Doctor David Meyer was furious.
It was not a feeling he was accustomed to. He'd made a point of it, in fact. He knew exactly how hot his rage would burn, and he'd tried to get through life without encountering too much aggravation for that exact reason. Anger was a fire that consumed everything in its path, and he had no desire to be burned up in the inferno of his own emotions.
Normally, he was a kind, gentle man. It was why he'd gone into medicine and psychology. There were so many ways that people could hurt, so many things that could ruin lives, and he wanted to help them all. Yet that kindness was a double-edged sword. He cared so much, so deeply, that it was easy to become furious on someone else's behalf.
He'd thought that Catherine agreed with him in that. But it had been years since he'd seen her, and now, she was unrecognizable. Someone else might assume that she'd changed, that she was hardened by time or experience. David knew better. He'd spent years living with the young Catherine Halsey, and he'd had many fierce debates with her on a wide range of topics.
Catherine Halsey was passionate, driven, and almost obsessive about her beliefs. She held them so strongly that Earth would split in half before she gave up a single one of her ideals.
David's anger burned hot, but his mind was a steel trap, and he refused to let emotional bias convince him of anything so absurd as Catherine Halsey agreeing to kidnap children, brainwash them, and use them in experimental human augmentations. It simply was not possible.
Yet here he stood, sitting inside USNC laboratory in Menachite Mountain, reading over the same staff report over and over again, his eyes glazed over and unable to pick up the words. It was yet another report from one of his doctors in the Surgery Team.
The Surgery Team. What a horrible thing. When this sick project finally got put the children under the knife, it would be him and his fellow doctors to cut them open, fill their bones with grafted ceramics, carve into their brain, implant metal pellets in their thyroids, inject a witches brew of proteins and growth hormones into their muscles, and even more untested procedures.
ONI was forcing him to be a monster. To share in this immoral abomination, or to stand back with his conscience clear while children died on the table.
It was the kind of thing that made David want to burn the entire lab to the ground – and seven years ago, he would have known that Catherine Halsey would be standing right next to him, throwing bombs, screaming in outrage at the injustice of it, the crime of robbing these children of their childhoods, their lives, and even worse: their free will.
Of their four man band, only he and Catherine had shared that painful certainty. He should know – he was the shrink among them, the crazy bastard who'd sought to understand the human brain from every possible aspect, both physical and not. He'd grown to love the party house and his three roommates like siblings, and he'd learned their psychologies inside and out.
Steve Sullivan was a happy man who enjoyed life. He had never seen the horrors that people inflicted on each other. He'd grown up in a happy family, he'd known very little suffering. He longed to bring his dreams to life for the betterment of all mankind, because he believed, fundamentally, that everyone should be helped.
Paul Wu was a morose man who desired control. His family life, what little he spoke of it, was cold and distant, with the expectations of a harsh mother mollified by the attempts of a kind-hearted but meek father. His college rebellion was choosing to study biochemistry, and he'd found a love for the discipline's unholy combination of rigid precision and random chaos. It let Paul imagine a perfect system, while accepting the inevitable downfall of that system; a neat balm to his love of detail and his underlying fears of failure.
David Meyer, himself, was one of the two Outer Colony kids in their group. He'd gone into psychology after watching his own family break apart… and then, when he'd seen how bad medicine could be, he'd gone right back to university to fix that as well. It was directly driven by his own history, and David acknowledged that. He'd seen a broken world, and he wanted to fix it, no matter the cost to himself. It burned at him. It drove him forward.
Catherine Halsey was the other Outer Colony kid. She'd rarely ever spoken about her childhood, which said plenty. She was formal in a way that did not fit her age, and when she finally relaxed, she displayed a dark, biting wit that was a better fit for a crippled veteran than a teenage prodigy. Throughout it all, she'd also possessed an ironclad devotion to the ideals of personal liberty, and it had burned in her heart as strongly as his own conviction – perhaps more.
It was not a passing interest, a fleeting whim. To Catherine Halsey, people were free, or they were dead, and she would fight the Devil himself to keep them free. David had privately hypothesized that Catherine had suffered in that exact way, and that motivated her. He'd never spoken of it to her, there was no need. They were in sync, and they could never disagree on this.
Which meant that right now, Catherine Halsey was still fighting for that ideal, even in the deepest darkness of ONI Section Three. The alternative was impossible.
David sighed, and shut down the computer with a button-press. He couldn't stand to read another page of hypotheticals and computer simulations on the best way to perform such intense surgeries on pubescent teenagers.
It would have been so easy to extend his disgust to the paper's author, but he knew that the man was just as horrified by this situation as he was. His entire Surgery Team shared his beliefs on it. That was why they were all so focused on the procedures, running test after test, simulation after simulation, in a relentless effort to reduce the potential failures.
Right now, their estimated success rate was ten percent, and every single person in the Surgery Team agreed that was unacceptable. They would not allow sixty-eight children to die under their care.
And Catherine Halsey probably agreed with him, David knew. Which only made this next appointment even harder to deal with.
It was time for a progress report. A one-on-one meeting with his boss on his team's contribution to Project Orion-II. A meeting where neither of them could speak openly on their feelings, misgivings, or anger about this atrocity. Not in an ONI base. That would be beyond arrogance.
From now on, David would have to rely on the unspoken bond that he'd shared with Catherine back at the University of Circumstance – the silent knowledge that on this topic, on their shared ideals, he had her back, and that she had his. Something that they'd never once discussed, but always known.
The door hissed as it opened, and David stood politely, his face molded into an emotionless mask, as Doctor Catherine Halsey entered the room.
Catherine Halsey walked forward to the desk, and David begrudgingly admitted to himself that she truly looked like an ONI spook. It was a masterful display of lying. It wasn't just wearing the right clothes, or saying the right things. It was how a person behaved consistently. It was their expressions, their reactions, their attitudes towards every little detail. If they didn't all add up, then they were faking.
None of the party house had ever been inclined towards theater, but apparently Halsey had picked up the taste somewhere, because she was doing the best job of acting that David had ever seen. Her face was cold and distant, just the right touch of disdain and contempt without overacting through scowls or screams. Her body language was stiff and precise, like she was a UNSC veteran still following military discipline.
She looked like a killer. She looked like she had ordered cities burned. It was a magnificent false front, presenting Catherine as the monster that she couldn't be. If David hadn't known her, and hadn't been aware that Catherine Halsey was above all else a nerd, he might have believed it.
"Doctor Meyer," she greeted him, as she sat down in front of his desk.
"Doctor Halsey," David replied, joining her. "Our initial simulations have proceeded without much success, but they have helped us eliminate many of the Orion-I augmentations from consideration, due to the difficulty of the required surgeries, and the need for the subjects to continue development afterwards. Our current goal is to narrow that field down to only the procedures that can safely be performed on all subjects."
"Excellent," Catherine said, her cold expression unchanging. "Admiral Keeler has high expectations of this program. Nevertheless, he has expressed faith in our abilities, both in determining the full scope of the augmentations, and in implementing them. I trust I do not need to explain the responsibility we possess."
David nodded grimly. The responsibility to the lives of the young candidates. He knew full well what she really meant, behind the double-speak. They were doing this for the children, not for ONI… but to keep the children alive, they would have to satisfy Keeler's demands. If they tried to call the program off, tried to pretend that it was impossible, then they would be removed and replaced with someone else.
In other words, there was no hope of killing the project. Not with the head of ONI Section Three keeping a personal eye on them, and expecting results.
Damn.
He had known the odds of that outcome were low. At the very least, now he knew that they were truly stuck with this job for the next ten years.
"What shall be the primary focus for the augmentations?" David asked. "Your initial briefing mentioned seven specific enhancement procedures, but did not clarify which."
"The close-out on Project Orion-I included post-op evaluations of each test subject," Catherine told him. "I have just secured the appropriate permissions to share those evaluations with both Doctor Wu's Augmentation Team, and your Surgery Team. While I am certain that there will be redundancies in the data, you will of course perform your own thorough examination to confirm their conclusions."
David's eyes widened slightly. This was the first time that he'd heard of any post-op evaluations. ONI had been infuriating tight-lipped about the predecessor to Orion-II, and his 'liaison' was constantly slamming the door in David's face every time he tried to request access to data. It had taken nearly the entire first month just to get the details on the augmentations alone, without any performance metrics for the individual procedures.
"Not Doctor Sullivan's team?" he pointed out softly.
"The Exoskeleton Team has no need for that data," Catherine said firmly, her eyes narrowing. "Focus on your tasks, and Doctor Sullivan will focus on his."
Another quiet message. She really was quite good at pretending to be a bitch, David thought to himself.
They both knew that Steve Sullivan was the naïve one in their friend group. Steve was barely hanging on at the moment. Even with the promise of unlimited budget for his personal dreams, the vague, non-specific knowledge that his equipment was destined for cybernetically enhanced teenagers had been a massive blow to his confidence. Providing the cold, hard data on the many adults that had suffered from the same augmentations would have wrecked Steve completely.
"I presume that the specific procedures were the recommendation of the previous project?" David asked rhetorically.
Catherine nodded, and flicked a finger down towards her tablet. After a moment, David's desk chimed with a confirmation that the file transfer had gone through. A hologram display came to life, and a model of a Vitruvian Man floated on the side of his desk, just far enough away to not block their vision of each other.
"The goal is to enhance the cadet's performance," Catherine explained, her fingers flying across the tablet as different body-parts began to glow. "We will avoid all additions of an extra capability. No total limb replacements with artificial prosthetics. No gimmicks, no toys. Some of the procedures were undoubtedly useful to an operative in the field, but this program will not include them due to their extreme incompatibility issues."
David frowned as he inspected the floating hologram. There were little glowing nuggets over various parts. A node in the throat near the thyroid gland, a second in the left hemisphere of the brain, a third located over the heart, the fourth over the lungs. Three more notes were floating along the sides of the hologram, each labeled. They read: Carbide Ceramic Ossification, Muscular Enhancement Injections, and Superconducting Fibrification of Neural Dendrites.
He'd seen some of these before. He'd been reviewing four of them just prior to this meeting… and he knew that some of them were very much incompatible.
"The bone grafts and muscular enhancements compliment each other," David said slowly. "But altering the nervous system is a much riskier endeavor, particularly when combined with those two procedures. The optimal outcome is obvious: enhanced reflexes. But that's just another phrase for increased sensitivity, and that sensitivity could easily cause complications with the other two. Erroneous signals creating constant pain signals. Muscle cramps triggering and crushing their own skeleton system."
"A risk that Doctor Wu is already working on," Catherine cut in. "He identified the same problem, though he is much more concerned with the platinum pellet in the thyroid, releasing growth hormones."
"With good reason," David said, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying too much, too aggressively. "The endocrine system is the messenger system for the entire body. Too much growth hormones could easily spiral into gigantism, with all the associated side-effects. Unfortunately, that's more Doctor Wu's area than mine. I can put the pellet in just fine, but what happens afterwards…"
Frankly, it was easier to list the human body's systems that they weren't modifying. By his count, these procedures would alter the circulatory, endocrine, immune, muscular, skeletal, nervous, and respiratory systems. That left only the digestive, exocrine, integumentary, reproductive, and renal systems untouched.
While no system of the human body was truly unimportant or redundant enough to be missed, they were easily aiming for the most important, and most dangerous parts of the human body. In medical terms, it was like doing blind anesthesia on an unconscious drug-addict in anaphylactic shock, with breathing difficulties and a gusher on both legs. In layman's terms, it was like juggling with nitroglycerin, while other people kept throwing more at you.
Sure, if you messed up your renal system and couldn't get a cloned kidney, you'd need constant dialysis, or you'll die painfully over the course of days to a month, depending on severity. Even with dialysis, you were in for a lifetime of suffering as your body couldn't filter your blood.
But fuck up your lungs or your heart, and you'd be lucky if you lasted longer than a few minutes. Even the 'minor' issues like the bone grafts could easily lead to blood clots that could lead to a stroke or heart attack; almost invisible until it was too late.
"Doctor Wu had already noted the potential risk," Catherine said, a flash of something in her eyes as she locked gazes with him.
David fought the urge to wince, and kept up his poker face. He'd been saying too much, and she was unhappy. The project had to succeed, after all, and too much of this could sound like defeatism. He schooled his expression, and forced his voice to be flat, emotionless.
"We'll continue to refine the procedures, of course," he said, nodding to her.
"Of course," Catherine said. "If that is all, then I will leave you to it."
"I have one more thing," David said before she could stand up from her seat.
"Very well," she replied, folding her hands over her knee.
David took a quick breath, making sure to keep his motion as still as possible. Catherine would see, since she was right across from him, but the cameras and the microphones shouldn't notice.
"When will the psychology team begin their work with the children?" he asked, keeping his gaze firmly on her.
Catherine stared at him. She blinked slowly. Despite her unchanging, stone cold expression, David could see that he'd taken her aback. For several long moments, she said nothing, before finally responding.
"There is no psychology team," Catherine said, her voice flat. "You run the Surgery Team. Do not forget that, Doctor Meyer."
"I remember our paper, Doctor Halsey," David countered, doing his best to keep his mannerisms professional. "Out of all of us, I was the one who proposed the age requirement. I did that for the specific reason of inculcating the ideal mental traits and mindset into the candidates."
Frankly, the age requirement was the single most horrifying part of all of this, and it was his eternal shame that he had proposed it. In some ways, he was the guiltiest of them all, no matter that ONI had picked Catherine Halsey to run the entire program for some reason known only to them.
"Yes, and it is a valid reason," Catherine interrupted, the tiniest cracks in her expression showing. Her eyes were narrowing, her chin was tensing. "But at this early stage, it is not appropriate."
David leaned back in his seat, and tried not to show his irritation. Catherine wasn't wrong, per say, but she wasn't thinking clearly about this.
It was clear to him that she was holding back from the psychology team because she was worried about the moral problems. Catherine had always been a fierce proponent of free will and the free market, and this was perhaps the single biggest affront that she could offer to those principles.
But at the same time, their paper was the guiding document behind the Orion-II project, and ONI was well aware of it. They knew that the psychology team was important. Not just because they'd read the paper, but because of his ONI-recruited 'Surgery Team', several of them were psychologists, not surgeons. They had already recruited, explicitly, for those responsibilities... and those experts had been sitting around, bored, since the start of the project.
Catherine might not understand that. The military was a vast and confusing machine, and she'd never had any experience with it. David didn't know for sure, but he was starting to wonder if she was deliberately avoiding those topics because she didn't know how to handle the military interactions.
If that was true, then she needed his help. Avoidance of the topic would not work. ONI wasn't interested in him, Paul, or Steve. They didn't have ONI handlers, they hadn't had special briefings. Their oversight was Catherine alone, and whatever questions ONI had about the Augmentation, Exoskeleton, or Surgery Teams, they would ask Catherine.
He had to keep pressing. Catherine might not like the idea, but she probably didn't understand the military culture. For better or worse, they had to start involving the psychology team with the children. Especially in these early stages. This was the most vital time, before behaviors became codified and calcified.
"Doctor Halsey, at this stage it is imperative," David told her firmly. "No other time makes sense, or will have as much impact on the candidates."
Catherine didn't respond verbally. She didn't need to. Her face was a clear enough indication of how she felt. She was gritting her teeth and glaring at him.
David stared right back at her. As hard as it might be to aggravate his old friend, it was the best way to keep the children safe right now. Hell, it was probably the best way to make sure that the children grew up as well-adjusted as they could be, in this monstrous situation. Catherine's resistance to the idea would only make things worse.
Like any psychologist treating a patient, the real difficulty was explaining that to her. Catherine was stubborn and fiercely independent, which made that hard. On the other hand, she'd already compromised her independence by going along with Orion-II in the first place. David suspected that was purely due to fear of the UNSC, and he had no desire to follow that same approach.
"I will take your recommendations into consideration, Doctor Meyer," Catherine finally spoke, her words slow and precisely enunciated. "However, that determination will be made by me, and no one else."
It took a lot of effort for David to not let out a sigh of frustration at that. Instead, he closed his eyes for a moment, and nodded back to Catherine.
"That is all I can ask," he told her.
He hoped that Catherine understood what he was getting at. This was incredibly important, and if she was avoiding the topic due to her own personal misgivings, then it could ruin the children's lives. Both by not giving them vital psychological support when they most needed it, and by potentially causing ONI to pull her from the project and put a more sadistic researcher in charge, who wouldn't care about the children at all.
"Good day, Doctor Meyer," she said as she stood up, expression once more formed into a cold, emotionless mask.
"Good day, Doctor Halsey," he replied, standing in politeness as she walked out of his office.
As soon as the door clicked, David sat down again, and let out a long slow sigh. He knew that ONI could see that, that they could hear him. He was too tired to care. The entire situation was stressful on the easiest moments, and this had not been one of them.
Perhaps they'd believe that he had only been reminding Catherine of the paper, and trying his best to follow it. Perhaps they'd think that he had been trying to undercut her, and that he was a risk. Perhaps, they'd wonder if he was planning something, and trying to communicate with Catherine about it – which he was.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. That was the worst thing about this, David knew. There were so many potential concerns to be paranoid about. Many psychologists disdained paranoia, and he had been one of them… but when you were working for the Office of Naval Intelligence, was it really paranoia?