Trinity's Legacy

by P A Vasey

  TRINITY’S LEGACY

  By

  P.A. Vasey

  Copyright © 2019 P.A.Vasey

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  TRINITY’S LEGACY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  DAY 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAY 2

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DAY 3

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DAY 4

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DAY 5

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  DAY 6

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  DAY 7

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  TRINITY’S LEGACY

  The Vu-Hak: An ancient and malevolent alien race, once organic, now entities of pure thought, drifting between the stars, limitless and immortal. An alpha species. A species that colonizes on a galactic-scale.

  The portal: A rift in space connecting Earth to the Vu-Hak galaxy. A result of the Cold War’s secret nuclear arms race. Hidden by scientists and U.S. governments for half a century. Forgotten.

  Kate Morgan: A doctor grieving the recent death of her child. She encounters a strange man in her emergency room. A man who speaks to her telepathically. A man who knows things about her he could not possibly know.

  Adam Benedict: Amnesic, enigmatic, and not entirely human. The FBI and the Government are desperate to capture him. Driven by urges he cannot understand, he goes on the run, taking Kate Morgan with him.

  With Adam questioning whether humanity is worth saving, Kate realizes that she is the only thing keeping him human.

  And time is running out.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  P.A. Vasey is a Physician, born in Newcastle, UK. He moved to Brisbane, Australia in 2004. His professional writing credits include over 200 publications including peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, conference contributions and electronic outputs in the field of cancer research.

  ‘TRINITY’S LEGACY’ is his first novel. It is an official semi-finalist for the 2018 CYGNUS Book Awards for Science Fiction, a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards.

  The second novel in the trilogy, ‘TRINITY’S FALL’, will be released in 2019. The third novel, provisionally titled ‘TRINITY: EXTINCTION’, will be released in 2020.

  At the author’s website http://www.pavasey.com you can get a free no-obligation download of a short story entitled ‘I AM TRINITY’

  PROLOGUE

  The Chief Resident didn’t look at me but just pointed down the corridor in the general direction of the patient bays. She was writing an entry in a chart as her pager went off and the phone by her elbow started ringing. She had the stiff-backed posture of a soldier, and her unlined face was calm and collected as she picked up the phone with one hand while looking at the number on her pager. I saw her smile in that cold and distant way that professionals do as she took another call and started the process of admitting another patient.

  “Mommy, can I stay here and play with the big computer?”

  My five-year-old daughter, Kelly, cannot yet see the world through my eyes, and generally I am good with that. But occasionally, as a single parent, I need to bring her to work, to my world, where the darkness and suffering happens. However, hanging onto my arm, iPad in hand, all she could see was a big TV with a flashing screen saver of some Marvel movie character floating in the sky, lightning bolts raining down on some helpless adversary.

  The Resident, a doctor called Meiko I’d met a few times in the ER, glanced at me and put her pen down. She gave a wink to Kelly and patted the chair next to her. Kelly looked up at me and I nodded assent so with a little squeal, she jumped up into the chair and pulled it closer to the desk. Meiko smoothed Kelly’s curly blonde hair out of her eyes and gave her the mouse to play with as she continued to take her telephone call.

  I smiled a ‘thanks’ and picked up the thin manila file she’d pushed towards me and flicked it open to the ER page that detailed the admission notes and the reason for my visit, as the Oncology Fellow. The entry was brief, but informative: The patient was male, mid-seventies, brought in by ambulance paramedics after a 911 call from a local grocery store. Apparently he’d been found unconscious behind one of the fruit and vegetable aisles. There were a couple of blood results attached, but nothing diagnostic or particularly informative. I noted that a brain scan had been ordered and Meiko had written: “Likely intracerebral event, CVA or tumor, refer to Internal Medicine and Oncology.

  “When’s he having the CT scan?” I said to Meiko, who was still on the phone. She held up a finger in the universal gesture of ‘hang on a sec’, and swapped the phone to her other ear. Then continued her conversation, ignoring me.

  I got the hint.

  I kissed Kelly on the forehead, barely getting an acknowledgement, and headed towards bay number three. I walked past nurses and porters running between patients carrying charts, x-rays, sample bottles, syringes, drugs and everything needed to keep the chaos from becoming madness. There was the constant rush of footfalls, squeaking trolley wheels, telephones ringing, monitors beeping and pinging, and I found myself longing for my office, where I’d been ensconced for the past couple of hours in companionable silence with Kelly, reviewing my own charts for tomorrow’s morning rounds.

  The curtains around bay three were drawn, and so I pulled them open and stepped through. Lying on the trolley was a young tattooed black man, draped in gold chains, dressed in a tracksuit and wearing Nike hi-tops. He was holding his abdomen, where a surgical pad and dressing had been applied, and which was oozing crimson. He seemed not to be in pain, and had a dreamy opiate-imbibed look to his eyes. The name above his bed written in precise sharpie was ‘Jayden Washington’. Three similarly attired males, and one female, who looked very pregnant, surrounded him.

  Seeing me, one of the guys gave a low whistle, and nudged his injured pal who gave me a sly grin. Now they were all checking me out, eyes doing that up and down thing. I was instantly regretting putting on my black tights and knee-high leather boots this morning, which were all the fashion in Chicago that winter, although I had assumed the white lab coat and stethoscope would offset any fashion faux pas.

  “Hey doc, been waitin’ ages,” slurred Jayden. He had a round face and one of those sharply cut goatees. He was a good fifty pounds overweight for his height, which I guessed was about five feet nothing given the way his Nikes weren’t touching the footrest.

  “I’m not your doctor,” I said. “Wrong bay.”

  “Yo can be my doctor any day, know what I’m sayin’,” chimed in another of his buddies, followed by a round of snickering and a fist bump. The girl gave him a thin-lipped stare and turned to me, hands on her hips.

  “You going to fix him?” she snapped.

 
I shook my head. “Your doctor’ll be along in a minute. I’ll let her know.”

  “Hurry along then,” she said.

  I sighed and mouthed “dicks”, before turning on my heel and leaving through the curtain. I peered at the chart again, and tried my luck in bay two.

  Jackpot.

  Well, sort of.

  Lying on the bed was a man beaten down first by old age and then by some sort of neurological catastrophe. His withered face was drooping on the right side, and drool was tracking down his chin pooling at the root of his neck. Ill-kept iron-grey hair was lank and pallid; his eyes were open and a milky blue with early cataract formation. He was long and thin, stick-like arms poked out from underneath a T-shirt bearing the logo from the zombie show ‘The Walking Dead’. The irony didn’t escape me.

  I popped the chart on the side table and said, “Hello, anybody there?”

  There was no response so I grasped his hand and squeezed, repeating the question. His hand felt cool and rubbery, wiry tendons palpable under thin skin.

  I stood back to get a better look at him, and someone nudged me from behind the curtain.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and moved away a little, assuming I’d just backed into a visitor standing outside the curtain. There was a swishing noise as whomever it was tried to find the slash entry, and then a face appeared. Followed by a gun.

  I backed up as the gun’s owner entered the bay. He was young, seventeen or so, his collection of gang tattoos with spidery designs and Latin writing curling up around his neck. His eyes were staring and watery, his mouth pulled down in a sneer, a thin film of sweat on his moustache. He took a quick look at the man on the bed and then pointed the gun at me.

  “Where’s Jayden?”

  The weapon was twitching, but from where he was standing, he wouldn’t have any problem with his aim. The hole at the end of the barrel looked three feet wide.

  “Jayden who?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

  He jutted his chin at me, mouth curling downwards. “You don’t want to be fuckin’ with me.”

  There was more swishing, this time from behind the curtain on the opposite side of John Doe. Three of Jayden’s buddies stepped through, and squared off across the bed at the man with the gun. He bared yellowed teeth, turning the gun sideways gangsta style and pointed it at the three newcomers. His eyes were narrowed, and there was a cool hatred there. He’d have no problem pulling the trigger, if he hadn’t already. I guessed he was coming to finish the job on Jayden.

  “This is a hospital,” I said, while moving to the foot of the bed and out of the firing line. “You can’t bring guns here.”

  “Yeah Tyler, get the fuck out,” scowled one of Jayden’s entourage, very helpfully.

  I flicked a glance at him. “You guys need to leave, too.”

  I could see a fairly obvious bulge under his sweatshirt. He was packing and therefore probably the others were too. I kept my hands in the pockets of my white coat, mainly to keep any of them from getting too excited, but also so I could press the emergency button on my phone.

  “Did you hear what she said, asshole?” Jaden’s buddy hissed.

  Tyler’s eyes turned towards me, and the gun followed in a sweeping arc. Immediately, the others drew weapons from jackets and pant pockets, and all of a sudden the situation had gone from one angry guy with a gun to the OK Corral. Big glistening black 45s wagged in the air, twisting and pointing like in the movies. I inched backwards towards the edge of the curtain, which was tantalizingly half open. In the distance I could hear the tannoy announcing ‘CODE BLACK’, and the patter of running feet approaching.

  There was no sound in our bay. John Doe lay oblivious to everything, and none of the gunmen were talking. If stares could kill, everyone would already be dead. I held a hand up towards Tyler, the seventeen-year-old child with a hand cannon.

  “Hey, Tyler. Look at me. It’s not too late. Just leave. Police are on their way.”

  I could see it in his eyes. The fast blinking. Jerking left and right. He was looking for a way out. Anger had segued into fear, trapped in a nightmare of his own making.

  I breathed in, and licked some moisture onto my suddenly-dry lips. “Tyler. Sometimes it takes courage to back off, live to fight another day, you know?”

  At that moment the curtain behind him twitched and billowed and my daughter ran in, laughing and waving her iPad looking for me. I screamed her name and hurled myself towards her, arms outstretched, heart hammering, and all the guns seemed to go off at once. The sound was like a million thunderclaps, cracking the air as if the very fabric of the atmosphere was being ripped apart. Something hot seared the side of my head above my right ear, and I tumbled onto the floor, everything spinning and churning like a washing machine.

  Booted feet stepped over me and the gunshots continued, and I was being kicked and stepped on as more people entered the bay. I turned my head sideways and vomited, acid burning the inside of my mouth. I tried to pull myself up onto my elbows but someone yelled “stay down!” and I found that this was all I could do anyway. My eyes fluttered, and I lay there, hot and coppery-smelling blood trickling down the side of my face and dripping onto the floor. I stared at the droplets forming into a puddle, wondering who’s it was, and if it was mine, and why there was no pain.

  Then, arms grabbed me from behind and I was being pulled out of the bay.

  I had glimpses of blue and black police uniforms swarming around the bed, and of white-coated figures swarming over bodies on the ground. Track suited, adult bodies, bleeding and gasping and limbs twitching.

  And one little girl, lying on her side, head turned towards me, eyes open.

  DAY 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Indian Springs Hospital and Medical Centre, Nevada

  Six months later

  I entered the empty doctors’ office, the early morning sun squeezing through half-closed blinds, probing and casting zebra-like patterns into the darkened corners. It was a small functional space, with worn but comfortable lazy-boys lining the wall facing the window under which was a desk groaning from the weight of an idling computer monitor, abandoned coffee cups, and reams of half-completed paperwork. A wall clock looked balefully down. A variety of coloured theatre scrubs and a few stethoscopes draped over hangers decorated another wall. A dartboard sporting the face of Donald Trump occupied another. A pot of coffee bubbled on a low table. A single door with an inlaid window obscured by more blinds was covered with notices and flyers.

  I poured a cup of coffee, and took a sip, savouring the smooth bitterness and the hit I always got from the stewed sludge in the bottom of the pot. I flopped down into one of the recliners, and closed my eyes. The ward outside was bustling with morning activity, nurses and orderlies walking up and down doing their jobs, chatting and laughing. There was the usual hospital smell of disinfectant, and a pleasant waft of toast and coffee coming from one of the rooms next to the kitchen. The intermittent beeping and pinging of cardiac monitors could just be heard from the central station.

  It was relaxing, soporific even. I felt myself drifting off.

  As usual my thoughts gravitated to Chicago, and my daughter. I couldn’t properly visualize her any more. She was like a ghost. What had once been my whole life and existence was now a memory, a shadow lingering in the depths of my mind, slowly but inexorably becoming more insubstantial. My mind called out to her, but the connection was missing, and in its place was a numb paraesthesia, an empty place, hollowed out by grief. Sometimes, the shell was filled with tears and burst open like a crack in the side of a dam. More often these days, I felt nothing, or I didn’t know how, or what, to feel.

  The rising crescendo wails of an approaching emergency vehicle broke into my reverie, and I pulled myself up to peer out of the window. An ambulance swerved into the parking zone, gravel crunching and tyres screeching.

  I went through to the ER where the front desk was occupied by a receptionist speaking into a phone and two nurses flicking idly t
hrough magazines. As would have been usual for the time of day, the wait area was empty of patients. The receptionist was a heavyset woman called Carlie, who noticed me and smiled whilst cradling the phone on her ear. I held my hands palms up, mouthing, “What’s going on?”

  Carlie shrugged back and spoke into the phone, sarcasm dripping and looking at me with lidded eyes, “Yeah, we can hear you now guys, thanks for the heads-up.”

  She put the phone on its cradle, and pointed to the entryway as a trolley crashed through the heavy plastic doors, guided by two paramedics. One was holding an IV line and steering the trolley with his free hand, while the other was pushing from the rear, oxygen bagging the occupant of the trolley. Two men in their early twenties, dressed in jeans and T- shirts followed, stopping to look around the reception area like deer caught in headlights.

  I put my coffee down on the bench, and gestured for the paramedics to take the patient into one of the three empty medical bays. I moved over to the left side of the trolley and through the oxygen mask got a glimpse of a white Caucasian male in his forties with black hair, and a greyish-white appearance to his skin. The paramedics had him in a supportive neck brace. His eyes were closed.

  I recognised the lead paramedic, a stocky blond guy called Jeff. “Hi, what’ve we got?” I said, all business.

  Jeff looked up and smiled. “Good to see we’ve got the big-city hot-shot on today. Dr Morgan, how you doing? This guy was hit by a truck, couple of clicks on 95 just east of Mercury.”

  I flicked a glance over at the two men, still standing in the middle of the ER front entry. “Their truck?”

  “Yep. Apparently just wandering down the I-95, pitch dark. Truck ran straight through him. Made quite a dent in the hood.”

  I nodded and waved a hand in their direction. “Hey, you guys. Get over here. Tell me what happened?”