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Dr. Serik Khan was not a good man, though he liked to pretend he was.
Sure, he was a veteran of the war, like pretty much everyone his age. He’d thought that the war would be over by the time he was out of college, but as luck would have it, it dragged on well past when he was out with a PhD. Thankfully, he wasn’t some poor sap thrown into the front lines in the jungles. Instead, he fought his battles on the molecular level, working in the Second District labs to develop new chemical weapons, to hopefully gain an advantage over the enemy.
That was all he ever told anyone, at any rate. The reality was far more… messy. Far more dangerous. He was forbidden to talk about the NULL Project at all, and especially forbidden to give anyone any clue that he had once been involved with the (strictly rumored, never confirmed) super soldiers New Mecca had fielded in the final years of the war. Too many people with too much money and power would be extremely upset should any of that leak to the public, or (God forbid!) the press. And they would be even more upset to hear it coming from the mouth of Serik Khan, one of Al-Quasim’s top chemists.
Serik Khan was a smart man. So he kept his mouth shut about all that. After all, what was the point? No one needed to know about the human experiments the army had kept locked in a Third District slaughterhouse. No one needed to know how many of them had been killed needlessly, fighting a war they could not win, or how many had been turned out onto the grimy streets and run-down apartments of the city after the retreat. No one needed to know about the children that had died. There was nothing he could have done to help them, anyway. It was his duty to help the war effort, so he helped the war effort.
It was his duty, but it did not lighten the weight on his conscience.
The bar Khan frequented was seedy, a grimy neon sign flickering and sputtering as it advertised drinks above the steel plated door. It was not the kind of place that people would think one of New Mecca’s most distinguished scientists visited on a near daily basis, but this one was the closest to that old slaughterhouse that the NULL project used as a training ground. He wasn’t sure why he kept coming back here, to be honest. After all, the war had ended five years ago, and the facility had been shut down by the government as soon as the helicopters pulled out. But still, he kept coming back. Perhaps it was the nostalgia for a time when he could delude himself into believing what he did was for the greater good. Perhaps it was merely habit. It didn’t matter to him, honestly. Liquor was liquor, and this place had plenty.
He sighed. Bars and booze were the only thing that could remotely relax him these days. Khan wouldn’t admit it to anyone’s face, but he’d been having the strange feeling he was being followed recently, for about the past three weeks. People kept being more and more on edge around him and he had no idea why. He had asked his psychiatrist friend about it, but he’d told him not to worry. “Probably just the stress of your new job at Juncture”, he’d said. He’d encouraged Khan to let it go and try to relax, and if he needed it the government could probably get him anxiety meds.
Khan had refused. Never mind how many problems he may or may not have, he was not taking drugs just to survive another day.
As he pulled up a barstool he dully looked around the few other people in the bar at this time of night. A couple older men, smoking around old wooden tables, two or three younger guys talking about girls in the back. Fairly typical for a Tuesday night, but with one exception.
The woman sitting against the corner was on the taller side of average, brown hair tied back into a messy ponytail under a military surplus beret. One pale hand in a fingerless glove clutched a glass of whiskey, another sat on her knee near the combat knife tucked in her belt. He’d seen people like her before in these seedy Third District bars- old veterans of the war five years ago, muttering and remembering, their glassy eyes reflecting the bottles and bottles of booze they drank, but this one was different. She was analyzing- he could see the gears turning and turning in her head as she glanced from person to person, sizing them up, gauging how much of a threat they were. He could understand completely. If you weren’t vigilant on the streets, well, you weren’t likely to survive to dawn, much less live for years as she probably had.
He ordered a bottle of lager, his usual, and let his mind wander as the booze started to work through his system. Damn war. Damn life. Always the same old thing, day after day after day. Nightmare about the labs, get up and do more office job, get off work and go to the bar, stumble home at 2 in the morning. Rinse and repeat, for the rest of his life. Khan ran his shaky hands through his hair. If he could leave New Mecca he would, but it cost too much money to move, and there was no telling how people outside would react. They’d probably hate him if they ever found out what he did, honestly. He quickly ordered the next beer- he was here to get drunk, not reminisce.
Somewhere in the middle of the fourth bottle the chair to his left scraped across the floor. Turning to see what asshole had decided to sit next to him when there were at least five other empty seats around the bar, he suddenly met the piercing, dark-brown eyes of the woman who had been sitting in the corner.
“Get me another whiskey. And another for him.” The bartender scurried off to make the drinks as Khan shifted uneasily on the bar stool. The woman was staring straight into his eyes now and it was making him slightly uncomfortable. She hunched over slightly to rest her elbows on the bar.
“Dr. Khan.” Her voice was low, but with a slight edge that was enough to command his attention.
“Yes?” He cursed internally as soon as he said it. He answered that way too quickly, and this person probably didn’t exactly have his best interests in mind. Especially given that she was armed with what looked like a military grade pistol, and probably knew damn well how to use it. “…How do you know who I am?”
“I work for Al-Quasim, he speaks highly of you.” The bartender passed a glass to her and she took a swig of it, without breaking eye contact. “Said you worked on projects together during the war.”
Al-Quasim? Khan’s heart sank. Al-Quasim had not approved of Khan’s attempts to put the war behind him. The difference had resulted in Khan going to work for Juncture instead, trying to start a new life. If Al-Quasim had sent this woman after him the jig might already be up. But then again there was no real way of knowing how much this mercenary knew, so he had to keep that information to himself for now.
“Government projects for the war effort, yes.” He thought he knew where this was going, and didn’t like it. But the woman just chuckled darkly to herself.
“Of course. I remember those times.” The woman swirled her drink in the glass and the corner of her mouth went up in what could be construed as a wry smile. “In all honesty I thought I would never see you again. It’s taken this long for me to track you down.”
“Again? What do you mean?” Perhaps it was the booze, but Khan was not recognizing her at all. But she was terribly young to be a front line soldier, after all.
“Again. You don’t recognize me?” The woman tilted her head quizzically.
He finally saw what she wanted him to see. Her eyes unfocused and refocused slightly every few seconds, as though she was getting lost in thought and then coming back to the here and now.
This woman was a NULL. And if she was a surviving NULL, meeting him out here, armed, that could only mean one thing.
“Dear God… not like this.” He whispered, heart beginning to pound in his chest. His eyes darted over to her pistol. No way to tell if the safety was on from this angle.
The NULL was puzzled for a second, then grinned. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Al-Qasim doesn’t want to come after you and neither does the government, at least for now. Qasim is too busy spending his money on hookers and blow anyway- that’s where he is now. You know how old, rich men are.” She let out a laugh- a barking, unpleasant laugh with no real humor in it. “No, I sought you out myself.”
That was something of a relief, but still left too many questions open. He took a deep breath and shakily put his beer down. “Why me?” he asked, carefully. The NULL’s demeanor grew more serious, and she leaned forward.
“You were one of the lead chemists for Chronos.” She hissed under her breath. “The drug. The drug that we need to survive.” She brought her hand to the crook of her left arm- the arm where he knew the drug was administered, every day of her life. He winced as she continued. “I need to know what happens to me when that supply runs out.”
“When the Chronos runs out? Don’t you have a government mandated supply?” He knew that only the few NULL whose services had been retained by the government had those supplies, but to be quite frank he hadn’t followed the news surrounding the project. It was enough to relive it every night. Though, he felt a pang in his heart. After all, this woman did not have the option of ignoring what had been done to her.
She leaned back to take another drink of whiskey. Khan vaguely wondered what alcohol would even do to a NULL soldier. Testing that hadn’t been on the list- none of the NULL candidates had been old enough to legally drink. “No, I never got one from the government. Mine… well. Al-Quasim’s pulled some strings, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Or him. Surely there must be a way to safely come off of dependence on Chronos to live.”
“Right.”
There was a period of uneasy silence. Serik scratched the back of his head. The NULL woman knocked back more of her whiskey. Both were remembering.
Now that he was thinking about it, Serik could remember seeing her. A young girl, unremarkable at hand-to-hand combat but one of the best sharpshooters that anyone had ever seen. Serik hadn’t seen her combat prowess himself- he only developed the Chronos in the lab- but he had heard stories from the front. Apparently, her favorite method of killing was to put holes clean into Cromag heads from nearly a kilometer away. Or beheading the ones who managed to get near her.
They started calling her the Headhunter after that.
“Chronos travels in the bloodstream to the brain.” Serik started, uneasily. The woman shifted slightly, hanging onto every word he said. “It… It creates a condition where the grey matter of the brain develops more myelin sheathing than normal, increasing the speed of the electrical signals, but requiring the drug to maintain. Without the Chronos, those neurons start to deteriorate, eventually resulting in amnesia, hallucinations, deterioration of vital functions… and death.”
“So there is no cure.” She stated bluntly. Khan took a shaky breath, then hastily nodded. Contemplating this, she turned away from him for a few moments, before that wry not-smile returned.
“You know, that sounds like my buddy.” She was quieter this time. “You probably would have known him as Seven. Nicest guy I ever met, survived several combat missions. My wingman both during the war and as soon as it ended. Didn’t get a government Chronos supply, but he was one of those people who always looked on the bright side. Never understood why.” Her face darkened. “He started getting the shakes after a while, wouldn’t see a doc about it. Then one day he just… froze. He was still alive, still breathing, but he couldn’t move. It was like he was trapped in his own skin.” She turned to face him directly. “You’re telling me that that’s what’ll happen to all of us?”
Serik nodded. “If you don’t get your supply of Chronos from the government, then yes.”
The gears in Headhunter’s mind were turning again. Serik could tell. An angry glimmer was beginning to appear at the edges of her eyes.
“The chemical formula is of course classified.” Headhunter did not phrase it as a question- both of them knew that was a fact. Part of the classified information the government was keeping under for the rest of the century. Serik nodded.
“I’m sorry.” He said, lamely. Headhunter said nothing in response. She rose from her stool at the bar and adjusted the military cloak around her shoulders. “It was good to see you again, Doctor.”
And with that, she left without another word.
The news reported the death of Serik Khan about a week later. His body had been found headless, severely hampering the investigation. The discovery of the head skewered on the fence of a Third District meat processing plant had left some people wondering what exactly had happened to him. But the public was not that curious to know. After all, knowing too much was dangerous. Soon, Serik Khan was just another name added to the tally of gang-related murders plaguing the city.