"I can't wait until it’s done,” Rachel said with great excitement. "They're gonna have new weapons and VR training dummies, it's so exciting!"
"Well, who do you think is responsible for salvaging and building all your new toys?” I reply with a facetious sense of superiority.
"Haha very funny but who do you think protects the camp while you work on your little science projects?"
"Nevermind, I shouldn't have brought it up; you know no one wins these arguments.”
“Said the person who was losing the argument.”
I couldn’t help but smile. But it quickly faded when I was overcome with a sudden sense of dread. The soldiers seemed distracted, officers barked orders in the distance, a hover tank floated by, and drones hummed overhead. Despite all the activity, the atmosphere grew extremely quiet and calm, and the dominating sound was that of my heartbeat. I looked ahead and saw the Tunnel with the sinking feeling that someone, or something, was watching me.
I was jolted back into reality when Rachel snapped her fingers. “Hey, dummy, wake up!”
“You’re up next,” she said, looking somewhat concerned. “Are you OK?”
I blinked and re-calibrated to reality. “Yeah, sorry I just…I just had a weird feeling.”
I was given my injection gun and headed to the line of a few dozen people waiting for their “salvation”. I approached my first patient and asked him to roll up his sleeve. I then applied some disinfectant and administered the injection of dark purple liquid. With a nod and a patch, he was on his way. This continued for about the next half-hour. On my way, I met Aaron Forrester, another Neogen that I’d grown up with in our Sanctuary.
“Hello, friend,” he said.
“Hey,” I replied. “You almost done?”
“Almost,” he said, looking around more often that usual.
His power was superhuman vision. He could see perfectly, whether he was in total darkness or facing a blinding light. He had even begun to see organic material, living things, through solid objects. He was always seeing more than the rest of us, but today he seemed especially alert.
We made plans to meet later, and went our separate ways. I joined Rachel in the post-vaccination tent, but that’s when that feeling suddenly came rushing back and I fell to my knees.
Rachel ran over to see if I was OK. I looked up and saw a military car driving in our direction. Then I turned to the Tunnel, and repeated my earlier sentiment.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
The car rushing toward us was being driven by a very young officer I had never seen before. She reached for something in the passenger seat and held it up to the windshield. I realized what she was holding only a second before I saw the flash and heard the shot. The next few moments were a blur. Scrambling to safety, I heard an echoing clang and saw smoke erupt from a canister that landed several feet ahead of me.
“Hey, this way!” I heard a voice beckon.
I turned to it and saw Aaron heading towards the Tunnel. He was signaling me to follow him onto the platform. I was hesitant but Rachel helped me up, pushed me forward, and then I ran.
Gunfire erupted among the soldiers, and I couldn’t tell who was shooting at who. Amidst the chaos, Aaron was firing his pistol behind him, his dark coat fluttering violently in the wind. Super-vision allowed him to land a fair number of shots. However, in this situation, and given that Neogens only had a remedial grasp of their powers, Aaron could only provide suppressing fire as we made our escape.
A car suddenly emerged from the smoke and was now racing toward us. I ducked as I ran to avoid the gunfire and by some miracle I wasn’t hit. Rachel and Aaron were both ahead of me now; we were about half-way across the platform and the car was pursuing us on the tracks that led into the tunnel. The gunfire was deafening, but I was startled by the ear-shattering sound of some kind of explosive. This forced Aaron to drop his bag, and the contents to scatter all over the platform. Still running at full speed, I saw a loaded magazine, a pistol, some batteries, and a smoke grenade.
At first, the only thing on my mind was catching up to my friends and getting out of this alive. But then, I forced myself to calm down and steady my breathing, in spite of the situation. I resolved to recover the items and still get out alive. I knew I wouldn’t have long before my concentration broke and I’d have to keep running, so I rehearsed my exact moves as I got closer and closer. Then, when I was only a couple feet away, I slowed time and stooped down to grab the items. Seconds had begun to feel like minutes, and the thundering gunfire died down to a dull roar. I leaned down and began to pick up the scattered bullets, my fingers shaky and my breathing heavy. I stuffed the magazine and grenade into the bag, slung it over my shoulder and kept the pistol in my hand. I then let go of time as I once again began to run.
Reality came rushing back, and I stumbled out of shock at the full intensity of the gunfire. Finding myself falling forward, I used all my focus on putting one foot after another, eventually regaining balance. I saw my friends beckon me to get under cover behind a large statue, several yards away from the entrance of the Tunnel. Ducking down next to them, I caught my breath and looked back to see that the car had stopped its chase.
“You got the bag!” Aaron seemed quite surprised.
Our hunters were now walking towards us, guns drawn.
“Hello!” I heard a girl call out. I risked a quick glance at her face, and recognized her as the one who fired the first shot from the car. “You can call me Meredith, and this - “
“Why do we have to be so diplomatic?” it was a girl I didn’t recognize; she seemed both excited and annoyed at the same time.
“How about you learn to be patient?” Meredith answered.
“Godammit, if I don’t kill something in the next five seconds I might go insane!” I jumped when her last word produced a deafening boom, followed by a rush of wind. I didn’t know Meredith’s power, but the other girl seemed to have some kind of kinetic force in her voice.
“You’ll have to excuse my sister. What do you say we talk somewhere a little less…creepy.” With those words I glanced at the Tunnel ahead.
“Thran, we have to go in there,” Aaron said, taking out the smoke grenade.
The moment he finished the sentence, two shots were fired, hitting the statue and forcing us to scramble further behind cover.
“Margot are you out of your goddamn mind?”
“What?”
Rachel and I exchanged glances. I don’t know what concerned me more; the fact that her eyes reflected excitement rather than fear, or that I myself was beginning to feel the same way. I turned to Aaron, and he gave me a nod. Now the only problem was crossing those few feet without getting shot.
“Look, I haven’t got all day,” Meredith said, her voice turning from calm to impatient.
Just then, shots rang out from behind our attackers. Two men, my father and another soldier, were firing at them amidst the firefight that had erupted back in the streets of Sanctuary. Meredith and her sister both turned, and Aaron took this chance to throw the grenade and fire a few shots at our attackers. They were caught off guard and rushed behind cover.
“Go now!” Aaron shouted.
I lost sight of both my father and our attackers behind a haze of smoke of muzzle flash. The three of us then bolted towards the darkness, trusting the veil of smoke to mask our escape. The arc of the Tunnel towered over us as we entered. Suddenly, an earsplitting shout came from the platform, and the cloud of smoke was instantly dissipated by the force of the sound. I turned back one last time to see two figures standing in the opening. One stood with her hand on her hip, head tilted to the side. The other, presumably Meredith, took on a more firm pose. She then raised her hands, and the ground began to shift as fragments of concrete fell from above.
“Back away!” Aaron yelled.
We ran deeper into the dark as the earthquake intensified. A few moments later I heard a loud crash of rocks and metal. Among the collisions, I he
ard a booming female voice shout the word “Bye!”
What little outside light penetrated the void before me was quickly snuffed out as the entrance caved in.
Chapter 2
Complete darkness is a strange thing. With one sense gone, the other four become stronger to compensate. I could hear our individual footsteps. Rachel’s were quiet and soft, while Aaron’s sent rumbling echoes through the tunnel. The air was hot and moist, and the smell was almost unbearable. It was as if someone, or something, had died and was left to rot. Worst of all were the sounds. I heard echoes and noises that did not correlate with our footsteps, and had the sinking feeling that we were not alone.
“Are we gonna talk about what happened back there?” I asked nervously.
“We were attacked,” Aaron said.
“Did you know it was going to happen?”
“We had suspicions. I’ll explain later, it’s not entirely safe here.”
“Well I can’t see a thing, but I guess I’ll take your word on that.”
“You’re not missing much anyway,” Aaron said. “This place is disgusting. There are corpses piled up against the walls and rats all over the place.”
I took a deep, wavering breath. “Aaron, have you ever heard of the phrase, ‘ignorance is bliss?’”
“I have, friend.”
“Well, I could’ve lived without that description.”
“Don’t worry, if anything attacks, I’ll see it coming so at least we won’t be surprised when it kills us,” he said facetiously.
I chuckled, but I couldn’t stop worrying. I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents. Were they alright? Did they stop the people that invaded Sanctuary? Or did they at least get out of the city? For now, I just walked through the Tunnel to an uncertain destination, keeping my hopes up but expectations realistic. I tried not to think about the situation, and I instead found myself reminiscing of my childhood; of a time I felt, in a loose definition, safe.
When I was little, I used to see the other kids go running every morning, complete obstacle courses, play sports, and other such athletics. One day, they found something while out searching for resources and the Parents recognized it as a football, used for a game of the same name. The kids deemed the rules too verbose. Given that they were training to be fighters, they had very little patience so they simplified the game. Each team gets a turn and assigns a runner. The runner starts at one end of the field, a large expanse near the border of the Sanctuary, and must somehow get the football to the other side of the field. The ball can be passed along the way, and the team defends the runner by knocking down any opponents. If the ball is intercepted or the carrier is knocked down, the team’s turn ends. I personally did not enjoy getting pushed around and covered in mud, and opted to spectate instead.
I was also fascinated with technology, and spent much of my time tinkering with various machinery salvaged from scouting missions. At a very young age, I built a device from spare parts that could harness the power of the sun to generate energy. This is also when I found out that solar power was already being used to sustain the Sanctuary. However, my parents were delighted nonetheless.
My greatest breakthrough was when I was 16. I created a radar device that flew into the sky, scanned everything in a set radius, and returned with analyzed data about anything of interest. This included food, water, electrical parts, and even signs of life. It was a prototype of course, but our top engineers were able to fix some bugs, make it more durable, and optimize it for distribution to scavenging parties. Since then, our supplies have increased dramatically.
After what seemed like hours of walking, I had calmed down a bit and was ready to ask for some answers.
“Aaron, where are we going?”
“It’s a Sanctuary," he replied. “I’ve been corresponding with a friend there ever since comms went down a few years back.”
“How did you correspond if the comms were, in fact, down?” Rachel asked.
“It’s her power,” Aaron explained. “I don’t know how it works exactly, but she’s basically an advanced mind-reader.”
“So she sends you her thoughts then reads what you have to say in response?” I was both impressed and confused.
“But how is that even possible when you live so far apart?” Rachel was also curious.
“We met several times on scouting missions,” Aaron said in a happy tone. “We had a meeting place all set up in the northern part of the city, and we’d meet there whenever we could. Eventually, she learned to enter my mind no matter the distance.”
“That’s…that’s beautiful,” Rachel and I were quite touched.
“Anyway, she often offered for me to go stay with her, but I could never - ”
Aaron was interrupted by a short, high-pitched cry in the darkness ahead. We stopped in our tracks, frozen in terror. After a few seconds of silence, I deluded myself into thinking it was something else, when it was obvious there was nothing else it could’ve been. Then it came again, except this time it was more like a whimpering, and it did not stop.
“Someone’s in here with us,” Rachel said quietly. “Do you think they need our help?”
“Our help?” I was shocked. “There is no possible way someone is down here, alone. It has to be a trick.”
“We’re down here,” Aaron argued. “For all we know it could be another Neogen from the Sanctuary.”
I heard them continue onward, and I was forced to follow. Something didn’t feel right, but Aaron and Rachel seemed intent on finding the source of the crying. They probably thought it was a small child, lost in the dark. I did not understand why they believed this so easily. I tried to warn them repeatedly, but my words fell on deaf ears.
“She’s close now,” Rachel said, her footsteps quickening. “I can hear it up ahead.”
“She?” I whispered, voice shaking.
“The girl of course,” Aaron answered.
“Listen to me. There is no lost child down here. It’s something else, something dangerous. Can you not see that?!”
“Don’t be so selfish, Thran!” Rachel said. Her tone cut through me like a knife. She was always joking when she said things like that, but this time she sounded quite serious.
“You’re not a fighter like us, you wouldn’t understand,” Aaron added.
We continued onward in silence. My heart was racing, my legs were shaking, and the crying was getting louder and louder. It reached a point where the crying no longer sounded human. It was more like a low wailing echoing in the shadows. Suddenly, I ran into Aaron.
“Hey, what - ?”
“Quiet!” he said sharply. “I see it.”
“Is she OK?” Rachel asked.
“I can’t tell. She’s kneeling down, facing the wall.” That’s when the wailing stopped.
“Wait” Aaron said, voice trembling. “It stood up. Somethings not right…that’s not -”
A startling screech came out of the darkness in front of us, and I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. Then suddenly, a bright light shone behind me and revealed the creature. It had a distorted humanoid shape, gray skin, and a mess of black hair covering its face. I looked down to see that I had been stabbed with one of its long claws. I struggled to breathe or move, but as darkness began to cloud my mind, the creature squirmed in the light and backed off. I winced in pain as the claw left my body. Gunfire focused on the monster, and the last thing I saw before I fell to the ground were two words written on the wall:
“Wake up.”
Chapter 3
In a dream I was in a city with towering skyscrapers, standing in all their glory. There was no rubble, a clear, bright sky, and most refreshingly, the people were smiling. There were hundreds of them happily walking alongside me in the street. And they weren’t wearing clothes fashioned from old, tattered fabric. I saw one man with a shiny black coat that draped magnificently over his broad shoulders. He wore a fresh white shirt underneath and from his neck hung a straight piece of bright red cloth. His
pants were also a jet-black color, and they ran down to his obsidian shoes, every inch of which seemed to have been polished to perfection. His dark blonde hair was combed to perfection. I was in awe of how he was able to achieve this level of physical perfection. I was also curious as to how I was imagining all this. Had I seen this before? Or has my mind simply created a world based on the stories I had heard from the Parents?
I looked around and saw other well-dressed men and women walking around. I had no idea where they were going, but they clearly seemed busy, their minds deliberating on important matters that seemed so trivial in my world. In some ways I was relieved that my life was so simple. But at the same time I couldn’t help but yearn for some greater purpose in life. The human race, once so vastly diverse and beautifully complicated had been reduced to nothing but survival instincts. We risked our lives everyday; we had no idea what was still wandering in the barren wastelands that used to be bustling cities, luscious farmland, and great forests. This dream made me long for some other reason to live. I didn’t just want to use old machinery and repair it into a useful device. I wanted to innovate, make new things that no one had ever seen or thought of before. I wanted to meet like-minded people to work with. Most of all, I wanted to be known. If I died now, only a few people would remember me. I would be nothing to the myriad of beings that remain alive on Earth or even those among the stars. I would just be another casualty of war, and that was my greatest nightmare.
As I continued to walk I saw a busy road ahead of me. There were people walking back and forth between the buildings, but what really caught my attention were the vehicles. In reality, the only cars I’d seen were military vehicles. These cars were colorful, shiny, and full of life, dashing across the smooth, gray concrete. I looked to my right as I approached the busy intersection, and saw a young couple extending their hands into the road. I followed their gaze but it was difficult to know what I was looking for, since this whole place was a mystery to me. But then, I saw a bright yellow car drive up next to the couple and pick them up.
The Children of New Earth Page 2