GENESIX: THE TRILOGY

by Greg Logan

  “So, tell me, you and this Darkness guy. Jeff gave me a rundown of the players here in Boston, but the Darkness has to be the most unusual meta. They say he’s kinda scary.”

  “Oh, no,” Sondra said. She found herself smiling. “He’s so warm. So loving. So incredibly pure in his love. He’s only scary to those who don’t understand him. And he’s a hard guy to understand, I suppose, because his ability sort of separates him from humanity more than most. And he can be so lonely. He’s really detached in a lot of ways, but there is so much love there.”

  “Jeff said you guys are, like, a couple?”

  Sondra nodded.

  “But, how do you..,” Sara let it trail off. She wasn’t really sure how to ask. “It’s really none of my business, I suppose.”

  “Timmy and I have never actually physically touched,” Sondra said. “What he does is he transforms me into dark energy also, a state I can maintain as long as I’m within his energy field. And when we are like this, we share consciousness. We share spirits. It’s so,” she drew a breath and let out a sigh, “intimate on a level that physical love-making can’t even approach.”

  “Timmy? The scary Darkness dude is called Timmy?”

  “Most people don’t know that’s his name. Mother does, of course, because she’s his actual mother. I knew him in school. He was only twelve when this happened to him.”

  “Timmy. Huh.”

  “So, what about you and Jeff?”

  Sara shrugged. She combed her fingers through her hair absently. “I kinda like him. I have to admit. Actually, I really like him. We met at a party a couple weeks ago, and he’s all I can think about.”

  The door opened, and a man stepped in. Marty. The guy with the tall head and the compound eyes. Jeff had told Sara about him, too. Sara found herself startled for a moment. This was going to take a little getting used to.

  “Marty,” Sondra said. “Looking for Mother?”

  “She’s off on the other side of town. Trying to sell us all on letting the Colorado people scan us for some sort of implant.”

  Sara couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or not, but figured he was. He said to her, “So, you’re one of them.”

  Sara drew a breath, trying to put aside the fact that he had compound eyes the size of softballs, and a head that rose a foot higher than that of the average person. She said, “I’m Sara. Sara Reid. I’m with Jeff and Akila.”

  “That’s what I thought. But they’re not here, now. They’re off with Snake and the Darkness, freeing our people who were taken in that raid a week ago.”

  Sara nodded.

  Sondra said, “What’s going on?”

  Marty said, “This.”

  He reached behind his back and pulled out a revolver. He aimed it at Sara.

  Sondra said, “Marty! What are you doing?”

  Marty said to Sara, “You’re a traitor. You had them somehow shut off your controller box. I have to stop you.”

  Sondra stared, her mouth falling open. “You’re one of them.”

  “Good guess. I have to kill her, Sondra. I have my orders. And I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you, too. We can’t have any witnesses.”

  Sara said, “What about her boyfriend?”

  “He’s off in the woods somewhere outside of town, playing hero.”

  He turned his gaze from Sara back to Sondra. “I know you can call out to him, and he’ll come. But you’re not going to live long enough to do that.”

  He hauled back the hammer.

  Sondra said, “The thing is, I don’t have to call out to him for him to hear me. He and I are always connected to some extent, even when we’re not communing. Essentially, I can call out to him in my mind. And I already did.”

  The room was lighted only by what drifted in from the streetlights outside, which cast the room in a sort of dim, grayish light. But even then, it was noticeable when the room started growing darker.

  Marty said, “Oh, shit.”

  They stood on a small hill. Jeff and Akila and Snake and Chloe. Down below was a warehouse. The walls were made of corrugated tin, and the moonlight caught it and gave it a sort of pale glow.

  Rick wasn’t with them. Snake had wanted him to remain behind in the city should Kincaid launch another attack on the community. At the moment, most of the firepower seemed to be either here, or in Colorado.

  The top of the hill where they stood was covered with a small grove of pines, but the terrain between them and the warehouse was an open field. Tall grass and an occasional short tree, but nothing that would provide real cover.

  They were just beyond the small city of Lowell, a suburb of Boston. Agent Kincaid and his men had brought the survivors of their raid here.

  “Not much to look at,” Jeff said. “I would have thought where they were being held would be a heavily guarded prison complex, or something.”

  “Don’t let the looks fool you,” Chloe said. “They have motion sensors outside that place, all around. I can feel them from here.”

  “Snake, how’d you get the intel that they were being held here?”

  “I prowled around the parking garage behind the F.B.I. building,” Snake said, in a voice that was something between a growl and a hiss. “I finally found one of them who was willing to talk. With a little friendly persuasion.”

  “There are windows in that place,” Jeff said. “There could be people in there with weapons watching from the windows.”

  Snake gave a motion that could have been a shrug. “If they knew we were coming.”

  “Wouldn’t they? Put yourself in their shoes. If it was me, I would plan on a rescue attempt being launched. It wouldn’t be a question of if we would come, it would be when.”

  Akila said, “One of the first things I was taught was to put yourself in the place of the enemy. Ask yourself what you would do in their place.”

  “We have to get across that open expanse,” Jeff said. “We’ll need the cover of darkness to do that. And I can think of only one man for that job.”

  Snake said, “You ready, Darkness?”

  There was no response.

  Chloe said, “Isn’t he here?”

  “He was a minute ago.”

  Then came the baritone from the night all around them. “I am here. I had to return to Mother’s store for a moment. There was a problem. Marty is one of the infiltrators, it seems.”

  “Marty?” Chloe said. “Really?”

  Jeff said, “Is everyone all right?”

  “The matter has been resolved.”

  Jeff found himself a little creeped out. He had seen the way the Darkness resolved matters. It was never pretty.

  He found he had to ask one question. “Is Sara all right?”

  “Both Sara and Sondra are unharmed. I cannot say the same for Marty.”

  Snake said, “Let’s focus on the task at hand. We have to get down to that building.”

  The baritone said, “I can offer a cover of darkness.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  THIRTEEN

  Night vision goggles would sure come in handy, Jake thought as he circled about in the night sky. He expressed that thought into the open comm-link he had with Chuck.

  Chuck was standing on a small ledge just above the hangar doorway that was now open to the night like a huge maw. You could have easily slid a 747 through this opening.

  “You would think,” Chuck said, “an operation as thorough as this one, and as high-tech, would have at least one pair of night goggles.”

  “We never needed them before. The sensor fields were so thorough whoever was on monitor duty could tell a lot more from right inside the computer alcove than anyone out here could.”

  Chuck nodded. He was in his full battlesuit and helmet. He had commented once that this battlesuit made him look like something out of Flash Gordon, but it allowed him to use his full meta ability without causing harm to himself.

  Jeff had asked who Flash Gordon was. It turned out one of Chuck�
�s passions, other than beer and chasing women, was old classic sci-fi movies. Sammy had come to like them, and Sammy and Chuck had spent many a night drinking beer and watching old Flash Gordon serials.

  Chuck said, “It also might have been a good idea if we had a door to the hangar deck we could actually close. We never needed one before, because the holographic projection was solid.”

  “There are a lot of things we need to rethink.” Jake was now about five hundred feet above the peak of the mountain. The moon was out and the wooded slopes below were taking on a silvery texture where the moonlight touched the trees, and there were lots of deep shadows. He was powered-up to a great degree, enough that he could have flown up into space with no ill affects, and his vision took on a fine degree of acuity. Where the moonlight touched tree branches, he could actually make out individual pine needles. However, he couldn’t see in the dark. Even powered-up like this, the shadows were like dark, blank spots against the moonlit landscape.

  “The thing is,” Chuck said, “we’re explorers. Scientists. Discoverers. We’re not soldiers. This place just isn’t designed for war.”

  “Maybe it should be. For discoverers who don’t want any trouble, we seem to be making a lot of enemies.”

  “Yeah.” Chuck chuckled. “I’d hate to see how it would be if we were actually looking for trouble.”

  “Hey,” Jake said. He thought he saw something odd. “Wait a minute.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  An odd look of motion, on one exposed section of rock, on a ridge that shot out from the mountain about three hundred feet below Chuck. Jake swept down through the night sky.

  Chuck saw him shoot past the hangar doorway, looking like a giant dark condor swooping down out of the dark sky.

  Chuck could fly, too. All of the battle suits allowed for gravitational field manipulation. But Jake had wanted someone positioned here by the hangar doorway and the other to be in motion, and it made sense to have Jake be the one in motion because when he powered-up, he had much better eyesight than a human.

  Jake’s voice came out of the speaker in Chuck’s helmet. “I thought I saw something move on the ridge down there. But I guess it was nothing. A deer, maybe. Nothing here now.”

  Jake went back up into the sky. Chuck saw him soar by.

  “I wonder how the other team is doing,” Chuck said. “Springing those guys the FBI took.”

  “They have a lot of firepower there, and they’re smart. I’ve come to realize Snake is one of the best battle technicians out there. And Akila is, too.”

  “And that Darkness dude is with them. And Jeff can match you in outright firepower.” Chuck was searching the trees below with his eyes. There was suddenly the look of motion. Then it was gone. “Hey, hold on.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Now I thought I saw something move.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “No, it wasn’t that far away. I can get there fast enough.”

  It would have taken Chuck ten minutes to climb down from this ledge, then another couple more to work his way across uneven terrain toward the line of trees where he thought he had seen something move. Instead, he activated his anti-gravity field and flew down to the trees.

  He stood there for a moment, listening. His helmet was airtight and he could really hear nothing at all through it, but there were audio sensors built into the side. The volume switch was actually connecting to his brain wirelessly via an electronic pulse tuned to his brainwaves. He simply had to think louder, and it turned itself up, and he could hear the sounds of the night. Wind whooshing through tree branches. Crickets chirping from somewhere out in the woods.

  “I guess it was nothing,” he said.

  But he had a bad feeling about this. Something tugging at the back of his brain. Nothing he could explain, but he had learned long ago not to ignore this type of unexplainable warning. If he hadn’t earlier in his life, then he wouldn’t have an ex-wife.

  Jake said, “Are you heading back to the hangar opening?”

  “In a minute. Hang on.”

  Chuck cranked up the volume even more. He could hear a tree limb creak a bit as it waved in the wind. At this altitude, there was always wind. He could hear a small animal skitter away. From somewhere up above, a small rock tumbled its way down the slope. And he heard a strange sort of whispering sound. Almost a rustling. It reminded him of the sound made when feet are stepping along through gravel. There was a large gravely patch in front of the hangar. He had been out for walks along this mountainside a lot of times, and this was the sound his own feet made as he walked near the hangar.

  “Maybe you’d better come down,” Chuck said. “I might be hearing things, and maybe I’m just letting this nighttime guard duty get to me, but I’d swear I’m hearing footsteps.”

  That was when there was a large flash of light. Chuck felt something impact him and knock him backwards.

  Jake saw the flash of light from above, and came swooping down, powering-up even more as he did so.

  “Jake,” Chuck was saying. Whatever it was, his suit had protected him, but it had packed a whale of an impact. “What was that?”

  No response. The female computer voice said into his helmet, “Audio field disrupted.”

  Jake couldn’t see Chuck, as Chuck had stepped into the shadows. He instead flew toward the flash of light. There was another, and this time it hit Jake. It did nothing to him, but it fried the communicator in his wristband.

  The computer said, “Audio field disrupted.”

  Jake landed. He called out, “Chuck!”

  Chuck stepped out of the shadows. “Whatever it was, it fried our communications. My helmet’s audio is still working, though.”

  “It felt electrical, whatever it was. And it was aimed at us.”

  Chuck looked up toward the hangar opening, silent and dark above them. “All looks okay.”

  “We have to tell Scott and the others what’s going on. And that means one of us has to go in. You go ahead, and I’ll stay down here and scout around. Find out what the hell that was.”

  Chuck heard another stone skitter downhill. Jake had heard it, too. Powered-up like this, his hearing was extra acute, also.

  “Stand back,” Chuck said.

  He raised hands up toward the hangar doorway, and let loose with a blast of energy. According to Scott, the kind of energy Chuck generated caused molecules to contract. Essentially, he could freeze things.

  The blast toward the hangar was strong enough to freeze water within a half second. Jake could feel the coldness, even though he was powered-up enough so it didn’t hurt him. A layer of frost immediately built up on his battlesuit and his eyebrows. If not for Chuck’s battlesuit, he would have been frozen solid by his own energy blast.

  Icy humanoid figures suddenly appeared, scattered in front of the opening. They all appeared to have been frozen solid while in the motion of walking. Some were a few yards from the opening, and others were almost to it.

  “Who are they?” Chuck said.

  “We’re under attack,” Jake said. “They have some sort of invisibility. We probably still can’t see them, but we can see the layer of ice over them. Come on. Let’s get to the hangar.”

  Another blast of light from behind caught them both. Chuck was knocked forward. He came to a tumbling, sliding stop in the gravel. Jake turned, and tried to get a fix on where the blast had come from, but he couldn’t. He saw only the dark trees at the edge of the woods.

  The doorway to the conference room had been forcibly slid open earlier in the day. All of the doors had been, because there was no circulation of air within the facility with the power down. Scott was in the conference room with Sammy, April and Ashley, discussing how they could come up with a power source strong enough to expand a tachyon field around the entire planet. Jeff had taken Quentin back to Boston with him.

  “Let’s get to bed,” Scott said. “A little shut-eye wo
uld do us all some good. If we’re fighting exhaustion, we’ll just make the invader’s job easier for them.”

  Ashley nodded with a yawn. “You don’t have to twist my arm.”

  She was the first out the door, which opened into one of Scott’s labs, and she was the first hit. There was a flash of light, and the sound of an electrical charge.

  Sammy was immediately behind her, and he jumped in the way of a second blast.

  “Ion blasters,” Scott said, following Sammy through the doorway. “Jeff and I saw them used in the future.”

  Scott hit the switch on his belt to activate his force field. A humanoid figure sort of shimmered into view at the other side of the lab and fired at him. The beam crackled against his force field, but the field held.

  More figures shimmered into view. They were men, dressed in gray jumpsuits. Five of them. They all appeared to be early twenties. There was no marking of any kind on the jumpsuits to indicate which branch of the government they represented. Scott didn’t think they represented any government, at least here on Earth, because the ion pistols they were using were identical to the ones he had seen in the future.

  April’s ability was great at traveling large distances in a short time, and running reconnaissance. But it wasn’t the best suited for combat in close quarters. She was the last one out of the room, and Scott adjusted his force field, extending it to envelope both April and Ashley

  April knelt by Ashley’s side. Ashley tried to push herself to her knees, but found she couldn’t. She was still too weak from being hit with an ion blast.

  “Hey, easy,” April said. “You were hit pretty hard.”

  Ashley should have felt miserable. She had never experienced and ion blast before, but had been told about them. You felt like death-warmed-over for about an hour afterward. And that was when the weapon was at its lowest setting. At higher settings, it could fry you. Turn you into a charred, smoking corpse. But she didn’t feel like she had always heard you should. She felt weak from the blast, but she felt strangely exhilarated. Like in a way she was coming really alive for the first time.