Chapter 13
Claudia was cold and tired. Dirt, leaves, and all kinds of forest foliage clung to her body as she stumbled from tree to tree, boulder to boulder. She felt disoriented, her hands shaking with fear. No matter how hard she tried, her mind couldn’t focus on a single thought. Not one. Pain streaked across her eyes, and she felt almost like an animal. She couldn’t deny the urge to run on all fours. Every noise caught her attention as she slinked and slithered across a mountain range, no idea where she was.
A frightening fireball in the distance was what she was running from. At first, her name came easily to her; now she couldn’t remember it. The environment was all that she was concerned with. Her safety. Wearing a long white medical gown, she tried her best to ignore the deep cuts and scrapes her legs were enduring. To make matters worse, her movement had attracted the attention of stray dogs, who now chased her, biting her ankles.
“Captain,” said an American lookout on one of the few surviving watchtowers along the DMZ. The army captain took his binoculars and scanned the area. It was the dead of night, with searchlights and helicopters filling the dark sky, readying for an onslaught. He spotted the white-gowned woman running among the foliage.
“What the hell?” said the captain, spotting a few dogs run alongside her. Moments later, a swarm of North Korean infantry surrounded Claudia and dragged her back into the trees as she screamed and fought against them. He waited with bated breath; the noise of military preparations seemed far off now as he caught brief glimpses of the young woman being grabbed in every direction. Gunshots violated the strange sense of calmness on both sides. He instinctively grabbed his handgun and pointed it toward the trees, the soldiers around him aiming much larger weapons in that direction.
“This is Captain Rodgers to Central Command. We have a situation.”
Chapter 14
“Files received,” said CIM.
“CIM, load the sterilization data file and display.” Peter stood from his desk, his private office more untidy than usual. Multiple screens appeared in front of him, showing an array of genetic diagrams, charts, and advanced formulas that only a seasoned geneticist could understand. Finding exactly how the Council planned to sterilize the human race was baffling. To perform such an act at a genetic level was astounding.
“CIM, specify genetic actions to be taken when sterilizing a human adult.” He wanted to see what specific changes would be made to the hosts to make them sterile. As with all Council material he received, it was presented to him with no instructions or notes. Peter often thought they went out of their way to be unhelpful.
A zapping noise across the labs interrupted his train of thought. The young girl had arrived. Peter headed over to the bio-containment chamber, where Gabriel was already waiting.
“What the hell?” said Gabriel.
The girl hid in one of the corners of the square containment chamber. Looking terrified, she whimpered and sobbed loudly, catching the attention of the rest of the team. Peter was disturbed to see her flesh looked mottled, and her were eyes bloodied and red.
“This is our new patient,” said Peter. “She is infected with the Eugenics Virus.”
“And you brought her here? Are you out of your mind!?”
“Freda wants us to try and cure her, to give her some kind of life.”
“Peter … seriously…” said Gabriel. “She is beyond help.”
“The virus entered her system and was designed to repair all her genetic defects. As you can see, it didn’t go according to plan.”
Peter approached the glass and tried to calm the little girl down. He had nieces of his own and hated to see any child in distress.
“Peter, she looks dangerous.”
“What? Violent tendencies aren’t a side effect of this virus.”
Gabriel shook his head, unconvinced, and stood back from the glass wall.
“I don’t think we can help her,” said Mary. “I’m as motherly as they come, but something about this child scares me.”
“We have to try,” said Peter. The infected child threw herself at the glass wall, crying, wanting out.
“I can’t let you out. Please understand that.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that, boss,” said Gabriel. “These scans show her neural network is going crazy. She probably doesn’t even know who or what she is anymore.”
“CIM, release a mild sedative into the bio-containment chamber.” Peter wanted to try and calm her.
“It’s not working,” said Gabriel a few moments later. If anything, it had enraged the child. She began slamming her jaw shut repeatedly, smashing what teeth she had left.
“You know, it looks similar to rabies,” said Mary.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Peter and Gabriel together.
“I’m being serious.”
“Computer, release five liters of water across the interior of the safety glass.”
“Releasing water,” said CIM.
A small strip opened up in the ceiling, releasing cold water.
“Nothing,” said Peter. Those infected with rabies had an extreme fear of water and of drowning. “If she was infected with rabies, she’d be cowering at the back of that room now.”
“I’m just saying, the symptoms aren’t all that different,” said Mary, undeterred.
“Computer, release sedative J-12 into bio-containment unit.” Peter watched as the girl noticed a change in the air. J-12 was the most powerful airborne sedative available to them.
“I can’t believe that’s not working.” The girl continued to run around the room.
“Believe it, Gabriel.”
Peter watched, the Eugenics Virus changing the very essence of her humanity.
It frightened him.
Chapter 15
“Peter, I was looking over the notes for the Eugenics Virus,” said Mary. “If it had worked, we could have seen an end to all the world’s problems. Well, genetically anyway.”
“I know.” Peter agreed with her. He found the Eugenics Virus a terrible tease of what could have been. Ridding humanity of illness, in the right way, was the golden mountaintop every scientist raced toward.
“The girl continues to deteriorate,” said Gabriel. “Where was she found?”
“Freda found her in an underground lab run by the Bernay.”
“Oh yes … under the DMZ in Korea.”
“Yes,” said Peter. “She’s the result of their original plan. Create a virus to correct all our genetic mutations.”
“And look at the result,” said Gabriel.
Jolene roared across the lab.
Peter tuned the noise out. He didn’t want to risk giving her any more sedatives.
“It’s Tuesday, people. We have six days until sterilization begins,” said Peter.
Gabriel went to get a pad. “There must be something we can do to stop them.”
“We can’t fight a race of super-intelligent aliens.” It pained Peter to admit it, but humans were the very junior member in this partnership.
“CIM, confirm the subject is infected with the Eugenics Virus,” said Gabriel.
“Confirmed.”
“It’s a super virus,” said Peter. “She will have to be exterminated.”
“Peter,” said Gabriel, “that’s a bit hasty.” No scientist wanted to hear the words “super virus.”
“CIM, status of genetic scan of infected female?” asked Peter, ignoring Gabriel.
“Ninety-eight percent complete.”
“I want us to work on a vaccine for the Eugenics Virus,” said Peter.
“What? Why?” said Gabriel, shocked. “Why would we need a vaccine for a virus that we have the last sample of?”
“We need to be prepared for the future. A backup is vital,” said Peter. “I don’t trust the Council or the Bernay. The most deadly virus known to mankind is sitting in our lab. I want a vaccine. We need the expert.”
“She’s usually busy, Peter.”
“We need her, right now.”
“Analysis error,” said CIM.
“Typical,” said Gabriel. “You always get out of calling her.”
“Explain,” said Peter to CIM.
“Unknown error. Cannot continue.”
“You cannot continue?” said Peter.
“Affirmative.”
“Explain!”
“Unknown error. Cannot continue.”
Peter couldn’t remember their computer system ever having an error. “CIM, any explanation possible?”
CIM displayed a simple white star symbol in front of them.
“Now that’s odd,” said Gabriel, trying to poke it. “You going to ring her now?”
“Shut up,” said Peter, going to get the pad Christopher had given him earlier. With Christopher having discovered the Council had really discovered humans a lot longer ago than claimed, something wasn’t adding up.
Chapter 16
Christopher and Freda sat in silence on the edge of her large, dark oak desk, watching the interview recording for the twentieth time. Freda was frustrated. There was so much to do, and she was being held up watching a video recording. “I can’t see any connection here at all. The girl is calm and collected one moment, violent the next.”
“The questions are asked slowly and politely. Freda, maybe she just went mad.”
“That’s hardly a scientific explanation.”
“And neither of us are scientists—or detectives, for that matter. We’ve played this recording in 3D, 4D, and every other format we have. I’m not getting any clues.”
“Well, the file is definitely genuine. It hasn’t been tampered with. Grace assured me of that.”
“At least it was Grace who said it,” said Christopher. “I trust her more than any on the Council.”
“Something doesn’t add up with all this.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “One second…”
He grabbed a pad from her desk and began scrolling down, finding the right section.
“According to this report”—he pushed his glasses up—“once the host is infected with the Eugenics Virus, total loss of self and control is experienced within minutes. Freda, she’s been infected for at least an hour in this video, probably longer. CIM, zoom in on the human female’s eyes, play from the beginning, and speed up by a factor of five.”
The girl’s face was now magnified, with perfect clarity, on the big screen. They watched as the video sped forward. They noticed the small intricate changes taking place on the girl’s face, particularly the pupils.
“We’ve been watching her slowly be overcome by the virus. Look at the eyes, compared to in the beginning. You can see blood vessels beginning to pop.”
“I see them,” said Christopher. “Look at the sweat beads, heavy breathing. There’s the moment.” He stood up and walked right up to the screen.
“Pardon?”
“Something changed in her eyes there.”
Freda joined him.
“Computer, replay from time index 3619 and zoom in again on the human female’s face.”
“Can I leave?” asked the girl.
“No, not yet,” replied the interviewer.
“Computer, freeze frame,” said Freda quickly. “You’re right. Look at her face.”
“Why did the virus take so long in this case though?”
“She is a child,” said Freda. “It’s the only variable. Maybe the Eugenics Virus takes longer to effect children?”
“A longer incubation time,” said Christopher. “But why does she turn violent? I didn’t think that was a side effect of this virus.”
Freda lifted a report pad, reading some of the bullet points Peter had sent her over.
“Debilitating reduction in brain function. Possible side effects include disorientation, confusion, violence…”
“I suppose Cecil wouldn’t have been told the full story by the Council,” said Christopher.
“Or not told us,” said Freda. She’d noticed he was more on edge than usual with her.
“Incoming communication from Captain Grace,” said CIM.
“Put her through.” “Grace,” said Freda. The captain appeared before them via a projection.
“We have a problem. The human female sitting in your science lab. We’ve analyzed her blood work…”
“And what did you find?” asked Freda. She tried to steady her voice.
“We’ve analyzed her genetic structure three times to make sure. I’ve even checked it myself. She’s devolving. Genetically, she’s nearly at a time before the Great Leap Forward.”
Freda dropped her cup of coffee, and it went freefalling down onto the hard wooden floor, smashing everywhere.
“That’s impossible. You must have made some mistake.”
She ignored the spillage and pieces of porcelain.
Christopher was lost, staring between the two women as Grace tried to convince Freda what she said was accurate.
“Freda, within another hour or two, she’ll be at a time before the Great Leap. Pushing the damn reset button.” The shock was all too evident in the captain’s voice. Not since the quarantine of her own home world due to the Gazeba virus outbreak had Freda seen her looking so unnerved.
“Will someone please tell me what this Great Leap Forward is?” asked Christopher finally.
“That’s it exactly,” said Peter, standing in the doorway.
Freda knew her top scientist had pieced it together.
“What?” said Christopher.
“When you showed me that report earlier, we wondered how the council possessed such an early copy of our gene pool. Sixty thousand years old. I never connected the dots.”
“And now you have,” said Freda.
“I still don’t see the connection,” said Christopher.
“When I asked CIM to scan the infected girl, Jolene, I kept getting computer errors.”
“From CIM?” Christopher looked between Freda and Peter.
Peter continued. “I knew it had to be programmed not to divulge the information. When I asked it to clarify, it showed me this.”
He held up a copy of the white star from the report.
“That’s the same…”
“Yes,” said Peter.
“What is that star?” asked Christopher.
Freda stood up, walking behind her desk. They both waited.
“The white star represents the old official stamp of the Council.”
“It’s been a long time since that was used,” said Grace. “The white star represents the solar system that acts as headquarters for the Alliance. A white star at the center.”
“I instructed CIM to try and match the genetic data scanned from Jolene, and there was one match in the database. Just one.”
“Dated sixty thousand years ago,” said Freda. She was about to tell her two friends something that would change their humanity forever.
“Yes,” said Peter. He walked up to her. “Please explain it to me. I need to know.”
“CIM,” said Freda, “analyze the current genetic structure of Jolene in the bio-containment chamber. Search for a match in the database.”
“Scan performed,” said CIM. “Match found 61,463 years ago.”
Peter spoke each word with CIM.
“Which is before the Great Leap Forward,” said Peter. “Before Freda. Before.”
“Calm down,” ordered Christopher, putting a restraining hand on his chest.
“It’s okay,” said Freda.
“What is the Great Leap Forward?” said Christopher. “I don’t have an advanced alien brain or the benefit of a dozen Ph.D.s.”
Peter took Christopher by the arm.
“Sixty thousand years ago, there was a sudden and unexplainable jump in human development. Intelligence, tool sophistication, the beginnings of art and music. Everything either started or shot forward exponentially. We’re talking about the founding blocks of human civilization.”
Freda continued to stand, watching Peter deliver the history lesson to her closest confidante. Grace only had eyes for her, though.
Peter continued. “The most important development in our history. Forget the industrial revolution, sanitization, or penicillin. None of it would have happened if that leap didn’t occur.”
“It’s true,” said Freda.
“But that’s not the real issue here,” said Peter.
Freda watched him turn to look at her.
“This is going to take some explaining,” she said. It was something Freda herself hadn’t give much thought to. She never presumed it would be her delivering the news.
“We were there,” said Freda. She sat down. “Sixty thousand years ago, this Council discovered Earth.”
“So long ago?” said Christopher. He too took a seat.
“What you call the Great Leap Forward, we called an ‘invasive, exceptional intervention,’ and it occurred 61,453 years ago. We had been monitoring Earth—”
“So early on in our development?” said Peter.
“You were the first life forms the newly formed Alliance had discovered. It gave us hope for the future. We spent years studying Earth and its inhabitants, always from a distance, of course. At the time, Earth was recovering from a devastating ice age, and almost all life was dying out.”
“Keep going,” said Peter.
“Well, things continued to get worse,” said Freda. She remembered it all very vividly. She was a government official attached to her own race’s president at the time. “While we debated how to help life on Earth, humanoid population numbers plummeted. Around 2,000 were left, and that’s when we knew action had to be taken.”
“We were heading the way of the dinosaurs then,” said Christopher.
“Yes,” said Freda. He seemed to be keeping up.
“What did you do?” said Peter.
The mood in the room was surreal. She knew there was no going back after this. Her relationship with them would be changed forever.
“There were four human-type species on Earth at the time. After genetic sampling, we discovered your particular species had a genetic structure we could easily manipulate. Little genetic resistance and plenty of room for positive mutation.”
“I can’t believe we were created,” said Peter. “This is a nightmare.”
“You weren’t created, Dr. Roberts, just helped along,” said Grace.
Christopher looked to Peter. “We’re lab rats.”
“Seems so,” said Peter.
“And look what’s happened!” said Freda. “A planet populated with billions, with huge advancements in technology and science across the board. I have never once questioned whether we made the right decision.”
“But it wasn’t meant to be,” said Peter. “Natural evolution. It didn’t happen here. Is that why our gene pool is falling apart?”
“Not at all,” said Freda. “That
is
your own making. Loretta is right that humans are self-harming. Pollution, obesity—I could go on and on.”
“Now so close to extinction,” said Christopher.
He looked lost.
“Well, we didn’t see that one coming…” said Grace.
“Why does the Eugenics Virus send us back to the Stone Age?” said Peter. “CIM has a full working copy of our genome and DNA from 60,000 years ago. Hell, I could program it into our cloning machines right now and make a caveman.”
“Please don’t,” said Christopher. “We’ve enough problems.”
“I’ve been looking into that up here,” said Grace. The captain was still appearing as a hologram in Freda’s office, standing quite close to her. “Loretta sent me a final report on the Eugenics Virus problem. When we modified your genetic structure 60,000 years ago, we mainly focused on intelligence and the physical attributes necessary to survive the last decades of the Ice Age. In most other respects, the human breed was genetically healthy. Excellent vision, stamina, coordination.”
“Let me guess,” said Peter. “They based the Eugenics Virus on our original genetic structure, 60,000 years ago, when it was healthy.”
“Yes,” said Grace. “The Bernay isolated the changes they made back then, in intelligence and so forth, while allowing the virus to correct anything else.”
“They used our original blueprint because a lot of the genetic mutations we’re suffering today didn’t exist back then,” said Peter.
“More or less,” said Grace.
“It was a barbaric and stupid thing to even try,” said Peter.
Freda held herself back from arguing with her chief scientist. She needed him on her side.
“Grace, what about the data I recovered from the lab?”
“Fragmented and encrypted. My crew say it’s impossible.”
“The shuttle?”
“The same,” said Grace. “We may never know what happened down there. Loretta informed me there are few official records available due to the sensitivity of the research. Everything was recorded on location and stored there. Data was only streamed to the Council for progress analysis. Never banked.”
“Typical off-the-books research program,” said Freda. “Damn.”
“Seems that way.”
Freda knew there were a dozen off-book programs in progress at any given time with the Council. She wasn’t against them usually. She recognized the fact that certain operations were too sensitive to be divulged to the general public—or to government, for that matter.
“We got lucky.”
“How did we get lucky?” said Peter.
“Don’t raise your voice to me,” ordered Freda. He stormed around the room. “We got lucky because the virus did not escape the Bernay lab on Earth. We don’t have infection. We don’t have a pandemic.”
“Which we must be thankful for,” said Grace. “Everyone is accounted for, and Loretta would be taking control of the situation if she thought for one moment a breach of quarantine was possible. She’d never let anything tarnish her record.”
Christopher piped up, and Freda was glad. He’d looked a million miles away after their discussion on the Great Leap. “Her record?”
“Loretta plans to run for vice president of the Alliance once her tenure on the Council is up,” said Grace.
Freda had heard the same rumors among some of her peers on other worlds. “When are you due to leave?”
“I’ve postponed everything until the
Reason
arrives,” said Grace.
Peter swung around, breathing quickly.
“That ship is bringing sterilization with it,” he said.
“We can’t allow that to happen,” said Christopher.
“Even if it makes sense?” A part of Freda—and she wasn’t sure just how much—wanted to let sterilization go ahead. The upheaval would be huge, but it might just give humans that fresh start that was desperately needed.
“It’ll cause war,” said Christopher.
Freda kept trying to make eye contact with him, but he only had time for the floor.
“You know it’s wrong,” said Peter. “If you don’t, you’re not the person I thought I knew.”
“Grace?” said Freda.
“We interfered once. We have no right to do it again.”
“I will fight sterilization,” said Freda. No sooner had the words left her mouth than she felt lighter than a bird. She had finally made her decision and would stick by it. “Grace, request a special review from the Supreme Court right now. Tell them we need a team with all haste.”
“Right away,” replied the captain. Her hologram shimmered away, leaving Freda alone with her team now.
Freda leaned against her desk; the silence seemed to last an age. Peter broke it.
“We need to make a decision about Jolene,” he said.
“She carries the most dangerous virus known to the human species,” said Freda. “She needs to be terminated. I’ll do it if you want.” She wouldn’t hide away from the tough decisions.
“No no, I’ll do it,” said Peter. “We’ll be putting her out of pain and misery.”
“As quickly as you can,” said Freda. “We have enough matters on Earth to deal with?” She took a sip of her water, then continued. “Okay, let’s discuss sterilization. Peter, if given the time and resources, could Section 51 lead the charge to improve the human gene pool our own way? I need to present the Supreme Court with a plan of our own.”