Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices Read Free Page A

door clanked opened and I stepped forward. The halls were the same, light gray walls with too much overhead lighting. A man dressed in a suit eyed me over once and then escorted me down the hallway to one of the other rooms. I noticed he was carrying a gun, even though that wasn’t standard issue inside the facility. I speculated that he brought it along with him as a safety precaution, but I shrugged it off. As if he actually stood a chance against me.
    He unlocked the door with the scanner implanted in his wrist and then ushered me inside. The room was small and bright with a little red light above the adjoining door. I removed all my clothing and waited for the light to turn green. Immediately after it had, I proceeded through. Another thing I’d always remember about this place—the numerous doors. I wasn’t sure if it was a security measure or for privacy. Likely both.
    The tile floor was icy on my feet, but I stood perfectly still and closed my eyes. The water and whatever disinfectant they’d laced it with sprayed over my naked body, sending a chill up my spine. It smelled like chemicals and caused my skin to tingle. I can’t say it made me feel any cleaner than I had been before, just a little more raw.
    When the spray stopped, another door opened and two women came in. One handed me a towel and the other set a case down on a metal table in the corner. I dried off as best I could before they each reached out to me with full syringes. I held still while being poked and prodded and injected everywhere from my neck to my hip to my ass.
    When they were done, one of the women took a thin pair of pants from the underside of the metal table and handed them to me. They were white and fairly see-through, not that I was modest. They were the type of disposable clothing people used to be given at hospitals and treatment centers. I slipped them on and made my way through the other side of the room. Another small hallway, darker than the previous. There were around twenty doors with lights about the frames—all red except for one. The one lit in green was for me. It clinked and locked behind me. The room couldn’t have been bigger than the size of most standard washrooms. Worse than a prison cell—smaller and darker without natural light. There was a toilet in the corner and a thin cot on the floor. I was in one of the holding rooms.
    A metallic voice came over the intercom. “You know why you’re here—in this room specifically?”
    I wanted to play dumb, but I was smarter than that. “Yes.”
    “We may not have had to go through such extensive precautions if you hadn’t developed a drug problem or kept the company you did.”
    I had nothing to say to that.
    “Is your drug addiction significant enough to make you compromised?”
    “No.” I hoped that wasn’t a lie.
    Then everything was quiet and stayed that way. I sighed.
    The room had two glass windows I knew to be two-way mirrors. They could have stuck around to observe me, or they could’ve left. I didn’t care either way. I sat down on the cold ground, wearing nothing but the thin pair of pants they’d gifted me, and waited. That was just how things worked when you were a soldier for ENAD.
    ENAD was a division of the state that was implemented some sixty years ago. ENAD stood for Enforced Necessary Arms Division, and that’s exactly who and what we were. We were the biggest, the best, and everything we could do was over the top. I’d been injected with more microbots and gene-altering formulas than I could remember, all to make me the perfect soldier. And I wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but I was closer than a lot of the people out there sleeping on the streets.
    The state treated us like dogs, which we were. We were rottweilers, starved and half-deranged, waiting for someone to let us off our leashes. Our division was classified, meaning the public didn’t know we existed. I was never sure why since I didn’t think they’d give a shit if we