Ruthless Redemption
Marie E. Reid

Hours of ear-piercing screams stopped.  The abrupt silence held everyone spellbound.  Even though the medical team had performed dozens of these procedures, the climax continued to affect them, and the quiet lingered.

Labor and delivery had been rough.  The baby weighed an estimated nine pounds, while its nineteen-year-old mother, a petite five feet, had been one hundred pounds.  Surrounding the inert body, the staff stared down at the serene childish face, the smooth pale skin glistening with the perspiration of her efforts.  She had taken her last breath.

The team’s directive mandated the staff stand by and watch the women suffer.  Prior efforts at chemical intervention had negative effects on the altered gene structure of the fetus, which resulted in stillborns.  Besides, easing the host’s pain didn’t alter the outcome.  During gestation, to sustain the life of a fetus required multiple intravenous therapies that diminished the life expectancy of the mother, making death inevitable.

The agency considered these hosts to be throwaways, their recruiters acquiring women with at-risk lifestyles to eliminate problems with concerned relatives or friends.  From foster homes, they solicited naïve eighteen-year-olds, eager to make their mark on the world, while runaways keen to find work, they would signed up as soon as they arrived in town.  The others, ranging in ages from seventeen to twenty-one were prostitutes weary of the life.

Promised a standard of living they never could have visualized, the women willingly left all behind.  The institute kept its word, providing the anticipated lifestyle, but they let the women believe it would be permanent, knowing none would survive the births.  The women deserved better.

Linda Forsythe, lead surgical nurse, had been present at too many of these debaucheries of modern medicine.  Replacing the previous surgical supervisor, who had retired, Linda had joined the group expecting research with genetic mutation and cloning.  After the first birth, realizing they weren’t experimenting but implementing, she suspected covert or military operations of orchestrating the entire program.  She wanted no part of government mechanizations.

Linda had questioned her director and the powers-that-be were prompt to issue a standard denial of governmocracy involvement.  Further, they remained adamant that private scientific sectors of the community were the only sources of research funding.  How gullible did they think she was?

She worked for a research foundation using a camouflaged compound on a Marine base located in the Arizona desert.  A Technical Services Division of a certain intelligence agency had shown a scientific curiosity in their work.  It must be coincidence that this particular tech group had done studies on the use of telepathy, hypnosis, and remote viewing for secret operations in the fifties and sixties.  Trials identical to the institute’s research, yet not federally vested…yeah, right.

What management left unsaid reminded Linda of decades-old rumors about viewing trials done at the Stanford Research Institute funded by CIA money.  Back then, the gossip rampant throughout the research community suggested various intelligence agencies considered adding remote viewing to a roster of psychic phenomena as a potential resource.

Hell.  Whatever her employer’s goals were, she’d had enough.  Watching each attempt to create, birth, and nurture a new-order of intelligence, she realized she wasn't hardcore enough.  Empathy for the women took precedence over her need for medical and scientific knowledge.  She wanted out.

Linda detached herself from the group, took the infant from the doctor’s outstretched hands and moved to the back of the room where a neonatal team waited to receive the child.  Once they cleaned, weighed, and examined the baby for any defects, they would document vital statistics and ready it for transport.

Meanwhile, the morgue team prepped the young woman’s body for disposal and the surgical team prepared the operating room for the next birth.  They had four more women due to deliver that night, which had everyone speculating about the decision to take this child before checking out the other four infants.

* * *

The doors to the operating room whooshed open and Marta Santee, pediatric nurse, hurried from within carrying the tiny bundle swaddled from head to toe.  Looking neither right nor left, she moved along the stark hallway made more so by the glaring overhead lights and the pristine environment.  She reached the door at the end of the corridor and stepped out into the sizzling night air.  Close to midnight, yet the outside temperature hovered at one hundred and twelve degrees.  Marta handed the baby and a file folder to the Marine on duty, smiled and nodded, then returned inside.

The Marine moved to the open door of a limo, stooped and placed the child in the arms of the woman on the back seat.  He handed the folder to the uniformed man beside her, waited for acknowledgment from his superior, then saluted, closed the door and stepped back.  The car sped off into the night headed for a city on the Colorado River, two hundred miles away.  The limo’s occupants settled in for the two-hour journey.  For several miles, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson Ramsey perused the file.  Once they made initial contact with their assigned liaisons and settled into the Research Housing Complex, they had a flight to catch.  Sighing, Jackson turned to Helene Luzerne, practicing pediatrician with a PhD in molecular biology and psychology.  “Let’s have a look.”

Helene lifted the cover and revealed the infant.  She gasped and glanced at Jackson, then examined the sleeping infant from the tufts of reddish-brown hair with golden highlights, down over its unblemished parchment-toned skin, to its perfect little appendages.  Despite the donor DNA gathered from designated sperm banks and specific criminal elements being a crapshoot, the multi-ethnic gene manipulation and serous fluid engineering had created a beautiful child.

“What about eye color,” Helene demanded.  “Is it recorded?”

“Yes, it has the signature greenish-yellow hazel that should darken to that sherry-gold hazel, and there’s no birthmark.  Our experiments have finally paid off!”

Helene smiled.  Jackson had reason to be satisfied.

The institute had been conducting these experimental trials for years, but previous efforts to birth a healthy genetically altered child had failed for one reason or another.  The most frequent obstacle to success -- a flaw in the collective molecular structure.  Weakness in one component prevented the mix of effusion fluids from triggering crucial augmentation to the primary marker.  An essential element needed to develop Psi prowess.  The macromolecule had been there but recessive, which resulted in normal interracial children placed for adoption, with one exception.  A baby from a previous venture, PsiD-Es6, considered their first success, and the child the staff had named Ruthless.

There wasn’t a problem with PsiD-Es6, per se, but a lapse in cognitive thinking by the staff.  In the early days of research, ninety percent of the babies born with a viper-shaped birthmark didn’t survive.  The other ten percent couldn’t tolerate the first round of injections, were released from the trials, and put up for adoption.  PsiD-Es6 had been the exception to both percentages.

Swayed by the perfection of PsiD-Es6, personnel were careless and failed to document the birthmark at the base of its spine because it wasn’t viper-shaped.  Then, when its beginner trials progressed on schedule with success, they dismissed the birthmark as unimportant.  Afterward, treatments of serous fluids to augment specific nucleotides failed to advance chromosomes necessary for equalization.  Critical trials went awry, which generated controversy about the import of the paw-print birthmark surrounded by odd-shaped markings.  But it had been too late to reverse the processes.  PsiD-Es6 had escaped from its foster parents.

© Marie E. Reid