Trinity's Fall

by P A Vasey

  I stabbed a finger in his direction. “They’ve come here to kill me and every one of my kind. And yours too, Cain. You were their slaves, remember?”

  He shrugged. “Is this righteous justice or merely vengeance, Kate?”

  “Call it what you want. We didn’t start this. It was an accident. We didn’t invite them here.”

  “Kate, what if there is more to the Vu-Hak than you know? Remember, no one, and certainly no race, is created evil … perhaps I could tell you more of their, shall we say, ‘backstory’?”

  “Save me that bullshit,” I cut him off. “Perhaps once they were innocent but that was way, way in the past. They’ve learned the thrill of the kill, the sick joy of evil that comes with wanton violence and destruction. You’ve witnessed that. I’ve had them in my head – and so have you, for fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with you? If it’s them or us, I choose us and the countless other civilizations in the Milky Way that they’ll destroy in the future. No contest, no guilt.”

  I stormed out of the room and along the spotlessly clean corridor, looking for a way back to the main laboratory where the portal chamber was situated. Cain’s footsteps followed me at a distance. The corridor bent around to a doorway. It opened into another spotless white room. Cain quietly followed me in, and the door closed invisibly and noiselessly. This particular chamber was full of pale eggshell-colored equipment, all pipes and cogs and tubes. A dozen or so tables for examinations or surgery were lined up against one wall, linked to cables and optics.

  “What goes on in here?” I said, still angry.

  “This is the cloning facility.”

  I walked over to one of the tables and ran my hand over its surface, feeling it give like a spongy mattress. Everything appeared sterile and unused. I scanned the other tables and pulled up short. One was different. I walked over to it, aware of Cain’s scrutiny. It was smaller than the others, with plastic-looking screens that would completely cover the table when erected.

  “Has this one been used?” I said.

  His face was impassive. “I do not know.”

  My eyes narrowed. “How can you not know?”

  Cain actually looked embarrassed, if that was possible. “I have been away from the facility for some time. Adam was working on this, in addition to –”

  “Wait.” I whirled to face him. “Where is Adam?”

  Cain closed his eyes for a second, and then said, “He is not here on the moon. I cannot sense him anywhere.”

  I was incredulous. “When did you last talk with him?”

  “We last communicated moments before I picked you up from the Pentagon.”

  I started pacing, thinking about where he would have gone, and why. And why he wouldn’t have left any messages as to his whereabouts. “Have you tried contacting him since we arrived back here?”

  “Just now. There has been no response.”

  I tried to get into Cain’s mind, looking for deception or outright lies, but there were none there. Just order and logic, and no sign of subterfuge. A sinking feeling came over me. “What do you think this means?”

  He stared back, his unblinking eyes now locked into mine. “I do not know, but it cannot be good.”

  I leaned against the wall and sank down until I was sitting on the floor. I put my head in my hands and tried not to scream again.

  “We’ll find him,” said Cain, coming over and reaching out to touch my arm.

  I shrugged him off, shaking my head. “We don’t have time for this … you said so yourself.”

  “He must be back on Earth,” he said. “I should be able to detect his Electromech’s radiation footprint, if we get close enough.”

  “But you have no fucking idea where he is,” I said, more harshly than I meant to.

  He shrugged. “True, but I should be able to narrow down his possible destinations. Then I just need to get within a hundred miles or so in order to determine his exact whereabouts.”

  Another worrying thought occurred to me. “What if he doesn’t want to be found? Or worse, he’s been … taken?”

  Cain squatted down next to me and lifted my face up by the chin. “I’ll find him,” he said. “You go and get the embryos.”

  FORTY-ONE

  The wormhole spun a kaleidoscope and the sensation of nausea swirled unrestrained in my virtual stomach. It was incredible how my mind was still able to convince me I had internal organs and the feelings that went with them.

  I materialized behind a dumpster in an alley smelling of days-old food and dog shit. Above, clear blue skies were scarred by black smoke trails, and the pixelated outline of the ship was just visible as it banked away, camouflaged from human eyes.

  I’d been transported to Cairns, an Australian city on the northeast coast of Queensland and a popular Australian tourist destination because of its tropical climate and access to rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns was the home of AusStemGen, the storage facility for the embryos we needed. Stillman had argued strongly about me going alone, but both Cain and I made her understand that my Electromech body would give me the best chance of survival should I encounter another Vu-Hak – even one in an Electromech of its own. I was definitely worried about Cain’s assessment that they were already adapting to the Electromechs without the AI interface, and would soon be much more powerful than I ever could be. We’d also noted rising levels of radiation and spreading global panic, which were other compelling reasons why it would be safer for me to go alone.

  The whine of police sirens and the sound of windows being smashed interrupted my reverie. I picked up the two containers I’d brought from the ship. They were the size and shape of over-sized suitcases, and inside were interlinked vacuum-sealed tubes for the embryos together with vital nutrients and an electrostatic plasma field designed to keep them safe. The cases were also lined with diamond-strengthened carbon-epoxy to protect them from the wormhole’s destructive vortex.

  According to my internal schematic the ASG facility was one block away so I headed up the alley to the corner of the main street. Fires were raging further up the avenue where the obligatory piles of car tires had been stacked up and set alight. Deserted trucks and cars were scattered along the road and sidewalks. Youths in a gang were breaking windows and throwing themselves against the door of a 7/11. The shopkeeper was inside, peering fearfully out from behind the counter. A few vehicles were snaking around the obstructions, windows closed, lights on, stopping for no one. A couple of kids threw bricks at the passing vehicles, laughing. There were jeers and shouting as they burned cars, looted, destroyed property with no thought to whom it belonged to. I saw only a mob, mindless and dangerous. Other law-abiding and fearful citizens were fleeing down side streets or barricading themselves inside their properties.

  I set off along the sidewalk toward the AusStemGen building, which looked intact and unsullied by the mob. I supposed there’d be nothing attractive about it to loot. A single logo on the wall above a large glass-fronted entryway said ASG-Australia, giving no clue as to what went on there. There were a couple of steps up to weary looking double doors painted bright blue. The frames had some bullet holes in them, so that wasn’t so good. The door was locked with an electronic pad, so I infiltrated my mind into the mechanism and opened it. I entered the lobby and closed the door behind me. The air inside smelled like a dentist’s office, all antiseptic and sterile.

  Behind the main desk was a glass-fronted doorway leading to the offices, the laboratory and the vaults where the embryos were stored. I unscrambled the door’s keypad, gaining entry to a corridor lined with pictures, certificates and awards attesting to the work the facility had done over the years. Water was dripping somewhere, a plinky-plunk kind of noise, which was metronomic and irritating. The corridor was barely lit, flickering neon tubes buzzing and crackling.

  An elevator led down to the basement and hopefully to where I’d find the embryo storage tanks. One quick ride later and the doors opened into a dimly lit laboratory as quiet and as
cold as a morgue. The desktop computers were dead, their hardware boxes, printers, scanners all missing. Filing cabinets had been ripped open and their contents discarded around the room. Personal effects of the scientists and technicians were scattered everywhere, as if they’d left in a hurry. The whole place gave off a mildly disconcerting Marie Celeste feeling. There was a strong odor of bleach and organics, such as the agar used to plate bacteria on petri dishes. Stainless steel centrifuges and microscopes and PCR machines were dotted around in between a huge walk-in refrigerator and water baths glowing with cool yellow light. An autoclave with double flow hoods dominated the side of one wall, and there was a walk-in shower cubicle next to another door that was bolted and locked.

  The embryonic stem cell storage vault.

  There was no entry pad and no padlock, just solid bolts and an archaic tumbler mechanism to the door. As I reached out to spin it the noise of a chair scraping on the tiles made me jump.

  “There’s nothing valuable for you in there,” came a woman’s voice from the corner of the room.

  I hit a light switch and the strips in the ceiling shimmered on. A middle-aged woman sat at a desk, legs crossed. She took a drag on a cigarette and squinted up at me, an unruly mess of dark chocolate hair framing a heart-shaped face and expressive red-rimmed eyes. She was wearing what looked like dungarees underneath a soiled lab coat.

  “What the fuck are you supposed to be?” she said, taking another drag on her cigarette and flicking the ashes onto the floor.

  I realized how strange I must appear to her. Cain had insisted I wore appropriate clothing for a research laboratory, so he’d put me in a white one-piece garment that covered me from shoulders to mid-thigh without any seams, creases or pockets. My hair was whitened as well, cut just above my ears, and I’d painted a single horizontal strip of shadow across my lids and nose like an Apache Indian, hiding my phosphorescent green eyes. My skin was almost as white as my clothing and hair.

  “I’m not supposed to be anything,” I said. “And you’re wrong about there being nothing of value here.”

  To my surprise she threw her head back and gave a raucous laugh, a sound like crow calling. She flicked her cigarette in my direction, embers twinkling as it spun through the air. “I meant there’s nothing for you in there,” she said, eyes wide and defiant.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, perplexed.

  Her mouth twitched. “Because what’s been done here is immoral and against the law of God.”

  Right.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “What does it matter?”

  “Did you work here?”

  She snorted and broke into a half smile. “Of course not. I’ve been trying to shut this place down for years. Since it opened. My church and me, we been protesting outside every day. Didn’t stop these bastards from experimenting on embryos.”

  I wondered whether I could be bothered to debate her, or indeed had the time. Many religions took the position that embryos were human beings, beings created by God in whose image they were made. Given that such teaching stated it was immoral to destroy human life, the mere derivation of embryonic stem cells was antithetical to their position.

  I approached the desk she was sitting at, which was covered in journals and papers and a few photograph frames. One had a picture of a woman holding a little girl, aged about five. The girl was holding a white cat in her arms and clearly giggling with delight. I picked it up and my heart melted. An image of my own daughter floated unbidden into my mind. She was standing on a sidewalk looking left and right, holding herself in a manner that suggested she’d like to disappear altogether. She wasn’t focusing, eyes scanning without locking onto any one thing, daydream-like. She shifted her weight from left to right and back again every few seconds as if thinking of moving and yet choosing to remain still.

  I suppressed a sob and rubbed a hand over my eyes.

  “Lost someone as well, did you?” the woman said. There was little emotion in her voice, a flat, weary, past-caring kind of tone.

  I nodded, not looking at her. “My daughter.”

  “God judged you then. How did it feel?”

  “I’m not one of the scientists you despise,” I said, my anger bubbling up.

  The woman grunted, looking me up and down with a sneer. “Of course you are. Look at you. Think I’m stupid?”

  Then she did something I didn’t expect. She pulled a gun out of her lab coat pocket and pointed it at me. It was a small silver weapon, like a derringer with four barrels.

  “The ‘end times’ are here, as prophesied. You and your kind laughed at us, but who’s laughing now? We’ve been judged, and God’s damnation is on all of us.”

  “So what’s your role in this now?” I said.

  “I’m here to protect these here souls.” She gestured to the vault. “And God will judge me fairly.”

  I moved closer to her, watched the gun barrel trembling slightly as she moved it up to point at my face. I’d been part of an evangelical congregation as a child and had witnessed pastors raging about the fire and brimstone of hell so much that I’d become immune to it. However, I’d seen enough people crippled with anxiety, scared witless that every and any bad thought would expel them from everlasting life. This woman was one of them. “Go ahead and shoot. I’m here for the embryos. I’m actually going to save them so you and your god should be pleased.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You want to save these souls from going to hell, is that right? These cells in petri dishes? You aren’t being honest with yourself. You’re just doing this to win ‘brownie points’ with your god now that you are for sure going to die soon. Tell me I’m wrong?”

  The knuckles on the gun handle whitened, and she gritted her teeth as my words sunk in. However, I didn’t care anymore. “You’re right, the world is ending,” I continued. “But not humanity. Not if I can help it. Earth is our home, where we started out, but it doesn’t have to be where we end up.”

  The gun wobbled a bit more, and lowered a few inches. The face behind it was looking puzzled, less certain, less crazy.

  I held out a hand, palm up and smiled. “Put the gun down.”

  Her gaze drifted away, trained on some invisible ghost, her eyelids looking too heavy to even blink. It was as if her brain was suffering some sort of short circuit, and she was struggling to get the neurones to fire and connect. I moved back into her line of sight and touched the barrel with the side of my finger. Her head tilted upward, her eyes sliding back into focus.

  “Are you an angel?” she said in a quiet voice.

  I let my mind drift into hers, and I pushed images and sensations there. Riding a cycle, autumn leaves crinkling and crackling under the tires and light playing peek-a-boo through the moving branches. Of air alive with the song of birds, a nearby stream of clear water bubbling over a rocky bed teeming with silver fish. Of her loved ones, appearing on the beach ahead, ready to greet her and walk hand in hand with her into heaven.

  She smiled and closed her eyes as I took the gun from her hand and caught her as she slipped out of the chair. I laid her gently on the ground and watched her for a few minutes as her breathing slowed and settled into a regular rhythm.

  “Maybe I am,” I said softly.

  FORTY-TWO

  As I exited the front door of the facility, burning rubber and woodsmoke once again assailed my olfactory receptors. Pungent black clouds were blowing through the streets and there were cries and screams and gunfire coming from all around.

  I hopped down the stairway to the sidewalk, broken bottles scrunching under my feet. There were a number of vehicles stopped nose-on in the middle of the road, no signs of drivers or passengers. The nearest was a kind of utility vehicle that Australians quaintly called a ute. I gently placed the two containers in its rear, pushing aside gardening tools and paint pots to make room. I was about to climb in the cab when I heard the slap slapping of shoes on concrete. I turned and saw eight guys c
losing in, most holding beer bottles as weapons, one carrying a big knife, and one waving a baseball bat that had blood stains on the tip. They were all in their late teens or early twenties, rough and unshaven. Opportunists. Looters. Anarchists. Taking advantage of a society breaking down. They pulled up in a rough semicircle a few yards away, trying to look intimidating, and would have succeeded had I been Kate Morgan in her former iteration.

  “Hey, what’s in the bags, darlin?” said the guy with the bat.

  I stepped down from the ute and glowered at him. “The future of the human race, you shithead.”

  He burst into laughter and nervously tapped the bat on his thigh. A couple of the others thought it funny too but the laughter quickly stopped and they became aggressive again. Batman’s lips curled down and he nodded at the AusStemGen building. “What you hidin back there?”

  I just looked at him silently, hoping this was going to go another way. Any other way. One of the gang leaned in to Batman and pointed to the cases in the back of the ute.

  “Ask her what’s in the bags,” he said.

  I sighed and looked up at the sky. “Okay, I’m going to give you all one chance to walk away. Please take it.”

  There was more laughter, but it was short-lived. I could smell alcohol on their breath, and they had the wide-eyed stares of drug-users. A guy with blond scraggly hair tied up in a manbun took a step forward and waved a knife in my direction. “I think we’ll just take em. Then we might take you as well, bitch.”

  I knew how they thought this was going to go down, because all they saw was an unarmed woman in a world suddenly gone to shit where there were no rules and they could do what they liked. Society hadn’t been kind to them before the fall, and so they felt they owed society nothing. They expected easy pickings and got closer, Batman moving ahead of the knife guy while the others fanned out on both sides.

  “Fuck this,” I said and reached out with my mind, preparing the neurological switch that would put them all to sleep.