by Hanks, Greg
Celia frowned from the other end of the feed. “What do you mean? What did they do to you?”
The door behind Justin beeped and whooshed open.
55
A thick haze covered the world around me. My head burned with a malevolent heat. I knocked pieces of shrapnel and rubble out of the way as I crawled. I heard a distant moaning sound. Was it me? Disoriented, I tried to stand.
“Mark!”
My eyes focused. Flaming wreckage appeared before me. The billowing flames warmed my face and dried my mouth. Ash and smoke fell upon me. Tears came, combating the debris.
“Are you okay?!”
I coughed blood into my hands, caught my breath, and my surroundings found their place.
“Hey!” redoubled Tara, stepping in front of me, grasping my arms. Her helmet was gone, leaving a soot-covered face.
“I’m—I’m okay. You?”
“Fine. We’ve got to find the others. The helicopter fell right on top of them.”
Her words ignited a fearful flame. Nevertheless, I nodded and we hopped toward the ruins, bounding over gaping holes, fissures, and mounds of churned concrete.
We started shouting names, searching amongst the wreckage. The remains of the helicopter shed enough light to discern between the different bodies. We pulled huge slabs of concrete and moved sheets of plating, but our squad was nowhere to be found.
The middle building was unaffected structurally. It stood safe and sound, waiting for us to enter and claim our prize. But I didn’t care anymore. As I searched, I realized the people I loved were the only thing that mattered. Repik had probably escaped by now, seeing the attempt to kill us fail right before his eyes. Maybe we could still reveal their secrets. Maybe we still had a chance.
“Over here!” shouted Tara from the other side of the wreckage.
I scaled the hill of rubble and saw Tara kneeling over a lifeless corpse, half covered in large chunks of metal. I reached her in time to help remove most of the debris from his body. We dragged him to an unaffected part of the roof and removed the helmet.
Bollis.
“No . . .” muttered Tara. She leaned down to listen for breathing.
When her ear was centimeters away from his mouth, he coughed and sputtered. He groaned, turning over.
We rejoiced and helped him into a sitting position just as Vexin trotted over with Vane in tow.
“Is everyone okay?” asked Vane, followed by a giant string of coughs.
I noticed a huge gash running diagonally across Vexin’s face. He wiped the blood away and buckled to one knee, weighed down from the ordeal. Vane’s Undersuit hardly looked useable at all. He reminded me of a rag doll. His gaunt cheeks collected a ring of black and his breathing was hindered even more than usual.
When I looked past them, I couldn’t find the third member.
“Where’s Dodge?” I asked.
Vexin kept his head down. His eyes were glazed and heavy. I had never seen him so dejected.
“I barely made it out of the explosion,” said Vane, his tone so low and scratchy it was hard to understand. “And he was a few feet behind me.”
I looked over to Tara. Her face was sagging. Tears were forming.
“No, he’s alive,” started Bollis, struggling to his feet. “He’s got to be around here some—”
“Bollis . . .” tried Vexin.
“No!” Bollis snapped, and then moaned as a sharp jab of pain hit his abdomen. Tara and I helped him stabilize. He squirmed again. “We’ve got to look!”
“We all knew the risks involved!” rebounded Vane. “Get a grip!”
Bollis wrenched away from our support. His breaths were getting shorter and his eyes growled with rage.
“We’re out of time! After this little episode, it would be a miracle if Repik’s still up there!” Vane continued.
Tara approached Bollis and looked him in the eyes. “We’ll come back for him. I believe you. I know Dodge is still alive. But right now we have to finish this.” I watched the fire reflecting in their glass eyes.
Vane made his way around the destruction, toward the elevator, signaling the end of the debate. The rest of us stood in the dancing light of the helicopter fire. It was as if we were standing around our best friend’s tomb. Emptiness consumed us. For the first time, Vexin looked unsure. Bollis was defeated and somber, yet full of anger. It was a side of him I never wanted to see again.
I placed a hand on his shoulder.
No matter what I told myself, I still felt the poisonous sting of sorrow. Dodge—gone? I couldn’t accept it, not for one second. I tried shrugging it off, but like a cancer, it grew in the back of my mind. I knew one thing for sure; Jonas Repik was going to suffer for this.
Everyone eventually piled into the elevator with an uneasy air. Genesis was falling apart. In a matter of seconds, the bond they—as well as Tara and I—had built for years started to crumble. Bollis was done. I could feel it. The energy once displayed across his face had disappeared. Vexin was seething. Tara was in a state of mournful perception and shock. Vane was stripped of all other options, held together by eight years of dedication. I was . . . in the middle of it all.
And Dodge was dead.
56
The Twilight Zone.
That title could have described the elevator ride. Everyone remained silent, thinking of what lied ahead. It was surreal.
Jonas Repik. All the answers I was hoping for were only a few minutes away. Everything that happened to Tara and I. Justin’s parents. The soldiers. The death of Archturus Slate. Everything funneled to this moment. The more I realized what was about to happen, the more my mouth began to water.
But when that elevator door opened and the chime rang in my ears, I froze.
“Mark?” asked Tara.
She stood at the threshold, holding the doors open. Her face was calm, serious, and accepting.
“I know we can’t hold a candle to the others,” I began, watching them move silently past the first set of double doors toward the gleaming second set at the end of the new corridor. “So why am I freezing up?”
Tara thought for a moment. The fact that she didn’t care about the mission more than another one of our conversations made me relax.
“Maybe it’s because we haven’t been in Genesis as long as they have.”
I thought about the others’ commitment, their dedication and fervor. Bollis risked his life for us—twice—even before he knew us. Dodge died for the cause.
“They really are heroes,” I said. “They’ve given up everything.”
Tara cocked her head back to watch the other three approach Repik’s door.
My statement was more of a contemplative one. Here I was, fearing what lied ahead, while my friends—who had endured ten times more than I—were pressing on without hesitation. Standing in their presence humbled me. I felt small against their wake.
Tara turned back to me. She placed a gloved hand to my check.
“You are a hero. You would give your life for any of us. Even Justin.” She smirked. “Let’s end this, Mark. Let’s go home.”
“Charges in place—Mark, Tara, get up here,” said Bollis.
I grabbed Tara’s wrist and stared into her iridescent blue eyes.
“Let’s get some answers,” I said.
“What are we going to do if he’s not here?” asked Vexin when we caught up.
“Regardless of his presence,” said Vane, “there are thousands of stored records behind this door. We’ll have what we need.” He paused for a moment, looked back at the door, and then turned to us again. “And then we’ll find him.”
“Here we go,” said Bollis.
Our demolitions expert counted down from three.
The explosion was quick and succinct. Not a second afterwards, we infiltrated the office. Out of the smoke, my eyes feasted upon the magnificent room. Luxury was an understatement.
The CEO’s workplace was covered in dark, reflective marble flooring, with a second,
raised level. The walls and vaulted ceiling had flecks of gold and sapphire glinting from within. Four giant pillars lined the pathway to a glass desk at the end of the room. The desk supported a 90-inch Fuse, an AI pedestal, and four supercomputers built into the foundation. Bookshelves, a few sofas, and gaudy décor dotted the entire space.
But the splendor fell away when we realized we were the only ones in the room.
“Damn it!” shouted Vexin.
Jonas Repik was nowhere to be found. Which wasn’t much of a shock, but rather a reminder that luck was never going to be on our side.
“Turn this place upside down,” commanded Bollis.
The rest of us remained speechless. Our footsteps echoed as we filtered through the place we had been studying for weeks. My heart rested at the bottom of my abdomen. I was furious, depressed, and anxious. I had envisioned the encounter with Repik so many times. What would this mean? The CEO wasn’t stupid enough to just leave his arsenal of incriminating data for us to collect. Was he?
But remembering what Dodge had died for, I held on to what little determination I had left. We had to find something.
Before I could begin my search, Vexin approached me. He looked around, making sure no one else could hear us.
“Mark, do you remember what we saw in that basement room?”
I thought back. The man hooked up to the wires. The weird machine. Vexin had said he recognized it.
“You remember now?” I asked.
He nodded. His voice turned into a whisper.
“That’s what Simone looks like,” he said, referring to the Underbed’s nanomachine-injecting program. “Behind the wall, that’s what it looks like.”
I furrowed my brow.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought Vane built Simone from an ancient military prototype?”
“That’s what bothers me. Why does GenoTec have something exactly like it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, not really putting any weight on his speculation. “Something feels wrong, though.”
We looked at each other for a minute before continuing our search. No one was saying much. The sound of shuffling books and ripping drawers open were the only things creating sound.
I stepped up the single stair onto the raised level, looking past the glass desk. Something instantly caught my eye. Located directly behind Repik’s station was a wall of monitors, still buzzing with life. While everyone worked in their own area, I moved passed the table and focused my attention on the weird, Big Brother-esque wall.
“I found a data cache,” said Vane to no one in particular. He used a portable monitor by the entrance to begin compiling information.
I ignored everything else. I couldn’t take my eyes off of what I was seeing. Partly because of the specific information being displayed, but even more because I had seen the same stack of monitors in Primary—Vane’s office.
On the right side of one screen, a male figure was outlined in neon green. On the left was a description:
Marcus Phillip Wenton.
Birth: February 12th, 2014.
Height: 6’1”. Weight: 193.5.
Status: Infected. Vax Influence: approx. 12.6%.
Location: GenoTec HQ.
Oversuit Capacity: 45%.
Mental Stability: Under Duress.
History: Depression. Anxiety. Adrenoprene Addiction.
Usage: Support. Dispensable.
It was my whole profile.
I took a step back, full of horror. I read more by touching another tab. Hair and eye color, weapon proficiency, birthplace, family names, places of habitation, monthly acquisitions of survival items.
Everything.
I fell into a state of shock. There were no words to grasp my confusion. On every other monitor, the other members of Genesis were displayed in the same manner. Jordan Dabbs, AKA “Celia.” Curtis Mundson, AKA “Dodge.” Valiant Davis, AKA “Vexin.” Ryan Caprete, AKA “Bollis.”
By now, Tara and the others started converging on my location, noticing my utter despair. Once I had scanned each monitor, a wave of annihilating fear and paralysis overcame me.
There was one name missing.
The sound of an electrified fence erupted from behind us. Bollis, Vexin, Tara, and I turned to find a transparent wall of what looked like a network of pink neurons; the surface rippled like a tight piece of fabric. We were imprisoned.
Vane stood on the other side.
“What’s this?!” shouted Bollis.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” said Vane coolly. He was still stooped over his portable monitor, uploading data. He paid no attention to our flustered group.
Bollis took a few steps forward, eyes wide. “Vane . . .” he said, his chiseled jaw clamped and quivering.
“What the hell?!” shouted Vexin. He lifted a small lamp off of the glass desk and threw it at the pink barrier. When the lamp collided with the shield, sparks flew everywhere and the lamp ricocheted back, half melted.
I pushed past Vexin. “Why isn’t your name on this?!”
I was inches away from the barrier, feeling the dull heat.
The atmosphere on our side was corrosive. There was so much unknown outrage and uncertainty. My heart was leaping around my chest cavity like a rubber ball.
Finally, with no urgency whatsoever, Vane stood and turned to us. He walked toward the barrier, stepping up the second tier. When he came within feet of the pink shield, he smiled and began to speak.
“It’s called a Kinetic Voss Shield. It’s the only one of its kind. Really quite beautiful. Impenetrable. Powerful.”
He admired the glowing technology with the utmost pride.
Bollis lashed out, “You better tell us what the—”
“In a few moments, none of this will matter anyways,” Vane responded.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” growled Vexin.
Behind Vane, a small beep sounded from his monitor. He stared at us a little bit longer before going back to check the screen. More impatient curses came from our end of the field. Then Vane’s face frowned for the first time. He tapped a few things on the see-through keyboard and looked our direction for a split second.
“It looks like we do have some time,” he said, his voice mildly changing from a low, raspy tone, to a more sophisticated, younger one.
He stood straight and craned his neck. The rest of us watched with intense perception. Our leader stepped away from the computer, placed his hands on his scalp and began to rub in a circular motion.
Through the shroud of pink, I thought I saw pieces of skin start to fall off. No—whole sections of his head! We watched in disgust as he ripped the white-blonde hair from his skull and toss it to the floor. He did the same to his face, peeling away a fake nose and discarding an entire neck brace of false skin.
His head was turned away, hiding his face, but it gave us a front row seat to the black tattoo that snaked down the back of his skull, continuing into his collar. Designed like a grouping of veins, the tattoo sparked an unbelievable memory within me. Out of one of his lumbar pouches, he withdrew a loose, silver contraption. As he held it in one hand, he took his other hand and reached into his throat and pulled out a tiny device. Gagging a little, he threw it to the ground and placed the other metal contraption around his mouth and nose, clamping it down at the base of his cranium. Slowly, the muscular man turned to us. His eyes were black holes. His brow line was caveman-like, lined with bushy caramel eyebrows. The metal contraption covering his mouth and nose had slits across and two indented circles on either cheek.
He inhaled, as if breathing through a megaphone. The unnatural metallic voice sent a green poison spike through my brain.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Archturus Slate.”
PART
3
INTENDED EXTINCTION
57
Never had I felt so sorry for myself than at that moment. The whipping vines of corruption and decei
t bound my feet. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. Standing before me with a truly emotionless face, Slate embodied the essence of everything evil about my life. My nervous mind tried to grasp the concept of his betrayal, but the reach of his deception was unfathomable.
“You—you’re alive,” said Bollis in the most restrained voice he could muster.
Slate blinked. He continued to stare at the four of us, mocking our entire existence.
Tara approached the barrier and gritted her teeth, “The whole time. You . . .” She couldn’t find words to adequately describe her anger and confusion.
“You only have fifteen minutes,” our false leader said, “I suggest you find something more productive to say.”
The distinct reverb of his tin can voice garroted my flesh as if I was being scourged with thick barbed wire.
“What do you mean?” snarled Vexin.
“In fifteen minutes I’ll have total control of GenoTec once more. And it’s all thanks to you.”
A flood of answers burst through my core.
Slate was Vane, Vane was Slate. He had tutored me, raised me. His wisdom and experience trained my mind and soul to new heights. My mind flashed white.
“You should be grateful,” Slate spoke, “you’ve contributed to the future prosperity of this planet.”
“Bullshit,” said Bollis, pointing at Slate. “What’s going on?!”
Slate stood motionless. “Am I supposed to tell you?”
There was silence. The pink kinetic shield made an irritating buzzing noise. As a matter of fact, everything was irritating.
But I guess Bollis’ command held some gravity. Slate extended his neck back and pondered the request. As he began to speak, someone else overrode him through the room’s intercom system.
“This is Roger Celement. I have your boy. In ten minutes, I’m going to kill him. Turn yourselves into me and I’ll spare him.”
Everyone exchanged glances. Slate scoffed.
Tara whipped her head to me, a glance of utter hopelessness.
“Ten minutes,” repeated Celement.
I could feel my veins and tendons stretch as I clenched my fists.
