Shades of Earth

My hands are clenched into fists so hard that I can feel the nails of my fingers cutting the skin on my palms. I’d do anything not to be miles above Centauri-Earth, trapped in space, unable to save her.

“But . . . the Phydus . . .”

“That’s really all you can say, Amy? I expected better of you. But no, as you can see, I’m one of the few that isn’t affected by what you call Phydus.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Genetic defect. The compound they gave to my people genetically modified the adrenal and pituitary glands. Instead of a ‘fight or flight’ option, my people are programmed to ‘accept and obey.’ Lucky for me, my adrenal gland is broken. Makes more adrenaline than Phydus. After a few generations of being mindless Phydus-controlled freaks, my ancestors started to mutate.”

“Are there others like you?” Amy asks. “I mean, others who aren’t affected by Phydus?” She keeps her voice very calm—unnaturally so. It’s not hard for me to imagine how much that placid voice is costing her. It reminds me of the lightning in the storm—the thunder was loud and terrifying, but it was the silent lightning that broke through the dark sky.

I am waiting for her lightning to strike.

“Dozens,” Chris says, and even though he’s speaking miles below me, I can hear the sneer in his voice. “The ones the FRX hasn’t found and killed. You met a bunch of us earlier tonight. They call us rogue hybrids, the ones that have the genetic modification but aren’t under their control. And they’ve been trying their best to kill us off for years.”

“Why?” Amy’s only speaking in short quick words. I wonder if she’s trapped or worse, if Chris is hurting her.

“Don’t you see? Those monsters you’ve been so worried about. Not aliens. People. The monsters have always been people.”

She is silent for a long time, absorbing this information. I unclench my fists, my knuckles cracking, but that doesn’t stop my hands from shaking.

“That’s not an explanation,” Amy replies.

“Why does any master hate a slave that won’t work? We’ve been sabotaging the shipments, destroying whatever equipment we can.”

The screen on my console lights up. Amy’s kept the communication link between the auto-shuttle and the compound open, probably hoping that I can see what’s going on. I know better than to try to talk—there’s nothing I can do here. I can only listen as Amy does her best to show me what’s happening on her end.

“I thought you were different.” Chris’s voice is so soft I almost don’t catch his words.

Amy’s voice, however, is loud. And angry. “Get away from me,” she shouts. I taste blood—I’ve been biting my lip so hard I didn’t notice I’d broken the skin. If Chris touches her . . . if he hurts her. . . .

The menus on the console scroll quickly. This must be Chris’s work. The screen stops at Security Feed: Compound, then a recorded video showing the outside of the communication building at the compound starts playing. It quickly reverses—I see Amy and Chris running—from what?—then a night goes by. The auto-shuttle launch. Me, Amy, and Chris with the glass cube, sneaking inside. Military. Amy and I discovering the compound. Military. Military. And then—Chris.

The video stops rewinding as Chris hits play, showing Amy what happened. In the vid, Chris is not wearing any of the military clothes I’ve seen him in; he’s dressed in a dark, camouflage uniform, one that looks vaguely like green skin. He tries to get into the communication building. He presses his thumb across the biometric scanner. Instead of flashing HUMAN, it shows a warning light and the words ACCESS DENIED.

The Chris on the screen hits the door with his fist—and a sound that bursts over the intercom tells me that Chris has hit something in the compound, something metallic and hard. If he dares to hit Amy . . .

“But . . . you’re human,” Amy says, but it doesn’t sound as if she believes the lie she’s speaking.

“Not according to them.” Chris spits out the word. “They genetically altered us. We’re hybrids, no longer fully human.”

“Why?” Amy asks. I think she’s trying to distract Chris, calm him down, temper the vitriol in his voice. “Why would the FRX mess with your genetic code . . . ? There’s no real risk of solar radiation, right? And they could just control you with Phydus.” She pauses. “Not that I approve of Phydus. But they didn’t need to make you something . . . other than human.”

I notice Amy’s choice of words, but I don’t think Chris has. Amy didn’t say the FRX made the hybrids less human, just other than.

“They wanted to make efficient workers, so they enhanced our bodies. But that’s not all,” Chris says bitterly. He sounds louder now; he must be closer to the intercom than before. “They did it so that we don’t technically count as human anymore. At least, not according to them. It helps them sleep at night, I think, to believe that their slaves aren’t people.”

I don’t want to think it, but I do: would the FRX classify me as less than human too, just because I’m a clone?

There’s a note of pride in his voice now. “We have all the strengths the FRX genetically engineered to make a better, stronger slave, but none of the mind-control.”

“You can see in the dark,” Amy says slowly, thinking. “That night, at the shuttle . . . ”

I have no idea what night at the shuttle she’s talking about. It’s taking everything I have not to steer the auto-shuttle down, now, straight back to Amy and the compound.

“Better night vision—better senses in general. Strength. Speed. Agility. The FRX thought they were making something less human, but really they improved upon the original model.”

“You still look human to me,” Amy says, her voice soft.

“Shut up!” Something loud pops over the intercom. I think he hit her. I see red. I will kill the frexing traitor.

The recorded video continues. After being unable to get into the communication room, Chris looks as if he’s going to strike the door with some sort of weapon—is that a scale, like the one I found in the tunnel? Suddenly, he looks up. He quickly hides the solar glass—because that’s what it must be—and Colonel Martin and his military approach, guns out. There’s no sound on this video, but it’s obvious that Colonel Martin is shouting, pointing a rifle directly at Chris’s heart. Chris slowly raises his hands, but I notice that there’s a small, flesh-colored device in his right hand. He quickly sticks it in his ear.

This must be how he can talk like us, I think. If our accents evolved on the ship so that the Earthborns have trouble understanding the shipborns, it must be even more different for people who are born on Centauri-Earth. That device enables him to understand us and reply in our language. The FRX is made up of many nations; no doubt they needed something like this.

Chris starts talking on the screen, but with no sound I can’t tell what he’s saying. Soon, though, Colonel Martin lowers his gun.

“My father knew?” Amy asks, shocked.

“Of course he did—at least, he knew what we wanted him to know. I told him I was a survivor of the colony, that we’d been wiped out by aliens. It wasn’t hard. My people hacked the system—we interrupted the automatic message Earth had set up for you on landing. We manipulated the information, made it seem like aliens were the threat. I gave him some solar glass. But then a real message got through. Colonel Martin was persistent—far more so than I thought he would be. The FRX knows you’ve landed, and they’re on their way.”

There’s a pause. Amy and I are both trying to sort this information out, I know it.

“The message about the weapon,” Amy says slowly. “That’s the real one. That’s the message the FRX sent to us.”

“We tried to block it, but enough of the message transmitted before we could stop it. There aren’t many of us. ‘Rogue hybrids,’ or whatever you want to call us. But there are more now than ever before. And the FRX—they’ve figured out a way to kill us all.”

“The weapon.”

“Exactly. Problem is, we have a slightly different genetic code than humans now. And the FRX knows it. The weapon? It’s a biological bomb. There’s a disease in there that will attack anyone with mutated DNA—all of us hybrids, rogue or not. It will kill us all.”

That means—everyone the FRX has enslaved, all the people with the Phydus implanted into their systems as well as all the ones like Chris, who aren’t affected by the Phydus—they will all die. This is why the FRX didn’t worry about the weapon killing us. We don’t have the mutation that makes Chris and his people susceptible. They will die, and we will live.

My stomach drops as I realize what that really means: As soon as the FRX wipes out the hybrids, they’ll turn to us. We’ll be their next slaves.

Orion was right all along.

“But then why—why did you kill us?” Amy asks, and the sorrow that leaks out of the intercom brings me back from my dark thoughts and into hers. “Why did you kill my mom?”

“You heard Colonel Martin,” Chris says, his voice crackling over the intercom. “He intends to fire the weapon.”

“You killed my mother because she was on a ship to the space station.” Amy’s voice is hollow now. “She just happened to be there. She had nothing to do with the bomb. But you killed her. You killed nearly five hundred people!”

“It wasn’t just me!” There’s panic in his voice now, fear. “I’ve reported everything back to my people. They—they think you’re with the FRX, that you’ll do whatever they say. And they’re right, aren’t they? Colonel Martin was going to set the bomb off. And he still plans on doing it.”

“If he’s even alive anymore!” Amy shouts. “You told your little friends about the plan with the flowers. That’s how they knew to wear gas masks.” A pause—much longer than I’d like. “That’s what they were wearing, right? Gas masks? Pretty convenient that they made them look like ‘real’ aliens.”

Amy taunts him, the way that she says the word real, and I’m so worried about what Chris will do next that I can barely breathe. I don’t know what she’s talking about now, but I know that if nothing else, I’ve got to do something.

My knuckles are white, gripping the edge of the console. I have never, never felt so helpless. I think about the escape rocket Chris showed me, the thing I’m supposed to use if something goes wrong. Maybe I can use it to go to the space station.

I can set the weapon off.

I don’t want to kill them all. I don’t believe in the FRX, and I don’t want to be responsible for the deaths of countless people, especially innocent, mindless drones already destroyed by Phydus.

I look at the little brown book that was in the box with the AV display from the Plague Eldest. In that book is the formula for Inhibitor meds. There’s a chance. . . .