The Children of New Earth (20 page)

We had time, but definitely not enough to reach the Sanctuary. Micah urged me to just keep moving, and that help was on the way. Upon reaching the end of the town, the three of us stepped onto the long, winding road to the beach. We sprinted down the seemingly endless path, the ground shaking as the Demons got closer. Leaves broke off from the adjacent trees, showering our trail in green and orange foliage. After about a minute, I risked a backwards glance. The Minotaur was barreling down the middle of the path, nostrils flaring and eyes burning red with fury.

Just then, I heard a faint whoosh, as if something had just flown overhead.

“Just in time,” Micah said, slowing down.

I looked at the sky ahead and saw three Neogens flying towards us. Two of them had large, feathered wings, beating heavily against the wind. The other had no such appendages, and seemed to be running on thin air. One of the winged Neogens flew toward Micah and picked her up in one swift swoop. The other followed suit with me, and the third grabbed Raphael. They must’ve been incredibly strong to both fly and carry us at the same time.

As we glided over the peninsula, we looked down to see the Minotaur slowing to a halt, furious that its prey had escaped. From this height I could also see the Swarm barreling down the road with Minotaurs and multiple Sirens charging among them. I also heard faint roaring in the distance, but we weren’t willing to stick around to see what it was. One thing was clear: we wouldn’t be going on more supply runs anytime soon.

I turned to the Neogen that had just saved my life. His dark blonde hair ruffled in the wind produced by his beating wings. His light blue eyes reflected a childlike kindness in them and his jaw was chiseled to perfection. Even several hundred feet in the air, he remained calm and graceful as he carried me in his arms.

“Hey,” he said. “You OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, a little flustered. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“Anytime. Oh, I’m Jared by the way, nice to meet you.”

Chapter 14

We made it into Sanctuary by flying through the same trapdoor that we had fallen into not so long ago, landing on the platform where Michael and the others were waiting for us.

“Did you get the radio?!” Michael asked.

“Oh don’t worry about us, no one got hurt,” Raphael replied sarcastically.

“Well you’re all standing here, I assumed as much,” Michael retorted. “Now give me the radio.”

I handed it over, and he hurried off with a couple other Neogens. We handed the rest of the supplies off for inventory as well.

“What’s that all about?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Micah replied.

Just then, a crowd of people came rushing into the room, surrounding the platform and asking how the mission went. Michael had no doubt informed everyone about the Demon attack, and they were eager to hear a first-hand account. I let Micah do most of the talking and filled in the details of the radios, including how one of them nearly got us killed. Jared finished with his recount of the heroic rescue, but even then the crowd’s curiosity was far from satisfied.

“Wait so we’re trapped in here?” a voice called out.

They murmured nervously amongst themselves.

“How many Demons are out there?” another said.

“Where will we get supplies now?”

“What’s the radio for?”

“Yeah, comms are down anyway, why does it matter?”

“QUIET!” A loud, deep voice cried out above the commotion. The words shook the room, and it wasn’t hard to tell that this augmented voice was the power of a Neogen.

Within seconds there was pin-drop silence, and the familiar voice of Father Cameron could be heard.

“Thank you. Now everyone let’s remain calm,” He stepped up to the platform. “We can all agree that this is a dire situation. We are trapped in our Sanctuary, and the land above us is overrun by Demons. We knew something like this would happen, they have been getting more and more aggressive in recent weeks. This is no doubt correlated with your visions.”

I was a surprised to hear that. Apparently, the Neogens here were having the same visions of the Queen. Or at least, I wondered if they were the same. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have any more answers than I did.

“I am sorry to say I’ve kept a secret from you, but I can think of no better time than now to reveal it,” he said solemnly. “With the help of a few of your peers, I have undertaken a project that will allow us to make contact with the Sanctuary in Dubai, home of Earth’s Director.

This elicited an excited response from the crowd. Communication had been cut off years ago, and many attempts had been made to restore it. To finally achieve this goal would accelerate the rebuilding process by many years. As the room began to quiet down, Father Cameron continued to explain.

“For years, the Parents have been working effortlessly to restore communication among the official Sanctuaries. But as of recently, a new power has emerged in this world,” he said, referring to us. “The rules have changed, and this is something your forebearers have chosen to neglect. With your vast and diverse abilities, the possibilities are endless.”

We began to understand what he was talking about. I already knew of three Neogens who were telepathic in some form. And in this base alone there must’ve been many more. If their power was focused, they could act as a substitute for the broken technology that was preventing communication. The idea was brilliant, and somehow Father Cameron had achieved it.

He reached into his pocket and took out that same remote he used to lower the glass and turn on the lights our first day here. He pressed a button on the side of the device, and spoke into it.

“Michael, are they ready?”

He responded over the intercom system, “Just finished installing the radio. We’re ready.”

“Alright, you know the drill, find us a channel.”

The lights in the room flickered slightly, and we heard a distant humming. I assumed that whatever device Father Cameron had created required a fair amount of power. After a few moments, Michael attempted to make contact, his voice playing over the intercom.

“Hello. My name is Michael. I am transmitting this message from the United States. We are attempting to make contact with anyone in the capital Sanctuary in Dubai. Please respond.”

Besides some soft static, there was no response. Michael changed the frequency and tried again. And again. And again. But there was nothing but radio silence on all channels.

“My name is Michael, I am transmitting from…what? Damn, alright then. Sorry everyone,” he addressed us this time, “The telepaths need a break, we’ll try again later.”

“Is the radio intact?” Father Cameron asked.

“Yeah, radio’s fine and we have feedback. It’s a good sign, we won’t give up.”

The crowd slowly shrank as people left the room, disappointed but not disheartened. Eventually, even Father Cameron retreated to his study without saying a word. The next day, Michael tried again, but without success. The day after that wasn’t any different. The thing is, even if we didn’t make contact, we were right back where we started. But I couldn’t say we had nothing to lose. By revealing this project, Father Cameron had given these people hope, and to take that away at a time like this could be devastating. We were surrounded by Demons, and sooner or later we’d need to get out.

Though Michael didn’t stop transmitting in the following weeks, we eventually sank back into our normal routines. I wondered if the others ever got sick of training all day. They probably wondered the same thing about me and Cora working in the lab. I realized Mark was actually socializing the most out of all of us. His speech was becoming more and more human. He was using contractions, idioms, and humor. One day, I walked into one of the rec rooms to see him talking to some Neogens, among them being Jared, Rachel, and Raphael. I decided to ask him the question that had always caused him to crash. Maybe he’d have an answer for me this time.

“Hey Mark, I have a question for you.”

“Hopefully I’ll have an answer.”

“What is the meaning of life?”

“Whoa, so deep,” Jared remarked.

Mark paused, as he always did. Then in a monotone voice, he said, “I have no idea.”

Same error, but no crash this time. To me, that was progress.

“Don’t worry, man, none of us know either,” Raphael assured him.

“And, to be fair, I’m less than a year old,” Mark replied, much to everyone’s amusement.

I talked with them a while longer before returning to the lab, where Cora was focused on her code for one of the VRC simulations. I’d been working on a similar project of my own for some time now, but it was more about research than about creating.

“Made any progress?” she asked as I sat down.

“Well, I…” I did have a question, but was trying to figure out how to phrase it.

“OK, in the simulation, if the player class doesn’t interact at all with a myriad of these background loops, why are they even coded in?”

She thought for a moment before responding, “Isn’t it like how we can’t see most of the light spectrum? The waves are there, we just can’t see them.”

“The real world isn’t made for us. We evolved within it, so it’s reasonable that there are some aspects of it that we can’t see. But the sole purpose of a VR setting is to interact with the user, so why would it have features that neither add to the structure of the world, nor interact with the player? There are whole layers of data here and I have no idea what they do.”

“I’d tell you to ask the original programmer, but the template goes back to the core assembly code at the root of every VR program. And sadly, the person who created that is long dead.”

She hadn’t once looked away from the computer. I know she more than she was letting on, but my trust in the reason for her discretion was beginning to waver. Her secrets were becoming more and more concerning.

But once again, I decided not to push the issue, and went back to my own projects. After a couple hours of work, Cora and I headed to the VRC where we met some other Neogens and ran some simulations. This time we played a variant of capture the flag. No Demons, just old-fashioned strategy and physical training. From there it was off to bed. Such was our routine for the next few weeks. Every day in the early afternoon, we’d hear Michael on the intercom, sending his transmission. With each broadcast, this went from being an exciting event to irrelevant background noise. When the telepaths felt too tired, they would stop for the day.

I offered to take a look at the communication apparatus but Micah assured me that the Sanctuary’s best engineers were already working on it. Cora, having been one of the telepaths on occasion, described it as five Neogens wearing neural headsets, all connected to the base’s central transmission console. Prior to the supply run, multiple failed attempts caused a crash in a core component of this apparatus. Reprogrammed radios could perform the same function, and so they were used to replace the broken connections. With each failed use, radios eventually had to be replaced. The fact that our current radio was still intact was actually a positive sign. I’m sure the science behind it was much more complex, but I understood the general concept.

After about two months, we ran out of medicine. It wasn’t surprising that the few pills we got on our last supply run lasted this long. Neogens were an incredibly healthy generation. Most of us had illnesses when we were very young, but since around age 13, we rarely ever got sick. The medicine we did use was mostly for severe conditions; anything from food poisoning to training injuries. Running out of pills wasn’t too serious, but we’d need to take it easy until we came up with a plan to acquire more.

The transmission continued to play over the intercom. Most of us had lost hope that there would ever be a reply, but Father Cameron insisted we keep playing it. Stopping it would only confirm that we had given up, and that was not something he was prepared to do.

I had become a lot more comfortable in combat situations, thanks to the VRC. I wasn’t sure I’d be as focused facing a non-virtual Demon that could actually kill me, but at least out there I’d have my power. I was better at controlling time even under stressful situations. The other day, I asked Rachel to make a sharp arrow with her Orb and shoot it at me. The first time, it froze inches from my face before I stepped aside and let it pass. But after some practice, I could avoid a volley of her arrows, simply by stopping time and pushing them out of my way.

I was sure the others felt the same way about their abilities. But to me, there is something frustrating about having a talent but no practical way to use it. There was nothing real to fight, no important battle to win. In my eyes, we were trapped in this Sanctuary because most were too afraid to leave. Every Neogen here was trained in VRC combat, and on top of that had supernatural abilities. But few had ever faced actual Demons in the flesh, and after all, fighting the real thing without a safety net was a daunting endeavor.

One day, the six of us were in our room, debating our future plans. Me, Isaac, Cora, and Mark decided that it was best to stay in the Neogen Sanctuary until we knew our next move, since we didn’t really have anywhere to go. The others, however, felt trapped down here and were itching to leave.

“I wish they’d at least let us go out for a bit,” Rachel said. “I haven’t killed a Demon in ages.”

“The VRC isn’t enough?” Mark asked.

“It’s not real, sooner or later you have to realize that.”

“Real enough for me,” Cora muttered. “Some of us aren’t suicidal.”

The transmission to Dubai began playing over the intercom. After the first week, Michael had just recorded a message, and it played on a loop for as long as the telepaths could hold a connection. As usual, we thought nothing of it.

“I just feel so confined down here,” Aaron echoed Rachel’s frustration.

“Leave then,” Cora answered. “Get as much daylight as you can before you’re ripped apart by a Minotaur.”

“Seriously, where would we even go?” I asked.

“I don’t know, anywhere but this giant coffin,” Lynn grumbled.