Evolution

by R S Penney

  He disrobed and stepped into the liquid, submerging himself to the very top of his head. It didn't harm his ability to breathe; in fact, he felt the burden of consciousness slip away as he fell into a kind of stasis.

  Sometime later, he was curled up naked on the chamber floor, suddenly free of the aches and pains that had plagued his body. A Nassai duplicated its host's cells with near-perfect accuracy, preserving youth well past the point of what would normally be called middle age. But even they could only do so much to halt the inevitable.

  In time, when a Keeper's body could no longer sustain its symbiont, the Nassai he carried was returned to its people, and the Keeper was allowed to pass with quiet dignity. Very few Keepers made it far past fifty-five.

  Grecken Slade was over two thousand years old.

  The Inzari rejuvenated him, repaired his body, strengthened his symbiont and gave him a new lease on life. They were masters of life and death, gods in the truest sense of the word. And he was their humble servant.

  Rolling onto his stomach, Slade groaned. He pushed himself up on extended arms, head hanging from the fatigue. “I will secure the Key.” His words came out as a hoarse whisper. “And kill Lenai.”

  His doppelganger stood by the wall with arms folded, watching him with a dull-eyed stare. “Bring the rabble that follow you,” he said. “It is time they looked upon the faces of their gods.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we will take away their fear.”

  He was a criminal.

  As he watched his faint reflection in the surface of his coffee table – the ghostly version of himself that stared back at him – Harry felt a powerful sense of shame. What Jack had said was true; he was a criminal.

  He sat with his knees apart on the couch in his family room, head hanging as he tried to compose himself. “We needed the cipher,” he mumbled for his own ears. “It was for the greater good.”

  Somehow, that tired appeal to utilitarian ethics did nothing to soothe his miserable conscience. True, they did need the cipher, and true, the entire planet might be put at risk if Slade got his hands on the Key. But there were some lines a good man just didn't cross under any circumstances.

  He felt sick to his stomach.

  The sound of the front door opening made him jump, and for a moment, he half-expected to hear his ex-wife's voice insisting that he was the worst father ever and that the girls were better off without him. Maybe that damn N'Jal really had twisted his mind. He didn't feel any different, but…

  Melissa appeared at the head of the stairs that led up to the kitchen, dressed in a pair of jeans and an old black t-shirt. Her black hair was done up in a bun with just a few flyaway strands. “Dad.”

  Harry shut his eyes. “Hey, kiddo,” he said in a soft voice. “I guess you finished your work in New York. Did Dr. Hamilton send you home?”

  Melissa descended the steps with her arms folded, staring down at her feet. “Yeah. Things started picking up once people were free to move about the city.” A heavy sigh exploded from her as she paused on the bottom step. “By the second day, we had more nurses than we knew what to do with.”

  “Well, that's good.”

  “Dr. Hamilton said I needed the rest.”

  Harry threw himself back against the couch cushions, breathing deeply. “Don't we all,” he muttered. “But at least the worst of it is over.”

  He waited for some response, but his daughter remained quiet. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw her at the foot of the stairs, standing stiffly. It was the posture she took on whenever she had something to say but couldn't quite force the words out. Maybe it was about Raynar.

  She had taken the kid's death pretty hard. Come to think of it, Harry ought to be a lot more shaken, but this wasn't the first time he had seen someone give his life in the line of duty. Now, his kid was getting her first taste of that life.

  “Mom said you wanted to talk to me,” Melissa murmured.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Harry groaned. “She won't even give you one night to get settled in,” he grumbled. “Yes, Melissa, I was planning to talk to you. I spoke to Larani Tal, and she's willing to let you do your training on Leyria.”

  Melissa just stood there, blinking at him. Boy oh boy, would he like to give Della a piece of his mind; the woman refused to trust him to handle this in his own good time. “I don't want you to take this the wrong way,” Melissa began. “But what made you talk to Larani? I'm not angry, but…”

  “Your mother thinks Leyria would be safer.”

  A low growl escaped the girl as she strode across the room to stand in front of the coffee table. “She is aware that I've chosen a career where people will shoot at me, isn't she?” Melissa threw up her hands in frustration.

  Harry smiled into his own lap, shaking his head slowly. “Don't be too hard on her,” he said, unable to contain his own exasperation. “It's part of being a parent. The urge to protect your kid is hardwired.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Well, I didn't get an answer to the question,” Harry said, deliberately redirecting the conversation. “Do you want to move to Leyria?”

  “On my own?”

  Harry leaned against the couch cushions with his arms folded, tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “Presumably, I would be going with you,” he explained. “They may need me for this anti-Slade task force.”

  “And Claire?”

  “Your mother and I are still working it out.”

  Tapping her lips with one finger, Melissa shut her eyes. “It's a pretty big change,” she said. “I always knew that this career might one day take me away from Earth, but I never thought it would be so soon.”

  “Well, you better make your decision soon,” Harry said. “Jena and the others will be relocating once this immediate crisis is over, and we just retrieved the third cipher. We will be going after the Key any day now.”

  That made Melissa's eyes bug out, and she stumbled backward until she almost hit the wall. “I need to go with you,” she panted. “To the Key. I need to be there.”

  “No.”

  Grinding her teeth audibly, Melissa winced and let out a soft hiss. “No, you don't understand,” she insisted. “I have to be there, Dad. I still remember everything Raynar took from Slade's mind.”

  “Including what the Key does.”

  “It's all muddled but…” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eye-sockets and moaned with displeasure. “I don't know. If Raynar were here, he would go, but without him, I'm all you've got.”

  Melissa stood hunched over, sobbing as tears streamed over her cheeks. “Sorry,” she whispered, pressing her back to the wall. “I just…I haven't really had the time to let it all sink in.”

  Without even thinking, Harry was on his feet and marching across the room. He wrapped his daughter up in a gentle hug and let her sob against him. Selfish as it was for him to think it, he was comforted by one undeniable reality: no matter how old your kids got, you would always be their rock. “It's all right,” Harry whispered. “Everything will be all right.”

  She cried for a very long time, and when she was finished, she looked up at him with determination in her eyes. “I have to go with you to the Key,” she insisted. “This is not up for debate.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” she mumbled. “Just okay.”

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, Harry grunted into his own palm. “I can't protect you from this life,” he said softly. “I realize that now. I couldn't save you from the pain of losing Raynar, and I can't…”

  A shudder went through him, one that made his whole body spasm, but he managed to back away from her with some dignity. “If you think you need to go to the Key, then I will be right there with you.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too,” he said. “Always.”

  The fogginess receded, allowing Patrick to regain some semblance of conscious thought, but everything was still muddled. He remembered the
strange knock on his door, the man who had come to…to what? He remembered the strange sense of euphoria and then drifting off into a deep sleep.

  His eyes fluttered open to reveal soft moonlight coming in through his living room window. It was still dark outside, and he was lying on the couch. Why hadn't he gone up to bed? That man…What had that man done to him?

  He sat up.

  And that was when he saw it.

  Bathed in cold moonlight that came in through the window, the silhouette of Death itself stood in the corner of his living room. A cloaked and hooded figure that moved like a wraith as it came toward him. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't. “You will forgive me for this,” the apparition said softly.

  Death had a woman's voice?

  She moved with ghostly dexterity, approaching the couch to stand over him. “It is nothing personal, you understand,” she went on. “Once again, I am forced to clean up one of Slade's messes.”

  “Who…Who are you?”

  She leaned forward as if to kiss him.

  A gloved finger touched his lips, quieting him. “Shh…” the apparition said in sweet, soothing tones. “This is just a nightmare. You will slip back into a sweet, dreamless sleep and forget that I was ever here.”

  He saw the gleam of a knife in the moonlight.

  The slash across his throat was quick, fierce and decisive. Patrick had to stifle his shock when he felt his own blood pooling in his hands. What? Shouldn't it hurt more? Why was everything so murky?

  A hand pushed him down onto his back, and he barely registered a distant voice speaking. “I would have preferred to have avoided this,” the woman said. “But we can't have you telling the authorities what our dear friend Harry did.”

  Who was Harry?

  “Rest now,” she said. “You have earned a reprieve from the burdens of this world.” The last thought of any coherence that raced through his mind was that Death was right. It really was a sweet, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 24

  The Science Lab was abuzz with activity as Ven's hologram floated high above the black-tiled floor with fists on its hips. A spectral being of swirling blue light, it seemed to be fixated on something in the corner.

  Dressed in black pants and a matching t-shirt, Jena stood in the middle of the room with arms folded. “So,” she said, looking up to fix her gaze upon the hologram. “you said you have something for us.”

  Ven nodded.

  Off to her left, Jack and Melissa stood side by side in clothing identical to her own, both shifting nervously, though she suspected they each had their own reasons for their apprehension. Something had happened between Jack and Anna; she could tell that much by the distance.

  Whether they realized it or not, those two usually found a way to be within arm's reach of each other, but today, Anna was on the exact opposite side of the room. Like the others, she was also dressed in black.

  The girl sat on the edge of a table with her elbow on her knee, her chin resting on the knuckles of her fist. “Well, don't keep us waiting, Ven,” she said. “We got all dressed up. I don't know about you, but I want to go to a party.”

  In her mind's eye, Jena saw Harry hovering by the entrance with his hands shoved into his pants' pockets. The way he kept casting glances at his daughter. He really didn't want her here, but he had learned not to protest. “Agreed,” he said. “Let's get on with this already. Do you know the Key's location?”

  Ven's hologram floated with ghostly hands clasped behind its back, running its gaze over the lot of them. “I have analyzed the three ciphers,” it said. “When put together, they form what I believe to be the SlipGate equivalent of source code.”

  Lifting his chin to study the hologram, Jack narrowed his eyes. “Source code,” he said, shaking his head. “Source code that does what exactly?”

  Ven disappeared.

  In his place, what appeared to be a spiderweb of glowing green lines expanded until it stretched from corner to corner across the ceiling. His disembodied voice came through the speaker system. “The SlipGates form a galaxy-wide network that allows for interstellar communication in real time and near-instantaneous travel between any two gates within approximately five light seconds of each other.”

  When she looked closely, Jena realized that each of those green lines intersected at a glowing green dot. “They are programmed to recognize each other,” Ven went on. “But there is not just one SlipGate network; there are two.”

  A second spiderweb of red lines appeared, overlapping with the first. Together, they formed a beautiful mosaic of light.

  Ven's hologram reappeared beneath the glowing spiderwebs, descending slowly until he hovered just above the floor tiles. He raised one hand toward the ceiling. “I have analyzed the code over a dozen times.”

  “And what have you found?” Jena asked.

  “I cannot be one hundred percent certain,” Ven began, “but I believe that any Gate that runs the code we have assembled will drop off the primary network and instead join this secondary network.”

  Harry was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, shaking his head slowly. “What good would that do?” he said. “So, we've tapped into the Overseers private network, but that doesn't give us much.”

  “If I'm correct, Harry,” Ven replied, “there will only be one other SlipGate on this second network. And it will correspond to the Key's location. Consider the enormity of what we have just discovered.

  “The Overseers do not know of this second network; if they did, they would have found the Key ages ago. The radicals among them – the ones who wished to preserve the Key for human use – must have designed this second network in secret.”

  Jena took a moment to let it all sink in. All her life, she had imagined the Overseers as larger-than-life beings. They were a species who could shape planets to suit their needs and scatter thousands of people across the galaxy. Now, she knew something they didn't know. It was humbling–and terrifying.

  Jena stood hunched over, tapping her lips as she thought it over. “Okay,” she said, taking a few steps forward. “Then what we need is a SlipGate. One that won't be missed after we run the program.”

  Ven floated up a few feet and watched her with that eyeless stare. “I submit that we already have a SlipGate,” he said, gesturing to the corner. “The very one you took from Wesley Pennfield a few months ago.”

  The puddle of skin that had transported Jack and Anna to a mansion in Hawaii was still sitting undisturbed in the corner. It looked almost like a folded up blanket except for the veins and the slight sheen. The truth was that Jena would have preferred to have forgotten about that damn thing. Everyone had given it a wide birth for the last few months. After all, there was always a chance that it might randomly activate again. “You're saying that we could go now.”

  “Yes.”

  Jena closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “Well then,” she said with a curt nod. “That was what I wanted to hear. All right, I want everyone geared up and ready to leave in ten minutes. Pack light armaments, ammo and explosives.”

  Jack stood by the wall with a hand pressed to his stomach, staring down at the floor under his feet. “Explosives?” he said in that mocking tone of his. “You really wanna blow up the ancient piece of alien tech?”

  Licking her lips, Jena looked down at herself. “No, I don't,” she answered, brushing bangs off her forehead with the back of her hand. “But the fact is that we don't know what this thing does; if we can't control it…”

  “Better to destroy it than let Slade have it.”

  “Exactly.”

  As if on cue, the double doors slid open, revealing Larani and Ben standing side by side in the hallway. Like everyone else, they were both dressed in black. “Good,” Larani said, striding into the room.

  The woman squeezed her eyes tight and gave her head a shake. “I was worried we may have missed you.” She stopped about five feet from Jena, planted fists on her hips and stood like the statue of a disap
proving mother. “I just reviewed the report you sent me an hour ago. You have decoded the ciphers?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Jena answered. “And we're going after the Key.”

  “Then Tanaben and I will be going with you.”

  “That isn't necessary, ma'am.”

  Closing her eyes, Larani tilted her head back. She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Jena,” she said in mollifying tones. “You're about to unearth one of the most important discoveries in human history. The head of the Justice Keepers should be there.”

  Jena crossed her arms, backing away from the woman with a heavy sigh. “You're right,” she said, nodding her agreement. “I take it you want to command the mission?”

  “That's unnecessary,” Larani said. “You've been spearheading the search for this Key for over six months. I'm happy to follow your lead on this one.”

  “All right then; gear up and be ready to go in ten minutes.”

  Nine minutes and fifty-five seconds later, they were all standing in a small cluster around the folded sheet of veiny skin in the corner. Ven appeared, hovering over them like an angel. “Are we ready?”

  Craning her neck, Jena squinted at the hologram. “We're ready,” she said, nodding to him. “Run the program. Let's see what this bloody thing does when we screw around with its firmware.”

  “Transmitting the code now.”

  At first, it seemed as though nothing had happened, but then the puddle of flesh lit up for half a moment, glowing blue and bright and forcing Jena to shield her eyes. She wasn't the only one.

  Next to her, Harry stumbled backward with a hand raised up in front of his face. “God in Heaven,” he muttered, getting his bearings. “Please tell me that we actually did something there. I'd hate to go blind for nothing.”

  “I am interfacing with the SlipGate,” Ven answered.

  “Have you found anything?”