And neither did his fellow scientists.
“No, you won’t.” The words were out before Reese could stop them.
Harrington glared.
Reese shook his head at the man. This wasn’t fair. And Harrington had to know that. Reese might regret his actions tomorrow, but for now? “Do you want to tell them or should I?”
“This is need-to-know, Reese.”
“With all due respect, Colonel, this situation is the definition of need-to-know.”
Jones furrowed his brow.
Harrington made an unhappy sound, but he didn’t pull his gun, so Reese took it as an okay.
“My name is Dr. Reese Dante, and I was one of the ground floor researchers of this project. The work here involved the use of a substance we couldn’t identify. Not biological and not chemical. And the people it was used on exhibited… changes.” Now Reese had Jones’s attention. “Those changes make your guns virtually useless.”
“We’re not carrying pistols.”
“Yeah, well, unless you separate the spinal cord from the brain stem and preferably removed the brain from the cranial cavity within a quarter second, you’re not going to kill them.
“The subjects contained in this lab aren’t normal people. They heal, they move fast, they’re ten times, sometimes twenty times stronger than any man. Honestly, I don’t think anyone but me should go in there.”
Jones laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “You sound like one of those canned characters in a science fiction movie.”
“Yeah, and when everyone ignores the canned character, they all die. I’m telling you, sir, if you react aggressively, they will kill you.”
Jones snapped his mouth shut. The other three scientists exchanged uneasy looks.
“What the hell were you doing in there?” It was Katz.
Reese squared his shoulders. There was not dulling the truth. “Playing god for New World Genetics. I’d hoped what we learned could be used to help people, but to them it was just another way to make money.”
“And you used human beings?”
“Yes.”
“How is that—” His eyes bulged. “How is that even legal?”
“Because they were dead.”
A couple of Jones’s team laughed. Then they looked at Harrington and quit.
“Dead?” Jones said.
“Yes. They were dead, and we used something we didn’t understand to resurrect them. They’re still people, but they’re also something else. Something far more dangerous than you can even imagine.” Reese’s gut twisted. He hated talking about Koda and his betas like that, but these people had to understand the gravity of the situation. Especially if something had happened to cause them to kill the personnel.
“Dr. Dante, we’ve seen a hell of a lot of things while doing our job.”
Reese nodded. “I don’t doubt that you have. But I can guarantee you have never seen anything like this, and nothing you have ever trained for can prepare you for what you might experience.”
“Do they bleed?”
“Yes.”
“Then they can die.”
“Sir, it’s not that simple. The laws of physics don’t apply to the subjects. We’re not even sure the rules of quantum physics do. They don’t just have the physical strength that surpasses anything physically possible for a human body, they can do things we’ve never been able to explain. That means you’d be dead before you could even lift one of those guns you carry.”