Shine: Season One (Shine Season Book 1)

by William Bernhardt

  “I’ve been in bad scrapes before.”

  “If you keep on bleeding, this scrape will be your last.”

  “Heard that before. Leave me alone, you freak.”

  She didn’t have time to argue. She focused on Coal’s neck, on the severed artery, the lacerated tissue.

  Regenerate.

  “Stop it,” Coal grunted. “Leave me alone, you pervert. You don’t have the right to invade my body. It’s like assault or—Ahh!” She gasped. The expression on her face changed from anger to near ecstasy.

  Heal, you stupid government tool. Heal.

  The bleeding stopped. The laceration closed. At first, the woman’s skin showed some ugly blue-black bruising. And then even that disappeared.

  Her healing had never happened this quickly before. Arterial damage was the hardest to repair—or used to be.

  Something was happening. Her powers were…changing.

  Tank bound the woman to an immovable piece of rebar. “You are some kind of incredible.”

  “This from the woman who just took down a platoon of armed soldiers.”

  “I didn’t get them all.”

  “No. But we did. I hope you all noticed that. Working together, we got them all.”

  To her surprise, the one called Coal yanked her arm and pulled her down to eye level. “I’ll come after you.”

  “Grateful much?”

  “We’ll meet again, Aura. You can’t escape.”

  “Well, we’re gonna try, just the same.”

  “Even if you get away today, you’re just protracting the pain. Do you understand who wants you dead?’

  “I’m guessing more or less everyone on the planet.”

  “Worse.”

  “Because you’re with the government? So far, I’m not impressed.”

  “I work for someone a hell of a lot more powerful than the government. Our operation has already begun. And we will make sure you don’t interfere.”

  “If you keep talking, I’m going to interfere with your face. Let go.” She shrugged Coal’s hand away.

  “They’ll crush you, little girl. Every one of you. And you will suffer.”

  Twinge appeared beside her. “Aura, she is, like, really annoying me. Can I make her pee herself or something?”

  “No. Come on. Let’s find a boat and get off this island.”

  “What do you think you are,” Coal shouted, “some kind of resistance leader? Head of the Malibu chapter of Ohm, is that it? You don’t even know what you are.”

  “Sure I do. I’m an above-average smart, below-average looking Shine with a bad attitude. Especially toward you.”

  “You know nothing. I know what you are. Where you came from. And what really happened in Seattle.”

  She froze.

  “Turn yourself over to me. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Right before you crush me? Pass. Let’s go, team. I need to check something out.”

  She raced across the campus to the area where the stables once stood. Almost nothing remained. A section of the ground had cratered, revealing what was left of the underground cellblock.

  “What the flick was that?” Twinge asked.

  “I’ll explain later.” She searched from one end of the other, but she saw no one, dead or alive, in any of the cells.

  The prisoners—and everyone else—had been moved. Before the explosion.

  “Problem,” Harriet said. “Whoever that other group is, they’re almost here.”

  “Blast. Does anyone have any thoughts on how we might escape?”

  Mnemo brightened. “I’m conversant with all the major works of strategic warfare from Lao Tsu to—”

  “Cut to the chase, Mnemo.”

  “Here’s the plan.”

  Aura listened. She knew that once they took this step—once they left the island—there would be no turning back. They would be criminals. Outlaws. Renegades. They would be hunted every day, by every means possible, everywhere they went. She would give those who most wanted to hurt Shines the ammunition they needed to pass any anti-Shine law imaginable. She would feed gossip, jealousy, bitterness, fear—all the aspects of humanity most likely to hurt them.

  She also knew that unless they escaped, they would be trapped forever. They would probably end up at Mordock, or tortured and experimented on like those women in the underground cells.

  Including her mother.

  The time had come for decisive action. And she’d already decided what that action would be.

  She clapped Mnemo on the shoulder. “Let’s roll.”

  Episode Four

  Renegades

  by William Bernhardt

  56

  Bristow Genetics

  Five Years Before

  The nagging voice in Dr. Emily Coutant’s head wouldn’t go away. The one that told her she’d made a tragic mistake. That she should never have come here. That she’d let curiosity and vanity overcome her common sense.

  For months she’d been pursued by the exorbitantly endowed Bristow Genetics lab, a scientific research outfit known to have some of the brainiest scientists in the nation and several lucrative government contracts. What she couldn’t figure out was why they wanted her. Her field was neuropsychiatry. She was a clinical and therapeutic analyst, not a data cruncher, not a lab slave. And the Institute kept her completely occupied. So what possible good could she be to Bristow? Made no sense, but the relentless offers kept coming.

  Today they offered her a preposterous retainer just to sit in a chair and watch a presentation. No strings attached. Sounded more like the offer of a time-share salesman than a scientific headhunter. She scanned the check with the Secure Funds app in her glasses. The money was there, already transferred to her account. Technically, she could leave now and keep the cash. But no. She’d fulfill her end of the bargain. But even if she kept their money, they did not own her. Nobody told her what to do. Nobody charted her course.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining me today.”

  The man behind the podium was, of course, Dr. Simon Estes. She’d heard of him. He’d made a big splash with his findings on these people called “Shines.” Estes’s involvement with Bristow guaranteed a high level of respectability.

  So why were they bribing people to get them in the room?

  “My friends, donors, and scientific colleagues,” Estes continued, “I am proud to tell you that we stand on the threshold of a dream. For years, humanity has been victimized by the vicissitudes of genetic fate. Forced to live with the cards we were randomly dealt. Often leaving some of the greatest minds and the most valuable public servants trapped in physical bodies that made their work difficult if not impossible. My friends, I am happy to tell you that those days are reaching an end.”

  She supposed she should be more excited, but she’d heard this declaration before. Since the human genome was first mapped, many a soul trumpeted the dawn of a brave new era in human evolution. So far, however, the actual benefits were few. And some of the proposals were not so much promising as terrifying.

  She glanced around the room. The woman sitting beside her was a middle-aged brunette, reasonably attractive and able to apply a little makeup properly, unlike some of the female specimens who worked in these laboratories. She knew some of the others sitting around the oval acrylic table. Scott Banner used to work at the Gen32 lab in Las Vegas. Mark Fisher had something to do with neuroprogramming, but she was sketchy on the details. Last she heard, Emerson Ogilve was doing some kind of top-secret work in North Korea on quantum computing. George Mason was trying to make teleportation a reality. Was Schreiber still trying to develop that extra-dimensional ray gun, or did the government finally shut him down? She couldn’t remember. But it was an impressive assemblage. Estes appeared to have gathered a diverse group of people from the top echelons of the scientific research community.

  “Yes, we have reached a new frontier in human evolution, one that will yield a bountiful harvest for every man and woman o
n the planet.” Behind Estes, a fast-paced array of images from the history of science flickered past. Galileo. Copernicus. E=mc2. Dinosaurs. The Vitruvian Man. A mushroom cloud. “But this is not something we can do alone. That’s why we’ve invited you to witness this presentation. We need your help. We need your genius. The threshold work has been completed, but there are still many tests to be run, applications to be developed, and trillions of lines of code to be written. Whatever it is you are asked to do, I can assure you it will be worth your time. Indeed, it will be the most important work of your life.”

  Mark Fisher swung around in his seat. “Hate to tell you this, Dr. Estes, but I’m swamped. No way I can take on a new project. In fact, looking around the room, I don’t see anyone who doesn’t already have a full plate.”

  “Whatever you’re doing now,” Estes replied, “it dwarfs in significance to what you could be doing tomorrow.”

  “That’s your point of view, of course. We’re all fond of our own projects. But even if yours were the most important work on earth—it’s still yours. And no one ever made a name for themselves doing someone else’s work.”

  Estes kept his smile in place, but she felt certain Fisher had ruffled the scientist’s empirical feathers. “If Galileo offered to let you peer through his telescope and be the first to glimpse the moons of Saturn, would you refuse because it wasn’t your telescope?”

  “Are you suggesting that you’re Galileo?”

  “An even better question,” Estes continued, “might be this: would you protect Galileo from the Inquisition, from the emissaries of Rome and the enemies of science? Because that is also what I will be asking of you, my friends. Your scientific contributions to the project itself, yes. But also your scientific strength, your assistance in warding off the threat.”

  “The threat?” She jumped into the conversation. “Care to be more specific?”

  “Dr. Coutant, you’re wise enough to realize that every scientific innovation is potentially a double-edged sword. Gunpowder was used by its Chinese inventors to create beauty and splendor. It was used by the Europeans who stole it for mass murder. Nuclear power can be a source of almost limitless energy or almost limitless destruction. The Internet can be an unprecedented tool for the dissemination of knowledge—or the basest tool in the history of mankind for the dissemination of lies. I am talking about genetic research of unprecedented scope. Opposition is inevitable.”

  “Does this relate to those Shines?” Fisher asked. “Because if that’s what you’re talking about, believe me, the opposition is already there.”

  She cut in. Might as well earn her paycheck. “You’re asking us to take sides without knowing anything about it. I don’t like all the secrecy surrounding this operation. It’s contrary to the scientific process. We need qualitative data. Peer review. Repeatable results. I’m not going to be a part of anything that isn’t completely above board.”

  “Of course not,” Estes replied. “Perish the thought.”

  “That goes for me as well.” This was the brunette to her side. “I’m sure you know there are many rumors flying around about this project.”

  “Am I to be pilloried by the malicious gossip of the underachiever?”

  “No.” The woman scooted her chair out and stood. “But I think it might be best if I leave now.”

  “Just give me five minutes. For a simple demonstration.”

  “Very well.” She sank back into her chair.

  On Estes’s cue, three men in lab coats entered through a side door. Each carried something about the size of a microwave oven. A white cloth prevented her from seeing precisely what they carried.

  “We have developed a prototype for what we call Project Intensify,” Estes said. The lab assistants placed the three boxes in the center of the table. “For years we’ve toiled unsuccessfully for the means to enhance the human chromosome. Eugenics became an ugly word, usually code for racism or genocide or other ugly hidden agendas. Science had little to contribute. Even if we could create a stable modified gene, we couldn’t reproduce it. And it certainly could not reproduce itself. Then two breakthroughs changed everything. First, the discovery of the 47th chromosome.”

  She was no expert, but she believed this to be a reference to Shines.

  “And the second came when someone suggested that instead of attempting to incubate a cell in vitro, we inject a nascent cell into a living creature.”

  An audible stir rustled around the table. That sentence alone suggested about four different potential breaches of scientific ethics and possibly a violation of law.

  “I wish I could tell you that idea came from me, but it did not. I was too hidebound, too locked into one way of thinking, restrained by old school paradigms of what is and is not permissible. I forgot that there are no shackles on men of science, though kings and princes and priests have tried since the dawn of time. Once I cast aside my old ways of thinking, the pathway became much clearer.”

  “Is this some kind of stem cell research?” Fisher asked.

  Estes chuckled. “Stem cell research is to my project what a matchstick is to a nuclear bomb.” He lowered his hand to the cloth covering the first of the boxes. “Our first approach involved experimenting upon white mice. But they did not survive the initial trials. Mice proved too fragile, too weak. Our next round of experimentation was far better. We found a more resilient breed.” He removed the white cloth. “We used rats.”

  The box was a small cage. The front door was bolted shut, but through a mesh screen she could see the rat inside.

  Black, with pink squinty eyes. Twitching whiskers. Sharp outsize front teeth.

  She sensed the woman beside her shuddering, shrinking ever so slightly from the table. She understood. Rats were disgusting, and this one more than most.

  “This is a control rat,” Estes continued. “Perfectly ordinary, as you can see. Goes about his business. Eats. Drinks. Excretes. That’s about it. Consumes its body weight almost every day. Has teeth capable of ripping through cable or shredding plywood. A resilient species indeed. Come the holocaust, the final one, the rats and cockroaches may be the only creatures to survive.”

  “When you say this is your control rat,” Fisher asked, “do you mean you’ve done nothing to it?”

  “That is precisely what I mean. So if you’re staring at that cage thinking about how loathsome it is, remember: this is the way nature made it. Or perhaps more precisely, this is the way the random process we call evolution made him.”

  Estes laid his hand on the second cloth. “The question is: could we make him something else? Something different? Something better?”

  Estes removed the cloth.

  The beast inside this cage was not a rat. At least, not like any rat she’d ever seen. If she’d encountered this in a dark alley—and she hoped to God she never did—she would not have thought it was a rat.

  She wouldn’t have known what else to call it. But she would’ve run like hell to get away from it.

  Monster was the first word that came to mind.

  “This rat—we call him George—was injected two weeks ago with the latest trial version of PI—Project Intensify. You can see that even in that brief period of time, genetic change has occurred. This rat is forty-four percent larger. Its eyes are wider. Its teeth are sharper. It may have other abilities we are just beginning to discover. And if you’re thinking this serum is nothing but some souped-up steroid, let me add another telling detail. George is smarter, too.”

  Everyone sitting around the table exchanged glances.

  “On trial runs with a standard labyrinth, this rat scored more than fifty percent higher than the average member of its species. More importantly—it improved its initial scores in a remarkably brief period of time. In other words—it learned. Quickly.”

  “You mentioned…other abilities,” Fisher said. “Like what?”

  Estes ignored the query and skittered along the table, like a little boy delighted to show off his toys. He laid h
is hand on the cloth covering the third box. “The compound has been tweaked each week based upon our newly acquired knowledge. This injection does more than simply stimulate bacterial growth or reinforce antibodies. It quite literally rewrites the genetic code.”

  He lifted the cloth. “We call this rat Dickie.”

  Dickie was much larger than the previous rat. And more monstrous. Its flesh and fur had a green tint. Its teeth seemed too large for its mouth. Its eyes were bloodshot. And it twitched. Constantly. Almost as if it were unable to stand still.

  Open sores pocked its hindquarters, oozing pus. Something black moved beneath its skin. A continuous stream of drool dripped from one corner of its mouth.

  The rat peered through the mesh screen. She found she could not turn away.

  They made eye contact.

  She sensed the exchange was more than coincidental. She sensed intelligence behind those eyes.

  Worse, she felt as if the rat were…trying to do something. Trying to…tamper with her.

  She looked away. What was going on? Was she completely losing her mind?

  “Dickie’s strength has increased more than three hundredfold since he received his first injection of PI. Allow me to give you a demonstration.” He opened a door on the side of the cage and inserted a fist-sized ball of string. He closed the door. “Unfortunately, Dickie is not in the Mr. Universe contest. He has no desire to flaunt his strength. So I will have to provide a small incentive.”

  The black device Estes removed from his coat pocket was thin like a pencil, but it delivered a powerful jolt.

  Estes tased Dickie.

  Dickie went into shock, but did not pass out. The gargantuan rat shook violently for several moments, then flung itself against the walls of the cage, creating a fearsome clanging and rattling the tabletop. It thrashed and growled and shuddered.

  Then it attacked the ball of string.

  Dickie pounced with such ferocity that, had she not known about the genetic tampering, she might have thought the rat bore it a personal grudge. String flew through the cage like a localized snowfall. Grotesque guttural noises made her cringe.