Chapter Twenty Six
Simone and Marco were led across the factory floor, by Winston and Phaetos, the leader who had greeted them when they first arrived. The thousands of workers all looked identical to Phaetos, aside from minor differences in skin pigment and facial curvature. They each had a very slender, yet human looking nose, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes; all in their appropriate locations. They worked tirelessly, but were noticeably malnourished. Each worker seemed to walk with the same stagger and had poor balance, when pivoting or coming to a stop. They wore thin gray fabrics, which were hardly protective, against the brilliant sparks that flew across the room from the blades of their circular saws. Some of those who were cutting aluminum-like materials to be used for the tanks, wore clear protective masks over their faces, but they did not seem to have enough for everyone.
“How have your people survived down here for this long?” Simone asked Phaetos. “I don’t mean to seem rude, but no one here seems to be in very good health.”
Winston and Phaetos exchanged a look of uncertainty. “I think we need to show them everything,” Winston said to Phaetos. “They need to see this place for what it truly is. It’s the only way we’ll know if they can be trusted.”
Phaetos nodded and led the group to a sliding steel door panel. A gleaming red eye to the right of the door, scanned Phaetos’s retina. Afterwards, the panel quickly slid up into the ceiling, revealing a long narrow catwalk. On either side of the catwalk, was a seemingly endless row of completed water tanks, each containing a single human occupant. They slowly walked down the hall of lifeless bodies, leaving Simone and Marco with the grueling task, of masking the sheer terror they were experiencing. Some of the tanks contained small children; not even ten years old. Hundreds of adult men and women filled the other tanks. People of all ethnicities were present. It was just as Marco had predicted to Simone.
They were all completely naked, aside from thick white collars, attached to their legs and necks. Feeding tubes connected the collars to the sides of the tanks, and appeared to be slowly draining blood from their prisoners’ external jugular veins and femoral arteries.
Along the way, Winston introduced Simone and Marco to the true nature of their surroundings. He spoke of the true origins of Darkside, and the contract that bound its leaders and the Martians together that was later signed with human blood. Winston Severov, along with Darkside’s co-founders, were contacted by the Martians and given the technological means to fast track the world’s space programs.
By downloading technical schematics, sent to them by Phaetos, Darkside learned to build and eventually launch the first manned mission to Mars in 1994. Winston Severov was the first human being to set foot on Martian soil. He was 25 years old at the time. He and three other astronauts; also co-founders of Darkside, were invited inside Aeolis Mons. The mountain sat directly on top of the Incomplete’s crash site, in an underground cavern, formerly referred to as The Depths by ancient man. Phaetos invited the humans on board their ship with open arms and explained its peoples’ situation.
Unbeknownst to Winston, using all the information they had collected about ancient man, and Phaetos’ new physical appearance, Phaetos alone, was able to convince Severov to begin a search for the Talin, on Earth, which would give them all the proof they would ever need, about the existence of ancient man on both Earth and Mars.
Phaetos then explained that its people were dying and required an unfathomable amount of human genetic material from Earth, in order to survive. Severov was already a jaded, sadistic and self-absorbed man in his mid-twenties. But he still refused to allow the Martians to experiment on his people. There was even a brief moment when Phaetos had contemplated capturing Severov and his companions for the sake of the sustenance they could provide. But in the interest of securing a long term business relationship, Phaetos invited Severov onto the ship’s bridge, where he was a shown a holographic projection of Daelon tossing the Incomplete around like rag dolls, after he had consumed Starblood.
Phaetos convinced Severov that the aliens displayed in the projection had tried to invade their vessel, after their world had been destroyed, and that Daelon was one of Phaetos’ people, defending his race. Phaetos lied further, suggesting that Daelon was a prime example of their former physical appearance, and that they had evolved into their current state, after billions of years of hiding underground without proper nourishment.
Phaetos then led Severov into another chamber, where a swirling stream of Starblood molecules was displayed, for the benefit of the dazzled humans. Severov never realized that the Starblood he had been exposed to, was merely another holographic projection; a mere picture of the stream Daelon had discovered, just prior to their ship’s crash, billions of years before.
From that point, Phaetos’ proposal was a simple one. It had offered Winston the very last of its people’s Starblood, in exchange for Winston giving the Martians what they needed to survive. Given his delusions of grandeur and predetermined, unwavering opinions about the world, Winston gave into temptation while on his way back to Earth.
The Darkside co-founders in his company were in fear of Phaetos and denounced his proposition. They had remained silent on Mars, as did Severov, and were instructed to give Phaetos an answer at a later date. Unfortunately for Severov’s companions, Severov had already made up his mind and was already formulating ways to bring others around to his way of thinking.
Upon learning of their true feelings regarding Phaetos, Severov injected his companions with a powerful sedative, while they slept. He then forced them into the ship’s airlock and disposed of their bodies. During his return to Earth, Severov explained to his superiors that there had been an incident with a dust devil on Mars that compromised their spacesuits, leaving him as the sole survivor of the mission.
Severov of course, gave the same fabricated explanation to Simone and Marco. Winston was under the impression that “Timothy and Tara Burrows” were long time Drellic sympathizers, and longed for a man such as himself, to rise up as absolute ruler of humanity, in order to end the ongoing counterproductive disputes between the nations of the world. He prayed that the promise of Starblood’s return to Earth, would be enough to sway “Timothy and Tara’s” judgment.
Simone and Marco did their best to continue masking their feelings, while Winston continued to justify the presence of the thousands of withering humans, by insisting that he never sent a single colonist out into space that didn’t volunteer to go, and that they knew they would be facing uncertain dangers. Winston also explained that he was convinced that saving the Martians from extinction, was the only way to save humanity as well.
A few minutes later, they finally came to the end of the lifeless human eyes that had been staring at them through the glass tanks, since they had entered the corridor. Winston then asked for a few moments alone with Simone and Marco, to which the Martians agreed. Winston stood in between them, placing one hand on Simone’s right shoulder and one hand on Marco’s left shoulder.
“My friends, the choice is yours and yours alone. But in the end, I know you will do the right thing. I’ve been all alone in this for the last ten years. I’m tired and I’m going to need all the help I can get, to save both of our worlds,” Winston began. “You have until the morning to decide; but know this. In the coming world, I am going to need trusted advisors; lieutenants to be at my side, when I cannot be in two places at once, just as Drellic did. But come tomorrow morning, should you choose to abandon me, you will be joining them. Because, as you can now see, Mars never belonged to us,” he concluded, as he pointed at the row of floating bodies behind them. “Choose wisely, my friends,” he said, as he removed his hands from their shoulders and asked Phaetos to rejoin them, along with its escorts.
Phaetos led Simone and Marco to their private quarters, where they were told to remain for the night. Just before entering the room the Martians had prepared for them, Simone noticed that she could see the gleaming hull of Phaetos’ crashed
ship at the end of a wide circular tunnel that had been forged in the rock ahead. She knew there was much more to the Martians than was being revealed and was already fighting the urge to sneak aboard the buried ship during the night.
It was then explained to them that since the construction of the Shadow Colony, unknown lethal contaminates had been discovered inside the ancient spacecraft, forcing the Martians to seal it off and never return to it. This of course tempted Simone even more. Marco discretely gave Simone a certain look as if to say, “Don’t even think about it.” Winston and Phaetos then left Simone and Marco to rest.
After passing through the narrow rectangular opening, into the dark room ahead, a steel door panel slid from the ceiling down to the floor behind them. Once they were sealed inside the room, the overhead lighting was triggered. It was a much smaller version of the large illuminating crystal, they had discovered when they had first entered the mountain.
The room was roughly the size of an office cubicle and contained nothing but a double bed draped in a black quilt, and a walled off bathroom section, with no door. The bathroom contained a moldy stand shower with a cracked glass door, and a white, old fashioned toilet that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1950’s home on Earth.
They were both still wearing their business attire from their interview with Severov. Marco unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosened his tie and sat down on the bed. He let out a long exhale and let himself fall back onto the stiff mattress. “So what the hell are we supposed to do now, Simone?” he asked, in a frustrated tone. “We were supposed to arrive with the others and sneak off. Now, they have us in here, under lock and key.”
After a few seconds of silence, Marco tilted his head up, to see that Simone was staring blankly at him from against the far wall. “Are you even listening to me?” he asked. Simone remained silent and quietly approached him. She then slowly crawled up onto the bed and straddled him, while lightly kissing his neck. “What are you doing?” he asked her. “Thanking you,” she whispered. “For coming this far.”
Marco enjoyed what was happening to him, but was too confused by Simone’s actions to reciprocate. She loosened his belt and unzipped his pants, making him tense up for a moment. Simone felt his body squirm and released his pants. She then lunged at him and pressed him firmly against the mattress, by his shoulders. “Listen. I haven’t fucked in ten years and this might be my last chance,” she said, in a quiet but commanding tone of voice. “So, you’re going to go with this. Who knows? You might like it.”
It wasn’t long afterwards that Marco stopped resisting and allowed her to pull off his shoes, pants and briefs. She then pulled down her panties from beneath her skirt. When she returned to the bed, Marco forcefully grabbed her and pulled her towards him, allowing her to straddle him again. This time, he penetrated her without hesitation.
Her loud passionate moans could be heard on the other side of the door, where Phaetos walked alone towards its ship, which had supposedly been quarantined. It passed through a gray circular pad on the ship’s hull, as though it were stepping into a body of water. Phaetos then disappeared entirely inside the ship. It reappeared on the other side of the hull and stepped into a dark spherical chamber, where it seemed to levitate towards a holographic projection of Simone and Marco having sex, in the center of the room. Phaetos watched the projection for a moment, then glided back to the outside corridor. Phaetos then walked several feet, until it came to a row of locked double doors, in a much wider corridor, brightly lit by shimmering green crystals overhead.
Phaetos stopped in front of one of the sets of doors and allowed the glowing red eye to the right of the doors, to administer its routine retina scan. Once Phaetos’ identity was verified, the double doors parted ways, revealing a naked, blonde Caucasian woman, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties and was strapped to a black metal table. Her legs were forced apart and locked in place by tight steel clamps. Upon seeing Phaetos, the woman screamed, “No! Not again, you sick fuck! Please! Not again!”
Phaetos ignored her pleas, removed its clothing and mounted her. It aggressively penetrated her with the human-like penis it had inherited from its generous intake of human genetic materials, over the years.
The woman locked in the room as Phaetos’ sex slave, was just one of hundreds of fertile human women being held as prisoners, in that particular corridor on the ship. The Incomplete had discovered that in addition to needing human DNA to survive, they would also need to learn to reproduce sexually, since they were developing human sex organs. The most recent generation of the Incomplete, referred to as Martians by Severov, were all rapidly developing into adult human males and needed fertile human females, if they were to breed future generations.
A few hours after Phaetos’ routine breeding experiment, Marco awoke and was immediately thrust into a panic after realizing that Simone was nowhere to be found. A moment later, the door panel slid up into the ceiling, revealing an irate Winston Severov. He charged at Marco and was followed by two armed Martian soldiers holding laser rifles, reminiscent of the weapons Drellic had issued to his soldiers, during his occupation of Earth.
Winston tackled Marco, forcing him onto the bed. Marco could’ve easily overpowered Winston in his younger and more physically fit form, but the presence of the armed aliens before him, forced him to resist his aggressive impulses.
Winston pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, shoved it in Marco’s face and screamed, “The results of your DNA test are in, Mr. Gropovski! Now tell me, you traitorous fucking snake! Where the fuck is Simone fucking Hammond?!”
The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three Page 49