by Paul Teague
‘What is it?’ asked Simon, sensing her unease.
‘I just got this overwhelming feeling of guilt. I can’t believe what I’ve done, I don’t know how to make up for it.’
‘We’re at war, Kate. You were under somebody else’s control. We can still sort this out.’
Kate knew he was right, and she picked herself up and carried on moving. But she resolved that, before this battle was over, she’d make up for the damage that she’d done, she was determined to set things straight. Even if that meant losing her own life doing it.
Simon put up his hand to urge her to silence. They were outside the main ops area. He could see Doctor Pierce. And there were the twins – Dan and Nat – their faces were white, they looked like they’d just received some terrible news. There was a man next to Dan and Nat. Simon struggled to make him out. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. It was a second Doctor Pierce.
At that moment, Simon got it. He didn’t know the detail – he didn’t need to – but it all made perfect sense. If there were two people identical in appearance – twins, clones, whatever they were – what happened that day must have been sabotage. The man he saw talking to the twins’ mum as his car swerved at the girl, it must have been one of these men.
One of them must have had Global Consortium access, it just pieced together for him as he looked at the two of them. It had to have been how this whole deception was carried out. He’d always felt there seemed to be an extra person involved, like it didn’t quite add up. It was easy to tell who was in charge here. One of the men looked bruised, beaten and weary, the other looked charged, confident and powerful.
And to the side him, sitting on a chair and smirking, somebody – or something – else. Kate had recognized him too. That was the thing that had been sitting at the control desk in the simulation area eighteen years ago. They’d been right, the creature they’d seen on that day had not been human.
Now they knew who the enemy was. And they now had a plan to break out their friends.
* * *
Face To Face
* * *
What do you do when the life you thought was yours turns out to be completely different? The sister I thought was dead was alive. We turned out to be aliens – or human–alien hybrids, to be more accurate. The man I thought had been sent to help me at school had turned out to be a brilliant scientist in charge of one of the most important challenges in the planet’s history. And he had an identical twin who seemed hell-bent on destroying Earth. And now, to top it all, I was being introduced to my birth mother.
But this was no joyful reunion. She looked terrible. She was attached to wires and tubes, muttering furiously and looking wretched. It was disturbing to see. I turned away. But how could I turn away from the woman who was supposed to be my mother? I got an overwhelming sense of revulsion from Nat. She felt the same as me – whatever they’d done to her was horrible. Like most of the people in that room, she wasn’t responsible for her actions. She needed our help.
Harold was clearly shaken by what we were looking at on the screen. Henry seemed to feel the need to explain himself.
‘Your mother is currently issuing our instructions to the troopers. We hijacked her telepathic abilities.’ Then he added, ‘And thanks to you too, Nat, for helping us with that. We are very grateful for your help with our … experiments.’
This telepathy thing was really strong in Nat and me now, and I could feel the surge of rage she experienced as he spoke. I was quick to urge her to caution. Nothing would be gained by goading this man, she’d only get herself hurt. Hurt more.
‘To help focus your minds on my offer, you may like to know a few things,’ Henry continued. ‘We are about to set in motion the final stage of the terraforming process. This will destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable for all of the humans who live on it. They’ll never wake up, the planet will burn as they slumber.’
At this, the holographic faces that surrounded the ops area started protesting, but we couldn’t hear them. Pierce had silenced their speakers. Their protests could be seen, but not heard.
‘We will also destroy the Nexus and the Quadrants – it’s worked out pretty well this Unification process, it saves us having to destroy them on Earth.’
Then he added spitefully, ‘Thanks for your help with that, Harold.’
‘Why would we want to know this, you psycho?’ Nat almost spat at him.
‘Because there is going to be nothing left for you to return to. Earth will be destroyed, this ridiculous ark which was built by the Global Consortium will be destroyed, and the Off World Federation will see this as a terrible accident, a pioneering project gone wrong. My friend here, Zadra Nurmeen, will file a formal claim for custodianship under the Covenant and he and I will become legal owners of your dead planet.’
I urged Nat to calm down. Earlier I’d thought her more battle-ready than me, but now all I saw was recklessness. She really needed to think things through more carefully.
‘And what about Davran?’ asked Harold Pierce. He had finally rallied and wanted answers about his friend – our mother.
‘We don’t really need her for much longer,’ his brother replied. ‘We’re moving all of the troopers up here now, into the outer sections of the Nexus. We’ll destroy them when we blow up the Nexus.’
The troopers around us didn’t flinch when he said this. He’d just announced they were all going to be blown up in space, but it didn’t seem to have registered with any of them. I reminded myself that they weren’t really part of this, they were being controlled by Henry Pierce and his alien friend.
The face of the woman on the screen – our mother – told it all. She might have been controlling these troopers because of some villainy Pierce had committed, but her sense of right and wrong must still have been very much intact. She was commanding those troopers in spite of herself – she was struggling to stop every evil instruction that was forced upon her, but she was losing that battle. Whatever those tubes and wires were doing, they were compelling her into actions she didn’t want to execute. That must have been why she looked so anguished. It must have been a terrible thing to be carrying out atrocities and unable to stop yourself. A living torture.
Nat was right, Pierce was a monster.
My mind had wandered off while he was speaking. I needed to listen. We needed to get this information back to Magnus.
‘What about Davran?’ Harold Pierce asked again. He must have really cared about our mother, he was deeply concerned about her. I really hoped I’d get to know her.
‘She’ll just burn out,’ laughed Henry. ‘By the time the troopers go offline, her mental capacities will be exhausted. She’ll just be a shell …. and you know the laws about ostracism, Harold.’
I didn’t like sound of that.
‘What does that mean?’ I spoke directly to Harold. Nat turned to hear the answer.
‘When you’re ostracized, you’re there forever,’ he replied. ‘The ISOCells are wired to make sure it’s permanent. They’ve managed to locate her ISOCell, I don’t know how, and they’ve somehow got a transporter onto it. Nothing surprises me about these two, they had enough access to Genesis 2 to be able to do these things. There’s just one problem with the ISOCells ...’
Here it was. I was getting used now to detecting when bad news was coming.
‘They were never supposed to be boarded, but that’s just covenant law. Henry and Zadra Nurmeen won’t care about the risks of being ostracized themselves. But when the prisoner dies, the ISOCell explodes, there’s no trace left, they live in isolation until that happens.’
Okay, so far so good, that didn’t sound pleasant, but it wasn’t too bad. It was like a funeral in space.
‘Nobody is ever supposed to leave those things,’ he continued, seeing the urgency for more information on our faces. ‘When the last live person tries to exit the ISOCell, it will explode. Davran is stuck there – if they destroy the transporter, she’s lost and isolated i
n space, we’ll never find her. If she tries to leave the ISOCell, it’ll explode, and that’ll be the end of it ...’
Harold’s words were left hanging as Henry charged up to him and pounded him in the head with his bloody knuckles.
Chapter Fifteen
Signals
* * *
Xiang looked at her screens. A fourth data stream had just appeared. From nowhere. This was all new to her. She shuddered to think what was going on wherever Dan and Nat were right now.
She’d received Dan’s text alert about there being two Pierce brothers, and she knew now what that third data stream had been. One of the Pierces. But if there was a new nanovirus host now, what did that mean? This genetic destruction, whatever its source, was being passed on between hybrids. How though?
She didn’t know yet but as the latest information feed had come online, she’d immediately seen the hazard levels for Dan, Nat and whichever Pierce hybrid had been affected first reduce immediately. They seemed to be dealing with it like a committee – as a new hybrid was infected with the nanovirus, it seemed to help the others. It was as if this hybrid species was linked in some way, like they could actually help each other to survive longer. The scientist in her knew this would be an incredible evolutionary concept. Xiang felt immediately guilty for even daring to be excited about the prospect of running more tests on Dan and Nat – if they got out of this thing alive.
For now, they’d just bought themselves a little more time. But as far as she knew, there were no more hybrids. That meant that when this destructive genetic killer attained viral levels of 100 percent, all four hybrids would be dead.
And by her reckoning, the most time any one of them had to survive was just over one hour.
* * *
Transported
* * *
Mike and Amy walked up to the elevator on the first floor of the bunker. It was heavily armed and the explosives teams were getting very jittery. They knew that whatever move would be made to take over this structure must play out soon.
When Amy walked towards them, they knew what she was up to, and they moved aside to let her get through.
‘I’ll need you to stay close with the helmet for the sym node to work,’ Amy reminded him. ‘Just make sure it works before you leave the area.’
Mike grabbed her and hugged her.
He was so proud of his wife, immensely impressed by what she was doing, and he feared that he might lose her in whatever was going to happen next.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We need to take care of our kids, Mike. You do your thing with the tech – I’m going up there to kick some ass!’
He smiled and released her from his embrace.
She walked into the elevator and pressed the new symbol that had appeared since the Nexus had come online. This was where Dan was heading – it was a wild chance, but hopefully this symbol would activate the transporter and take her to him. The doors closed and she pressed the new touchpad. The elevator jolted, but nothing happened. She tried again, but again nothing happened.
‘Damn it!’ she cursed, kicking the side of the elevator, just missing one of the packs of explosive which were stacked up there in case of trooper attack.
Amy decided to try the symbol one more time – it was useless for her to try to head anywhere else, she needed to follow Dan’s lead. This time it worked. The transporter fired up, the elevator interior lit up, and she was immediately transported to the same place as Dan.
* * *
Act Of Rebellion
* * *
The small remaining conscious part of her mind could sense what was going on. She’d known immediately that the trooper had been wounded and his helmet removed. She’d become aware of that as soon as the woman had placed the helmet on her own head.
At any one time she was processing hundreds of pieces of data. And now she could sense that this woman was trying to use a sym node … to get to the Nexus. But this woman was not a trooper, she was the enemy. Wasn’t she?
The small part of humanity that still functioned within her told that this woman could mean help. Salvation even. The Queen was fighting with every last drop of will that she could summon, but she was losing the battle, she was under Pierce’s deadly control.
But then she detected the woman trying to activate the transporter on Quadrant 3. This woman could help her. She was not the enemy, perhaps she was a final chance of escape? She tried desperately to activate the sym node authorization when the woman first touched the activation pad in the elevator.
At the same time, hundreds of pieces of information cycled through her brain – from the troopers, the Nexus, the Quadrants and from Doctor Pierce – and she urged herself to separate this information. She failed. The woman had tried again.
The Queen forced herself to fight the thing that compelled her against her will. She was losing her energy now, she knew that she was dying.
Then, a final chance, the woman had tried to use the sym node a third time. She was persistent. The Queen commanded every last bit of free will that she could muster, and for a split second she was Davran once again. And in that moment she gave Amy access to the Nexus via the transporter in Quadrant 3. It was a last act of rebellion from somebody who could no longer fight the evil that had been done to her.
It was a desperate grasp at freedom, a final chance to escape the terrors to which she’d been subjected by her torturers.
* * *
Obsolete
* * *
Mike listened to the sound of the transporter taking his wife to wherever she was heading and he made his way back to the control room.
A text update from Xiang told him that they’d just been granted a little more time to save Dan and Nat. About an hour he reckoned. An hour is such a short time normally, but now it was a matter of life and death for his children.
There had to be something on this SD card, why else would Nat have been so interested in it? Where was she now? And Dan? Damn these comms tabs, there was no sign of the twins. At least they’d sent a text message, they were still alive. For now.
Mike delivered the helmet to Magnus, explaining what it was, and headed back to his work area. His tech team had nothing to report, just more files, more snippets of information, including interesting notes about Dan, written by Harold Pierce, about his difficulties after Nat’s death.
Pierce knew exactly what it was. He’d already experienced ‘the disconnect’, as it was known among the Zatheons. Although he hadn’t been able to share his own experience with Dan or his parents at the time, he knew that what Dan was going through was entirely normal. He’d had to endure it – as had his brother – and so had Davran when she’d left her own sister. The symbiotic bond could bring so much strength, but at times it also brought terrible pain.
There were a few more random notes the team had flagged up, all very interesting, but nothing which helped to move things on. It turned out from a personal diary log that Harold Pierce’s tie had been a gift from Davran Saloor. She’d had it made from a Zatheon textile which had amazing properties. It was thin, light, beautiful to touch – yet extremely tough. The Zatheons used the textile for many things, including heavy industrial purposes. Davran Saloor had given it to Doctor Pierce as a sign of friendship, because of the compassion and care he’d shown to her while on Earth. She’d have loved the Zatheons to work more closely with Earth, the two species had so much to learn from each other, but the elders had resisted. Davran wanted Harold Pierce to know how much she cherished his friendship.
But of course the tie had deep scientific significance as well. She’d added something unique to the tie, a token of trust and kinship. The symbol on the tie, which had amused and distracted Dan so much at his sessions with Doctor Pierce, would change colour whenever a Zatheon was nearby to let them know they were in the presence of a member of the same species. This is what Dan had seen, it had been the coloration that had intrigued him. If only he’d known back then that his birth mother was givi
ng him a message. She was telling him that Harold Pierce was a friend.
Mike sifted the new data and discarded it swiftly, it could all wait for later, it meant absolutely nothing to him, neither would it help the twins. He took the SD card out of his pocket and started searching his terminal for a slot to plug it into.
‘You’re kidding?’ he cursed to himself.
He called over to Jen from the tech team.
‘Jen, where are the card slots in these things?’
‘Don’t need them, don’t use them!’ she replied. ‘It’s dead technology.’
This place was so hi-tech, they’d moved well beyond these old devices. Mike had encountered this issue already. It’s how he’d accessed the files they were searching, they’d been encrypted using old coding systems.
He dared to wonder if this was the same thing again, crucial data hidden in plain sight on old systems. Almost defunct technology which any decent geek would dismiss out of hand. But how was he going to access it? Of course! He had Amy’s laptop with him in the rucksack. It’s what Nat had been trying to use to get to the data herself. He thrust his hand into the bag and drew out the laptop which he’d dismissed so readily when he’d been speaking to Amy in the med lab. He regretted that now. This old thing might hold the solution. He put the SD card in the slot, fired up the PC and got ready to see what information Nat had been so keen to read.
* * *
Secure Connection
* * *
In all the commotion Zadra Nurmeen had slipped away unnoticed. He’d not gone far, but he knew the patterns of behaviour with Pierce: he’d get angry, start ranting, hit or kick somebody – or both – and then do something unpredictable.