by Paul Teague
His presence here wouldn’t be flagged either, so long as he didn’t draw attention to himself by trying to access unauthorized areas. He could see too that since the mission briefing, the entire operation had been stepped up a notch. Security, monitoring, and surveillance were now significantly increased. TerraLevel 2 was about to begin. Although it was fully automated, it would be monitored around the clock. As Doctor Pierce had said, they were guardians of the entire planet, similar to parents watching over children as they sleep. He needed to locate the doctor and confront him about the girl. He also wanted to know how this family was connected. Years of work in this field gave him highly tuned senses for this type of operation.
And he smelled a rat. It was only because he was trying to locate the source of Doctor Pierce’s broadcast that he stumbled upon the information that nobody else had thought to check for. He was unable to determine the location of the broadcast but he was sure that it was delivered live and that it had not emanated from within this bunker. Certainly it wasn’t on the same mainframe that the Control Room team were using. It was while he was scanning the source that he noticed an unusual thing.
Two video streams were being served simultaneously. The one that they were all watching was shielding something else, which was heavily encrypted. It was a Trojan Horse system used rarely in Consortium circles, but highly undetectable – mainly because nobody ever looked for it. Hiding in plain sight. Somebody, within this bunker, had just received an encrypted message from Doctor Pierce. A message that they didn’t want anybody else to see.
Terraforming
The terraforming process was a slow one; these environmental ailments could not be cured instantly. It would take fourteen days for Genesis 2 to breathe new life into the planet. It’s said that it took God seven days to create the Earth. Such a work of art is not so easily recreated. First, all life forms had to be put to sleep. This regeneration would take place around them and unknown to them. The darkness that surrounded the Earth would provide everything that the planet needed to survive.
Over the next fourteen days and nights, that black, impenetrable blanket would change colour and begin to lighten as the complex atmospheric, chemical, geological and biological transformations took place.
Even God would be in awe of this process and might be forgiven for questioning how Man had become so advanced that he was capable of mimicking the power of the Creator.
The terraforming process was complex, and it could be used to breathe new life into extinguished planets, or light the flame of first life in dead planets.
It could also be deployed for destructive and selfish outcomes. When God used His powers to create the Earth, it was for benevolent purposes, to give Man the opportunity to live in His beautiful garden.
Imagine, then, if those powers were used for evil and just how much devastation could be unleashed across the surface of the planet if they were.
Contact
It was Nat that I’d seen with Mum! Now I am certain. I don’t know what to think or feel. We’ve grieved for Nat for three years. I’ve missed her every single day since then. And yet there she was, right in front of me. In the middle of whatever is going on in this bunker. I feel incredibly level-headed considering what’s just happened, and I know that Nat and I must be reunited as soon as possible. The fact that she’s alive has to be connected with the amazing technology in this place; we must be caught up in all of this in some way.
But how? Nat seems to be able to move around this place the same as I can. And if she’s inside the bunker now, Mum must be here somewhere too. I’ve got to figure out how to get her back from wherever this device took her. And I hope she’s trying to figure out how to get back to me; she had just enough time to see me. I hope she recognized me. Since she disappeared moments ago, I’ve lost that feeling of ‘connection’ again. It’s already dawned on me that this must be hooked into Nat, it must be a ‘twin thing’. Useful though, because I seem to be able to sense when she’s around.
I must have been picking up on her ever since she managed to get through the bunker doors. If she’s definitely below ground now, that timing seems about right. At that moment, an announcement and alert sounds through the transportation area and the corridors outside. It is eight o’clock, the time of the mission briefing. I curse what’s just happened with Nat and the fact that I’ve got caught here, on Level 4, at the time of the briefing.
I need to run by the Operations Centre on the floor above. I left my phone on the workstation there and I want to ask Kate how I can charge it. I want to see the end of Dad’s video too, it might tell me how I can reconnect with Nat.
I rush back to the lift, and return to the third level. The announcement that the briefing is about to begin is sounding throughout both of these lower levels, which nobody else seems able to access, so far. They must all be connected in some way if they share the same announcement system. I head back to the Level 3 Operations Centre and make straight for Doctor Pierce’s console. I pick up my phone and it lights up as my hand touches the screen. I check the battery life as it should be dead. It’s fully charged now. How did that happen?
This bunker must have wireless electricity. That would explain the lack of plug sockets. I wonder if that’s how it works, this place is certainly techie enough. I’m about to open up the MMS message that Dad sent me, when a familiar face appears on every single terminal in the room. It’s Doctor Pierce. He begins to speak: ‘My name is Doctor Harold Pierce, I have met all of you already, but due to the highly confidential nature of this mission …’
His words are cut off on the terminal at this workstation. On all other terminals he is delivering a briefing speech: ‘Firstly, let me start by reassuring you that your loved ones are all completely safe and secure,’ he goes on. But on the screen I’m looking at, he’s saying something very different. It’s an overlaid message, as if one message is embedded within another.
‘Dan,’ he begins in the second message. ‘This is an encrypted message, which only you will be able to receive.’
‘At present, you are the only person in the bunker who has Purple or Black Zone access. That won’t be the case for much longer. I don’t have much time to speak, we’re currently on an encrypted delivery system. You’ll have worked out already, Dan, that you and your sister are very special.’
I begin to talk, but he continues to speak over me. This can’t be a live message; he must have recorded it beforehand.
‘Dan, as you’ll see on the main screens, I am currently explaining to the bunker personnel what’s going on outside. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about terraforming, but we’re involved in the highest level project to regenerate the planet.
‘That automated process will begin the second my mission briefing ends. Bunker personnel will receive their agendas directly to their personal devices.
‘Dan, I’ve spent more than twenty years personally preparing for this. I thought I’d covered every possibility, but I’ve missed something … I can’t believe I didn’t see it.’
I get the feeling that he isn’t here to deliver good news to me.
‘The terraforming has been hijacked by a terrorist faction, Dan. I don’t know who they are – or where they are – I just don’t understand how they even got access, it should be impossible, it’s all tied into me.’
He’s flustered and has the look of a genius who’s just been told that his theory is rubbish, even though he knows that it must be correct.
‘If they sabotage the terraforming, Dan, they can kill the planet … everything will be dead. It’s the minerals they want – and the gas – they don’t care about what else is left.’
He’s getting quite distressed now. I’m with him on that.
‘I managed to get some people inside the bunker who you can trust, Dan – your mum is one of them, and James, her friend. You can tell if they’re safe by the devices in their necks.
‘Look closely under their skin; you should see a very faint, blu
e, pulsating light there. If you do, they’re safe, they’re connected directly with me.’
He furrows his brow. ‘If they have any other colour device, Dan, you mustn’t trust them. I have partial control, but the encryptions were hacked when the sirens sounded. It’s why the lights were off in the bunker for so long, why the timing was all wrong. They hacked in when we were at our most vulnerable – as we handed over from governmental control to the bunker.
‘Dan, I’ve got to go. Remember, you can access all areas here, but you’ve only got a short head start on them. Once the hacking is complete, they’ll have the run of the place.
‘One last thing, Dan: they’ll go for the terraforming last of all. First thing they’ll target are the drones.’
The message ended. Just as his final words were delivered on the second presentation that had been continuing on the main screens.
‘… The Global Consortium thanks you for your service in the Genesis 2 project.’
Chapter Seven
20.05 Control
At the very moment that Doctor Pierce finishes his briefing in the Control Room, Amy notices something that she might have missed if it wasn’t for her conversation with James only minutes before. In unison, the minute the screens return to The Global Consortium logo, the necks of the bunker staff glow red. She turns to James. His neck is fine, still blue.
He notices what just happened too, and reads her face when she nudges him. ‘You’re fine!’ he acknowledges, checking out her neck. The light is blue.’
Across the room there is a simultaneous beep as the bunker staff receive their instructions on their personal devices, just as Doctor Pierce had suggested. There is a sudden air of purpose, as Control Room staff access their personal mission agendas. The time for acclimatization is over; Genesis 2 has begun.
‘I need to get back to my station,’ James whispers, ‘I’ll find out what I can.’
He walks towards the man who had taken up his duties in his absence, somebody he hasn’t noticed here before. The man makes way for him, and seems lost momentarily, he has no place to go. He is saved by the alarms that began to sound on a console to his left.
‘Stasis Room power has been cut, as requested,’ the terminal operator reports to Kate.
‘How long?’ asks Kate.
‘A maximum of one hour independent survival for the adults, about forty minutes for the children.’
Amy hears everything.
James walks over to her and whispers hurriedly. ‘They’re killing the civilians in the Stasis Room, Amy: they’ve turned off the power supply. Take my E-Pad, I’ve mapped in the location. When you get there, I’ll send instructions to work around it without detection. I’ll do what I can here while you’re on your way.’
Amy leaves the Control Room, adrenalin flowing, heart beating furiously. Unknown to her, the man who had been sitting at James’s terminal notices her departure and follows her, making sure that he is not detected. She is suddenly aware of a feeling that she hasn’t experienced in some time, since those terrible events with James. It is survival instinct. She follows the navigation data on the E-Pad and manages to make her way through the corridors easily enough. James must be monitoring on the cameras. As she approaches the Stasis Room door, it slides open without her having to place her hand on the panel.
James is good, he must have managed to override it. Unfortunately, his actions are detected immediately by Kate. Security just went up to maximum level and anything that is out of the ordinary now gets relayed to her instantly. Inside the Stasis Room, it doesn’t take Amy long to work out what is happening.
Encased in glass cocoons, she finds her family and other people, some of whom she recognizes as the bunker staff that she’d seen on the previous day. To the side of each of the inanimate bodies is a life-signs indicator. The levels on the graphs are going down, bit by bit. Heart rates are slowing. These people are dying. She has to save her family. The Stasis Room door opens.
With the blue device in her neck currently inoperative, she recognizes him straight away, but she can’t place where they have met before. The alarms are sounding in the corridor outside, they must have spotted her. The man in the doorway looks as if he is about to speak, but becomes aware that there are heavy footsteps behind him. A security team is following just behind. He takes the gun that he has been hiding within his uniform, points it at Amy, and shoots. She falls to the ground.
As the security team enters the Stasis Room, a small pool of blood has begun to form where her body lies still and lifeless.
20.14 Drones
Kate receives the news that the intruder in the Stasis Room has been dealt with. Unknown to the man called James, she alerts Security to his recent unsanctioned actions. Combined with his unexplained visit to the bunker entrance earlier, he obviously means trouble. They catch him unawares as the security team storms quietly, but efficiently into the Control Room and take him away for interrogation.
With the red devices pulsating furiously in their necks, interrogation will now mean something completely different to what it did only an hour previously. Somebody else is now calling the shots here; internal sabotage will neither go unnoticed nor unpunished. Kate continues to work through the tasks that are being directly transmitted via the device in her neck. By a source unknown.
As the faint red glow pulsates, she executes her next task with no emotion or any thought of consequence.
‘Begin drone activation!’ she commands as the woman in front of her, responsible for carrying out that task, sets to work at her console.
‘Activation sequence has begun, authentication required to process,’ the woman replies.
Kate places her hand on a panel at her desk. Her eyes are scanned by a red laser. This is a Black Zone security operation. Kate now has top level access.
‘Drone activation underway!’ comes the confirmation from across the Control Room. ‘Initiating the arming sequence!’
20.16 Peril
My mind is racing. First, Nat’s reappearance – or should I say ‘resurrection’? Now this message from Doctor Pierce. Dad said to trust him. Doctor Pierce said to trust Mum and James. I need to start tracking people down – and fast! I remember the unfinished video message on my phone, and begin to replay it. I get to the part where it broke off earlier: ‘It’s about you, it’s all about you and …’
The message continues: ‘… It’s about you, it’s all about you and Nat. It’s because you’re twins, it’s all about you two. Dan … Nat is alive. It’s all connected with your genetic patterns, you have to work together. Doctor Pierce says I’m not going to remember recording this afterwards, so it’s in your hands, Dan. Trust Mum, look for Nat, and do everything together.’
As he said that last word, I could see Doctor Pierce operating some electronic device behind him. His expression turns blank and I hear Doctor Pierce’s voice say, ‘Now go back inside,’ as the video comes to an abrupt end.
‘Work together’. Everything that won’t work for me in this bunker seems to need something else. Or someone else. The weird buttons in the lift. There are two of them. When Nat was in that machine earlier, as soon as I placed my hand on the pad to try and stop it, it seemed to do the opposite – it actually completed the process. I need to get back to that transportation room where I left Nat.
I run as fast as I can, back to the area where Nat disappeared. The activation panel is illuminated. Nat must have touched it already. I place my hand on it once again and the orange light surges once again into life.
End
Moments after Dan leaves the Operations Centre, one by one, three of the large screens flicker into life. On one is the face of a woman. There are men’s faces on the other two screens. Each of them looks serious, grave, concerned. Behind them are control rooms, exact replicas of the one only two floors above. Each of the people on the screens is attempting to deliver an urgent message. A message that goes unheard:
‘Quadrant 2 to Quadrant 1, breaking commun-i
cation protocols to transmit this urgent message. We’re receiving data that indicates armed drones are being activated in your Quadrant. This is a Tier 10 alert … they’re targeting the remaining three bunkers!’
As the urgent message is broadcast to the empty room, two levels up a woman lies bleeding in the Stasis Room. Shot by a man who is being congratulated by the security team at this very moment. The only man who can help her is being escorted under heavily armed guard to an interrogation room. A room which he is unlikely to exit alive. Around her are the dying bodies of her family, deprived of life by the glass coffins which were meant to protect them.
In the Control Room on the floor below, a woman named Kate has just given the instruction to arm hundreds of drones. Their targets are the other three bunkers which have been secretly built to act as joint guardians of the Earth while the terraforming takes place. The Earth is in peril; its cries for help go unheard. But on the lowest level of this bunker a sixteen-year-old boy has just placed his hand on a panel.
The machine whirs into life, recognizing his genetic pattern. Bright orange lights circle the platform and a figure appears as if from nowhere. It is a girl, about sixteen years old, and she knows the boy. She steps off the platform and grabs him urgently by the hand. It is the first time they have been together since they were violently parted three years ago.