by Paul Teague
The military applications of this were extensive. You could create whole armies of soldiers – remove any genetic disorders or physical weaknesses – then control elements such as intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities to forge warriors who were almost incapable of error or failure. Viktor could manufacture the strongest, most intelligent and efficient soldier ever known to humankind, all of it via a laboratory.
Was it ‘playing God?’ Viktor didn’t know. But as a man who knew from his own personal experiences the necessity of using huge force at certain times and in particular situations, he understood the value to the military of such a discovery.
He just hoped that it would be used for good.
Change
As each one of the hundreds of satellites circling the planet released its vast, glowing Shards and projected its healing energy through the darkness, a change began to take place below.
Where once it was black, thick and impenetrable, minute by minute it started to take on a hue that had become less black and much more blue.
There was change taking place beneath this blanket which had been wrapped around the world to help to cure it of its diseases. Billions of life forms continued to slumber – on the surface and in the oceans – unaware of the changes that were taking place around them.
What was occurring was a highly advanced terraforming process which had been carefully balanced to enrich the planet once again where it had been plundered and left bereft. This was about replenishing, regenerating and rebuilding. It was a positive process, one of growth and creation. But it could also be adapted for other purposes too.
The advanced technology which was healing the Earth could also be used to destroy it.
Terraforming is a process which is deployed to manipulate a planet’s atmosphere, temperature, surface topography, and ecology to make it just like Earth. Or in the case of the Genesis 2 project, to recreate the Earth as it once was, before it was damaged by the industrial and wartime activities of Man.
But what if the planet didn’t need to be like Earth? When men created the term ‘terraforming’ it was a sign of their vanity that they used it to create an Earth-like atmosphere and environment. Not everybody needed to create a place like Earth. Not everybody needed an atmosphere or environment like our planet. And not everybody needed a planet with life forms on its surface.
Sanctuary
This is almost the moment I’ve been waiting for – all of my family are in the same room together at last. Harriet is quite obviously in some discomfort. Who knows what happened here, but she seems to be in considerable pain. Mum looks exhausted and sore, in fact she doesn’t even look like Mum, she’s changed her appearance so much since I last caught sight of her. Dad and David just look dazed, they don’t really seem to have a grasp of what’s going on. They’re vague in their behaviour and, although they recognize us, they don’t seem to be fully aware or conscious.
There’s another man in the room too, next to Mum and with David. I assume he’s friendly because Mum accepts his presence here. I’ll go with her judgement, but he looks familiar and I’m struggling to place his face. I can sense that Nat feels that familiarity too.
There’s not much time for introductions now. The approaching heavy footfall means that we have very little time to take the initiative over the approaching guards.
I’m quite surprised by what I do next. I step in and take control. And nobody stops me. In fact, they all seem to agree with me. ‘We need to get to the lift!’ I shout, ‘But we’re going to have to fire our way through. Everybody who has a weapon will need to provide a shield, but we need to get to the end of the corridor and then to the lift entrance before they start to send reinforcements.’
I still have a spare stun device which I hand over to Mum who seems to be the best person to take it right now. The man she’s with has a weapon, as does James, who looks terrible with all his cuts and bruises. Nat, Magnus and I have stun devices. We’re well kitted out between us.
It’s funny to think that only two days earlier we were touring this place as holiday makers. It’s turned into some really extreme holiday experience, not the sort of thing you’d book through your travel agent.
The other people in the room appear useless. It pains me to say it but even Dad is so vague that he’s not going to be a lot of help to us in this fight. We need to get him, David, Harriet and the people who worked as guides in the bunker safely to that lift. Nat and I can then transport everybody back to Magnus’s Quadrant which Kate doesn’t appear to have access to at the moment.
Whatever is ‘special’ about Nat and me is the key to this. I haven’t a clue what it is yet, and I certainly don’t feel special in any way, but I’m going to go with the information that I’ve got for now.
We position ourselves as best we can along the corridor. It’s not a great place for a confrontation, as there are very few areas to take cover. I’m no military strategist but I know the basics. I need to hide where they can’t shoot me but I can shoot them.
I’m nervous and breathing fast, it seems incredible that I’m here and involved in this right now. If it was a dream I wouldn’t be surprised, but my senses are so alert I know that this is definitely for real.
It’s good news for us that Kate’s security teams obviously don’t think that our ramshackle army is any threat whatsoever, so there are only six guards in the team that comes to apprehend us. That puts the odds in our favour, though they have proper weapons – we mainly have stun devices.
We have the advantage, so are first to fire. They’re not expecting us, so we stun three of them immediately. ‘Get ready to run!’ I shout to Dad, who is with the civilians around the corner, on standby to run for their lives.
He’s carrying Harriet too, but he still seems completely out of it. He can see what’s going on here, but he just isn’t engaged in it.
The guards return fire. This is scary, it’s very fast and intense and it’s extremely difficult to tell what’s going on. I hope we’re stunning these people rather than hurting them. I’ve seen what has been done to James, but I don’t want to be hurting anybody. I’m still hoping that we can fix this like a playground altercation – just shake hands, apologize and move on – but the returning weapon fire is suggesting otherwise.
Nat’s really into this, she’s firing her stun device like she’s playing a fairground game and another of the guards drops to the floor. The remaining two are retreating now and it’s Mum who actually signals that we should start to move forward towards the lift.
Normally she can’t even survive a few laps of a console motor racing game, but now here she is, stun gun in hand, waving us all forward. Wow, I’m impressed. I’m guessing we have some catching up to do, because in that photo I spotted in the Control Room she was wearing a military uniform.
I’ve never seen her like this before. I know that she can manage a unit of school children, get their lunch boxes packed up, and have them all dressed and out of the house by 8.45 a.m. But she’s really in control here, firing her weapon alongside Nat and helping us press forward along the corridor.
All the time the alert sirens are sounding loudly, it can’t be long until reinforcements arrive. We’re almost at the lift and I think we’re going to make it when a laser beam fires just by my ear and hits one of the bunker staff behind me. I don’t even know these people, yet this woman only has time to give a small cry before she’s thrown back onto the floor, with shocking force.
The familiar looking man who’s next to Mum goes to help her, but indicates that she’s dead. ‘Can’t you use your machine on her?’ yells Mum, still firing at the two guards who are slowly retreating ahead of us.
‘It heals damaged tissue, it can’t bring her back,’ he replies. ‘I’m sorry, we’ll have to leave her.’
I’ve never seen a dead body before and I’m scared and frightened by the speed and force of what just happened. To be honest with you, I haven’t done much in this corridor battle so far a
nd I’m a bit stunned by everything happening around me. But now I feel angry for this woman – I don’t know what’s going on in this bunker yet, but I do know that I want more than anything right now to get all of these people into that lift, and back to the safety of Magnus’s Quadrant.
I don’t know what comes over me. Whatever it is, I think it got to Nat and Mum already, but a rage surges through me and I fire my stun device with absolute precision towards the two remaining guards. I’m yelling as I do, but I find both targets and they slump to the floor. I’m still yelling when I realize that the firing has stopped and everybody is looking at me in stunned silence.
‘Nice shooting Dan!’ Nat breaks the silence. ‘All those computer games have paid off.’
I’m concerned about how normal this seems to her. Nat isn’t fazed at all by what’s going on here, she takes all of this violence in her stride. I even think that she was quite excited by the fight we’ve just had.
We can hear the thudding of more boots as the reinforcements make their way up the corridor from the opposite direction, so there’s no time to talk now. We bundle ourselves into the lift. I hesitate to call it a lift because, as we now know, it’s so much more than that. Maybe ‘transporter’ is a better word, or ‘shuttle’.
We’re all in and the door closes just as the first blast of hostile fire shoots along the corridor. The light array begins to fill the lift signalling that the Transporter is activated, and the doors open at our new destination. We’ve managed to escape to Quadrant 3. For now, we have sanctuary.
Chapter Nine
Psychologist
It’s very difficult to get a diagnosis that your young child is a sociopath. And who would want that particular diagnosis for their own child? But after the scalding water incident in the bath, both parents had an uneasy feeling about this child.
They had searched everywhere for clues and information. How do you describe the violent actions of a young child? Are they random experiments, carried out without thought of consequence? Or are they calculated and planned, the expression of an evil mind?
So, with their child at the very young age of only three years old, they found themselves sitting in the psychologist’s office discussing whether there could be something wrong with this particular toddler. As all parents would be, they were scared to learn the answer.
The psychologist listened attentively and nodded with sympathy as they retold the stories about the wooden brick and the scalding water. They held back about the incident involving the scissors. If she forgot to keep her sleeve pulled down fully you could still see the wound; it had been deep and painful. Whilst enjoying a simple art activity with the children, her sharp scissors had been grabbed from her hand when her attention was diverted and plunged deep into her wrist.
As parents, they could still not bring themselves to admit that incident to anybody. They felt shamed in some way, as if it was their fault, as if they were responsible for what this child was doing.
They spent some time with the psychologist, but she was adamant in her opinion. At three years old, you simply can’t pigeonhole a child as being a ‘sociopath’. If you do apply that label, they may become one anyway, simply because of the way that you treat them. So, for now, there was to be no help or support for them, they were on their own with this.
As parents, they knew that something wasn’t right here, but as the psychologist had stressed, this matter would not be taken too seriously until the child was older. Certainly they would need to be attending school and old enough to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong.
As they thanked the psychologist for her time, she gave her husband a disappointed look. They had really needed some assistance here, this was the only cry for help that they felt they could make. And now the door was being closed on them. They were on their own.
With a child who was going to become deceitful, manipulative and a sickening murderer.
22:27 Quadrant 3: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
You can actually feel the sense of relief as the door opens onto a quiet, calm corridor where there are no sirens going off and no weapons being fired at us. I’m not sure if anybody even realized what just happened in the panic – they saw the lights in the lift of course, but I don’t think they can tell that we just moved between bunkers.
I have to admit that I’m totally stunned by what Magnus says next: ‘Welcome to West Virginia,’ he says, ‘you are all very welcome and safe in Quadrant 3.’
‘West Virginia?’
Virtually everybody asks the same question at one time.
‘Yes, Quadrant 3 is located underground in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia,’ Magnus continues. ‘Don’t ask me how we did it, but we appear to have just travelled well over three thousand miles in a matter of seconds!’
There’s astonishment all around, but I think that we’ve all seen so much that’s unfamiliar and out of place in the past forty-eight hours that we would believe anything right now. Members of Magnus’s team arrive to greet us, and it’s good to see guards and bunker staff who don’t seem to want us dead, even though they all have those yellow lights in their necks – dormant for now, but potentially a future threat.
Mum’s friend James and Harriet are in most need of help. Harriet seems to be in a bad way and James looks in need of some urgent medical attention. He was great in that fight we just had though, a real asset.
The other man who was helping David has taken a very obvious interest in the pads and buttons in the lift. I think he’s trying to figure out how we just did what we did. I don’t know this man yet, but Mum has vouched for him and he certainly helped us in the showdown we just had in Quadrant 1.
He puts his hand on the pad next to the unusual symbols, but nothing happens. Not even the jolt that Nat and I got when we tried it on our own. What is it about me and my twin that enables us to do something so cool in a place that we’ve never even been to before? I’d love to know, but I think that Doctor Pierce is going to be the one who sheds some light on that.
Magnus is clearly in charge right now, just as Kate had asserted her authority in her own bunker earlier that day. I instantly like Magnus, he’s geeky, but he’s also calm, reassuring and in control. I think he likes me too, he speaks very easily to me, he doesn’t treat me like a kid, and I appreciate that. After all I just gave my first ever orders. And people even listened to me.
Magnus directs his team to take care of those who need it. I hug Dad, check in on David, and ask Mum about Harriet. She looks guilty and concerned, but reassures me that Harriet is okay, and that she probably has a broken rib.
Everybody who was in the BioFiltration Area is being taken to the MedLab for a full check over, just like I had when I was first found in Quadrant 1. That means that Dad, David, Harriet, the bunker staff and James are heading for the MedLab. The group in the cocoons still seem dazed to me – I was talking to Dad but he still isn’t all there. There are hugs given and some reassurances, and that group splits off.
Magnus tries to get Mum to go to the MedLab but she refuses. She’s talking to Nat, asking her what seem to be a million questions per second and making no progress at all. In the end she just gives up and holds her tightly, like she’s never going to let her go. She cries and is overcome with emotion. Of course, Nat has an advantage over us, she knew that she was fine all the time when we thought she was dead. For Nat, this is a long anticipated reunion – not the resurrection that it is for us.
Magnus brings our thoughts back to business. ‘Okay, we need to head for a Meeting Room everybody,’ he begins. ‘We have very little time here.
‘The drones will begin to reach their targets very soon and, according to Doctor Pierce, Dan is going to be the one who helps us to stop them.
‘Bearing in mind what you just did in that lift Dan, I think that’s our clue as to how we’re going solve this problem. Somehow you have a higher level of access.’
We’re escorted along the corridors towar
ds this bunker’s Control Room. The familiar looking man accompanies us, nobody seems to have challenged him yet, and I’m still wrestling with why I feel like I know him. Was he one of the tourism staff in the bunker? Did I see him when we were coming in two days earlier? I’m sure that’s not it, I wish I could place him.
Although the layout is very different, whoever kitted out and transformed the Scottish bunker also did the same to this one. The look, feel and colour scheme is exactly the same, as is the technology. It’s sleek, hi-tech, clean, ultra-modern and not like anything I’ve ever seen before.
The Meeting Room is businesslike but comfortable; it’s very well lit and there are display screens at the far end. They show various bits of data, but it’s the video feeds that grab my attention. They must be visuals of the drones – these maps are tracking the trajectories of their flight paths.
I can figure out what these screens are telling me and it doesn’t take a genius to know what that number counting down in front of us is monitoring. We have very little time now until the first drone will strike this bunker.
22:42 Quadrant 1: Troywood, Fife
Kate surveyed the Control Room and noted with satisfaction that the attack plan appeared to be going well. The drones were launching at regular intervals and continued to do so, carrying their deadly packages to pre-designated targets. They were launching from an area in her own bunker facility which even she, as Custodian, didn’t yet have access to. That would be resolved shortly.
