by Zen, Raeden
She hoped she’d cornered him, for Marstone was listening, and Lady Isabelle enforced the precepts and RDD policies as guided by the Office of the Chancellor.
Antosha nodded. “Let’s get you a uficilin injection for that bruise.”
Oriana smiled. Finally, she thought. I’ve got him.
RDD Infirmary
“That’s it,” Oriana said, “one step after another. You’re doing great.”
Dr. Shrader trembled on the bars as Antosha spotted him along the track. The doctor’s skin appeared rosier than when he had first awakened, though his muscle spasms seemed worse, caused by movements that would be simple for a transhuman newborn. How will this man serve as striker for the mission? she wondered. What was Antosha’s play?
She didn’t speak to him on the way to the infirmary, but she felt him in her mind the same way she used to feel Pasha sneak in her head during simulations.
Sweat dripped around Shrader’s face. On his way back down the bars, he lost his grip before Antosha stabilized him. “Another injection,” Antosha said when Oriana stopped the doctor from falling back.
A medical bot placed a gun to Shrader’s neck and pulled the trigger. His face turned bright red, and saliva dripped from his mouth. “Another,” Antosha said. A different bot fired into the other side of the doctor’s neck, and he coughed and fell to his knees.
He put up his hands. “Don’t, don’t help me!” Sweating profusely, he lifted himself on the bars and made his way down on his own.
“Get him in the harness,” Antosha said.
The three of them dangled from Harpoon harnesses in a triangular formation in the rehabilitation portion of the infirmary. The illusion of trees, moss, torchlight, crystal bridges, white sands, and dark pits surrounded them. Water trickled down the stones.
“What is this?” Dr. Shrader said.
“It’s your mind.”
“That cannot be.”
“I’ve helped you pull Oriana and me into your subconscious. This is where your secrets lie. This is where you will discover who you are.”
Oriana felt it now, the ZPF, in the way her brother had used it at times to see into her, to communicate with animals and outwit his foes.
“Take us with you,” Antosha said, “wherever your mind will lead. Don’t be afraid, give in to the unknown, let us inside.”
The scents of berries and syrup and coffee tickled Oriana’s nose. The scene shifted to a table in a room with cedar walls. A harpist played in the corner near a fireplace.
“Where did you take us?” Oriana said.
Antosha raised a finger to his lips. Dr. Shrader was rapt, watching the scene before him. Scientists carried wineglasses and serious expressions, all except a blonde woman in a gown who held a much younger Dr. Shrader’s hand. They talked, though Oriana couldn’t hear what they said.
Then Shrader stepped closer and examined his twin of the past, as if he were a bacterial specimen.
The scene disappeared, and Oriana hung in a harness beside the doctor and Antosha.
A bot lowered them.
“What did that woman say?” Oriana asked. “What did you learn?”
“My name is Dr. Kole Shrader. Luella and I were the lead researchers for the Western Hegemony’s League of Scientists, an elite team structured to complete the Reassortment Strain.”
“What was the goal?” Oriana said. “What did Reassortment do?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You must,” Antosha said.
“Take me back there,” Shrader said to Antosha. “Take me back to Luella—”
“The mind doesn’t operate this way. You shared your soul with us, not ours with you, and I can only open the doors, I cannot force you through. The session ended because your mind closed, not the other way around.”
“Why do medical bots refer to me as the Legend? Where am I? What happened to Luella?”
“You were stored in suspended animation for three hundred sixty-eight years,” Antosha said.
“So how old am I?”
“That depends on your definition of time and age.” Antosha altered the surrounding Granville panels to show a field at dawn, a rising summer sun. “Time is the ultimate paradox, a river that carries us away, but we are the river, it is a tiger that destroys us but we are the tiger, it is a fire that consumes us but we are the fire. These are not my words, but those of a wise man long dead, which your presence has proved wrong, many long years later. Hegemonies, peoples have been brought to their maker, the transhuman race nearly destroyed. And we would have been, were it not for those of your kin who created this world.”
“Beimeni,” Dr. Shrader said.
“The only place on Earth safe for long-term transhuman habitation, and we need your help if we are to survive, and return to the surface.” Antosha removed the Earth’s surface from their surroundings.
“This place is … fake … a mirage.”
A phosphorescent flash overtook them. They stood in a canyon, Dr. Luella Shrader with Dr. Kole Shrader of the past. Tears of laughter streamed down his and her cheeks, though, it seemed, Dr. Shrader of the future didn’t know why.
This was Antelope Canyon, Oriana realized. Why here?
Luella grinned and moved to the canyon’s wall. She brushed her forefinger along it and dabbed the dirt onto Shrader’s arm. She said something Oriana couldn’t hear, but now Dr. Shrader of the future laughed with his twin of the past and his lost Luella. At the dead end in the canyon, an alloy box protruded from the earth. Letters blinked in deep red: LIVELLE.
“Dr. Luella Shrader, requesting permission to enter Livelle Laboratory.”
Phosphorescent light burst in the canyon. Oriana hung in her harness beside Shrader and Antosha. Luella and the Livelle Laboratory entrance were gone.
“What happened?” Oriana said.
“We were in Livelle Laboratory,” Shrader said. “Luella was with me when the soldiers came …”
“Go on,” she added.
“The lights flashed when the soldiers broke through. They took my colleagues through the tunnels, some to the exits, others to the elevators that fell deeper into the laboratory. They took Luella and me to the elevators!”
He paused and blinked. “There’d been an attack in Hengill, an Eastern Hegemony … infiltrator … the Autocrat ordered Operation Preservation! The start of hostilities!” Shrader’s eyes grew distant. “No, it can’t be! We’re so close, the Reassortment Strain can work, we can make it happen! We can end the war! The Eastern Hegemony cannot know about Livelle!”
“Doctor?” Oriana said. “How did the Reassortment Strain escape containment?”
“Shut up! Get in the fucking elevators! Now! We were so close, so close, could’ve ended the war—”
“Where did the war end?” Oriana said. “Tell us what happened. It might be the only way to save the commonwealth.” It might be the only way I can save my family!
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “They froze us, as Operation Preservation called for, they took us to the depths of Livelle Laboratory and put us in stasis and shipped us into containment deeper within the Earth.”
He looked around the room. “But if I’m here, that means the rest are too. Luella! Take me to her, please, please, take me to my dearest Luella!”
They traveled to Livelle Cemetery in Livelle City. Antosha led them to Luella’s grave. Mist flowed between the marble gravestones and mausoleums. An angel sculpture rested upon a pedestal, her arms outstretched, wings extended. Shrader moved in front of Luella’s gravestone, his hooded cape fluttering in the artificial wind. The air smelled of flowers.
“My condolences to you,” Oriana said.
“You can enter our minds,” Shrader said to Antosha, “is there a way for you to bring her back?”
“I’m a scientist,” Antosha said, “not a sorcerer.”
“How did she die?”
“I’ll let Oriana explain since she understands her commonwealth history so well.”
Northeast
0 meters deep
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Antosha said.
“It is,” Dr. Shrader agreed.
He, like Antosha, wore a biomat suit to protect from the Reassortment Strain. Antosha didn’t mention that the biomats, like the terradomes, were prone to failure upon the surface.
Hills and mountains stretched out below them, so thick it was impossible to see individual trees. A river with white rapids flowed over stones into inlets.
Their helicopter flew through a peach sky so pure it might’ve been a dream. They crossed a much wider river and neared the Island of Reverie.
Electric-appearing strands of radiation spread in triangular patterns, spiraling from the Reassortment research terradome’s peak. The chopper descended through the dome’s quarantine sector, then landed upon a pad. A group of Reassortment research scientists waited outside, standing in a crescent formation.
The main hull slid open. Antosha helped Shrader down the steps. The force from the chopper’s blades nearly toppled the doctor before Antosha steadied him and hand-signaled the scientists. The steps retreated back to the chopper, the hull closed, and the helicopter powered down.
“I don’t understand,” Shrader said, looking at the invisible barrier far above. “This dome doesn’t protect from … Reassortment.”
“Reassortment is the plague in the paradise, Kole, it permeates the atmosphere, the Earth’s fauna and flora. It is as much a part of our world as oxygen and water, and no terradome structure we’ve designed can block its passage, not yet—”
“And it only kills transhumans?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“That’s far from how we envisioned the strain.”
“Is it?”
One of the scientists approached them. “Supreme Scientist Zereoue,” he said, “welcome to the Reassortment research terradome.” The scientist extended his hand, and Antosha shook it. He introduced the scientist to Shrader, and he swooned as if he’d just met a Hammerton Hall performer. The other scientists who waited all bowed toward Shrader as if he were a king.
When the scientists joined their colleagues near the workstations, Shrader said, “I don’t get it, why does everyone I meet react that way to me? I didn’t succeed in what you people call the time Before Reassortment. If anything, my actions contributed to this—”
“You will not speak of your actions, here or anywhere. The people think you are the Legend, a savior. It is not your place to take that from them.” It’s mine, Antosha thought.
Now a research bot neared Antosha and bowed. “Status report,” Antosha said.
“Aha, on schedule,” the bot said. “All preparations in the hall are complete.”
“Outstanding.”
The bot escorted them to a group of scientists who telepathically operated workstations. Above them, the holograms rendered an image of Portal 13, a cement slab outside surrounded by weeping willows, birds, and other wildlife. Two rabbits rested on the platform, crunching leaves. They scattered when the cement slab vibrated and opened.
“What’s happening?” Shrader said.
“You want to know why the commonwealth adores you.”
A transparent transport capsule emerged and delivered a Gemini to the surface. The protohuman blinked and protected its eyes from sunrise. Shrader passed his hand through the holographic image above the closest workstation. “What is this … wizardry?”
“We call it a Gemini,” Antosha said, though he could tell the doctor didn’t listen.
“This cannot be …”
The Gemini took one step off the cement slab and doubled over. Its head rocked up and down. Its body shivered, then convulsed. Blood oozed from its mouth, eyes, and ears, then crystallized.
It collapsed. Bobcats gathered near the corpse. The scientists under the dome expelled a collective gasp. Some cried.
Nothing that happens here today leaves the team, Antosha sent.
“That man … you killed him …”
A helicopter swooped down to the Gemini. The animals scattered, and the research bots retrieved it. The helicopter took off, creating a breeze that ruffled the willow trees and wild grass.
“I don’t understand …” Shrader said.
Antosha pulled him away from the research scientists to a dais that held several workstations and a levitating, legless gurney. “Let me simplify it for you,” he said. “You’ve awakened to a world that’s hostile to protohumans and their descendant, transhuman man.” Antosha pinched the outer layer of Shrader’s biomat. “Without this,” and he nodded to the biomat, “the Earth’s atmosphere would penetrate your skin, your eyes, your blood, your nerves, and your brain and destroy you.”
Shrader flexed his hand, covered with the biomat, then swiped it through one of the holographic willow trees above a workstation. They broke apart and reformed. “Who was that man?”
“It was no man. We took your DNA and together with Neanderthal genetic materials we reverse engineered a protohuman clone, a synbio creation we call a Gemini, similar enough to conduct clinical trials to understand the effectiveness of our … Reassortment treatments—”
“Clinical trials? Clones? You killed that man!”
“No. It wasn’t a man, not in the way you’re suggesting. It was a Gemini.”
“This is barbaric. No, it’s worse, it’s—”
“But you know all about barbaric studies, don’t you, Kole?”
Antosha expanded his consciousness and wrapped it around the doctor. He triggered Shrader’s limbic system. Luella and Livelle Laboratory flashed across their vision, Antelope Canyon, the synbio silos, the mineral and medicine production, the physical and mental enhancements. The war. Ending the war. The transhuman trials. The torture of Eastern Hegemony prisoners of war …
“The work Luella and I performed was meant to end the war—”
“Well done, your work is what forced us beneath the ground, is why we test treatments with our less evolved ancestors, why you were frozen near absolute zero for three hundred sixty-eight years—”
“You don’t know what we faced then! The war, the famine and fear of extinction on a planet sucked dry of its reliable resources—”
“And your lovely Luella, dead, buried, gone from this world.”
Shrader met his eyes. His voice turned hostile. “Why’d you bring me here?”
The research bots returned with the dead Gemini and dropped its body upon the gurney next to Antosha. Some scientists cried out. Antosha told them to get back to work. Not a word of this to anyone in the commonwealth, he sent. I find out any of you leaked information about today’s clinical trial and I’ll see to it you’re the next volunteer for the next Jubilee. He delivered his message with the same telepathic tone he might use to invite a guest over to his apartment unit for dinner, but the scientists quickly turned back to their workstations and data streams.
“Oh my …” Shrader was saying. The Gemini looked like him, covered with bruises, its face and chest splayed with tributaries of crystallized blood.
“Dr. Shrader, you’re the man who was stored in stasis,” Antosha said, “the man the entire commonwealth believes could be immune to Reassortment, the man who can restore humanity’s place in the biosphere.”
“That’s preposterous. If the Reassortment Strain escaped our quarantine procedures in Hengill and mutated,” he turned to his Gemini, “and caused … this … there’d be no cure.” He turned to Antosha. “I’d be no more immune than you. That’s why we had self-destruct mechanisms. That’s why we strategically positioned hydrogen bombs throughout the lab—”
“The Myst and the bombs didn’t work though, did they?”
“Take me back to your commonwealth.”
“You remember, don’t you?” Antosha said. Shrader trembled. Antosha searched his mind. “Yes, I see it now. The strain escaped from Hengill after an attack by the Eastern Hegemony infiltrator that you or
chestrated with—”
“I didn’t know what to do, the Autocrat sent a team to Livelle, or that’s what I thought, and we needed more time, more funding, and they offered it and I didn’t know what they would do—”
“With the access codes to break the z-wall to the Locust program, truly did you not realize they were Eastern Hegemony agents? Am I supposed to believe you?” Antosha searched deeper. “Seems you didn’t know, or did you ignore the signs willfully?”
“The Reassortment Strain was designed to enhance the human genome, not destroy it—”
“Not at first, but that’s what the project evolved into, didn’t it? You were going to use it against the Eastern Hegemony.”
“No! Luella and I were going to end the war! That I shared the access codes with my colleagues didn’t cause this.” Shrader waved his hand over the dead Gemini.
“You know I can tell you’re lying, don’t you?” Antosha raised his head. His breath fogged the bottom of his helmet, then cleared. “And you’ve been lying to us from the start.” Antosha closed his eyes. He merged his consciousness completely into Shrader’s. “But no longer …”
Sweat streamed down Shrader’s face. He blinked rapidly. He tried to resist Antosha’s presence in his mind. “What’re you doing to me?”
Antosha opened his eyes. “Forcing you to remember, willing the truth out of you.” Antosha paused. He reviewed Shrader’s research. “Just as I suspected.” Antosha squinted and his upper lip quivered. “You were missing a vital piece to the genomic puzzle that you couldn’t imagine would soon be discovered.” Antosha smiled, thinking about the Lorum orb. “With the strain designed for transhumans, you didn’t have to adjust it all that much to kill transhumans throughout the Eastern Hegemony, including those underground in synbio labs.”
Shrader’s eyes turned glassy. “You don’t understand.” He held back sobs. “Those bastards killed much of my family.” He narrowed his eyes, breathing hard. “If you’d experienced the quantum weaponry they used to kill our people, you’d have thought I was being merciful.” Shrader blinked his eyes clear and clenched his teeth. “We found something better.”
