Footsteps Of Giants - 4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

September 27th, 2143 A.D.

Orbital Platform Leonidas

Low Orbit Over Neptune

Sector J: Quarantine

The elevator descended rapidly.

It was hard to tell that it was moving at all. It lifted with barely a jolt and only recoiled gently when it stopped. The only way to tell that it was moving was by the luminous display next to the controls. The air inside smelled stale, a result of not being recycled on the evacuated decks. Then again, I might have been imagining things.

Ivy and I barely had time to catch our breath, when the elevator came to a stop and the door slid open. I had raised the plasma riveter as soon as the elevator stopped, ready for anything to be on the other side of the door, but the hall was empty. It wasn’t a surprise, what with the evacuation and everything, but I kept the riveter up and ready to fire.

“Let’s move,” I said.

We headed down the corridor. I led the way, having our only weapon. Our footsteps echoed through the halls. Every shadow made me pause. I was taking no chances.

“Why do they finish each other’s sentences?” Ivy asked as we continued toward the tram.

“Great minds think alike? How should I know?” I snapped. I was just starting to come down from my adrenaline rush, and was too busy trying to keep us alive to think about it for now.

“No, seriously,” he said. “It was like they knew what the others were thinking.”

“Ivy, we can speculate on that later. Let’s just get to the maintenance storage room, then we can figure out what makes the worker bees buzz.”

After a few moments, I realized that Ivy was no longer walking with me. I turned around to see what was keeping him. He stared at me with an astonished look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“Worker bees? That actually makes a lot of sense.”

“So they’re insects used for pollenating flowers?” I said, not really getting what he meant. “I just always thought that the Leonidas looked a little like a hive, and the people inside like worker bees.”

“But what if the infection is a hive?” he moved forward to where I was standing.

“The infected haven’t shown any indication of having hives… I don’t follow.”

He smacked me on the back of the head.

“For someone so brilliant, you can be pretty dumb at times,” he said, shaking his head. “A hive mind. A singular consciousness spread throughout the infected, like a beehive.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “But if they’re all connected, there has to be a queen, something linking all the minds together.”

“Take out the queen…” Ivy started.

“…Sever the connection,” I finished.

We rounded the corner, and from there it was a straight shot directly to the tram. Trash littered the corridor, food waste, papers, empty drinking containers, and the occasional discarded item of clothing was piled up on both sides of the hall. It looked as if the people who made the mess had left in a hurry.

“What happened here?” I asked as we navigated the junk-maze.

“In the evacuated areas, the tram stops were used as staging areas,” Ivy explained. “As many people as possible were loaded in, and taken to designated ‘safe’ areas.”

“Where were you when this all started?”

“All the medical staff were testing people as they came through checkpoints before the staging areas,” Ivy said, without making eye contact. I was about to ask him what was wrong, but we finally reached our destination.

“Go into that office and press all of the switches on the tram start-up panel,” he said, pointing to an enclosed glass office. I nodded, and headed inside.

On the wall, near a huge desk, I found the panel that Ivy mentioned. There were switches labelled “engine”, “power”, “guidance”, “lights”, and many others. I flipped them all to “ON”. As soon as I flipped the “power” switch, an electric hum filled the room, and vibrated through the floor. As I flipped the “engine” switch, the tram rumbled to life. When the tram lights came on, I could see Ivy inside, typing furiously on a touchpad. I left the office and headed to the main car.

“Crowe says many of the cameras on the tram line aren’t functioning,” Ivy said as I entered. “We should be alright though, track maintenance is automated. It should be smooth sailing from here.”

SLAM!

I leaped away from the door as something slammed against it. The color drained from Ivy’s face, and I dreaded looking at the door.

Infected.

At least fifteen stood outside the door. The two in front threw themselves into the door with inhuman force. Their bodies were mangled and bloody; it was a wonder that they were even alive at all. Their limbs were fractured and jutting out at odd angles. At least one had a severely broken neck; its head flopping around lazily as it moved.

“Any chance you can get this thing started?” I yelled, still in shock at what I was seeing.

“The battery in the engine is only at twenty-six percent!” Ivy said, harshly. “We need at least thirty-two if we want to reach the storage area!”

SLAM!

A small crack formed where one of the infected rammed its head into the glass. Its skull cracked open, and the body slumped, flailing at the door uselessly. I recoiled in horror as another two immediately pounced on the disabled one, and began eating it alive. Another took its place and started hitting the door, widening the crack. I raised the riveter, taking aim at the one nearest the crack.

“How long until the battery is charged?” I yelled without taking my eyes off the scene in front of me.

“It’s at twenty-eight percent now,” Ivy said. “Maybe five minutes?”

“We don’t have five minutes!” Another crack formed. “What’s taking it so long?”

“It’s a machine, not a magic transport-box!” he snapped. “You wanna get out and push?”

One of the infected punched its broken, bloody fist through the glass, making a hole just larger than a hand. It pulled its hand out, scraping off several layers of skin with a sickening, wet sound. As soon as the hole was unobstructed, I took aim and fired, striking the creature directly in the chest.

It fell like a sack of potatoes. Just like before, two more infected swooped in on it like vultures, and another took its place. I took another shot, blowing off one of the creature’s hands, but they were smart enough to stand as to not give me a direct shot. As they kept hitting the glass, cracks in the glass around the hole increased in size.

It was only a matter of time before the entire window gave in.

“What’s the engine charge at now?” I asked.

“Thirty,” he said, his voice quivering with fear.

SLAM!

One of the larger cracks had spread out along the entire length of the window. One more hit and the infected would be inside.

“Fuck it! It’s charged enough!” I yelled as I slammed my palm down on the ignition button.

The closest infected reached its hand into the hole just as the tram lurched forward. It moved with such force that the thing’s hand was ripped off, hanging half inside, half outside of the window. Two fingers were broken and pointing upwards, as if the disembodied hand was giving us the peace sign. I extended the middle finger on my right hand at it, and pushed it out of the window with the barrel of the riveter.

The tram was hauntingly quiet now. The hum of the engines was still there, but it felt strange, as if we hadn’t just narrowly escaped with our lives.

“That was intense,” Ivy said quietly.

“You win.”

“What? I win what?” his look of confusion would have been adorable at any other time.

“The ‘understatement contest’,” I said, with a forced grin. He snorted, and sat down heavily on the bench across from me.

I took a look around the tram. It was unexpectedly clean, aside from the blood near the door. There was a small vending machine that contained various snack foods.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, gesturing at the machine.

“I don’t have any money on my credit chip,” he said.

I shot the glass out of the machine, and Ivy leaped out of his seat.

“Are you insane?” he screamed, his breath coming in quick, panicked gulps. “A little warning would be nice, Adam!”

I shrugged and walked over to the now broken machine. I grabbed a couple of nutrient-bars, tossed Ivy one, and sat down. He was still glaring at me as I opened mine.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Still glaring, he opened the package and took a bite. We ate in relative silence, the only sounds coming from the engines, and our chewing. When mine was half eaten, I looked up at him.

“Spill.”

“What do you mean?” he stammered, once again not making eye contact with me.

“You’ve been strange ever since I met you,” I said. “Saying strange things, not saying things… You said you’d explain when we had a minute.”

“I don’t really know where to begin…” he said, trailing off. I waited a few moments before pressing him again.

“Start with Crowe,” I said. “You said things with him are complicated? He creeps me out.”

“Things with Crowe are complicated,” he said. “I’m not stalling, it’s just hard to talk about. Crowe is, in a way, my father.”

I’m absolutely sure that had my eyes widened any further, they would’ve fallen out.

“Please tell me there’s not a really gross reason for him to have holocam recordings of you in your underwear? And anyway, he doesn’t look anywhere near old enough.”

“I guess it’d depend on your definition of really gross,” he said, looking away. “I told you earlier that the medical staff was examining people for infection at checkpoints. Not all of the staff made it out.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. If…” “None of the staff made it out.”

“You were the only survivor? That’s rough,” I said, sympathetically. “But what does that have to do with Crowe?”

“I’m getting to that,” a hint of annoyance in his voice. “When the Chief Medical Officer at the time, Doctor Kelvin, realized that the situation was critical, he had his brain digitally scanned. Two other senior medical staff had the procedure done as well, with the intent of creating holographic medical personnel in an emergency.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Why wasn’t that plan fulfilled?”

“It was scrapped for a different project. Crowe is a certifiable genius. His skills in genetics are surpassed only by his skills in engineering. Crowe was working on making a synthetic human.”

“He was growing a person? Isn’t that practice outlawed?” I asked.

“Crowe’s from the outlying settlements, synthetic sex slaves are created all the time out there. This one was different, he wanted it to be as close to a naturally born human as possible. His experiments went better than he could have ever hoped. He found the digital brain-scans in a restricted file in the main computer, combined the three scans into one unique mind, and loaded it into the body.”

“That’s kind of creepy, but where do you come in?” I felt like I was missing something.

“When it was discovered that he’d taken the scans, the synthetic was taken from him. When he merged the three scans, he erased any traces of the doctors’ identity. The amalgam scan still had the medical knowledge, but was free to develop its own personality.”

“This is all very interesting, but what was the point? Why isn’t Crowe locked up? Where is the synthetic now?”

“Crowe loaded the amalgam scan into the synthetic on June 4^th of this year,” Ivy said. “The Roman numeral four is IV. IV June.”

I felt like a complete idiot. He was the synthetic.

“Ivy, I don’t know what to say. This is kind of a shock.”

“What’s so shocking? You’ve only been working with a three-month old, synthetically grown doctor, with the combined knowledge of three dead medical professionals. There’s nothing abnormal about that at all.”

“Wow,” I said, stunned. “So I guess you really are too young for me.”

He burst into nervous laughter, and I grinned at him.

“So you are interested in me!”

“Ivy, this is hardly the time or the place for that,” I stammered. Why were my hands shaking all of a sudden?

“I guess you’re right,” he said, dejected. “But the place could be worse. We could be stuck in the main medical bay. Trust me, with how badly that was overrun, we don’t want to be anywhere near there.”

The speaker for the intercom above our heads crackled, and a tinny, robotic voice spoke.

“Obstruction ahead. Unable to continue. Please exit tram at nearest stop, Medical Station One.”

Ivy looked at me in horror. I sighed, and checked the charge on the riveter. What else could possibly go wrong?