“We will be captured,” she said. Her voice was calm now, the urgency of a moment before drained away, like the page of a photo album, turned from an image of war-torn chaos to one of blissful serenity.

I was concentrating on the door, but I could see the look on her face out of the corner of my eyes. A sort of calmness, deep thought, and then she smiled, oh so slightly. I felt myself speaking, my voice coming out of the void as my being focused, focused on the lock, “If they don’t blow us up, we *can* escape, I just need a damn moment more.”

And then her fingers were in her left eye, digging deeply and yanking the orb of its socket. She crushed it in her right hand even as she placed her captured prize into the newly vacated socket with her left.

It took me a moment to re-orient myself. I was lying in bed, shivering from a nightmare, the alarm was ringing, its urgent tone indicating a personal alert, highest priority.

Jesus, what now? I rushed to the terminal and shut off the flashing red light. This alert was never meant to be used, it was set to activate only if I was in grave personal danger, requiring an accumulation of several different warnings, all ringing together.

My Kibo prog was bleeping, someone was doing a search for The Humani Project. And that someone was Heaven. And she was trying to hack Omega. I guess today is her lucky day, it sure as hell didn’t feel like mine.

I had never kept in touch with Heaven, but I once made a promise to keep an eye on her. She didn’t do much online, and she’s fairly easy to trace, you can tell if she’s moved into a new city when the invariable reports surface – disappearances or fainting spells of her typical prey, a physical description once or twice. Sometimes, rarely, I’ve had to sidetrack an investigation that came too close. Very rarely, though. I would never call her cautious, but she’s a hunter, with all the instinct of any successful predator.

But this is new for her. I’ve seen her hack, usually to create or maintain an identity on the few occasions that she required one. She’s not too bad, to even be able to find Omega is proof enough of her skills, but she wasn’t so good as to avoid the trap in the guise of an ‘unguarded’ entrance. She wouldn’t get in, though, no unauthorised person could, I designed it that way. I left her to try while I called up her logs to see what she had been doing, and what she had found out about Humani so far.

Then I took control of her computer.

<BEGIN LOG>

Heaven.

Hell. As in, “Who the Hell are you?”.

Don’t shut the box, I know you’re going to. Just listen, I’m a friend.

I’m listening.

Why are you searching for Humani?

It’s none of your business.

Alright, that’s fair enough. But let me tell you a story, and then you can decide for yourself if looking for Humani is still your business.

Shoot.

It always occurs to me, now, years after the fact, that maybe if she had stopped herself everything would have been alright. If we had simply left the carnage and let the fire do the rest. Maybe if she hadn’t saved that one eye we would all still be safe. Just maybe.

She used the handle Cassandra. I suspect for the ill-fated prophetess of myth. I had never heard of her before, small as our elite society is, and I still don’t know her name, or anything else about her. You know that’s virtually impossible. I didn’t have the time to do a proper search back then, and when I did, after it was all over, she was ghost. I don’t know if she existed before we made contact, or if her new masters wiped her. I suspect the latter, and I don’t intend to pry.

She had contacted me over the fibre a week before she died. Yes, I do think of her as dead – it’s… easier that way. She had heard of me through the friend-of-a-friend network, the usual channels of the unusual suspects. I am good at what I do, and for what she intended, she needed the best.

I don’t know why she did it, don’t know how she found the money she offered me. My job was simple – I get her in, she does what she had to do, I get her out.

Is Project Humani funded by a government, a corporation, an individual? I don’t know. That night itself dances in my memory, too many strange sights in too short a time, a delirium of events. I don’t know much of what happened, really, or what came before, or what followed, but what little I do know I try my best to forget.

It was in the Middle East. We had each taken separate flights to Tel Aviv, she had a safe house there, where we rested a day and a night while she brought me up to speed. That night, we drove for about four hours into the desert, and then we walked for a further half-hour after that. The place itself was like a military installation, heavily guarded but poorly lit. Like a military installation except it didn’t fly any flags.

The perimeter was easy. Guards are never alert, as you know, too many nights watching unchanging scenery dulls all the senses. Guards in top secret military installations are worse, they never expect anyone to even be there, much less attempt to breach. Whoever ran the place seems to know that too, and trusted to electronics to sound the alert, leaving the guards to clean the mess.

I remember we went through three separate fences, watched over by e-eyes some folks will pay millions to get their hands on. We went through like a shadow. The door was a bit harder, but I did my thing and we were in.

A lab, white corridors bathed in white light, not a soul around. In all probability the guards did not even know what they stood watch over. Her gun in hand, she opened doors in total silence, searching. Room after room, scientific equipment, printouts and flashing lights, charts and graphs on the walls, conference rooms. The first person we came across was in a washroom. She shot him, twice through the head, before the surprise had fully registered on his face. We placed him in a cubicle, head first in the bowl, so he wouldn’t bleed. I locked the cubicle from outside, and she made me wear his coat. It was white, like everything else.

She killed the second person with equal finesse, taking his coat for herself. Then four more, together and dispatched in quick succession, and we had found what we came for.

Three glass cylinders, each with a woman inside, floating naked in a clear, blue, liquid, tubes connecting to sensors about their bodies, a mask through which they breathed, their hair floating like Medusa’s, a dark halo around each face, each one of them exactly alike.

She spoke for the first time since we entered the compound, ordering me to lock the door. She went up to the cells, standing herself in front of the middle one, staring up at that sleeping face, as if in awe.

“It’s safe now,” I whispered, when the room was secured. She remained silent, a full minute, two.

“They did it,” she said, at last. “They went and did it. We will destroy this, but someone else will be able to do it too. It will never be safe again. Not for any of us.”

“What is it?” I asked, “Who are these girls?”

“Not who. What,” she turned to look at me. She seemed a little shocked, a little stunned. Off her guard and out of her element. I had been calm until then. Seeing her surprise made me a little uneasy, she had already made it clear that she was a professional, but now she seemed lost, and maybe a little afraid. “These are machines, killing machines.”

“They’re not human?”

“Strictly speaking, yes they are. But if you mean human as in born of a mother and bred in a loving home, no, they’re not.”

“I don’t understand. These are clones? Genetics?”

“They’re machines. Machines made out of millions of little machines, self-replicating microscopic machines.”

“Nano-tech?”

“Close enough. You don’t really need to know. We have to destroy them, every last part of them, if even a drop of blood survives they’ll be able to regenerate themselves, given enough time.”

“Like starfishes.”

She nodded in reply, then turned away and started to set up the charges. I went across to the workstation, professional interest taking over. The computers were locked, and I didn’t want to jeopardise our position by attempting a hack. The notes and papers scattered around seem to confirm her story, a strange hybrid of nano-technology and genetics. Superhuman, or, inhuman, machines. “My mother is a test-tube. My father is a knife.” I remember reading that phase somewhere. The thought frightened me, not because it existed, but because it existed in such secrecy, without the public eye as witness and conscience.

It was about fifteen minutes after we entered the room that we heard the crash. I had leaned a chair against the door, to serve as warning in the unlikely event that someone would manage to break my lock. That someone was a young woman, and as I ducked behind a table, I realised she had the same features beneath her dark hair as the three floating in their cells.

When the fight was over her torso was non-existent. My host was bending over the body, and, as I walked over, she pocketed something. It was an eye, I realised, seeing the empty socket of the messed up corpse.

“We had better go,” she said.

I nodded.

As we left the room I turned for one last look, and the thing had risen, was trying to stand, one hand holding its entrails in. Then we were running for the exit and the alarm sounded, flashing red lights in the white corridors, a siren wail at the edge of consciousness. When we turned the last corner, she activated the charges, and the resulting explosion shook the floor.

And we were at the door, and it wouldn’t open.

“Get us out!”

“Dammit, I can’t!”

“We will be captured.”

“If they don’t blow us up, we *can* escape, I just need a damn moment more.”

And then she dug out her eye, crushing it in her right hand even as she placed her captured prize into its new home with her left.

“They won’t kill us, not before they find out who sent us. Tell them the truth, it’ll be easier on you if your story remains consistent. I won’t leave you, when I escape, I’ll take you with me. Remember that, I won’t leave you.” And she squeezed my arm, staining me with her blood, making a promise.

Then she blinked.

And she was different.

Her face changed, subtly. Her posture, oh so slightly different, more, it seemed, feral.

When she wiped her eye, the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Then she touched the controls of the door. And it slid open.

I was staring at her face, unable to look away. I realised that the guards would be coming, and every moment not escaping reduced our chances, but I couldn’t look away. Tears started to run down her cheeks, one a streak of red, and she gritted her teeth.

With a shudder, she seemed to regain control, then she pushed me out the open door, with more force than I would have expected, sending me sprawling onto the sand outside.

“Go!” she hissed, and as the door slid shut I saw her fall to her knees, then she screamed.

Yes, I ran. I was so bewildered instinct took over. I’ve been running all my life, after all. I’m not proud of it, but I left her there.

I never saw her again, except once. On a street in Peking, I saw someone who could have been her. But maybe it wasn’t, and she died that night. I don’t know.

Only three people have searched for The Humani Project. Two of them are dead, and you’re the third. I don’t know why you’re looking, but leave it alone, before they start to look for you.

Take care, Heaven.

<END LOG>

I doubt that Heaven would leave it, but she lacks the attention to find anything possibly dangerous. As I expected, she shut the box as soon as I closed the connection, coming back on again with a different security set-up, acting out of instinct, not caution. I decided to keep an eye on her until she finds something else to occupy her time, knowing her, it’d take a week more at most.

I felt better for having told her what happened. Putting it all down felt like a purging. It is here now, in the machine, and maybe my memory can finally be rid of it, and maybe then the nightmares would stop, and I don’t have to feel so afraid, and I don’t have to feel so alone.

The truth can set you free.