"Leave it open," a voice behind me says. "And disable the cloaking."
We are surrounded by plain-clothes PP officers leveling pistols at our heads. I look around at their faces. They don't object. Their expressions are intense and I can tell their veins are full of adrenaline.
"You, too," the officer across from me says to Rory. He's talking about the cloaking. They are wearing their badges on the outside now, and I can see that he's a captain. "Now. We won't ask again."
We both enter the key sequences that align the duel displays on our notebooks so they project a single image. We are now all watching the satellites.
"What's about to happen?" the captain asks me.
"You tell me," I say. "I assume we're under arrest."
"I mean with the satellites. What did you just do? What's the next phase?"
"There is no next phase," Jakub says. "It's over. They're about to deorbit."
"Bullshit," the captain says. "I'll give you one more chance to tell me before we start putting holes in heads."
Jakub reacts to something on my screen. The satellites are changing. Small apertures are forming in the ends of the cylinders and growing larger. There's something inside. There's a simultaneous flash across all 16 video feeds and the blur of something being ejected.
"What was that?" the captain says.
"We don't know," Rory says. He instinctively starts tapping keys. Nobody stops him. "This is as new to us as it is to you."
"You'd better figure it out," the captain tells him. "From now on, your lives are only as valuable as the information you give us."
"Just give me a minute," Rory says impatiently. "I'm trying."
Something else starts happening. The satellites' propulsion systems begin to glow.
"There's the burn," Yuuka says.
"I told you," Jakub says. "They're deorbiting."
"Jesus Christ." The captain looks around at his men. "Those were missiles they just fired."
Nobody says anything. Rory is frantically typing. I look over at my wife. I wonder if this building will be a target.
"Tell us where they're going," the captain says. "Tell us now."
"I don't think they're missiles," Rory says. "They're going in the other direction. They're going away from Earth."
The captain looks confused. "Why?"
"I don't know. They're all moving directly away from us, and they're broadcasting radio and optical signals outward."
"Stop them," the captain says.
"I can't. There's no way to communicate with them."
The captain points his gun directly at my wife's face. "I said stop them. Or I start executing."
Rory is sweating. He isn't typing anymore. He's trying to figure out what to do. The captain's pistol goes off and everyone reacts. My ears are ringing. I see the shell casing eject but I don't hear it land. I can't see my wife in my peripheral vision anymore. I don't turn to look. Yuuka is screaming and I can see everything I need to see in her.
"Now you know I'm not bluffing," the captains says calmly. The gun moves to me. "I'm going to count to ten, and if you haven't figured out how to stop them, he's next."
Yuuka is screaming at what she sees on the floor behind me. Rory is trying to focus. The captain starts counting aloud and I close my eyes. I can hear my wife softly gurgling. The scene I just witnessed replays itself in my mind. I picture the impassivity in the captain's face and I hear the calm in his voice. I know that he feels nothing right now. I have felt that way, too. I think about all the things I've done, the thousands of lives I've taken and somehow justified. That's when it all begins to make sense to me. I understand what Phase Four is now. As I listen to the captain finish his count, I realize that The Human Legacy Project had never been intended for us. For us, it had always been too late.
Table of Contents
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Human Legacy Project Page 3
