Chapter 17 Dave
DAVE
The Humvee was built for rough terrain and military utility, not comfort, and every pothole on the road that cut through the island's central ridge reminded all eight of Dave of that fact.
Number Seven was behind the wheel, which was not a random assignment. Of the eight bodies, Seven had the best spatial awareness when it came to operating vehicles, a quirk of the individual mind that had existed before the merge and persisted afterward like a phantom.
The remaining seven of Dave occupied the jump seats that were bolted along both sides of the rear compartment of the expanded-capacity model, the tight configuration close enough for the collective consciousness to hum at full coherence.
The road descended through a tunnel carved into the volcanic rock of the ridge and emerged on the other side of the island, where the landscape changed.
The manicured gardens and whitewashed buildings of the resort side gave way to flat terrain, the dense vegetation broken up by concrete structures that squatted low against the ground.
Most of the barracks complex was underground, carved into the bedrock to escape the heat, but the surface installations spread across several square kilometers.
This was where the army lived. Over ten thousand Brotherhood warriors, housed in subterranean dormitories, trained in open-air arenas and underground combat simulators, and maintained in a state of perpetual readiness for deployment to missions around the globe.
It was the engine of the Brotherhood's power, and it had operated like a well-oiled machine for millennia.
Dave had grown up here. Or rather, the eight boys who had become Dave had spent their adolescence here after being transferred out of the Dormant enclosure at thirteen.
The training camp, the barracks, the combat drills, the brutality of instructors who believed that pain was the most efficient teacher, and boys who tried to distinguish themselves by bullying others.
It was the perfect breeding ground for the worst traits immortals and humans possessed, but the Eight of Dave hadn't seen it that way at the time. The transition was not just about their transformation from humans to immortals but also from boys to men.
It had been a rite of passage.
The memories were shared now, eight versions of the same experiences that had shaped them, honed them, turning them into killing machines long before the enhancement drugs had made them unstoppable.
Visiting the training grounds was like stirring up sediment from the bottom of a swamp, bringing back memories of countless cruelties, big and small.
The training was designed to eliminate anything soft in them, to eradicate compassion, to destroy empathy, to blind them to beauty, make them indifferent to music, incapable of feeling love or any positive emotion other than devotion to the Brotherhood, Lord Navuh, and the teachings of Mortdh, their hateful god.
It had taken the merging of their consciousness to transcend the conditioning, the brainwashing, to recognize what had been done to them as such.
Number Seven parked the Humvee at the edge of one of the training fields, a vast rectangular arena bordered by concrete walls and observation towers.
A company of young warriors was running combat drills, pairs sparring in hand-to-hand combat while a commander bellowed corrections from an elevated platform.
The Eight of Dave climbed out and stood in formation beside the vehicle.
The effect was immediate and predictable.
A group of warriors who had been resting between drills straightened and went still.
The commander on the platform noticed the change in atmosphere, stopped mid-shout, and turned to watch.
Sparring pairs across the arena disengaged and looked toward the entrance.
Dave knew what they saw, what effect the eight bodies with eight identical expressions had on them. It must be disturbing to realize that one grand consciousness was looking at them through eight pairs of eyes.
But more than that, the harbor killings were still fresh enough in the collective memory to serve as an effective deterrent against disrespect.
"We are here to observe," Number One announced, his voice carrying across the arena with the authority that Dave had perfected by emulating the most respected commanders he'd observed. "Carry on. We're here to observe on behalf of Lord Losham."
The commander on the platform climbed down and walked over to them. He had the kind of face that looked like it had been carved from the same volcanic rock as the tunnel, and Dave remembered him from his time in the Brotherhood's army. His name was Othren, and he wasn't one of the worst.
Othren stopped at a respectful distance, his posture rigid. "I wasn't informed of a visit."
"We don't schedule visits," Number One said. "This is a random inspection. You should expect those at any time."
Othren's jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Of course. You're welcome to observe."
"We don't need your welcome. Carry on, Commander."
Dave walked through the training ground, his eight bodies moving in the loose cluster that made warriors step aside and conversations die mid-sentence.
Number One stopped to speak briefly with unit commanders, asking about this or that, to provide cover for what was actually happening beneath the surface.
The thralling was subtle. It wasn't the heavy, mind-bending compulsion that Lord Navuh had deployed through his loudspeaker devotions.
In comparison, this was a nudge. A gentle pressure applied to the edges of consciousness, planting suggestions so delicate that the recipients would experience them as their own thoughts.
Loyalty to Losham and his current leadership.
A vague but persistent sense that his authority was legitimate and worthy of their support. Confidence in the island's stability.
It was tedious.
Dave had to work in small groups, which worked well because the warriors were already divided into manageable clusters.
The effect was temporary unless reinforced repeatedly, but it should hold for at least a month.
Dave moved through groups of ten and twenty, with Number One engaging them in conversation while the hive mind worked beneath the words, laying down the neural pathways that would make the compulsion stick.
By the time they had covered the primary training ground and two of the underground barracks levels, two and a half hours had passed, and the collective was beginning to feel the strain.
Compulsion on this scale was energy-intensive, and without Navuh's raw power, Dave had to compensate with precision and repetition.
"We should head back," Number Three said as they climbed into the Humvee. "We are late for our shots."
We don't have to be there precisely at two in the afternoon, the hive mind thought. Dimitri and Petrov work until six.
As Number Seven started the engine, a thought surfaced in the collective, not originating from any single mind but from the shared space where the eight minds overlapped.
It arrived fully formed, the way the most important thoughts always did, as if it had been assembling itself in the background while the foreground was occupied with the compulsion rounds.
The Dormant enclosure is not far from here.
"We are already here," Number One said.
Number Four shifted on the jump seat. "We shouldn't. No immortals are allowed inside."
"We have Losham's authorization to inspect facilities."
"We do not have Losham's authorization to inspect the Dormant enclosure."
"We can make the guards believe that we do."
A silence settled over the Humvee's interior, dense with the processing friction of an internal conflict.
It wasn't a disagreement, because the collective didn't disagree with itself the way individuals disagreed with each other.
It was more like a difficult problem that the hive mind was trying to resolve and arrive at the correct course of action.
"There was a girl who was my friend." Number One spoke first, because Number One always spoke first. "Her name was Sullha. We were the same age. She used to help me with homework. I used to let her win at the races in the yard even though I was faster."
The memory was vivid in the collective, pulled from Number One's individual past and now shared by all eight.
A girl with shoulder-length dark hair. She'd cut it herself because long hair got tangled, and she had no patience for brushing it.
A gap-toothed smile. A horrible laugh that sounded like an animal's call and had always made him laugh so hard he couldn't breathe.
"I had a sister," Number Four said. "Two years younger than me. Asira was her name."
"My mother," Number Eight said. He was the youngest of the Eight, eighteen now, which meant he had been taken only five years ago. His memories of the enclosure were the freshest. "Her name is Vinnah. She hummed when she thought no one was listening. I want to see her."
"She won't recognize you," Number Three said.
"I know. I don't look anything like I did back then. But I would recognize her."
The collective processed the three requests in parallel. Sullha. Asira. Vinnah. Three threads connecting Dave to a place he had not visited since each of the eight boys had been marched out of it and into the training camp, where everything soft and human had been systematically beaten out of them.
Almost everything.
"We go," Number One said.
Number Seven put the Humvee in gear and turned onto the service road that led west, toward the coast. The Dormant enclosure was set back from the shoreline, shielded by a natural ridge and a perimeter wall that was designed less to keep threats out and more to keep the inhabitants in.
The Eight had never approached it from the outside.
They had only ever known it from within, and the memory of the communal dormitories, the shared kitchens, the yard where children played while their mothers watched from benches along the wall, carried a sentimental quality that was probably overblown.
It had been the closest thing to safety that any of the Eight had known, and the almost carefree environment was its own kind of refuge, even if it came with the absence of love.
It is good that there are no visitors on the island.
The thought arrived in the collective with an edge that was close to violence.
Since the rebellion and the subsequent shutdown of the tourist facilities, no human guests had been brought to the island.
The resort was closed, the brothel was operating only for the local population, and the Dormant enclosure had been spared the visits from selected males who were brought in to breed with the women.
If visitors had been present, Dave would have had a difficult time refraining from killing them.
Dave remembered what happened when the selected males came to the enclosure.
The women were called by name over the compound's intercom.
They left their dormitories and walked to a separate building that the children were forbidden to enter.
They went silently, resigned to their fate.
Some had to be escorted by the human guards who managed the enclosure's daily operations.
The children learned not to ask where their mothers went, and they learned not to ask why their mothers were different when they came back, quieter, or angrier, or simply absent.
They hadn't understood it as young children, but they did as teens, and the understanding sat in the collective consciousness like a lump of coal that still smoldered.
The perimeter wall came into view as Number Seven crested the ridge.
It was three meters of reinforced concrete, unremarkable in construction but effective in purpose.
A single gate served as the entrance, flanked by guard posts.
Two immortal warriors stood at attention outside the gate, armed with standard sidearms and wearing the bored expressions of men assigned to a post they considered beneath them.
Number Seven brought the Humvee to a stop in front of the gate, and all eight of Dave climbed out.
The guards' bored expressions evaporated. They straightened, hands moving instinctively toward their weapons before stopping, because drawing a gun on Dave was not something they dared to do.
One of the guards stepped forward. "This area is restricted. No immortals are permitted beyond the gate." His voice was firm, but his heartbeat, which Dave could hear from three meters away, had nearly doubled in speed.
"We are here on Lord Losham's orders," Number One said. "He has authorized an inspection of all island facilities, including the Dormant enclosure."
The thrall was precise and economical. Eight minds focused on two targets, applying just enough pressure to reshape their understanding of the situation without leaving traces that could be examined later.
The guards' memories of the next few minutes would be slightly blurred, unremarkable, the way memories of routine events always were.
They had been visited by the Eight enhanced soldiers, who had authorization from Lord Losham.
It had been checked and confirmed. Everything was in order.
On their way out, Dave would thrall the guards to forget that they had ever been there.
"Of course," the guard said, stepping aside and keying the gate's lock. "Please proceed."
The gate swung open, and Dave walked through.