“System failure,” the man at the machine said, strangely calm.
The doctor tutted, clasping his hands behind his back. “Yes,” he said, sounding almost bored. “Take him away, then.” He shook his head, visibly disappointed. “And we were so close, too.”
“Next time, doctor,” said the technician, and the doctor nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Next time.”
“Formula needs tweaking, that’s all.”
The doctor grunted. “Perhaps.”
The first man set down his clipboard and swung the wheeled table around to cart the body away. As it moved, the body beneath the tarp swung into view. Its skin was black, burned to ash as though by acid, leeched away by something impossibly hot. His eyes, open, were red all the way through, dripping blood. A white tongue lolled out of an open mouth over cracked teeth, still twitching.
Dana gasped.
The doctor looked up. Dana didn’t duck away in time.
“It appears we have visitors,” said the doctor. “Perhaps you’d like to join us?”
“Let’s go,” said John, and they started running for the front door.
“Not so fast,” they heard the doctor’s voice. Gunmen swarmed out, silent, crackling with the electricity of their weapons. John and Dana stopped short. Dana resisted the urge to put up her hands.
“Stay calm,” John whispered. She gave him a small nod.
“Indeed,” said the doctor, striding out into the hall. “We should all stay calm, don’t you agree, boys?” He looked around at his soldiers. None of them relaxed their grip, but Dana thought she saw a few of them smile. Or maybe that was just her imagination.
“Temba,” she said to the doctor, a peculiar certainty overtaking her. “You’re Temba.”
The doctor seemed surprised. “I am,” he said. “What gave me away?”
“Lab coat,” Dana said stupidly. Not that it would have been any better to say it was a wild guess.
Temba chuckled, tapping his thumbs together. “Ah,” he said. “I should have known.” He cocked his head, examining Dana — he seemed totally unaware of John behind her. “And you... I must confess, you look disturbingly familiar, my friend. Who are you?”
The one who’s gonna blow this place to high hell, she thought, but she kept that to herself. “Nobody,” she said.
Temba chuckled again. There was a tautness in his voice when he spoke next. “Don’t be so modest,” he said. He stepped forward and held out his hand as though to touch her face; John was in front of her in an instant.
“Don’t touch her,” he growled, staring daggers into the doctor.
Temba retracted his hand. “Forgive me. I meant no offense. Your friend only looks so... Familiar. I swear I’ve seen her face before, but I can’t quite place it. Perhaps you could help me?”
John looked between Dana and the doctor. “Can’t,” he said simply.
But then the doctor’s eyes widened, and he offered Dana an unabashed grin. “Ah,” he said, clapping his hands together at his revelation. “I do know you! You, you’re the spitting image of that...” He took a deep breath, pulling himself back from saying something unsavory. “...of Adele. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Dana swallowed, suddenly remembering how Nick Blade knew Temba. They went to high school together, she thought. He’s the one who tried to burn the farms. He’s the one who built Biolance.
Her stomach dropped into her heels as she realized exactly where they were. Water, why did you bring us here?
The storm outside grew harsher. Thunder crashed, loud enough to shake the building and make the guards flinch. Temba remained unmoved, smiling like a snake.
“Good,” he said. “That was going to drive me insane if I couldn’t place you. So, tell me, Adele’s daughter... You have a name, I assume?”
Dana said nothing. Temba shrugged.
“No matter,” he said. “Why are you here? Sightseeing, I suppose?”
“We got lost,” said Dana. “Got... curious.” It wasn’t completely a lie...
“Fine, don’t tell me,” said Temba. He cocked his head, suddenly thoughtful. “Although your presence here may be a stroke of good fortune... you see, I’ve had some... let’s say, experiments, go awry and I’ve need of some... some samples, you might say.”
“Samples,” John repeated darkly.
Temba nodded. “Yes, yes, samples. From people like your mother,” he said to Dana. “People like you. Blood, saliva, brain tissue, the like.”
Brain tissue. Dana felt herself go numb. That didn’t sound like the kind of thing living people could give away.
“If you’d be so good as to hold still,” uttered the doctor.
John snapped his fingers. Fire leapt to life in his palm, and the doctor’s expression changed.
“I assumed you would be unhelpful.” He looked around at his gunmen and waved vaguely at John. “Kill them.”
John didn’t even have to move. He blinked, and suddenly everyone in the room, Temba included, was engulfed in pillars of white-hot flames. Dana stared at them as they dropped their guns, screaming, rolling on the flat white ground in a vain attempt to put themselves out.
John grabbed her hand and they ran.
He blasted the door open with an uninhibited wave of fire, sending it straight into three armed men running towards the building. The only sound was sirens and crackling flame, the hiss of spitting metal and gasoline taking fire. Dana looked left and saw the barrels, loose and rolling, leaving a fiery trail behind them.
Burn it, said Water. Drown it. Destroy it. Leave nothing behind.
Gladly, thought Dana. “Water says to burn it.”
John laughed bitterly as they ran. “Way ahead of you,” he said. All around them buildings were taking the fire, filling with smoke, spilling scientists and soldiers into the soaking black night. The rain fell harder, but the fire didn’t seem to care. Freezing winds swept up the orange blaze, carrying it from building to building, sending coils of smoke through vents, curling around the legs of towers and snapping them like twigs. It was a living thing, this fire, an animal bent to John’s will; he moved his hand and the fire spread, grew hotter, bolder, swallowing anyone that got in their way.
And then there was an explosion.
It threw them both forward, slamming them hard into one of a hundred burning buildings. They looked back and saw a mushroom cloud, small and green and glowing, billowing up from a mound of black and grey rubble across the compound. The wind carried a strong toxic chemical smell towards them that made Dana want to vomit. Waste, she thought, chemical waste from his stupid experiments.
The sky was red and green as they ran, as John sent fire crawling down every alley and into every building, between stones and into cellars, smoking out anyone who thought they could hide. Everything, everything was burning now, every building was collapsing in on itself as fires hot as magma made support beams buckle and melted the mortar that held blocks of concrete in place. All around them was the sound of breaking things, tumbling stones and splintering wood, the screech and pop of breaking glass and the muted thunder of explosions as the fire found things in labs that could burn.
“Come on,” said John, his face stoic and white, totally blank. They vaulted over a soldier writhing on the ground, under the toppled remains of a doorframe, and towards the wire mesh fence, running for everything they were worth.
Dana stopped at the fence, breathing hard. She felt a pang in her chest, an icicle in a field of fire, holding her steady. Wait, she thought. There was something else she needed to see.
From somewhere in the ashes, Dana heard a voice.
“Leaving... so... soon?”
She turned. A body was crawling towards her, a man with burning hair and a blackened lab coat. He was laughing, teeth impossibly white against the smoke that clung to his skin.
“Do yourself a favor,” said Temba, spitting blood. “Run. Run as far away from here as you can and never... never... come back.” He chuckled, red
spilling out from between his teeth. “This... this is only the beginning. Soon I will create something that will beat all of you. Something... much stronger... than you.”
Stronger than us, Dana thought numbly. He’s building an army?.. She saw the burned man on the table again and the tubes in his arm, and she nearly collapsed right there. Water... this is what she was meant to know.
John grabbed her shoulder. Barrels of gas, warehouses full of chemical waste took flame around them, blowing their concrete roofs into the sky. “We need to go. Now.”
Dana couldn’t tear her eyes from Temba. The mad doctor smiled his red smile and Dana felt her bones freeze.
“Tell Nick I’m coming for him,” he said. “All of you. You.... unnatural, unholy...” He cringed with a sudden bout of pain. “...monsters.”
“YOU are the monster,” Dana replied. She felt John pull her away.
They disappeared into the trees. Behind them in the fire, Temba kept laughing.
Freeze
Prologue
Once upon a future, the world was torn between two destinies. One was of community and nature. The other was of ambition and advancement. The two sides mingled with each other for a while, until they found that -even though they depended on each other- they no longer held the same values. They decided to go their separate ways and try their luck in different worlds. They flourished then. Separately. The world of community and nature spawned magic. While the world of ambition and advancement spawned power. It wasn’t long before the two locked horns again, giving rise to legends and leaders that made the two worlds seem equally irresistible. There were times when one destiny seemed bound to win and times when it lost the battle. But one thing became constant. Never again did the two worlds strike a balance. When the land was quiet, battle plans and lines were being drawn. Peacetimes were used as preparation for war. And in all the chaos, the self still reigned supreme. In both worlds, every citizen had family, goals or Purpose. Someone or something they were willing to lie for, die for or kill for. In the terrible twists that are the signature of fate, the self would tip the land into war or peace. The self would decide when blood was to be shed and when it was time to unleash the prototype. The self would say when lovers became enemies and when fathers -or the figures of fathers- became disputed territories.
PART I
THE KEEPERS
Chapter 1
He could hardly see as he drove carefully down the long driveway of Château de Confiance. A right turn soon led him through the city and towards the forest. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself. Exactly what driving too fast or too slow would do. As the tears clouded his vision, he squeezed his eyelids shut then opened them again. Better. The tears ran down his cheeks freely now. But at least he could see the road. The streets were fairly deserted since it was very early on a Monday morning. Everyone would be waking up to another day of training in a few hours. A sense of urgency engulfed him as he tried not to panic. He could imagine their faces now, when they realized what he had done. The disappointment. The anger. The rage at further upsetting the balance of power on an already fragile planet. He wondered what would give him away first, the manifestations of nature’s displeasure or his own raw nerves.
As he reached the other side of the city and entered the forest, a small chill ran through his body. He was about to deposit his secret in the earth, which wouldn’t be too pleased about that. It was bad enough that the wind had already sensed a disturbance in nature. Anything would have been better than making the earth implicit in his crime, but what other way was there to dispose of a body? The next option was the sea, which was much less understanding than the ground in which he was about to hide the body.
Bracing himself, he turned off the engine and climbed out of the car. The early morning air was icy cold and he shivered as it hit his face. Walking round to the other side of the car, he flipped the trunk open and stared at the figure wrapped in plastic. He had done his best to make sure the earth would not come into direct contact with the corpse. A synthetic material acting as a boundary between the body and the soil meant that he had time to ‘fix’ things, whatever that meant. Of course, when the body decomposed far enough, the earth would identify the crime and would start manifesting the tell-tale signs that the balance of power had been upset.
So there he was, on an otherwise perfectly ordinary morning, placing a ticking time-bomb in the ground. The ground was damp from the rains of the night before, so only a short chant was needed to part the earth, creating a gaping hole big enough for the body. He heaved the plastic-clad body out of the trunk and hauled it over his shoulder. Placing it as carefully as he could in the shallow grave, he stepped back to catch one more glance at the unfortunate figure wrapped in plastic. The body had once belonged to the spirit of a Journeyman sixty years old, with two children and a mortgage paid for in experimental-hours-logged. Children he had grown to know and love. Now, at the hands of one of their own guardians, they had just lost a father.
He had never felt the burden of being a Great Keeper as he did now, when he tossed one last bit of earth on the grave. As the irony of his life’s purpose and his deed dawned on him, he fell to his knees next to his victim. Spasms of pain wracked his body as he sobbed into the damp earth, his tears mingling with the sweat he spent burying his secret.
“I USED TO THINK YOU were crazy, now I know for a fact you are,” Captain Dana Reeves laughed as she chatted with her right hand man, Lieutenant Nick Blade.
“At last someone agrees with me,” Sergeant John Howard, a respected member of Savvy, replied jovially.
Seated around a table at Château de Confiance, Blade’s humble abode, were the living legend that was Captain Dana Reeves, Lieutenant Blade and five members of Savvy, the elite team of Great Keepers that were at the fore of the defenses Captain Reeves had built up over the years. They sat drinking steaming mugs of coffee as they went through the day’s briefing.
“The Journeymen from Border Patrol say all is well at the Espérer-Metz border.”
“You mean the forest. Why do you always have to sound like an intelligence report?”
“No suspicious movements in Metz, either. That must mean all Biolance’s activities are concentrated in the laboratories around the country and the company headquarters in Metz. They must be planning something big.”
“Well, so are we. For once, we are the ones who will be on the offensive.”
“Not if they beat us to it.”
The members of Savvy went back and forth while Dana watched Blade closely. He seemed to be in a world of his own this morning.
“Everything fine on your front, Lieutenant Blade?” she asked, attempting to draw him from his reverie.
Blade jumped visibly, “Of course. Why do you ask?”
Had he done something to give himself away?
“Do you have anything to add?” Dana persisted.
“No, no, everything is as usual on my end.”
“Your new training methods have been yielding good results,” Dana said.
“Thank you. It’s been helpful going over the past wars again and seeing how best to update our strategies. Cognitive gymnastics is showing the best rate of improvement. It seems this war will be won by strategy rather than might,” Blade managed.
Dana nodded, keeping her eyes on Blade. She was worried about him. He seemed to have broken into a sweat, as if he were nervous about something. But she had never seen him nervous about anything. He was a seasoned soldier who had nerves of steel, hardly ever blinked under pressure and was a stickler for rules. He believed in the Purpose, the raison d'être of a Keeper: to care for and safeguard the wellbeing of the Journeymen, mere human beings whose goal in life was to forge out a purpose for themselves as they traveled through life. He must be coming down with something.
“Why don’t we stop here for today? It looks like Lieutenant Blade isn’t well,” Dana suggested.
The small group immediately stood up to leave as Dana walked u
p to Blade.
“Why didn’t you tell me you are ill? We would have let you sleep in,” she said.
“I thought it was nothing. I suppose I was wrong.”
“You don’t take enough care of yourself,” Dana rebuked.
“Of course I don’t. That’s your job.”
Dana laughed, happy that he still had his sense of humor.
“Well, I’ll be back later with some soup.”
With that, Dana walked out of the castle and into what was turning out to be a bright and sunny day. John Howard had been waiting for her outside and let his eyes travel over her body as she stepped out into the sunlight. The sun hit her raven black hair just so, setting off her smooth porcelain skin. She had spent a considerable amount of time training and making sure the younger trainees were up to standard. He couldn’t help but feel drawn to her supple body as she pressed herself against him for a moment, then slid her hand into his.
“He might be coming down with something,” she said.
“He’ll be fine in no time. He’s Lieutenant Blade, after all.”
“Yes, he is,” Dana said proudly. “But he shouldn’t put himself under so much pressure. He’s not getting any younger.”
THE ASSEMBLY OF ADOLESCENT boys and girls stood quietly as Dana and John addressed them, soaking in every word. As Captain, it was not Dana’s duty to see to the education of the young trainees but she considered it important to keep the lines of communication between herself and the younger Keepers open. She regularly met with the young trainees to keep morale high. John, as Espérer’s Minister of Education and Child Welfare, went with her.
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