture.
I think about the chair in the first room. The monthly calibrations.
What if they put something in him he doesn’t know about?
“This is…comprehensive,” I manage to say. I know I said I didn’t want to be somewhere private with Vanguard, but now, I’d like to have a few conversations off the record.
“We protect our investments.” Julia turns away from the display, her eyes finding mine with unsettling intensity. “Vanguard represents billions of dollars in research and development, not to mention the hopes and dreams of a nation still recovering from its darkest decade. We take his wellbeing very seriously.”
“I can see that.”
“Can you?” She steps closer, but I hold my ground. “Because I want to be very clear, Miss Baxter, what you’re seeing here, this is what it takes to keep Vanguard functional, safe, and sane.” She pauses, letting each word land. “This is why I’m showing you this. Without Global Dynamix, without me, he would deteriorate. The enhancements would turn on him. The man you’ve been interviewing would cease to exist.”
I swallow hard.
“That sounds like quite a responsibility.”
“It is. One I take very seriously.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Which is why I’m concerned about distractions, things that might interfere with his maintenance schedule or his focus, his loyalty to the program that keeps him alive. His loyalty to his country.”
And there it is. The real reason for this tour.
“You’re worried about me,” I say.
“I’m worried about my asset. Nate has a tendency to become obsessed, to fixate on things—people—that catch his attention. It’s a flaw in his psychology we’ve tried to correct, but some things are more difficult to calibrate than others. Perhaps it comes from his childhood, maybe it’s something that tipped during active duty or when his sister died, or perhaps it’s something that comes with the territory of being a genetically enhanced super soldier. Either way, it’s there, and you’re…activating it.”