Subject Seven by James A. Moore Read Free Book Online

shoot her. She didn’t survive. But she was hurt before she died. She suffered is what I’m saying.”
    Seven closed his eyes for a second. Deep in the recesses of his thoughts he could remember the sudden screaming pain, the way his stomach had clenched and the way Three’s screams had echoed through his mind.
    Daniel continued. “They watched the tapes, and they showed me the sequence. They saw how you reacted to Three’s escape and death, and they knew they’d succeeded.”
    â€œCut to the damn chase.” Seven’s voice was a rumble.
    â€œCall it a psychic link. You don’t have any of the others around right now, but back at the labs you used to respond whenever anything happened to one of the others. You would scream when they were angered, and you communicated with them. We saw it. We studied it. They cataloged the whole thing. You’re the reason the program went on, Seven. You made them know they were on the right track.”
    â€œHow very nice for them.” His sneer was enough to make Clarkson flinch. “Now tell me about the rest of them.”
    â€œThe rest of them?”
    â€œThey kept ten out of the batch. There were more than that.”
    â€œHow do you know that? No one knows that but—”
    â€œWhat do you think I was paying Hanson for? His company?” He took a breath to calm himself down. The anger was there again, reminding him that he hated Janus and everyone associated with the company. “Of course, he eventually clammed up and I had to use more than money to get him to talk. Be smarter than him, Daniel. Tell me everything I need to know and it doesn’t have to get as messy. See my point?”
    Clarkson nodded emphatically. “Yeah, I get you. There were more. Most of them, most of them were eliminated.”
    â€œBut not all of them. You kept some, didn’t you?”
    â€œWhat? No. What the hell would I want with a bunch of kids?” Clarkson shook his head. “I sold them. Me and Marty, we were in the same boat, see.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, it was wrong, okay? It’s one thing to create them, but to just, to just throw them away? Like they never even existed? Man, that shouldn’t even happen to dogs.”
    â€œHappens every day. Ever hear of a puppy mill?”
    For just a moment Clarkson looked offended. “Well, we didn’t want any part of that, and we were the ones who got stuck with the job of disposal. Marty because he was low man on the team and me because I was supposed to handle the paper trail and get rid of the evidence. No one wanted to know what happened to them. No one wanted to deal with the details, okay? So we decided to put them up for adoption.”
    Seven nodded and munched on a few fries. “And if you could make a little money, that didn’t hurt your feelings any either, did it?”
    Clarkson looked down, caught in his self-righteous lies. “Yeah, okay, so maybe we made money from the deal, but the kids got to live, didn’t they?”
    â€œWhere did they go?”
    â€œI’ve got a list.”
    â€œHow many did you send out there? How many did you put out in the world?”
    â€œFrom your batch?” He squinted in thought, but Seven suspected it was for show. Clarkson was the sort that already knew the answers, or at least thought he did. “Ten.”
    Seven’s heart pounded hard in his chest. Ten! The possibilities were staggering. “And have any of them shown signs of changing?”
    â€œI don’t think so. Look, it’s not that easy. You know that. A command has to be given.”
    â€œA command?” Seven frowned. There was something back in his memories, something about a command, wasn’t there? So much had happened since then he had trouble remembering everything sometimes.
    â€œOkay, an Alpha, like you? You can give them a command to wake. Another to sleep. But there’s