by Paul Teague
Amy allowed herself a moment to grieve over James, but knew that she did not have the luxury of time. Her eyes began to well up with tears, she held his hand and became very angry as she looked at his lifeless body.
Her kids were at risk, her friend had been killed and a bunch of madmen were trying to destroy everything. If there had been anything left of a victim in Amy, it was all gone now.
She’d been tamed by her experiences in the Army, frightened off by such a near miss, and was happily settling for a life of domestic simplicity.
Of course she loved it, the kids, Mike and everything – but in her working life she’d compromised, she’d never really been a briefcase and office type of person.
Amy picked up her laptop and popped out the SD card that she’d so nearly missed. She put it safely in her pocket, placed the Trooper’s helmet back on her head, picked up her weapon and the laptop, and steeled herself for what was going to happen next.
She was blasting her way out of this corridor and getting back to Quadrant 3. And as sure as anything she was taking down some Troopers on the way.
Crime
The reason for Davran Saloor’s sudden and abrupt fall from grace was as predictable as it was forbidden. Her contribution to the early terraforming plans for Earth was considerable. Without her knowledge and experience, the work would never have got off the ground in the first place.
Which is why so many efforts were made on Earth – and on Zatheon – to try to plead her case, to save her from the strict consequences of breaking the agreed protocols within The Covenant.
The rules were there for a reason – they had been agreed by all twelve planets within The Off-World Federation. Earth and Zatheon were but two lone voices among those clamouring for punishment.
Yet Davran’s crime was not one of evil or malice, it was a crime as old as time itself. She had simply fallen in love whilst on Earth, with a human who was not directly connected with the Genesis 2 project.
So much of Earth and Zatheon biology was similar; there were just a few crucial evolutionary steps which made the difference. Davran looked completely human, so it was no wonder that when she accidentally bumped into one of the military personnel at the high-security base in the UK where the Genesis 2 project was based, a connection might be established and a friendship follow on from that.
Locked away on the base, so far away from her home planet and her own sister, spending many hours with the rude and arrogant Zadra, the two Doctor Pierces and the other Genesis 2 personnel, it was inevitable that she would begin to crave new company.
She was a scientist too. Regardless of the rules, she was keen to learn more about this planet which was so similar to her own, yet with a population so much more fragmented and violent.
As her friendship grew with the guard, Jeff, they risked more and more as the bond between them grew. In fact, many people knew what was going on and turned a blind eye to it, such was Davran’s invaluable contribution to the project, but when it became clear that she was carrying a child, a rapid intervention took place.
It was suspected that Zadra Nurmeen had tipped off The Off-World Federation at the time, but nothing could be proven, and shortly afterwards, he himself was also banished from the project.
With Davran pregnant and The Off-World Federation now party to that information, the legal process had to be seen to be applied. The Elders on Zatheon shook their heads in despair. They knew and loved Davran. She was not only a highly respected mineralogist, but also a much-liked colleague and advisor. A friend.
Yet in their wisdom they understood that it could have been anybody on any one of the twelve planets who had made this simple error – it was hardly a crime, but it could not go unpunished.
Davran was not carrying a single child, she was carrying twins. All Zatheon females gave birth to twins, it was part of what made their species unique. An evolutionary step on their planet had determined that twins sharing certain genetic traits were stronger and much wiser than infants born alone.
Zatheon twins had a symbiotic relationship – they were deeply connected from the moment of conception. As they grew from infants to adults, that connection became stronger, ultimately resulting in the ability to communicate telepathically. Their knowledge and wisdom became shared, and each sibling could give strength to the other, so in times of illness, the healthy twin could assist in the regeneration of the other.
In evolutionary terms it had made the Zatheons a stronger, wiser and more temperate people, and in turn, their progression and achievements had soared.
It was already known that Zatheons and humans were capable of successfully procreating. In fact, the previous hushed-up incident during the late 1960s was one of the reasons why the interplanetary legislation had been tightened up in the first place.
It was untenable that more advanced technology and learning should be permitted to permeate other planets, allowing them to accelerate their progress at greater than natural evolutionary rates.
Davran and Jeff knew the rules.
They understood the risks and they were compelled to accept the punishment. And when retribution came, it would have devastating consequences for both of them.
Rage
I get up from the floor slowly, trying to work out if anything is broken. For a man who just offered us a deal, Henry Pierce is not much of a diplomat.
After making the offer, Nat, me and Harold Pierce were roughly thrown into a meeting room, where we’ve been given fifteen minutes to think through this proposition.
To save our own lives, will Nat and I agree to help destroy another planet? He’s included his own brother in that offer too, in spite of just beating him up pretty badly.
Doctor Pierce looks in a bad way – he’s still out cold. Nat is the same as me, shaken and disturbed by such sudden and violent treatment. We look at each other, and I know what she’s thinking. The funny thing is, I do actually know what she’s thinking. I was aware of it earlier, but it’s so weird, that connection that we lost when we were parted, well it seems to be getting stronger the more time we spend together. She’s experiencing this as well.
We nod in agreement before we even speak. Of course we’re not taking up this offer. We desperately want to meet our birth mother – evil Doctor Pierce couldn’t have dropped a bigger cliffhanger on us if he’d tried. The fact that we’re not strictly human makes sense too.
I’m not particularly shocked, but I feel exactly the same as when I didn’t know my mum was from another planet, so in that respect nothing has changed. I am who I am – part human, part alien.
To me though, it makes sense, I’ve known something was not quite right ever since Nat and I were torn apart by the accident. My trouble at school, that wasn’t just a bad reaction to death, it was always something more than that. It wasn’t just grief either, it meant something much bigger to me when Nat was in the accident – it was a physical reaction for me, not only an emotional one.
Now we’re together, it’s only confirming what I think. We’re linked in some way. Whatever is different about us, we’re both feeling it very strongly now, the bond between us is powerful.
I can actually feel her anger and hate towards the other Doctor Pierce; it’s quite unnerving, I’ve never experienced such powerful emotions myself. I can sense that it will burn her up if she doesn’t control it, it’s clouding her judgement.
I want to save our lives as much as she does, but I can see her rage clearly now – I can even feel it. If she doesn’t get a grip on this, she could make a bad decision – and considering where we are right now, that might destroy us all.
Target
Viktor recognized Magnus for the man he was. Highly intelligent, innovative, and a collaborator. A man he felt he could trust, one he could do business with.
Together, they hatched a plan and the deal was done. With no world leaders to sanction their actions, they were the planet’s protectors, its sole custodians.
But Viktor always had a
backup plan. Sure, he’d made this agreement with Magnus over the nukes, and they’d still need Xiang to sanction it too, but in matters of conflict and war, he’d always found it best to have a Plan B.
So while Magnus fixed in preliminary strategic coordinates for the jointly controlled nukes, Viktor was plotting out his own strategy for the fifty nuclear weapons under his sole command, lying in wait beneath the cold waters of the Black Sea. These nukes, if they were needed, would be going somewhere completely different.
At that moment, Viktor would not have been able to contemplate that within the next two hours he would be setting in the coordinates to deliver this nuclear payload to a destination in his own country.
Chapter Two
Exiled
Many Zatheon Elders would have been very happy for their people to integrate with the humans, but if the rules had been changed, less socially evolved planets such as Helyios 4 would have been able to play the same game too.
Several Elders felt that increased interactions with the humans would bring a new dimension to their planet, one of greater passion and emotion, elements which some felt were lacking in their ordered world.
It was a privately held belief among the majority of The Off-World Federation members that Helyios 4 was best left to develop at its own slow rate. The less impact from that particular planet, the better, but their voice still had a right to be heard within O-Fed itself. So it was that Davran found herself banished to an ISOCell in space. This was a humane punishment – she was fed, clothed and permitted to live in relative comfort. But all communications with her own world – and Earth – were broken off, she was to remain in isolation indefinitely.
At the insistence of the Helyions, she was not permitted to keep her babies; they were taken away from her as part of the punishment, to be resettled in a manner to be determined at a later date. This left an uneasy feeling among the Zatheon Elders, but they were bound to The Covenant, just like the other members, and it had at least maintained peace among the twelve planets for many years now.
After much argument, and a delay of almost three years, the children were moved from their high-security nursery, set up in a UK military base, and settled with new parents on Earth.
Davran had a twin on Zatheon of course, and it was felt to be too much of a risk to let the children stay on that planet.
There was a precedent here too – it had worked well before during the first incident in the 60s, and it would surely be fine a second time.
So the twins were settled on Earth where their presence would go undetected. Doctor Harold Pierce took the lead on this, and very quickly sourced a couple who were childless and seeking to adopt a child. They were delighted to be allocated twins. A boy and a girl.
As a result of an accident five years earlier, their new mother had been unable to have children of her own, so she and her husband, Mike, were ecstatic to be offered orphan siblings, a ready-made family. They named them immediately – Dan and Nat – and they lived happily and undetected on Earth until the day on which it all began to unravel.
The day when Henry Pierce violently entered their lives and took away the daughter – and sister – that they’d all loved so much.
Prospecting
Mike was almost spoiled for choice. The files opened one by one – he didn’t know where to start. He called over the team that he’d been assigned to work with and talked them through how he’d managed to break through the encryption.
If he hadn’t felt under such pressure to find any scrap of information which could save Nat and Dan, he might have taken a moment to bask in the glory. After so long away from the workplace and looking after Dan at home, it felt good to have the admiration of his colleagues once again.
He checked his ego quickly, knowing there was no room for this now, the clock was ticking. Dan and Nat were relying on him and Xiang – they were their two sources of hope in this terrible situation.
Either Xiang would find a medical solution or he’d find the cause – or the cure – or at least some clue as to what was happening to them. A bit of basic data on the nature of the NanoVirus would help everybody gain some ground.
He quickly allocated the files to his team members; they’d work through each of them swiftly and methodically, reporting anything to Mike if it looked significant. But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The files seemed to hold every memo, note, observation or finding that fed into the Genesis 2 project since the early 1990s. Mike tried to search on key terms, entering ‘Dan’, ‘Nat’, ‘Troywood’, and any other word or phrase that he could think of to try and collate the information.
But the data was not indexed in a way that he could quickly grasp. It reminded him of the Dewey Decimal System that they used in libraries. It probably made sense to somebody, but it certainly made no sense to him.
There was only one thing for it, he’d have to go one file at a time. They were prospecting for gold, soon enough one of them would find a nugget.
But would it be in time to save Dan and Nat?
Prisoners
The Doctor Pierce at our side is stirring. He’s badly bloodied and bruises are starting to show where he was so violently struck. At least we know now why Doctor Pierce seems to have been acting like two people. It’s because he is two people – twins, just like us.
Well, not just like us. The Pierces are identical, Nat and me are not. I never particularly warmed to this guy, who I’m sure is the twin who came to help me through my ‘difficulties’ at school, I’m certain it wasn’t the evil Doctor Pierce who was working with me then.
That makes sense too – he knows more about me than I do myself. I suppose he’d be the first person to be called in when the alien kid starts playing up in the classroom.
Funny, I’ve received some life-changing news in the past half-hour, but it’s just making me feel calmer. In many ways, it explains who I am and why I’m like this. I feel more comfortable in my own skin. Before these events I just wondered what was wrong with me.
‘Dan,’ begins Doctor Pierce, ‘are you kids okay?’
I think he’s getting his priorities a bit wrong – if he could see what we see, he’d be thinking more about himself. He’s in a right state.
‘I’m so sorry it’s come to this,’ he continues. ‘I thought I could protect you all from this.
‘I had no idea my brother was planning these events, I should have known ...’ His voice trails off, he seems like a broken man.
He’s quite anxious about what’s going on, but he doesn’t appear to know what to do about it. Nat chimes in and breaks the silence.
‘That guy outside – and his sidekick – they’re the ones that took me, Dan ...’ She pauses, she’s thinking back to what happened.
I get a glimpse of it in my own mind momentarily. I see a terrible image of her pain and loneliness – it shocks me and I’m overwhelmed for a moment as I begin to comprehend what she’s been through.
‘He must have been the guy I saw when you were hit by that car Nat,’ I pick up. ‘I was sure I’d seen you move when they put you in the ambulance. He was there when it happened.’
It’s beginning to make sense now, these disparate pieces are coming together. The evil Pierce – I don’t know what else to call him – must have engineered the accident to get his hands on Nat.
Maybe he wanted both of us, perhaps if I hadn’t stepped back, it might have been me who’d disappeared for three years. I feel a strong sense of gratitude to Nat, like I owe her one for what she’s gone through. It might just as easily have been me.
I think it’s a safe bet that this NanoVirus which is going to destroy us both was engineered via the experiments that were carried out on Nat.
Funny that the Pierces are twins too though. There aren’t that many of us around. It’s not out of the question of course. But I do wonder for a moment if that’s significant. There are too many twins in this scenario, it doesn’t feel right.
Doctor
Pierce begins to talk again. He’s sore and it’s difficult, but he’s determined to get the words out.
‘I need to tell you some things before they come in here to get us again,’ he starts. ‘If my brother is involved, it’s very unlikely that this will end well for me.
‘You know that you’re twins of course and that your mother was not from this planet.
‘Her name was Davran and she was a wonderful and intelligent woman.
‘It broke her heart when she lost you children, I promised her that I would take care of you both.’
He’s getting quite emotional talking about her – our mum – and I’m sensing that there’s a lot of water gone under the bridge to get everybody to where they are now. He talks about Amy – our real mum – well, that’s how we think of her, she’s the only mum we’ve ever known. He explains that we’re symbiotic, which apparently is why I feel so connected to Nat now. As we get older, we’ll become more closely connected and develop a telepathy between us. I think he’s too late with that one, it’s happening already.
It turns out that this symbiosis is why evil Doctor Pierce managed to infect Nat with whatever he did, and it spread to me. It’s like a virus passing wirelessly from one computer to another; when Nat and I met up again, the reconnection took place and this destructive genetic process began. It needed both of us for it to work though – carried in just one of us, it’s completely benign. Again, it’s related to us being twins. And aliens.
Doctor Pierce thinks that his brother wants Nat and me to act as carriers in some way if he wants to destroy Zatheon. He’s only guessing, but he thinks we’re being earmarked for some kind of Trojan Horse strategy, to get the NanoVirus that is destroying us into the Zatheon population. We’re probably his guinea pigs.