The Artifact: Natasha Burrows Series Book One

by Phillips, Michelle

  She looked directly at Neron. Like staring down a lion, she was determined not to look away. “What kind of barbarous animal are you?”

  Neron looked at her proudly “I’m not an animal, I’m humanity's saviour.” Xavier groaned and rolled his eyes it wasn’t the first time he had heard this. He literally wanted to wither and die, or just like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, melt into the carpet, if that meant he never got to hear that statement ever again.

  “And you knew about this?” she looked at Xavier accusingly. He refused to look at her. “Look at me damn it” she yelled. He couldn’t.

  Her blood was beginning to boil. Instead of feeling like a victim, she was starting to feel pure unadulterated rage for the first time.

  “You think the aliens just packed up their kit like good little boys and returned home never to bother us again? This is the bigger picture here, the flip side of the coin. We provide a service and they leave us alone.”

  “You can’t really mean that?” Tasha looked at Neron incredulously, her blood burning with the fiery sting of a thousand vindictive fire ants. “Where do these poor people come from?”

  “Everywhere. Do you know the statistics on the number of people who go missing in the world every day? It would surprise you. India, Mexico, China are all very good places for that.”

  “You’re an abomination!” she spat, her hostility peaking. “A murderer, a serial killer, a monster….” She ran out of words.

  “Really?” he arched his eyebrows at her scornfully.

  “Anymore analogies for me? I thought you were intelligent and not so short sighted. How do you think it would go without me? Brutal culling’s, people suffering and dying brutally at the hands of an alien race, having their beating hearts ripped out of chests in sacrificial ceremonies, being hunted like dogs for sport. Or our leaders, the rich and powerful, choosing who gets to live and who dies. This way it's done quietly, humanely and the rest of you sheep can live your lives undisrupted, without fear.”

  “Is that how you see us? As sheep?”

  “You really don’t understand do you?” He was looking severely peeved. “It’s like you’re persistent in your lack of comprehension. Do you think we have a choice in this? They barely tolerate us. Our family have been providing this service for centuries, keeping the wolves from your door. Allowing you to lead a normal comfortable life whilst keeping the boogeyman at bay. We are the descendants of the first hybrids. We supply them with what they crave, and they leave humanity alone, safe in their belief that they are the centre of the universe.” She couldn’t believe he was still trying to palliate the scene before her, a scene of mass murder the likes she had never imagined before.

  “Oh no, you’re not going to excuse this? How can you? I’ve heard the ‘sacrifice the few for the many’ excuse before. How do you choose? How do you get to decide who lives or dies?”

  She turned on Xavier. “How can you sleep at night?”

  Xavier finally answered her. “I can’t bear to be around it. That's why they sent me away. I’m the first disappointment to my family, the first in centuries of us.”

  Neron regarded him with a look of partial sorrow and annoyance, like a telemarketer calling during dinner-time. “Your blood is not of our line.” Neron spoke the words Xavier had heard for the most part of his life.

  Xavier’s pupils dilated and he clenched his fists looking haunted, a thin brow of sweat forming on his forehead and upper lip. It was a line he had heard all his life, one he would never escape from as long as his father lived.

  “So what if I don’t have your genetically superior lineage, I’m still your son.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tasha was now completely out of her depth, confused by the turn of the conversation.

  “He doesn’t have the hybrid gene. He’s one hundred percent, mundane human. It's not evident immediately, the mutation manifests at puberty. We waited and we waited, but this one” he said indicating to Xavier “is worthless. His mother's womb shrivelled up and died after having him.

  He took away my chances of having a true son and heir by birthright to his father's legacy, progeny with which I share a common gene.”

  “That didn’t stop you from trying with other women” Xavier responded bitterly.

  “You’re mother understood” he said dryly.

  Tasha looked at Xavier, understanding now where his pain and hatred came towards his father. They were descendants of the original hybrids, hiding this secret throughout the centuries passed from father to son. She felt pity for him, but that was mixed with a feeling of betrayal and she didn’t know how to process the two feelings together.

  She had given Xavier her heart. They say people can tug on your heartstrings, but this normally refers to deep pity or love, the idiom used in reference to one’s deepest feelings of love or compassion. She had given Xavier her heartstrings to pull, allowing him into a part of her heart where her deepest feelings of love were held.

  What they don’t tell you is once your heart is tied up in strings, and someone is given control of them, some people don’t merely tug like a puppet master, they pull like a Pitbull. She forced the pain aside, pushing it back down into her gut where it raged like a ravenous monster. She had to, otherwise it would tear her apart.

  She felt like her heart was being rent literally from her chest, and left pounding while people looked at it, inspected it and tut-tutted over the humanity of it all. Xavier’s father was in a league of his own, his openly aggressive abuse of Xavier reason enough for him to hate him, let alone the macabre sausage factory he had going on out the back, she could clearly see his childhood was not all puppy dogs and kittens. She could now see why he was a risk taker with a subconscious death wish.

  “So why do you want the orb then?” she interrupted them, partly to give Xavier some breathing space from his father, and mostly because she needed more answers.

  “Some believe that the orb” Xavier's father said, “is the only reason why they haven’t come back and finished the job of eradicating us.”

  “So what then genius” she said condescendingly “you plan to give it to them and give away the only leverage we have to keep us safe?”

  “Is that what you have been told? Our ancestors rose up to protect you and you were ungrateful even then” snorted his father. “Cowards worshipping false gods the lot of you. We wanted to bring ourselves and humankind back to our former glory, but looking back over the centuries I have come to realise, we are the superior species, the best of both human and alien and we deserve to rule.”

  “Superior species” she eyed him defiantly like a snake handler staring down a cobra. “By what standard? Yours? Forgive me if I don’t take your word on it and all, with the midnight meat train you’ve got going on out the back there.”

  He chuckled “well I do approve Xavier, she’s definitely feisty enough.” He walked over to the desk and tipped the contents of her clutch on the table. She expected the fake orb to come rolling out, but instead was a hundred little pieces of it, some almost ground to powder. “Are you referring to this ‘orb’ by any chance?” he chuckled now, amused by the avarice and deception of it all. “What you really mean is this tracking device disguised as an orb?”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew” he directed an accusatory look towards Xavier “and he should have known as well.”

  “It was a trap, to get to you” she said petulantly.

  “Oh, is that what you think? Those brothers really did a snow job on you didn’t they?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wake up and smell the roses. Two outsiders stumble across the identity of a secret society and they pat you on the back and send you on the way like good little doggies, with a clever story about trying to catch the big bad wolf with a carefully laid trap. But let me guess, the details of the trap are unknown by the little doggies, and they are told to just go out and and p
lay like good dogs and have fun and they will take care of the rest?” She looked at him shocked.

  “You can be shocked” he said noticing her look “it is my son I expected a bit more nounce from,” he glared at Xavier.

  “But why? I don’t understand, it doesn’t make sense.” Natasha was looking perplexed.

  “You and lover boy were going to have a little accident. A little accident in a very public place. How long did you think it was going to take them to recognise my own son? They got their hands on what they have always wanted and they were going to tie up the loose ends. You don’t actually think they want to stop me do you?”

  “How could they not want to stop mass genocide?”

  “Foolish, foolish the pair of you!” his frustration was evident. “You just don’t get it do you? They are happy with the status quo, the service that I provide to humanity. They don’t want things to change, they don’t want this to stop.” He turned to gesture at the conveyor belt which had not stopped even once since the shutters went up. “They just want to keep sweeping all the evidence under the carpet, hiding the truth from the masses, controlling the world as you know it. They want the orb for the eternal life it can offer, it will make them even more powerful. They don’t care that it could free humanity.”

  He frowned at her “You say I’m a mass murderer, an animal. Look out there” he gestured to the factory below them “tell me how many men can do what I do, how many can live every single day with this kind of taint on their soul, one in a million? One in a billion? Oh no, mark my words they are very happy leaving me with this burden, allowing me to do the dirty work whilst the rest of you live in blissful ignorance. Processing thousands of carcasses a month, filling quotas that should never be filled. They didn’t want me to know the orb had been found after all these years.”

  He looked sullenly at his son “and I finally had the chance to get the orb, a chance to change everything and my own son betrays me.”

  “Betray you?” Xavier looked scornful “I was never working for you in the first place, remember?”

  “What do you mean, what would you do with the orb?” Tasha was reticent to admit it but some of what he was saying was starting to sound legitimate.

  “What would I do with the orb?” he raised his eyebrows “something that should have been done a long, long time ago.” He was pacing now, more aggressive than ever. “An end to all this. I would shut down this damn plant, a damn chain around my neck.” He stood staring absently out the window, his mind deep in thought.

  Neron remembered being a child once, that youthful naivety, blissful ignorance. But normal children didn’t have to worry about how the bills got paid, or how food made it to the table. They lived in a blissful bubble of games and friends, bucking against the system when they got older, defying parents with their choice of music or clothes. All simplistic, childish things. He used to wish once that he had a childhood like that, but becoming an adult made you pragmatic, realistic, and the foolish make-believe games of childhood were buried, lost in the tricking sands of time in an hourglass.

  “That would be like issuing a declaration of war.” Xavier knew the consequences of disobedience to the Patriarch's.

  “War?” it was phrased as a question and then an answer. “War, yes, war.” Neron’s eyes gleamed sanguinely. “With the orb we could cease placating them and finally fight, with the orb we could have a chance of winning.”

  “But how many people would die in a war?” Xavier reasoned with him, “that orb is a curse. It destroyed the world the first time it was used. There’s no upside, if we lost, The Patriarch's would do the job for us, they would they finally annihilate us, wipe us out for good for our impertinence.”

  Neron turned on him, not in the mood to entertain questioning. “Really? Are you one of The Brotherhood now? This coming from my only son, the one who could not bear to continue the family tradition?” he snorted with disbelief. “You are just like them, unforthcoming when it comes to doing the dirty work, unwilling to seek an alternative solution.”

  “So you are saying that you want the orb, to end all this?” Tasha stated the obvious, and didn’t get an answer from either of them. She didn’t know if she was being played or he was telling the truth. She now didn’t even know if she could trust Xavier. For the moment it appeared like they were both on opposing sides from each other.

  She could see a picture developing slowly before her, like an old time negative developing in a dark room. Parts were filling in unevenly, the darkest parts first, but it would soon form a complete picture. A picture of a father who had tried to bring up his son to carry on the inexplicable, the inhumane, grooming him by being cruel and callous. On the other hand, she understood Xavier, angry at his father for mistreating him, leaving him resentful and rebellious.

  “What are they going to do with the orb then? The Brotherhood.” Tasha directed her question to Neron.

  “Nothing, they’ll try in vain to get it to work, to heal them and give them eternal life, and then eventually they’ll lock it away. It's not like those fools could likely use it anyway. It’s genetically programmed. It can only be activated by a hybrid like myself. I doubt even a handful of those fools has any real hybrid left in them.”

  Tasha shot a sharp glance towards Xavier. He looked like the entire world had come crashing down on him. It was an unexpected revelation, one his father had never told him. The orb would only work with alien genetics, which means the orb had worked because of him! That had to be why. It was his touch that activated it, it wouldn’t work when Tasha tried to use it, because he….he was….

  “Xavier..” he nodded his head furiously indicating no to Tasha, he wanted this to remain a secret for now. She stopped short seeing his reaction.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Neron noticing the strange shenanigans.

  “I.. .I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I’m inclined to believe you.” Tasha said to Neron. She was trying to distract him, but the truth was, she actually meant what she was saying. “How do we get the orb back?”

  “Well, I’m afraid it's a bit too late, Xavier already crossed the Rubicon for us on this one.” He picked up the shattered pieces of the fake orb and let them fall clattering to the desk. “It will be difficult to get it back now, but I will find a way to do it.”

  Tasha had made her decision “we will help you” she offered. Xavier looked at her shaking his head ominously. “You can’t. You don’t understand what you are saying.”

  “I think I can make my own decisions” Tasha pouted.

  “She’s an intelligent woman, she knows to back the winning side, unlike you.” Neron looked condescendingly at his son.

  “Winning side, see Tasha, listen to me please. I know what he is saying sounds truthful and its seductive, I’ll grant you that, but there’s more to it, more that he’s not telling you. He’s become unhinged over the years. Tell her who the winning side is. Go on.” He nodded to his father “Go on, tell her, superior species.”

  “She already knows. She understands that I believe the hybrid to be the genetically superior breed.”

  “But that’s not all there is to is there?” Xavier pushed the point. “He believes that he is genetically superior, that the future for humankind is a hybrid alien alliance.”

  “There is a small faction operating amongst The Patriarch's, who believe the same and have formed a coalition with me, it's true.”

  “Go on, you haven’t finished yet have you? Tell her your plans.”

  “What are you and the alien coalition going to do?” Tasha was feeling anxious all over again. She had been trying to avoid looking at the conveyor belts below, but now denied the sight of it, her mind was focusing in on the sound. The shutters had blocked out the sound of their whirring, but now its whirring was magnifying in her mind, like there were a thousand bees buzzing in her brain. She was so focused on the sound, that she felt a sense of relief when she heard the sound stop, like a large weight was lifted fro
m her shoulders and she could breathe again. She gingerly looked out of the corner of her eye and noticed that the conveyor belt had stopped and the factory was shut down for the day.

  “We are going to defeat the oppressors of the human race. The Patriarch's who have controlled our future for so long with the threat of annihilation. The Brotherhood who have concealed their presence and kept us in an age of darkness. Both stopping us from reaching our true potential and claiming our place in the stars. It will be the dawn of a new age for mankind, a new species will arise, and we will dominate the galaxy.” He looked closely at Tasha, “in fact, you are wasting your time with my son. You would be perfect for our breeding program.”

  “And there it is!” exclaimed Xavier finally feeling vindicated. His father had not just dropped a bombshell, he had dropped the whole damn mother lode.

  Tasha’s jaw dropped and she sat lost in a coma of disbelief. Just when he started to sound reasonable, even sane, Neron had gone and flew over the cuckoo's nest.

  “Now you understand don’t you Tasha” Xavier was begging her, like a puppy in a pet shop window. He sat next to her placing his hand over hers. “There is no choice I could have made that would ever have been right. Give the orb to The Brotherhood and allow this to keep happening, or give it to my father and bring war to Earth, the certain end to humanity as we know it, either by annihilation or by my father's plans of assimilation. Humanity, wiped out, a genocide of epic proportions, mankind turned to cold unfeeling, calculating hybrids. The loss of true joy and … of love.”

  Tasha looked at him, for the first time she saw him and only him, Xavier, lost and uncared for as a child, his mother dying in his early teens, his father calculating, emotionless, abusive, expecting him to carry on the family line.

  The Brotherhood, not willing to help them - to help him - wanting his family to continue their trade in death to keep the world the same for centuries, mopping up behind the aliens, concealing evidence of their existence. His father a madman, wanting to start a pogrom, the organised decimation of humanity, replacing it with hybrids.