DYSTOPIA

chapter 1-2 (present day)

"Vanessa" I looked around "what just happened?" I asked but she remained silent, an overwhelming surprise was all over her face, thought she tried to hide it, she clearly didn't understand what was happening even though she designed most of the core parts of the system computer. The door opened and even Steve was afraid to come out, it was an all-round feeling, none of us understood why the system released the door, maybe Jamie was planning to escape and infiltrated the system somehow or maybe his blood did not contain Relilium at all, unless; no that shouldn't be possible, it probably was something else. Ray and Steve looked suspiciously at me from where they stood, they knew something or at least had a theory, since they also gave everyone else the same look I'm guessing they weren't entirely sure either, but it seemed we had a similar theory

"Could it at the very least be possible" I Said while facing Ray, he looked conflicted and lost in thoughts, his hands moved involuntarily and he avoided eye contact extremely, he was not sure and didn't want to give me a wrong answer but his behaviour gave it away, without answering me he answered, it was possible and as we had eliminated the impossible the only explanation however improbable was the correct one

"I see" Steve said, as I thought, he too had arrived at the same conclusion, the blood was in fact infected but it still wasn't clear what was going on

"We should run some more tests" I said

"What's going on" the Sarge asked, he had gotten fed up of our sideways talking, he was probably wondering how I could arrive at a similar conclusions with Ray and Steve but I don't blame him, all the time he spent off the base he wouldn't have known what I'd been up to, Ray and I had been in the labs a lot so I had learnt a lot about blood and chemicals and stuff I didn’t know before. The air in the basement changed, everyone was now curious to know our theory

"Doctor" The Sarge exclaimed looking back at Steve "what is all this talk about" he asked

"I have a theory" he replied

"Well"

"If you remove the situations that probably won't ever happen, what remains is that the prisoner's blood contains Relilium" everyone looked shocked but yet disappointed, they'd figured that much out already, they needed a more mind blowing explanation and I had it, as it turned out Steve was not still sure about what to say, he was cautious not to cause unnecessary spread of wrong information, damn doctor

"It may be possible that Jamie's immunity has helped him develop a new isotope of Relilium" I suggested

"That's what I thought too but it shouldn't be possible" Ray said "but it would explain why the computer flagged it at first as a contamination" he added. Efomo took some steps back and then ran towards the stairs,

"Wait for me" Vanessa shouted, somehow she knew he was going to the computer control center on the second floor, I'm sure they wanted to confirm that there was nothing wrong with the computer.

"Steve, you should analyze the blood samples now" the Sarge Said

"Should I help him out or do you have something else for me to do?" I asked him, he looked around and sighed "okay everyone get back to what you were doing, McCarthy, stay with that Jamie, try to talk to him, make him trust us" he said. Of course he did, it was probably the smartest thing he could have done at the time, and I personally wanted it, it had been a while since I saw Jamie, I could use the catching up. "Yes sir"

Apart from Ray, Steve and Eric, everyone else went upstairs, surprisingly Doctor Nathan never showed, and he was supposed to be the top nuclear physics on the base even though his experience level was not very high, he was doing quite okay on the base. I walked to the holding cell which was two rooms from the lab while the Sarge went upstairs.

"What was that alarm?" Jamie asked as soon as I entered, the Sarge didn't have him removed from the hand-cuffs, why would he do something like that? What if the emergency was a power failure or something else, he could have died in there but then again it's the Sarge, he acts irrationally and authoritatively.

"It's nothing, a false alarm" I said "I'll take the cuffs of right away" I looked him in the face "Don't attack me" I said trying to make a joke, he pretty much didn't seem to care about my joke or he didn't get the reference.

"What is this place" he asked with a fearful look which also reflected in his tone, he must've assumed he was in some secret anti-human establishment or something of the sort. I sighed lightly, the Sarge wouldn't approve of me telling him but if we needed his trust, it was the best I could do.

"Look, I never told you this okay" I stopped to think things through "then again they're probably watching me so..."

"They're watching you?" He gave a disgusted look, but it wasn't directed at me, "what exactly do they do here?" He added,

"Look Jamie it's not what they do here, it's you, they're freaked out because you're here"

"Why am I a problem? I didn't ask to come here" he said and he had a point but we couldn't let such an opportunity go by and he probably wouldn't have come with us so... Well s**t happens

"Jamie I'm sorry about that but let's face it, you wouldn't have come with us if we had asked" I said

"You don't know that" he answered

"When I came to Benin looking for my family after the accident, they asked me to come with them; I refused so they had to arrest me to bring me here. That's how people think in situations like that" I said

"Here eh... Where's here" he asked throwing his hands in the air up to his shoulder level "where the hell is here"

"You're in The Allen research facility or A.R.F for short”

"The Allen what"

"The Allen research facility in Ughoton, Benin city"

"What" he said, apparently he still didn't believe me or he didn't understand what I Said which was bizarre because I was speaking English

"Look The Allen was built back in the 70s as a nuclear research lab to study Uranium, Neptunium and Plutonium for military uses and for nuclear reactors during the cold war. After the cold war it was abandoned here and with the explosion of 33, it was reactivated, retrofitted and turned into a base of operations for the atomic disasters prevention and containment agency"

"Wait so Nigeria had a nuclear lab of this magnitude in the 70s? But we weren't even involved in the cold war"

"The lab was not Nigeria’s obviously" I said "since the union of Soviet socialist Republics was all up America's a*s, they saw the need for an off shore-invisible nuclear base, luckily, Nigeria was used and now it's become beneficial to us"

"But why here? Why use this 60 year old building?" He asked, I smiled at him in a very scary way, he had no idea where he really was

"It was a nuclear base designed to keep radiations inside or outside, there was a nuclear accident... That's supposed to be pretty obvious by now" I said "and the base is not a 60 year old building, it took about eight months to reactivate and renovate the useful areas of the base"

"The useful areas"

"The whole base is underground Jamie, the med wing, the security wing, the living area and the research wing. The rest of the base is storage and there's the bridge and another area were fixing up to act as another Living area"

"What!" He exclaimed

"It was a secret base man, you didn't think people would have notice a 60 year old eight storey nuclear building since the cold war" he was clearly dumbfounded but I expected it, I think in that moment he realized how little he knew about anything

"How does all that fit underground?" He asked

"It's American, they do the impossible"

"But... It's gotta be at least four floors... How"

"It's actually just around ten floors, the basement floors are at the bottom of the whole base, there's about a floor and a half worth of concrete dividing it from the rest of the base, and super-reinforced steel doors on entrance and exit, guess it was for nuclear waste containment. That's about three floors, and then there’s the medical wing and security wing's floor, which is the one directly above the basement floors, research wing and medical share the floor above the basement, while the floor above us is the research wing. This floor has been partitioned into a cell, research wing extension and containment unit. It used to be the container room"

"And the living area"

"The three floors above medical"

"That's what seven floors" he asked

"That's six; we don’t count the concrete shield separating the base from the basement but whatever"

"Isn't the basement too dangerous to keep people here or leave the doors open?"

"There's a shaft with a ladder from here that leads straight to the surface, if anything goes on or wrong, we seal the entrance doors and open the shaft, throw whatever in from there without harming the base, also the basement has its own air circulation system in case of emergencies"

"Hold on, hold on. What you're saying makes no sense"

"Well above the living area is the command center, that's where the bridge is and above that is the computer bay, where the system computer operates and above that are the recreational area, training, sports and stuff, all on the same floor. Then there's a sister facility connected via a large hallway to the command center and there's the garage, the hanger... Actually six hangers, we only use there because we have just three ospreys and copters; and the reactor station, below that is the unused area that's about 400 feet around. The other three hangers house the sky fortress"

“How do you supply air and power for something this big?” he asked

“I just said reactor station… also, there's an offsite air intake system with two floors above ground and one under, the floors above ground have three motors about fifty feet around which spin at around 40,000rpm and are spun by a turbine control computer powered by the fusion reactor, the air discharge turbine is also offshore and it as well as the station are all powered by the 930MW fusion reactor on the Allen’s sister floor three”

"Jesus Christ" he said "something like this has been in Nigeria since 1970?"

"I didn't believe it myself the first time I arrived" I looked around the room and it crossed my mind for the first time in a long time how long we'd been in the base, a lot had changed indeed, I honestly didn't know what to tell Jamie to get him to stay, it didn't seem like he wanted to stay, I don't think the Sarge wanted him on the base, it was all a big pile of s**t. And then it crossed my mind, Jamie could really help our efforts to produce some sort of cure or vaccine for Relilium, maybe if I could make him understand that, he'd stay, hopefully. "Jamie, we've been studying Relilium for the past three years and have been working on a cure for the past year, but we're still nowhere" I said to him, he raised his head and looked at me

"And" he asked

"You're immune Jamie, you can handle Relilium, we can't, and we could analyze your blood and see why it's resistant"

"You want me to stay here" he said, he saw straight through my plan, he knew immediately what I wanted "I want to help Roselyn but I'm not wanted here and I hate being where I'm not wanted" he Said standing up to me, when he was closer to my face, he looked different, much more pretty than I remembered, his chocolate skin glowed like a candle fire, he was so smothering that for a second I stuttered, I guess some feelings just don't go away even after a long time, somehow I needed him to stay for more than his immunity, I was a little selfish but then again, aren't we all?

"Jamie it's not that they don't want you here, everyone's just on edge lately, scared and um..." I stopped to think of something reasonable to say but I couldn't think of a single thing, damn at a time like that, and then the Sarge Said through the station's main communication system, a really complex system of speakers spread around the station all connected and managed by the station's computer. He must have heard me try to convince Jamie to stay, he must have, through the camera microphone in the room, and perhaps I had wrong views about him because as it turned out, he still had a part of his humanity left in him

"Can I have your attention everyone" he said through the speaker "earlier today we brought a man in from the devils playground; at first I was reluctant to let him on the base but uh..." He sighed really loud, I guess he too didn't have the right words to describe things "I had lost hope that the world could ever return to the way it was, but seeing the man in the containment room today has restored that hope, I think he might be the breakthrough we've been hoping for. I know some of you probably wouldn't like him around, it's an extra mouth to feed and may be a burden to us but this is a burden we're going to have to carry if we wish to leave this facility and return home..." I finally understood, while the Sarge looked tough up close, he missed home and was tired of this hell-hole we now called home "we need that man here, we need to help him as he needs to help us, and I hope you all help him fit in. The alarm earlier was from a system error and we have it under control, keep doing what you were doing and do not panic. This is Sargent Jackson Kent, and I believe we'll get through this together" it had been a while since I heard his name, for the past months everyone just called him Sarge and it seemed he liked the name, more important, his speech got to Jamie, he was quiet and I'm sure he was thinking things through, I immediately thought of something that could get him to stay

"Jamie we could help each other couldn't we" I said, he looked like he was lost in his thoughts, perhaps the Sarge's broadcast had gotten to him or it was something else, he needed help with something, of course, a place to stay with food "you said something about a bunker earlier, is it stocked up with food and supplies?" I asked, he nodded as of to imply 'yes' but he wasn't sure of it, he must have hoped it was

"Are you sure?"

"Larry told me he stocked up on non-perishable goods for his supermarket there before the accident, before he could get there with his family, they were attacked and he barely survived with his daughter, they were living there and occasionally going to look for survivors once a week, every week since the time they got there about two months after the outbreak of the Relilium infection. I never heard from him after our last message"

"Have you seen this bunker before?" I asked

"In a Picture, yes” he made a grin face “What are you driving at?"

"What if we can break into the bunker and get those supplies, then will you stay? I mean if you're right his daughter may still be there" I said

"No I don't think so, it's been over three weeks, she should have answered my call via the communications module in the bunker. She probably went to find her father"

"I see" I answered "come with me"

"Where to" He asked

"To meet the Sarge, he would know how to go about this stuff"

"What's your game now?"

"I'm just trying to arrive at a solution that would be beneficial to us all" I answered, if that would make Jamie stay, I would have to convince the Sarge to allow it, "common" I said again as I went to the door, he followed behind me closely, the Sarge would be on the computer control center if I was correct that was like five floors above us, the elevator would've probably be in use so I walked to the stairs and opened the door,

"I see" he paused and touched the large steel door that was left open after the system released the locks, "this is the door you spoke of" he added

"Yeah" I answered with a nod, "common, we should be quick before they leave the computer room" I walked up the stairs and Jamie followed beside me, we were both quiet as we climbed the first flight, then he asked

"Why are you here?" He stopped climbing and I took about three steps before I turned around "how did you end up here?" he asked again

"What"

"The last I heard from you, you took an internship in that company Exadyne, with that exoskeleton project stuff, that was supposed to be in Lagos, how did you end up here" he asked, by heaven he had to ask, the one question I had successfully avoided for the last four years, he had to ask and at some point I would have to give an answer to him, I turned around again and continued to go up the stairs, he also followed after a brief moment of waiting. I didn't want to answer him and some parts of me just wanted to lie but then what would be the point, I needed his trust so I guess I needed to tell him after all, the pity he'd have for me might have him stay, at the very least that may be a win situation

"You know I um... I was in Lagos at the time of the accident but um...um My family wasn't so lucky I guess, they died in the explosion, I mean I still don't even know if they did, I don't know anything" I said with a little humph as I kept climbing "you know for the past years I haven't been able to get over it, I tell people it'll be okay but I don't think it will"

"I'm sorry I... Sorry I didn't think"

"Of course you didn't, it's not your fault. I should let it go"

"You don't have to"

"It's my fault what happened to them, how can I let it go? But then again I'll have to move on at some point right, I’ll have to let it go" I said

"Like I said you don't have to"

"What do you mean" I said nonchalantly while I started going up another flight of stairs, we were closer to the computer floor, a lot closer

"Maybe it was your fault, maybe not. Either ways, you can't know. The best thing to do is to hold on to their memories and live with it. Whether or not you caused their deaths, the thing is you're alive so you got to make sure their memories are honored" I stopped and looked to him as he walked beside me holding the rails, it seemed As if he was hurt as he talked but he was still at peace with himself, the thought of what he had gone through was a little frightening, when someone talked like that they had to have gone through a severe traumatic experience or something of the sort, maybe he lost someone too, I asked him but he smiled and continued walking upstairs, I went up with haste to catch up to him and asked him again

"What happened to you?" I held his hand "did you lose someone?" But he still wasn't talking, my plan had successfully failed and backfired on me, I was the one feeling pity for him, but something else bothered me, Jamie always had that look of grieve on his face, perhaps he had lost someone important even before the accident, or perhaps that's just who he is and I'm wrong. After climbing up about a thousand stairs, we arrived the computer floor, I immediately entered the main command room and saw the Sarge sitting on a table with a large wall and ten screens mounted on it, just opposite the door, Jamie entered the room and stood behind me, Vanessa and Efomo were in another room bordered with tempered glass windows on all sides, it was the system computer core, the CPU of the computer, they were still checking if there was a fault in the system, I assumed they were running a full system checkup which would take hours to complete, Ray and Steve were in the room with the Sarge, they must have gotten the results from the blood test they ran. The Sarge clearly knew I was coming and wanted me there for his next line of action, I kept thinking if it was related to the conversation Jamie and I had earlier or if it was completely different. As Vanessa saw me through the glass, she said something to Efomo and they both entered the room through a door beside the glass window. She sat on a chair in front of the computer console while Efomo leaned on the wall, the Sarge looked to me and said

"Good you are all here" he said "Steve" he pointed "call Rick, be should be somewhere on this floor. He left some seconds before you entered" he said, Steve nodded and walked to the door; as he opened the door, Rick came in from the left corridor, a strange coincidence? Yes but stuff like that happened a lot on the ARF, it wasn't exactly all that surprising.

"I assume you heard our conversation" I said

"That'll have to wait; I wanted you to get here first because you're one of the smartest persons here, so we need your opinion on things"

"What's that about?" I asked

"HQ requested weekly activity reports about two years ago and..."

"Everyone knows that you report to them what happens here. Why do you need me?" I said without letting him finish, he looked at me with a sullen face which made me feel goose bumps

"It's about him" he said pointing to Jamie "Doctor Steve thinks I should send him to the nexus to be examined there"

"Doctor Steve's an i***t sir" I looked at Steve "no offences but you're not reliable; your ideas are not reliable"

"Jesus Christ sir, we can't even have a rational conversation with McCarthy sir, it's been like two seconds and she's already throwing insults at me"

"It's not insults if they're true" Vanessa said supporting me, she usually always had my back, another good thing about her

"Look sir; if you report Jamie to the nexus, they'll have him transported there and let's be truthful to ourselves, they'll cut him open to see what's so special about him" I said

"What" Jamie took some steps backwards in shock “I don’t like this nexus already”

"Rose has a point sir, and that's the truth, the nexus take really drastic actions and we can't risk that. Think of the good things he could do for us here" Vanessa said

"That's actually true sir, he can handle Relilium we can't handle" Efomo raised himself from the wall and leaned on a column beside the door, he looked to Ray who he probably hoped would support my point of view and they locked eyes, Ray turned to the Sarge and said

"Roselyn is right sir, I need him here to carry out proper research on the elements of Relilium, and maybe work out a cure for it"

"Rick" the Sargent called "what do you have to say" reluctantly, Rick spoke up

"I don't know much about science stuff but I think the nexus will be the best place to study Jamie Sir, they have better equipment there and staff and resources" he said "but if we're to be realistic, they'll most likely cut him sir"

"The thing is the nexus already knows about him, they can see our cameras" the Sarge said, I rolled my eyes with a sigh, that he hadn't figured it out at this time was disappointing,

"The nexus can't see our cameras or hear our audio, Vanessa blocked their access ages ago, she didn't like the idea of them spying on us"

"She can't do that" Rick said "can she?" He asked looking at her malevolently

"How did she do it?" the Sarge asked

"Are you kidding me?" I said looking around the room "look around guys, she practically designed most of the goddamn system" I stopped, short of words, I said "how could you not know this? There's literally an icon on the main monitor displaying the networks with access to the cameras feed, she blocked audio, video and all non-official communication access"

"Why the hell would you do that Vanessa? The nexus is our command center" he stood up and walked to her, his face furious and red, like he was going to explode spontaneously but Vanessa strangely remained calm, as if she was not scared at all, I couldn't even tell if she was, because I was scared like s**t, it was not every day the Sarge got that angry

"I did it because they were spying on us sir, Eric came in here on day and I was sleeping, he said the cameras were cycling through the base and locating key personnel faces, he also said the lab was put up across all the screens as if someone was looking for something there"

"Eric is delusional Vanessa, he's not very straightforward or very smart either" the Sarge said

"But that's just it, he started ranting about a conspiracy by the nexus to destroy their works or take credit for it. But he wasn't lying, I setup micro cams to watch the monitors and they were cycling through the base locking on faces, when I woke up, they’ll stop, if I wasn’t there, they’ll continue. It’s a single uplink so whatever they do, I see and whatever I do, they see"