Page 40 of Dark Shaman: Love Found (The Children Of The Gods #99)

He returned to his lab, locked the door, and pulled a bottle of whiskey from the filing cabinet. Not bothering with a glass, Zhao unscrewed the top and took a long swig, and then another, and another, until the languid feeling of drunkenness replaced the fear and anxiety.

Twenty minutes later, another enhanced soldier was sitting in the same chair, bound by the same chains.

This one was called Demetri, designation E-23, one of the earlier subjects. The early ones were often the most stable, their transformations less extreme than the later iterations, where Zhao had pushed the boundaries of what was possible and reasonable.

"Hello, Demetri," Zhao said, preparing a fresh syringe with a slightly different compound. Each soldier responded differently to the drugs, and he'd made extensive notes about each one's reactions and customized his approach.

"Doctor," Demetri acknowledged with a nod that rattled his chains. "Hozran had a seizure. Did you give him a dose that was too large? "

"No, I was just trying a different formulation, and he had a mild reaction to the medication. He's fine."

"Of course, he is. We're all fine. Better than fine. We're perfect." Demetri's tone was flat, almost bored.

As Zhao administered the injection, Demetri didn't even acknowledge the needle's penetration.

"Tell me about the secret meetings you and the other enhanced soldiers have been having lately," Zhao said once the drug had time to take effect.

"What meetings?" Demetri's pupils dilated, but his expression remained neutral.

"The ones where you plan your transcendence."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Either Demetri genuinely didn't know, or the drugs weren't working on him.

Given the flat affect and lack of emotional response, Zhao suspected the latter.

Some of the enhanced soldiers had developed remarkable resistance to chemical manipulation, their altered brain chemistry creating unexpected shields against pharmaceutical interventions.

"You haven't been sleeping," Zhao observed, noting the micro-tremors in Demetri's hands, and the way his eyes tracked movement with hypervigilance.

"Sleep is a waste of time. We have so much to do."

"Like what?" Zhao asked. When Demetri didn't answer, he repeated, "What do you have to do?"

"Train. Grow stronger. Fulfill our purpose. "

"Which is?"

Demetri's carefully schooled expression turned manic. "Whatever Lord Navuh commands us to do. We are his secret weapons."

It was the correct answer, the one any loyal soldier would give, but he was lying. There was something in the delivery that betrayed it.

Zhao tried adjusting dosages, asking questions from different angles, but Demetri gave him nothing useful. Either he was out of the loop on whatever the more enhanced soldiers were planning, or his resistance to the drugs was on a different level.

"Take him back," Zhao finally said to the guards.

After sealing the laboratory door, he slumped against it. His hands shook as he pulled another bottle from the filing cabinet—vodka, Russian and potent, the only thing that could still cut through his nerves.

He should report this to Lord Navuh.

The enhanced soldiers were planning something, had developed their own communication system, and they seemed to be operating as some kind of collective consciousness. It was one of the several nightmare scenarios he'd feared when the psychological changes had first begun manifesting.

But reporting it would mean admitting failure. Navuh had ordered him to fix the problems, to create counter-medications that would restore obedience while maintaining the physical enhancements. Zhao had tried, but they adapted to every compound he developed within days.

The enhanced soldiers weren't just evolving physically—they were evolving mentally, socially, and perhaps even spiritually into something beyond his ability to control or understand.

Zhao took another long pull from the vodka bottle, then moved to his primary workstation.

If he couldn't control them, perhaps he could at least create a fail-safe.

His fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up the files he'd been working on in secret—a neurotoxin specifically designed to target the enhanced nervous system.

The formula was elegant in its brutality.

It attacked the very enhancements he'd created, turning their improved neural processing against them.

The faster their synapses fired, the quicker the toxin would spread.

Their enhanced metabolism would pump it through their system at incredible speed.

Death would come in seconds, perhaps minutes at most.

He'd tested it on tissue samples, run computer simulations, even tried diluted versions on some of the enhanced soldiers under the guise of routine medications. The results were promising, which was to say, horrifying.

Naturally, he encrypted everything with military-grade protection. If something happened to him, or rather, when something happened to him, at least there would be a record. Maybe someone would find his notes, understand what he'd tried to do and why he'd failed .

Because even though he'd failed, what he'd done was revolutionary. He should get a Nobel prize for it, but of course he wouldn't.

Perhaps he would at least be acknowledged posthumously.

The vodka bottle was half-empty already, and the lab had taken on a soft-focus quality that made the harsh fluorescent lights almost bearable. Zhao added final notes about the enhanced soldiers' communication system, their resistance to chemical interrogation, and their talk of transcendence.

He paused at that word.

Transcendence .

Not rebellion, not escape, but transcendence.

They saw themselves as becoming something greater, evolving, and it was exactly what he'd designed them to do, but the joke was on him.

He'd succeeded and failed at the same time.

Zhao saved his files, backed them up to three separate encrypted drives, then took one more drink. The vodka burned, but it was a good burn, a reminder that he was still alive.

His cot called to him, the mattress and blanket offering the promise of temporary oblivion.

He lay down fully clothed, not even bothering to remove his lab coat.

The ceiling tiles above him had water stains that looked like faces if he squinted right—screaming faces, laughing faces, faces twisted in transcendent joy .

He needed to make a decision. Report to Navuh and likely face his wrath for failing to control the enhanced soldiers, which would almost certainly lead to his demise, or stay silent and hope he could either develop a better controlling agent or perfect his neurotoxin before the subjects decided to transcend their current circumstances. Whatever that meant.

Neither option offered much hope for his survival.