As you'll recall from the last review, Laney's implant that gives her supersenses and advanced reflexes suddenly malfunctions during an op when the suspect she and a teammate are chasing uses a codeword that causes it to react. In this scene that is supposed to take place at the start of the following chapter, we learn exactly what the implant is and why it malfunctioned.
>>>>>>>A.T.X.D. HEADQUARTERS<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>MEDICAL CENTER: NEURO-SURGERY SECTION<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>6:55 AM MDT<<<<<<<
Given that her head still surged painfully despite recovering from the seizure, it seemed to be both a relief and a frustration that Laney was put into an induced coma to prepare her for the neural scan. Dressed only in her uniform t-shirt, leggings and socks, the young Corporal’s body was gently slid into the scanning machine’s central chamber, which began to spin around her before a blue light swept up and down Laney’s body. While two medical officers controlled the machine inside the room, Ashley stood outside with SIO Chief Science Officer Doctor Christian Scollay. Following the destruction of the Dulce Site where he used to work developing biochemical and neurological counteragents to the Harbinger organism, Scollay had been reassigned by Command as one of the lead medical examiners at HQ and whose job it was to investigate medical and scientific anomalies. And Laney’s seemingly induced seizure was right up Scollay’s alley, as he and Laney’s TL reviewed the data being streamed to a flatscreen display in the main corridor and the former Dulce Base scientist observed the results with intrigue.
“So what exactly did you hear over the radio before you lost contact with Private Wayne, Captain?” Scollay inquired.
“Cassy alerted us that Laney was down, and I located both of their signals in the loading dock,” Ashley recalled. “But when I arrived, I only found Laney, and she was writhing and wailing on the floor, clutching her head like she had the most agonizing of headaches. Jesus, I’ve never seen anything like it before. And Cassy was just…gone.”
“And Corporal Davidson has no prior history of epilepsy, to your knowledge?” Scollay probed further as he continued to watch the on-screen display.
Ashley denied it firmly, stating that she’d thoroughly reviewed Laney’s medical history, psych eval, and any other related documents she could find on her operative’s life pre-A.T.X.D. The scan then finished and Scollay was able to touch the screen and do a full review of Laney’s digitally-mapped body shape and internals. And within a few seconds, Scollay found the implant which he’d heard of Laney having in her frontal lobe. The first time he’d heard of this, Scollay was hoping for a chance to examine what he considered a fascinating blend of natural and offworld genetics in the human neural net. And now he had his chance remotely, but the doctor knew that more urgent answers were needed, so Scollay kept his scientific passions to the wayside and continued to look over the data before him. But that didn’t keep the intrigue in his voice at bay when he finally found what he was looking for.
“Interesting. It would seem that this implant in Corporal Davidson’s frontal lobes is a biological blend of extraterrestrial genetics which have been cultured over time to synchronize with her brain cells. And its function appears to be remote.”
“Okay….English please, doctor?” Ashley asked with a quizzically dull look.
“It’s a trigger mechanism, Captain,” Scollay replied with a calm huff. “Installed in the Corporal’s brain and used to activate her mind to follow commands relayed by somebody else.”
Hearing this turned Ashley’s blood into a frozen river, draining her face of color and exposing the whites of her gentle brown eyes as they widened with horror. First, the Captain thought back to her own experience being a humanoid under Stilatro’s control before the Crawler that had been shot into her synapse was surgically removed and its mutatious mind-control symptoms were reversed. But more to the point, the idea that Ashley had a sleeper agent in her team the whole time terrified her. What if Laney had been implanted long ago by the unknown party exactly to gain A.T.X.D.’s attention: to get her special treatment, get her recruited into the force, and now provide whoever was behind this access to HQ or somebody who worked here?
“You mean….Laney’s a sleeper agent?” Ashley clarified shakily to Scollay.
“Yes,” Scollay replied in his calmly prompt way as if this were not a concern at all, “but a poorly designed one at that.”
Ashley’s fear was replaced once again by confusion as she gave another quizzical look and Scollay proceeded to explain.
“Take a look at the scan, Captain?” the former Dulce Base scientist encouraged, pointing to the glowing outline of the implant in Laney’s brain scan. “What do you see?”
“Doctor Scollay, I’m not a brain surgeon. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“From the theoretical literature I’ve studied about human sleeper agent programs, the proposals all focused on the ridiculous idiocy of chips and wires and computerized shenanigans embedded into the human brain; pathetic lunacy with so much room for error. But this…this is fully biological; ideally, or I should say worst case scenario, it’s supposed to be directly compatible with the cells in Corporal Davidson’s brain. When it’s activated, this biological implant is supposed to override the subject’s personal impulses and give someone else the ability to control the subject without otherwise giving away the fact that the person in question is under any kind of spell or other possessive means. Hypothetically speaking, the subject could still act normal and their target won’t have any idea that they’re in danger.”
“Sounds all too much like those goddamn humanoid experiments which the Kronosians performed,” Ashley whispered with disgust.
“Well, that was through a living organism, Captain, and the biological research and application of a fully-developed, mind-control parasite that has a sentience of its own is quite different. This implant, on the other hand, isn’t independently alive. From the looks of it, I’d say the responsible party already knew from the moment this girl came out of her mother’s womb what kind of DNA her cells were producing. And that would imply a level of understanding of the human body far more technical than even my own expertise. But as I said earlier, the implant was misaligned.”
“I’m sorry, misaligned?” Ashley was dumbstruck. That sounded almost like a death sentence for Laney, and maybe that’s why she had the seizure. But it still left a blank as far as whether the seizure was random or incurred as a direct result of contact with their target. And if that were the case, how the hell would Ms. Turner know about Laney’s implant in the first place?
“Despite SIGA’s supposed expertise, Captain, it seems that, by either accident during the surgery or incompetence in the research, the implant was not properly lined up in the frontal lobes. Better yet, and I mean to your Corporal’s beneficence, the implant has seemingly broken down over time as Ms. Davidson’s brain and intelligence have grown and her body’s nervous and immune systems have matured. Therefore, it cannot activate properly, and thus it poses no tangible danger of its own to those around Corporal Davidson. However, it also remains partially active as though it has a stuck ‘on’ switch, presumably explaining why she can call up those super-sense reactions at her will, according to what I’ve heard.”
“So then the seizure may have been caused by someone trying to activate Laney, but not realizing that the implant was defective?”
“Mmm, it’s possible,” Scollay replied with a pondering twist of the lip. “Another likely explanation, however, is that your target, Hannah Turner, already knew that Ms. Davidson had a defective implant and used that to her advantage to escape.”
“Fuck,” Ashley muttered with sour anger, watching as the gently sleeping Laney was carefully reawakened by the medical staff after being pulled out of the scanning machine.
If that was true, and SIGA was responsible for the implant twenty years ago, Laney could not be safely deployed in the field. The next time one of the syndicate’s goonies got access to her, Laney would either die in another psychotic episode or, worse, the implant might accidentally work as intended and put her teammates’ lives at risk. But the Captain also felt like she had developed an almost maternal feeling for the ex-Marine. She was thus unwilling to give up and follow the procedure for a medical or psychological discharge. Then the Captain remembered who was next to her, and an idea came to Ashley’s mind.
“Doctor Scollay, your expertise in the field of human and extraterrestrial biology and psychology is unmatched by anyone here at A.T.X.D.”
“Why thank you, Captain,” Scollay replied, taking it as a compliment. “I believe….”
“And regardless of the technical differences, you once managed to surgically cure a patient who had a biological implant that overrode their neural impulses and was intended to destroy their humanity,” Ashley continued. “Could you repeat that extraction process?”
“If…uh…you…oh ah.” Scollay was now caught off guard and, for the first time in more than a couple decades, was stuttering to find an answer. Finally, though, he recalled that Ashley was talking about the surgery Scollay performed on her and realized what the Captain was now asking him to do.
“You do realize, Captain, that the hazards are even greater this time,” Scollay replied. “And I’m still attempting to reinstall my equipment that survived the Dulce Site’s demolition….”
“Can you do it though, Doctor Scollay?” Ashley now had that firmer commander attitude in her voice, and the emotionless look she turned his way reinforced her authority.
“I…I will need some time to more thoroughly analyze Corporal Davidson’s biology. As soon as I determine that, I might be able to find something that could help.”
“Good,” Ashley replied, then spun on her toe and left without another word. The sound of the Captain’s tactical boots thumping firmly on the white-tiled floor seemed to eerily echo on the walls of the medical center, again reinforcing her authority and reminding Scollay that she was expecting a solution soon. But rather than a curse, it seemed a blessing: now was Scollay’s chance to carry out his thorough research of Laney’s implant provided he didn’t cross any lines.