Overture to War

Chapter 2

The next day Bastien awoke to a moderate hangover. He would have to wear it on his feet because the assignment LED on his PDA flashed yellow. Swiping to take a look at the appointment it quickly became apparent why: something wrong with one of the Clock Signal relay towers. The alerting system used colors to codify issue severity. He got dressed as fast as he could and took his soy coffee with out the door and onto the belt.  

Vince wasn’t wrong. Issues with the signal wouldn’t make the average imprint forget how to breathe. However, not remembering how to operate critical equipment inside the city could prove far deadlier to everyone. For all the talk about how Homo Magnus represented a leap in evolution over his ancestor, Homo Sapiens, to him it felt more like the leap had been accompanied by a restraining harness around the neck. What would happen if the signal ever went out completely? Hard to tell, no records existed of it ever occurring and indeed the Clock Tower stood as a marvel of redundancy. If the worse came to pass, it would be the last thing standing.  

Fortunately, it proved to be a false alarm. One of the redundant status sensors had gone haywire and started generating conflicting reports. Replacing it proved a simple task and not worth delegating to Engineering maintenance. They had enough on their plate. The most complicated part of the job was the trip around to fetch a spare from the depot. The entire ordeal took him most of the day, but, by 5 p.m. everything showed green on his PDA. Finally, a relaxing evening to look forward to once off the tower. 

He started making his way down the tall vertical ladder attached to the relay tower at a brisk pace. It took around twenty minutes to make the descent from the access port back down to ground level, even if done speedily and he didn’t want to be late to his weekly genome checkup. Having to do it was tedious enough, but having to listen to the technician spouse the same lecture about the importance of the procedure made him grind his teeth. Work-related excuses wouldn’t insulate himself from the lecture either.  

About halfway through the descent, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, freezing him in place. An ominous feeling crept up on his spine, and sure enough, he felt the cold sweat on his forehead that usually accompanies it. He hadn’t yet realized what had started to happen. However, the reptilian part of his brain had felt the danger. It started reacting to the coming threat by clutching his fingers so tight around the stairway it almost hurt.  

Tremors!  

Slow at first, then with an ever-growing intensity, the vibrations made their way up through the tower. It began to shake more and more as if it had awakened to his presence and it was consciously trying to throw him off. The alarms went off all over the underground city causing his muscles to stiffen even more. 

As reality started trickling into his brain, it gave way to a flood of understanding, and he suddenly realized his predicament: still ten to fifteen minutes of descent away from safety, unstrapped, relying on only his clenched fingers to keep him safe. The steel around him ached and groaned. However, as he tried moving his body, it had completely stiffened up with fear. Each move required considerable effort against the strained muscles. Then, he instinctively did what the procedure said never to do: look down. 

Maybe the terror moved his consciousness; perhaps he shifted himself, but it seemed to him like the entire city undulated, almost flowing together in waves more and more as the intensity of the tremors grew. It came to him he might, no, he will die right there if he didn’t do something. The High-Altitude Earthquake Protocol steps acquired during his imprinting came to him. As if someone was talking to him in a daze, but clear enough for him to understand: 

“Step 1: the adrenaline shot. All engineers carry a portable syringe of adrenaline with them as standard kit. Fix yourself in place with the safety harness with your left hand. Then, using your right hand, reach into the outer pocket of your jacket, grab the dispenser and use it to inject the compound into your body. “ 

Easier said than done; his left-hand clang to the cold metal for his life, and his body shouted at him that letting go with even one finger, let alone one hand, meant throwing his life away. With a conscious effort, he freed it and reached for the safety harness dangling free behind him into the air. The first time he almost got a hold of it but not quite. A rush of fear came over him, and he gripped the cold rail with both hands once more. Sweat now completely soaked him, causing his overall to stick to his body. The tremors grew in intensity, and by this point, the high-pitched noise of the earthquake alarms blanketed the entire city. 

“I know! I know, shut up! Useless pieces of junk, I know!” he said, grasping the handrails ever tighter. After taking a few long breaths to compose himself he made another go for the harness but as his hand reached for it one of the screws adjacent to him gave way. The extra load of his body combined with the jolts from the tremors were starting to take its toll on the ladder as it swayed a little bit outwards. 

“I don’t want to die here,” Bastien muttered to himself. Another one of the screws gave way, this one further up the ladder. Then another one, then a couple more in rapid succession. He looked up to try and spot where the ladder started to give way. Seeing through the dust and small debris falling on top of him from the arching stone bolt that supported the gallery proved impossible.  

Grinding his teeth in sheer terror, he closed his eyes and begged for the imprint to come to his aid. All of a sudden, the noise of the sirens, the screaming of the people below him and the sound of the falling dust all faded into the background. Freed from the distractions of the world around him, he could see and hear himself with perfect clarity: his nostrils expanding and contracting as he breathed; the watch on his hand ticking slowly with a deafening echo and the small fiber particles on his jacket moving side-to-side. Everything penetrated his consciousness at the same time. In his mind, something snapped, detaching him entirely from his reality, making him just want to just roll the dice. His fingers, numb by this point from the effort of clinging on, seemed to loosen up.  

So, with a third try, he managed to swing his left hand back and grab the harness. It felt like grabbing on to life itself while instinctively attached it to the step right on top of him. It still had both its fixing screws in place, and they appeared to be holding. Switching hands, he thrust his right hand into his pocket and immediately found the syringe, but it had the cap on. It would take two hands to unscrew the safety cap. That meant leaning back and prompting himself on just his harness. No other choice.  

Slowly he began shifting his body’s position to start tensing up the strap until it began supporting his weight against the abyssal drop behind him. He tried grabbing the cap with his left hand only to realize it was so sweaty it couldn’t firmly grasp the cap. Frantically rubbing the sweaty palm against his body got it covered in dust. But it did the trick, it had dried enough to grasp. Once uncapped, the dispenser produced a tiny needle that glimmered in the pale artificial lightning. Counting fast to three, he bit on his teeth and then stabbed his thigh with it. 

He felt the effect immediately. Bastien felt his whole body loosen up and a feeling of warmth coming over him. Having regained control over his arms and legs, he rushed down the stairway faster than he had ever done in his life. By the time he reached down to about two floors from the ground, the staircase rocked back and forth beneath his every step. His arms and legs moved of their own accord, and he felt more like a passenger along for the ride than anything, Then, a metallic screech filled the air around him. This one didn’t come from far away. Tracing the sound of the shriek Bastien looked up to see one of the transponders he had been working on shaking itself loose. Soon it would come down, bringing the staircase with it. He started climbing down two steps at once. About three-fourths of a floor up someone shouted:  

“Jump for it engineer! It’s going to come down on you! Do it, do it now!” 

Looking up, the transponder hung only by its cables. They seemed ready to snap at any moment. Closing his eyes, Bastien jumped and hit the ground with a large thump that knocked all the air out of his lungs. The medic was right there next to him to help him on his feet.  

“Are you alright? Can you walk?” he said, kneeling next to Bastien. 

“I… I think so.” The shock of the fall dazed him, and both his feet felt like jelly. But, half because of will alone and half because of the adrenaline running through his veins, he managed to stand up.  

“Come on; I’ll help you. Lean on me and walk. We need to vacate this area as fast as possible before that thing comes down.” 

They had just managed to duck behind a robust steel and concrete building when the receiver shook itself out of its hinges and came down crashing in a cloud of dust and debris that collapsed the entire staircase.  

The medic turned toward Eliot. “You did very well up there to get down so fast. And not too soon either. Wouldn’t have been the first time we scraped someone’s remains from the base of a relay tower. Are you alright?” 

 “Yeah, I’m alright,” Bastien said, gasping for air.  

 “Are you sure you’re alright?” the medic said.  

“Yeah, I already told you I’m alright; didn’t you hear me the first time?”  

 The medic shrugged his shoulders. “Post-traumatic stress. Got it.” He searched into his medical supplies pouch and pulled up a small bottle with some pills in it, handing it over to Bastien. “Sedatives. Take one of these if you feel a panic attack coming over.” He also opened his prescription notebook. I’ll write you a batch of trauma drugs you can get from the medic at the genome checkup facilities. Take one each night before going to bed. They’ll help you sleep and avoid nightmares.”  

Bastien shook his head and took the prescription, then, getting up slowly again, made his way toward the medical bay. Rather, his legs made their way toward it on their own. His mind wandered somewhere, far away. Unlike their Homo Sapiens predecessors, Bastien, alongside the rest of New Society, was part of a new race of humans: Homo Magnus. While genetically engineered to be immune to the Oldworld sicknesses that plagued their ancestors, their genetic makeup made them vulnerable to two new forms of affliction. The Associative Personality Disorder, or, the Chimera Syndrome was the benign awakening of the genetic consciousness of the forerunner imprint. The malign one, the Dissociative Personality Syndrome. In this case, the imprint consciousness would try to wrestle for control of the body, transforming the individual into something else entirely: an abhorration.  

The Inquisition didn’t differentiate. As the protectors of genetic orthodoxy in Phobos, they took it upon themselves to eliminate any deviation from the ideal genome. The benign version was undetectable by genome checks and less of a threat to the imprint. However, it did burden the unlucky individual with a lifelong deadly secret. In theory, the likelihood of either of them was negligible until an individual’s mid-forties. However, there were cases on record where extreme duress triggered them long ahead of the forty-five-year norm. If an individual’s genetic makeup proved inadequate to subdue the imprint until forty-five years, he would be judged a reject and his gene line terminated permanently. Just the thought of it made him sick to his stomach. Thankfully, there had been no voices in his head. Doubt crept over him. The entire thing seemed like a daze right now and there was no telling for sure what had or had not been there.  

 He opened the bottle of sedatives and took two pills at once. What he was experiencing went a long way past being a simple panic attack. The fear subsided, and he could feel his pulse quickly returning to normal. A comfortable numbness installed itself, and he picked up the pace, switching belt lanes absentmindedly. They carried him at a steady moderate pace, creaking every here and there, denoting they were long overdue for maintenance.  

Phobos had begun to show its age, so much so it didn’t take a trained eye to see it at this point. Dents showed in just about every metal component, and the cracks in the walls no longer got repaired. The advanced materials needed had all but ran out, or the city could not manufacture them anymore. Even mid-inner-city rings now had belts with missing tiles. It wasn’t an issue relegated to the least populated areas anymore. The standard practice had been to take tiles from the rural areas w and use those for replacement on the more populated routes. 

They could only take so much out of those areas before it became a serious safety risk to the people there as well. For the last couple of years, even the people traveling on the routes confined to the city’s inner center had to watch where they stepped. Toward the outer city limits, however, continually tripping had become a regular part of life. Especially since the artificial neon illumination in the city followed much of the same logic. People on the city edges found out first why missing tiles and lousy lighting did not mix well, but, if they didn’t abandon the underground city soon, even those living within the center research districts would start learning the same lesson as well. The steam pipes feeding the geothermal plant responsible for electricity had sprung leaks, creating veritable mist zones in many areas of the city. And while the maintenance crews welded them shut time and time again, it felt like a lost battle. The metal had corroded over time, and more leaks appeared in one day than could be fixed by the day’s end. As a result, the city seemed to lose a little bit of its light each day as it couldn’t generate enough electricity to keep everything at nominal levels. Naturally, the research institutes took priority, diluting the rest of the power into the illumination grid which faded in intensity from year to year.  

With the decaying state of the city itself, the same could not be said about the people living in it. Humanity had been left to thrive in this hole in the ground by their creators, and somehow, optimism had endured. All the important holidays had made their way into New Society’s calendar, and even a few extra ones added in for good measure. It was a calculated step, since, even with their genetic enhancements, never seeing the sun still proved to weigh heavily on their human brains. The family structure had been kept intact for the most part, the only notable exception being natural conception. Even now, as the workday reached the end, all around Bastien, the air buzzed with the unmistakable hustle and bustle that came with families reuniting. A particularly noisy one rode the belt right in front of him.  

“Is everybody alright?” the father asked.  

“I’m fine dear,” the mother responded, kneeling down to caress her two children: a boy and a girl. Both of them fussed about impatiently. The little girl looked to be around four to five years old and took after her father. Apparently, of Greek descent, she had dark curly hair, large round eyes, and olive-colored skin. The boy, around six years old, took after his mother with refined facial features, thick red lips, and pale-white skin.  

“What about our two little champions?” she said, gently grabbing both of them by the arms and turning them around toward her. “Did you listen to your daycare teacher? Melissa? David?” 

“Yes,” the little girl answered, smiling shyly.  

“Yes mom,” the boy answered, rolling his eyes. “When do we eat? I’m hungry!”  

“Just as soon as we get home, honey, I’ve made you your favorite -”  

Bastien didn’t get to hear the answer, as they hopped off at a junction. However, the scene made him melancholic. Back when he was about the same age as little David his parents also used to pick him up from school. A rush of affection combined with sadness washed over him as he wondered if they would be proud of how he had turned out. 

One of the city alarm lights went by, pulsating a dark green color. Usually, after any quake, they would leave it on yellow for a couple of hours. However, it appeared the tremors had subsided quickly enough this time as to cause no severe damage. Bastien could make an educated guess about the number and gravity of medical issues because there had been relatively few medics moving about. As for any severe damage to any critical piece of infrastructure, his buzzer would have denied him ending his shift. He decided to make the best of what remained of the day and head to The Ring as soon as possible.  

The entrance to the Botanic District snapped him back from his melancholy trip. He had forgotten to switch belts at one of the junctions. Turning around, slowly, shivers made their way up his spine, defeating all the soothing effects of the medication. A massive, tall and wholly blackened building seemed to be gazing at him through its burned-out windows. Bastien felt powerless to move as the belt carried him ever closer to its gaping mouth. As if a rift had opened in front of him, his mind ran back through time. It went back to the very day, ten years ago, when this place had completely changed his life.