The Prospects (Book 2): Nothing Poorer Than Gods by Daniel Halayko Page B

outside of a recently built mansion. Jim Griffin waited for them on the porch. He wore a housecoat and had a pitcher in his hand. “Can I offer you a drink?”
    “It’s ten p.m.,” said Alex. “Seems a little late for that.”
    “It’s lemonade. I’ve been sober since retirement. And look at you all concerned about appearances. I used to be the one in a suit.”
    “We don’t have time for pleasantries,” said Stormhead. “Tell us about the human experiments done by Griffin Industries.”
    “That’s no way to greet an old friend. Do you have any experiments with our logo on the island now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Throw them in the ocean. Problem solved.”
    “We want information,” said Alex, “not advice.”
    Stormhead said, “Trista, read his mind.”
    Jim raised his hand. “Don’t. My mind is no place for a young lady. I’ll start in the seventies. The Cold War was a lot hotter than most people realized. That’s back when people believed superheroes could actually change the world. The Soviets didn’t waste time considering the ethics of genetic engineering or how complex it actually is, they tried to build their own superheroes. They sliced and spliced until they had an army of insane monsters. Uncle Sam didn’t like that, so the Company got involved.”
    “Right,” said Alex. “Griffin Industries.”
    “No, not my company. The Company, spelled C-I-A. Someone named the Handler marched into my office one day without an appointment. The weirdest thing is I could never recognize him. I’m good with faces, but every time I saw him it was like looking at someone new.”
    Stormhead said, “Why did he contact you?”
    “For Project Cold Warrior. The goal was to make all-American cloned superheroes under their network of shell companies so the commies’ spies in the military wouldn’t know about it. He made it sound like a competitive offer between us and every company with a R&D department and a defense contract.”
    “That is so messed up,” said Trista.
    “That’s what I said. He told me to cooperate or they’d kidnap my researchers and make them work for the other companies. I got to tell you, the Handler is more ruthless than any those idiots in purple suits who rant about world domination.”
    “At least you tried to reject it,” said Stormhead.
    “I let the Handler do what he wanted with my people. We built a cloning facility to create blank bodies based on DNA supplied by another company. We were required to include the Griffin Industries logo on our creations to differentiate them from Alerion’s clones.”
    “Wait,” said Alex. “Do we still have a cloning facility? We can use that to save Lady Amazing.”
    “No, and you wouldn’t want to use it. The scientists mixed human DNA with parts from animals to make things with the strengths of both. They customized assassins to kill the Soviet’s creations. Some of the things that came out of the vats were completely inhuman. I don’t know why one company designed those things or what the next company did, but we did our part.
    “And then, Handler said it was over. My employees dismantled the facility and sold off the machinery for scrap. It was over before seventy-six, I remember celebrating the bicentennial with a toast to forgetting Project Cold Warrior.”
    “Why did it end?” asked Trista.
    “The Russians lost control of their monster army. Those abominations went wild. It took the whole Commie army to destroy those things. Some are still hiding in the former Soviet states. And the CIA figured that could happen here. They could barely keep their program under wraps. Even with military-level security, every now and then one of those clones developed enough of a free will to escape.”
    “The live ones,” said Alex.
    “Yeah, that’s what the hunters called them. When the project ended, Sergeant Hammer said he and a few other government goons slaughtered every god-awful creation and incinerated their remains in a