The Complete NEW DOMINION TRILOGY
© 2011-2013 Matthew J. Drury, All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
BOOK I: EDEN2
ACT ONE - A SLEEPER OF OLD
1
Light.
An explosion of light, and suddenly he was aware, thinking, feeling. An excruciating pain thundered through his body, overwhelming his senses – a coldness, unlike anything he’d ever known. He opened his mouth to cry out, and instead gasped for air, suddenly aware that he wasn’t breathing, and hadn’t been for some time. The sensation of fresh oxygen hitting his lungs sent him into an uncontrollable coughing fit, and he felt his body jerk forwards, his diaphragm spasming, forcing cold liquid into his throat, and through his nose.
The initial feeling of nausea passed, and he lifted his eyelids, though he could see nothing more than an unfocused blur of colours around him. He was in an unfamiliar place, that much he could tell, and he had no idea how he had gotten here.
Or who he was…
The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks, adding to his distress: he had no memory of anything up until this point, not even of his own name. Was he dead? Was this what it was like to be dead?
“Ken yA hAr m'-eùn?” A woman’s voice pierced through the confusion like a beacon. He focused on the sound, waving his arms out blindly, unable to do much more than grunt.
He felt a soft hand take him by the arm, guiding him into a sitting position.
“Mr. Stefánsson, can you hear me?”
His breathing steadied. The woman’s voice was firm and reassuring. He nodded, swallowing dryly in the depths of his throat. Yes, he could hear her. He recognised that she was speaking English, which was good. Clearly he hadn’t suffered complete amnesia. Then he felt a cup being placed to his lips, and his tongue went out to meet the contents.
“Drink.”
The water was warm, but needed, and he gulped it back eagerly without question. Then slowly, but surely, the blur of colours around him began to focus, taking shape.
He was sitting in a large elevated cylinder of plastic and glass, half-filled with some pinkish, oozing fluid, which was now seeping away through a drainage port by his feet. He was damp, naked and hairless, his skin covered in water wrinkles. He appeared to be in some kind of derelict science lab. Most of the machines and equipment around the room were shut down, covered in cobwebs, now useless beyond repair. It looked like some time had passed before anybody had set foot in this place. What was he doing here? More cylinders, identical to his own, were positioned around the large chamber at regular intervals.
Standing beside him was a young woman dressed in a black, skin-tight military exoskeleton of a strange design. Savage, with metal-like plates and jagged edges protruding from the shoulders and forearms. She was tall, attractive, with an intense look in her piercing, emerald-green eyes. She had black hair drawn back into a large knot, and her face held an expression of both fascination and concern. “Forgive me if my use of your dialect is not perfect,” she was saying.
“Where am I?” he managed, looking at his right hand and turning it back and forth as though he’d never seen it before.
The woman frowned slightly. “Do you remember anything?”
He looked at her and shook his head. “No. I…” He sighed. “Nothing. I don’t even know who I am.” Then he frowned. “Who are you?”
One corner of her mouth went up in a half-smile. “My name is Lorelei Chen. I’m a scientist, among other things. I work for the Seventh Faction. You’re very lucky I found you.” She lifted a small organic object resembling a marine anthropod and waved it over his chest.
“Found me? I don’t understand. What are you doing?” he demanded. “What is that thing?”
“Relax, I’m just checking your vital signs,” she told him. “I need to make sure you’re okay before I move you out of here.”
He took a deep breath and waited patiently for a moment while the strange device performed its scan. A thousand questions filled his mind. “Where am I?” he asked again.
Chen stuffed the device into what looked like a gas mask bag she carried over one shoulder, then scanned their surroundings as if she were nervous about something. Her gaze returned to him. “Underground,” she said simply, then got to work tapping in commands to a small computer console beside the cylinder. There was an unlocking sound, a hiss of steam, then a groan of straining metal as a hidden hydraulic mechanism raised the cylinder slowly to an upright position.
“Lay back,” she told him, and he obeyed, allowing the cylinder to bring him up until he was virtually standing inside. “You can come out now,” she said, “but be careful. You haven’t used your legs for a long time.”
Gingerly, he took a step forward out of the cylinder, placing his right foot onto the cold metal of the lab floor. As he put his weight onto the foot and went to bring the other one forward, the muscles in his thigh gave way and he collapsed.
Chen grabbed his arm and used her considerable strength to steady him before he hit the ground. She helped him to his feet, reassuring him that everything was going to be okay. “According to these instruments, your name is Cris,” she told him. “Cristian Stefánsson.”
He blinked. But before he could say anything, Chen was moving around the room, frantically checking storage lockers. She found one with his name on it, and opened it. Inside, she found his clothes, stored neatly on plastic hangers - a pair of denim jeans and a flannel shirt. They were badly moth-eaten and dusty, but still intact.
“Tees w’ do Fur nA,” Chen muttered to herself. Beneath were his shoes, but the leather in them had disintegrated. She threw the clothes to him and said, “We haven’t much time. Dress yourself, Cris. You’ll have to go out barefoot, I’m afraid…”
Cris Stefánsson put his clothes on, sensing the woman’s urgency. Moving was difficult at first, but his strength seemed to be returning fairly quickly, and he found this odd since he hadn’t eaten anything. He was still bleakly unaware of what was going on here, and felt more confused than ever. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he told her. “Where are we?”
“Underground, I told you,” she said.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a cryopreservation chamber,” she said. “Powered completely independently by a small hydrogen reactor. A miracle of engineering that it still works. As best I can tell, this place was owned by the ‘Cryonics Institute’ in the mid twenty-first century. But not anymore. The place is just a ruin now. Like I said, you’re lucky to be alive.”
Cris frowned. Cryopreservation? So he’d been frozen? He felt like this fact should jolt his memory, but no such luck. “I don’t remember anything.”
“You’re suffering memory loss as a side effect of such an unusually long cryofreeze,” Chen said, opening the metal door to a corridor outside and peeking her head out. She stepped outside and gestured for him to follow. “Come on, I’ll try to explain more when we reach safety. I managed to avoid a pack of Cerberus Dogs on the way in here but those creatures are good hunters with an uncanny sense of smell and I’m pretty sure they’ll be looking for me. Trust me, you wouldn’t want them to find us.”
Cris nodded. Cerberus Dogs? What the hell were they? “Unusually long?” he repeated. “What are you talking about? How long have I been in cryofreeze?”
She turned to look at him and took a sharp breath. “As best I can tell, you were frozen for over four hundre
d years,” she said. “This place was abandoned a long, long time ago.”
Cris Stefánsson couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He felt faint. Four hundred years? Was that even possible? “What about the others?” he asked, and gestured to the other cylinders beside his own.
Chen shook her head dismissively. “They’re all dead. You’re the only one who survived this long. A miracle, really. Now come on.”
He gathered his strength and followed her down the outside corridor, struggling to keep up with her as she put on a burst of speed. The rooms they passed through were dusty, dilapidated, filled mostly with rusted lab equipment or rotten, broken office furniture, overgrown with exotic plants. Nobody else was around. Cris decided that he would trust this woman, at least for the time being.
But four centuries? If it were true, would he even recognise the outside world anymore?
They climbed a long flight of crumbling stairs. Burn marks scorched the walls on either side. After a while they emerged into a large, steel-reinforced concrete room, the walls painted a muddy, faded industrial orange. Metal ducts and overhead pipes lined the upper walls, and the room was rather aptly titled “Bl,” painted across the concrete in black letters, several feet high. The far side of the room had collapsed inwardly, now filled with dozens of huge boulders and rocks, completely blocked.
“This is the site of the original entrance, as far as I’ve been able to tell,” Chen said. “Unfortunately, an avalanche of the mountain above some years ago saw the end of that.”
“How do we get out?” Cris asked.
“The same way I got in.” She pointed toward the destroyed ceiling where the rocks had fallen. There was a small opening with sunlight peering through. “We climb,” she said simply.
“I’m no expert,” Cris said.
Chen smiled. “Maybe you are. Maybe you just don’t remember. Come on, I’ll help you.” She moved to the base of the rockfall, turned back and reached out her hand toward him.
Cris took a deep breath, and stared up at the opening. It was easily a thirty foot climb, maybe more. Deciding that there was no way back either way, he took a few anxious steps forward and took Chen’s outstretched hand. She helped him up onto the first ledge, and the sensation of his bare feet pressing down on the jagged, irregular surface of the rock sent a wave of pain and discomfort through his body.
Chen led the way, following a path over the rocks which would be easiest for Cris to follow. Every few minutes he would need to stop and recover his breath, his body apparently still adapting after his long cryofreeze. When they finally reached the opening, which was only just big enough for one slim person to squeeze through, Chen peered her head out into the sunlight.
“It’s clear, for now,” she called to him.
Cris watched her athletic body worm its way up through the opening and disappear. Then her right hand was thrust back down, reaching for him.
“Grab my hand. Come on.”
Cris braced himself as he did so, allowing her to pull him up as he twisted his larger body into the gap. It was tight, and he was exhausted, but he would make it. His head breached the surface a moment later, and the sunlight dazzled his face, disorienting him.
“Welcome back to the world,” Chen said with a hint of irony in her voice. She pulled him the rest of the way up, and he collapsed to a rocky ground of red desert sand. He saw mountains in the distance, canyons, and very little else.
Recovering from the initial shock, Cris got to his feet and looked around. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He saw that they were standing at the base of a mountain, half devastated by multiple avalanches. Thin vegetation had sprouted nearby, but it was the only greenery he could see for miles around. They were in the middle of a craggy desert. And the sky – the sky seemed to be tainted a faint orange-red colour, the air hot and humid.
He was taken aback. “Where are we?” was all he could think to say.
“This area is known as the Shadowlands,” Chen said. “A very remote place, indeed. A broken land once called America.”
2
America.
The very sound of the word was like a lightning bolt striking his brain. He suddenly felt a rush of euphoria, as previously dormant memories began to form in his mind. Images and feelings, ideas. Something familiar, and tangible… coming back to him…
For the first time since awaking from his cryofreeze, Cris Stefánsson was remembering something. It wasn’t much, but it was something…
America was his home, where he’d lived before. He had spent his childhood exploring the country and its great many natural wonders, with his parents, during the late 1980s. The deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont… The Appalachian Mountains, dividing the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest… The Mississippi–Missouri River, and the flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretching to the west… The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains… Clear blue skies and a few wisps of cloud on a summer’s day…
His eyes scanned the mountainous, barren desert that surrounded them here, now, and the orange-red sky above. The clouds were thick and green. The air seemed sticky, so humid he almost had trouble breathing, and a faint odour lingered, an obnoxious smell akin to sulphur or methane. He could see no resemblance to the America he once knew. This place was destitute by comparison; hostile, the atmosphere seemingly choking under the harsh ultraviolet rays of the sun.
“Cris, run!”
Before he knew what was going on, his body lurched forward. Chen had pushed him forcefully from behind and broken out into a sprint, heading in the direction of a nearby canyon. Cris turned his head instinctively to see what was wrong, and was greeted by the sight of three dog-like animals charging at him with gnashing, dripping jaws. They were the size and shape of dogs, as big as German shepherds maybe, except that they seemed to have no fur, no skin. Wet, red sinew and muscle flashed in the glare of the sun, the dog-creatures shrieking and snapping in a frenzy of bloodlust.
Within a second, Cris was running, following Chen. Adrenaline surged through his body; he was so shocked by the sight of these bizarre animals he could barely feel the touch of the jagged, sharp rocks beneath his bare feet, and as he charged forward he felt his heart thumping rapidly beneath his ribs, gasping for breath, beyond exhaustion now.
The animals were fast runners and closing swiftly, and Cris wondered if he was going to make it. The edge of the canyon Chen seemed to be heading for was only a few dozen feet ahead now, and as he drew nearer he saw her turn around, holding the same organic device she’d used earlier, wielding it now as though it were a weapon. She lifted a flap of what looked like chitin from the base of the thing, then pressed something inside.
Behind him, he heard the growls of the dogs turn into high-pitched whines, and he suddenly remembered his childhood pet, a shaggy black lab mix named Buddy, remembered how much he’d loved him – and understood that these things were far different – could never be mistaken for a lovely pet like that. He risked a glance behind him, saw that two of the things had collapsed in agony – - and the third creature tensed its flanks and leapt at him, its jaws wide, snarling.
Chen pressed down again on whatever was in her hands, and the dog did a twisting jig with a high whine of pain, slumping to the ground by Cris’ feet. It spasmed once in the sand, then lay still.
“Deez-gAr’-Stun bees!” Chen spat, then seemed to relax.
Cris took a moment to get his breath back, then stared down at the fallen creatures. “Cerberus Dogs, I presume. Are they dead?”
Chen shook her head. “No. They are only stunned for now. We should keep moving.”
“What is that weapon you’re using?” he asked, following her toward the edge of the canyon.
Chen laughed. “This is not a weapon. This is my Vei’nl, a multifunction device with many specialised abilities. It is very useful, a great asset to me out in the field. In this instance I asked it to emit a high-freq
uency sound that only Cerberus Dogs and other such creatures are susceptible to. Now I will use it to scan for nearby caves suitable for our needs.” She lifted the device and seemed to whisper gently to it in her strange language.
Cris raised his eyebrows. “It’s organic,” he observed. “An organic computer.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Chen said, and looked at him as if he were a nuisance child. “An electrodynamic fluid circulatory system for the distribution of power, and a neurological computer core. It’s quite simple.”
Cris sighed. This was all so much to take in. He was dog tired, physically and mentally exhausted.
“Come,” Chen said. “We will find shelter, and you can rest. I will feed you, and provide what answers I can. I’m sure you have a great many questions.”
The entrance to the cave was located twenty feet or so down a sheer wall of rock. Chen, who was clearly adapted to life in this environment, didn’t seem to have a problem with it, but Cris was terrified. The canyon was vast, far bigger than it had initially appeared from a distance, and he couldn’t even see the bottom. It was so deep it seemed to bore endlessly into the darkest depths of the earth.
Chen whispered quietly into the arm of her suit, and as if responding to her command, it released a thick strand of what looked like spider’s silk from an outlet on the wrist. Without another word she got to work attaching it to the rocks at the canyon’s edge.
“What are you doing?” Cris asked, though he knew what was coming.
“We’ll have to rappel down to the cave entrance,” she said. “Don’t worry, this line will support ten men without breaking. I have done it hundreds of times.”
Cris swallowed dryly. “Is this necessary?”
She flashed him an impatient glance. “Trust me. Caves like this are the safest place you could hope to sleep, especially in the Shadowlands. The more inaccessible, the better. Cerberus Dogs aren’t the only wild beasts that roam these lands, you know.”
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 1
