by Eliza Green
Sign up for Eliza’s newsletter and get Genesis, a teaser story set before Genesis Code. Click here to get started.
GENESIS PACT
The Genesis Series, Book 4
Eliza Green
Copyright © 2017 Eliza Green
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copy Editor: Andrew Lowe
Proofreader: Sally Vince
Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design
This book was previously published as Quantum Silence: Exilon 5 Book Four in 2017.
This book is also available in print.
www.elizagreenbooks.com
Prologue
Bill Taggart walked the tunnels of District Three alone. It had been too long—about six months—since either he or Laura had been in Stephen’s home. Stephen usually travelled to see them in their apartment in New London.
Much had changed in the last eight years, not least his open invitation from Stephen to visit the district whenever he liked. Today he was here on business. Twenty-six cities now occupied Exilon 5; twenty more than in 2163 when he’d last been on the planet working as an investigator for the World Government. The final passenger ship had arrived from Earth in 2165, six years ago, carrying the ten remaining board members. Soon after, the board called time on the alteration programme, and in his role as Director of the International Task Force, a role he’d earned by avoiding an all-out war with the Indigenes, Bill had ordered the transfers from Earth to stop. The board members had taken all the skilled workers off Earth, people deemed worthy enough to live on Exilon 5. Or so they thought.
Not all of them had made it to the last ships destined for Exilon 5. Bill had made sure of that.
He thought about Earth, his home for forty-plus years. Now a distant planet in another part of space. But it would always be a part of him and Laura and they refused to give up on it. Everything had deteriorated there in the last six years. After the last passenger ship departed, criminal factions had come out of hiding and put anyone left on Earth under their control. Bill and Laura hoped that with their help, the underground movement on Earth could change things there.
For now, he must see the interrogations through. Anton had captured a newly devolved female, but before she could return to Earth she must pass his rigorous tests. The female could not be told of Earth’s conditions. She had to see it for herself, to understand what they were asking her to do. They had tried with others, but with disastrous consequences.
Bill had arranged to meet Stephen in the central core, a communal space at the heart of District Three. He waited by one of the teaching areas; an alcove carved into the rock. Three barefoot male Indigenes dressed in white tunics and trousers entered the empty space. But when they saw him they jerked to a stop and dropped into a hunting stance. He felt the familiar brush against his mind as they tried to access his thoughts. He let them in part of the way, as Stephen had taught him, and greeted them silently. They straightened up and with a tight nod resumed their walk.
The Indigenes didn’t embrace human-style formality and custom. No one had met him upon arrival, no one waited with him now. He ruffled his grey hair that complemented his tanned skin. Wearing a black suit covered by a long trench coat, he blended into the Indigene surroundings like oil to water.
Other Indigenes joined Bill in the core but they kept their distance. After ten minutes, Stephen showed up. The Indigenes greeted Stephen by his formal title: Elder. With a grim smile Stephen nodded. By the time he reached Bill, he was smiling.
‘I don’t know if I should be offended that they call me “Elder”. I’m barely older than them, and younger than most. Serena handles her title better than me.’
‘It’s not how old you look, Stephen. It’s that old-man head of yours. They can see the wisdom, the way you present yourself.’
Stephen tilted his head. ‘And how is that?’
‘Why, grumpy, of course.’
Stephen laughed and pressed his forehead to Bill’s. ‘Good to have you down here, Bill Taggart. It’s been too long. The Evolvers miss you. Laura, in particular.’
Laura, with her easy-going nature, had been a hit with the Indigene young.
‘Only because my mind is so easy to read.’
‘Yes, in comparison to ours, it is. Come.’ Stephen walked on. ‘I want to take you to where we are conducting the tests.’
Bill followed Stephen out and to an area west of the core, in a quiet, dark section of unoccupied tunnels and accommodation. Bill pulled out a torch.
‘He shouldn’t be able to detect you. He’s been sedated.’
They walked up to one of the accommodation rooms with a viewing hole in the door; Stephen opened the flap and Bill shone the light inside. He saw a blindfolded male Indigene on the floor curled up on his side, asleep. His hands and feet were bound. Stephen closed the flap and Bill clicked the light off, knowing Stephen couldn’t tolerate the light for long periods. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness again.
They walked to a nearby set of rooms. Bill winced when he heard a female cry out in pain. Stephen stopped at the entrance to one room and Bill looked inside to see her bound to a chair that faced away from the door. Anton and Serena stood behind her chair, just out of sight. Anton peppered her with questions while she looked up at him, confused.
Anton motioned for Bill to enter and mouthed her name at him. He hesitated a moment, then took a deep breath and walked forward. He hated this part the most. The female grunted like an animal in the chair. She must have detected his presence because she sniffed the air suddenly. Bill kept to the edges of the darkened room. He could see she’d had the genetic reversal treatment because she looked more human. But she still had her feral Indigene instincts.
Bill kept his back to her as walked in front of the chair. He clicked on his torch and turned around to shine the light in her eyes. She jerked her head to the side, squeezed her eyes shut, yowled in pain.
Then he began what he had come to District Three to do.
He tortured Isobel.
1
2171
The spacecraft hurtled to Earth at an alarming speed. Ben Watson watched from the roof of an abandoned building as the giant docking magnet rose from an extendible platform and lined up with the craft. The craft slowed and was thrust upwards, then fell again, as the rusted magnets toggled between positive and negative polarity. The craft’s reverse engine thrusters kicked up dust just before it landed.
Ben searched the cloud-filled sky for the large passenger ship that had delivered the craft to Earth. But other than a lone bright star visible through the tiny breaks in the cloud, he couldn’t see it. He and Kevin Lee—brothers in all but name—had watched this sequence several times now; always from the same place, always lying flat on the roof of a building on the street in front of the docking station. Lots of other kids did the same thing. Nobody ever noticed them up there.
Kevin made to stand up. ‘Come on, I need a better view. I can’t see what’s happening from up here.’
Plumes of dust in the distance caught Ben’s eye. ‘Wait.’ He pointed at three cars approaching Waverley Station. ‘Look.’
Kevin
followed his finger. ‘Shit.’ He ducked back down.
The cars pulled up to the entrance of the former John F. Kennedy airport and the only docking station within a hundred-mile radius. He and Kevin lived inside the curfew-controlled neighbourhood of Waverley, in the Brooklyn borough and two miles from the station. When the last World Government ship left six years ago, most of Earth’s residents had been forced inside restricted neighbourhoods with curfews in place.
Ben watched as several men dressed in dark clothing alighted and shook hands with the military still stationed on Earth. Ben recognised Marcus, one of the criminal associates who worked for the Agostini family. Marcus clapped one of the military men on the back, then handed him a parcel before he entered the station.
‘What a surprise,’ muttered Ben into his gel mask. ‘The asshole’s paying them off.’
It had been eight years since Ben and his mother had been exiled from their home on Exilon 5 and sent to Earth. It had been eight years since his mother decided he was too much trouble and left. Ben had spent his time back on Earth in captivity: first the orphanage, then the Waverley neighbourhood in Brooklyn. He’d known little else about the planet he was not native to, other than the criminals operated under ruling factions and those factions had carved up all the territory. Oh, and they liked to do deals that involved handing over parcels. Marcus’ behaviour didn’t surprise Ben as much as it did Kevin. A diminished police presence since the time dubbed The Last Escape had made it all too easy for criminal factions to take over the gated neighbourhoods in New York and surrounding areas.
Ben’s breathing laboured and he tapped the battered oxygen canister on his hip. The flow inside his mask hissed. He adjusted his mask and looked up at the sky that offered the occasional glimpse of stars. When industries halted after the skilled workers had left Earth, small breaks in the cloud had allowed some of the poisonous air to filter away. But it wasn’t enough to abandon the masks; the carbon dioxide levels remained at dangerous levels.
Kevin lay on his stomach and crawled to the edge of the roof. He gripped the ledge and raised his head. Other teens close by copied him.
‘The cars are blocking my view. Come on, we need to get closer. I want to see them up close.’
‘Fine,’ said Ben. He refused to admit his curiosity about the newcomers.
Initially, their arrival had been frequent enough. But interest waned when news spread about the conditions on Earth. The last shipment of Indigenes from Exilon 5 had been six months ago.
Kevin jumped to his feet and bounded towards the stairwell door they had propped open with a rusty chair. Ben followed him down the crumbling steps. Kevin took them two at a time, sometimes using the steel banisters to slide down.
Outside was quiet, but Ben and Kevin kept to the shadows. They relocated to an unlit road to watch the station from a spot one block away. Other onlookers had already claimed similar spots and did the same. Curfew wasn’t in force yet, but Marcus Murphy could be a dick at any hour.
Military, once loyal to the World Government, patrolled outside the station entrance. Few had remained after the final passenger ship had departed for Exilon 5. Now, the military worked for the criminals who outnumbered them.
The station doors opened and Marcus strutted outside with a confidence that didn’t fit him. Short, pale-skinned and black-haired, the man ruled over several neighbourhoods, including Waverley’s fifty thousand residents and the black market two miles from the neighbourhood. Behind, his men pointed Buzz Guns at a group of Indigenes tethered together by wrist clamps. Ben counted nine this time. Two—a male and a female—had been separated from the main group and were tied to each other.
‘There’s so few bottom-feeders,’ said Kevin. ‘That’s a good thing, right? I’m sick of ’em coming back here, thinking they have some claim to our cities, our food. I wish they’d all just stay on Exilon 5.’
Kevin’s inaccurate impression of Indigenes irritated Ben. It was a narrow opinion that was shared by many others who had never encountered an Indigene before.
But Ben had, when he’d lived on Exilon 5. A chance encounter with an Indigene named Stephen was the reason Ben had been exiled to Earth.
He examined the faces of the Devolved: a term humans had applied to the Indigenes who had chosen partial or full genetic reversal treatment.
Ben had read about the plans for Indigene repatriation in one of the digital libraries. But the criminals didn’t value words or technology, and when the World Government had abandoned Earth the libraries had fallen into disrepair.
The reports, most factually questionable, had mentioned the restoration of memories to those Indigenes who wished to remember who they were pre-alteration. Before returning to Earth the Indigenes had been given two options: change back into their human form, or partially revert to restore memory function but still retain their Indigene appearance. The devolved Indigenes experienced partial hair re-growth and their skin regained its original opaque appearance. Those who chose memory restoration experienced subtle physical changes, but still looked like Indigenes.
No matter how great or small the change, the Devolved would never be accepted as human.
‘Look at them,’ said Kevin. ‘They’re shitting themselves being back here. I’m not surprised. Don’t know why they bothered. I mean, it’s their fault we’re in this goddamn shit of a mess. But I suppose Marcus sees value in them. I guess they can be useful slaves.’
Ben wrapped his arms around his cold body. He hated it when Kevin talked like this. It wasn’t just that Kevin had become increasingly intolerant over the last year, but his words reminded him of how he and his mother were treated when they had arrived on Earth. He was born on Exilon 5; Earth was never his home. Kevin Lee would never understand what it was to be an immigrant. If it hadn’t been for Kevin’s grandfather, Ben would probably still be stuck in the orphanage.
Ben peered around the edge of the building that stood in deep shadow; the street lights hadn’t been powered for years.
‘I wonder if they’ll send any to East Compound,’ said Ben.
Kevin snorted. ‘Who cares? Once the crims cream off the best for themselves, there’s never any good ones left.’
‘I hear they’re causing all sorts of problems elsewhere,’ said a man close by. ‘Why would we even want them?’
Nobody trusted the Devolved who still retained their strength and speed. Up until now, the residents in Waverley had resisted Marcus’ prior attempts to dump Indigenes on them.
But Ben couldn’t understand why people didn’t view skilled Indigenes back on Earth as a good thing. The last of the skilled humans were rounded up by the World Government and sent to Exilon 5. Those left behind on Earth were either general labourers—old and young—or belonged to criminal factions.
But if the rumours were to be believed, not all of the skilled workers had left: doctors, engineers and IT experts were thought to be living secretly underground.
Marcus’ team unhooked the chains and divided the larger group of seven Indigenes into one group of four and one of three. His team bundled the groups into two waiting black, titanium-covered vehicles. Military issue. A third car took the devolved pair; Marcus and another man climbed in after them.
‘Come on, show’s over. Let’s go home.’ Ben expected the cars would head back to Astoria Park where the ruling Agostini family lived.
Kevin was about to step out from the shadows when the car with Marcus and the devolved pair did a one-eighty turn.
Ben yanked him back. ‘Wait.’
The car sped past their location and stayed on the straight road heading away from the docking station, towards their neighbourhood. Ben looked at the darkened vehicle as it passed but couldn’t see anything.
‘Where the fuck they going?’ said Kevin. Ben could guess. ‘We have to follow them.’ Kevin took off after the car, keeping to the pavement and the shadows.
Ben caught up with him. He gripped Kevin’s shoulder and slowed his progress. He wheeze
d into his mask and tapped the canister again. The tainted oxygen hissed up the clear plastic tube.
‘Stop, we need to head back to Waverley. Curfew’s coming and Albert is expecting us.’
Kevin kept up a fast walking pace. ‘Why are you always kissing my grandfather’s ass? You know you don’t have to do shit for the old man, right? Being an orphan and all? If we don’t go now, the car will be gone. Aren’t you the least bit curious about where they’re going? They’d better not be going anywhere near our neighbourhood. Why should the bottom-feeders get special treatment and we don’t?’
‘I don’t think they have it any better than us, Kev. Would you rather live like the Indigenes do, under the crims’ control?’
‘Well, listen to you, using their official name. Besides, we already live like that. Marcus forces us to run businesses and takes any profits we make.’
‘A visit once a week is minor compared to how some of the other neighbourhoods are being treated.’
Kevin made a fist and smacked his hand. ‘Serves the bottom-feeders right. They’ve no business coming back here.’
The car in the distance was still visible but it would be out of sight soon. He didn’t stop Kevin when he picked up the pace and ran after it. At least they were on the road that would lead them back to Waverley. There was no point in arguing with Kevin when he was in one of his moods.
But their pace was no match for the car. It disappeared ahead of them.
‘Well, I hope you’re happy,’ said Kevin. ‘We’ve lost them.’
Ben checked the time and punched Kevin on the arm. ‘Come on, we need to hurry.’
2
Ben tapped the battered oxygen canister on his hip as they jogged back to Waverley.