Genesis Lie (Genesis Book 2)

by Eliza Green

  Pretending everything was normal had been the hardest adjustment to make. No more so than when she’d passed Daphne Gilchrist in the corridor. The CEO of the ESC had slowed down to watch her. Her scrutiny had set Laura off to fidget with her hair. Then Gilchrist smiled and walked away, leaving Laura to wonder if she’d become a source of amusement for the CEO.

  The absence of the woman from booth sixteen had been the most notable change since Laura had met with Bill and Stephen. Some said she had been transferred to another department in the ESC, yet Laura had not seen her for nine weeks. During those tough weeks, she’d relied heavily on Actigen and the Vitamin D shots to keep her seasonal depression at bay. At least she had a new friend: Bill Taggart. But Bill hadn’t been in favour of Laura returning to work.

  ‘If I move now, I’ll only draw more attention to myself,’ she’d said.

  ‘But I can’t protect you in there,’ Bill had replied.

  ‘I know, but I’d prefer to be in the ESC. I can’t sit at home waiting for them to show up at my apartment door. Besides, I have to see what I can find out about Anton.’

  He threw his hands up. ‘Jesus, there’s no talking to you. Fine, have it your own way.’ Then he added, ‘When you find something, let me know.’

  Truth was it terrified her to stay on at the ESC. And while it wouldn’t be the last time she and Bill would clash, she appreciated he cared enough to argue. She was just sorry she hadn’t been able to shed more light on what had happened to his wife Isla.

  The attention paid to her at ESC had lessened and her recent time off approved without question. But now wasn’t the time to drop her guard.

  ‘—and then I told him it just wasn’t good enough.’ Fionnuala’s voice cut into Laura’s thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ lied Laura.

  ‘Really? Then what did I just say?’

  She took a wild guess. ‘Something about the fella who manages the tea stall not having your order ready.’ Her mother liked her tea made with fresh leaves.

  ‘Okay, so you were listening.’ Fionnuala huffed. ‘You know, you could make more of an effort to visit me.’

  Laura scrubbed harder.

  Fionnuala flinched. ‘Watch what you’re doing.’

  She eased off the pressure. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think the nerve damage would repair this fast. And I’m here now, aren’t I?’

  ‘It’s not the same when you’re being forced to look after me. I know what Dr Sorenson said to you. When was the last time you visited me because you wanted to?’

  ‘Keep still while I finish up here.’

  ‘I miss your father.’

  Laura rinsed the dirty cloth, applied more soap and slapped the wet cloth onto her mother’s back.

  Fionnuala flinched again. ‘Laura Frances Mary. Stop what you’re doing and listen to your old mother.’

  Laura looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m trying to talk to you about your father.’

  She didn’t want to have his conversation. She couldn’t. Laura grabbed a clean towel and dried off Fionnuala’s back. She eased the bathrobe back up over her shoulders and tied the rope around her waist. Then she guided her to a more comfortable seat in the living room.

  ‘Are you thirsty? Do you want something to drink?’ said Laura. ‘I can make you that tea now.’

  ‘Yes, love, that would be nice. And grab some of those nice biccies. Then we should chat more about your father.’

  Laura couldn’t take another round of who was to blame for his death. Usually Laura.

  ‘No! I can’t talk to you about him. It’s too difficult for me. I’m barely keeping things together in my life as it is. Let’s talk about something happier, like the future.’

  Her mother wept. Laura had witnessed the fake tears on numerous occasions, but these ones were real and ugly.

  She patted her on the arm. ‘Come on, Mum. Crying won’t help your recovery. Dr Sorenson said you shouldn’t exert yourself. Positive thoughts, remember?’

  Fionnuala wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry love. I don’t like it when you see me all vulnerable like this. I know I’m not a very nice woman sometimes.’

  It was easier for Laura to placate her than to agree. The quicker her mother recovered, the sooner Laura could deal with more pressing matters—like Anton’s whereabouts.

  ‘Go away out of that, you’re fine,’ said Laura. ‘Now stay where you are and I’ll get you that tea.’

  She found Fionnuala’s illegal black market stash hidden behind a baseboard in one of the kitchen cupboards. She grabbed a handful of Fionnuala’s special biscuits, also from the black market.

  Laura placed the tray with the biscuits, a steaming pot of tea and two cups onto the living room table and poured them one each; Fionnuala liked hers black and strong. Laura handed her the cup.

  Her mother swallowed half of the tea and set the cup down. ‘Ahh, that’s better. I’m sorry to be such a nuisance. I know you had to take time off to be here. I hope your workplace doesn’t mind.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. They were okay about it.’ Laura nibbled on one biscuit.

  The two women sat in silence. Fionnuala drank several cups while Laura nursed just the one. When her mother had drained the last drop from her cup, she stacked the uneaten biscuits carefully in one corner of the tray.

  ‘He was my best friend, you know,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said he was my best friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father of course. Who else?’

  Laura flinched as Fionnuala continued.

  ‘We used to do everything together. When he died, it was like a piece of my heart had been ripped out.’

  Her mother’s eyes filled with new tears.

  ‘Did you know we were planning a trip away?’ she said. ‘It was going to be a second honeymoon to celebrate forty years together.’

  She perked up. This was new information. ‘To where?’

  ‘Istanbul, of all places.’ Fionnuala laughed. ‘Apparently they have the most amazing food—’ she broke off just as the tears began to fall. ‘I was devastated when he... you know. I hated him for changing our lives like that.’

  ‘Come on, Mum.’ Laura rubbed her mother’s back. ‘He’d want you to live in the present instead of pining for the past. He made his choice. What’s done is done.’

  She looked at her. ‘Have you ever been in love, Laura?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you don’t know how it feels to lose that special person in your life. It takes time to heal. I’m not there yet, but I’m trying to make positive changes.’

  Laura looked around the apartment she had spent the last week cleaning from top to bottom, wondering where those changes were.

  ‘I’ve been going to a healing group every Thursday. The Order of the Dearly Departed it’s called. I think they can help me put my life on track.’

  ‘But what about your back and neck?’

  ‘I have to use the chair, but they don’t mind pushing me around. Cecil, the leader, has agreed to pick me up next Thursday when you’ve gone home. I should be a lot better by then.’

  Laura smiled. ‘Odd. Ha. That’s funny.’

  ‘What’s funny? What’s odd?’ Fionnuala frowned. ‘Laura, you really can be cruel sometimes. Here I am unburdening myself to you and all you can do is tease me.’

  ‘What? No—I meant Order of the Dearly Departed—the initials are O. D. D. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh... Oh yes, I see what you mean.’ Her mother laughed. ‘How strange. I guess they are an odd bunch.’

  Laura tried to be supportive. A healing group might be just what her mother needed, especially if it got her out of the apartment.

  They spent their last days together talking about the things that Fionnuala wanted to change in her life, and Laura wondered if she might be open to a move to Exilon 5.

  On Thursday, Laura hande
d the responsibility of her mother back to Dr Sorensen. She arrived at the ESC, ready for work and desperate for a distraction.

  But the hairs on the back of her neck stood up when she entered the levels below. The place that kept its workers on its toes lacked its usual hustle.

  Everything felt too normal and too calm.

  7

  ‘You’re scrolling through it too fast, MOUSE,’ said Caroline Finnegan. ‘Go back to the last data entry.’

  ‘It’s not necessary for you to watch everything I do, Doctor,’ said MOUSE. ‘I’m programmed to run all known algorithms on the data. I will let you know if I find a match.’

  But Caroline didn’t move. Instead she tapped a finger against her lips and studied the information Susan Bouchard had sent over about Annie Weber.

  ‘Doctor, you’re making me nervous,’ said MOUSE.

  ‘Good.’ They needed to study what didn’t work as much as what did. ‘Okay, you can move onto the next page.’

  ‘I already told you there was nothing. Why don’t you take a break? You’ve been at this for hours. I’ll call you if I find anything.’

  Caroline stifled a yawn and was about to protest, but MOUSE had begun to scroll through the data so fast it was just a blur. She turned away from the screen and called out to her assistant to come get her if anything new emerged.

  ‘Grab a cup of tea,’ said Felicity. ‘I’ll keep an eye on MOUSE for you.’

  MOUSE mumbled something unpleasant. The Maximum Operations Unit with Sentient Emotions lived inside the walls, the fake lighting system and the medical equipment. It existed in a world of its own, and was an integral part of theirs. It didn’t require human form to have representation, or an opinion.

  Yet, it had too much of the latter.

  Caroline headed to the hydroponics bay to collect some fresh mint for her tea. She followed the tunnels inside the specially designed bunkers that housed the government’s medical facilities. The bunkers were buried deep below the Irish landscape, directly underneath the former site of the National University of Ireland in County Galway. Every piece of medical equipment they might need was here. Interstellar wave communications allowed Caroline’s team to keep in touch with similar facilities on Exilon 5.

  As she walked she shuddered, thinking how close elitists had come to discovering the entrance points to the secret facility. Genetic testing was common practice at the manipulation clinics, but the bunkers carried out secret research that went beyond the ethics of the programme. To alter one’s appearance had become a popular practise. The elitists who outraged publicly at the secret testing were more often opportunists after the expensive medical equipment the bunkers housed.

  Caroline arrived at the hydroponics bay and found Sam, the in-house gardener and cook for the facility.

  Sam looked up from his mini courgettes that were growing in a dirt tray. ‘Dr Finnegan, good to see you taking a break. Have you come to help an old man out?’

  Caroline laughed. ‘Not today, Sam. But soon. I think I promised to show you a thing or two.’

  ‘Well, if your family’s reputation is anything to go by, we should have the most beautiful Parrot’s Beak growing in the back. Complete with fruit, no less.’

  ‘I might have inherited my grandfather’s green fingers, and think I said I knew how to grow some things, but Parrot’s Beak? I’m not sure anybody has ever got it to grow fruit.’

  He smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘A sprig of fresh mint, please. I’m making tea.’

  Sam moved at the pace of a gardener stooped from a lifetime of gardening. Caroline followed him down the centre aisle of the bay and caught a heady bouquet of various herbs, from thyme to coriander. The space was divided into rows of dirt boxes with heat and light lamps and a sprinkler system overhead to encourage growth.

  ‘Mint tea won’t fill you and you have to keep up your strength. How about some nice asparagus?’ He took a knife from his pocket and carefully cut two stalks. He held them up to the light. ‘They’re only small, but they’d go lovely with a nice risotto. I could make some up for you if you’d like?’

  ‘Sorry Sam, just the mint for now. Maybe later, when I’ve gone through more data.’

  He put down the asparagus stalks and cut a few leaves off the mint plant. A question formed on his lips as he handed them over. ‘How did you, a green-fingered gardener like myself, get involved with this place anyway?’

  ‘I did research on a newly discovered pseudogene for my PhD thesis. I investigated the pattern of transcription of different pseudogenes across tissues and cell lines to examine their potential functionality—’

  Sam held up his hands. ‘Never mind. You lost me at “research”.’

  Caroline brought the leaves up to her nose and breathed in the scent. She’d miss fresh food when the latest project wrapped. Replicator food just didn’t compare. Maybe she’d ask Sam for some of his recipes before then.

  ‘Genetics is a lot like gardening,’ she said. ‘Get the conditions right and you can hit the mark.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t understand. I do. I just—What about the poor people you experiment on here?’

  Caroline smiled. ‘We only use volunteers, Sam. All regulars at the genetic manipulation clinics who want the experimental treatments on offer. Nanotechnology was being used long before I came along. They were using nano particles in the early twenty-first century to sneak cancer-fighting drugs past the immune system to the site of the tumour. Our immune systems go on the offensive against all new material. Just think if they hadn’t perfected that, all known types of cancer would still plague us today.’

  A biologist in nanoid-controlled gene therapy, Caroline had been drafted in by Charles Deighton to work on the current Indigene project. Caroline had spent her first year of medical school exclusively studying the government’s earliest genetic experiments.

  Sam waved his hand. ‘All that science was good back then, when it was put to good use. Now it’s all about vanity. What would your father say about you getting involved with this work?’

  ‘The same thing I am now probably.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry Sam, but I come from a long line of scientists. Besides, not all the work we do centres around appearances.’

  From her mother’s passionate interest in pathology to her father’s involvement in genetic modification, her family’s background in biology stretched back to her great grandfather who had spent most of his life working in the Forensic Science Laboratory in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

  Caroline squeezed the old man’s arm. ‘Thanks for the mint, Sam. I’d better get back to it.’

  On her way to the kitchen, she thought about the Indigene the military had captured two months ago. It still felt strange to be working with the World Government’s biggest secret.

  It was at medical school when she’d first come to Charles Deighton’s attention. As well as her work with pseudogenes, or non-functioning genes, she’d also had an interest in the effects on the genetic structure when nanoids added new genes to a host. Nanoids had a specific role to play in genetics—to repair damaged cells or deliver a repaired gene to where a defective gene had been spliced. The government had experimented with different species, to see how the addition of extra genes would affect their growth, abilities or immune system. The subject matter had fascinated her enough that she’d done her dissertation on it.

  It was only when Deighton had called her that she’d learned of the military’s capture of a second-generation Indigene, here on Earth. Her early studies on the first hybrid had given her a good working knowledge of the Indigenes. But she was curious to see how the race had evolved since then. When Deighton chose the Galway facility to host the second-generation Indigene, both pride and fear had filled her.

  Her team had a limited time with the subject. Deighton was after the secrets in the Indigene’s mind. The first team to crack them would transfer to Exilon 5 and if they failed, the Indigene would be moved to another facility. With just four p
eople in her team, Caroline had a lot of work to get through—and a lot to prove.

  In the kitchen, she filled a mug with hot water and dropped the mint leaves into it. Her back creaked as she sat in the chair; she’d been standing for most of the morning. Anton had only just arrived at their facility, but the activity to prepare for his arrival had been nonstop.

  Her team was relying on her success. It was their future on the line, too. Those thoughts drove her to her feet. She returned to the lab and found a flustered Felicity poring over the data while MOUSE was cursing at her.

  Her two male assistants walked through the door, chatting and joking. They jerked to a stop when they saw her.

  ‘Sorry Doctor. We were just—’ Julian began.

  ‘Keep the idle chat for your breaks, please.’ Caroline jerked her head towards the stream of new data. It was from the Berlin medical facility, the last place to host the second-generation Indigene. The pair rushed over to their stations.

  She sipped on her mint tea and looked around at the ostentatious laboratory facilities. A virtual screen floated on each end wall. One screen streamed live data, images and incomplete calculations. MOUSE scrolled through reams of incomprehensible data and formulae while Felicity argued with him to slow down. The other screen looped peaceful images designed to be motivational and calming: trees and falling leaves, Serengeti animal reserves, babbling brooks. It was the government’s visualisation of what Exilon 5 would become, once they completed all the engineering work on the planet. The images served as a reminder to the Galway team of their potential reward.

  In one corner of the room, her two male assistants studied the new data stream. In the other, Felicity continued to yell at MOUSE. Compared to the harsh world that existed above them, the bunkers were a haven. Each room was illuminated using an artificial sun prototype inset into the ceiling, a glowing ember the size of a golf ball that required tight controls to restrict its size and emissions. The World Government had trialled the prototype over forty years ago when they considered living in containment units on Earth. That was before they had discovered Exilon 5.