The Unseen by Hines

Author:Hines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc.
Published: 2010-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

THE YOUNG MAN STARES AT THE SECRET VISITOR AND NODS. THE SECRETvisitor seems happy, happier than the young man has ever seen. “Congratulations,” the secret visitor says, holding out a hand. “Usually, we don’t make such changes with someone so . . . young. You’re a first. A prodigy.”

The young man takes his secret visitor’s hand, shakes it. He’s been let out of the metal room many times now, seen the world outside this steel trap. And yet, oddly enough, he’s always felt most comfortable here inside a place other people would call a prison cell. It’s the only thing that’s comfortable and familiar for him, and he needs to hold on to something comfortable and familiar.

Especially on the missions he’s been performing for his secret visitor these last few years. Raven still has no idea. He thinks the young man is his experiment, his property. He thinks the daily tests, the prodding questions, the learning sessions, are the young man’s only contacts with the outside world.

But the young man knows better.

The young man has been outside the steel room. He’s learned all about Raven’s pheromone research, and he thinks he knows why Raven has failed.He’s shared these ideas with his secret visitor, as well as some new ideas in genetic research spurred by the new materials, new lessons.

And now, he’s agreed to become part of another . . . experiment. To carry on with Raven’s research, as well as to partner with some other researchers on new opportunities. He’s ready, because his secret visitor has given him the ultimate training these last few years. Combat, strategy, physics, theoretics, and more, all of it implanted with the help of new cocktails brought to him only by the secret visitor.

And now, the secret visitor has offered him a promotion.

He stands, hearing the chair he was sitting in scrape against the bare floor. “I’m just wondering . . .” he says.

“Yes,” the visitor prompts. “A good quality, to wonder. Something Raven hasn’t been able to kill, despite his best efforts.”

The young man returns the smile, only now becoming aware of the constant buzz in his ears. For several years now, the wasps have been his constant companions, fluttering about his head—drawn, he knows, by the experiments Raven has performed with wasp pheromones. Raven wanted to create a Drone Soldier, someone who would follow orders unquestioningly, much as the drone wasps sacrificed themselves to protect their hives.

He is a failed experiment, he knows. Raven hasn’t given up yet, of course, but it’s too late to go much further down that path alone. With the help of newer technologies such as gene splicing, coupled with the pheromones, there are possibilities—possibilities the young man has expressed to his secret visitor—but Raven is the proverbial dinosaur. He has no interest in using these new techniques.

“Your question,” the secret visitor asks, drawing him from his reverie.

The young man looks the secret visitor in the face. “Where did I comefrom? My family—my mother, my father?”

The secret visitor takes his hand, pats it comfortingly.

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