Genesis Lie (Genesis Book 2)

by Eliza Green

  An ethereal voice in the distance stopped her halfway over the chasm: Someone is upset. Help calm them down. A torrent of emotions slammed into her. A surge of energy bolstered her strength on the outside, but only for a moment. It was long enough to open up her mind to show her more of her hallucination.

  The vision of the strange auburn-haired woman appeared to her in the soft wispy space.

  ‘Elizabeth, dear, it’s me,’ said the woman. ‘Where are you going at this hour? It’s so late.’

  The apparition had asked the question before. This time Elise pretended she was Elizabeth. ‘Nowhere special. I’m just going for a walk.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I told you—just for a walk.’

  ‘Elizabeth, are you listening to me?’ The woman stepped forward and grabbed Elise’s arm. In her unit, Elise jerked her arm away.

  A different voice answered in the Nexus space: ‘I won’t be long. I’m just heading to the office to pick up some case files.’

  ‘Can’t you download what you need from here?’

  ‘I can’t stay cooped up in this apartment forever. I have to face the world some time.’

  Elise was facing a mirror. She gasped when she caught Elizabeth’s reflection: curly, dark hair that fell round her shoulders, just like she’d dreamt about. But what shocked her most was the ugly raw scar that sliced her face from her left eye across her lips to her chin.

  In the unit, her fingers grazed the scar at the same time the Elizabeth woman touched her face.

  ‘But why now? Why at night? What if he’s waiting for you?’ said Greta.

  Her scarred reflection tidied her hair, with tears in her eyes. ‘I promise he isn’t. They’ve assured me he’s in custody.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. Please—let me go with you,’ said Greta.

  ‘No, I need to do this alone and get back control of my life.’

  The conversation ended abruptly, just like before.

  No...

  She drew on the energies around her to prolong the memory. But when they switched from helping her to draining her energy, something pushed against her and knocked her backwards.

  Uncertainty clouded her mind as she drifted over the black chasm. A new tendril from the Nexus wall, fatter than the ones before, raced towards her. It cocooned her in its thick strand and pushed her down. She fought against the squeeze as it raced to the bottom of the chasm. Knowing the Nexus reacted violently to negative thoughts, she switched to thoughts of the Evolvers. The tendril slowed and relaxed its grip. She released herself from it, scrambled to the side of the chasm and hauled her energy back up.

  Safely out, she stared into its inky depths. Any energy banished to there could never connect to the Nexus again; it would be too weak for a tendril to detect it.

  Elise raced over to her point of entry and disconnected from the Nexus. Opening her eyes, she let out a breath when she saw the plain walls of the unit.

  Shaken, she remained sat on the floor for a moment. Her hands, two fists, gripped her white robe tightly. She revisited the reason for her disconnection.

  Was Greta a residual memory, an imprint of sorts? If she could access other residual memories, she might piece together more of the story. But without the Nexus, she couldn’t determine if the memory wipe was permanent.

  Elise released her robe; her hands refused to unclench. She wished she could talk to Pierre about this, but these days they were arguing too much. And now Leon had stopped talking to her because of Pierre’s refusal to send a team to Earth to rescue Anton. With no children of her own, she could only imagine what Leon was going through. But she agreed with Pierre’s decision. They couldn’t risk losing Leon too.

  Swiping a hand through her tears, Elise looked up. The humans had created new lives—false lives—for the Indigenes. What could they want with one of their own creations? She shook her thoughts away.

  Feeling too weak to stand, she attempted to reconnect with the Nexus, hoping for the healing and tranquillity it offered. She closed her eyes, waiting for the rock face to change and for a tendril to come for her. But nothing happened.

  With a sigh, she opened them. Perhaps she could find tranquillity in this world.

  Yet, there was so much to fix: her mind, her union with Pierre.

  She’d start with young Stephen. His emerging ability was becoming too much for him to handle—that much was clear. Pierre hadn’t the skills to help him, but perhaps she could, as an empath.

  12

  With his overcoat folded over one arm, Charles Deighton exited the turbo lift that connected to the bunker area below the World Government offices in Washington DC. He crossed the public foyer, gel mask at the ready, and smiled at Carol. The receptionist gave a tentative smile back. He was on his way to a meeting with the board members to discuss the captured Indigene. While it pleased him that his real plans for Anton remained a secret, the lengthy wait for results irritated him. The Indigene had been with Dr Finnegan for two weeks now and she still hadn’t reported back with any findings.

  This has to work.

  Deighton inhaled the scent of the artificially grown roses, placed in a dozen clear glass vases on a table in the middle of the foyer. He’d had Carol put the roses there for a reason other than to improve the decor. Newcomers would get distracted by their smell, long enough for his recruiters to swoop in and regale them with facts about the World Government’s power. Ever since Anton’s capture, and possibly before that, Deighton had lost interest in recruiting. The genetic selection and secret tests had provided more suitable test subjects than a lengthy recruitment process had ever done.

  He thought about the Indigenes. How good was their sense of smell—better than a dog’s? Because that’s all they were to him: animals. A more cooperative Anton might have skipped months of torture.

  Time was not on his side. His obsession with the second generation would remain a secret for now, but he couldn’t hide his genetic condition forever. Given enough time, doctors might fix his broken code, code that ruled him out of transferring to Exilon 5. At least the board members’ interest in Anton’s code had kept the Indigene alive. They would get their answers, but not before Deighton got his.

  He swung his overcoat like a matador’s cape and slipped his arms into the sleeves. Carol smiled at the theatrics. He loved showing off for his employees. The gel mask moulded to the contours of his face as he entered the revolving door. His skin tightened when he passed through the force field, separating the clean air inside from the contamination outside.

  The freezing air caused him to shiver. He stamped his feet and pulled his coat around him tighter. The damn town car was late.

  Deighton scanned the streets. ‘Where the hell is that ingrate?’

  A black car turned the corner and screeched to a halt at the kerb in front of him. A tall man wearing a driver’s uniform stumbled out of the car and straightened himself.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Deighton. I... the traffic was terrible.’

  ‘Excuses, young man. I won’t tolerate them.’

  ‘Of course not.’ The driver fumbled with the rear door handle, then opened the door.

  Deighton got in and got comfortable. The driver returned to his seat. He popped off his mask as soon as the air conditioning hummed to life. ‘How long before we get to the meeting?’

  The driver turned around in his seat. ‘About ten minutes, sir. If we take the outer ring road, we should cut out the congestion in the city. I’ll set the coordinates now.’ He programmed the route into the car’s navigation system. ‘The car will choose the quickest route, sir.’

  ‘Make sure of it. The board members don’t wait for anyone.’ Deighton snapped his fingers. ‘Give me privacy.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ The driver pressed a button and a blackened window created a buffer between them.

  As soon as the car moved off, the side-window display sprang into life, showing green fields and hedgerows, sunny skies, people on bicycles,
and lots of space. The lies blocked out the real truth: beggars littering the road in their dozens, looking for a quick release under the wheels of an oncoming car. The cars had been fitted with a plough on the front grill to clear a path.

  Deighton activated the small monitor in front of him, scanned his security chip and punched in an encryption code. Dr Caroline Finnegan appeared on screen.

  The doctor smiled and touched the back of her neck. ‘Mr Deighton. Lovely to see you again.’

  ‘Is it?’

  The doctor touched her neck again. ‘Of course.’

  They could lie to his face, but body language revealed the truth. Like Daphne Gilchrist and her nervous nail tapping.

  ‘So tell me, Doctor, how is the Indigene settling in?’

  ‘Well enough, Mr Deighton.’

  The car came to an abrupt stop and Deighton fell forward in his seat.

  ‘Good God. What’s going on out there?’

  The driver released the blackened partition between them. ‘A problem,’ he said, nodding towards the centre of the road. ‘What would you like me to do?’

  Deighton craned his neck. A young woman holding a bundle stood in the middle of the road. ‘Use the plough, for God’s sake. Where’s your backbone, man.’

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘Thought what? That the sight of an undesirable would break my heart? Look at her eyes, dear boy. She’s after a fix, and I’m sure there are hoodlums waiting for some idiot to take pity on her. Do you know how much a car like this fetches on the black market? Push her off the street and let’s be on our way.’

  The driver nodded and raised the partition again. The car lurched forward with a bump and shudder as it disposed of the obstacle. Deighton was about to return to his conversation with Dr Finnegan when someone banged on one of the side windows. The fake scenery rippled. He heard the words ‘Rich scum!’ above the faint hum of the car’s air conditioning. He hit a button and the window rolled down a few inches. It gave him enough space to spit at the woman.

  ‘Cheap whore,’ he hissed, holding the gel mask to his face. ‘If you’re after money, why not sell that genetically defective child of yours? Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure you’ll get a fair price.’

  He closed the window and pushed his hair back into place, then turned to the monitor to see a pale Caroline Finnegan staring at him.

  ‘That was unexpected,’ he said a little out of breath. ‘Sorry for the interruption, Doctor. There’s really only one way to deal with those people. Everyone wants something for nothing these days.’ Fuelled by a new urgency, he said, ‘You have your official orders, but I want to discuss a couple of extra tasks I’d like you to carry out. Highly confidential, Doctor. Experimental at this stage. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Deighton.’ The doctor had regained her composure.

  Genetic biologists were good at doing that. ‘Your success is all I care about. Don’t let me down.’

  ‘I don’t plan to, Mr Deighton.’

  ‘Good. The World Government is keen to identify the Indigene DNA formula that will work best with humans. I’d like you to take it a step further.’ His heart beat a little faster. ‘Let’s discuss the hosts sent to your facility, shall we?’

  13

  Susan Bouchard opened her eyes, but saw little in the thick blackness that surrounded her. Splinters of blue light caught her eye. The underground Maglev train stations used a similar shade of blue to calm the crowds that gathered there. To her, the blue made the platforms darker and more claustrophobic than they were.

  But this was no underground station on Earth: she could hear no whine of the train riding the magnetic tracks, or hum of the swollen crowd waiting for the train to arrive. What she could hear, when she turned her head, was an unfamiliar grinding noise far off in the distance.

  The smell of stale body odour informed her that she was not alone. She breathed through her mouth and examined the space as far as she could see. Silhouettes of other people came into focus—several rows of them—suspended inside what looked to be a huge warehouse. Where was she? She listened, sensing no other movement around her.

  Susan jerked in her seat, but her wrists, ankles and torso moved little underneath the metal restraints. A swell of panic caused her breath to hitch.

  Was this the passenger ship to Exilon 5? She felt neither hungry nor thirsty. If this was stasis, she may have come out of it too soon. That would explain her confusion.

  Where was Joel? She tried to speak, but her dry and scratchy voice barely registered above a whisper. She frowned, trying to remember back to her arrival on the passenger ship. Her memories stopped at the spacecraft taking her to the ship. She and Joel had sat together. A sense of unease had filled her during the flight. She should have listened to her inner voice.

  Susan trawled through her last conscious moments for a clue—something said at the transfer facility or mentioned on board the spacecraft—about where they were going. Maybe the pilot had informed them of the change of plans mid-air.

  She and Joel had sat by the window of the spacecraft—Joel hated travelling. The pilot then made a safety announcement. The spacecraft carrying blonde-haired-blue-eyed people had risen out of the Toronto docking station. Joel had closed his eyes to stave off his motion sickness. Then a strange odour had filled the craft—an underlying chemical stench beneath a sweet sanitised smell.

  Now here she was, and with no memories after that moment. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she finally saw what could be stasis pods. Except these open-style ones differed to the closed caskets on the promotional videos for the transfer programme. New edges appeared in the darkness, turning rough shapes into definitive ones.

  ‘Joel.’ Susan coughed. ‘Joel, are you awake?’

  The final layout of the room came into view. She jerked back from the rows of unconscious people wearing identical jumpsuits that surrounded her. People were suspended in bucket seats above and below her, to the front and to either side; how many, she couldn’t tell. She glanced down at her own body, grateful she was not naked.

  ‘Joel, are you there?’ she whispered.

  The blue light made sense to her now. Its purpose was to illuminate a number at the bottom of each bucket seat. A force field crackled below her feet and next to her hands. Its proximity made her skin tingle. She counted along her own row as far as she could see—at least forty people were suspended on either side of her. What she couldn’t see was how long each row was or how densely the rows were packed.

  Susan studied the faces in front of her. Also restrained, they were posed most unnaturally, almost as if they were dead.

  Oh God, I hope they aren’t dead.

  New panic caught hold. Her neck tightened at her proximity to the “dead”. She wriggled against her restraints, but it did nothing to ease her sudden claustrophobia. Sucking in a sharp breath, she reminded herself that she was a lab technician. She was trained to deal with death. Chests rose and fell. Susan released her breath.

  Four colour-coded tubes were inserted in each person’s upper left arm, including her own. If one delivered nutrients, it would explain why she wasn’t hungry or thirsty.

  Why am I the only one awake?

  Slight movement in front of her caught her attention. Her eyes cut to the face of the young man sat opposite her. She could have sworn his eyes had been open just a moment ago.

  ‘Joel?’ Her voice normalised.

  A grunt sounded close by. She searched for the source of the noise. There was another grunt. She leaned forward.

  ‘Joel, is that you?’

  ‘Jesus, my head.’ Joel moved in his seat, located two up from her in the same row.

  She smiled. ‘I’m so happy to hear your voice.’

  ‘Susan? Is that you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d like to say we’re on the passenger ship, but it doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘I can’t see properly
yet,’ said Joel. ‘My head aches. Why does it feel like I’ve been slapped around the face?’

  ‘Maybe you were being your usual charming self.’ Susan attempted to make light of the serious situation. She felt eyes on her again.

  She studied the face of the young man opposite her; his eyes were still closed. ‘Excuse me—you in front of me. I saw you looking. Tell me your name.’

  The young man opened one eye, then the other. His fear was apparent.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. Joel and I can’t hurt you.’ She wiggled her wrists in the restraints. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Robbie—Robbie O’Shea.’

  ‘How old are you, Robbie?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  The man was nearly at tears. He struggled against his own bonds. The more he twisted, the more the bucket seat swung around and fuelled his panic.

  ‘Shush,’ said Joel suddenly. ‘Listen.’

  A whirring noise began. Liquid travelled down the translucent yellow tubes into the arms of the people around them. None appeared to head for her or Robbie’s arm; she couldn’t see Joel’s.

  ‘What the hell is going on? Where are we?’ whispered Robbie.

  ‘I’ll tell you where we’re not,’ said Joel. ‘The passenger ship. I got a tour of its stasis room a few years back—my cousin works there—and this is not what I saw.’

  ‘What was that noise we just heard?’ Robbie’s voice wobbled.

  ‘They’re topping up the sedative to keep the rest of them under,’ said Susan to Joel.

  ‘What are all the tubes are for?’ asked Robbie.

  ‘The red one is most likely for nutrients. The yellow one is a liquid sedative of some kind, the blue one is probably to keep us hydrated, and the green one—’ She leaned forward to look at Joel.

  He shook his head. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

  ‘Shouldn’t the nutrients feed directly into our stomachs?’ said Robbie.

  Joel sighed. Her colleague had little patience for people in general.