Shade and Clearwater

Chapter Two

 Like I hinted at before, the best way to describe Dakota Territory is that it's one big pancake. Sure there's hills up north, on the border with Manitoba, or out west, along the border with Montana, but mostly it's just flat. There's not much to see, either, just fields and fields of wheat and corn and soybeans that are the same dismal gray as the sky. It all just sort of runs together, makes you feel lost and alone. For that reason, I wasn't much of a fan of highway driving, so I was glad when Jon offered to take the wheel.

I was also fighting off one hell of a headache. I'd been wiping other people's minds for the past hour and it was getting tiring. First, clean-up at the diner. Not too hard, just removing any last traces of memory people had about me. It bothered me I couldn't do anything about the marshal, but even knocked out, all I could get from him was static. Then Jon had stolen the marshal's car, just pulled out his tools and cracked the lock like it was nothing. It was a nice ride, a sleek black SUV with all sorts of fancy gadgets. But it also meant I had to cover our tracks. Wahp-Breck isn't that big of a city, but there were still far too many witnesses, and each one got a little mental nudge to mind their own business. At least now that we were out in the country, there were fewer people on the road to worry about.

"What's the noise?" I asked Jon, who was holding a headset up to his ear as he drove.

"Lot of traffic. I think they're sending a tactical team or two to investigate."

I'd never seen more than a single marshal at a time, and only at a distance. I couldn't imagine a whole team of them. "So you going to start explaining, or what?" I snapped, rubbing my temples. A part of me knew I wasn't being fair, that I was the one that'd caused the incident with the marshal, but I was rattled.

Jon didn't seem to mind. "You know you're from Eden?"

I gave him a puzzled look. "Eden? Jorge Luis said something about that once but I figured he was talking about church stuff."

That got Jon's attention. I thought we were about to go in the ditch, the way he turned and stared at me. "The Jorge Luis? You knew him?"

I nodded. "Know him? He raised me, like he was my pa."

"Where is he?"

"Gone. Dead."

"Damn." Jon punched a fist into the steering wheel. "Damn, that could've been huge."

"What's this about Eden?" I asked, feeling impatient again. "And how do you know Jorge Luis?"

Jon sighed as he turned his eyes back to the road. I saw the sign for Morton pass by in a blur and wondered how fast we were going. Then he said, "A while back, the Feds were involved in a project they called Eden. It was right around when they were trying to unite all the territories and provinces. They were looking for a way to build up their power. Some scientists started bioengineering human subjects, focusing on the development of specialized and desirable talents..."

"Slow it down," I interrupted. "Explain so I can understand."

"Okay, look. Say the government wanted a super-soldier. What would they want? Increased strength, stamina, maybe reflexes, right? They'd probably want them to be fearless, too, and loyal to their comrades."

"Yeah, makes sense, I guess."

"Well, the scientists could go into a person's DNA and make it happen."

I stared. "They could?"

Jon nodded. "After some failures with the first few generations, they got a pretty good handle on the process."