by Paul Teague
When an experiment began, it would be triggered by a large device being positioned at the side of the operating table, not unlike something that you might see at the dentist. It would start with a whirr – the medical staff would leave the room and only the man would be left in the adjacent room, monitoring panels and screens as if his own life depended on them.
At hourly intervals, for a twenty-four hour period, needles would be placed at angles in four places at the base of her spine. They would inject some kind of fluid or serum – she could feel it shooting up her spine and into her brain. It was the final fluid that she dreaded most of all. It put her in agonizing spasms until the process began once again on the hour, every hour, twenty-four hours in a row each time.
By the time she was put back in stasis she was desperate for the relief that sleep would bring. There was one thing that got her through this excruciating torture, one piece of information which she was determined above all else would remain etched on her brain whatever happened.
It was the name that she was compelled to look at as this inhumanity was administered, the wording that was clearly displayed on the lapel badge attached to his white lab coat. It read ‘Dr H. Pierce’.
As the letters burned an indelible image on the back of her retina, she vowed to herself that she would escape this place and make sure this man was punished for what he had done to her.
02:07 Quadrant 2: Balaklava Bay, Crimea
Viktor watched the dots on the E-Pad screen as they moved towards the exit of Quadrant 2. On the level below them, in an area which they had not yet seen, the submarine drones were activating one by one in the chamber that was buried deep within the bay. It operated like a vast, iron lock, water being drawn from beyond the bunker to bring the chamber up to sea level so that the submarines could be released.
As each one activated, two lights glowed red in the darkness. Once more, the eyes of a devil. The submarines would be moved up to sea level, then a force field would be activated to allow them to enter the Black Sea without letting the darkness outside permeate the bunker. Each one had to traverse a long, dimly lit channel which led out into the sea beyond.
Like the airborne drones, they would leave the bunker at regular intervals, travelling below the surface to assume their positions deep under the waters beyond. At the appointed time they could rise nearer to the surface to release their armoury of nuclear missiles.
Nat and Dan had colluded with Viktor to enable this release because they believed it to be in the best interests of everybody involved. What Viktor had said made complete sense. He had been as good as his word – once Dan and Nat had activated the subs, he’d notified Xiang and Magnus and given them joint control via a remote and secure connection. But he’d omitted one crucial piece of information.
Two hundred submarines were being released from the base, one at a time, each one of them under the joint control of Viktor, Magnus and Xiang. No missile could be released without the agreement of all three Custodians.
What Viktor hadn’t mentioned were the fifty subs currently being activated with a different tracking encryption. These were armed with nuclear missiles just like the others and they would sit patiently under the Black Sea awaiting further remote commands. These subs required only one authorization, thanks to Nat and Dan having just granted top level access.
Viktor alone was needed to activate these nuclear missiles and that was a secret that he intended to keep from everybody.
Chapter Three
Dissent
He had not felt this level of hostility since he had been forced to defend the outcome of the failed simulations earlier that year. In each of the cases, he’d had to fight to maintain his position within The Global Consortium.
He was playing a difficult game here – there were so many parties to appease and they were all intent on achieving their own outcomes from the Genesis 2 project. He’d also managed to keep all four of the troublemakers in his sights, unknown to the members of The Consortium.
For the partners in the project, they were a big problem. They’d all seen and done things that had not been anticipated. Amy went on with her civilian life, but he’d managed to assign to her the most important role, one which it was likely she’d finally realize as a result of the events unfolding now. It was a secret that was hiding in the open, his preferred strategy.
James had returned to the military where he could be monitored closely – ready when he needed him, maintaining his fitness and training. Triggering him for redundancy, then placing the new job opportunity in front of him – it had been easy and predictable where James was concerned.
Simon had proven an excellent recruit, and had done many years of fine work on behalf of The Consortium. Now his role was completed, he wouldn’t be a part of the endgame.
Then there was Kate. She’d had an interesting career, away from the glare of The Consortium, separated from Simon, but placed exactly where he could see her. He was completely sure of her leadership qualities, which was why the current state of affairs in Quadrant 1 was so worrying to him. Kate was a massive military asset – but it depended on which side she was on as to whether that was to your advantage or not. In this case, she was definitely not the person that you would want to have fighting against you.
Reluctantly, he’d had to admit to the world leaders angrily seeking answers from him in his Ops Area high above the Earth that he’d concealed some facts from them after those botched simulations. He’d also had to notify them of Kate’s activation and deployment of the Troopers.
There was certainly a lot of hostility towards him as he bargained and pleaded with the near two hundred angry faces surrounding him on the screens. But as their votes came in, and were tallied one by one on the screen, it was clear to him that he was no longer in control here, The Global Consortium was now ignoring his advice.
Their responses were given via direct access to their consciousness. They were represented before him only by holographic images, but their authority was final in these matters. He was just the one orchestrating these events, as he had done for many years now, yet he was the one who could best predict how this was all going to play out.
But the votes were in. When it went to a full ballot, he had no say. They had opted for the most extreme response. They’d actually sanctioned Unification.
02:24 Quadrant 3: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
Magnus studied the data that had just arrived on his E-Pad. This was technology that he understood – it was advanced and very clever, yes, but he could deal with this. He was working through the analysis on the neck implants.
It seemed likely that whatever had caused Kate’s bunker to sabotage the Genesis 2 project was related in some way to these implants. Nobody had any recollection of them having been put there in the first place, and they couldn’t be felt under the skin. Only some of them appeared to be active and they were different colours, dependent on the Quadrant location.
And there was one thing that was particularly mysterious. James and Amy were unique in that they were the only ones with a blue implant.
They appeared to be based on biotechnology. The devices were essentially electronic in nature – in the way that they transmitted and received data remotely – but they were enmeshed in each person’s brain function, controlling memory, emotion and consciousness. They could rewire a person’s thinking once activated.
As far as the tech teams could establish, there were no mind wipes going on; it was a much more subtle process which each individual would find very hard to detect. There were three key pieces of information that the research teams had established from their initial tests.
Firstly, the implants used advanced nanotechnology of a type not recognized by anybody in this Quadrant. Magnus decided to forward the data to Xiang in Quadrant 4 – she’d probably have a better idea as to its source.
Secondly, it was likely that the implants had been put in place during basic training and mission preparation. They were so
small that they could easily be inserted as part of a simple and routine procedure, such as taking a blood sample.
Finally, by monitoring the almost imperceptible broadcast trail emitted by each device, Magnus was able to figure out how the implants were receiving data. Each device was in a constant state of readiness, emitting a faint pulse which was capable of receiving data from a source which was, as yet, unknown.
This source had to be separate from any other communications within the bunker itself. They had been designed to give remote control of bunker staff in a way that was not dependent on any of the other technology. They appeared to be a fail-safe. But in this situation, the fail-safe had been hijacked to create a direct route to control the actions of the bunker staff in Quadrant 1.
Mixed among all the tech and unanswered questions was some good news. The data received by the implants was being transmitted via a fairly old fashioned system. Whoever invented these devices needed an external system for relaying the data around the world. They’d used the existing mobile phone network. Rather than build their own network of aerials, they’d simply piggy-backed off an existing global facility. Hiding in the open, where everybody could see them, but nobody actually did.
To prevent the signals reaching Quadrant 1, they’d have to blow up the mobile mast placed only a couple of hundred yards away from the cottage which concealed the bunker. There was a chance that there might be a signal breakthrough from other transmitters, but Magnus thought it unlikely. If they could just break that signal to Quadrant 1, they might at least stop fighting each other and work together to resolve the issue of the drones.
There was one man who had already operated the doors in Quadrant 1, who knew the way out of that bunker – it was James. And in the debrief, Simon had revealed the Consortium technology that he’d been wearing which had enabled him to see beyond the bunker doors, in spite of the darkness outside.
Another drone missile exploded on the surface, high above Magnus. It violently shook the whole bunker, spilling Magnus’s coffee which had been resting on the side of the table. He would need to move fast. Finally, they had the means to break Kate’s hold on the first Quadrant.
As Magnus quietly celebrated this small victory alone in Quadrant 3, Kate was finishing the final briefing in her own bunker. Her army of Troopers stood before her, motionless, threatening, heavily armed and mission ready. Over their eyes were complex electronic visors, attached to menacing, black helmets – these would enable them to see in any environment, including the darkness beyond their own bunker doors. They were heavily armed, with multi-barrelled laser attachments on one arm, and multiple weapons in their body armour. Each wore a SymNode, the very device that could now give them access to any level in any of the Quadrants which had already been accessed by the twins. And, as Kate spoke, the black implants in their necks pulsed steadily, receiving data from an unknown source far away.
These troops were instruments of war and if Magnus had known the mission that they had just been given, he might not have been quite so pleased with himself.
Within a matter of only hours, the Troopers had been instructed to overcome and secure each of the remaining Quadrants, making Kate the sole Custodian of them all.
Change
The Shards were all in place now, doing the regenerative work that had to be done to save the planet. This was how Earth would be healed, and like a patient who had to be put to sleep during a difficult and delicate operation, so it was for the inhabitants of this planet.
They would eventually awaken, unaware of what had been going on around them, oblivious to how close they were to destroying the very environment which was supposed to sustain them.
There was a sudden change in the activity of the Shards. They had been dispatched from the satellite matrix which surrounded the Earth and, up to this point, they had been under the control of that matrix. But something unexpected was happening now.
Where once the Shards pulsed blue, green, purple and yellow, that gentle and reassuring rhythm ceased momentarily, as if the heart which gave them life had just stopped beating. The pulse began once again, but the Shards were different now. The colour which once flowed through them had gone. The Shards had become dark, black and menacing.
They beat slowly and portentously, like the threatening thunderous footfall of an approaching army intent on destruction.
Incarceration
Nat had no choice but to endure the experimentation in the lab. She could not cry for help. Nobody knew that she was there. She was completely defenceless against her jailers.
But as her life slipped into a nightmarish routine of experimentation and deep sleep, she noticed that the man in charge was becoming more agitated. As he became more agitated, he grew more angry, increasingly unpredictable, and most importantly, careless.
She felt as if she was constantly fighting sleep and pain, but she knew that to stand any chance of escape, she had to stay aware, she had to watch and spot the patterns. If she knew how people moved, what they did, when they did it and how, she would eventually be able to figure a way out of this Hell.
Some things that she saw were so bizarre, she wondered if they were part of her dreams. The people here seemed to speak through devices attached to their hands, and she was sure that once she’d even seen somebody materialize out of thin air, surrounded by an amazing array of shimmering lights. She could not be sure sometimes what was real and what was not.
Nat had been in the Lab for almost two years when she finally spotted her chance. Her muscles were wasting from lack of activity, she knew that she would need to find her strength before she could attempt an escape. She’d watched, learned and struggled to remember between periods of stasis. She’d fought to focus on that information as the agonizing serums had been injected into her spinal column. It had taken her two years of this treatment to piece together the fragments.
The pod was always unlocked. It was the stasis that left her immobile and sleeping – the pod didn’t need to be locked when she was held in that state. The stasis came via direct contact with electrodes attached to her head. If she could break the contact, she could stop the stasis.
The area where her pod was kept was under camera surveillance. The camera swept the room. It fixed on the pod for three seconds, took ten seconds to cover the length of the room, then it paused for three seconds, then another ten seconds back to the pod. That gave her twenty-three seconds to get behind the pod, away from the camera.
Then she got her break. One of the lab team dropped a wrapper on the floor. She stood on it when being moved from the pod to the table. It stuck to her foot. She strained her body to grab it while the staff calibrated the instrumentation. This was going to act as her insulation between the electrodes and the pod.
The staff were as much in a routine as she was, but that played to her advantage. They weren’t expecting her to move, to run, to try anything – after all, she had been in stasis, she was pretty well useless. So nobody was expecting her to do or try anything – and that was her opportunity.
It took every bit of will that Nat could muster to progress her plans. She craved the stasis when they placed her back in the pod, because that was the only thing that brought relief from the experimentation. But she forced herself to place the torn wrapper across the electrodes as the staff prepared the pod around her.
She would watch and count, fighting the pain. The camera would move off the pod. The staff would check the machine, calibrate her food, vitamin and liquid intake to prepare for stasis. Nat would adjust the electrodes in that short window while the camera was scanning the rest of the room and the staff were busy elsewhere.
The first time she tried it she braced herself as the gushing sound which preceded stasis swept through the pod. The electrical hum began. She was still awake. Every part of her body craved sleep, but she had to force herself through this, or it would never end.
For a while she waited, working through her pain and discomfort. She had no idea how lo
ng they kept her in stasis. The doctor worked long hours, constantly in that office of his, swiping away at the terminal, talking to somebody via a communications device at regular intervals. Reporting his results, or so it seemed to her. When he finally finished, she was left alone. And awake.
She pushed the door of the pod as the camera was turned away – it opened easily, unlocked as she’d previously figured out. She waited for the camera to make its next sweep. Her legs were weak, she hadn’t done any sustained walking for … she didn’t know how long she’d been in there. She had body strength though and it was obviously important to them that she was kept fed through her tubes. The tubes. She slipped them off one by one, and tensed her arms and legs. She had to know that they were going to work properly when she needed them to.
The camera made its sweep once again. It was now or never. She started her count.
One … two … three …
She opened the door to the pod and stepped out.
Her legs held her weight, but she was unsteady. They always supported her by her arms on the short walk to the operating table.
Seven … eight … nine …
She quietly closed the door to the pod.
Fourteen … fifteen … sixteen …
She was aware of the camera resting for three seconds and now pointing at the other end of the room. She’d need to move fast.
Nat stepped behind the pod, pushing herself harder than she’d ever thought she could go, fighting the pain that ran through her body, willing her legs to move properly to take her to where she needed to hide. She’d been right. There was an area behind the pod where she could position herself completely away from the camera. Here was where she would prepare for her breakout.