Alpha Nine
By
Rebecca Bosevski
Copyright © 2017 Rebecca Bosevski
All rights reserved.
First published in Australia by Rebecca Bosevski 2017
Newcastle, NSW, Australia
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.
http://rebeccajaynebosevski.wixsite.com/author
https://www.facebook.com/RebeccaBosevskiBooks
https://twitter.com/rebeccabosevski
For Heather. You know why.
CHAPTER ONE
Alpha Nine watched the lights moving behind his closed eyes, but he was unable to open them; the life supporting fluid surrounding him had only begun to drain.
When the pod he had spent his entire life within opened, Alpha Nine would finally get to see the world, or what was left of it.
For years, he had slept, lived only in his own mind, fully aware of what he was made for, why he would be hatched rather than born. The sound of fluid slurping down the evac tube made his pulse quicken at the thought of his new beginning.
Pictures of places he had never been and people he would never meet swam in his head. His creators were very thorough. They installed all the information he should have needed, including the creation of the secret labs designed to grow and develop those like him.
He knew he was an experiment.
A creation of Terminus.
A member of The Swarm.
But Alpha Nine’s consciousness stirred for years before it started to piece together his situation. Started to awaken a part of his brain meant to remain asleep until completion.
They were made to be better, stronger, faster and smarter. They were the hope of the Earth; they were the ones that would fight the war, they were the only ones that could win.
The white-haired man appeared again in his mind and repeated the same mission statement he had heard a million times.
Alien beings calling themselves Annoronians, from Planet A7392 will arrive on earth in eleven months to take with them ninety percent of the female population. Their reproductions are dying. After generations of duplication, they no longer have enough of a pure sample pool to continue this path.
When they initially arrived, they hovered just outside of Earth's atmosphere, then in two days, they sent several scout ships to various locations around the world.
They came to ask for our aid, and it was decided that Earth’s government and the Annoronian representatives would work together.
Thus, the secret government organisation Terminus was born.
After a year of failed enhancements to their cloning technology, the Aliens began their own tests. Stealing human women and impregnating them with both pure and hybrid embryos. The women that survived the implantation wished they hadn’t.
When it was discovered what the aliens had done, the agents of Terminus attacked the scout ships. Only a handful of agents survived and all but one ship left and took with them over one hundred women from across the globe.
Many people questioned the government's involvement in the disappearance of those women, questioning if they had offered them to the Aliens in exchange for the technological advancements the people worldwide had benefitted from.
Alpha’s mind burst with classified information about the first arrival, the back and forth between our scientist and theirs and the final video message left by the scout ship that promised to be back for the rest.
He moved his hands through the thick liquid wondering what else would feel that way. Would the ocean be like this?
The buzz of the system that sustained his life slowly softened and the tube protruding from his open mouth re-wound, allowing Alpha Nine to take his first breaths. They were short and painful.
An odd sensation begun at his wrist. He searched his memory for the name of the drug that kept him and the others asleep. Thiopental.
A sharp tug signaled that the IV administering the drug had been removed and his body hummed with new life as the drug quickly began to wear off.
He focused on his fingers and tried to move them; after only a moment, they slowly bent inwards towards his palm.
The airlock released and sent a gush of cool air through his pod and over his damp skin. His eyes shot open and he watched in awe as the top of the pod retracted revealing a bright white ceiling.
His lungs took but a moment to adjust, no longer stinging with each breath, thankfully quick to find their natural rhythm.
He raised his hands slowly to grasp the cold hard edges of the pod and he tried to pull himself up.
His head arched back, his neck struggling to lift the weight of it, but his arms, though weak, finally pulled him to sit.
The room before him stood empty. His mind sorted through a lifetime of memories to try to see the lab he should wake to find. Nothing.
The pod slurped loudly again as the remaining life fluid drained away beneath him. The cool air on his damp skin sent a shiver down his body and then as if on cue, his skin warmed, drying the moisture from the surface before it cooled to a normal temperature again. They had adjusted his DNA but exactly what they had done to him remained a mystery, even to him with his vast memory bank of classified information.
Looking around the room Alpha couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. All the pretty images he had in his mind of people, homes, bedrooms filled with stuffed toys, knick-knacks and video game systems, there was none of that here. Simply four bare white walls, except for his pod which protruded as if supported by nothing from one of the walls. The light came in through the seams where the walls met the ceiling, making it look as if it too were floating above him.
He swung his legs over the side of the pod and lifted himself to his feet. The wall hissed behind him, retracting the pod though an opening that closed as fast as it had opened.
“Ok, what now?” Alpha asked. The wall opposite him vibrated in reply.
A black line formed from the far-left side, snaking its way at right angles over the white surface. When it had closed off a rectangle shape at about waist height, that section of wall hissed and pushed out towards him, creating a low shelf.
Another snake shot up from the floor and ran up the wall disappearing under the shelf. It re-appeared a moment later about a meter further across making its way back to the floor to create a square. The wall hissed and the square section pushed out from under the shelf creating what looked like a desk and stool.
The snakes continued across the wall. With each completed shape, a hiss followed and the wall moved. Beside the desk, two draws sat slightly off the wall, complete with handles.
Alpha slid out the bottom drawer not sure what he would find. A smirk crept across his lips when he saw it. Blue boots sat beside two blue socks, both fixed in place perfectly by a molded drawer base.
He slid the drawer back in a little and pulled the top drawer open and his smirk grew to a gleeful smile. Another perfectly molded section held his new combat gear, all of it blue; underwear, shirt, pants,
and jacket and all of it sporting the same T symbol.
Terminus.
The line continued to snake out across the wall and Alpha quickly dressed, the tight gear hugging snugly to his muscular form. He zipped his combat jacket up to his neck, then ran the tips of his fingers over the lettering gleaming on his breast pocket. Embossed in gold was his name: Alpha Nine.
Looking at his hands against the blue of his gear he noticed they were bigger than he thought they would be. His nails kept short by the automatic grooming system in place in the pod.
His hair too, he noted, as he brushed his fingers through the short length of it, trying to ascertain the style, but without a mirror it was useless. A hair clung between his second and third fingers and he slid it free, holding it up to the light. It was brown against his skin, but when held up to the light, it passed through it making it look almost blond.
He sat down at the desk and laid the stray hair onto the crisp white surface. Reaching into the bottom drawer he pulled his socks and boots free, putting them on to complete the look. When he attempted to tie his boot lace, his fingers fumbled with them for a minute before his hands relaxed and allowed the pre-learned knowledge to flow freely.
Alpha Nine swung his legs to sit under the desk as he listened to the hiss of the snaking line continue. He dragged the hair across the table top as he wondered what would come next.
When he hadn’t heard a hiss in a few moments, he raised his head to look at the sections the snake had made. Four joined squares were marked out, outlined but still very much flat against the wall above his desk. He ran his fingers along the bottom line, it’s rough edge scraping against the pad of his finger. He pulled his hand away quickly when all four squares hummed and came to life, digital screens all buzzing with static. Then the fragmented image of a woman appeared across them.
Her age would have been around thirty but her eyes were much older. She didn’t smile, just stared at him blankly. Alpha Nine searched his memory for this woman; he knew her face but could not place it. The memories her image stirred, were a mixture of numbers and letters. Codes. Computer codes.
“Wow, they really did load me up. Um, hello?” Alpha asked, the unmoving screen. Tapping it with his finger and watching the colour leech from the black screen turning silver where his finger pressed and then returning to black just as fast when he pulled away.
Still nothing.
Alpha was becoming restless and stood up from the desk to walk the room.
“What the hell is going on, this can’t be right, why would I wake to an empty room?” Alpha continued to pace and mutter to himself about how different it was to what he expected.
The squeal of feedback filled the room and Alpha spun towards the screen as the once still image of the woman came to life. She had dark blonde hair, that was tied back tight against her small head. She wore a crisp white lab coat with the same T symbol, embroidered in black on her breast pocket.
“You will remain seated until the others are awakened,” she said with no emotion behind her words.
“What is going on?” Alpha asked the image.
“You will await the beginning of the first phase,” she continued.
“What do you mean by first phase, if this is the first, then there must be others, how many are there?” Alpha questioned as he returned to sit at the desk. He knew he was an experiment, but he had no knowledge of having to go through phases. His mind only knew what the world was like, how to live in it, the languages and technology. “When will I get to see the world?”
But the image returned to its unmoving stare.
Alpha sat and waited, spending the time trying to ascertain his appearance in his partial reflection on the screen. He ran his hands down the sides of his face as he squinted at the monitors. It was slim, like the rest of him, but his jaw was strong. When his fingers ran along it, it was as if nothing sat between the skin of his face and the hard bone of his jaw. He smiled at his reflection and his white teeth shone easily through, all of them perfectly in line.
He ran his fingers over the length of his hair again, feeling the hair shorten to where it reached the neck and bristled against his fingers.
“Good morning subjects.” The screen came to life and Alpha Nine sat bolt upright.
“All of you will go through the Trials. Each phase is designed to test your abilities in different ways. If you fail, you will not progress. The first is a computer aptitude test, your time begins now.”
The screens all went dark except the one on the bottom left. It showed the first question.
“Warden is to prisoner as principal is to?” Alpha said aloud, touching the screen where the word student appeared.
“Planet is to tennis ball as dice is to? How is this helping prepare for the war?” Alpha asked, as he touched the word sugar cube. His screen went blank and the woman reappeared.
“Alpha Nine, please stand by the door and await the next phase.”
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, as the snake appeared on the opposite wall creating a large tall rectangle that hissed like the others when complete.
“Alpha Nine, please stand by the door,” the woman said flatly again. Unsure of how two questions constituted an aptitude test, he nevertheless did as he was told Desperate to see the world, he would do whatever they asked
After a few more minutes of silence the door hissed again as a cool air shot through its outline and the door retracted upwards, disappearing into the surrounding wall.
At first only a black rectangle replaced it, then one by one, small round lights illuminated with a faint ding, beginning at the door’s sides and continuing onward. Alpha Nine followed the lights with his eyes until they reached the center of the room where what looked like a large round table sat.
Alpha Nine’s path was the first to complete, but others illuminated with the same chime, as more doorways hissed and revealed their subjects at random intervals around the room.
The open doorways were too far across or out of his line of sight to see the subjects inside. He was about to take a step out onto the lit path when a several monitors, all of them alive with static, dropped down in the center of the room. A border of red lights illuminated the edge of the table, and the woman’s face returned.
“When the buzzer sounds, those who reach the center and place their hand on a red button will progress. Those who do not will be recycled.”
“What do you mean, 'recycled'?” Alpha asked, and the woman’s eyes narrowed slightly for but a split second.
“Do not move before the buzzer sounds or you will be recycled,” the woman said to the room, but one of the subjects jumped the gun when she spoke.
They took only a step before righting their mistake, but the door that had opened upwards to the room slammed shut in a second, crushing them beneath. The path de-illuminated just as fast. If the subject cried out, Alpha Nine didn’t hear it.
But he now knew what ‘recycled’ meant.
CHAPTER TWO
He awaited the buzzer, prepared to run his hardest, but careful not to let the tip of his shoe pass the border of where his pod room ended and the arena began. The woman counted down. “Ten. Nine. Eight…”
“Go already,” Alpha said to himself, the nervous energy building in him.
The second the buzzer sounded Alpha took off. He leapt forwards eager to be the first, but mostly determined not to be the last. He was not first; three other hands sat over red lights, each of them arriving but half a breath before him.
He did a quick count, twenty-three remained available, but were quickly being covered by hands. A young blonde female, with wide blue eyes welling with tears pressed the buzzer next to Alpha Nine’s; she was clearly fighting the urge to cry, a bi-product of maximum exertion.
Alpha Nine took in the others around the table, the ones he could make out in the dull glow of the platform and buzzer lights.
Several reminded him of his reflection, especially the male two across on his left. His
hands were the same as Alpha Nine’s, down to the small dark spot on the inside of his index finger, but without more light he wouldn’t know how many of his handle had made it to the table.
The second the final available buzzer was pressed the platforms beneath those not yet to the center collapsed, and a red headed male leapt from his falling platform grasping for Alpha. Their hands barely gripping each other as Alpha struggled to hold onto his buzzer and the boy dangling from his other hand.
The blondes’ eyes widened at the sight of what Alpha was doing, but then she reached her other hand out to grab hold of Red’s arm and help Alpha to pull him up. Alpha placed Red’s hand beside his on his lit buzzer so that both held a portion. The blonde reached across and gripped Alpha’s arm as the shrieks of those who fell filled the air along with a sickly-sweet smoke that clung to the back of his throat.
Alpha’s heart pounded in his chest, but he felt something else too. A heat in his heart and in his mind. Looking at Red, clutching the other half of his buzzer, the fear of what almost became his fate, was hard to shake. The others all looked back and forth from each other and the reality of what they were facing sunk in a little deeper.
The screen dropped down again and the same female face greeted them.
“Alpha Nine, you have broken the rules. Return the subject to be recycled.”
Whispers erupted from the others around the table and Red’s fingers turned white from clutching the red light harder.
“I broke no rule,” Alpha called. “You did not stipulate that each light could hold only one subject’s hand.” The screen flickered and Alpha thought he saw the woman’s eyes squint at him momentarily before returning to her emotionless stare.
A few seconds passed in silence, then the monitors flickered again. “As the remaining subjects, you will proceed to phase three. Follow the lit path to sustenance.”
All the doors to the pod rooms closed in an enormous hiss that reverberated around the room and then all the paths went dark.
Alpha 9 Page 1