The Eden Project (Books One & Two)

by DP Fitzsimons

  “Molly, is that you?” Zeke said, “It’s okay now. Come with us.”

  When Zeke stepped forward, Molly saw the light hit his long knife. She darted away, back into the corridor. Zeke and Tuna exchanged a confused look as the door slid shut.

  Zeke burst through the door after her with Tuna trailing behind. Her speed was impressive considering her condition, but she was no match for Zeke who accelerated past her and cut off her path.

  Molly stopped and faced Zeke again. She breathed heavily once and snapped her head around to see Tuna standing ten feet behind her. She had nowhere to go. She stood still and made her calculations.

  “We found you,” Zeke assured her. “We can protect you, Molly.”

  Tuna knew this wasn’t true even if Zeke still believed it was. She had been exposed. Zeke would come to realize she would be a risk to everyone. The best they could do for her would be to put her in a suit and hide her somewhere. Alone. They could bring her food and water, but not even a miracle would prevent her from turning. She had been exposed too long.

  Zeke put his knife away and reached his hand out to her. “We need to get out of this corridor. Okay?”

  Molly reached her left hand out to him, but her right hand moved slowly behind her back to an object tied to the strings of her gown. Tuna squinted in the dim emergency light to make out what her right hand was doing.

  Zeke wrapped his hand around Molly’s small left hand. It felt like ice. She leapt up and onto him before his next heartbeat. He stepped back startled and tripped. His helmet banged against the hard floor as he landed on his back. Molly slid the narrow knife from her gown and swung it up high above his chest. He saw the dried blood around her mouth and smelled the stench of her infected gums.

  Her arm accelerated down toward his chest as quick as a guillotine.

  Tuna had made out the knife just before she pulled it. He flew through the air and got both his hands on her arm before the knife penetrated Zeke’s suit. Tuna’s momentum caused him to bang onto the floor and roll away. Her arm slipped out of his grasp. He watched on in horror as the girlish beast lifted the knife again and readied to bury it into Zeke’s pulsing, pure-blooded chest.

  The moment Molly’s knife began its rapid descent, Zeke buried his long knife in her small forehead. Before she fell off of him, he grabbed her quickly by the shoulders. He wanted to lay the small girl gently on the floor.

  Tuna rose to his feet. Zeke squatted down next to Molly with a heavy heart. He slowly removed his blade from her skull.

  * * *

  “THE BEASTS HAVE NO taste for infected blood,” Ethan explained. “Once infected, the itch and the hunger for pure blood becomes unbearable, none of us could deny the insatiable need. If infected, we would naturally become either a solo hunter or one among a horde.”

  “What about Lexi?” Jax asked. “Do we know her fate?”

  Ethan glanced over his shoulder to check on Trinh. She sat with her back to them playing a mindless game on her scrollpad. Despite the heat, Gen wrapped herself in a blanket waiting for Ethan to answer Jax’s question.

  “We have not seen her in two days,” Ethan finally said. “That was before I decided to bring us here to the reactor.”

  “So she could be alive?” Gen said.

  “Two days is a long time out there,” Ethan said. “We assume no one is alive, at least with pure blood, except those of us here.”

  “So they could have turned her?” Jax asked.

  “They do not turn people, Jax. They eat them,” Ethan explained impatiently. “The air can turn you if it carries enough of the virus. The fastest way is a bite or scratch you pick up in battle with them. You win the battle. You kill the beast, but the virus defeats you later.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ethan,” Jax said.

  “But could she be turned? You said some kids were among them now,” Gen said.

  “We have never seen her with them.” Ethan said dismissing the idea.

  “How can you see them?” Jax wondered.

  “Tuna,” Ethan said. “He hacked into the camera system and enabled its infrared capabilities.”

  “That would give us the tactical advantage,” Jax said excitedly. “We can easily defeat them if we know where they are and they don’t see us coming.”

  “That would have been true, if we hadn’t found out it enabled infrared for the beasts as well. We no longer risk using it.”

  “What kids have you seen with them?” Gen wanted to know.

  A sudden iciness came over Ethan. Trinh stopped playing her game behind them and lifted her head.

  “We never mention their names,” Ethan said quietly.

  “Why not?” Gen asked.

  The unspoken answer began to creep into Gen’s mind.

  Ethan hung his head not wanting to say the word.

  Jax figured it out and said what no one else would, “Because we’re going to have to kill them.”

  Trinh ran past them suddenly to the big pipe. Gen watched as Ethan helped Jax to his feet and they made their way over to welcome Zeke and Tuna back. Gen could not stand. She felt paralyzed, worried that only one would return.

  Tuna climbed in head first. Jax and Ethan helped him down onto his feet. Trinh grabbed the rope tied to Tuna’s foot. She used both hands to reel in the rope from the pipe. Bottle after bottle of water suddenly appeared from the pipe fastened to the rope.

  Zeke did not appear and when Tuna took off his helmet there was nothing but remorse on his face. Gen thought she would throw up until Zeke’s helmet emerged from the pipe. She jumped to her feet, ran over and hugged Zeke as his feet hit the ground.

  “Hey,” Tuna said. “What am I? Chopped liver?”

  Gen turned to her dear friend, Tuna, and gave him a hug.

  Trinh and Ethan reeled in Zeke’s rope. Their faces lit up when they began to see brick after brick of packaged nutrients.

  “You did good out there today, boys,” Ethan said.

  Zeke pulled off his helmet and marched off into the shadows. He was anything but pleased. Gen started to follow him, but Tuna quickly reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Not now, Gen,” Tuna said. “He’s going to need some time.”

  * * *

  TUNA WAS HIMSELF AGAIN. Gen had noticed it right away. Despite all that had befallen them, despite how little hope they now held, his mind was on fire with ideas and hope. This was vintage Tuna, the Tuna before he ever heard the odd mutterings of the DJ outside the dome.

  They gathered in a circle to share a meal. A scrumptious feast of packaged nutrients and water. Their party was short one person. Zeke remained in isolation, working his scrollpad in the distant shadows.

  “The infected are piloting our ship?” Jax asked.

  “The commander of their ship is among them,” Tuna said. “We believe they were headed back to Earth when they spotted us on their long-range mapping.”

  “They played dead,” Trinh said.

  “So now they’re traveling back to Earth on this ship,” Tuna said.

  “We have no choice but to hunt them,” Zeke said as he sat down and picked up a nutrient bar. “If they make it to Earth, we’d become infected there anyway. There would be no dome to protect us.”

  “The reactor is our dome now,” Ethan said.

  “They will find us here,” Tuna said. “The infection sharpens their senses. Sooner or later, they will be coming down that pipe.”

  The idea of the beasts crawling through the pipe chilled everyone to the bone. The last six survivors of the Eden Sphere 1 chewed on their tasteless nutrients silently searching for a way out of the nightmare.

  “It can be done,” Tuna urged. “We can fight them.”

  “We only have two guns,” Zeke said. “They have a hundred.”

  Gen stood up and walked away. All this was too much too soon. She had not been awake long enough. Trinh followed after her.

  “We can find more guns, right?” Jax said.

  Tuna, Ethan and Zeke e
xchanged mournful glances.

  “After the attack in the gymnasium,” Ethan began, “they were waiting for us in weapons storage.”

  The boys hung their heads. Jax tried to understand.

  “We lost three kids there,” Tuna remembered. “It was an ambush. The beasts are no longer human. They become predators. They track. They set traps.”

  “We’re alive because we ran,” Zeke confessed. “Cade and Luke and little Ren. They fought until their last breaths. We ran.”

  Tuna could see that Zeke’s gloomy confession worried Jax. “They were the first in,” Tuna said. “They fought so we could run. That’s what we did. We ran and we survived.”

  “Is that not the first word of the Protocol?” Gen said, returning from the shadows. Zeke lifted his eyes to meet Gen’s eyes. He saw a hope there that his soul needed.

  “It’s the first sentence, actually,” Tuna said.

  “Yeah,” Trinh added. “It’s a one word sentence.”

  Jax began to understand. A suffocating doom lifted from his heart. They all knew the first word of the Protocol. They had known it since they were toddlers inside the dome.

  “Survive.”

  -12-

  Artie was not quick to laugh. Quite the opposite. Since they were young, the kids of the Eden Project considered making Artie laugh a Herculean task on par with beating Zeke in a foot race or besting Adam in a flight simulation.

  The day they slowed down from their first light-speed propulsion run, Artie checked the systems and declared the two-month push a success. When he said they could schedule the next push for fourteen weeks at five times the speed of light, Adam grinned like this sinister clown that Artie had seen recently in a legacy film about killer clowns.

  The film was supposed to be a horror film, but clowns always made Artie smile, sinister or not, and so when Adam threw his fist in the air to celebrate and said, “Hot damn, Artie!” it was too much.

  Artie broke out in hysterics.

  Sylvia entered to celebrate the end of the push, but immediately spotted Artie doubled over and ran to his aid. “Artie boy, are you okay? Did you swallow something? Are you choking?”

  Artie raised his head to stare red-faced at Sylvia and then turned to Adam to see if his ears had heard her correctly. He had. Now both Artie and Adam burst out laughing.

  “He’s laughing,” Adam spat out barely able to speak.

  When Artie looked up to Sylvia again all he could see was her huge smile. Unfortunate words suddenly popped into his head, Bride of Sinister Clown. He fell to the ground laughing. Adam tried to speak again, but the words drowned away in his choking laughter.

  “Okay, guys,” Sylvia said. “Try not to hurt yourselves. I just came by to congratulate you on the end of the push.”

  Maya and Max walked into flight deck. They were more confused than concerned about what was happening to Artie. The last thing they would have considered was a giggle attack. Artie never giggled.

  When the other kids started to file in and share in the completion of the first light-speed push in human history, Artie managed to compose himself and climb back onto his feet.

  Sylvia pushed Adam roughly and then leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Nice work, you big goof ball.”

  Adam calmed himself. Maya approached and gave him a hug.

  Both shifts of the ES3 were filling flight deck to its fullest. The second shift had woken that week from their six-month slumber on cryo deck. Nadia stood among them holding onto baby Eli, making faces and talking baby talk to the chubby little boy.

  Leo entered pushing a cart carrying a huge, white-frosted cake. On top of the cake was a small figure someone had crafted together wearing a space helmet. The figure was from an old-time animated movie they had all seen a dozen times.

  Adam put his arm on Sylvia’s back as Nadia and the cake approached. All the kids gathered around. They were star travelers and they traveled at the speed of light. All quieted down and waited for Adam to say something.

  He decided to read the blue frosting, “To infinity and beyond!”

  Everyone loved it. They began to yell it out as hugs and pats on the back abounded, “To infinity and beyond!”

  Maya picked up a knife from the cart and handed it to Adam. “Today we have cake,” Maya said, “but tomorrow, Commander, you must announce the new pairings for those without intended mates.”

  “You never stop, do you?” Adam said, shaking his head.

  Adam cut the cake into small squares and set the squares onto plates held by Sylvia and Maya who passed them out one-by-one to the exuberant crew of the Eden Sphere 3.

  When Nadia approached carrying Eli, Adam scooped up some creamy frosting with a finger and wiped some on the tip of Eli’s little button nose.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME MAX checked the new intended mate assignments posted on crew deck, Leo’s face had told him everything. Leo had won. Nadia would be Leo’s intended.

  Max slid his finger down the list and found his name. He closed his eyes dreading the moment in which he would read the name of his new intended. He had done the math the night before and feared the worst. If Nadia and Leo were mated, that would leave him with, at best, a ten-year-old.

  When he opened his eyes, his heart imploded. Freezing and burning sensations attacked his neck, shoulders and legs. Confusion overran all of his senses the moment he saw those letters. M-A-Y-A.

  Max reached out to use the wall to steady himself. Words began to race through his disorientated mind. Woman. Baby. Old. Hot. Scary. Eventually he could think in sentences. He walked away from the postings and hoped no one would notice the fear and exhilaration battling for his blood. There must be some mistake.

  Maya was sixteen and she was already a mother. Max had just turned twelve. Maya had a woman’s body and Max hadn’t even reached five-feet tall. She really had a woman’s body, Max thought. Like really really. She was hot as hell, he thought.

  None of those attributes made up for the undeniable fact that she was scary. She could look at a kid with a ferocity that made them stand up straight and zip their lips. Maya was an original eight member. She would only ever want Ozzie. She would not be happy to be mated with anyone, especially a barely twelve-year old and especially not him.

  “Dude,” Leo said, “I saw the board.”

  Max considered Leo’s combination of envy and relief. He could only nod back.

  Leo chuckled. “I mean, what are you going to do?”

  A single thought formed in Max’s head. “Hide,” he said.

  * * *

  ARTIE AVOIDED THE CHAOS of crew deck and the new intended assignments by hiding out down in the transport dock on the ES3 Terra Rover. No one would look for him in there. He walked through the shuttle and inventoried supplies making checkmarks on a clipboard.

  He opened a series of cupboards and counted out twenty huge sacks labeled FLOUR. Artie would never let his commander know but he dreamed of a day when they would find a new world. There would be new creatures there. He would be able to name many of the species and study them. He would chronicle them for the ages.

  The Terra Rover would never leave the belly of the ES3 unless they one day discovered an exoplanet with livable temperatures and radiation levels. That made the Rover the most mystical place in the entire Eden Sphere to Artie.

  The large shuttle craft would be the gateway to a new world, a magic carpet ride that would take them down through the atmosphere and onto the surface of New Earth or Eden or whatever they decided to call the wild, untamed exoplanet where they would begin to build a new human civilization that would last 100,000 years.

  “That would make a helluva lot of tortillas,” Adam said, startling Artie who was closing the last of the cupboards.

  “Hey, Commander,” Artie said, “I didn’t expect to see anyone in here.”

  “No, I wouldn’t expect that you did.” Adam walked through and opened the cold storage cabinets. “It’s completely stocked.”

  “I
took the liberty of keeping the Rover fully equipped,” Artie said.

  “It could be eons before we find a compatible planet,” Adam reminded him.

  “These grains are designed for longevity. Inside these units they can last nearly two years,” Artie opened more cupboards and started making checkmarks. “I’ll have them rotated out if need be to the commissary long before they expire.”

  Adam’s scrollpad rang in its holster. He pulled it out to check the screen. He watched the call symbol on his screen, but did not answer. He waited until the screen turned black and the ringing stopped.

  “Okay, kid,” Adam said, turning his attention back to Artie. “But you can never pretend again that you are not excited to reach Epsilon Eridani. Judging from all of this, you’re kind of obsessed.”

  “At least the obsessed man is clear of purpose,” Artie said.

  Adam smiled. “That’s like a famous line, isn’t it?”

  “Reginald Sistus. Twenty-second century physicist from his biography.”

  “The biography of a physicist?” Adam said. “So it’s not that famous.”

  “Not at all,” Artie said. “Anyway, I’m not obsessed. I’m always prepared. I can’t sleep unless everything is in its place.”

  “Then you should know who your intended will be.”

  Artie stopped in his tracks. He waited for Adam to finish.

  “Hanna,” Adam said.

  Artie’s eyes moved about trying to remember any encounter with the girl. “Hanna 82. She works in the gardens.”

  “She does,” Adam concurred. “She will be ten in two months.”

  “It’s a good match,” Artie said analytically without passion.

  “I think it will be. She is a couple years younger,” Adam explained, “but she is quiet and has a very high intelligence.”

  “What do I do?” Artie asked.

  “Make a formal introduction,” Adam said as he took a seat and put his feet up. “Tell her you are honored to be her intended and you will be forever at her service.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You won’t begin your formal dates until she turns fourteen. Until then just be quick to smile when you see her. Girls need that.”