by Zen, Raeden
Brody prayed for a positive outcome today. He stood on an oblong dais overlooking the Reassortment research terradome’s central chamber, where his team of scientists adjusted the holograms above their workstations. He observed them, taking deep breaths to settle his nerves. Two scientists assessed the latest serum as it moved through the body of their test subject. Three more checked the subject’s vitals and behavioral responses. Brody’s strategist, Verena Iglehart, stood engrossed at her workstation, analyzing data streams. His striker, Nero Silvana, studied holographic representations of the terrain outside.
Brody glanced at the sky, discreetly.
A gull circled overhead, outside the dome, perhaps mistaking the sea of alloy columns and holograms for its home near the coast. Higher above, near wispy clouds, a peregrine falcon plunged. As the bird of prey reached maximum velocity, the gull swerved. The falcon crashed into the invisible dome.
Brody shivered.
If only blocking Reassortment were as easy, he thought.
The gull flew away over the trees and into the shades of tangerine and crimson that tinted the island’s forest. It was a rare opportunity to witness true sunrise, one he couldn’t let distract him from his duty.
Brody turned back to his workstation and the hologram suspended above it, a three-dimensional rendering of a cement slab labeled PORTAL 13 in white paint. He zoomed out to observe the weeping willow and pine trees near the slab. A breeze wafted through, lifting the willow branches. It all looked so innocuous, Brody thought. He looked down at the opaque suit that covered him.
“Conduct a biomat suit diagnostic,” he said to Verena. His voice emitted from the audio capture in his helmet.
“Executing.” Above Verena’s workstation, two hundred fifty holographic biomat suits belonging to all the scientists under the dome appeared and disappeared in rapid succession. They were lean to allow for easier movement, their mid layer designed at the microscopic level to mimic the Venusian surface, one of the deadliest places for life known to man, while their inmost layer remained comfortable. “No containment breaches detected.”
“What about inside the dome?”
Verena pulled up more data. “Reassortment concentrations are rising.”
Brody’s mouth twitched. It didn’t matter that research bots had removed the atmosphere from this dome only yesterday and resupplied it with oxygen, hydrogen, argon, neon, and helium today. By way of an unsolved osmotic, diffusive process, the Reassortment Strain found a way inside the dome.
“Should we proceed with the trial?” Nero said.
Brody looked from Nero to Verena, then to all the Reassortment research scientists across the marble floor who risked their lives for this rare ascent to the surface. Brody was Supreme Scientist of the Reassortment project, leader of the research team, and captain of his strike team. They all looked to him.
“We must proceed with the trial, under parameters approved by the Office of the Chancellor,” Brody said. “Striker, please send the signal.”
Nero transmitted a stream of coded messages to Reassortment Hall, the research facility twenty-five hundred meters beneath them in the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni’s Volano Territory. “Portal 13’s activated,” he said. “The Gemini is ready for release when you are, Captain.”
Brody nodded. “Lift the Gemini.”
Nero sent the signal to execute, and Verena transmitted the live feed to the research team. The holograms above all the workstations under the dome rendered the words PORTAL 13.
The cement slab rumbled and parted.
Brody watched the perspiration drip down his striker’s face, then noticed his own brow was damp. Verena closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. Brody gave his full attention to the readout above his workstation.
The Gemini rose up, emerging through the portal.
Its bulging eyes inevitably reminded Brody of his own, for this particular subject, like the 345 before it, was of a prehistoric hominid genome, Homo neanderthalensis, reverse engineered by the scientists in the Research & Development Department from a combination of Brody’s DNA and fossilized Neanderthal genetic materials.
“Keeps me closer to the research,” Brody had told Verena one day under the dome.
“Too close,” she’d replied, cringing.
Reassortment detected at standard concentrations near the subject, Nero sent. Data feeds streamed round and round the holographic sphere above the striker’s workstation.
The Gemini raised its hand to shield its eyes from the light. The capsule that had carried it from Reassortment Hall opened, then retracted back into the earth. The Gemini lowered its hand to the platform and moved its head, searching for the way it had come.
Ten seconds.
Brody lifted his armlet, as did the scientists who surrounded him.
Verena examined the subject’s vitals. The Gemini is steady, she sent.
The newborn Gemini took a shaky step off the slab into the surrounding trees. It stepped again, then began to walk. It gained confidence with each step. Soon, it disappeared past the weeping willows and blooming brush.
Thirty seconds.
The holograms shifted.
The Gemini high-stepped through a sea of verdant flora and splashed through a stream. It lifted water to its broad brow and over its tangled hair. It closed its eyes.
Sixty seconds.
Brody felt his pulse quicken. He’d just broken his previous record for a Gemini trial.
The Gemini trundled through the brush, past a herd of elk. The scientists didn’t move. Brody didn’t breathe. He closed his eyes and imagined himself on the surface with Damy, his eternal partner, hand in hand amid the weeping willows, streams, and leaves, breathing the smells of pine and oak upon the Island of Reverie, the people of Beimeni in their wake, without protection, without biomat suits, back where they belonged, for the first time in 368 years.
Brody took measured breaths.
Ninety seconds.
“If the Gemini remains on its present path, it’ll reach us,” Nero said to his captain. “That would be incredible.”
“But not improbable,” Brody said. “The protective coatings around its cells should hold.” He turned to Verena. “Vitals, please.”
“Heart rate’s accelerated,” she said. “Its temperature’s near thirty-nine degrees Celsius, diastolic rate near eighty; the immune system is responding, and nervous system function is normalized.”
The Gemini disappeared beneath a canopy of leaves.
One hundred eighty seconds.
Above, the drones that rendered the team’s images searched for their subject. The holographic scenes shifted from colorful shrubbery to a flock of blue jays to deer sipping water.
Five hundred forty seconds.
Something thumped against the invisible dome.
The scientists turned east, into the morning glare.
The Gemini pushed against the dome. Its hair dripped with water and sweat and weeds. Its awkward body trembled.
Animals stirred in the surrounding bushes. The grass twitched under the weight of their scurrying feet.
The Gemini’s eyes filled with fluid. Not tears, but a viscous black liquid, mixed with blood. It opened its mouth and bellowed in a manner that could wake the dead, blinked once, and closed its eyes. When it opened them, it seemed exhausted. Its body sagged against the dome.
Brody felt his heart sag with it. He signaled Verena. Send in the airlift.
The animals emerged. Bobcats and gray foxes converged on the stricken Gemini, which slumped to the ground.
Brody rushed toward it.
“Brodes!” Nero dashed after him. Verena followed.
A helicopter’s downdraft scattered the animals. A pair of research bots rappelled to the Gemini, their alloy skin glinting in the sun. Brody knelt just inside the dome and watched the bots tether it to a harness.
The Gemini closed its eyes for the last time. Milky, darkened blood streamed from them, from its nose, mouth, and ears, then c
rystallized.
Brody turned away. I must work harder, he thought, work smarter, work longer.
“Captain?” Nero’s hand touched his shoulder.
Brody didn’t speak. He stepped away from Nero and ordered the nearest workstation to render Reassortment. He needed to see the enemy. The synthetic organism looked blurry at first. Then its edges transformed into spidery legs that tapered to a sharp point. It was as hideous as the first time he’d viewed it during a lecture given by the late Jeremiah Selendia, more than a hundred years ago.
Nero patted his back awkwardly. “We’ll destroy it.”
“Or disable it, or protect the transhuman body against it,” Brody said. “So long as we beat it, I don’t care how.”
“Exactly,” Verena said, hugging her lean arms around her torso and looking up. “We’re with you, Captain.”
At the top of the dome, threads of energy pulsed in concentric triangular patterns, vaporizing the dead falcon’s blood, guts, bones, and feathers. The radiation could also kill the Reassortment Strain, and anything else that lived. When the process completed, the dome opened, and the helicopter passed through the quarantine sector, then descended to a landing pad supported by carbyne spires. More research bots waited nearby. Under the dome, the scientists carried on with their work, studying the feeds sent to them during the Gemini’s short life span.
“Why’d you run to it?” Nero said.
The bots shrouded the Gemini, attached it to a gurney, and glided it toward the central chamber.
“The way it moved,” Brody began. He paused, awaiting the bots and gurney. “It seemed so alive, so determined. I thought for sure we’d succeeded.” He swallowed.
The bots arrived.
Brody eased the shroud from the Gemini’s body. “I—”
“Should use a generic for the next trial,” Verena said. “It’s not healthy to look at your … self in this condition.”
Brody observed the creature’s proportions, its bloody eyes, the sharp nose beneath its protruding brow, the dimple marks on its cheeks. Perhaps he would listen to Verena for the next Gemini trial.
“Initiating the autopsy,” she said.
The data feeds above her workstation transitioned into a holographic recreation of the Gemini’s musculoskeletal system and what remained of its nervous system.
A research bot, this one with six arms, moved caterpillar-like over the Gemini, slitting it open. The bot pulled back the bruised skin and secured it to the gurney’s sides with needles.
Nero winced. “Just be glad we can’t smell it.”
Blood spurted out of the Gemini’s heart and crystallized over its rib cage. Brody connected his consciousness to the zeropoint field, the subatomic world through which transhumans achieved telepathy and telekinesis. He reached out with his mind and removed the hardened blood from the bone. He placed it on an alloy plate and set the plate on top of his workstation, transmitting the sample to all the research scientists.
We must be swift, we must learn from this failure, Brody thought.
The best time to study Reassortment was right after it killed, for while the synthetic organism persisted in the Earth’s atmosphere and bedrock, humans remained its primary, preferred host. It was designed for humans, and could recognize them—it only went into deadly action in their presence. “You must find a cure before it finds its way into the commonwealth,” Chancellor Masimovian had told Brody during one supreme scientific board meeting. At another, the chancellor added, “If Beimenians succumb to Reassortment exposure in any of our thirty territories, you will pay in kind.” Indeed, it had been 203 years since the last Reassortment panic forced humanity to a depth of two thousand to twenty-five hundred meters below the Earth’s surface, eight decades before Brody’s birth, and he didn’t plan on being culpable for the first underground breach of his lifetime.
“Initiating examination,” he said. A laser grid spread over the crystallized blood.
Brody extended his consciousness and connected to his lab’s database. He opened his journal and recorded:
Day 80 of the year 368 AR: the results for the 346th Gemini clinical trial began with promise. Its enhanced immune system rapidly identified the pathogen. Its temperature elevated, as planned. From there, the process was much the same as before …
Nero collected tissue samples, while Verena dropped a crystallized blood sample on her workstation.
The bot split open the Gemini’s skull. Liquefied brain matter spilled off the gurney.
“My gods,” Verena said, placing one hand on her helmet near her mouth and the other on Nero’s chest.
While the test subject’s DNA and cells had been altered in ways no native pathogen could understand or invade, the Reassortment Strain somehow adapted, entered, and altered the subject’s neural and blood cells, consuming the former and crystallizing the latter …
Behind them, someone screamed.
Brody turned.
Two scientists had collapsed. They writhed on the marble floor, apparently dying from Reassortment exposure, inside the dome.
Brody retracted his consciousness and focused on quelling his rising panic. This was the stuff of his nightmares, to lose his team. “Verena, conduct a biomat suit diagnostic.” He turned to Nero. “Calculate Reassortment concentrations.”
The strategist and striker manipulated the holographic readouts above their workstations.
“No biomat suit breaches detected, Captain.”
Three more scientists collapsed.
“Reassortment has achieved critical levels inside the dome, Captain.”
Two more scientists collapsed.
We’re evacuating, now! Brody sent. He hand-signaled the research bots. Some rushed to the helicopters, others to the dead scientists, wrapping them in body bags. The surviving scientists dashed toward the landing pad, up the stairs, and into the helicopters. They lifted off, one after another.
After the last one departed, Brody entered his helicopter with Verena and Nero. He connected to the chopper’s navigational intelligence and ordered it to take them back to Area 55, where they would undergo quarantine before being allowed back into Beimeni.
Brody closed his eyes. As usual, his career and life were in jeopardy. How he would explain the latest biomat suit failure to the board and ministry was anybody’s guest. The chancellor wanted results, and rightly so, but Brody couldn’t keep his team alive long enough to study the pathogen, not on the surface. He would need to innovate, find a way to solve this thing underground.
He looked out the windows in the hull, watching the island move farther and farther away until it was a green speck between the river and ocean. The screams of his team members echoed in his ears. He could already see the look of horror on Damy’s face when he told her he’d failed again.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Johann Selendia
Hydra Hollow
300 meters deep
“Mr. President,” the helper said, “the Leadership awaits, as do your people.”
The title escaped the child’s lips so easily and elegantly, Hans almost believed her. “Interim President,” he said. “My father isn’t dead.”
Unlike in the commonwealth, children spread about Hydra Hollow, with some employed as helpers of the Leadership. The president’s cove, a cavern of granite, bioluminescent waterfalls, and a prehistoric pond, seemed empty to Hans without their presence. His own helpers, a boy and girl who’d been assigned to aid his preparations for the inauguration, stood next to him. They turned toward their colleague standing near the cove’s entrance, where heavy curtains hung.
“I pray to the gods that Jeremiah the Liberator lives,” the helper said.
“Save your prayers, child,” Hans said. “My father’s belief in the Twin Gods of the Cosmos did nothing to protect him from the commonwealth. Neither did my mother’s.”
The helper’s face lost all its color. She tugged on the leather strap around her neck that crossed over her tunic and shoulder. “What do you want m
e to say?”
Murray Olyorna stepped through the curtains, which swayed between stalactites and stalagmites. Wisps of mist disappeared from stone pedestals near the curtains, then returned, spreading the smell of cinnamon. “Tell them we’ll be ready soon.”
The helper nodded and turned to go.
“Wait,” Hans said. The helper looked back at him, her body tense. She appeared preadolescent, with sausage curls that bounced above her shoulders whenever she moved. She still carried a bit of baby fat. “What’s your name?” Hans asked.
“Jocelyn Vertulli.”
Hans saluted her, moving his forefinger over his forehead in an S-shape. “You do us proud, Miss Jocelyn.”
She returned the salute, along with a radiant grin that made Murray chuckle.
Hans completed his salute in earnest. “Now, didn’t you have some important business?”
“Yes, I do!” Jocelyn whipped around, her sausage curls bobbing as she scampered off behind the curtain into the limestone tunnel.
Hans and Murray exchanged a bemused look, then Murray wrapped the last of the silk sashes around Hans, who held his arms up at his sides.
“Do you think Zorian will come?” Hans asked.
He hadn’t heard from Zorian since before their father’s arrest twelve days ago. Like Hans, Zorian lived and worked undercover as a fisherman in Piscator Territory. With it being peak fishing season there, they had to be careful to leave only on their days off—they couldn’t maintain their commonwealth identities without meeting the Office of the Chancellor’s quotas. In all, it was an especially troubling time for Zorian to disappear, but then his brother was nothing if not unpredictable, one of the reasons the Leadership had appointed Hans to head the Liberation Front in their father’s stead.
“I doubt it, kid.” Murray adjusted the sash, took a step back, and nodded approval. “Zorian will find his way back to the Front, in his own time and in his own way.”
