Genus6

by Meg Buchanan

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  Genus6

  Trojan Gene Novella

  Meg Buchanan

  Range Road Press

  New Zealand

  Published in NZ by Range Road Press, 2019

  Copyright © Meg Buchanan 2019

  The author inserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

  All characters in this book are fictitious,

  and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  Cover designed by Kura Carpenter

  Chapter 1

  We come out of the Cineplex. We’ve just been to the Vids, and they weren’t bad, holographic, stereophonic, tactile, and interactive. But Isabelle and Lucan still decided to improve them chemically. The glass doors close. The smooth tiles of the parking lot stretch out like glass.

  The parking bays are almost empty, only two self-drives are still here, a red one in the middle of the bays and a purple one is way over by the stainless barrier. The City casts a silver sheen across everything at night. A Humicrib Vid slides across the sky, two kids waving and smiling, as flock of plump babies bumble happily across the ocean.

  Amon stands by the doors pointing at three innocent-looking trolleys some kid forgot to put away before he finished work.

  “Ela, look at those,” he says. The trolleys are sitting in the shadows near the Hypermall.

  “What about them? They’re trolleys.” I’m trying to sort out my cloak.

  “We could race them,” says Amon.

  “No,” says Isabelle. “There are only three trolleys, and there’s six of us.”

  But Amon’s not going to be put off easily. “One in the trolley, one pushing.” He flicks his head to get the fringe out of his eyes then looks at all of us. “You still got that haze app on your coms?” A few months ago, Amon hacked into the second layer of the Administration’s intranet. He wasn’t meant to be there, it was completely illegal, but that didn’t worry Amon, he found this haze app and downloaded it.

  He slides his thumb across the Com-screen on his wrist, activating the app. “We’ll use it, so the spoilsports don’t turn up.” Amon shimmers like a ghost. I can see the absence of him; it’s like looking through cut crystal.

  “With any luck, the spoilsports are at home in bed,” says Lucan shimmering too, his grin visible in his voice.

  I hear Damus behind me sigh, he’s never happy about using this app. The app acts as a personal cloaking device and was developed from the stealth programme the Vector Guards use to keep their surveillance hovers out of sight. Those hovers can appear in seconds if there’s a problem. Their motto is Surveillance and Protection, but their job is really, surveillance and keeping everyone in line.

  The ghostly Amon points across the parking lot. “First trolley to get to the other end, then back to the red eco wins.”

  It’s tempting. I’m not stupid. I can’t see any reason to replace the oxygen in my brain with chemicals like that rubbish Isabelle and Lucan just had, but if someone suggests something interesting, I’m usually in.

  I hug my cloak closer and consider this trolley racing idea. I know this sort of idea gets you into trouble. But if you spend time around Amon, you have to learn to bend a few rules. Lots of rules actually. So old school trolleys that run on wheels, no air-assisted hover like most Hypermalls have, looking forlorn and unloved in a parking bay, ready to race, I was always going to go for that.

  “Okay,” I say and fish in my pocket for a band to tie my hair up. I pull it back into a ponytail, get my Com, find the haze app and turn it on. My hands shimmer in the light. Then I put my cloak and Com in the trolley.

  “You’re taking this race seriously,” says Amon.

  “I plan on winning.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Isabelle moves so she’s nearer me. “I’ll go in your trolley, Ela. Lucan can go with Amon.”

  Amon grins. “You’ve got a big weight advantage if you take Isabelle.” He has a point; Isabelle is sixteen like me, but she’s tiny. Lucan and Amon are a year older, and they’re a lot heavier.

  “We could swap,” I offer.”

  “Nah, I’ll still beat you.” Amon takes off his jacket, it’s all zips and pockets. He’s wearing pants and heavy boots, so I have an advantage in a skirt and red Docs, but Amon likes a challenge.

  “In your dreams.” I hold my trolley steady, and Isabelle climbs in, she’s all cloak wrapped around diaphanous tutu and ballet flats. The tiny jewels attached to her eyelashes sparkle in the light and the hearts on her cheeks dimple softly.

  Isabelle likes girly. She makes herself comfortable, knees drawn up, leaning against the back of the trolley, arms resting on the sides. When she turns on the HazeApp she washes out like a watercolour painting

  Damus helps Jadah into a trolley. They’re both gentle, studious types so they’re no competition, Damus will just dawdle across the parking bays. I look across at Amon and Lucan. They’ll try to win.

  Lucan, with tawny eyes and dark hair, falls into Amon’s trolley, He gets settled then grins at Isabelle. We line the wheels up, our backs against the wall, hands on the push bars.

  I look on the other side of me at Damus and Jadah. They’ll take part but play it safe, like the good Elite they are. We’re all Elite, and Elite don’t take risks, but the Administration didn’t factor in me and Amon when they made that proclamation.

  “We’ll go around that purple Eco at the end,” Amon points at the ESD by the barrier. “Then finish by the red one in the middle.”

  We nod. I pull my trolley back a bit, ready to explode away the moment I get the signal. There’s no way Amon is going to win this; I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Ready?” Isabelle pulls off a white lace glove. “Get set.” Amon and I grip the push bars and lean forward. “Go.” Isabelle drops the glove, and it flutters down as we blast away from the wall and race across the parking bays like ghosts, cloud people.

  The grind of tortured trolley wheels combines with the smell of the spent biofuel floating just above the polished tiles. The Humicrib babies bumble across the ocean again.

  We race for the purple car; Amon and Lucan are starting to edge away from me and Isabelle. The trolley wheels screech, the baskets sigh at the weight.

  “Go, Ela,” yells Isabelle and grips the side of the trolley, I push harder, faster. The glass fronts of the apartment towers surrounding us lean over and glare. The shuttle rail curves in the distance.

  I start to catch up to Amon and Lucan, my boots pound, my skirt flutters. I head towards the purple blur in front of us. A shuttle on the rails flashes silently past, bullet shaped. Faces like white petals flicker behind the windows.

  “Cut her off,” yells Lucan, and Amon changes direction enough to stop me from getting through. I don’t want to have to go around him, so I keep going faster, thinking I can get there before him and slide through the gap. The small wheels complain some more. I think I’ll make it. Amon angles in a bit to make sure I’ll have to slow down and take the long way.

  I head for the narrowing opening and slip through the gap at the last moment, the trolley on two wheels as I make the turn.

  Just as I get around the car, and think I’ve done it, the trolley over balances, it topples, and I crash into the purple ESD, gouging along the side. The trolley falls over, and Isabelle tumbles out onto the smooth tiles.
My Com goes with her and smashes. Form and colour return instantly to me.

  The SkyVid changes to a field of Genus 6, seed heads gently waving in the breeze. The text, Genus6 saves the world, floats across the field.

  Amon and Lucan pull up beside us, and Lucan leaps out of Amon’s trolley. He lands by the car and goes to Isabelle. “You all right Is?” She’s lying there in a crumpled heap. The ESD’s in bad shape with a huge dent and deep scratches down the side. The trolley that made them is lying beside it.

  Isabelle shakes her head, “I’m hurt,” she says, quietly.

  Lucan switches off his haze and Isabelle’s so he can see her properly. He tries to help her stand and she cries out and collapses back onto the ground.

  “What happened?” asks Jadah as she runs up to us with Damus, both still an absent shimmering. Their trolley’s sitting in the light in the middle of the parking bays.

  Lucan and I are kneeling beside Isabelle. This time Lucan carefully helps her sit and she rests against him; holding her wrist, supporting it against her body protecting it.

  Tears are starting to make tracks through the hearts on her cheeks. “I think my arm is broken,” she says.

  We all know we have to get out of here right now. An injured girl, a fallen trolley, two others scattered around the parking area and a badly damaged ESD are too hard to explain away. If we can just get away from here, we can say she fell and call for an ambulance shuttle.

  “Can you walk if I help you up?” asks Lucan, his arm around her. We can’t afford to be caught racing trolleys in the parking bay, especially me and Amon. Three strikes and it’s a long spell at Re-Education. We’re both on two.

  Isabelle nods and Lucan and I gently try to ease her up to standing to get her moving. We don’t want Vector to find out about the stolen haze app either.

  Amon stands my trolley up and starts to push it away from Isabelle, so he can help too. Then we hear a shout from the entrance of the Mall. I look around the front of the ESD and see two men running towards us, across the parking area. Vector Guards, black uniforms, silver Vs on the front. There’s a muffled whomp, whomp, above us and a black StealthHover materialises, the V stretching from wing to wing, then two more surveillance hovers arrive.

  “We’ve got to go.” Damus and Jadah don’t wait, they fade away, slide into anonymity over the barrier, ghosts moving off into the shadows.

  Lucan tears the Com off his wrist. “You go too, Ela, take my Com, use the Haze, I’ll get Isabelle to the hospital. The guards will help us.”

  I can hear the slurring in his voice. I don’t know how much sense he’ll make after the Bliss he’s had, and Isabelle’s not in such great shape either.

  Amon’s ghostly face stares wildly at the StealthHovers as they softly come to rest on the tiles. “We’ve got to go, Ela.” He’s still in haze mode. “Luc can look after Isabelle.”

  The guards are pounding towards us. They probably can’t see how many kids are behind the vehicle. They probably won’t notice if Amon and I follow Jadah and Damus. I hold Lucan’s Com and try to decide what to do.

  Isabelle takes my hand, “Go now, while you can,” she says.

  The guards get closer; the doors on the hovers lift and more helmeted guards pour out like black fury.

  “We’ve got to go.” Amon urgently moves away towards the barrier. “We can’t get caught.”

  I shake my head. “I’m staying, I’m not leaving Isabelle like this.”

  Amon hesitates, shimmers with anxiety, then makes the decision. He grabs his jacket out of the trolley, the jacket fades into his haze, and he slides away without me. He follows Jadah and Damus over the barrier.

  ****

  Vincent watched the darkness go by. They’d finally sorted out Mount Annan a few days ago, and now they could get back to this assignment. He’d been in the country for two days, and it looked like they were already making progress.

  “Not a bad night’s work,” he said to Kane. Earlier they’d spent an hour sorting out a problem and had got the information they needed. They’d left the problem in a pool of blood, but it’d keep its mouth shut from now on.

  “Yes, sir.” Kane yawned, shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned back into the upholstery. “Do you still want me to set up those Intercepts?”

  Vincent nodded. “Yes, do it as soon as we get to the OutPost.” Travelling to New Zealand to find OffGrid kids and work out where the RogueSeeds were coming from hadn’t sounded very interesting when the commissioner had first broached the idea.

  But he’d set things in motion a month ago, and now he was back, and the more he looked into the records, the more intriguing it became.

  Whispers of a Natural born to an Elite mother, and a secret seed bank had started to get a bit of substance. Now he’d spend a few days in the Hinterland, and with Kane’s help, they’d see what they could find.

  Chapter 2

  We’re in Mum’s office watching a Vid of three trolleys racing across the carpark, pushed by vaguely human-shaped emptiness. Then I clearly see Isabelle lying by the purple eco with Lucan and me kneeling beside her.

  It didn’t take the guards very long to figure out who our parents were. When Mum got the connect, and even before she had a clear picture of what had happened, she’d contacted Amon’s father. He’s Simon Baker, Eugenics Corps head lawyer. Not that this has anything to do with gene tampering.

  A few hours after being loaded onto the EvacHover, being hovered to the hospital, having our retinas and fingerprints scanned, DNA swabs taken, we waited for our parents to arrive.

  Amon’s father looks worried. He scratches his forehead as if that will help him think. He works with Mum and has clout. Mum and Luc’s dad have clout too, but even top research scientists and administrators need help when their kids are in this much trouble.

  Amon’s dad waves his hand at the wall to stop the Vid, then stands up. “We’ll say the cameras were faulty, fading in and out of focus, and that the recording isn’t admissible as evidence.” He’s sort of ginger coloured and has freckles. He looks nothing like Amon. But nobody looks like their parents now, especially Elite, it isn’t possible anymore.

  Mum and Lucan’s dad nod. They’re watching him anxiously. They all know what we used to disappear and that this could turn into more than just kids fooling around. Hacking into the Administrations computer and stealing stealth technology is probably punishable by death, at least.

  “Will that work, Simon?” Mum looks tired. Usually, she looks beautiful in a tall, professional sort of way but tonight she just looks like a mum and worried. “We all know what they used to disappear.”

  And Amon’s dad has to know Amon would have been there. He’s choosing to ignore that. “It’ll give us time to think,” he says. I just wait. When you’re in this much trouble, interrupting thinking adults only reminds them why they are thinking so hard.

  Lucan’s dad is first to come to a conclusion.

  “Where’s your Com,” he asks Lucan.

  “I gave it to Ela.” Luc is usually pretty grownup and confident, but right now he looks the way I feel, like a frightened kid.

  I usually like being at Mum’s work. She’s in charge of the Humicrib at the hospital. Mum’s department cares for the Preborns. In her wing, there are these massive rooms all warm and softly lit and they’re filled with thousands of small plastic cribs with a tiny baby in each one.

  When I go there, Mum talks about how they care for the babies until they are viable. It’s nice. The babies are curled up around their umbilical cords and sometimes they stretch, or suck their thumbs, or give a little smile.

  “Do you still have it, Ela?” Luc’s dad asks.

  I take it out of my pocket and hand it to him. He spends a few moments going through the apps, finds what he is looking for, gives Lucan one of those looks you get when your mum or dad would rather not have known. Then he stabs his finger at the screen. I guess he’s just deleted the app.

  “Where’s your Com, Ela
?” Mum asks me.

  “It fell out of the trolley and broke.” I fish in my cloak and give the damaged Com to Mum. She hands it to Lucan’s dad. He plays with it for a moment.

  “I can’t get in,” he says, then turns to Lucan. “Where’s Isabelle’s?”

  “I think she has it with her in the room,” says Lucan.

  Lucan’s father stands up and goes to the door. “I’ll get it and clean it up. I’ll put this,” he holds up my Com, “in the incinerator as I go past.”

  Very shallow of me I know, but I’m pleased I have all the data on that Com backed up on my tablet.

  “Was Amon with you?” asks Mum.

  I nod. No one has asked that question all night. It’s morning now, and Mum and I are sitting in our kitchen. It was dawn before Amon’s dad finally sorted things out enough that we were allowed to go home in the custody of our parents.

  I stand up and wander over to the picture on the wall of Mum and Dad with me. It was taken when I was eleven, five years ago, just before Dad died. I run my hand over it. It still makes me sad when I think about Dad.

  Mum sighs, “Amon left?”

  I nod again. Leaving the way Amon did was sensible, I guess. I’ve known him since we moved to the City, so I know the only authority he’s got any respect for is his father, and it’s the sort of respect that’s verging on fear, so I’m pretty sure that’s why he left he didn’t want to have to face his father.

  I look out the kitchen window and watch the silver of the night start to change to the white light of day. Those Humicrib babies on the SkyVid march across the sky again. They turn and wave as they get to the end of the ocean.

  The City stretches out, gleaming and bright on the other side of the glass wall. It used to be called Auckland, but when the Administration took over it just became the ‘City’. Not much is left of the old Auckland, only the Sky Tower and the Harbour Bridge.