MARK OF THE EARTHWALKER: Evolution Protocol Read online

  “You mean you are now carrying the genes of a gorilla?”

  Lips pressed together, Luke kept both hands on the table for her to see. The fine down of black hair had become as thick and black as the hair on his head.

  Granny shook her head. “You see why I distrust all this technological meddling with the human body? I knew if it had a good side, one day the evil side will come, and it will be big enough to cancel out the good side.” She nodded. “The bad side has now come.”

  “The bad side?”

  “The final corruption of humanity. I know that some people will argue against it, but nothing can warrant the mixing of the human species with animals. It is the lowest immorality.”

  Luke lowered his eyes. “I’ve never thought of it, even as a biologist. I’ve heard of studies and experiments that enhance human functions with animal genes, but I’ve never really bothered myself about it. I never thought it would come to pass.”

  The electronic fanfare blared from the television, drawing Luke’s attention. The robot newscaster announced an attack on the Special Peace Primary School, the image of the school building filling the screen. It then cut into a surveillance video. A luminescent haze spread in its wake, a large Glidecar carrying screaming kids lifted off, streaked away, and vanished over the city skyline. The newscaster then said that forty children had been abducted, that no one knew who took them, why, and where they were. It concluded the breaking news, saying that the security forces would do whatever is necessary to recover the pupils.

  Luke was on his feet, his heart pounding. Tears welled from his eyes. Granny was saying something.

  “Maya has gone after your pupils the way you pursued the deer in the forest, but you’re here crying like a milksop.”

  “It’s because, last night, I’d been feeling a fellowship for a deer when I should have suspected that my pupils could be in danger.”

  “Then do something. We can’t afford to lose those children.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “If what you say is true, that Maya has changed, and that you will be like her, it means you can use what she made you against her. With a little help, of course.”

  “I’ve never fought with anyone.”

  “You will learn.”

  Aware of a nagging feeling, one that had been slowly taking hold, and which he’d suppressed. It now filled him like a pumped balloon. Luke raised his head and looked into granny’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 7 MEETING WITH THE MENTOR

  Only the voice of the untiring news anchor sullied the silence. Granny stared back at him for as long as he could endure. She broke off and turned away, crooking a tiny finger at him. Somehow, she looked more resolute as she led him away.

  They entered her bedroom, a large, windowless room. On both sides of the walls were delicate but cracked paintings of extinct water birds, the colors so subtle that they seemed to merge seamlessly so that one didn’t know where one began and where the other ended. An ancient poster bed stood in one corner of the room.

  Granny let her cane fall to the concrete floor. Her face contorted with the effort, she shoved the dressing table to the closest wall painting. Luke sprang forward but she stood shakily on the table before he could reach her. Without even a fleeting look sideways, she pulled aside the painting of a pensive kingfisher, its azure blue would have been heartwarming in any other circumstances than that of granny standing on a three-foot-high desk. Luke’s eyes popped when she revealed a flat button the color of the wall. She leaned on it and the poster bed folded in upon itself, uncovering a perfectly concealed trapdoor.

  Granny nodded in the direction of the hole in the ground. “After you.”

  There was no way he could turn his back. He wrapped his hands around her and set her on the floor. He let out his breath. “What’s in there?” He pointed at the trapdoor.

  “Move. There’s little time.”

  Intrigued, he followed granny. She touched the trapdoor, making sure Luke saw how she did it. It swung aside, revealing a staircase leading into pitch darkness.

  “Go on,” Granny said.

  With a shrug, Luke descended the small steps until his head was below the floor level. Then the light came on, showing the rest of the way. He went down slowly, looking behind to make sure granny was fine. Although her breathing was loud in the enclosed space, she seemed to be managing well.

  The staircase turned once and then they stood before a wall. Granny squeezed past him. Her fingers danced across some barely visible indentations. The wall slid away, letting out a gust of musty air. Luke gasped as the lights came on and they stepped into a subterranean vault. Tall racks lined its wall, and in the racks were weapons, both familiar and unfamiliar. In all the years he’d lived with granny, he’d never suspected there was anything under her bed or that she could even stand the sight of a weapon, never mind enough weapon to arm an army in the old warfare style. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Listen, Luke, everything in this world has many sides, but the most important ones are two, the good and the evil. At times, it may be possible for one to manage to exist with a foot planted on both sides, but that is a topic for another day. Right now, we’re concerned with the nature of right and wrong, exemplified by the kidnapping of children, the plan to mix human and animal genes, and the urgent decision to take sides. Although I have never suspected that such a thing might happen to you, I do not doubt which side you will take in the battle for humanity.”

  Luke shifted backward. “Battle?”

  “War is a part of life, and without death, there’s no life.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk like this.”

  “This is the first time my son has been given a gorilla gene treatment...”

  “Which doesn’t explain the presence of armament under this house.”

  “After the third world war, to pave the way for permanent peace, all weapons were collected and destroyed. We heard that some people were hiding weapons for future use, so we hid these too. In our case, we were good people.”

  “How could you say that, with these instruments of mass murder in your possession?”

  “We knew that, although the availability can bring out the nastiness in humanity, it was not weapons that cause wars and crime. In fact, without weapons, evil will continue to flourish. That is why those on the side of the good need weapons too. And here we are, the resistance.”

  “I never signed for that,” Luke said.

  “Same with me when I was recruited to fight against the first World Government. But this is different. I assumed you would need no urging to go after Maya for what she did to you. Look at you, you are covered in hair. And your pupils, what if Maya used them for her experiments?”

  The accusation in granny’s eyes brought Luke back to reality. For a moment, in his fear of the danger of warfare, he’d lost sight of what Maya had done to him. He suspected that considering what she’d told him, Maya only wanted to use the children as bait to lure him to her.

  “But it’s me Maya wants,” he said.

  “Such a person as Maya is an opportunist. Her type doesn't accept defeat easily. Nothing will stop her from using the children for her purposes the moment she thinks of it.”

  “True.”

  “Excellent. Then the earlier we get you ready, the better.”

  “Get me ready?”

  “You are not a soldier of the resistance. It takes time to make a fighter because it is not only about a strong body, the mind too must become that of a warrior. If I had to choose, the mind is what determines a soldier before his physical strength.” She peered at him through thick glasses, and then she poked a finger at his forearm. “I see that strength is coming naturally to you.”

  Luke would have been angry with another person but he couldn’t bear to hurt granny again. “Maya has been changing long before me. She’s likely to be much stronger than I am.”

  “I said everything has many sides. Excellent. You are beginning to t
hink like a resistance soldier, to see how to use the enemy’s strength—I don’t want to call it evil—against them. She made you into a monster, you use your monstrous strength against her.”

  “Monstrous?” He smiled, flexing his growing muscles. “Maya said the changes are irreversible, but it isn’t as bad as it seems.”

  “Hmm, that reminds me. You need to keep that hair under control. When I was a young girl, my mother used to make a herbal depilatory for us girls. I’ll teach you the recipe so you can help yourself.”

  “That will be great, granny.”

  “Now, time to go and rest. You bathe, eat again, and sleep for two hours. Then your training begins.”

  She turned and headed back up the stairs.

  Luke cast his eyes around the underground armory and training area. Granny was right. He supposed he couldn’t just rush after Maya on an impulse. He shrugged and headed out into granny’s room.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was bitterly cold. He peered through hanging leaves. A clump of shaggy shapes bickered at each other. A little one shrieked from the playful cuff from one of its mates. The sweet smell of rotten vegetation filled his nose as he stilled himself against wiping the icy water drops off his breaded face. The drizzle was a nuisance. Through thin shafts of the light rain, the eastern horizon froze in a bewildering explosion of colors, tinting the giant trees and plants, and soil with hues for which he had no name. It made him want to get on his knees in reverence. He shook his head and looked left and right. Friendly shaggy shapes crouched around him, each of them waiting for him to lead the charge at the unsuspecting invaders. It wasn’t a time for venerating the sky. It was a time for defending the territory with a blood libation to the soil, a time when the only creatures that matter were the closest family. It was the way. He rose to his full height, the others rising with him. With a low growl from deep inside his chest, he pushed through the rain-dampened leaves, shaking large drops of water all over him.

  Luke opened his eyes on a mat in granny’s room. His skin was smarted from granny’s herbal lotion. It had stripped him of every strand of hair before he slept off in the night. In the dim nightlight, a female figure raised her hand. He scrambled to his feet before the sprinkled water reached him.

  “You could have simply called my name,” he said, grumbling as he took off his damp skin-hugging shirt.

  “Sprinkled water is a time-tested method of waking up sleeping soldiers. You must get out of you early to avoid further unfortunate consequences.”

  “Noted, granny, noted, but how about another shirt?” He dodged the cold drops of water that pursued him and scampered out of the guest room, the same room he’d used when he was a teenager.

  He didn’t bother looking at the kitchen. If he remembered correctly, granny, except in extraordinary circumstances, granny always followed her timetable. Her bedroom door was ajar, the bed folded into a fraction of its size. Granny appeared in the doorway behind him, the half-melted ice cubes tinkling in the bowl of water she carried. Luke vanished down the trapdoor and stood waiting among the weapons.

  There were ray and wave guns, knives, and cans of lethal and nonlethal chemicals, small drones, wheeled and aerial vehicles that could be armed with all sorts of weapons. There were drug containers labeled Combat Stimulant. There were even a set of dangerous-looking knuckle dusters. It seemed as if someone had tried to create a museum packed with functioning weapons, dating from prehistory to post third world war. He scrutinized each of the weapons, the ones he could easily lay hands on. He’d never thought he’d need a weapon, but, of all the crude and Hitech combat hardware in the secret vault, it was the knuckle duster that filled him with an urge to possess it.

  The finger holes were open, in such a way that it would be long before his enlarging fingers would outgrow them. He slipped on the ancient steel weapon. He looked around to make sure he was alone, and then he threw a punch at thin air. He shook his head. It wasn’t right. He stepped closer to what looked like a brace for a disabled person, a type he’d seen in old pictures taken before scientists eliminated illness.

  “Aha!” he said, recognizing it as a fuel-powered exoskeleton. He jabbed at its midriff. Pain flashed through his hand as he hit the wall.

  “Young man, it’s a surprise. You are so clumsy you can’t hit such a big and close target.”

  He whirled around, blowing on his fingers. He’d not reckoned with the shock of the blow. Granny stood with a pitying grin.

  “You were lucky the exoskeleton engine is off. It could have reacted to your unprovoked assault. It has limited defense ability, enough to kill the unsuspecting.”

  She brushed past, pressed some buttons on the exoskeleton, and then turned a hidden starter key. The machinery coughed and trembled alive, and molded itself around granny. Luke stepped back from the acrid fumes, pressing his nose closed.

  “The fumes will clear,” Granny said, raising her steel-covered fists. “When you abandoned me, did you expect a small old lady to maintain all this equipment by herself?”

  Luke rolled on the floor and bounced from the fall, the knuckle-duster clattering on the floor. He wrapped his hand around his stomach. The vault spun fast, making it seem as if granny ran continuous circles around him. He clambered to his knees, looking for a handhold to help him stand. Granny stopped running around so fast.

  “You went away for eighteen years.” She leaned in, her face close to his. “I raised you from a toddler, staying awake to cater for you, giving you warm milk, bathing you thrice a day. But what did you do? Abandon me.” She raised a fist. “Why?”

  Luke stopped himself from shaking his head. He knew why he’d left, but it wouldn’t be a good enough explanation. Something bad was something bad.

  “Speak!”

  “I wanted to be free…”

  The air whooshed out of him, punched out by another heavy iron fist. His forehead hit the floor, sending white sparks through him. He clawed at the floor, struggling to get away from the pain and its source. Even in the thick fog that clouded him, he could hear the smooth hum of the internal combustion engine, and the more ominous hiss and tap that meant granny was stalking him. He butted into a set of loose equipment, covering him in a shower of knives and knuckle dusters. For a moment, he wondered if granny was fine at all. It would be a bad thing if she’d grown senile, or if Maya had somehow taking over her mind and was trying to use granny to subdue him. If he died here, no one knew what fate would befall the children. As surreptitiously as he could, he slid his hand into a spiky lump of steel that fitted his hand. It seemed costume-made. He exploded off the floor with a roar and sent a blow.

  His arm nearly pulled out of its joint, and then pain burst in his side as the fist rammed in again. He’d aimed at a leg joint to destroy the exoskeleton’s mobility, but, like the deer in the forest, it had vacated the spot.

  Fists raised, Granny hovered over him. “Give me a better reason for leaving me, or get up and fight.”

  Lying on his back, he looked into granny’s face, wondering if she meant it. He was kidding himself that she mightn’t, but she did mean it. He slowly got to his feet and raised his fist.

  “I’m sorry, granny. I don’t want to fight you.” He got on one knee and took her hand. “I’m sorry, granny, really, really, sorry. I should have stayed.”

  “Go on.”

  “I should have kept in touch, at least. Forgive me.”

  She stared at him for a long time, and then lowered her metal fists. “Be back here in two hours. She backed up against the wall, stepped out of the exoskeletons’ embrace, and hobbled to the staircase.

  Luke slipped off the knuckle duster and tossed it among the others. Holding his side, he limped back to his room. He was famished but he had to apply another layer of the depilatory.

  CHAPTER 9

  After wiping off the removed hair, Luke rushed to the dining table. He wolfed down a bowl of eggs and bacon and washed the food down with a glass of synthetic milk. His sides were afl
ame with the effect of the blows they had received, but he wouldn’t let the pain stop him from doing anything to find the children. He hurried down to the vault. He placed a hand on his chest.

  “Oops,” he said, not expecting to find granny waiting for him.

  She shook her head, her hair framing her delicate face line an aura of grew wisps. “You aren’t late.”

  “Thank goodness. I don’t want anyone to beat me again.” Granny’s face remained deadpan. A little embarrassed at having made a flat joke, Luke went and stood before the feisty old lady. “I’m ready, but don’t you think something will happen to the kids before we find them?”

  Luke whirled as a deep rumbling filled the room. Concrete and steel spilled on the floor. A small hole appeared in the wall and rapidly expanded. Granny hurried toward the exoskeleton section. Luke took his eyes off her to see a gleaming metal pod skidded across the floor and crashed into a rack of bronze throwing knives. A Depositor! It split open, letting out an android security officer.

  The sound of heavy automatic fire filled the vault as it emerged, guns in both hands blasting. Luke dived. Shoulder and side burning with a bullet graze he crawled after granny, the bullets stitching the ground. He gasped at a sight he would never forget.

  In an open exoskeleton, granny leaped like lightning from rack to heap and appeared high in the air behind the robot officer. Her chest exploded in a crimson blossom. She ripped off the android’s head before her exoskeleton feet touched the floor. Using the powerful hands that now obeyed her, she methodically reduced the robot to pieces of metal and wire stained with her blood. The exoskeleton finger held up a tiny microchip.

  “Granny!” Luke ran out of his cover. Granny hit the ground before he could reach her, exoskeleton softening the impact of the fall and gently releasing her. “Granny!” He held her head, her warm blood seeping through his fingers.