Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2

by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  Defiant

  Quantic Dreams Book Two

  Elizabeth McLaughlin

  Njörd Press

  Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Get a free copy of Quantic Dreams prequel “Binary” here! https://dl.bookfunnel.com/tatxnirht0

  Created with Vellum

  For my loves.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  32. Author’s Notes

  33. Special preview from book three!

  About the Author

  Belief in the unreal can comfort the human mind, but it also weakens it.

  -Gabriel to John Constantine, Constantine

  Chapter One

  My encounter with George still fresh in my mind, I checked in with the exploratory team. They had done excellent work and were ready to send out our first test subject. One of the mice had grown big enough to be released. I watched the little thing chitter away in his cage and thought.

  “Odysseus.” A member of the team spoke from behind me.

  “Hm?” I picked the mouse up and let him scamper over my fingers, turning my hand so the path continued.

  “I was thinking we should name him. After all, he will be forging a path into a new world. I thought it was only fair to name him for someone ingenious and cunning. The little guy will need it out there. Who knows what’s waiting for him?”

  “Odysseus.” I set the mouse back in his cage and he scurried away, burrowing a hole in the flooring to make a shelter. “A good name. Where did you learn it?”

  “My name is Jason. My parents are hardcore Greek mythology nerds. I can only be grateful that they didn’t go with something more ‘exotic’.”

  I turned and shook the young man’s hand. “Jason, it is a pleasure to meet you. I think you’ll be a good friend to little Odysseus here.”

  Jason smiled. “I’m actually here to inject him with a tracking chip. It won’t do much other than tell us whether or not he is alive since it’ll be powered with bioelectric impulses-but it’s something. We can get an idea of how far he’s gone, too. I know the team is working on something more sophisticated, but this is the best we could do for now.”

  I stood aside and watched as Jason plunked an impossibly small piece of technology into a large syringe filled with saline. He picked up Odysseus by the scruff of his neck and gently held the mouse down as he injected him with the tracker. Odysseus squealed and tried to bolt as soon as the pressure on his body lessened. I couldn’t blame the poor thing, if I had a huge needle stabbed into me, I’d want to bolt as quickly as possible too.

  “And with that, our explorer is ready to go! I’ll assemble the team so we can give him a proper sendoff. Can I meet you back here?”

  “Sure.” I went back to trying to play with Odysseus. This was an epic endeavor indeed and I thanked the mouse for what he was about to do. I grabbed a cube of 3D printed fruit gummy from a cooler in the lab and fed it to him. “Just stay alive, little friend. Stay alive, and I’ll make sure you get all the sweets your little stomach can handle.” Odysseus only looked at me, his cheeks full as he scarfed down the treat.

  “Jacob.” Jason had returned with the members of the team that were available to see Odysseus off. “Shall we?”

  “We shall.” I lifted the mouse’s cage, and the group set off to the shelter doors. The doors operated in a kind of airlock system. The inner door to the shelter was there both as reinforcement for the outer door and to serve as a seal against bringing contaminants inside. A couple of hazmat-style suits were neatly shelved next to it. I stared, more out of anxiety than anticipation as Jason and a woman donned the suits. Jason stopped halfway through sealing himself up when he saw my expression.

  “Mr. Alvaro.” He gestured to his suit. “Would you like to be the one who sets little Odysseus on his quest?”

  The notion of going outside in any way made my anxiety skyrocket, but I was the leader of these people now. If anyone was going to risk their health and safety, it should be me. That, and if Odysseus died out there, I thought only fair that I was responsible. “If you think that’s all right, sir, then yes, I would.” The gathering held a kind of formality to it. It’s funny, you know. We must have been the first people to set out on a quest of exploration in a few centuries, but the impulse to treat it as a solemn occasion was written into our DNA.

  Jason helped me into the suit and showed me how the seals work. It was bulky and thick, but not too heavy. He introduced me to my companion, a woman named Nicole, and put the helmet on my head. Whatever anxiety I had managed to hold back burst forth, my mouth going dry and my breath coming faster the moment I felt the seals of the helmet engage. It was like being back in one of the hibernation pods but worse. I focused on clenching my toes in my boots and scaled the fear back to a level where I thought I could hide it. My reaction had not gone unnoticed.

  “You okay, Jacob? I can take the helmet off if you need me to.” Jason’s voice came through a radio connection in my helmet.

  “No,” I breathed. “No, I’m all right. It’s just a bit of an adjustment.” Jason chuckled, the laugh muted from inside the heavy hazmat suit.

  “All right. It’s an open radio connection, okay? You don’t need to push any buttons or anything.” He turned to address the two of us. “Here’s how we’re going to run this. A couple of us will open the inner door for you and step back. You’ll go over the threshold and give us an all clear. Then we’ll seal the door behind you and it’s all on our friend Odysseus here. If you have a problem, you radio back to us and we’ll get the door open for you straight away.”

  “You mean like if there’s a giant monster waiting out there for us?” Nicole joked, casting a quick look at me. The team laughed.

  “Exactly. Now let us wish godspeed to our furry companion. May he journey safely and return to us in one piece!” More laughter from the team. I picked up Odysseus’s cage and turned to face the door. Two team members steeped in front of us and braced themselves hard against the door as they ratcheted the handle around. With a hiss, the inner door opened.

  It was like stepping into nothingness. There were no lights in the airlock, of course, and the meager lighting attached to our suits only provided flashlight beams worth of illumination. Nicole touched my arm gently, and I nodded. We stepped through to the threshold of the door and I held my breath.

  “We’re all good here, Jason. You can close ‘er back up.” Nicole radioed back to the team.

  “Good luck out there, Odysseus.” The door slammed so forcefully that I jumped. I leaned down to shine my flashlight on the ground and gaspe
d. Inches in front of me was earth. Real, earth. I bent down as carefully as I could in the bulky suit and ran my fingers through the dirt. A deep ache settled in my gut. I resolved that I would once again breathe the free air before I died. Even if we found that it was still toxic outside, I was determined to die in the light of the sun, not of the infirmary, when the time came.

  “Holy shit.” I scooped up some dirt and showed it to Nicole, who marveled at it like it was a handful of gold. She was third generation. The children who had never seen the surface. I stepped off the steel plating that secured the doorway in place and heard the soft crunch of dirt and rocks under my feet. “My god.” Tears came to my eyes unbidden. I wished so much that I could take the damned helmet off. The urge to smell the fresh ground and feel it under my ungloved fingers was overwhelming. Before us lay a long stairwell, stretching away from the dim illumination of our headlamps. Made of the same thick metal of the shelter’s door, those steps would ferry us to our new destiny.

  The climb felt endless. Nicole and I were breathless once we reached the outer door, the weight of the equipment heavy on our shoulders. Odysseus had noticed the change in altitude as well and squeaked furiously. Did the little mouse think we were getting ready to feed him to a predator? Or did he smell the freedom that generations of his ancestors never knew? I could relate to that feeling.

  “Let’s get the door open.” Nicole took Odysseus’s cage from me and set it on the dirt. The mouse shot to the edge of the cage, his nose working furiously. We followed the example of the team and set our bodyweight against the cold steel while we pulled peg over peg. Just as I started to break a sweat, we heard a crack and a hiss as the chamber decompressed. We pushed the door open and took in the landscape before us.

  There was so much more out here than I had seen in the cameras. Green grass covered the better part of the surrounding area. I could see mountains in the far distance. The sun was blindingly bright to our eyes, and I held up a hand to shield my face. We both glanced back at Odysseus who had now taken to squeaking madly, the upper half of his body raised from the cage’s floor as he sniffed the air. His little eyes squinted against the harsh light of the sunshine.

  “I guess that’s a good sign,” Nicole laughed nervously. I went to my pack and pulled out the strip of sensor tape the team had designed, along with a small machine that would dispense a piece of bait as soon as we had visual confirmation of Odysseus’s return. We set them up and brought Odysseus to the edge of his new world.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Ready. Godspeed, little fellow.” She opened the cage door and we watched as Odysseus shot from its confines, sprinting into the grass.

  “I envy him,” I said. We stayed a moment longer, watching the wind rustle through the landscape. Shutting the outer door again felt like sealing ourselves away in a casket. I knocked ‘shave and a haircut-two bits’ on the second door and it hissed as it opened again. This time there were only two people inside, clad in what looked like surgical gear. I recognized one of them as Jason.

  “Okay folks, we’re going to do this nice and simple, all right? Hang tight right there while we spray you down. He and the other person stepped forward with two hoses that sprayed us down with an orange liquid. When that was finished, they instructed us to wait two minutes. “Right,” Jason said once the liquid had dried on our suits. “Nicole, you already know this but for Jacob’s benefit we’re gonna model for you what order the gear should come off in.” Jason and his comrade extended their arms in a T shape.

  “Boots first. As soon as you get them off, you can step forward onto the cloth in front of you.”

  The buckles of the boots were frustratingly difficult to take off with the thick gloves we had donned ourselves in. It took a few tries, but I could eventually free my feet and I stepped onto the cloths laid out for us.

  “Turn around for us, please. We’ll step forward and unzip you from the suits. You may want to yawn, there will be a slight pressure change as we get you free.”

  I did as I was asked and felt my ears pop as they removed the suit. I stepped out of it and waited. Jason and his teammate demonstrated for us the proper way to take off our gloves and helmets off.. The protective measures that had felt so sensible before we stepped outside seemed a little silly now. Surely there wasn’t anything that could be that toxic to humans left on the earth, right?

  They bundled the protective equipment into thick plastic bags with the assurance that it would be properly decontaminated and replaced by the morning. To my surprise, there was one more step in the process. From another room, Jason wheeled out a large filing cabinet. It was easily taller than the both of us and wide enough for us to hide behind.

  “I’m going to ask you to strip off your clothes for me, my friends. Even with proper removal of the PPE, there is still a chance of contamination. We have two nice fluffy bathrobes out here waiting for you, so the quicker you are, the quicker you’ll be comfortable again.” Hands appeared with plastic bags and we took them.

  I snorted, knowing full well there were no bathrobes in the shelter, nor had there ever been. Nicole and I looked at each other and lined up back to back, stripping each piece of clothing carefully. It was the closest I had been to a naked woman in years, and it took restraint to not look behind me. What can I say, I’m male. After we deposited our clothing into the bags, Jason handed us large towels to cover ourselves with and stepped out from behind the barrier.

  “I apologize to both of you. In the future, we’ll have a better system set up. Certainly one a little more private. For now, we’re stuck with what we’ve got.”

  “No trouble. A pleasure meeting you properly, Jacob.” Nicole made her way down the hall towards the women’s showers. Was it me or was she blushing a little?

  “I’d make a joke, Jason, but I think I should follow the lady’s lead. I’ll catch up with you later?”

  He nodded, biting back a laugh, and I went to shower myself off.

  Chapter Two

  As the week went on, watching the outside camera feeds became something of an obsession for me. If Odysseus didn’t return, I would be in serious trouble. No doubt George and his fellows would ensure that I suffered an ‘unfortunate accident’ before declaring themselves the new leaders of the shelter. As it was, I couldn’t rule that possibility out. As I stopped by to check on the poor guy manning the cameras for the twentieth time that day, I saw a flash of white streaking through the greenery.

  “What’s that?” I pointed to the screen.

  “What? Jacob, I don’t see anything. Look mate, you should go and, I don’t know, see to some paperwork or something. Relax, we’ll get a hold of you the very moment anything happens.”

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m just anxious.”

  “I understand, but do me a favor and trust me, all right?”

  “You got it.” I turned and started the trek back to my office when a loud beeping interrupted my walk.

  “Is that…?”

  The technician held up a finger and tinkered with some switches at his station. I bounced on the balls of my feet, waiting to hear what the alarm was. The technician beckoned me close to his screen, and I almost cried. Munching down on the fruit gummy we had left him was Odysseus, the cage wired to the bait snapped securely around him. I jumped in the air and clapped my hands together. Without waiting for the technician to say another word, I raced toward the shelter door.

  Jason and a few members of the team had already arrived by the time I got there. They grinned at my enthusiasm and I hung back while they donned hazard suits and cracked the inner door open. The seconds crawled by as I waited for the team to return with our intrepid explorer. When the interior door opened again, I sprinted towards Odysseus, safe again in his cage, but a woman held her hand up to me.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let the two of you reunite just yet, Jacob. Our hero here needs to go into quarantine for at least two weeks. We don’t know what he got himself into out there just yet, and it could b
e fatal to us if he brought anything back in.”

  “Of course.” As soon as he was out of containment, I was going to kiss that mouse. Our first foray into the outside world had been a success; it would be seriously difficult for George and his allies to push back on resettling the surface. I accompanied Odysseus to his new home for the next couple of weeks and watched as they put him into one of the NICU cribs in the infirmary. There were small holes drilled into the top of the crib to allow airflow through with a tight filter over them. “Won’t that be a problem if Odysseus is sick with anything?” I asked Jason.

  “It will and it won’t. In a perfect world we’d be able to put the little guy in an oxygen supplied box with a higher-grade filter, but as things are, we’re going to give him his own room.” He gestured to the office that abutted the infirmary. “Plus, even if he’s caught a cold, the filter we have will take care of it.”

  Two people donned surgical gear, just as Jason had when we set Odysseus free and wheeled the crib into the office. There they outfitted the crib with water, food, and bedding, and left the mouse on his own. “What happens now?” I asked.

  “Now, you go give the good news, my friend!” Jason thumped me on the shoulder. Oh, right. It was my job to tell the rest of the shelter that Odysseus had survived his journey. To do that, I needed some council. It wouldn’t be prudent to proclaim that all was well, and we could go outside only to have Odysseus drop dead a week later from some horrific disease.