Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  “You will now if I have anything to say about it. Old and comfortable,” I told both women, my jaw going tight when I realized it had become my mission. Without them, I couldn’t build a home, and without a home, no one was going to live a life free from the daily threat of extinction. Plans needed peace to come true, and I knew that our real work would only start when we found the strange people of the forest.

  We made camp in sight of Alatus, deciding to go in fresh at dawn. There’d been no wolf sign through the day, and our watch rotation was simple. I took the middle, so that everyone could get some sleep, but we ended up watching the moon rise together, perched on a boulder as the stars began to spin overhead. Somewhere in the night, a small animal squealed, then went silent, either escaping to live another day or becoming a meal. The Empty forgave no one, not even the smallest living things.

  26

  “That’s it,” Mira said as we drew up before an expanse of covered ruins. “Alatus.”

  After a quiet night, we broke camp early, finding an unexpected trickle of water in a low hill just to the west. We found it by watching a bird dip, drink, and fly off, its scarlet feathers gleaming in the morning sun before streaking away. We were less than two klicks from the mass of lumps, exposed walls, and various rocks that had once been a sprawling military base. I felt a pang of regret at what was before us but tucked it away in favor of a cold, clear look at what we had to do.

  “Any activity?” I asked. If we were closer to the forest, that meant we were in range of whatever lived there. The Harlings were not specific about where they were attacked other than Alatus, but that could be anything spread over a huge area.

  “Nothing. If there were predators, the bones are clean. Wagons might still be there,” Mira said.

  “They were blown east by the storm, right? We can break left, through that open wash to clear sand. There’s high ground there,” Silk said, pointing to a smudge of brown. She was right. That was where we would start.

  “Alatus was supposed to be picked over by scavengers, right?” I asked. I knew that military bases were enormous, and my instincts told me that no matter how desperate people had been, something would be left behind.

  “Everyone knew about it. One of the biggest ruins in the area and close to a road,” Mira said with a shrug as if that was reason enough to consider Alatus dead and buried.

  Once again, my memory clicked, and something from my past let loose like a silent film, scrolling through my head with images of me in a car, busy streets, and a map of a life that was long dead.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said. I let the memory keep washing over me, and the pictures came clear. “I was here. Twice, I think, but once for sure. I know this place. Altus Air Force Base, and I’m willing to bet it isn’t scoured clean of everything.”

  “You were...here?” Silk asked.

  “This is where I’m from. This is my home state. I went to sleep in a tube less than twenty miles from my hometown, and I woke up in the future, but—damn, I remember now.” I closed my eyes, shaking through the time I spent here, placing buildings, roads. The hangars, and all the things that went into a base.

  When I opened my eyes, I pointed to a cluster of buildings a half klick from everything else, the tops barely visible through the thin pattern of the shifting dunes.

  “Bet the scavengers didn’t get in there,” I said.

  “Can we?” Silk asked.

  Mira had her hand up, blocking the sun. “Never been in those. They were buried when my parents started scavenging.”

  “That’s the thing about sandstorms. They bury things, but they also expose the past. I saw a storm uncover a city wall that was four thousand years old, and no one had ever suspected it was there. The science geeks went nuts, called it a lost city. Well, we have our own lost city, but this one isn’t from a culture that died out before modern people came around. This is my culture, and my people,” I told them.

  Mira hitched her pack up, smiling. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  “You brought your shovels?” I asked her. Silk nodded, having a small, folding shovel sticking out of her pack. So did Mira, and mine was tied to the frame of my ruck, its blade bright from years of previous use. It was about to go back in service. I smiled, sensing that answers and loot were under our feet. “Let’s dig.”

  27

  We didn’t hit access on the first hole.

  It was third. I muffled a shout of success when my shovel clanged off an intact door, eight feet down and three feet forward in a narrow trench I dug, leaving me filthy and wheezing. Even my ‘bots had limitations, though a normal man would have taken two days to move the sand that I did in less than three hours. Mira and Silk were strong, working together in a chain gang to move the sand away from my area as I kept digging down, down, finally hitting pay dirt.

  The door was heavy, metal, and pitted with age, but buried long enough that it had been sheltered from the worst of the Empty. I ran my fingers over the surface, wondering how long it took for steel to acquire the look of battered scrap, then, for the first time, asked myself the question. Did I even want to know how long I’d been asleep? The past was dead, my life gone. I had Silk, Mira, this place, and a lifetime of work ahead of me if I wanted it, so what was the purpose of knowing something as meaningless as the year?

  With my shovel resting on the ground, I had the answer. It mattered a lot.

  I had to know. The date would reveal things that the virus kept hidden, like how fast and how far mankind had fallen, when creatures became part of the landscape, and how we decided to enslave the big ogres with eyes that looked far too human for me to treat them like animals. The world had gone batshit crazy, and putting a time frame on it would let me start the work I knew had to be done.

  Some of what the virus did was permanent. I couldn’t raise the dead, unbury cities, or even ask the monsters of the Empty to kindly walk away.

  But I could reclaim the good parts of the world, and it would start with something as simple as a date. “Clearing this door. Mira, gun on it, please?”

  “Got it,” she said behind me. I heard her feet shuffle to get a better view. The sun was still up but fading fast. “Torches are in Silk’s pack. We don’t have to wait if you don’t want to.”

  “Good enough for me. Silk, light ‘em up,” I said, grabbing the door handle and leaning back as my boots scrabbled to find a grip in the sand. When the soles of my feet settled, I wrenched the door inward with a shriek, metal protesting as rust and grit fell away in shattered clumps. “So much for stealth.”

  “If anything is in there, it’s long dead,” Silk said, but she wasn’t entirely sold on the idea.

  “Unless there’s access somewhere else, and this entrance is closed,” Mira said. She had the air of someone who’s seen too many surprises in the Empty, but her weapon was steady, face devoid of fear.

  “One more. Give me some room,” I warned. With a savage jerk, I pushed the door fully open as sunlight streamed into air that was stagnant with untold years. Motes of dust swirled before me, drifting inward as the hot desert air began changing places with the cooler, dry air of the ancient hallway.

  Silence greeted us, but I stood still as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Ready?”

  Mira and Silk said nothing but stepped forward to flank me. I went in, lifting my feet in a vain effort to stop dust from rising. There was sand near the door, but it faded as we went on, and in ten feet, the bland hallway was more of a time capsule than a relic.

  “What is this place?” Mira asked, running her fingers over a smooth wall. The hallway went on for at least thirty feet with only a security window and desk breaking the monotony. The chair was still there, toppled over in haste long ago when someone let panic get hold of their emotions.

  Then I saw the bullet holes.

  “Gunshots,” I said, pointing to the wall. A spray of holes, arcing wildly upward. Someone had been using the spray and pray method, meaning that whatever happened,
it had been fast and chaotic.

  “There’s your shooter,” Silk said.

  The skeleton was still in uniform, though much of the cloth had decayed into little more than faded patches. The hair was still close to the skull. He’d been black-haired, short, strong-looking. His left arm was detached, broken in three places and a meter from his body.

  “What did that?” Silk asked. “Looks like it was torn right away. Where’s his foot?”

  “Missing,” I said. I hadn’t seen his right foot was gone, as his leg was facing away from us.

  “Not human,” Mira said, lifting her gun as she waved the torch in short, nervous twitches. “Something did this to him.”

  “It’s okay. This was a long time ago. All quiet now,” I told her. She calmed, but only a little. The base wasn’t just a tomb, it was a the site of a brutal murder. I understood her feelings. “We go in each room, scan, then back. We need to move quickly in case the air isn’t good enough, okay?”

  “Got it,” Mira said. Silk nodded, her eyes round with concerned interest.

  Moving steadily, we entered a second hall, lined with doors on both sides. At regular intervals, we would open, scan, and move on, finding little except for decrepit office space or meeting rooms. Whatever this wing of the building had been, the primary purpose was corporate, not research. We needed to change venues.

  I found our opportunity on the other side of another security station, this one manned by two skeletal soldiers, their bones slumped in frayed combat armor. Both were killed from behind, their angle of rest pitched forward in an oddly peaceful way. There was no blood spray, but then, I didn’t know how long blood would last, even in a closed building.

  “Lots of bones, and no idea who did it,” Mira said.

  “What about that?” Silk asked. She pointed to a series of marks along the wall, low enough that I had to bend close with a torch to light them up.

  Claw marks.

  “Something went wrong here,” I said in the understatement of the century.

  Silk gave me a measured look, running a finger over my bicep. “What if it went exactly the way your people expected?”

  “I—good point.” I levered my gun up, waving everyone forward with the torch. It felt wrong to speak, even though nothing could answer. Not in that place. “Down the stairs. Better chance of something useful, I think.”

  We descended two flights of stairs, past a bank of elevators with two more security stations but no bones. The floor opened into two larger sections, divided by a plexiglass wall. By torchlight, everything gleamed with the dull finish of dusty surgical steel.

  I knew the layout because I’d seen it before. A clinic, and not unlike the one where I’d been put under by Marsten. This one was five times larger, but there was no evidence of sleep tubes. Dusty circles spotted the floor at regular intervals, above steel tables. Peering close, I bent to pick something out of the gritty residue—a needle.

  “They were using nanobots here,” I said, holding up the needle for Silk to take. She examined it, handed it to Mira, and wiped her hand on her leg absently, as if the item had been toxic. In a way, it was.

  “This is what they put in your blood?” Mira asked, looking up at the open spaces above each table. A wheel of instruments hovered in a folded position, dusty but within reach of a doctor or nurse. It was a production line, but for humans instead of machines, and I knew that whatever had been done to me started here.

  I also knew they’d gone too far, and that was what killed the guards upstairs. And beyond.

  “A later version, I think. I’m faster and stronger, and my body can change to meet certain needs, like speaking or running or—”

  “Or fucking,” Mira said with a grin.

  “Or that,” I said, stifling a laugh. It seemed rude to celebrate something among the dead, but the Empty made tough people. It was me who had to change, not Mira, and I reminded myself that she had survived a place that would kill anyone from my generation.

  “What about them?” Silk asked in a muffled tone. She was far enough away that I had to squint into her torch. At the edge of the lab stood a door, ajar but on its hinges. “Two more in here and something you should see.”

  “What is it?” I asked, moving toward her.

  “Hightec. And—Jack, can you read this?” Silk asked, her voice soft with awe.

  “I can. Seems she was kind enough to leave us a note.” In the debris of her uniform was a colonel’s insignia next to a pair of ranks, only one that made sense. “Well, this is bullshit.”

  “What’s that?” Mira asked.

  Silk lifted the officer’s brass, picking them up and putting them down after a careful look. “This was a leader?”

  “And then some,” I told her. “Probably one of the ranking officers on base, just under the general, but this rank is bullshit. It’s the symbol for a dentist.”

  “What is a...dentist?” Mira asked, speaking the unfamiliar term slowly.

  “Like a doctor, but for teeth. They weren’t working on teeth here, which means her rank was a cover story. This was a base in a base, hidden in plain sight. It’s brilliant. They put a cutting-edge program in front of everyone, and then it all went to shit when the virus broke free, I think. Let me see what our friend had to say before she left,” I said, staring at the letter. It was yellowed and frail; I knew touching it might destroy the paper, so I leaned over, careful to keep the sparks from the torch at a safe distance.

  “Read it out loud for us?” Silk asked.

  “Oh—right.” I felt a flash of irritation at my mistake. The note was in my language, not theirs, the letters written in a precise, unhurried hand. I looked at the name badge, deciding I would have liked Colonel Tavis, who kept her head when the world was falling apart around her.

  Clearing my throat, I began to read, and in a few words, I began to understand what happened to my world.

  “I’ve got three minutes to write this, whoever you are. The gas is released and the fans will kill everything on base in hopes of stopping it here, but I doubt it. We’re on lockdown, but I can hear the screams topside, so I know they’re free. We tried to stop the virus in mid-shift, but it didn’t work. If anything, it left them feral, uncommunicative, and stronger than ever before. I lost sixteen people in two days, and now we’ve lost the state. I think the world is next, but I won’t be around to see it happen. Neither will my husband or children, nor anyone else I’ve ever cared about.”

  “Stronger than you?” Mira asked. I shrugged. We would find out in the forest, I was sure of it.

  I kept reading. “There are six facilities where we brought nanotech to full use. This is the first facility, three more were hidden in clinics where it was easier to convince test subjects they were doing something for the space program. We were never going to the stars. We were building warriors to fight what was coming because a bad actor decided they were going to create a virus that broke humanity into a prism, with each color being a beast that would kill our world just as surely as a plague. Some were smart, some were vicious, some were just big and stupid, reverting to the state of animals. None are human anymore, and I don’t think we can ever put the genie back in the bottle. I’m sorry we failed. I’m sorry I failed. The closest facility with a working forge is to the east of here. Find the forge. Find the plans. And if you’re reading this, avenge us. The forge will run for millennia, but you must control it before it can reproduce the nanobots. In the desk below, I left a gift. If it’s within thirty centuries, you still have time. Don’t waste it. We were so close to being perfect. Like gods, but isn’t that the way it always goes? We flew too—”

  The letter ended, and I felt the world closing in around me. With a shaking hand, I reached down, pulling the metal desk drawer open on rails that shattered after a hard tug. Inside, a plain brown envelope bulged with something.

  “She left it for me,” I said, but I knew it could have been anyone. I touched the envelope, watching as it flaked away in pieces to rev
eal a small, metal square with two buttons on top.

  “What is it?” Silk asked, her tone reverent. It was clearly technology, but so plain it confused her.

  “It’s an atomic clock, I think.” I placed it on the desk, moving the colonel’s finger bones aside with a gentle push. She was long gone, but I felt a sense of connection to this woman who had done so much as poison gas flooded her base. My finger twitched with uncertainty, then I pushed down on the left button.

  The screen flared to life, dull but visible. 19 July 4038.

  I went to one knee, the room spinning as the air left my chest. Sweat broke free across my face and neck, a cold chill running wild through me like a fever dream as the years fell away in a flurry. My life wasn’t just gone—it was ancient, almost a myth. It was closer to the pyramids of Egypt than to where I stood, and it took everything I had not to howl at the sky like some demented beast.

  When I could breathe, I noticed Silk and Mira nearby, though my eyes were cast down, staring at the scattered toe bones of an officer who crushed my past with her simple gift.

  “Jack, what is it?” Mira asked softly.

  “Do you use a calendar? I never thought to ask,” I said through gritted teeth. I had to get my shit together, and there was no time like the present.

  “We do. It’s Summer 1641. Kassos has a clock keeper, some crone who shrieks about time, the sun, and stars. Never seen her, but she’ll keep on until her daughter takes over, I think. Why?” Mira replied.

  “1641?” I asked, rising to my knees, then standing with a suppressed groan. I felt like shit, but it was better than being dead.

  “We keep years by summers since the winter is just a rainy season here. Snow to the north, but not here. Too hot,” Mira explained.