Genesis Rising

by Eliza Green

  ‘This wasn’t the work of the ITF. Our operations have been hijacked.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Emile regarded her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. ‘By whom?’

  ‘Harvey Buchanan.’

  Emile snorted. ‘How convenient.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’ How she disliked this elder. ‘Why are you out here?’

  She wished she were wearing the neurosensor that enhanced her ability to see liars, but it was in her pocket and she didn’t want Emile to know she had it. The day had been long and her concentration was shot. Laura wasn’t sure it would work anyway.

  Emile said, ‘Marie and I went out hunting last night. When we returned, we found our own entrances blocked.’

  Clement hunkered down, to get out of the sun. ‘So it’s the same at your district?’

  ‘It would appear so.’ The elder coughed—a possibly lingering effect of his illness.

  ‘And why are both elders out here alone?’ she asked.

  He ignored her question. ‘We took in exiles from District Three. I wanted to show them that things are different in District One, that rules can be flexible.’

  Laura scoffed. ‘How did that work out for you?’

  Emile just glared at her. ‘I assume you have a plan to get us back to our kind?’

  She wished she did. ‘I don’t know another way inside the district.’

  There was one secret entrance located beneath New London, via the train tunnels, but returning to the city was risky. Not to mention the station platform was crawling with guards.

  ‘I might know of another,’ said Clement. ‘Margaux showed me. It’s off the beaten track and not many know about it, but I was about to try it next.’

  Even though District Eight was his home, Clement had spent enough time these last few weeks in this district to get the lay of the land.

  The four of them ventured out from their safety zone. The sun had dropped lower and the temperature was beginning to fall, but not enough for the Indigenes who needed things cooler.

  Clement ran ahead and Laura followed him, not waiting for Emile or Marie. He stopped at an unremarkable area of land, flat and without so much as a raised section that might hide another entrance.

  Laura looked around for the way in. ‘Where is it?’

  Clement pointed down. She didn’t understand.

  ‘We’re standing above a series of tunnels. The tunnels were never finished and a way out was never created. If we dig down we should be able to punch a new hole inside.’

  It was then Laura realised Clement could see into the rock structure. Only a few Indigenes possessed that skill.

  ‘What about the environmental controls?’ she asked. ‘Won’t breaking earth contaminate the space?’

  The blue-eyed Indigene shook his head. ‘We’ll be punching through outside of the force field.’

  ‘Don’t we need tools for that?’ said Emile.

  Clement smiled and held up his two hands.

  Laura examined her own slender hands, which had never beaten rock before. ‘These are the only tools I have and I’m pretty sure they won’t punch through solid rock, or whatever is beneath us.’

  ‘We won’t need to. The tunnelling has weakened the rock. A short, sharp shock to it should create fissures.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘I repeat, my hands are no substitute for a couple of spades.’

  Clement dropped to his knees and began to dig like a dog. Dirt flew everywhere. Laura shielded her face.

  ‘Emile, Marie, dig,’ Clement said. ‘Your skin will heal.’

  Neither of them moved. Clement glared up at them. ‘This will go faster if you help.’

  Emile touched his chest, like he was a delicate flower. ‘I would but I’m not yet healed.’

  Marie smiled a wispy smile and touched her chest in the same, weak way.

  Laura hesitated. She might have mutations, but those did not include toughened skin.

  Clement growled and continued to dig. Anger spread through her at seeing him work alone.

  She pointed at the pair of elders. ‘Help him!’

  Reluctantly, they did. Laura dropped to her knees. Fast healing be damned. Fifteen minutes later and with four pairs of hands caked in dirt, their collective efforts had shifted three feet of soil.

  She peered into the hole to see the rock layer. ‘How are you going to get through that?’

  Clement made a fist and punched the layer. He winced and yanked his hand back out. The new cuts on his hand bled, leaking a clear fluid that mixed with the dark soil. Clement packed more dirt onto his knuckles and punched again, tossing larger fragments out of the hole. Before long, they had a system going. Clement punched while Laura, Emile and Marie plucked larger fragments of rock out of the hole and tossed them to the side.

  Half an hour of punching later, Clement stopped. He sat back on his heels, exhausted. The sun had dipped enough for Emile to lower his scarf. Laura saw it was soaked through with sweat. Marie kept hers up.

  Clement jumped into the hole, which came up to his waist. He dug out what he could and punched again.

  Laura worried about the difference in air between the district and beyond. She carried no air-filtration device. But Clement had told her she could breathe both types of air. She hoped he was right.

  She heard a pop and peered into the hole. ‘Did you break through?’

  Panting, he climbed out of the hole and nodded.

  17

  Bill sat in the car next to Gunnar. At least Jameson was with the Conditioned and safe for now. He hoped Harvey wouldn’t think to look for him there. Even if he did, the Conditioned had the area well covered.

  Jameson also had an advantage. He knew the Elite’s caves intimately, having visited often via a series of tunnels the Conditioned had created for them.

  ‘They’re a crazy lot, aren’t they?’ said Gunnar. His gaze was on New Tokyo in the distance. The setting sun deepened the evening shadows.

  ‘You’re going to have to be more specific.’

  ‘The Conditioned.’ He flicked his gaze to Bill then away. ‘And they live in caves away from society, away from all the amenities that make life a little easier. The Conditioned aren’t all that different in appearance to humans. They look closer to us than the Indigenes do. Still, society won’t accept them.’

  The hand-selected, former workers of the World Government and Earth Security Centre had evolved into a different subset of humanity. While they bore some resemblance to humans—mostly their skin—nothing could mask their height or alter their lack of interest in rejoining society.

  ‘That’s people for you. The peace treaty may have been drawn up between humans and Indigenes, but it protects the differences of all new species.’

  Gunnar shifted in his chair. ‘That’s the other thing. The treaty—it’s not working.’

  Didn’t he know it?

  Bill sighed. ‘I don’t know what else to replace it with.’

  Gunnar looked out at the deepening black landscape again. The moonlight had stripped back detail to its bare essentials. New London and New Tokyo looked different in appearance during the day, but at night everything blended together, and it was hard to tell the cities apart. The same blending could be applied to the three species living on Exilon 5. Beneath it all, the Conditioned, the Indigenes and the humans shared a history. Only their outward appearances and the ways they lived life had diverged.

  Gunnar tipped his chin at the landscape. ‘You’ll figure it out, after we get Harvey and quash the renegades’ power.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Gunnar turned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do we go back to life as before? Me in charge of the ITF, and you running my underground operations?’

  Each city had an ITF branch and every branch had an underground team that reported to Gunnar. The fact that they were needed at all should have been enough warning that things would go south even
tually.

  ‘I have no idea. All I know is this fight has been brewing for a long time.’

  ‘And I didn’t see it.’

  The Swede smiled. ‘Neither did I and I’m closer to this kind of trouble than you are. Although, nothing happened until Harvey Buchanan showed up.’

  ‘So if he hadn’t shown...’

  ‘...the renegades might have continued to sit on their plans. But someone would have had the idea eventually.’

  Bill recalled meeting a man from the construction site that Harvey had ended up in. Not that long ago, Ollie Patterson had demanded guns to protect the site from Elite attack.

  ‘Ollie Patterson was running things before Harvey showed up. Any word from him?’

  Patterson had been Harvey’s first contact after he’d arrived on Exilon 5, but the impression Bill had gotten from the man was that he was far down in operations. All subsequent activities had been directed by Harvey. But Bill had also seen Harvey converse with him directly after the demand for guns, as though Patterson had been his frontman.

  Gunnar shook his head. ‘If he’s important, Harvey will have him near, but I’ve heard no reports about him.’

  Bill shook the errant thoughts away. Patterson was not his concern. ‘Okay, let’s talk about how we’re going to get inside the city again.’

  Jameson had told them it was likely Deighton had several other tunnels leading into each of the cities, but he only knew of the one from the hospital to New London.

  Gunnar got out of the car and flicked on his DPad. He pulled an image out of the pad. Its brightness illuminated the bonnet of the car. Bill exited the vehicle and leaned over the 3D image.

  ‘From Jeff—and Susie,’ said Gunnar. ‘The maps of all the cities were stored in a separate partition on the AI’s server. It was an easy transfer to my DPad.’

  Bill eyed the detailed map of New Tokyo that Gunnar had enlarged. It was a bigger and more densely populated city than New London, with narrow roads and high rises that gave the city a claustrophobic feel to it. Bill had never been there, but he’d visited Hong Kong on Earth once. He imagined New Tokyo feeling like that place, jammed with more people than accommodation, and neon signs everywhere. But with the power down, the city no longer stood out like a bright icon.

  ‘Any word from the underground team there?’ Bill asked.

  Gunnar shook his head. ‘I can’t confirm if the way inside is safe or if our usual tunnels have been compromised. Communications right now are risky. We don’t know what Harvey’s men are listening to and what they’re not.’

  Bill agreed. This wasn’t like the criminal takeover on Earth. Harvey had more means at his disposal and a better understanding of how the ITF operated.

  Gunnar added, ‘The team will be useful once we get in there, but it will be up to us to find a way inside.’

  ‘Will they go comms dark?’

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘And how will we find them when we get in there?’

  ‘They’ll be watching the lesser known entry points inside the city. And when we get close to one of them, this should kick in.’

  Gunnar held up his sleeve. It had a pin on it. ‘It glows red when another pin is in close proximity.’

  Bill examined it. He hadn’t seen it before. ‘Is that ITF tech?’

  ‘No, we sometimes need to work off grid—for times like this. We had them made up to identify an operative quickly, safely.’

  ‘Seems like I should have thought of that.’

  ‘You did, in a way.’

  Bill didn’t understand.

  ‘You told me once that you used a communication stone to connect with the Indigenes while you were on Earth. This is made of the same stuff.’

  Bill frowned at the stone. ‘Where did it come from—one of the Indigenes?’

  ‘No, but they did source it first. It’s called gamma rock. When the pieces are in close proximity to each other, they glow.’

  ‘Like they’re talking to each other.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The communication stone Stephen had given him had become what he’d wanted it to be. A compass one time; another time, a two-way radio.

  ‘We could do with a few of those communication stones right now.’ He wished now he’d asked Laura to bring some back with her.

  ‘My men and women could certainly use them.’

  He worried for his wife, and hoped she’d made it safely to District Three. It worried him even more that Stephen had not answered his calls. Bill had checked his DPad only an hour ago. There was still no word from his friend. It wasn’t like Stephen to ignore his calls. Right now, he could really do with some help.

  ‘If you can get them, Bill, they would be better than these.’ He shook the DPad. ‘We have to assume Harvey is all over the encrypted channels. He won’t have disabled the Wave entirely.’

  Bill studied the map again, tracing his finger along the outline of the city. There were three main roads cutting vertically across the city and three roads intersecting horizontally, in a grid-like pattern. It gave them several access points inside the city. But he was sure the routes in and out were all being guarded. They couldn’t enter by conventional means.

  ‘Okay, we can assume these are blocked off.’ He pointed to the roads. ‘What about New Tokyo’s biodome?’

  Gunnar shook his head. ‘It sits inside the city.’

  ‘The water tunnels?’

  ‘Entry and exits points are all inside the city.’

  ‘So Deighton’s old tunnel leads from where to where?’ He studied the map again, but it showed top-level detail only—buildings, twisty, internal roads—not any tunnels running beneath the city. Bill was also sure Deighton’s secret tunnels would not be on any map.

  ‘What about the hospital?’ Gunnar asked. ‘Might Deighton have built more tunnels than the one leading back to New London?’

  ‘Jameson would have mentioned it.’ Bill had searched the lab and found only one.

  Gunnar sighed. ‘Well, the only place left is here.’

  He stabbed his finger on one spot.

  Bill drew back from the map. His pulse picked up. ‘Fuck, what if it’s there?’

  The place Gunnar had pointed to was the only place they hadn’t considered. And the one place most likely to be locked up tight: Base Station One.

  ‘What reason would Deighton have had to build a tunnel there?’ asked Gunnar.

  ‘Perhaps because it’s behind an electrified fence? It’s the one place that takes you far enough outside of the city.’

  ‘There’s too much activity there. Harvey has that place locked up tight.’

  Bill had already seen three vehicles and a dozen guards patrolling the boundary. For two of them, it would be impossible, but with help...

  ‘We need to find a way to check,’ said Bill. ‘Jameson assured me Harvey wouldn’t know the location of Deighton’s tunnels.’

  ‘How would he know they exist? He wasn’t here when Deighton built them.’

  ‘Harvey knew Deighton and his habits. Most likely, he met him in secret, possibly using one of his tunnels on Earth.’

  One of Deighton’s safe locations had been built inside a tunnel, beneath a house on a hill outside of London. He had no idea how many escape routes Deighton had created from that place. He’d only seen one, the day he’d met him for the first time.

  Gunnar lifted a brow. ‘Then I’d be surprised if he hasn’t been looking for the same tunnels.’

  But Harvey had failed to find the one beneath the hospital. Maybe he’d been too preoccupied with finding the doctor. But that didn’t change the fact that the base station might hide a potential tunnel there, or that the place was off limits.

  ‘So we’re back to looking for a way inside New Tokyo.’

  The 3D image cast a blue glow on Gunnar’s face. ‘If you can think of a better idea, I’m all for it.’

  Bill paced in front of the car. ‘I don�
��t like being out here doing nothing. I need to get in there, get Ben back and stop Harvey from doing whatever he’s planning.’

  ‘I don’t like it, either, but we have no way inside that city and no backup.’

  Bill stopped pacing and slumped against the side of the truck. He couldn’t see a way to proceed. ‘We have no choice but to wait for Laura to get back.’

  18

  Everything was falling apart. Half of Stephen’s charges had left. Now, there were electrified blockades outside his district that no Indigene could touch, let alone move. Who had put them there, and why?

  He wandered the tunnels of his whisper-quiet district. The silence had been a welcome change to the noise and disruption of the past week, but it felt wrong, like another cataclysmic event was about to happen. A quiet murmuring filled the tunnels as passing Indigenes conversed, mostly between those who had lost their abilities. They nodded at Stephen in an almost resigned way. Stephen hoped the Nexus would restore their abilities over time, including his own, but first it had to recover from its own illness. It could take weeks, months even, for that to happen.

  He watched his feet as he navigated the uneven tunnel surface. Someone tapped on his arm, surprising him. He spun round to see Serena standing there, her left arm frozen in the air. Since his illness, he hadn’t been able to sense her. He hated that they’d lost their intimate connection.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  She smiled softly. ‘I can feel you.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same.’ He leaned against the tunnel wall, feeling only half an Indigene.

  ‘Give it time. The Nexus will recover, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But until then I’m half, not whole.’

  ‘You mean more human than not?’

  He nodded.

  Serena’s lips thinned and he instantly regretted his remark. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I was human once, and a pretty good one at that,’ she said evenly. ‘I am no less and no better for those abilities. It’s the same for you. Humans might not be perfect but they have honed skills the Indigenes have never had to learn.’