The Roke Discovery

by J P Waters

  “This way,” Luca said, calm and collected.

  Olie frantically looked around, desperately wishing she’d grabbed that communicator from Kaif. “Luca, wait. Call Janie. Tell her what’s happened.”

  “I have already done so. Janie is currently monitoring our movements through my control system. Let us focus on our escape,” Luca replied.

  “How did Luca know to come for us?” asked Jayson.

  “Frog. I called Frog before we came in. I knew he would help us, especially if we were going to expose what was going on with the rokes. I gave him a message to give to Janie if he didn’t hear from us,” replied Olie in a whisper.

  In front of them, the cell doors had been opened and rokes were pouring out of their prior containment into the facility proper. The prison was hundreds of yards long and six stories high, and there had been countless numbers of rokes in each cell. Hundreds—perhaps, thousands—were now writhing in the pit below.

  The group moved from the cells to another set of stairs at the far end of the facility, peering around each corner for more rokes. The labyrinthine structure had been designed so that any jailbreak would entail crisscrossing the length of each block before ever reaching the bottom floor. Olie couldn’t help but continue to check over the railing as they went. There was a sea of rokes that kept growing, fighting and eating one another as they too moved toward the exits.

  “Come on!” yelled Olie.

  Olie looked out across the prison and saw a human-sized roke rolling down the far corridor. She looked back and saw another coming toward them from an adjacent walkway.

  “They’re going to cut us off!”

  “The stairs are no longer a viable option. We will have to climb down,” Luca said, calm as ever.

  “Climb?”

  “Come along, Mr. Belsey. Your sister is waiting.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Olie and Jayson followed Luca over the railing and began moving down the railings using them like rungs of a ladder. Jayson climbed beside Olie. Just as they were about to jump down into the next level, he slipped. He began falling backwards toward the rokes, but Olie reached out and grabbed hold of his flailing arm. She dangled for a moment with Jayson in her grasp, then used the momentum of the catch to throw him into the next level. Jayson hit the ground and rolled into the wall. He was holding his shoulder as Olie jumped down and grabbed him.

  Grasping his shoulder, he said, “I must be dehydrated, my grip is so weak. Thanks, Ol.”

  Olie gave him her hand. “Can you keep going?”

  He nodded as he stood.

  The others jumped into the corridor as Olie straddled the next railing. As they moved down to the next level, one of the large rokes leapt from an upper floor. It began to feast on smaller rokes before continuing to bang on the glass, making an odd growling noise, spewing water almost immediately.

  Jayson looked over his shoulder. “How big do those things get?”

  “Big. Very big. Gerry must be some kind of runt.”

  They continued climbing until they reached the second level. Jayson stared over the railing.

  “They’re going to kill everything,” Jayson said.

  “Not if we can help it,” said Olie.

  “There’s too many of them.”

  “Luca, are you taping this?”

  “Yes, Ms. Manning.”

  “With this there won’t be anymore half-actions, no more cover ups. The military—and Parker—will be forced to help. Look at that!” said Olie as she pointed to the floor level of the prison. Rokes were everywhere rolling into each other, fighting and eating one another. The floor was thick with a mix of black blood and water. It was a nightmare that nobody could ignore.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” said Jayson.

  “We go now,” Luca said decisively. “They’re thinning out.”

  Olie looked toward the stairs and saw a giant roke rolling onto the level above. She started climbing over the side, and the others followed. When they reached the bottom floor, Luca led them into a long tunnel behind the exiting rokes pouring out of the building. Luca shot any stray rokes that approached them, using his photon gun. As nasty as the rokes were, they died easily. Luca’s gun was an effective weapon. The time for darts was over.

  When they finally reached the rear entrance of the facility, the bright sun and searing heat surprised Olie. The incarceration had caused her to lose any concept of time, and she’d come to accept the facility’s bitter cold.

  “Hurry!” said Luca, guiding them through a field of scrub brush covered with black rokes who were feasting on anything living, including dry grasses, shrubbery, and one another. In the distance, there was a black mass of the creatures scaling the fence around the perimeter of the prison grounds.

  “What on Earth were they thinking? That fence isn’t holding them at all,” said Olie as she watched the rokes work their way up and over the fence.

  “The aerodrone is on its way.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” gurgled a voice from behind them.

  Kaif, covered in black blood and hunched over from exhaustion, appeared in the facility’s rear entrance door. She held a large weapon pointed right at them. It was bigger than a photon pistol but smaller than a chem rifle, and it glowed a mesmerizing hyper-green. Olie and the others backed slowly away, keeping an eye behind them on the feasting rokes near the fence. Luca continued to either shoot encroaching animals or lift and hurl them into distance, prioritizing the man-eaters above this new threat.

  “What do you want from us? We’ve been transmitting videos of what you’re doing. It’s too late,” shouted Olie.

  “The mission is no less important,” replied Kaif, a look of devotion and determination spreading across her bloody lips. It was then that Olie noticed her teeth. They looked like a biomod, but nothing like Olie had ever seen before. It was as if there were dental caps that had fallen off, exposing what looked like jagged fangs where her teeth should be. Even stranger, the skin around a wound on Kaif’s forehead appeared to be peeling away, revealing a gray-blue, sandpaper-like skin beneath. What the fuck was going on?

  Olie was about to protest—try and talk until they could come up with a plan—until she noticed the large roke rolling down the corridor behind Kaif.

  Kaif took a step closer to the crew with her weapon pointed at them. “Not so fast,” she said, her gravelly voice burbling out through the blood-loss. “Their discovery must be prevented at all costs.”

  Olie glanced at Jayson just before the giant roke began unfolding its five appendages and moving up the ramp like a spider, scampering toward the guard.

  “Jump!” Jayson yelled.

  Olie took two steps before leaping out of the way of the approaching roke. Kaif spun around just in time to see the human-sized meateater open like the petals of a flower and wrap all five of its limbs around her. The roke bit into Kaif’s chest, and she screamed. Right before Olie lost sight of her, she saw Kaif fire her weapon at the roke. A blast of green exploded from inside the beast, splattering them both across the courtyard. It was impossible to tell which seared chunks of meat belonged to Kaif and which to the giant roke.

  As Olie climbed to her feet, she saw a long aerodrone moving in low over the perimeter fence.

  “This way!” Luca shouted, still holding the smaller rokes back.

  Olie and the others jumped aboard, still having to contend with a dozen more rokes who were lurching at the skids. Already scavengers were rushing over to devour what was left of Kaif’s decimated body. They expelled water over each other and began rolling again before jumping for the drone as it lifted into the air. The animals fell just short, dropping back onto the other predators below.

  Olie stared transfixed at the skids as they rose into the air. At this point if the rokes somehow took flight it wouldn’t have surprised Olie. As she continued watching the rokes, though, she knew one thing was certain: allowed to breed, they would devour the world. A Sebanic army was their only hop
e, and even that might not be enough.

  Chapter Forty-One

  On the aerodrone, Jayson was shaking and damp.

  “You’re okay. It’s okay,” Olie said, wrapping her arm around him. He seemed far away, and Olie couldn’t help but think of his flash freeze. She wished she could have saved him from even more trauma.

  Instead, she just held him, repeating in a soft voice: “It’s okay, Jayson. It’s okay now.”

  Eventually she looked up from her comforting to the rest of their party. Luca was attending to Mona’s “wounds” at the back of the aerodrone.

  “How is she?”

  “Her chances for repair are very low,” Luca said, a hint of genuine sadness in his usually lifeless voice.

  After making sure Jayson was secured in one of the aerodrone’s harnesses, Olie bent down next to Mona and took hold of her hand.

  “Stay with me. Can you do that?”

  Mona blinked. Fluid was pooled in one of her eyes, but her mouth started forming words.

  “I feel… alive. I do not wish… to die,” Mona rasped.

  “What?”

  Her eyes closed and Luca continued to monitor her signals. Mona slipped into unconsciousness again.

  “She’ll need new organs,” Luca said.

  “But she’ll pull through, right?”

  “It is possible, albeit unlikely.”

  “Thank you, Luca. We wouldn’t have made it without you. None of us would have.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Ms. Belsey and your friend. The one who calls himself Frog.”

  “I wish Gerry had made it out too. Jayson wouldn’t have survived without him.”

  “Olie,” Jayson said, pulling her attention back to the front of the drone. He’d pulled something out of his pocket and was presenting it with both his hands. Slowly it unfurled and started sniffing the air.

  Gerry.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Olie rode along holding onto the cargo net that was strung up on the inside of the Cerebral Bionics tractor-trailer. She was equipped with a chem rifle and a pair of photon pistols. The Sebanic lining the inside of the trailer were similarly equipped, but they were also prepared for hand-to-hand combat with the rokes covering the shoreline outside of Melbourne. Olie noted the silence within the trailer – just Olie and the team of Sebanic preparing to embark on another round of roke executions. Trucks and aerodrones full of extermination-ready Sebanic were being dispatched all over the country. The media pressure had worked, and Parker’s recent public pledge of support showed none of the resistance he’d expressed privately.

  When the truck stopped, Olie watched the rear door open before yelling, “Go! Now! Now!”

  One after another, the Sebanic jumped from the back of the trailer and began running down the slight incline that led to the breeding ground. Olie followed, firing on the rokes that fed on brown grasses nearby. All around Olie, rokes were leaping at Sebanic, who were nimbly taking them down. Olie watched as a Luca model—not Janie’s—ripped one clean in half before stomping the eggs that fell out.

  Once Olie and the initial Seba team had cleared out a path free of rokes, they retreated into the trailer and were replaced by a new wave of the Seba soldiers who advanced on the colony with blowtorches. Olie knew it would go on like this until all nearby animals had been assassinated. The screeching of the burning animals was horrifying, but she had come to terms with the operation. Shoot ‘em, rip ‘em, burn ‘em. It had come to be the underlying motto of their mission. Left unchecked, the rokes would simply destroy everything around them, turn on each other, and then starve. Extermination of the rokes was the only way to assure that humans had a chance to survive on their home planet. Well, with the secret exception of Gerry, of course.

  Olie moved more slowly along the beach, continuing to fire as she went. The rocks quickly became slick with roke water and blood. The Sebanic, meanwhile, took to the waves. They dove beneath the surface of the water, taking vids and images for Navy reference. Occasionally, Olie saw a Seba pull a roke out of the water and blast it, creating a small, black explosion.

  Olie watched her band as the Sebanic relayed footage of the ocean floor. There was a dark trail in the sand indicating a group of rokes migrating back out of the belly of the sea. The mission was to clear the beach and find the origin point deep in the ocean. Once the origin had been found, the Navy was on standby to take it out. Olie looked up from her band as a small roke washed ashore. It reminded her of Gerry, except that it was injured somehow and missing the telltale stripe. Olie raised her pistol and readied to fire. She steadied herself but took a breath before lowering her weapon.

  “Take care of that one for me,” she said, turning to the nearest Seba.

  The Seba stepped forward, bent over, and took the roke in its hand. Olie turned her head and decided not to watch what happened next.

  “I think we got the footage we need,” she said into her band.

  Ten minutes later, an aerodrone landed a little further down the beach. Olie climbed aboard and left her team on the ground. The Sebanic were to remain on the beach, making sure no rokes made it inland. As Olie took flight she collapsed in one of the nearby seats. She’d only have a moment to rest before doing the whole thing over again at the next location.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The media was present for the operation as well. The Sebanic were lit up by their drones as the rokes’ extermination was recorded. Meanwhile, the release of the rokes near the exposed IWS facility had resulted in a curfew. Citizens were advised to remain in their homes as teams of Sebanic combed the area. Various sites around the country and the world were in a similar state. Seattle was on alert, but the city remained active, the residents cautiously going about their business. It was generally believed that the roke invasion was under control.

  But nothing was certain. It was not clear how many rokes there were at the bottom of the ocean, and speculation was rampant among scientists, politicians, and media personalities alike.

  Following the IWS incident, Olie had been urged into assisting the newly armed Sebanic Unit with containing the roke outbreak. Parker had insisted on her participation in the mission. Olie wasn’t sure exactly why, maybe as retribution, maybe so he could continue to keep tabs on her, she didn’t much care. She was willing to help even if he hadn’t required it. Olie was the closest thing they had to an expert roke exterminator, and Parker claimed the Sebanic needed expertise to learn from. Olie wouldn’t be surprised if he took some grim pleasure in sending her to the front lines—they both knew she was the one who’d gotten him into this mess.

  At the very least she was being paid. With her past military service, reactivating her accounts as a paid contractor had been quick and easy. Olie was amazed by how much faster the industrial war complex moved when they wanted something from her. The roke problem wasn’t going away any time soon, but it was on its way to being contained. Even if the known roke population was brought under control, there’d be years of clean-up operations put into place to make sure hidden colonies didn’t lead to a resurgence. Olie would likely be set for life if she wanted to be—at least as far as employment was concerned.

  Olie was laying on her cot in District 08’s roke control center when a shrill ring emitted from her band, alerting Olie to an incoming call from her unit’s commanding officer, Jin Belter. With a nod, Olie acknowledged the call.

  Jin’s voice bellowed from the band. “Olie, I need a sitrep from this morning. How’s it going on the coast?”

  Olie couldn’t help but smile, she wasn’t a soldier again, she was a contractor, but Jin was a solider and he struggled with the ambiguity. “Hey Jin. All good here. This morning’s extermination mission was a success, but I’m guessing you already knew that.”

  “Yes soldier, I suppose I did. Olie, they want to move you back inland, take care of some infestations that have grown lakeside… You’d be leading the whole charge down there, a big step up from the cleanup missions you are working
now.”

  Olie paused before answering.

  “Jin, it’s not for me. This is a temporary gig. If Parker hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t be here, I’m not re-enlisting.”

  “I figured as much, Olie, but I had to ask. Chain of command, you know?”

  “I do, Jin.”

  Jin nodded and gave her a salute on the video feed. The communication was over.

  The unfortunate consequence of an Earth crisis was that you needed to be on Earth to combat it. There’d be no bridge to the stars working in animal control, and the more integral she became to the response team, the more difficult it would be for her to leave. Not that she’d have much time to apply to other jobs, anyway.

  With a sigh, Olie leaned back on her cot and stared at the ceiling.

  At least one good thing had come to Olie’s attention from all of this, though. Evidently it had started with Frog and spread to the media, but it was common enough now that it was undeniable. Scientists could say what they wanted, but in public opinion at least, the animals would always be known as rokes.

  Olie traveled into town that evening to visit Mona in the hospital. Mona had an extensive rebuild of her endoskeleton as well as a number of transplants, but enough of her organs were human so that she could be treated in a public Sebanic facility. Olie walked into Mona’s room in the treatment center with an orchid. Setting it down on a table, she waved at Lane and Raquel, who had also come for a visit after hearing what had happened to the Seba.

  “You brought her an orchid?” asked Lane.