Children of the Machine

When he got back to the motel room, he smelled like smoke. A gust of wind came through the open door and knocked large flakes of ash loose from his hair and shoulders.

"Please. Tell me you didn't go back there," she said with an edge to her voice.
"If you'd come with me, maybe it could have gone differently," he said, trying convince himself as much as her.
"Danny." She said his name through clenched teeth. "We've been through this. There was no other way. Is no other way. And now? Running won't be enough."
"I had to try, Sara. I can't just run."
"That's great. Because you just took that option off the table. For both of us." Sara swore and slammed her open palm into the small bedside night stand. A low rumble rolled off in the distance like thunder.

Danny ran his hands through his thick, sandy hair, absentmindedly dislodging more of the ashes from his jacket and hair. Sara got up agitated and began to dress and throw things into a small suitcase while refusing to look in Danny's direction as he watched anxiously.

"Don't just stand there. We're going to need a different vehicle," Sara said with something like resignation. "I'll finish in here, you get something else to drive and get rid of the truck." Danny turned slowly with his head hung and walked slowly from the room. He'd hate this next part, and she knew it would be difficult for him. She wanted it to hurt. She wanted to punish him. He'd put them in this situation after all. Why shouldn't he be the one to bear the consequences.

As she slung a large duffel bag over her shoulder and hefted the suit case, the night sky outside lit up with the sudden burst of flames in the middle distance. Outside the motel room, a deep engine sound grumbled to life and shook the ground. Sara followed the vibration and sound to large maroon pickup truck, tossed the luggage in the back and hopped in the passenger side.

As Danny pulled the truck onto the highway, she searched the horizon behind them and in front of them for tell tale signs of patrol cars or blockades. Without a full night's rest and with no plan, neither of them were ready for a confrontation with law enforcement or worse, STA rangers. She stopped searching to study her brother for a moment. She wondered if they could afford any confrontations after what he had already done at the compound earlier this evening.

He didn't like to talk about it his time in the compound, but from what she had been able to piece together, neither Danny or STA understood his pyrokinesis. While he'd shared some of his speculations in the past when he was struggling with it, "I just need to rest", or "I haven't had enough to eat lately", Sara suspected it had more to do with his emotional state clouding his ability to focus.

For Sara, who'd been known for a quick temper at times, she felt her emotions channeling through her. Though she was afraid to explore the nature of the connection, it seemed as though it was connected directly to her emotional state as though one reflected another. The tremor she'd caused earlier wasn't a lack of self control; it was a natural extension of how she expressed herself.

***

The Society for Transhuman Advancement is an organization that uses its funding and proceeds from its public facing, sanctioned activities to fund clandestine research and operations. Its private research initiatives, like the compound where the James siblings were kept, explored various means of pushing the envelope for human augmentation and evolution through any means of promising experimentation. The STA became aware of the James siblings even before they themselves were aware of any unusual attributes or potential. When blood work for the siblings made its way through subsidiary medical labs, neuronets specialized in the identification of potential test subjects had flagged the siblings as subjects of interest.

It is a reflection of STA's power and reach that staging a fatal automobile accident in order to abduct children from their parents was considered standard operation. Just another Tuesday afternoon exfil on the list for one of STA's ranger teams. Michael and Elizabeth James died immediately on impact after their family SUV's speed climbed, stopped responding to the breaks and failed to deploy driver and front passenger air bags in what would later be determined to be unfortunate manufacturer defects in the computer control systems. Sara and Danny James were evaced from the scene in, what appeared to observers as, a regional hospital helicopter used in life threatening circumstances.

They had been taken immediately to the compound, separated from one another and put through a battery of tests to determine the extent of their potential. The experimentation and "training" as STA had labeled their harsh conditioning programs had lasted for 4 years before the siblings had escaped using the very skills and abilities that STA had developed in the now, young adults. Sara and Danny James, two of STA's most promising subjects, had escaped and remained on the run for eighteen months, alluding capture.

The night of Wednesday, October 10th at STA Dark Site North East had been routine. Until 20:12 PM ET, when long distance proximity and the on duty watchman in West Tower had each reported an approaching vehicle that then stopped and vanished. Standard procedure was to send a response team in a rover to inspect and report back. Twelve minutes later, chaos descended on the Dark Site so rapidly that it would take STA a full week to reconstruct a probable timeline of events from what they recovered from remote data centers and remains.

Danny James had turned the response team's rover into an explosive projectile and sent it rocketing into the West Tower. The resulting impact and explosion blew out the entire watchtower and surrounding portions of the wall as well as nearby structures in the compound on the inside. Systems would indicate that the unnaturally high temperature of the spreading fire melted steel and even crumbled the cement structures around it. Additional response teams from unaffected areas of the compound attempted to flank Danny, who responded by running into the burning compound. The remaining teams attempted to surround the compound, noting the need to stay back to keep their tactical gear from melting. As the last of the teams took position, the remaining walls of the structure exploded outward as shrapnel, flattening and setting fire to everything around the compound in a 200 yard radius.

Director Samuel Pendleton had fallen asleep in his study, a log fire burning in the stone hearth and a bound report in his lap. The sharp chirping of his phone jolted him awake.

"Pendleton," he said sleepily, not attempting to hide that he'd been asleep. "I'm sorry, you're going to need to repeat that," Sam growled into the phone. The hair on his neck and arms stood on end and his gut went tight. He was awake now.