Wasteland Rules: A New Dawn (The World After Book 3) (9 page)

September 7, 2029

Collective Base hidden in Alaska

   He opened his eyes and the light flooded in. It took a
minute to adjust to the bright lights as it was an unfamiliar sensation. He couldn’t
pinpoint exactly why, but it felt like forever since he had looked out with his
own eyes. When his eyes had adjusted he looked around and saw that he was in a
small room with bare concrete walls and filled with computer equipment. The
only sounds were the whir of cooling fans and the air conditioning. Where was
he? Who was he?

   Looking down at his hands he was startled to see they
were made of overlapping bands of metal. His arms were metal too! Examining
himself further he could see that his body parts made of solid metal with
articulated joints that allowed greater than human dexterity. Even his head was
made of metal. What was going on here?

  As he examined his feet he realized he was lying in a
standing position on a reclined metal bed suspended from the ceiling. When he
moved to get off, he felt plugs disconnect from the back of his neck. Once he
was off, the bed retracted into the ceiling. He moved over to the computer
equipment. Maybe something here could provide a clue to who he was and where he
was. There was no keyboard, but when he reached for the work station a tendril
shot out from his right index finger and plugged itself into a USB port.

   Data flooded into his brain and images and information
flashed at an incredible pace before his eyes. Some of it was fragmented, as if
the data was corrupted or not all there. There seemed to be some gaps in what
were apparently memories and sometimes he couldn’t place who or where the
memories involved. There was a man playing with children. There was the same
man receiving awards. Then the same man dying of cancer and then being reborn.

   Awareness returned in a startling blast of information.
He was Father, the founder of the Collective and its leader until certain
traitors had tried to destroy him. Derek Storm, his accomplice Rora Carter, and
the treacherous Humek, Bob, had succeeded in destroying Olympus and killing the
LINC in the process. They thought they had killed him by erasing his
consciousness, but he had prepared a backup plan in case of that contingency.
Unfortunately, it looked like the download was not complete.

   He had built a backup facility for his electronic brain.
The data was downloaded every month at random times and intervals to prevent
any detection of the facility. Not just from enemies outside the Collective,
but also from any traitors who might want to supplant him. He had had this
android body built in secret to house his consciousness if he ever chose to
return to human form and walk the Earth again. Father had never anticipated
that happening, but life was apparently full of surprises. That actually made
him smile internally, since his face was more or less frozen.

   The eye lids and mouth moved, but they were not capable
of mimicking human emotions or expressions.  The android was cutting edge, with
a micro fusion reactor provided an indefinite and powerful power supply, and it
had taken several failed tries before getting to this stage; but it still had
its limitations. Built from titanium alloy it was capable of sustaining massive
damage before being rendered inoperable and it had self-repair ability built
in, but it was still a robot. A very advanced robot, probably the most advanced
robot ever made, but still a robot.

   It had been a while since Father had experienced things
first hand; the LINC had provided him with the input from all of the
Collective’s stimuli. He hadn’t realized that he missed the sensations from
actually experiencing things. The auditory and visual receptors, olfactory
sensors, tactile feelers, and chemical analyzers weren’t as fine-tuned as a
human being’s; but they were very close. It was the most alive he had felt in
years. Perhaps this would prove to be a blessing in disguise. Maybe he had
become too distant from the real world, too disconnected?

    The LINC had provided an incredible amount of data and
had allowed him to be connected to everything at all times, but it had been
sterile. While he felt alone without the constant connection to his children,
he realized that the LINC had been a poor substitute for real contact. He
needed to leave here and reconnect with his children. They had been left all
alone without guidance when the traitors had destroyed the LINC. They needed
him.

   Father turned to leave and the door hissed open without
being touched. He ran a diagnostic and realized he had wireless access to every
device within one thousand meters. Using that, he pinpointed his location as
deep inside the mountains northwest of Juneau, Alaska. Not too far from the
Collective’s headquarters in Seattle, but remote enough that no one would
discover the facility by accident. He used the elevator to exit the facility
and found himself high up on a mountainside. The view was impressive. Snow and
ice covered everything for miles, and with his enhanced vision he could see all
of it.

   Activating his built in jet pack; Father blasted off and
flew towards Seattle. His flight path took him over Juneau and the city was
breathtaking in its beauty. The entire city was coated in a thick layer of ice
which sparkled in the fading sunlight. The city’s population had been virtually
wiped out during the Aftermath when the weather had suddenly shifted. Vicious
storms had battered the coastal regions of Alaska and left almost everything
coated in a thick layer of ice that never melted. The temperatures occasionally
got hot enough to melt some of the snow, but never all of the ice. He could
still detect some electronic signals coming from devices running on batteries,
so it was possible people still lived there, but it was highly unlikely.

   When he was still connected to the LINC, he could have
accessed a satellite to scan for heat signatures; but the traitors took that
ability from him. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. They had
destroyed his life’s work, killed his children, and nearly erased him from
existence. Once he had control of his network back, he would use it to take his
revenge. They would pay for their treachery.

   He was on the periphery of Collective territory north of
Vancouver when Father detected the first incoming UAVs. His sensors showed six
Apex Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs on an intercept course with him.
They did not respond to his attempts to communicate and their formation
indicated hostile intent. This was concerning, why would they be attacking him?
Even though he couldn’t control them remotely at this distance, they should
still be reading his IFF transponder and marking him as friendly.

   The Apex Predator was a modification of the Predator UAV
that the U.S. government had been using prior to the Collapse. The Collective
had modified it to have air to air armament, limited countermeasures, and
better sensors. A small “brain” had been added so the UAV had some autonomy and
did not always need to be flown by a person. It was the backbone of the
Collective air force.

   Warning signs flashed before his eyes as the UAVs locked
onto him. Moments later missiles launched from under their wings and raced
towards him. He registered them as advanced Sidewinder air to air missiles that
used radar and infrared to attack their target. Instinctively he triggered
jamming to disable the radar and prepared to launch mini flares to confuse the
infrared. The missiles were unlikely to do any real damage to his new body, but
why take a chance. He hadn’t believed anyone could reach Olympus and destroy
the LINC either.

   The missiles flew closer and closer until they were only
several hundred yards away. Only then did he launch the mini flares. They fired
out of his back in a brilliant pyrotechnic display. Confused by the jamming and
flares, none of the missiles scored a direct hit. He flew through the
explosions and debris and confronted the Apex Predators head on. Using pulse
blasters built into his arms Father fired glowing bolts of plasma from his
hands and blasted the UAVs to bits as he flew by.

   Angry that they had dared to attack him, Father
accelerated towards Seattle. He was anxious to see what had happened in his
absence. For the first time he realized he wasn’t exactly sure how long it had
been since the station had been destroyed. Things may have changed dramatically
during that time. Who was now in control of the Collective? What had they done
with his children? A thought struck him and he stopped flying.

   Hovering in midair high above the mountains he pondered
his current course of action. He had no idea who was in control of the
Collective and the UAVs that had attacked were just standard air combat
versions used to keep other factions, like the U.S.T.G., away. There were
plenty of more powerful weapons in the Collective arsenal, many with the
ability to damage or destroy him; especially if they attacked en masse. While
he had handled the UAVs easily, that would not be the case as he got closer to
the Collective headquarters in Seattle.

   He needed to know more about the situation before he
blindly flew into the heart of the Collective. With that decided Father scanned
the area for the wreckage of the drones. His sensors picked out a large piece
of the “cockpit” of one of them. Dropping down he plugged into the brain of the
UAV and attempted to access the network it had run on.

   Surprisingly he was unable to gain anything more than low
level surface access. The network was very different from the LINC and had a
more traditional structure. It was using incredibly high level encryption that
seemed to shift as he tried to break it. Whoever had designed it was certainly
a genius and was possibly in control themselves. What made it interesting was
that this kind of dynamic encryption would have taken years to develop and
Father was unaware of any such project. That implied that the designer had been
working on it in secret in preparation for such an occurrence.

   It angered him greatly that more of his children had been
planning to betray him. He had provided a better world and a vision that gave
them all purpose. Their betrayal hurt him deeply and he struggled with the
emotions. He had tried to rise above such weaknesses of the human condition. He
had thought that removing emotion from his decision making gave him better
perspective and made him more fair minded. But maybe the emotions could be
utilized as a strength to drive him back to the top of the mountain.  

   Looking down he realized that in his anger he had crushed
the drone remnant into powder. That was alright, he had what he needed. He knew
the date and how long he had been out, over three months. That’s how long it
had taken for his memory to be rebuilt and the android backup activated. Things
had changed a lot in that short time. But it appeared that those changes had
been coming all along. His demise had merely hastened them.

   He realized that he needed to build his own army before
he could retake his empire. The new system was using control towers to maintain
the network. All members of the Collective had to be within ten miles of a
tower to be under their control. And an alert has just passed through the
system that the tower near Boise, Idaho had failed.

   He would go there and take control of the forces there
before they could come back within the reaches of the network. Using those
forces he could launch attacks on other towers and begin to regain control.
Father launched himself back into the air and rocketed towards Boise. A series
of sonic booms followed as he broke the sound barrier in his haste. There was
no time to waste; the king must regain his crown.

September 4, 2029

Near Lamar, Colorado

   The helicopter touched down in the center of the
abandoned village that had been Rora’s home for many years. She and Derek
jumped out, followed by three soldiers sent with them by Augie to provide
security. Derek had been insulted that he needed protection, but Augie had
pointed out that someone needed to guard the chopper. That had mollified Derek;
so while they entered Rora’s old house the three soldiers had taken up
positions in the village overlooking the chopper. They would keep an eye out
while Derek and Rora investigated the lab Rora claimed was hidden under the
village.

   It had been a long flight to get there. The helicopter
had been rigged with extra fuel tanks to extend its range, but they had still
been forced to stop and refuel once at a secret Society supply cache. Rora had
asked Augie about the supply cache’s existence and if there were others, but he
remained as close lipped as always. She had spent the previous few months
trying to discover as much about the Society as possible.

    In the time it had taken them to discover Derek’s
location, she had learned many things about the Society. Not all of them were
good. Many of the lower level people trusted her enough to give her small
pieces of information, but nothing big. And the leadership was very good at
being secretive. They had been forced to be to survive this long. So she still
didn’t really know their true nature and what their real agenda was.

    During the flight, Derek had asked her what had happened
during the three months he was out. She had told him pretty much everything,
but it wasn’t much. She had spent much of the time working out and training
with the soldiers at NASA. Being without Derek had made her realize that even
though she had handled herself well, she needed to be even better and tougher.
She wasn’t always going to have him to lean on.

    As for world events, she didn’t know too much. But she
had heard that Augie had made contact with some of their agents around the
world and that the rest of the world was in bad shape. Ethnic cleansing in Europe,
tribal warfare in Africa, and cannibalism in South America. Some places had
governments in control, like the Neo-Soviet Empire that ruled parts of Eastern
Europe and the remnants of Russia. But most of it was lawless and out of
control.

    They exited the chopper and Rora led the way as she and
Derek entered the house. She gave a brief sigh as she moved through the house.
A picture of her father reminded her of how life had been before the slavers
had attacked and captured them. The simple life she had led before they had
killed her father during the rescue. Before Derek had snatched her up and led
her on a wild ride across the country and into space. Derek gave her space as
she stood for a moment considering a photo of her playing with her father.

    She shook her head and moved on. That life was gone, and
had been replaced with a new one; one with a greater purpose.  That needed to
be her focus now, she needed to let go of any hold her former life had on her
to see her quest succeed. It was what she had been born to do. It was in her
DNA.

    She walked into the house’s storage room, a small room
with no windows. Derek watched in amazement as the floor slid open to reveal a
set of stairs leading downward. He had assumed that the house had been built on
a slab because there was no stairwell leading to basement. In fact, the lab had
been constructed first and then the houses built over it. The contractors her
father and his partners used had worked for the government for years building
black sites and were very good at keeping quiet. According to her father, they
had all perished during the Collapse and the Aftermath. All knowledge of the
hidden lab had died with them leaving it a perfect place to hide.

   Unfortunately, the slaver attack had taken them all by
surprise and they had been unable to hide in the lab. Standard protocol was to
only hide there if no one knew you were in the house in the first place. The
logic being that someone who was there and then not there would prompt an
intensive search of the house and the secret entrance would probably be
located. To that end, the entrances went into lockdown for a period of twelve
hours when an alert was sounded. Her father had placed more value in the
security of the lab and its contents than their lives. That had proved fatal
for everyone but her.

   “That is incredible.” Derek said as the floor slid open.
“I would never have even thought to look for it.”

   “The lab was built using the utmost secrecy and caution.”
Rora told him. “It went into lockdown during the attack but it’s been so long
the lockout ended.”

   “How did you open it, I didn’t see you do anything?”
Derek asked with curiosity.

   “It detected my presence, and the system recognized me so
it opened the entrance. There is a handprint and eyeball scanner below at the
actual door. There are also sensors that read a person’s vitals, like heart
rate, and if the system determines the person is under duress it will not open
the door.” Rora informed him. “The doors are made of tungsten and are completely
impenetrable. The whole lab is encased in thirty five feet of reinforced
concrete, so even if you dug down you would have extreme difficulty getting
in.”

   “Pretty sophisticated and intense security. What is
inside that is so valuable?”

   “My father’s work. He believed his project would save the
entire world. The work itself was deemed greater than any collection of human
lives. As you saw, he was prepared to die for it.” Rora said sadly.

   “And all the other villagers were part of it?”

   “Yes, that’s why they all fought so we could escape. They
wanted to make sure someone survived to carry on their work.”

  “That’s some serious commitment right there. Not many
people are willing to die for something greater than themselves.” Derek pointed
out. “But why didn’t you all just hide in the lab when the slavers came?”

   “They caught us by surprise and we couldn’t get into the
lab before the attack started. The lab locked down and then we couldn’t get in
and we were forced to fight.” Rora explained.

   “Didn’t you have sensors to detect incoming threats?”
Derek asked. “I would have assumed that was part of the security.”

   “It was, but the sensors were offline at the time of the
attack. I have no idea why.” Rora replied.

   “Could it have been sabotage?”

   “It’s possible, but all the partners were longtime
friends of my father’s and were all very committed. So I find that hard to
believe.” Rora answered slowly.

   “Was anyone not captured by the slavers?” Derek pressed.

   “No, everyone was there.”

   “Huh.” Derek said, mystified. “I suppose it could have
been a coincidence.”

   “Let’s not focus on the past. We need to find my father’s
notes and where he hid the vault.” Rora said with determination.

    “I’m with you.” Derek agreed.

    Rora descended the stairs and faced the scanners at the
bottom. They scanned her eyes and her handprint and presumably her vitals.
Everything must have checked out because the door slid open with a hiss
revealing a large open room beyond. She entered and Derek followed, the door
sliding shut behind him. Lights came on as they entered, demonstrating that the
power was still working. It should be, her father had used a prototype of a
fusion reactor to provide the power. Everything looked undisturbed from the day
they had been taken.

   The lab was split in several sections, all of which were
connected to the main room. The entrances from all of the houses led into the
main room as well. It was the common area for all of the scientists and
technicians and housed generic work stations, shared equipment, and a break
area. The offices for each of the scientists were along one wall and had glass
walls allowing them look out into the common area. There were four other
sections focused on various parts of the research, including a genetics lab
with sequencers and cold storage.

   He looked around in awe as she moved to her father’s
office. This was nothing new to her; she had grown up amongst the computers and
scientific equipment. Rora went to her father’s work station and activated it
as Derek slowly roamed the lab poking his nose in everything. She easily
guessed his password and pin, her name and her birthday. Her father might have
been a genius, but he wasn’t particularly imaginative. She was happy to see that
all of his files were intact. There had been a possibility that part of the
lockdown protocol had been to wipe the servers.

   She downloaded the files she needed to a flash drive and
quickly scanned the remaining files for anything of interest. She was aware of
everything her father and his partners had been working on, but it was possible
they had pet projects that could be of use. Nothing much caught her eye until
she saw a file of her father’s labeled “For Rora In Case of Death”. It looked
like a video file and it was dated over a year prior to his death.

  “Derek!” She called. “I found something, come look.”

   “What is it?” he asked as he entered the office.

    “A video file my father left for me.”

   She double clicked on the file and a video popped up onto
the monitor. Her father appeared; he was sitting at this work station based on
the angle and the background. She could see the others moving around through
his glass wall, but couldn’t hear them since the office door was shut. He
looked tired, but he had always looked that way; he had worked too hard. The
project had become his life.

   “Rora, if you are seeing this then I am either dead or
you have hacked into my system.” Her father began. “If I’m not dead, then stop
watching now.”

   There was a pause as he waited for her to possibly stop
watching. “If you are still watching then I am dead. No need to mourn me, I was
living on borrowed time and I am grateful for all the time I did get to spend
with you.” He continued. “If I am dead then there is little time to waste. I
need to tell you a few things that I kept from you and then you will need to
complete my work. I was less than honest with you about a few things. For that
I apologize, but I wanted you to have as normal an adolescence as possible…You
are not my true biological daughter. You are a genetically engineered life form
that used some of my DNA as the blueprint.”

   There was another pause as he waited for that to sink in.
“That explains a lot.” Derek murmured.

   Rora ignored that and focused on the screen. Her father
was continuing to speak to her. “You are the first one we could get to live
beyond infancy. I’m not sure what the flaw in the others was, but you somehow
survived. We stopped making more because of the toll their deaths was taking on
us emotionally. You were engineered to be ‘perfect’; you will not get sick and
you are not allergic to anything. Theoretically your body will be almost
unaffected by the effects of aging. You are not immortal, but we tried to
remove all the imperfections in your DNA. You are possibly the next step in
human evolution. But don’t let that go to your head. You are also the shepherd
to guide the rest of humanity into a new age. Your full name, Aurora, means
‘New Dawn’ in Greek. You must recover the ark and begin the rebirth of the
world. Everything you need is in a vault at the Maximus Casino in Las Vegas.
Good luck. I’m counting on you to usher in a new dawn for the Earth.”

   With that the video went blank for a second before
flashing up a series of alphanumeric characters on the screen. They were gone
in less than a second and then the file erased itself. As soon as the file was
deleted, the system began to shut down. The servers were methodically erased
and they heard a sizzling noise from the server room as the monitor went dark.

   “That’s it?” Derek asked. “That was pretty cryptic.”

   “I downloaded some files before we watched the video.”
Rora told him. “I have what we were looking for. We need to go to Vegas.”

   “How about a little more detail than that for us non
perfect people?” Derek joked.

   Rora smiled. “Okay, I’ll go slow so you can keep up.” She
shot back. “My father worked on Project Noah for the government prior to the
Collapse. It involved a creation of an ark to provide a resource for the
recreation of all plant and animal life in case of an apocalyptic event.”

   “An ark? Like in the Bible?” Derek asked in confusion.

   “No, A..R..K. It stands for Agricultural Recovery
Keeper.” Rora explained. “The government felt that the current Doomsday vaults
were not secure enough, and that turned out to be true, so they wanted
something more advanced and more secure. Genetic samples of every animal and
plant were stored in a more secure and remote location. Fake sites were set up
all over the country to confuse anyone who might search for it. Only a handful
of people were even aware of the project. All of them except my father are
believed to have been killed during the Collapse and the Aftermath, leaving my
father as the only person aware of its location.”

   “Which is where exactly?”

   “I don’t know. The answers are in the casino’s vault. I
assume my father kept the information separate for security reasons. He was
very paranoid that the Collective or the U.S.T.G. would get a hold of the ARK. The
data I downloaded was reference material on how to use the genetic samples to
recreate life; but it didn’t contain any details on the project.”

   “What about them?” Derek asked pointing to a group
picture on the desk in the office next to an old phonograph machine.

   “As far as I know, none of them were involved in Project
Noah, and I doubt my father would have told them about it.”

   “Wait a minute…” Derek said as he grabbed the photo for a
closer look. “Is there a magnifying glass in here?”