Wasteland Rules: A New Dawn (The World After Book 3)

by J. G. Martin

  He needed to know more about the situation before he blindly flew into the heart of the Collective. With that decided Father scanned the area for the wreckage of the drones. His sensors picked out a large piece of the “cockpit” of one of them. Dropping down he plugged into the brain of the UAV and attempted to access the network it had run on.

  Surprisingly he was unable to gain anything more than low level surface access. The network was very different from the LINC and had a more traditional structure. It was using incredibly high level encryption that seemed to shift as he tried to break it. Whoever had designed it was certainly a genius and was possibly in control themselves. What made it interesting was that this kind of dynamic encryption would have taken years to develop and Father was unaware of any such project. That implied that the designer had been working on it in secret in preparation for such an occurrence.

  It angered him greatly that more of his children had been planning to betray him. He had provided a better world and a vision that gave them all purpose. Their betrayal hurt him deeply and he struggled with the emotions. He had tried to rise above such weaknesses of the human condition. He had thought that removing emotion from his decision making gave him better perspective and made him more fair minded. But maybe the emotions could be utilized as a strength to drive him back to the top of the mountain.

  Looking down he realized that in his anger he had crushed the drone remnant into powder. That was alright, he had what he needed. He knew the date and how long he had been out, over three months. That’s how long it had taken for his memory to be rebuilt and the android backup activated. Things had changed a lot in that short time. But it appeared that those changes had been coming all along. His demise had merely hastened them.

  He realized that he needed to build his own army before he could retake his empire. The new system was using control towers to maintain the network. All members of the Collective had to be within ten miles of a tower to be under their control. And an alert has just passed through the system that the tower near Boise, Idaho had failed.

  He would go there and take control of the forces there before they could come back within the reaches of the network. Using those forces he could launch attacks on other towers and begin to regain control. Father launched himself back into the air and rocketed towards Boise. A series of sonic booms followed as he broke the sound barrier in his haste. There was no time to waste; the king must regain his crown.

  Chapter 13

  September 4, 2029

  Near Lamar, Colorado

  The helicopter touched down in the center of the abandoned village that had been Rora’s home for many years. She and Derek jumped out, followed by three soldiers sent with them by Augie to provide security. Derek had been insulted that he needed protection, but Augie had pointed out that someone needed to guard the chopper. That had mollified Derek; so while they entered Rora’s old house the three soldiers had taken up positions in the village overlooking the chopper. They would keep an eye out while Derek and Rora investigated the lab Rora claimed was hidden under the village.

  It had been a long flight to get there. The helicopter had been rigged with extra fuel tanks to extend its range, but they had still been forced to stop and refuel once at a secret Society supply cache. Rora had asked Augie about the supply cache’s existence and if there were others, but he remained as close lipped as always. She had spent the previous few months trying to discover as much about the Society as possible.

  In the time it had taken them to discover Derek’s location, she had learned many things about the Society. Not all of them were good. Many of the lower level people trusted her enough to give her small pieces of information, but nothing big. And the leadership was very good at being secretive. They had been forced to be to survive this long. So she still didn’t really know their true nature and what their real agenda was.

  During the flight, Derek had asked her what had happened during the three months he was out. She had told him pretty much everything, but it wasn’t much. She had spent much of the time working out and training with the soldiers at NASA. Being without Derek had made her realize that even though she had handled herself well, she needed to be even better and tougher. She wasn’t always going to have him to lean on.

  As for world events, she didn’t know too much. But she had heard that Augie had made contact with some of their agents around the world and that the rest of the world was in bad shape. Ethnic cleansing in Europe, tribal warfare in Africa, and cannibalism in South America. Some places had governments in control, like the Neo-Soviet Empire that ruled parts of Eastern Europe and the remnants of Russia. But most of it was lawless and out of control.

  They exited the chopper and Rora led the way as she and Derek entered the house. She gave a brief sigh as she moved through the house. A picture of her father reminded her of how life had been before the slavers had attacked and captured them. The simple life she had led before they had killed her father during the rescue. Before Derek had snatched her up and led her on a wild ride across the country and into space. Derek gave her space as she stood for a moment considering a photo of her playing with her father.

  She shook her head and moved on. That life was gone, and had been replaced with a new one; one with a greater purpose. That needed to be her focus now, she needed to let go of any hold her former life had on her to see her quest succeed. It was what she had been born to do. It was in her DNA.

  She walked into the house’s storage room, a small room with no windows. Derek watched in amazement as the floor slid open to reveal a set of stairs leading downward. He had assumed that the house had been built on a slab because there was no stairwell leading to basement. In fact, the lab had been constructed first and then the houses built over it. The contractors her father and his partners used had worked for the government for years building black sites and were very good at keeping quiet. According to her father, they had all perished during the Collapse and the Aftermath. All knowledge of the hidden lab had died with them leaving it a perfect place to hide.

  Unfortunately, the slaver attack had taken them all by surprise and they had been unable to hide in the lab. Standard protocol was to only hide there if no one knew you were in the house in the first place. The logic being that someone who was there and then not there would prompt an intensive search of the house and the secret entrance would probably be located. To that end, the entrances went into lockdown for a period of twelve hours when an alert was sounded. Her father had placed more value in the security of the lab and its contents than their lives. That had proved fatal for everyone but her.

  “That is incredible.” Derek said as the floor slid open. “I would never have even thought to look for it.”

  “The lab was built using the utmost secrecy and caution.” Rora told him. “It went into lockdown during the attack but it’s been so long the lockout ended.”

  “How did you open it, I didn’t see you do anything?” Derek asked with curiosity.

  “It detected my presence, and the system recognized me so it opened the entrance. There is a handprint and eyeball scanner below at the actual door. There are also sensors that read a person’s vitals, like heart rate, and if the system determines the person is under duress it will not open the door.” Rora informed him. “The doors are made of tungsten and are completely impenetrable. The whole lab is encased in thirty five feet of reinforced concrete, so even if you dug down you would have extreme difficulty getting in.”

  “Pretty sophisticated and intense security. What is inside that is so valuable?”

  “My father’s work. He believed his project would save the entire world. The work itself was deemed greater than any collection of human lives. As you saw, he was prepared to die for it.” Rora said sadly.

  “And all the other villagers were part of it?”

  “Yes, that’s why they all fought so we could escape. They wanted to make sure someone survived to carry on their work.”

  “That’s some
serious commitment right there. Not many people are willing to die for something greater than themselves.” Derek pointed out. “But why didn’t you all just hide in the lab when the slavers came?”

  “They caught us by surprise and we couldn’t get into the lab before the attack started. The lab locked down and then we couldn’t get in and we were forced to fight.” Rora explained.

  “Didn’t you have sensors to detect incoming threats?” Derek asked. “I would have assumed that was part of the security.”

  “It was, but the sensors were offline at the time of the attack. I have no idea why.” Rora replied.

  “Could it have been sabotage?”

  “It’s possible, but all the partners were longtime friends of my father’s and were all very committed. So I find that hard to believe.” Rora answered slowly.

  “Was anyone not captured by the slavers?” Derek pressed.

  “No, everyone was there.”

  “Huh.” Derek said, mystified. “I suppose it could have been a coincidence.”

  “Let’s not focus on the past. We need to find my father’s notes and where he hid the vault.” Rora said with determination.

  “I’m with you.” Derek agreed.

  Rora descended the stairs and faced the scanners at the bottom. They scanned her eyes and her handprint and presumably her vitals. Everything must have checked out because the door slid open with a hiss revealing a large open room beyond. She entered and Derek followed, the door sliding shut behind him. Lights came on as they entered, demonstrating that the power was still working. It should be, her father had used a prototype of a fusion reactor to provide the power. Everything looked undisturbed from the day they had been taken.

  The lab was split in several sections, all of which were connected to the main room. The entrances from all of the houses led into the main room as well. It was the common area for all of the scientists and technicians and housed generic work stations, shared equipment, and a break area. The offices for each of the scientists were along one wall and had glass walls allowing them look out into the common area. There were four other sections focused on various parts of the research, including a genetics lab with sequencers and cold storage.

  He looked around in awe as she moved to her father’s office. This was nothing new to her; she had grown up amongst the computers and scientific equipment. Rora went to her father’s work station and activated it as Derek slowly roamed the lab poking his nose in everything. She easily guessed his password and pin, her name and her birthday. Her father might have been a genius, but he wasn’t particularly imaginative. She was happy to see that all of his files were intact. There had been a possibility that part of the lockdown protocol had been to wipe the servers.

  She downloaded the files she needed to a flash drive and quickly scanned the remaining files for anything of interest. She was aware of everything her father and his partners had been working on, but it was possible they had pet projects that could be of use. Nothing much caught her eye until she saw a file of her father’s labeled “For Rora In Case of Death”. It looked like a video file and it was dated over a year prior to his death.

  “Derek!” She called. “I found something, come look.”

  “What is it?” he asked as he entered the office.

  “A video file my father left for me.”

  She double clicked on the file and a video popped up onto the monitor. Her father appeared; he was sitting at this work station based on the angle and the background. She could see the others moving around through his glass wall, but couldn’t hear them since the office door was shut. He looked tired, but he had always looked that way; he had worked too hard. The project had become his life.

  “Rora, if you are seeing this then I am either dead or you have hacked into my system.” Her father began. “If I’m not dead, then stop watching now.”

  There was a pause as he waited for her to possibly stop watching. “If you are still watching then I am dead. No need to mourn me, I was living on borrowed time and I am grateful for all the time I did get to spend with you.” He continued. “If I am dead then there is little time to waste. I need to tell you a few things that I kept from you and then you will need to complete my work. I was less than honest with you about a few things. For that I apologize, but I wanted you to have as normal an adolescence as possible…You are not my true biological daughter. You are a genetically engineered life form that used some of my DNA as the blueprint.”

  There was another pause as he waited for that to sink in. “That explains a lot.” Derek murmured.

  Rora ignored that and focused on the screen. Her father was continuing to speak to her. “You are the first one we could get to live beyond infancy. I’m not sure what the flaw in the others was, but you somehow survived. We stopped making more because of the toll their deaths was taking on us emotionally. You were engineered to be ‘perfect’; you will not get sick and you are not allergic to anything. Theoretically your body will be almost unaffected by the effects of aging. You are not immortal, but we tried to remove all the imperfections in your DNA. You are possibly the next step in human evolution. But don’t let that go to your head. You are also the shepherd to guide the rest of humanity into a new age. Your full name, Aurora, means ‘New Dawn’ in Greek. You must recover the ark and begin the rebirth of the world. Everything you need is in a vault at the Maximus Casino in Las Vegas. Good luck. I’m counting on you to usher in a new dawn for the Earth.”

  With that the video went blank for a second before flashing up a series of alphanumeric characters on the screen. They were gone in less than a second and then the file erased itself. As soon as the file was deleted, the system began to shut down. The servers were methodically erased and they heard a sizzling noise from the server room as the monitor went dark.

  “That’s it?” Derek asked. “That was pretty cryptic.”

  “I downloaded some files before we watched the video.” Rora told him. “I have what we were looking for. We need to go to Vegas.”

  “How about a little more detail than that for us non perfect people?” Derek joked.

  Rora smiled. “Okay, I’ll go slow so you can keep up.” She shot back. “My father worked on Project Noah for the government prior to the Collapse. It involved a creation of an ark to provide a resource for the recreation of all plant and animal life in case of an apocalyptic event.”

  “An ark? Like in the Bible?” Derek asked in confusion.

  “No, A..R..K. It stands for Agricultural Recovery Keeper.” Rora explained. “The government felt that the current Doomsday vaults were not secure enough, and that turned out to be true, so they wanted something more advanced and more secure. Genetic samples of every animal and plant were stored in a more secure and remote location. Fake sites were set up all over the country to confuse anyone who might search for it. Only a handful of people were even aware of the project. All of them except my father are believed to have been killed during the Collapse and the Aftermath, leaving my father as the only person aware of its location.”

  “Which is where exactly?”

  “I don’t know. The answers are in the casino’s vault. I assume my father kept the information separate for security reasons. He was very paranoid that the Collective or the U.S.T.G. would get a hold of the ARK. The data I downloaded was reference material on how to use the genetic samples to recreate life; but it didn’t contain any details on the project.”

  “What about them?” Derek asked pointing to a group picture on the desk in the office next to an old phonograph machine.

  “As far as I know, none of them were involved in Project Noah, and I doubt my father would have told them about it.”

  “Wait a minute…” Derek said as he grabbed the photo for a closer look. “Is there a magnifying glass in here?”

  Rora dug one out of the desk and handed it to Derek. It was a small but powerful electronic magnifying glass capable of enhancing the view by several orders of magnitude. She watched as he pu
t the picture down and used the glass to focus in on one small spot.

  “I’ll be damned, notice anything familiar?” He asked as he moved over so she could look.

  They were all familiar to her since she had lived with them for years, but Rora took a look anyway. What she saw caught her off guard. Doctor Jenson was turned slightly sideways in the picture and his neck was exposed. And right there, as clear as day, was a very familiar mole.

  “One of your father’s partners was a Faceless.” Derek stated in disbelief. “These guys are everywhere.”

  Before Rora could respond, Derek’s pocket began ringing. They both looked down at his pocket in confusion. The ringing continued, and Derek pulled the phone that the Voice had provided him out. After returning to NASA, he had recovered all of his gear including the phone. With the Voice dead, it hadn’t had any value beyond that of a GPS device. Although it was possible that cell service could be restored in the future. Really he had kept it out of nostalgia; something to remember the man who had sacrificed himself so they could escape the station.

  Holding up the phone, they could both see that the caller ID was displaying the familiar “Voice”. Derek and Rora shared a look before she gestured for him to answer it. Derek tapped the answer button and put it on speaker.

  “Hello?” He asked tentatively.

  “Hello Major.” The Voice’s smooth voice spoke through the speaker.

  “Bob?” Derek asked in amazement, his jaw hanging open.

  “I think I prefer the Voice.” Bob answered.

  “But you stayed on the station. You must have died when it burned up on re-entry.” Derek said in confusion.

  “You are correct. My body did die on the station.” The Voice answered.

  “You were the second transmission.” Rora said excitedly.