The Black Rose

Stepping off the plane, the familiar fresh scent of animal feces, plants, and flowers inundated my senses. While I didn’t know much about the physical location of the Shadow facility, I knew it was out in the middle of nowhere. I also knew that when I lived on the east coast, the facility was a three-hour plane ride away, and this facility, if it was the same, was but a two-hour plane ride away.

My feet shuffled one in front of the other as Damien and I were led inside. Once the massive steel door closed, our blindfolds were removed. Four fresh faces in recruit fatigues were there to greet us, along with Nadine.

Memories of our last conversation flooded my brain. Chanel, the smell, tying Nadine up, letting her go, grabbing coffee, it all made me nauseous. I wanted to scream out and tell her I was sorry, but my lips remained shut.

“Greetings,” Nadine glanced to Damien and then me, no smile. “Damien, your presence is requested elsewhere. These fine gentlemen will escort you.” Nadine waved her hand in towards the right and those two fine gentlemen showed Damien the way.

I waited patiently. “Alex,” Nadine nodded. “Dr. Swartz has requested to see you immediately, you can follow me.”

I followed Nadine down the long corridors, the steel grates beneath our feet reminiscent of a spacecraft or submarine flooring would.

“Am I getting tested again?” I asked.

Nadine didn’t speak, she only walked. I gulped slightly. I glanced down and back at tweedle dumb and tweedle dee to my left and right. They carried guns, which was no issue for me, except for that wicked witch of the west in front. Nadine could make matters challenging, and after our last meeting, we weren’t particularly seeing eye to eye.

Nadine stopped in front of the first lab door. “You two can wait out here,” she barked, allowing the scanner to scan her handprints, then her eye. The door slid open and we walked in.

Every muscle in my body tensed. There was the familiar white dentist’s chair in the center of the lab. Dr. Swartz was sitting in the far corner on a swivel stool, writing something in a manila folder.

“Ah, Alex. Nice to see you,” he paused, closing the folder.

I smiled disdainfully and nodded. I took my seat on the dentist’s chair and held out my arm. I knew what I was here for, what every lab rat was here for.

“How have you been feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” I muttered. “No changes,” which was a big fat lie.

Nadine sat quietly in the corner of the room, like a panther poised in a tree waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

“That’s good,” he soothed, taking the long needle from the package, and he patted my vein. The needle slid in easily and soon, thick red blood filled the vials. After taking six vials, Dr. Swartz took my blood pressure, as well as a CAT scan, a hair sample, a skin sample, and another sample I would rather not repeat.

“Well, we have finished the normal routine,” Dr. Swartz peered up from his spectacles. “But I wanted to do one more thing.” He looked at me with an unfamiliar expression. “I want to do an MRI.”

I heard the subtle break in his voice. He was nervous. I didn’t say a word, I just watched him.

“If you will follow me. We won’t be long, Nadine, you can wait here.” Nadine’s face contorted as if to object, but she thought better of it and nodded.

I followed Dr. Swartz, my only supposed friend in this place. While I had my tenuous love-hate relationship with him, I couldn’t deny he was more of a father figure to me than my own had ever been.

Dr. Swartz led me into the small room.

“I just want to get a better picture of your brain,” he smiled. “Lie here.” I lay reluctantly.

He handed me headphones which I put on. “The machine will get very loud, but try not to move.”

I placed the earphones around my head and waited to be shoved into the white incubator. Dr. Swartz exited the room, but I could hear him through the headphones. “Just try to relax, and listen to the music I have provided.”

I wet my lips, adjusting myself to not move for the next thirty minutes. I closed my eyes, waiting to hear what musical selection Dr. Swartz had prepared for me when I was greeted with this voice.

“Alex, remain perfectly still. What you are about to hear is a prerecording of my voice. I have not been coerced nor bribed. Actually, quite the opposite. By doing this, I have put my life in grave danger. I have been with Shadow for as long as I can remember, and in this time, I have committed unspeakable acts. I have made grave mistakes that have cost many lives.” A pause in the recording. I tried to remain perfectly still, to quiet my racing heart.

“You were never a mistake,” he continued. “Alex, you are an extraordinary being. I created you, and as your father, it is my duty to protect you. There’s no easy way to say this, but in this three-year span, I have created three more just like you. Well, no offense, measurably better, but that’s beside the point. The point is, you are in danger. With new recruits to take your place, I fear they may look for any reason to neutralize you. I know I don’t deserve to be free, but you, Alex, you are still young. You have a chance. With your brain, your training, you could defeat them, and maybe, just maybe, I can find some peace with what I’ve done.”

I could hear muffled shuffling in the background. “I’m afraid I must end this now, but if there is any shred in you that doesn’t want to do this any longer, you must run. Remember this, Sparrow.”

The recording cut off quickly. I didn’t move a muscle. My mind raced to process what it just heard. Sparrow? Run? Did Dr. Swartz not know me well, or did he know exactly who Shadow was and my only choice was to run?

I could hear the sounds of the machine whirl to a halt. Dr. Swartz stepped inside as the table delivered me to the bright fluorescent lights. I sat up, taking off the headphones, and handed them to him. We exchanged a lingering glance but neither one of us spoke. We were being watched.

“Excellent music choice,” I mumbled.

“Ah, yes, Mozart, always a classic.” he grinned slyly.

“Well, that concludes the testing,” he spoke. “You may change back into your clothes, and I believe Nadine is now waiting for you in the hall.”

I rose from the table, “Es war schön dich auch zu sehen (It was nice to see you),” I muttered in German, Dr. Swartz’s native language.

He looked up at me inquisitively. I had never spoken German to him before, or any language.

“Ich sehe, Sie haben Ihren Horizont erweitert (I notice you have broadened your horizons),” he continued.

“Thanks to you,” I murmured.

“Well, I look forward to what you do with the next three,” he bowed his head respectfully, the wrinkles above his eyes a little more pronounced.

“Bis wir uns wieder treffen,” I murmured. This might be the last time I saw Dr. Swartz. I couldn’t thank him for his loyalty, for his sacrifice, all I could do was speak to him in his native language.

I walked out of the room, ruminating over his message. Sparrow, why was that name so important? Who was it?

I advanced to the door to find Nadine waiting patiently for me on the other side. “Where to now? My humble leader,” I snarked.

Nadine took my arm, “Dr. Marlo wants to see you now,” she aired flatly.

My whole body tensed. I hated that weasel of a man.

We moved in rushed silence fifty feet down, fifth door on the left, three hundred feet from the exit. My eyes clocked everything and everyone, it was as if a shroud had been lifted. I trusted no one now, and any one of these doors or people could be my end. Nadine knocked on the door. Three seconds passed and the door swung open. A smug grin splayed across his folded eyebrows.

“Hello, Alex,” he swooned.

I gulped lightly. The mental assessment was what I hated most. I stepped in. The same metal-framed chair I had endured numerous hours of torture sat in the center of the room. I moved to take a seat, my face calm, cool, and unperturbed. Nadine stayed outside.

The doctor moved to place the circles of death on my temples. “I hear you have been doing well on the outside,” he muttered. He latched my wrists and legs down to the chair. I fought to calm my nerves. The chains brought back evocative memories.

“Well, I guess you would know more than I,” I sassed.

Doc ignored my sarcasm and stepped back to his seat. He pressed a few buttons on his machine and grabbed his clipboard.

“What is your name?”

“Alexandra Pierce,” I groaned.

“How long have you been on the outside?”

“Three years.”

“Where do you live now?”

“L.A.” I prattled on.

“How was your first assignment, Chin?”

“It went well. I neutralized the target.”

“That’s not what I have written here,” Doc aired looking up from his spectacles.

“Says here that you killed everyone in the house. Why?”

“I did what had to be done,” I muttered defiantly.

“And how did you know what needed to be done?” he pressed.

“I mean, there was no way to kill Li Chin without alerting someone in that house. It was too risky.”

“Ah, so you took the easier approach.” Doc pretended to scribble on his clipboard, but he and I both knew they were listening and recording this conversation.

“I took the least risky approach. The approach that delivered results in a timely manner. Why does it matter if I killed a house full of Chin’s comrades and family? Maybe, if you would share more details with me, I wouldn’t have killed them all. Maybe if I was more than a plaything, a toy that could be wound up and set off in a certain direction, the result would’ve been more to their liking.”

Dr. Marlo remained stoic. Rising from the chair he walked towards a small surgical tray in the corner and grabbed something.

“If you won’t play nice, we will do this the hard way,” he turned gliding back over. In his hand was a thick syringe of light purple liquid. “What is that?” I asked my eyes widening with alarm. I was chained like an animal to this chair. He ignored my question and instead jabbed the needle into my forearm. I tore against the restraints but they didn’t budge.

“Now,” he aired, returning back to his clipboard. “That cocktail is of my own little invention, a fast-acting serum that will open your mind and enhance our little experiments.” He glared up at me from his wire-rimmed glasses. I could feel the liquid burn through my veins. I closed my eyes and swallowed. My fingertips began to tingle and my brain fogged.

“Open your eyes,” Dr. Marlo commanded. My eyes opened as if listening to his command. I tried to force them shut but they didn’t budge. What was this?

Suddenly the glass walls came alive with…her. I thrust my arms up but the restraints held. My vision blurred as white-hot rage filled me. Annie lay there lifeless in her bed. I didn’t kill Annie, I loved her.

“So much silence, am I striking a nerve?” he pressed arrogantly. “It seems the memories are coming back.”

“I will kill you,” I spat.

“No, no my dear you won’t. See that liquid I pumped into your system forces you to obey me.”

Suddenly the walls shifted to Mia. She was sitting perfectly in her lab, staring through a microscope. Her innocent, beautiful face completely enthralled.

“And what of her?” he muttered. My heart raced. Dr. Marlo glanced across to the monitor. “I knew it.” He grinned maniacally.

“Alex, I command you to kill her.” Just as the words left his lips a searing pain flashed across my forehead. The serum highjacked my cerebellum, the neurons firing at lightning speed. I watched the screen as my hands moved towards Mia. It felt so real, it felt as if I was with her. “Mia,” I called out within my mind. She looked up from her microscope, her smile melting into fear. I glanced down just as the gun I had pointed at her let out a sickening ring. As if in slow motion, the bullet sailed through the air straight into Mia’s forehead. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stop it.

“Good,” Dr. Marlo touched my shoulder. Tears welled within my eyes as rage filled every orifice. “Again.”

Dr. Marlo had me kill Mia over and over again, and with each bullet, each stab of the knife, I felt my sanity, my fight dissolve. After an hour of sheer torture, my will to fight let alone live had gone. While Mia was still very much alive, the stark visual mixed with the serum made it all too real. I had killed Mia the moment she met me, just as I had killed Annie.

“You will thank me when this is all over,” Dr. Marlo consoled. My tear-stained eyes slowly found his and I blinked. The serum’s hold had lessened. I wondered if Dr. Marlo noticed, or if the endorphins he was riding high on from my torture had clouded his vision. “We will be giving you a new pill regimen,” he continued. “To make you a little more cooperative.”

I grit my teeth, jaw clenching, waiting patiently like a lion in the thick grass.

He loosened the restraints from my legs, then my arms. “Sit here and let me get Nadine.”

Dr. Marlo ambled to the door and opened it. Nadine was standing outside. I wasn’t sure if she could hear anything that took place within these four walls, but as her eyes found mine, I knew she had. Her face softened slightly.

I lurched forward, ripping the leads and cords connecting the white circles to the machines. My hands found Dr. Marlo’s throat before he even knew what happened. I lifted him high in the air, his stupid clipboard dropping to the ground. He’s puny arms frantically tried to grab my hair anything to fight back.

“Alex,” a sultry voice rasped. “Please, put him down.”

I turned my head in her direction. It was a brown-haired woman with pale skin.

“I hear you have wanted to meet us for some time,” she paused, just as his hand found my forehead. I let his neck go, but grabbed the flailing arm and twisted as he went down. Pop.

The sweet sound of breaking bone. He gasped as his pathetic body hit the floor.

I turned to face her. The woman stood next to Nadine, and while she wasn’t built like her, she somehow exuded more power and strength. She ignored the whining Dr. Marlo. I liked her already.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I blurted glancing around the room. “I want to kill you.”

Her heart remained steady, her face stoic. “You and I both know you are too smart to kill me here and now. You wouldn’t make it past this door if you did.”

I bit my lip wondering if I should take my chances.

The woman decided to press on, “Well, I apologize for making you feel unvalued. You are one of our most valuable assets. We gave you Li Chin because he was one of our most sought-after targets. Li Chin was working on dealings with the Russian mafia and Mexican cartels. They were planning a move to disrupt many dealings of value to us in the United States and Europe.”

This woman looked like a robot and talked like one. I thought I had no soul, but her, I could tell she would kill her own child with her bare hands if need be.

“The problem, Alexandra,” she rose from the chair and circled me like a buzzard waiting to eat my dead corpse. Her eyes found mine as she stopped in front of me. “One of our other assets was in that room. You killed him. He was going to take over Li Chin’s empire and now he can’t. You have royally fucked this up for us.”

I swallowed slightly. I was going to die.

“How is Dr. Semmens coming along?” she asked, diverting the subject. “You failed to answer Dr. Marlo here?” she motioned to his crumpled body.

My eyes opened at the sound of her name but the serum had done it’

“Fine, she is starting to trust me.” I kept my answers brief.

“Good,” the she-devil responded, but with her tone I could tell she knew more. “We plan to incorporate her into the fold soon. So, for now, just stand by. Can you do that?”

I nodded. What was I a child?

The woman turned to head towards the door, but without thinking, I bolted towards her. I grabbed her by the neck this time. Hoisting her in the air, I saw no fear in her eyes, just a morbid sense of resolve. She didn’t back away or cower. “Alex, remember that temper I was talking about,” she choked.

“Alex! Put her down!” Nadine barked. I didn’t glance at her but out of my peripheral I knew she had a gun pointed in my direction but I didn’t care. Whether I died now or left her, I was dying it was just a matter of time. I squeezed harder.

“Danielle stop!” A male’s voice erupted. The sound of that name stopped me in my tracks. I dropped her and turned.

Eight men with guns aimed at my head marched in but my eyes found the elusive man’s voice. My knees almost buckled as I took in his eyes and face. “Hold, no one shoot.” He commanded.

“How?” I mouthed.

“Everyone leave us,” he continued.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” one of the men stated.

“Now,” he barked.

The eight men filed out of the room followed by a weeping Dr. Marlo and imposter lady. Nadine was the last. We locked eyes. She knew I knew this man but wasn’t sure how. Once the door slammed, I rounded on him. I bolted forward, but he was too quick. He held a gun aimed at my chest.

“I just want to talk,” he consoled. “I never meant for you to even see me, but you were at risk.”

“Explain,” I aired. “How did you go from absentee father to supposed leader of a secret assassination program?”

Richard sighed. “It’s quite a long story, but I never worked as a day trader. I was always apart of Shadow even before you were born.”

Waves of memories washed over me hitting me like tidal waves one after another. My whole former life as Danielle had been a lie too. My hand clutched my chest. If I could I would rip my heart out right here and now.

“You were never supposed to be here,” he continued, “But your genes, they fit the exact description for what we needed for project Sparrow.” I looked up at the mention of Sparrow.

“So, is that what I am, project Sparrow?”

“Not just you, the entire project covers the enhancement of humans for military action, you were just the start.”

“You mean the guinea pig,” I corrected.

He huffed throwing up his arms in frustration. “Alex, the truth is I never wanted to be a father. I never even wanted to be a husband. I married your mother as part of an undercover mission. When that mission was complete, I moved on to Atlanta to launch project Sparrow.”

“And then when I was kidnapped your problems magically went away,” I sassed.

“I have monitored your progress, I was even at your bedside when you were comatose during the transition,” he countered.

“And I’m supposed to care?” I snapped.

“Alex, I’m begging you, you have to follow the rules. Bring Mia in, or they will kill you.” He actually looked as if that might hurt him.

“I thought you didn’t want a daughter so what does it matter to you?”

“Alex, I’m just trying to do the right thing here,” he pleaded.

“If you aren’t going to provide any beneficial information like how many facilities you operate, how many leaders you have, any of that, I’m done listening to what you have to say.”

He grew quiet. “You know I can’t tell you that. I’ve put my neck on the line in revealing my identity already.”

“Okay, we’re done.” I had enough. “Shoot me if you must,” I called as I walked past him to the door.

Opening it, Nadine was waiting just outside, but my world was shattered. My former life came rushing back to me, all the emotions that Danielle once possessed were now within me. My father was a member of Shadow, and he allowed them to experiment on me, and better yet keep it all one big fat secret. Part of me wanted to whip around and kill everyone in this facility, starting with Richard.

I followed Nadine like a zombie through the facility until we reached our secret wing. Flashbacks peppered me left and right as my two worlds collided. Nadine placed her palm against the black screen and it flashed green.

The door slid open. “I only stay here when I’m training,” she continued, speaking loudly as I suddenly found myself in a spacious loft. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think about anything but what just happened to me and who I just saw.

“You okay?” Nadine asked worriedly.

“Why do you care?” I muttered robotically. Nadine didn’t answer, instead she grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall way. We walked the long corridor to the master bedroom. She flicked the switch in the bath and allowed me to enter.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

As if to answer my question, Nadine’s eyes glanced slightly to the right. My eyes landed on a small black dome. Of course, there was a camera in here.

I gazed in the mirror. Red rimmed my eyelids. My face looked pale, my eyes disheartened. I looked as how I felt. Broken.

“I’m going to shower,” Nadine muttered. I didn’t turn. My head looked up in the mirror as Nadine took off her shirt. I could see every muscle in her back, every rib. I gulped. Then she dropped her pants.

“Are you coming?” she called, stepping into the shower and glancing up at the camera. The walls began to cloud already from the scalding water.

I didn’t want to, but I knew this was the only way we could hold a private conversation.

Screw it. I ripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower to join.

“Thanks for taking the hint,” she whispered.

“Won’t they deem this suspicious?” I muttered inaudibly, suddenly picturing my former father watching me naked in the shower with Nadine.

“No, they won’t, not if we give them a reason to look away,” she groaned lightly in my ear, biting the lobe playfully.

I pulled away. I wasn’t in the mood.

“So, explain,” I muttered in her ear as Nadine lathered the sponge. She began to scrub and rub my back.

“There are three more like you,” she muttered barely above a whisper. She didn’t know I already knew this.

“If you don’t pan out, they can replace you. They will,” she strained.

“And why do you care?” I asked turning on her, even though I knew the answer. I knew Nadine cared more than she ever wanted to admit, but sometimes it’s nice to hear it.

“Because…I care about you,” Nadine sighed. “I always have.”

I gazed at her through the steam. “No, you don’t,” I exhaled. “No one cares about me.”

“Then why would I tell you all this?” Nadine pressed.

She moved her naked body to mine. “I’m risking everything.”

I knew she was right on both accounts. I also knew, in light of current events, that killing me wouldn’t be so easy. If Richard had the balls to reveal himself today, he just might have the balls to fight for my continued existence. But how much clout did he really have?

My mouth moved to hers. I wanted silence, and I wanted to think.

We kissed. Her lips felt familiar yet foreign. I had never seen this side of Nadine, the vulnerability, the desperation. Nadine thrust me against the shower tile, her nails cutting into my back, the passion we once had for one another returned. As Nadine and I had sex within the belly of the beast, I couldn’t help but hope Richard was watching. With that, I held one middle finger in the air towards the camera to send a message.