by Eliza Green
Elise gave up trying to access her buried memories and instead sought out the Nexus to provide her with peace and tranquillity. She crossed her legs again and closed her eyes. Her energy was pulled inside the Nexus a second time just as she began to think about more pressing issues to attend to. Stephen, for example, needed her help; it was painfully clear to her that he was not coping well with his emerging new ability. Pierre couldn’t help him—it was beyond his practical skills—but perhaps Elise could, as an empath.
Confusion and uncertainty in her mind bubbled up again, just as a tendril from the Nexus wall reached out for her, curling itself around her and several other troubled energies and pushing them into the deep chasm below. As they spiralled towards the bottom, she kicked and fought until the tendril let go. She quickly shifted her mindset to thoughts about the Evolvers. Her energy slowed in its freefall, then drifted to the side of the black chasm and slowly, she hauled herself back up.
Chapter 14
Earth
With his overcoat draped neatly over one arm, Charles Deighton exited the turbo lift that connected to the bunker area below the World Government offices in Washington D.C. He walked across the public foyer, gel mask at the ready. He couldn’t help giving a little skip when he thought no one was looking. Feeling very excited, his body shuddered as a pleasurable tingle caught hold of him. The closer he got to realising his goal, the more his impatience increased, but he had to wait for Dr Caroline Finnegan to report her findings. This will work, he thought. It has to.
Deighton breathed in deeply through his nose. He could barely smell the familiar scent of the artificially grown roses, placed in clear glass vases on top of a huge circular table in the middle of the foyer. A single stem could emit as much scent as if the whole room was filled with fresh cut flowers. The roses served another purpose. They helped him to separate the newcomers from the regulars: those unfamiliar with the foyer usually breathed in long and deep as soon as they stepped inside the building. Then Deighton would click his fingers and a team of recruiters would swarm around them. But Deighton had no interest in recruiting today, not since the genetic selection and secret tests had been shown to provide more suitable test subjects than a lengthy recruitment process had ever done.
He thought about the Indigenes, and wondered how good their olfactory range was, if it was as good as a dog’s. He made a mental note to check with the Galway Medical Facility. They could add it to their list of things to do. He thought about Anton, and how frustrating it must be for him waiting for the doctors in Galway to finish running their tests. Maybe the last couple of months would have gone smoother for the Indigene had he not fought so much against capture.
But Deighton was frustrated too. Others had been given the opportunity to live out their dreams while he struggled inside his flawed human body, and all because they had the right genetic code. He could have the right code too, if given a little time. But without much time, the board members were eager to know what the tests revealed about Anton’s abilities and how they could use them to improve human life on Exilon 5. Deighton was curious about Anton too, but there were other matters to attend to. He had a high stake in the special project at the Galway Medical Facility. The board members would get their answers, but not before Deighton got his. The special project had not been sanctioned by the World Government—a little side project he was working on—so he had to be careful not to get ahead of himself.
Deighton swung his overcoat around his shoulders like a matador’s cape and his arms slipped effortlessly into the sleeves. He smacked the gel mask onto his face and walked through the force field that kept the clean internal air well away from the contamination outside. The freezing air outdoors caught him by surprise. He wrapped his coat tightly around him and folded his arms across his body, stomping angrily up and down the street while he waited for his driver to appear.
‘Where the hell is he?’ he muttered.
A black car turned the corner and screeched to a halt at the kerb in front of him. A tall man wearing a driver’s uniform stumbled out of the car and straightened himself.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Deighton. I … the traffic was terrible.’
‘Excuses, young man. I won’t tolerate them.’
‘Of course not,’ said the driver, hanging his head as he opened the rear door of the car.
Deighton settled into the black leather seat and removed his mask as soon as the driver had got in and the air conditioning had kicked in. ‘How long before we get to the meeting?’
The driver turned around in his seat. ‘About ten minutes, sir. If we take the outer ring road, we should cut out the congestion in the city. I’ll set the coordinates now.’ The driver programmed the route into the car’s navigation system. ‘The car will work out which is the quickest route, sir.’
‘Make sure of it, my boy,’ Deighton said. ‘The World Government board members don’t wait for anyone.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I need privacy.’
‘Of course, sir.’ The driver pressed a button and a blackened window created a buffer between them.
As soon as the car moved off, the side-window display sprang into life, showing green fields and hedgerows, sunny skies, people on bicycles, lots of space. It served well to disguise the truth out on the streets such as the beggars that littered the road. Some sought a quick release under the wheels of an oncoming car, others hoped to capitalise financially on the injuries they sustained. As a result, the cars had been programmed to avoid obstacles, and were fitted with a plough on the front grill that removed any obstacle quickly and efficiently.
Deighton activated the small monitor in front of him, scanned his security chip and punched in an encryption code. Doctor Caroline Finnegan appeared on screen.
‘Mr Deighton. Lovely to see you again,’ the doctor said. She touched the back of her neck with her hand.
‘Is it?’ Deighton replied, bemused by her telltale body language.
‘Of course,’ said Dr Finnegan, smiling and touching her neck a second time.
They could lie to his face, but body language was much harder to hide. Deighton thought of Daphne Gilchrist and her subconscious nail tapping.
‘So tell me, Doctor, how is the Indigene settling in?’
‘Well enough, Mr Deighton,’ the doctor said.
Suddenly the car came to an abrupt stop and Deighton fell forward in his seat.
‘Good God! What’s going on out there?’
The driver released the blackened partition between them. ‘A problem,’ he said, nodding towards the centre of the road. ‘What would you like me to do?’
Deighton craned his neck. A young woman holding a tiny infant was standing in the middle of the road. ‘Use the plough, for God’s sake. Where’s your backbone, man!’
‘I just thought—’ the driver began.
‘Thought what? That the sight of an undesirable standing in the street would break my heart? Look at her eyes, dear boy. She’s a junkie, and I’m sure there are hoodlums waiting for some idiot to take pity on her. Do you know how much a car like this fetches on the black market? Push her off the street and let’s be on our way.’
The driver nodded and raised the partition again. The car lurched forward, giving a bit of a bump and shudder as it disposed of the obstacle. Deighton was about to return to his conversation with Dr Finnegan when someone banged aggressively on one of the side windows, making the fake scenery ripple. He heard the words ‘Rich scum!’ above the faint hum of the car’s air conditioning. Taking a deep breath, he hit a button and the window rolled down a couple of inches giving him just enough space to spit at the woman. It landed on her coat.
‘Cheap whore,’ he hissed, holding the gel mask to his face. ‘If you’re looking for money, why not sell that genetically defective child of yours?’
He closed the window and pushed his hair back into place, then turned to the monitor and smiled at Caroline Finnegan. The doctor had become very pale. He smiled.
‘That was unexpect
ed,’ he said, his breathing slightly ragged. ‘Sorry for the interruption, Doctor. There really is only one way to talk to those people. Everyone wants something for nothing these days.’ Then with a new urgency, he tapped his nose with his finger. ‘You know what your orders are from the World Government, but I want to discuss a couple of additional tasks I’d like you to carry out. Highly confidential, Doctor. Experimental at this stage. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mr Deighton,’ the doctor said, the colour slowing returning to her cheeks.
Deighton studied her face for a moment and then smiled again. He’d always found genetic biologists to be more than capable of putting things into perspective. His heart beat ever so slightly faster. ‘Your success is all I care about. Don’t let me down.’
‘I don’t plan to, Mr Deighton.’
‘Good. The World Government is keen to identify the Indigene DNA formula that will work best with humans. I’d like you to take it a step further. Let’s discuss the hosts that have been sent to your facility, shall we?’
Chapter 15
Susan Bouchard opened her eyes slowly, seeing very little in the molasses-heavy blackness that surrounded her. She waited for her eyes to adjust and eventually identified what looked to be splinters of blue light. The light reminded her of the underground bullet train stations on Earth, which used a similar shade of blue in an effort to calm the crowds that gathered there—the government’s cheap attempt at crowd control—but like so many other people, she hated the feel of the stations, and their singular use of the colour made the platforms seem dark and even more claustrophobic than they were.
She wasn’t sure where she was, but she certainly wasn’t in an underground station: she couldn’t hear the whine of the train riding the magnetic tracks or the hum of the crowd waiting for the train to arrive. What she could hear, when she turned her head in a particular direction, was an unfamiliar grinding noise far off in the distance.
She was not alone, that much was obvious: the smell of stale body odour was almost overpowering. Careful to breathe only through her mouth, her eyes roamed as far as they could see. She could just make out the silhouettes of other people—rows and rows of them—silently suspended in what looked like a huge warehouse. She considered calling out, but thought better of it—unsure she wanted the attention until she knew more about where she was. She sensed no other movement around her.
She tried to move her body, only to discover that she was restrained—at the wrists, the ankles and round her torso. A swell of panic rose from deep within. Where was she? Why was she tied up? Who were the others?
Joel! Susan remembered her colleague who had boarded the spacecraft with her. So was she on the passenger ship to Exilon 5? Where was Joel? She felt neither hungry nor thirsty. If this was stasis, she may have come out of it inadvertently. That would explain her confusion.
But where was Joel? She tried to speak, but her throat was too dry. She remembered the notice to transfer and her avatar’s eagerness to discuss its contents. Perhaps there was a hidden extra that she hadn’t been aware of and that she’d prevented her avatar from telling her about. Suddenly she regretted the way she’d left things.
She tried to recall the moment she’d arrived on the passenger ship, but could only remember the connecting flight on the spacecraft. As she’d sat beside Joel on the journey up to the ship, her inner voice had nagged at her—something hadn’t felt right. She should have paid attention to it.
She tried to piece together her last conscious moments. There must have been a clue—something said at the transfer facility or mentioned on board the spacecraft—about where they were going. Maybe the pilot had informed them of the change of plans mid-air.
What she could remember was that they had selected a seat in the middle of the spacecraft because of Joel’s motion sickness. The pilot then made a safety announcement. Seeing so many genetically similar people—blonde hair and blue eyes—had unsettled her long before she boarded the craft, but they were ordinary men and women heading for reassignment, weren’t they? The spacecraft had left the Toronto docking station, but even after it had settled into its flight path Joel still struggled with his motion sickness. Susan recalled how he had closed his eyes to stave off the worst of it. Then a strange odour had filled the craft—an underlying chemical odour lingering beneath a sweet sanitised smell.
Now here she was, and with no memories after that moment. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, she could make out more clearly what looked like stasis pods. These ones looked different—less inviting—than the ones she’d seen in the Light Box promotions for the transfer programme, where they’d depicted the journey to Exilon 5 as a comfortable trip in a bright and airy room. New edges appeared in the darkness, turning rough shapes into definitive ones.
‘Joel—’ she croaked. She coughed. ‘Joel, are you awake?’
She could hardly believe what she was seeing—rows of unconscious people, wearing identical jumpsuits, suspended in bucket seats above and below her, to the front and to either side; how many, she couldn’t tell. Well, at least we’re not naked, she thought, suddenly grateful for small mercies.
‘Joel, are you there?’ she whispered loudly.
The blue light was stronger now. Its purpose was to illuminate a number at the bottom of each bucket seat. A force field surrounded each seat—she could hear it crackling and feel the tingle of it on her body. Seeing the people trussed up in this way unnerved her. It was all wrong. She counted along her own row as far as she could see—at least forty people suspended on either side of her. What she couldn’t see was how long each row was or how densely the rows were packed. There might be thousands of people in there!
Susan studied the people in the row in front her, making out their faces now. If she hadn’t been restrained, she could easily have reached out and touched them. She scrutinised their faces closely, even though doing so sent shivers down her spine. Equally restrained in their seats, they were posed most unnaturally, almost as if they were dead.
Oh God, I hope they aren’t dead! Another wave of panic flooded her body, followed by a sudden bout of claustrophobia. She tried to shrink away from the others, but the restraints on her upper body only afforded her slight movement. Instead, she took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was a lab technician and trained to deal with death. She noticed, with relief, that their chests were rising and falling. She shifted her focus to the four colour-coded tubes that had been placed in each person’s left arm, including her own. If they were delivering nutrients, it would explain why she wasn’t hungry or thirsty. She wondered why she was the only one awake.
Slight movement in front of her broke her concentration. Her eyes darted to the face of the young man sitting opposite her. Had his eyes been open a second ago?
‘Joel?’ she called out, her voice gaining in confidence.
She heard a grunt close by and her eyes darted round. There was another grunt. She leaned forward.
‘Joel, is that you?’ Her eyes honed in on someone two seats up from her, in the same row.
‘Jesus, my head,’ he groaned.
‘Joel! I’m so happy to hear your voice!’
‘Susan? Is that you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Where are we?’
‘I don’t know. I’d like to say we’re on the passenger ship, but it doesn’t feel right.’
‘I can’t see properly yet,’ Joel said. ‘Owww, my head. Why does it feel like I’ve been slapped around the face?’
‘Perhaps you were being your usual charming self,’ Susan said, trying to make light of the situation. She felt someone else watching her.
‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Who else is awake?’
There was no answer. She studied the face of the young man opposite her; his eyes were still closed. ‘Excuse me—you in front of me. You were looking at me a second ago. I saw you. Who are you?’
Tentatively the young man opened one eye, then the other. His fear was ap
parent.
‘Don’t be afraid. Joel and I can’t hurt you.’ She wiggled her wrists in the restraints. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Robbie—Robbie O’Shea.’
‘How old are you, Robbie?’
‘Twenty-two.’
He was on the edge of tears; she could hear it in his voice. She watched him struggle pointlessly in his restraints. The more he twisted, the more the bucket seat swung around and the more he panicked.
‘Shush,’ Joel said suddenly.
Susan heard a whirring noise and saw liquid begin to travel down the translucent yellow tubes into the arms of the people around them. None seemed to be heading for her or Robbie’s arm; she wondered about Joel.
‘What the hell is going on? Where the hell are we?’ Robbie whispered.
‘I’ll tell you where we’re not,’ Joel piped up. ‘We’re not on the passenger ship. I got a tour of its stasis room a few years back—my cousin works there—and this is not what I saw.’
‘What was that noise we just heard?’ Robbie asked, tears not far away.
‘They’re topping up the sedative to keep the rest of them under,’ Susan said in the tone of voice she normally used with patients.
‘So what are all the tubes are for,’ Robbie asked.
‘Well, the red one is most likely for nutrients. The yellow one is a liquid sedative of some kind, the blue one is probably to keep us hydrated, and the green one—’ She leaned forward to look at Joel.
He shook his head. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’
‘Shouldn’t the nutrients feed directly into our stomachs?’ Robbie asked.
She heard Joel sigh heavily.
‘No need,’ Susan replied. ‘Our stomach acid breaks down food until it’s small enough for our bodies to absorb nutrients from it. The body then gets rid of what it doesn’t need. It’s likely that the compound they’re giving us has already been broken down so the blood stream can absorb it straight away. They use the same technique for stasis—it reduces body waste. The only thing you should be excreting right now is urine.’ Susan idly wondered about the nutritional makeup of the red tube’s contents.