The Andromeda Project (The Cluster Chronicles Book 1)

by Jason Michael Primrose

  “Lieutenant Delemar, accepted,” the computer said, the door opened and he followed her in.

  “Is it inappropriate to ask you--”

  “If you have to ask…then it is.” Leesa caught herself staring at his physique and trusting eyes when she answered him.

  “Noted,” he blushed. Allister waited to see if she scolded him for his proximity. They were close enough to touch and it seemed the magnetic poles reversed, they were more drawn to each other than propelled apart.

  “The purpose of this exercise is to determine a few key characteristics based around work in the field, you either possess them or you don’t. You’ll be judged on three categories: first is decision making. Your ability to decide when to stop and when to destroy, when to save and when to kill. Second is overall combat ability, this includes strategy as well as strength and execution. The third is stress management, how you handle yourself when faced with these situations. General Delemar will monitor changes in your power levels, increases or decreases based on the danger you are faced with, or if you freeze and fail to follow through. Do you understand?”

  Allister gave her a single thumb’s up.

  “I will not go easy on you,” Leesa said, stepping away from him. Strange intoxication coursed through her like a heroin injection, feeding the emotions locked beneath her psyche. Her face softened for a moment. Unprepared and unsure where the dangerous sensation came from, her mind worked diligently to tame what lurked within. It was far too similar to what she experienced the last time her powers went haywire. Softness dissipated behind a face which might as well have been an iron mask.

  Andromeda Project’s magnificent reality-altering generator, another gift from Neight that Russell fused with Earth technology, worked by rapidly reconstructing atoms into desired physical settings. The building blocks were chunky and square like Legos, they started as pieces of color, clumping together to make up scenery and surroundings. A coniferous forest was the chosen set design, some combination of fog and snow created a heavy mist.

  Allister’s advanced visual senses adjusted to the thickness and he spotted Leesa. She timidly waited for an inclination of his first move, seemingly unaware of his whereabouts. Her silhouette stood out against the background like infrared technology, but without any color discrepancy. His quiet approach smart in theory, but he foolishly assumed only he had heightened senses. Leesa caught him mid-advance. Allister, taken aback by a grip similar to a wolf’s hold on a sheep’s throat, struggled to pry her hands away as his feet left the ground. The violence in her eye was that of a woman who’d killed someone for no reason and didn’t have qualms about doing it again, something about it wasn’t human or maybe it wasn’t humane. Leesa threw him backwards before he decided between the two, sending Allister through three trees.

  Leesa’s fighting style had the calculated moves of a robot, she knew where he would be almost before he did. But something else made the battle even more deadly, her primal instincts, the swiftness of her execution. She stayed on top of him, wearing him down with well-placed punches, kicks and throws.

  Allister rubbed his head, he was bound to lose, starting at a disadvantage. It was hard to achieve any physical damage with a telekinetic field surrounding her during battle. Leesa whipped him upwards by the shoulders. Unsure of what was next Allister flailed while she jumped, twisting her body in midair and brought her right leg around to connect with his ribs. His landing shook the ground. Allister inspected his side with one hand and winced in pain. A process he imagined needed a doctor and a few weeks in a body bandage, happened in seconds. The bones of his broken ribs moved and reconnected before fusing back together. He took his hand away, startled at the feeling of regeneration.

  Allister’s body handled the pain, but his brain worked like a computer that hadn’t booted up for years. It needed upgrades, more RAM and a better processor. No offensive tactics came to mind and the defensive battle strategy of dodging and deflecting failed repeatedly. Leesa applied the right amount of force, thrusting her palm into his midsection.

  Part of the giant cliff hidden at the edge of the battlefield shattered on impact, he slid down collapsing to his hands and knees. Dirt-filled hair covered enough of his slanted eyes to look as dangerous as he was about to become. Comprehensive hand-to-hand techniques poured into his newly expanded brain capacity, filters combined best practices to formulate his next offensive attack. His body surged with rage.

  Leesa wasn’t moving quite as fast as before, either that or Allister moved faster; he tackled her around the waist then sat up. He meant to punch her in the face but hesitated once they made eye contact. Leesa socked him in the jaw and his neck snapped to one side. Allister wasn’t as squeamish the second time his body healed.

  They locked arms when she went to hit him again. Leesa pushed up with a loud scream releasing a telekinetic wave, like a final repetition in a bench press set. He landed on his back and rolled. Her backhand gesture sent him grinding into the forest floor until he hit the cliff’s base.

  Leesa approached him cautiously, the adrenaline coursing to her brain hadn’t stopped fatigue from setting in. Conversely, Allister wasn’t losing speed or willpower. Determined to win. Slow but steady.

  Allister continued to wobble until she was close enough. Replacing his faux weariness with brute strength, he ducked down and jammed his shoulder into her stomach, lifting her. The wave of energy from her body slamming into the artificially generated dirt, bent trees at their trunks. They both tumbled away from each other but remained on their backs. He ninja-jumped to a standing position, affirming better recovery time.

  Leesa breathed heavily staying low, although free of injuries, the physical contact had thinned her telekinetic protection. Lines of being a training session and a pissing match were blurred. She stared at him as she would an opponent without considering his potential as an ally. A flattened palm channeled her telekinesis through soil; forcing two large trees on either side of them out of the ground by their roots. Leesa arranged them horizontally before bringing her hands out to her side; the trees followed her command, crushing Allister between their trunks. She appeared to worship the sky as she prepared for a second attack, sitting back on her heels with a black whirlwind of hair billowing above her. The natural weapons moved to crush him again but he intercepted one of the huge trunks and swung at her with it. Leesa spun backwards onto her stomach. She wasn’t hurt yet but the telekinetic field was gone until there came a time to reconstruct it.

  Leesa doubled over from another injection of power, destined to lead to an overdose. The only sounds echoing through her ears were of pumping veins, her short breaths and Allister’s feet on their way for a follow up attack. A thicker version of the telekinetic field returned.

  Allister spotted the opaque, white-colored field and Leesa’s clenched fists bent on destruction; his footsteps slowed. She became less mechanical robot and more feral creature as logic and reason melted into a contorted snarl. Leesa floated, elbows at her side, palms up, fingers curled in. She wanted blood.

  Objects in the vicinity, dirt, branches, and even smaller trees, swirled around them. With a mere thought-focused command Allister tumbled head over feet groping for a branch or root to stop his motion. He succeeded in catching a piece of foliage strong enough to resist her influence, but his legs tugged in her direction.

  A painful sensation in Allister’s left arm mimicked tiny needles stabbing from underneath the skin, he screamed without thinking and grabbed his forearm. His legs hit the forest floor. Leesa regained her consciousness while Allister lost his. If the game was winning and if winning meant taking down a commanding officer, his brain had figured out a way to do it. The blue energy’s color was the same as when white light shines up from the bottom of the ocean but doesn’t quite reach the surface.

  Four feet in diameter was anyone’s best guess on the size of the blast that zoomed from his closed, glowing fist; Allister steadied the force with his right hand and balanced using hi
s core. Leesa’s protective field grew in size and intensity as the blast grew but neither of them made headway in stopping one another. She threw one arm out across her chest; expanding the field. His blast backfired. They flew apart from each other, returning the room to normal. Pencils down, the test was over.

  Leesa kept her face parallel to the cold floor. She’d never experienced being sold bad drugs, only to wake up the next morning to a horrible comedown and a full day’s work. But she had an idea of how it felt as her power levels returned to normal.

  Allister’s boots entered her peripheral. Leesa glanced up to his hand outstretched to help her up. A few cuts from the energy blast on his face and upper body healed faster than the giant gash on his arm. She refused his help and stood on her own.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Quivering eyes studied him. “You did fine. Congratulations.” Leesa wiped her forehead. The mechanical robot steadily infiltrated the parts of her brain infected by the emotional outburst.

  “But?” Allister watched her body harden from the influence, forcing feelings deeper into her psyche. Leesa reached for Allister’s shoulder but imagined her father’s face in a judging “no” scowl and pulled her arm back into her body.

  “I can’t bring you on until I know you don’t pose a threat to the project.” Her voice came out even after what Allister imagined was a fierce battle for control between the two mentalities.

  “I don’t want to be terminated,” he said, turning from her.

  “You’re accepted on a contingency basis with two calendar days for further review.” She wasn’t sure if she’d get approval, they’d already extended Bridget’s initiation period by twelve hours.

  “Yes, Lieutenant. Thank you, it means a lot.”

  “The level of meaning my actions have is of no interest to me. My instinct tells me you can be a valuable asset to us and the success of this program is my only priority. I’ll have you moved to permanent living quarters before orientation tomorrow,” Leesa stated. “Change your uniform immediately and report to the conference room at 0600 hours.”

  NICOLAS DELEMAR

  Washington, DC, April 2026

  “To what I owe pleasure, General?” Rabia asked in a broken accent. Nicolas squinted against fluorescent light seeping from the crack in the door but it bounced off of Rabia’s bleach white furniture, blocking visibility of the lab’s interior. Nicolas pushed the door open with unplanned force and Rabia tripped over a cart in the center of the room.

  “I see gene therapy experiment working.” The doctor’s jaw clenched like a child who’d finished a sand castle built too close to a rising tide, the tools he’d so neatly arranged were scattered on the floor.

  With a bit of coercion and empty promises, Nicolas had become Rabia’s unapproved test subject for a viral serum. It introduced a uragonian gene plus a few modifiers into the general’s muscle tissue. The procedure allowed him seven percent access to the Zosma energy source, which manifested as enhanced strength and speed. Nicolas wanted to be a formidable adversary in the event things escalated with their enemy, C20.

  Observing positive effects from his work, the work Rabia really loved to do, pushed away any outward irritation for the spill. He hummed to himself while picking up the items.

  “When were you going to tell me you’d performed the same testing on Private Adams?” Nicolas asked.

  Rabia glanced at the ‘no questions’ sign but answered instead. “I do not, I swear. He is born like this.”

  Nicolas wanted to know without any excuses or cryptic answers why Rabia hadn’t delivered a complete report before the combat session. “Private Allister Adams walked away like it was nothing. What if he didn’t stop fighting? What if he was sent to bring her down?”

  Rabia nodded, as if listening to the general’s rant, and emptied his hands into the sink. Sounds of metal landing on metal filled the silent room. “One moment,” he said, prancing to the other side of the lab. Rabia finished compiling the results he wanted to share and added a note about the genes found in Allister’s “junk DNA” without citing their origin. Nicolas flattened his hand against the door for support. Normally Rabia would’ve cringed, yelled, and went into a cleaning frenzy, but he hung a short distance away. Rabia swirled his hand around the general’s body. “Negative effect of experiment making you sickly.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Nicolas wrenched the tablet away to read the report’s first few paragraphs. “You should’ve told me about this the moment you knew.”

  “Still figure things out.” Rabia shrugged and gently took it back.

  “Once you do figure it out, I want to be,” Nicolas paused to see if his body temperature was rising or if the lights were hot, “the first to know.” Some combination of both.

  “Naturally, General.” The bow couldn’t have been more genuine if it came from a loyal servant. “Come, let me take blood,” Rabia gestured for the struggling man to sit on the operating table. He recognized a fevered sweat.

  Nicolas hated being stared at sympathetically. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t be late for the briefing tomorrow.”

  The general wasn’t sure when violence became his go-to drug. He wanted to leap forward, grab the doctor by the collar and choke him until he confessed to deceit. A bit of rational thought and fatigue stopped it from happening. Nicolas twisted the handle and the door opened slightly wider than the first time. “And keep your mouth shut,” he said, slipping through.

  The hallways seemed bigger and darker than normal. Nicolas was used to walking down the middle, every step ahead of him lit like a path. Instead, he caught his breath along frigid walls where light didn’t reach. If the directors found out about the experiment going on behind their backs, Nicolas’s position at the Andromeda Project was as good as gone.

  When everything seems out of control, people tend to cling to the things they can control. Health, work, their subordinates, their peers, their children. Nicolas saw his actions as taking control of the success of the project, to stop looking above for the answers and power ahead. But the fish bowl surrounded him no matter where he went and he’d swam in another circle instead.

  Nicolas thought about the training session with Allister, a potential strike on his record, as bad if not worse than the experiment. Leesa was only allowed specific access to her powers for reasons everyone understood except for her. They couldn’t afford another meltdown, literally, the directors couldn’t afford damages, payouts and the cost of covering up an incident.

  The exercise wasn’t for her to win, it was for the project to determine a recruit’s combat skill level. But she’d never lost, to the point where Nicolas didn’t know what to do if she lost. He didn’t know what she would do if she lost. If everyone found out Leesa wasn’t unstoppable, would their hold on the Andromeda Project crumble? In his mind the answer was an unchallenged yes. Some might call them acts of desperation. Taking control, he thought.

  Nicolas was tired of losing, he’d lost so much already. Memories of Leesa’s mother crept into his mind as he prepared for his next correspondence with the directors. Poor Connie. She died the same year they hired him back. Terrible car accident after her water broke. The worst part of it, Nicolas wasn’t with her...a grown man not allowed to watch the birth of his first child. He still believed if he’d been there the accident wouldn’t have happened. Nicolas always told her to stay off highways, she didn’t like driving fast and no one liked slow drivers, but it was the quickest way to the hospital.

  Doctors cut the baby out of Connie’s stomach once they reached the emergency room and Nicolas arrived as she died. Everything went black for a moment, like right before a movie starts, until they brought news of the baby. The thinnest silver lining around a towering storm cloud. His daughter paralyzed, but alive. Doctors kept saying the baby wouldn’t make it but they hooked her up to machines to assist with organ function just in case. They’d dished out so much “we can only hope for the best” and “there’s only s
o much we can do,” the already broken man lost faith. Nicolas was as afraid twenty-six years go, as he was in that moment leaning against the edge of his office door, to love a daughter he might lose.

  Back in 2000, shortly after seeing the magnificence of Neight’s ability, Nicolas asked for a wish no genie could grant, to bring someone back from the dead. On the roof of one of the NASA buildings in Florida, Neight explained to the widower that dying was an irreversible change in mental state. Somehow the conversation shifted to time and time travel; its potential and its consequences. Neight had never done it. He claimed to suffer more loss than Nicolas’s heart could fathom or survive. “Going into the past and saving loved ones might change many things but it does not guarantee happiness,” Neight said, “Timing is everything.” The age-old Earth saying meant something different when he said it, maybe it wasn’t an Earth saying at all. What did humans know about time anyway? “Timing is all off,” Neight shook his head. It was their last friendly conversation.

  Nicolas was merely curious all those years ago. But anger and resentment showed up like uninvited guests at a birthday party and violence often followed those two around, so everything else cleared out. Nicolas missed innocence the most.

  “Nicolas Delemar accepted,” the computer said. The door moved aside and he limped into the secret room. A hexagon of screens surrounding the center console, made humming noises reminiscent of 1950’s television sets. Blurred silhouettes of the directors waited.

  Nicolas didn’t need to see their faces to visualize their annoyance at his tardiness. “You were right,” he said, “about the recruit. He is more powerful than her.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tensions Rising

  DOLORES ADAMS