by Paul Teague
Alert to the slightest sound, Nat moved quietly towards the next door and entered Doctor Pierce’s office. His terminal was still live. It looked as though he’d left it performing an automated operation. She noticed that the video channel was still on – whoever he talked to in here seemed to be monitoring his screen live from a remote location.
Nat stood to the side so that she wouldn’t be picked up on the camera, and she held her breath, terrified that she might already have given away her presence.
After waiting for what seemed like hours, she dared once again to look at the console. Doctor Pierce was collating whatever data he’d managed to extract from his endless experiments on her.
She didn’t know what it meant, but she could see that whatever it was that he was doing related to the four liquids that were injected into her spinal column during the tests. Something that she hadn’t even thought about was that he was also monitoring her responses after the tests. In the six days after each series of experiments, he was monitoring her recovery times day-by-day, hour-by-hour.
She stopped for a moment and thought it through. She broke out into a sweat as she realized the truth of the situation. Doctor Pierce had known what she was up to. He must have seen it in the results. He must have known that she was breaking out of the pod – but did he know the extent of her freedom, and that Dae-Ho was involved? If so, they were all in danger.
A text message popped up on Doctor Pierce’s console. At first it was an indecipherable array of unusual symbols. Line by line the symbols were translated into English and Nat watched as the sentences unfolded.
‘That’s all the information we’ll need,’ it began. ‘I’m transferring over all the data now. You’re finished with the girl. Close down the test centre and ensure that there is no evidence left behind.
‘You’ll need to deliver the girl to us. I’m sure that there’s still a lot we can learn from some more thorough experimentation. When we’ve completed that process, we’ll dispose of her.
‘You need to prepare to relocate to the Ops Area now, Genesis 2 is beginning in the next fortnight.
‘Confirmed that the initial breach will be at Troywood Bunker 15:00 on 15/03, all systems are in place. Confirmed that the Tracy family will be there. I have the codes too.
‘Will speak again at the meeting point, Zadra Nurmeen.’
Nat had a lot of new information to assimilate quickly. The tests were over. Doctor Pierce must have known what she was up to all along. It looked like whoever was at the other end of this PC had received all the data that they needed for now. Only it wasn’t finished for Nat, they had more tests planned for her.
At that moment, another message popped up on the screen, this time it must have been Doctor Pierce replying from his remote PC.
‘Clearing the building shortly. Will get ready to transport the girl. Shutting this terminal down now you have what you need.
‘They won’t know what hit them, Pierce.’
Whatever Doctor Pierce had planned for this building, it was happening now. She had to warn Dae-Ho, but first she was going to save what she could from the PC. Her mobile phone and various other bits that they’d taken from her pockets were discarded in a cardboard box at the side of his desk. The phone was dead, but Nat took out the SD card and quickly erased her images. She grabbed as much as she could from Doctor Pierce’s files and saved it to the disk. The operation was interrupted as the PC was closed down remotely, just as Pierce had said it would be.
Nat ran out into the corridor, unafraid of cameras or being detected now. She was running for her life. If she didn’t escape now, she was certain that she never would. Dae-Ho was approaching her from the end of the corridor, stumbling and struggling to move himself forward. Nat ran up to him.
‘Nat, I’m so sorry, they have gassed us.
‘Take this money, it is South Korean won, it will help you. You must get far away from here Nat. Use the window near the store room, the code is 4897k.’
Dae-Ho collapsed on the floor in front of her. He was completely still, and she knew that he must be dead. She grabbed the currency, ran along the corridor, found the store room and typed the code into the panel. 4897j if she recalled correctly.
No response. Through the glass she could see two black cars pulling up outside. Eight armed men got out and started walking towards the facility entrance. Nat was sure the numbers were right, had she misheard? She heard the door opening further along the corridor.
4897a … 4897k … she was in! Nat leapt through the window just as the sound of footsteps could be heard approaching along her corridor. She quietly closed the window so it would take them longer to work out how she’d made her exit.
She ran as fast as she could, through fields, woodland and along tracks until she finally came to a main road. She waved down a lorry, jumped into the cab before the driver even had a chance to protest, and demanded that he drive on. He didn’t argue, he could see from the look in her eyes that whatever had happened to this girl, the explanations could wait until they were driving along.
Nat knew that her next destination was a place called Troywood. If she could make her way to that place, she could be reunited with her family as Doctor Pierce had already revealed.
She did not even know her current location let alone where Troywood was situated.
Using the lorry driver’s sat nav and map, and taking every care not to leave a trail on security cameras, Nat gradually navigated her way along the UK’s motorways, scrounging food and drink, using truckers’ facilities to stay clean and relying on the goodwill of drivers to get her there safely.
Such was the rural location of Troywood, she ended up making the final parts of the journey on foot, cutting across fields and woodland in the process.
So it was that Nat found herself finally reunited with her family in the Secret Bunker.
Concealed in her pocket was data which could be used to destroy the entire population of a planet.
Quadrant 1: Troywood, Fife (Unification: T-minus 22 minutes)
James stood in front of the control panel which he’d successfully operated not that long ago. So much seemed to have happened since he let Amy and Nat into the building – and Simon too, as he had found out later in the briefing session.
He was looking at the panel now, but he was struggling to remember what he’d done to operate the blast doors. Why couldn’t he remember? He cursed the device in his neck, assuming that it was responsible in some way. The sooner they disabled these things, the better.
He and Simon were successfully reunited on the third level; they blended in with Kate’s security teams and managed to avoid detection as they moved through the bunker.
The level of activity in Quadrant 1 was massive – Kate was very obviously on the verge of deploying her new army of Troopers. That probably meant that they’d be breaching the remaining Quadrants imminently. And he was sure that making their way back through Quadrant 1 would be nowhere near as easy as it had been, once those new troops were deployed.
James understood the gravity of this mission. He had to disable the mobile mast on the ground above to release Kate’s team from whatever – whoever – it was that was controlling them.
At least he was free from the threat of the drones. He didn’t envy the Beijing team who were having to disable multiple masts within a city that was under constant missile attack from the drones. They had to make their way through the rubble of many destroyed areas to disable all of the mobile masts that served the massive city. His was an easy mission by comparison.
He got the feeling that Simon was keeping something back from him. He kept emphasizing how important it was that James was back at the bunker doors within a twenty-minute window.
Twenty minutes to reach the surface, blow up the mast and run back again. It was a tight window – he knew that he’d struggle, particularly with the visor and breathing equipment that he had to wear to avoid being overcome by the darkness beyond the blast doors.
He struggled once again to recall what he’d done earlier. It was like trying to remember a dream. You got the overall sense of it, but it was impossible to pull out the detail.
He’d got it, by focusing on all the events before and after. That way he’d managed to close in on what he’d done to activate the panel.
‘Remember James, I’m going to hide for twenty minutes after we open this door. I’ll be back to let you in in twenty minutes exactly, if I can access this area again afterwards. If it’s blocked, you’ll have to sit this thing out on the surface with everybody else.’
James closed his eyes, and pressed the buttons using the memories that he’d dredged up from the depths of his mind.
The blast doors began to open, slowly and heavily. The protective force field activated in front of them to defend against the darkness beyond. James ran. ‘Back in twenty minutes!’ he shouted.
Outside the blast doors James became just a disembodied voice, Simon could see nothing. He closed the doors, noted the way that James had operated them in the first place, then prepared to make himself scarce.
The alarms were sounding, and although he was confident that he could cope with a small team of Kate’s security guards, he knew that he stood no chance against the Troopers if they were deployed.
Simon looked at the countdown on his Comms-Tab, carefully synchronized with James’s.
He’d taken a risk playing confidant to Doctor Pierce, particularly in the light of the sabotage that was responsible for the deadly events taking place within this Quadrant.
He hadn’t revealed anything about their plans, but he’d taken Pierce at his word over Unification. He knew it would be a tight window, but James had to get that mast disabled.
If he wasn’t back in twenty minutes, Simon wasn’t sure that he could protect him from what was about to follow.
Chapter Six
Quadrant 3: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia (Unification: T-minus 19 minutes)
Mike was anxious to squeeze out the last of the final seconds before Xiang’s meeting. He’d barely read the text message on his Comms-Tab. He was totally engrossed in two coding projects on his screens. Magnus’s guys were good, they’d share information with him as they got it, and Mike would assimilate it and build it into his own work.
They’d got lucky. One of the tech staff had found the drones folder and they’d merged it with additional data that Simon had retrieved from the Quadrant 1 Operations Centre. They’d also managed to get some basic information about the neck devices. Neuronic Devices as the documentation referred to them, shortened to ‘Neuros’ in many of the text files.
Magnus was right about them being linked to the mobile masts. They used another frequency which was bounced all over the planet using the existing infrastructure. Very clever. And a little last minute according to the files.
The dates indicated that this was existing technology introduced into the Genesis 2 project much later, due to deadline pressures. Hence the use of mobile masts by the look of it. He was more worried by the way that the Neuros were allocated.
Quadrant personnel were allocated red, yellow, green and purple devices. Each one operated on an individual frequency, via the mobile network. There was nothing in the files about the blue devices. The ones used on his wife and her friend James. Or ‘Roachie’ as she insisted on calling him.
It was the black devices which bothered him most though. They didn’t use the same system as the others. The mobile masts made no difference to them, they formed their own network. So the black devices were used like bees in a hive or ants in a nest. The Troopers were using them to sustain a group consciousness. There was a Queen, and it was the Queen that had to be destroyed to break the link. But where was the Queen? Who – or what – was the Queen?
On his second screen, Mike watched the data array complete filtering and analysis after running for over thirty minutes. So many codes, so much information. He’d had to use his best tech tricks to accelerate the process.
The bunker shook as the missile from another drone exploded on the ground high above them. Alarms sounded in the corridor outside – there was momentary confusion and panic. They’d sustained structural damage. The drones were beginning to erode the defensive layers that separated them from the surface high above.
At least that’s one problem that they could now solve. He finally had the codes to disable the drones.
Shamed
At first he’d been pivotal to the early successes of The Global Consortium. His brilliant mind, his scientific innovation, his ability to find creative solutions where there seemed to be so few options available. He’d been an integral part of the team, working alongside world leaders, instrumental in combining talent from around the world to make incredible strides forward. But it was a disaster waiting to happen.
The massive power and the huge budgets fanned the flames of his psychosis, and it was not long before he was unable to help himself. As well as nurturing the work of the Genesis 2 project, he started up a few side projects of his own, unwittingly funded by The Global Consortium. They ran for over two years until he was discovered. He was relieved of his duties due to ‘ethical conflicts’.
He believed to his core that it was acceptable to experiment on live creatures – humans – particularly when the safety of the planet was at stake. The Global Consortium begged to differ. He was furious. He vowed revenge on the government leaders who had disowned him. How dare they question his processes? Didn’t they know that he was a genius and that he alone could save the planet from these threats?
His megalomania was only fuelled by the actions of The Global Consortium and, in hindsight, they should probably have monitored him more closely after the inquiry. That event had involved two of their most senior project managers – two brilliant scientists who together had been entrusted with the future of the planet. One had been investigated after a series of simulations went badly wrong, resulting in the serious injury of two of the recruits. The other was investigated for unacceptable medical and experimental behaviours which had resulted in completely unethical experimentation being carried out.
Both were brilliant men, but their motivations were different. One had made an error of judgement which was forgivable in the circumstances, though entirely unacceptable. The other had committed a crime against humanity – he was lucky that his current immunity under the Genesis 2 project spared him from prosecution and incarceration.
These two brilliant scientists came as a pair. They had studied together as young men and their brilliance had come about because of that deep bond between them. They were brothers. More than brothers. They were twins. Identical twins.
Yet one was born with a compelling desire to do harm, to wreak havoc and create destruction. The other was a good man, who tried to guide his brother, but knew that deep inside he couldn’t help himself.
And so it was that Doctor Harold Pierce was permitted to stay with the Genesis 2 project, whilst his furious twin, Henry, was let go from the project.
Doctor Henry Pierce had a brilliant mind and was given unlimited access to one of the most important global projects ever carried out. But now he had become a bitter, resentful man, wildly jealous of his twin brother and part of Genesis 2 for long enough to form alliances which would ultimately place the future of the planet precariously in his hands.
Docked
High above the Earth, there was movement around one of the larger satellites which formed the main hub of the giant matrix. It was a small spaceship, not of human origin, and it approached from outside the matrix, undetected by the man who was currently consulting once again with The Global Consortium of world leaders.
This was not part of the plan that had been so many years in the making. The ship docked noiselessly with the spherical orb, unseen and unnoticed. There was a boarding party ready. It was made up of twenty Troopers, each of them heavily armed for combat, just the same as those which had been activated in Quadrant 1. Embedded within thei
r necks were pulsating black lights. The devices enabled them to speak directly to their Queen.
At the head of the boarding party were two people. One was a middle-aged man. He wore a lab coat on which was pinned a lapel badge. It read ‘Dr H. Pierce’.
At his side was a figure which was neither man nor beast. He was not of this planet. His name was Zadra Nurmeen and he had forged an evil alliance with the man at his side.
They boarded the orb and stormed into its central Ops Area. Brother faced brother, twin was reunited with twin.
‘Henry ...’ said the gentler looking twin, taken aback to see his brother after so many years, yet not altogether surprised.
He had suspected this from the moment the lights failed to come on in time in Quadrant 1. There were only two other people who knew these systems as well as he did: Doctor Henry Pierce and Zadra Nurmeen, who had also been thrown off the Genesis 2 project at the same time as his brother. Who’d been spotted by the human participants in the second botched simulation, which had caused so much trouble for him as well.
In the instant that he saw them, it all made perfect sense to Harold Pierce. These two disaffected scientists had formed an alliance, intent on disrupting the Genesis 2 project. He’d known about his brother’s illness. He’d tried his best to focus his brilliant mind on the positive work of The Global Consortium, but in the end Henry had engineered his own downfall.
Try as he might, he was unable to help his brother. Now Henry was here to seek his revenge. Harold Pierce knew that it would come eventually. As surely as he’d spitefully poured boiling water over his twin as a child, Henry Pierce would now torment Earth with the same degree of amorality that he had shown to his brother and family all those years ago.
