Genesis Cure (Genesis Book 7) Read online

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  GENESIS CURE

  The Genesis Series, Book 7

  Eliza Green

  Copyright © 2020 Eliza Green

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copy Editor: Sara Litchfield

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  This book is also available in print.

  www.elizagreenbooks.com

  1

  Bill Taggart sat in a booth made of plush red leather. New London residents walked past the window of his favourite haunt, oblivious to what had happened three weeks ago, less than a mile below their feet. His stomach grumbled as the server from Cantaloupe restaurant set his steak and chips down in front of him. He hadn’t eaten all day, but the thought of going home to an apartment without Laura unsettled him more. Her smell still lingered in the place they called home. Most of her clothes were still there. Every day for the last three weeks, he’d hoped she’d return home and tell him her leaving had been a mistake. That she no longer craved an Indigene life. But to his disappointment, Stephen had confirmed that Laura was settling in well.

  What had he expected? She hadn’t walked away from their marriage. Bill had forced her out.

  The Cantaloupe franchise had expanded in the last eight years. The square tables, covered in red and white chequered cloth, were gone. The small window he used to idle by had been replaced with a longer one. A row of booths now looked on to the street. The upmarket restaurant had lost the homely feel he used to come here for.

  Bill occupied one of the booths. At least he still had his window seat. But the familiarity of the spot wasn’t enough to forget recent events.

  A cleared-out lab, ten genetically superior Elite housed in stasis pods, nine Conditioned underlings infected with the consciousnesses of the former board members, and one Marcus Murphy in custody. These were the spoils gathered from stopping Tanya. All the doctors who had been treating the Elite had disappeared. Bill had found the Elite just after Harvey had, all ten of them dead in their beds. But with the former geneticist’s help, he had gotten them into stasis pods and revived their withered bodies. Bill had no idea what to do with them, but letting them die while he had technology to revive them had seemed too barbaric an act. Even for him.

  Bill sucked down a mouthful of scalding coffee. It jerked him awake; combined with the Actigen he had started taking again, it also made his hands shake. Slipping into old habits came easier to him without Laura there. But with old habits came hindsight as to how dangerous taking too much Actigen could be. He would not fall down that rabbit hole again.

  The lack of sleep he could handle; it was eluding him anyway. Might as well use the extra time to figure out matters. He’d already wiled away many hours at the ITF office after hours, searching through night-time chatter on the Wave, hoping the missing doctors would get in touch there.

  So far nothing.

  Harvey Buchanan had been a strange ally in this mess. The former geneticist used to work for the World Government, using nanoid technology in the seedy black markets to alter the faces of criminals. But the eighty-year-old, who could pass for fifty, had a past that had only come to light after the World Government had absconded from Earth. Their departure had released hundreds of government documents detailing the secret experiments done on the first-generation Indigenes. And Harvey’s name, as a young geneticist, was all over those documents.

  While Harvey was familiar with the Indigene DNA, he had not helped to create the GS humans. Without having specific data on the Elite, all Bill could think to do was keep this elusive species alive artificially. Having Harvey on side was better than not, but relying on that man had Bill worried. The geneticist would surely want payment for this. A genetic manipulation clinic had been his first request—one Bill had yet to fulfil.

  Despite its bland flavour, Bill finished his steak. It was the Actigen, altering the functionality of his taste buds. More than once, he’d considered stopping its use. More than once, he’d considered packing the ITF job in and walking away.

  With a sigh, he pushed his plate away. Where the hell were those GS doctors hiding out?

  A black car with tinted windows screeched to a halt outside the restaurant. A man he wished he didn’t know so well jumped out. The look on Harvey’s face told Bill he had good news. Harvey entered the restaurant. The bell above the door rattled overhead and a waitress greeted him with a wide smile.

  He pointed to Bill and said to her, ‘I’m not staying.’

  One of the patrons called for a coffee refill and she turned away.

  Harvey slid into the booth opposite him. He was a man of average build and average height who had come to Exilon 5 wearing a new face. Now, Harvey looked like himself again—an eighty-year-old with the face of a younger man, and sandy coloured hair. But his shifting eyes revealed his true nature.

  Bill stared at Harvey. ‘You’d better have good news; I don’t like being disturbed during lunch.’

  Harvey glanced down at the plate of chips Bill hadn’t touched. ‘Let me help you with those.’

  He grabbed a bunch of them and stuffed them into his mouth.

  ‘I told you not to contact me unless you had some news.’

  Harvey swallowed his food. ‘You also told me you didn’t want anyone to know where the GS humans were being kept, but there’s a team of doctors ill-equipped to look after them monitoring their vitals.’

  Bill’s patience wore thin. ‘Harvey, what the fuck do you want?’

  The geneticist pointed to the car sitting outside.

  ‘You want me to take a ride with you, is that it?’ He had no time for games.

  Harvey smiled and shook his head. ‘I have someone in the back who I think you’ll be very interested in talking with.’

  Bill’s hope lifted. ‘You found one of them?’

  ‘Not one, the one. Jameson himself.’

  ‘Fuck!’ His outburst drew attention from the other patrons. He muttered, ‘Sorry,’ then leaned in towards Harvey. ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Holed up in the basement of one of the safe houses on the other side of the city. He’d been living there since the attack.’ Harvey looked out the window. ‘Thing was, he didn’t seem too bothered I’d found him. I think he was relieved.’

  ‘And is he willing to work with me?’

  ‘You mean us?’ Harvey corrected.

  Bill nodded.

  ‘Yeah, wants to put right his mistakes.’

  Bill clicked his fingers and called the waitress over. ‘Just the bill, please.’

  ‘Right away.’

  She tapped something on her handheld console. The bill flashed up on the table. Bill tagged his chip against the amount and the number vanished.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ☼

  Dr Jameson sat quietly in the back of the automated car while it drove the three of them to a military hospital on the outskirts of New London. Set in the stony landscape against a backdrop of mountains, the zoned area with a single approach road loomed in the distance. It was manned by a skeleton crew now, but had bee
n part of the old Deighton regime. The car pulled up to the tall gate, where a blue light scanned it. The gate opened and the car parked outside the hospital that had also been used as a genetic reversal clinic for Indigenes wishing to return to their former selves.

  Bill and Harvey got out, Jameson last. The doctor in his sixties looked up at the hospital that had been built in haste. It lacked the finesse of the newer buildings in New London. But these places had all been designed with temporary in mind. Underground labs kitted out with the best equipment sat below the surface. Access through the hospital was just one way to reach them. Several tunnels had also been built to keep the old regime and a paranoid, power-hungry Charles Deighton happy. The former CEO of the World Government had built all his labs in the same way. This lab, with access tunnels connecting to important sites in New London, was no different. To manage security, Bill had ordered all of the tunnels to be sealed.

  One way in, one way out.

  Holding on to Jameson, Bill entered the hospital through a set of double doors. Inside was a large warehouse partitioned into sections, each with a white curtain around it. This was where Isobel, an Indigene who had helped to topple the criminal regime on Earth, had received her genetic reversal treatment. Half a dozen medical assistants and double the amount of doctors milled around the space that no longer attracted Indigenes since the GS attacked District Three. Instead, the space was being used to treat passengers who had returned from Earth or who were travelling for the first time. Vaccines to inoculate against common Exilon 5 diseases topped the list.

  Bill walked the Jameson through the space crammed with the best equipment, and more doctors and assistants than patients. The doctors looked up, some curious, others surprised. According to ITF records, Jameson had worked out of this very facility. But now, Bill controlled proceedings.

  For years, the GS Elite had been using Jameson and his team of doctors to further their cause, right under Bill’s nose. They had been helping Tanya and the other Elite to transcend using Simon and other Conditioned as hosts. But Tanya had failed in the end and Simon, her chosen host, had perished because of her efforts.

  The name Jameson had sounded familiar to Bill. And it had been. Back when he’d been an investigator tasked to follow Stephen, he’d watched videos on the Indigenes to understand what he was about to face. A young Indigene had been captured and Jameson had taken point on the subsequent study of him. It made sense that Jameson had been Tanya’s first choice to help her to transcend.

  Harvey walked ahead of the pair to the back of the room and down a corridor, where a lift waited. Not one of the turbo lifts fitted in most government buildings on Earth, but a slower one. Harvey pressed his hand to a plate that read his bio signature. Giving him access to these levels had been a necessity, but with the doctor back could Bill cut Harvey loose?

  The lift opened and Bill steered Jameson inside. Harvey joined them and the lift took them down three levels.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Jameson, breaking his silence for the first time since Bill saw him.

  ‘To check on our captives.’

  The lift opened and Harvey exited first into a corridor with matching, smooth, concrete walls and floor. Bill escorted the doctor to the door at the end, which Harvey opened with his bioscan.

  The door opened to reveal a spacious room, not as big as a docking station, but half the size. A wall of glass created a second room at the back containing ten upright stasis pods, nestled against one wall. Each pod housed one of the original GS Elite. The Elite Ten, all former World Government board members, had been planning to transcend their physical forms. Tanya, the ex-chair of the board, had had her sights set on the Nexus power to do it. On the opposite wall were another nine pods containing the Conditioned who had been forced to host the consciousnesses of the Elite. Simon, Tanya’s host and Bill’s former boss from the ITF, had been buried close to District Three. Tanya’s mind had been destroyed by the Nexus, but her body had not.

  In one section of the main room, several screens flicked between the many faces of the Elite. Monitoring the screens were two doctors and two assistants.

  With a click of his fingers, Harvey dismissed the doctors.

  ‘No, you stay,’ he said when the assistants tried to go with them.

  Jameson’s eyes fixed on the screens, then the pods. ‘They’re alive?’ He strode over to the screen that showed the resting Elite. ‘When I left them, they were dead.’

  ‘We resurrected them,’ said Harvey, following him. He leaned against the wall, eyes on the doctor.

  Bill sensed a fight brewing between the medical professionals for alpha position.

  ‘Have you spoken to them?’ asked Jameson.

  Bill shook his head. ‘They’re out of it. Asleep and close to death.’ But the doctor should know all about that. ‘Of course, they wouldn’t have aged so fast without your help.’

  Jameson folded his arms, looking contrite, but only a bit. ‘If it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else.’

  Bill stood back and studied the faces of each of the Elite as they cycled through on screen. He still didn’t know what to do with them.

  He looked at Jameson. ‘Why did you run, doctor?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted with me.’

  ‘To talk.’

  Jameson smiled. ‘That’s what they all say.’ He pointed at the cryogenic room. ‘After I talk, I end up in one of those stasis pods fighting for my life.’

  ‘I have no fight with you if you cooperate,’ said Bill.

  The doctor lifted his hands. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’

  Bill took a guess. ‘Hedging your bets?’

  ‘Like you are?’ The doctor turned away. ‘I’ve nothing to feel guilty about. I had no choice but to help Tanya.’

  Harvey chuckled. Jameson spun round and glared at him.

  Ignoring Harvey’s attempts to piss off the doctor, Bill said, ‘You had a choice. You didn’t have to help her.’

  ‘Helping her gave me the freedom to come and go. Had I not, she would have locked me up in their caves. I couldn’t live like they did, never seeing the sunlight again.’

  Jameson’s admission reminded Bill of how Laura had felt before and after Stephen’s cure of her Seasonal Affective Disorder. Before, she had craved sunlight and despised the dark. After, the dark no longer ruled her.

  A sudden pain bloomed in his chest. Bill pressed a fist to it.

  Jameson was watching him too closely. Under his scrutiny, he reined in his emotions.

  Harvey said, ‘Are we going to waste time catching up or shall we discuss their condition?’

  Keeping the Elite alive wasn’t necessary. Tanya was dead. Simon had perished in her failed attempts to reach transcendence. The GS were no longer a threat. Yet, Bill couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the end of it.

  He nodded at Harvey.

  Jameson looked around the underground lab. ‘Deighton had this place built specially. He was a paranoid individual, a real piece of work.’

  ‘You just needed to know how to handle him,’ said Harvey.

  Jameson flashed him a sceptical look. ‘And you did?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’ He lifted his chin. ‘I was his personal physician. He was... temperamental. Liked to have things his own way. I pretended he did.’

  Bill hadn’t thought much about the man who’d almost caused a civil war between the humans and Indigenes. Had it not been for Bill and Laura’s efforts to mend fences afterwards, they might have faced a different future on Exilon 5.

  His thoughts returned to the GS humans. ‘We have no information on the Elite or their changes. Do you still have the medical data?’

  Jameson tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s all up here now.’

  ‘What can you tell me about them?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Not much. They underwent too many transformations for their bodies to heal properly. If it weren’t for the pods keeping them alive now, you’
d have buried all ten of them.’

  Tanya’s body had been recovered along with the nine other Elite, but her consciousness was lost to the Nexus.

  Bill walked up to the glass wall separating the cryogenic room from the rest of the space. Both men followed him. Not knowing the Elite’s names, he had assigned them numbers based on their position.

  ‘Elite one to nine are under,’ said Bill.

  ‘What about their consciousnesses?’ asked Jameson.

  Harvey pointed to the other side of the room and the other pods. ‘We’ve kept them separate for now. We only have Tanya’s body. We’re still not sure if keeping the bodies of the Elite alive is worth the power.’

  ‘All of them need to stay under,’ said Jameson. ‘And Tanya? What do you intend to do with her?’

  Bill’s gaze went to the lone pod facing the glass, set between the rows of Elite and Conditioned. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  With the help of a body restraint, Tanya’s withered body stood upright inside the pod. She had lost all her hair and her mouth sagged on one side. Her consciousness no longer lived inside this husk, overused after too many experiments. Bill had no reason to keep her alive, but he needed someone to blame for Simon’s death. For now, her lifeless husk would do.

  From his position, he studied the remaining Elite, their pods illuminated by a soft, white light. Nine in total. Nine necks bent in an almost broken fashion, mouths and eyes hidden under heavy folds of skin. All wore their usual, white robes, dressed as though they held a superior position. Three weeks had passed since their collective attack on District Three. While life had returned to normal there, Bill’s feeling of dread had not yet lifted.

  His gaze went to the Conditioned next, wearing plain, white tunics and trousers. The younger, more virile, beings still housed the Elite’s consciousnesses as well as their own.

  ‘What can we do with them?’ he asked Jameson.