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  “And you still have no contact with your men inside?” Taylor asked.

  “No sir and I’m getting worried. This shit just ain’t right!”

  “Set a sentry and a medic fifty feet from the perimeter of the debris field and get the rest of your men out of there. No one else goes in there until we hear back from your men.”

  “Yes sir, gladly.”

  “And when you get back here I want a full report along with all video footage and sensor readings. You’ll find me in the security office. Taylor out.”

  He sat back in the chair, wincing in pain as he did. His arm and shoulder screamed in pain and it was beginning to dominate his thinking. With great resolve, he pushed the pain back and turned the chair to another terminal. This was the tracking station, all employees and subjects had a tracking chip inserted in their arms as they first arrived, to keep an eye out for subterfuge and rogue soldiers. Leaning forward, he typed in the codes to bring up the chip registry and after a few moments perusing the list, he highlighted Subject Zero and 54’s tags to try and gather their location.

  The computer screen went dark as the cursor turned to the typical loading hour glass. It linked the security systems to military and commercial GPS satellites and after a few moments, it completed its task.

  “NO SIGNAL FOUND,” the screen read.

  Taylor pounded the table with his fist, sending a wave of pain through his opposite injured arm causing him to regret the outburst of anger. Logical thinking calmed him down as he remembered the blast from the morgue produced the largest EMP ever unleashed on the planet and his mind began to race. He typed in the codes for himself and several other soldiers whose locations he knew and waited for the results.

  “NO SIGNAL FOUND.”

  Obviously, the wave shorted out all the chips and possibly most of the security equipment they had on hand. It was only by chance that the blast had occurred in the early morning hours and most systems were powered down, thus saving their circuits from being fried.

  Taylor was frustrated; between the haze of the painkillers and the situation at hand, he was finding it nearly impossible to focus. Leaning back on his chair, he closed his eyes in an attempt to better concentrate. Instead, all the factors leading him to this point swallowed him as he quickly fell asleep.

  A knock at the door roused him from his slumber. “Sir?” A young female private waited in the doorway.

  Taylor quickly sat up and noticed that he had been asleep for five hours. He was angry at himself for his lack of control; these were five hours of precious time he wouldn’t be able to recover!

  “Yes, Private, how can I help you?”

  “Message from Dr. Goodwyn, Major Phillips is out of surgery now and is in the recovery room. He asked me to tell you that they saved Emily’s legs and that she’ll have full use of them after a lengthy rehab.”

  Taylor exhaled a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “Thank you, private. Is there anything else?”

  “No sir.” She responded before snapping a salute and moving on.

  Emily. He hadn’t even known that was her first name. All these years of working closely with her and all he ever knew her as was Phillips. Taylor felt embarrassed; such a devoted, wonderful soldier had followed his vision blindly and he never bothered to learn her first name! Well, he’d do right by her now. Opening his personal terminal, he typed in medical transfer orders to the top medical facility in the armed forces as soon as she was stable enough to be moved. On top, he submitted her for multiple recommendations for promotion as well as the ability to choose her station anywhere in the Air Force once recovered. Silently he hoped she would return here, but he doubted she’d ever fully recover from this.

  Finding himself at an emotional moment, Taylor sent the orders and quickly turned his terminal off. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself before returning to reviewing the footage from around the building. He decided to bring up stored footage of the blast and anything that might be useful to answering the question of what happened. It wouldn’t be long until his superiors were calling demanding answers and he was racing against time to find some.

  Then his eyes caught something on the ICU camera; Subject Zero sitting up on her own and staring out the window, just before the blast! The images went blurry and to static before the camera came back into focus a few minutes later; this time from a different vantage point. No longer mounted to the ceiling, the camera now resumed filming from the floor and several feet from where it once hung. Coming into focus was a body covered in rubble and the alien still sitting up in the cot. For a moment, he watched as another figure; a male, entered the frame—before the camera went completely dead.

  Slowly leaning back on his chair as to avoid causing himself more pain, Taylor rewound the footage to just after the explosion. The body on the floor he recognized immediately, it was Phillips—but she had been found on the floor free of any debris, knocked unconscious. The footage, now playing on a loop, showed the Major awake and moving while still covered nearly completely in concrete.

  Taylor wheeled his chair back to his personal terminal and amended his orders of Phillips transfer. Now she was to be held until he could question her. Something had happened that she’d held witness to and he would get at least a few answers!

  Himalayan Mountains, Mount Kailash, Tibet

  Inside the great temple, Aaron stood amazed. In here, it seemed to be brighter than out in the mountain sun. Natural light streamed in from all angles and seemed to be amplified, but Aaron couldn’t remember seeing any windows or skylights built into the structure as they descended the crater. At the center of the room, was a two story statue of a robed woman standing with her arms outstretched in invitation for embrace. The statue was flawless crystal and Aaron moved forward to examine it further. There were no tool marks whatsoever! Stepping back and looking up, he could see the inherit beauty of the woman; he sultry smile and amazing body. Her face bore a resemblance to the woman in his vision; obviously one of the same race.

  “She is the Queen of Heaven; the Empress of the Lyarran Empire. She has lived and ruled for over ten thousand years, and continues to be the light that guides her people.”

  “So this is the future ruler of mankind?” Aaron sarcastically spoke.

  “To rule the Earth isn’t the intent of the Empire, only to have the experience and wisdom of humanity to be a part of the rest of the Grand Council. To dominate and rule outright is not their way.” Nyun replied with impatience.

  “Good to know,” Aaron said in a hushed tone, realizing that his entrance had turned all eyes in the temple to him. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the order didn’t make this statue?”

  “No, once again this temple and all in it was a gift from those of the Empire; those who came to us thousands of years ago. They brought wisdom and kindness as gifts, and we received them as Gods. It took many years for them to convince us of the truth, that they were not gods but beings from far away.” Nyun led him around the statue and to a set of stairs leading down. “Below are their chambers; their personal rooms in which we do not intrude. Your answers lie there.”

  “You aren’t coming down?”

  “I shall wait here, meditating until you return. Thus is our way, that we leave them to their own devices and respect their privacy. No human has set foot in the chambers below in the entire temple’s history. This is an extension of the Empress herself, and we must adhere to their laws.”

  “Ok,” Aaron slowly walked down the stone steps, stopping at the last one. “Guess if I don’t come back you won’t come looking for me, huh?”

  “You have quite the defense mechanism with your sarcasm, don’t you?” Nyun shot back. “Trust in Lyarra, nothing beyond that door will harm you.”

  Taking a deep breath, Aaron stepped forward and the door simply melted away, granting him access to the lower chambers. When ins
ide, the door reshaped itself, sealing him in and his eyes began to adjust to the lower lighting. There was nothing inside except for him! The room was the size of a walk in closet and was void of anything remotely close to a door or any other exit. Then, the walls began to glow brightly and he felt a warmth run inside and around his body. Everything went white and when the glow died down, he was in a massive domed room filled with technology far beyond the reaches of humanity. It occurred to him that he had been transported somewhere else; the fact that no human had been here was the result of a clever screening mechanism that only allowed the alien DNA to be sent here! The silence of the room was broken by systems powering up from their long slumber; it was obvious that the room knew he was here! He heard a whirring sound followed by a clink of a metal clasp letting go. Then a mechanical voice that made him nearly jump out of his skin.

  “Ah, the Harbinger! Good, we’ve been expecting you!”

  Rocky Mountains, Utah –

  Military Installation Code Named White Rock

  The research and development lab had become a literal hive of activity in the days since the “incident.” Army engineers had shown up to repair the battered building after going through rigorous security clearances, and Patterson and his “cleaners” had arrived from Area 51 to help get the project back on track. In fact, General Marcus Patterson had put Taylor on temporary leave as to properly recover from his injuries and taken interim command of all operations.

  Setting up his office in the conference room on the third floor, he had ten or twelve different laptops connected to different aspects of the building’s control systems. Being old school, the General liked paper reports and had a multitude of them scattered around the fifteen foot table. Patterson was closing in on seventy years old, but showed no signs of slowing down. He was as fit as most soldiers and could probably outlast the majority of them in an endurance run. He stood a hair over six feet tall with brown eyes and grey hair cropped in a short crew cut along with his grey, neatly trimmed beard. He had an aura of invincibility about him, one that the staff rallied around as he took command of the project. He was a contrast from Taylor’s style of direct involvement; General Patterson told you what he needed of you and gave you the freedom to do it yourself. He spent the majority of his time updating himself on the last few months of the project; not that he was in the dark about it, but he wanted to know all the small details. It was in these reports that he now saw where things went wrong.

  After years of directly injecting the DNA from Subject Zero into patients and having them expire, he saw the change in direction to finding a surrogate host to survive the bonding process. Although it was a few years too late, Patterson would have made the same call too.

  Then there was the fusion of DNA in Subject 54 and his subsequent transition into the proverbial cash cow. This is where Patterson saw the flaws in logic. The lab should have insisted on finding more subjects with genetic similarities to 54 and used this subject pool to create the ‘super-soldiers’ the project was mandated to create. Instead, they used the combined DNA of Subject 54 to infuse a less superior pool of men to produce the desired result. The results of the new soldiers had been impressive though, and the General had asked for a few minor missions to put them through their paces.

  After that misguided step, the most disturbing mistake was made—letting Subject 54 die. They chose to milk him for any usable DNA they could and watched as he expired instead of looking at why he was dying! In the General’s opinion, you didn’t let your purebred stallion go to pasture when all you had in your stables was a bunch of mixed breed colts. Then, they pronounced him dead without proper testing and discarded him in the back corner of the morgue without a second thought. When 54 rose from the dead, his outburst of power proved that Taylor misjudged what he had created.

  But to Patterson, he saw the purebred stallion that the project had originally been asked to produce, but this one now ran unbridled and free. Now came a newer mandate of the project; to locate and capture their prize horse and break him for military use. This is why he had accelerated the training schedule of the newly named Omega team; the ten resulting products of the projects mandate. They were to enter live-fire situations and if completed properly, Patterson would turn them loose like bloodhounds to find their father; so to speak. But first, they had to survive the slate of missions they had been assigned.

  A knock at the door let him take a break from his concentration. “Enter.” He barked forcefully.

  The young female private entered sheepishly and snapped to attention. “You asked to be made aware when Major Phillips was awake and alert, sir. She has been conscious for about the last half-hour.”

  Patterson looked back down at the reports one more time before returning his gaze to her. “What’s your name, Miss? I don’t believe I’ve met you yet.”

  “Private Susan Davis, sir! I was assigned last year to the office staff to run and analyze reports.”

  “So these are your handiwork then?” he said, waving the reports in his hand in her direction. “Excellent work, but I think your talents are being wasted in the office pool. How does becoming my personal assistant sound, dear? I need a capable mind with me to help me through this shitstorm. Comes with sergeant stripes.”

  Davis blushed and re-snapped her salute. “It would be my honor to work with someone of your stature, sir.”

  “Good,” Patterson said, tossing the papers into one of the piles. “Now lead the way to the Major. She’s got some questions to answer.” He motioned for her to lead and took pace right on her heels as she led him down to the new infirmary. Happy he had a new ally here as he realized he was a big dog in another dog’s pack. The two walked in silence to the elevator as Sergeant Davis pushed the button for sub level two, letting the door close as they went to ask some dire questions to a seriously injured career soldier.

  Himalayan Mountains, Mount Kailash, Tibet

  A bright orange ball of light appeared a couple feet in front of him and floated at eye level. As it spoke its greeting, the color shifted to yellow and red, returning to orange when finishing. Never in his life had Aaron witnessed something this bizarre and wondrous at the same time and he stood dumbfounded as it addressed him once again.

  “I was informed that the changes to your physique did not affect your vocal chords; should I do a full diagnostic on your systems to see what is causing your inability to respond?” the ball of light shimmered as it spoke.

  “That…..that won’t be necessary.” Aaron stammered. “I think this was just the final straw that left me speechless.”

  “I still have issues with the constantly shifting slang your kind uses, but I assume this means you are just surprised by my form. I must excuse my rudeness; I know you all too well, but you do not know who I am.” The projection rambled. “I am Caretaker; an artificial intelligence created to run this facility and left to prepare you for your trials.”

  “Ok,” replied Aaron, still wary of this thing. “We’re all best friends here—now what?” He looked about the room to study it, taking his eyes momentarily off the thing in front of him. The floor looked like glass; a polished deep blue that was speckled with splashes of color and bright white flecks. Stepping back, he took a second look and realized that the floor was a representation of the galaxy, and it was moving!

  “A live representation of our home galaxy as data pours in from our probes scattered throughout; give or take a few milliseconds of delay.” the Caretaker commented as it noticed where his attention had shifted.

  “Impressive.” Aaron muttered.

  “Not really,” it continued. “To be impressive it would be a three dimensional layout able to be manipulated through gestures or voice commands. This is just for pure aesthetics. Hardly impressive if you ask me.”

  Realizing this program had a bit of a perfectionist streak, Aaron simply nodded in agreement and explored the room in further detail. Th
e walls were mostly metallic and covered in computer interface terminals along with view screens and the roof looked impossibly high as it seemingly towered above them. In the center of the room was a chair, bathed in a bright blue glow and surrounded by holographic computer interfaces. To the ordinary person, this looked the part of a war room.

  “Now that we have the pleasantries over with, perhaps we can get to the tasks ahead of us, Harbinger.”

  “I came here with a woman but I don’t remember what happened to her. Where is she?”

  “Ah, poor Ameia. She is in the medical wing, in a cryo storage tank, as she awaits her return home for her body to be received to the afterlife. Getting you here took everything she had left to give, and now she is no more.”

  “So I am alone again? I guess it will always be that way now.”

  “At first, it would seem that you have lost it all because of your people’s psychological frailty. But in truth, you have awakened as possibly the most influential being in the cosmos. The power you will wield—both physical and political—will be immense and will forever alter the future of the human race.”

  Aaron’s anger finally boiled over. “I am sick of being told about this fantastic destiny, this gift of leading the way to a great future! I didn’t ask for this shit, nor do I want it! I want my family back! To hold my wife and daughter again, to enjoy the life I had forged out for myself! Destiny can go fuck itself!”

  “And how do you think they would accept you now? There is not much left recognizable as Aaron Foster. Now you are the Harbinger; now you are more than you were before so you must accept the facts as they are and stop dwelling in the past,” the program responded coldly to his rant.

  Peering into the reflection of a powered down monitor, Aaron looked at his face—much like he’d done in the reflection of the lake in his vision—and stared at the creature looking back at him. As much as it bothered him, the Caretaker was right; how could he go back to them now? His gaze went from the reflection to taking in the changes on his body, all of which were consistent with what was shown to him in the vision. Aaron Foster was gone, but he didn’t know what he was anymore.