Gene. Sys.

by Aaron Denius

  The Ragnarok that the scientists are planning is only expediting the inevitable, because this current version of humans is doomed to extinction. We Genesys are the next step in human evolution, and we were created in a lab.

  “What are those?” Al says, snapping me out of my trance.

  “Flyz,” Rene responds curtly. He looks at the group. “Everyone’s here. Let’s go.”

  Rene walks us down the destroyed hallway. Aside from the sporadic gasps of shock and surprise, everyone remains quiet. We pass the area of the hallway that used to be the other boys’ rooms and mine. If it weren’t for the fact that I have been down the hallway hundreds of times and that I can see some of the beds under the rubble, I would have no clue that people used to sleep here.

  As we step over fallen pieces of the walls and roof, I take a look at what used to be my room. Right between the bathroom and the closet is a giant hole. Even the ground has been destroyed. It looks as though a missile hit my room directly. The charred remains of my bed lie in the small hole in the floor. I realize just how close we all were to being killed. If I hadn’t gotten everyone into the simulation room, we might not have survived. The mumbles I hear behind me tell me that the other guys realize how close they were to dying.

  The second we reach the end of this hallway and turn the corner, the compound looks completely unscathed. Other than a layer of dust from the rubble that’s settled on the floor, this hallway seems untouched. As we continue toward the medical ward, I feel a sense of calm creep in. It appears no other parts of the main compound were damaged.

  That calm rushes away the second we turn the corner to the hallway with the girls’ rooms. It has also been destroyed. I hear a couple of sobs behind me as the girls take in the devastation. I look over at Ev, who is checking out her room behind me. Her stare is stiff, but the second her focus changes to make eye contact with me, she looks away. She’s mad at me about something, and I don’t like it.

  As we carefully step over the rubble and head for the door that leads us to the scientists’ quarters and the medical ward, a thought crosses my mind. This was not a random attack; this was targeted. They knew where they were launching.

  We pass through the doors and wind our way to the medical ward. Up until now, the hallways have been pretty calm. The medical ward, however, is a mess of activity. At least a hundred people are running around: drones running security, doctors screaming orders, injured scientists seeking medical attention. The giant room has a perimeter of drones ready for action.

  The wall opposite to where we enter has a giant hole in it, and I can only assume that’s where Dennis lost his life. A lump forms in my throat, and I try hard to hold back my emotions. Through the hole, I see more drones patrolling. Another group of Flyz passes overhead. I’m so focused on the activity going on outside that only now do I notice that the entire medical ward has stopped and is looking at us.

  “I would like to speak with Bruce and Ivana. Everyone else can return to what they were doing,” Rene shouts over the crowd. His voice is authoritative, and it’s the first time I realize how much power he has over the people at this compound.

  Two people in medical scrubs appear from the sea of people, and they make their way toward us. The man is about my height, with a sharp jawline and a well-groomed head of hair that juxtapose his bloodied attire. The woman is fit with short black hair, and her petite frame gives her a cute, spunky appearance. Both are relieved at being pulled away from their previous task.

  Rene turns to us. “Everyone listen up. Dr. Bruce Peters and Dr. Ivana Metzger will look you all over. Do as they say. When they are done with you, come find me, and we will assign you new rooms.”

  Rene walks away as Dr. Peters and Dr. Metzger arrive. They walk around us and scan our bodies for any surface injuries. Dr. Peters spots my bandage.

  “What happened to your leg?” he asks.

  “I was hit during one of the explosions. Mag took the pieces out of my leg.” I glance at Mag, and she gives me a small smile.

  “We’ll do a scan,” he says as he walks back around to the front of the group.

  “Ladies, come with me.” Dr. Metzger walks off, and the girls follow. Dr. Peters heads off in the opposite direction, and I walk after him. The other boys come along as well. The ocean of people parts as we walk through.

  Cal catches up to me. “I can’t believe they destroyed our rooms.”

  I look at him. “I’m glad we weren’t in them.”

  “Yeah, thank you for that. My pillow was saved too!” Cal smiles.

  I reciprocate. I had forgotten that I told them to take their pillows to the simulation room. It seems so trivial now.

  “So, where do you think we will be sleeping now?” Al jumps in as he steps forward.

  “I really have no clue. Hopefully, a room with a roof.” I smirk. Cal and Al laugh, but I notice a few looks of disgust from some of the people we pass. The joke was in poor taste.

  We reach one of the larger rooms in the medical ward, and Dr. Peters walks through the door. The room has three operating tables with glass lids. As I walk in, I bump my bandaged leg into the first operating table, and a searing pain rushes through my body. I wince as I gently rub my leg.

  “Atom. Lie in that first bed, I’ll be there in a second. Titan and Ox, take the next two,” Dr. Peters orders. We all do as we are told, and he closes us in with the glass tops.

  As he secures the glass over my body, my heart races with the growing sense of confinement. He presses a button on the side of the table, and the glass comes to life. A series of different colored scans pass over my body. I turn my head and see that Titan and Ox are going through the same set of scans.

  Dr. Peters walks back over to my table and reads some information that has appeared on his side of the glass top. He frowns and walks back to the other two, opening their lids and having Sil and Al switch places with Titan and Ox. He runs them through the scans, and it isn’t until he lets them out and puts Cal in one of their tables that I begin to panic.

  Why isn’t he letting me out? What happened to me? As confined as I felt a moment ago, I now feel as if the space has gotten smaller. The glass feels like it’s moving in closer to me and wrapping itself around my body.

  I feel around with my hands, looking for a way to open the top, but I can’t. I watch as Cal gets released and joins the other guys by the door. Dr. Peters speaks to them, and the boys all walk away. The glass is soundproof, so I don’t know what he’s saying to them. He turns his attention back to me and walks over to my operating table.

  “Let me out!” I pound on the glass.

  Dr. Peters looks at me and raises a finger, telling me to hold on. After reading some more information on the glass, he finally opens the lid.

  “What are you doing? Let me out of here!” I sit up, but he pushes me back down with surprising strength.

  “You have a hairline fracture in your leg, and you have lost a good amount of blood.” He looks at me.

  “Oh.” I settle down.

  “This should only take a couple of days.” He enters some information into a pad next to the table.

  “What will?” I ask, but before I get my answer, the glass closes back over me. “Hey!”

  I pound hard on the glass, and as I do, it turns into a light blue crystal color. I can no longer see through it. My eyes begin to get heavy, and just before they close, I see a white gas cover my body.

  The dream comes right away. I’m standing in the middle of the same white abyss as before, but this time I hit a wall or a force field when I try to walk forward. I put my left hand on the invisible barrier, and I walk along, making sure to keep the wall to my left. After hitting my nose on a wall a couple of times, I learn to have my right hand in front of me. I’m in a labyrinth.

  Far ahead of me, I see the same blonde figure as before. I can only assume it is Fe. When the next wall forces me to turn right, I see a different figure far ahead, and this one resembles Ev. Another right turn, a
nd I am staring down the massive Pyramid of Giza. I pick up my pace, wanting desperately to get out of this maze.

  Just as I feel like I am making progress, the floor gives way from underneath me. I fall, or so it feels. My heart jumps, and I struggle to grab at something to stop my fall. My hands swing around but aren’t making contact with anything. I begin to hyperventilate. I look around and see that even though I have the sensation of falling, everything remains in the same location. I’m still on the same plane as I was before.

  I need to regain control of the situation, so I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. Slow and steady. When I open my eyes, I am no longer in my dream. I am lying on the operating table, and the glass lid is opening up. Dr. Peters stands above me.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “You are done,” he responds.

  “I thought you said it would be a couple of days?” I’m confused. I can’t have been in there for more than five minutes.

  “It was,” he says as he walks away.

  “Trippy, isn’t it? Almost like time doesn’t exist in there,” a familiar voice says to my right.

  I roll my head to the side and see him sitting in a chair. He winks at me from the one eye without the patch. “80!”

  “Hey Atom.” 80 smiles.

  CHAPTER XII

  80 and I walk through the hole in the medical ward wall and out to the open area of the compound. I haven’t spent much time out here before, but what I do remember looks unrecognizable. What was once the grass is now a mix of dirt and rubble. Drones have overrun the compound. Hundreds of them are patrolling while others work on cleaning and fixing the walls.

  “This is crazy,” 80 says as he leads me next to a pile of rubble with bloodstains on parts of it.

  “Yes, it is.” I look around to see that the wall that was in front of the drones’ quarters is gone. “I’m guessing this is why they brought you back.”

  “Yeah. We were pretty much done building the bunkers, and they said that they needed reinforcements here. They left a few of them back to finish up the work.” He climbs atop one of the taller piles of rubble and sits.

  I climb up and sit next to him. “Where did they send you?”

  “A place called Nairobi,” 80 says nonchalantly as he points toward the wall.

  I look beyond the large opening in the wall. Rising above the city’s rubble is the Great Pyramid. It has never appeared as imposing as it does right now—the shadow looming over the city, swallowing blocks into darkness.

  “It was even worse in Nairobi,” 80 adds.

  “What was?” I ask as I adjust myself on the pile of rubble. The shift has somehow made my vision clearer—I spot about a dozen Flyz hovering above the city.

  “The people, the outsiders. They were all living in filth and days from death. Most of them were either covered in sores or nothing but bones. Some, which they called cabras, would be so malnourished and mentally gone that they’d try to eat you.” 80’s eyes have glossed over. There is a hurt deep within him that I haven’t seen before.

  “Are you serious? That sounds horrible. Did the outsiders attack in Nairobi as well?” I’m curious because I haven’t heard much about what humans are like in different parts of the world.

  80 stares at the pyramid beyond the wall, “They couldn’t. They were way too weak. Most of them wouldn’t even move when we walked by. Some would try to attack us individually, but it was more because they had lost their mind from malnourishment.”

  “Like the cabras,” I add.

  “Exactly.” I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, which makes me realize that things really were worse out there.

  After a few moments of silence, I decide that I should probably go back inside and find the other Genesys. I stand, and he looks up at me. “I’m glad you’re back, 80.”

  “Me too.” He smiles. “I’ll catch up with you later. You gonna be up on the roof?”

  “I’m not even sure if the roof is still there.” I force a smile. “How about I meet you back over here?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he says as he jumps off the pile and jogs over to a group of drones working on the wall.

  I watch him as I climb down and see him barking orders at the other drones. He must have been given a promotion while he was in Kenya. I’m glad to know that he has done well, and more importantly, I’m pleased that Rene made sure 80 was taken care of.

  A crisp breeze has started up, blowing in from the city and causing me to shiver. The breeze carries with it a hint of smoke, so I look back toward the city and see that the Flyz are actually firing into the fallen metropolis.

  I turn and walk back to the compound. I know I should be mad that we are attacking the outsiders, but I just don’t know what to think anymore. There are many innocent people out there who have done nothing more than try to survive. They care for one another and struggle together, but at this point, they are only buying themselves a couple of months.

  I’m numb, and I realize that what I saw in 80’s eyes wasn’t hurt but numbness. It’s hard to care anymore when you know the outcome is dire. With the recent events, I have switched my focus to the survival of the Genesys.

  The second I climb back through the hole into the medical ward, I am greeted by Rene. “Did you two have a good chat?”

  “You were watching us?” I snap at him.

  “I had told him he could be there when you woke up. I knew you’d be happy to see each other.” Rene smiles as he walks toward the doors leading out of the medical ward.

  “Thank you.” I jog to catch up. “So, where are our new rooms?”

  “We’ve placed you all in some of the old scientists’ rooms,” he says as he heads down a separate hallway that I haven’t been down before.

  “Where is everyone else?” I look around at the new hallway. It’s in excellent shape and looks like it has been recently cleaned.

  “The other Genesys are meeting with Dr. Kivuli right now for a group session. You can meet up with them later. I want to talk to you.” He stops at the door at the end of the hallway, where it intersects with another hallway. “This is your new room.”

  He opens the door, and I walk in. The room is twice the size of the one I was in before. Monitors cover the left wall as they did in Rene’s room, and on the opposite wall is a bookshelf with a mixture of books, journals, trinkets, and pictures. I take a closer look at one of the photos, and a rush of excitement runs through my body. “This is Grant’s room!”

  “Yes, it is.” Rene takes a seat in the desk chair by the bookshelf. “Have a seat, Atom.”

  I take Rene’s serious tone as a hint, and I sit on the bed. It’s twice the size as the one I had, and the second I sit down, I realize just how tired I am. Even though I was unconscious for a few days, my body and mind need a conscious rest.

  “Do you think the others are ready?” Rene asks.

  “For what?” I think I know what he means, but I want to make sure.

  “For the end, the Ragnarok. For survival.” He looks at me with care. Throughout everything, he has always loved me as his son.

  “I’m not even ready,” I say, prompting him to frown. “But we will do everything we can to survive. What’s going to happen when it starts?”

  Rene takes a deep breath. “Within an hour of pressing the button, all the nuclear weapons around the world will detonate. The one here in Cairo should be last. By then, we will have flown all of you to your bunkers around Africa.”

  “What about Grant?” I look around the room. I know that he left to make sure that all those nuclear weapons were ready.

  “If things are going according to schedule, he should be finished arming the weapons in Russia and China by now. He will be heading to Australia and the Americas after that.” Rene shifts in the chair.

  “Have you been talking with him?” I thought that we would never hear from him again; his goodbye felt final. “Do you think…”

  “Communication is limited to the com
pound. Unfortunately, we can only send information to mainframes that have been hardwired,” Rene interjects.

  “Like to the computers at the nuclear missile sites?” I remember learning in one of my earlier classes about how there was a time where everyone in the world could communicate with each other instantly, all through the use of satellites. Now each of those satellites in the sky is just a ghost ship, adrift in the orbit of the earth, time and solar flares rendering them all incapable of their job. Now the only computer communication that isn’t local is done through hardwired cables that were placed centuries ago.

  “Listen, Atom, there is something that we need to talk about with regards to these attacks, and I feel you already know more than you think.” He leans closer to me.

  “What do you mean?” I’m nervous. I don’t know what he thinks I know.

  “I believe these attacks were aided by some internal information, and I believe that you might know something about that.” Rene stares at me. I know that he’s alluding to the information that Grant told me about the group of scientists. Grant also said to keep the information to myself, so I don’t know what to do.

  I look at Rene and study his eyes. Grant was worried that Rene might try to go public with the information to try to out the scientists, but I don’t think that is the case now. “Grant told me that he had been hearing of a group of scientists who were looking to disrupt the plan. He didn’t know who was part of it, but he wanted me to keep an eye open.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” Rene says to himself more than he does to me. He’s hurt that Grant wouldn’t confide in him.

  “He was afraid that you would have tried to call them out before he had figured out who they were. He didn’t want accusations flying around.” I’m trying my best to justify Grant’s actions to Rene.

  “Have you seen anything or anyone do anything suspicious?” he asks.