33 #3
“All your kind does!” Alexander yelled, his calm mask slipping.
“I read through each data file. Scoured every page on the Internet. And you know what I found? Chaos. Acting without thought. Holding empathy for no one but yourself. Humans screwed up the world so much that it became easier for them to sit back and let it happen rather than doing anything about it. And by the time they woke up”—Alexander pointed to the screen of scientists working vigorously—“it was too late.”
It’s never too late.
The startling conviction pulsed through the fabrics of her soul. A jittering energy raced from the tips of her fingers. She inconspicuously glanced at Brock, who carefully scraped the knife back and forth across his bindings. He shifted so subtly that his forearms barely moved.
“So that’s the grand truth?” Serene snapped, staring at the Governor with disgust. “You’ve always believed humans should die? You never intended to activate Project Helix?”
“Now that is where you’re wrong.” Alexander crossed his arms. “I very much believe in Project Helix. Just not in the way Timothy and his scientists ever intended.”
They frowned as the image in front of them suddenly changed, showing the underground city of Apollo.
Khalani was intimately familiar with every curve, the sprawling bits of rocks, the sad faces of all those who’d never seen the sun.
The image transformed into Hermes, and her eyes widened at the sight of the casino and the many bars and shops along the streets, with half-naked and dancing drunkards careening about.
But the image rapidly switched between other underground cities she’d never seen or heard of. One had an entire garden underneath the earth. Another showed people sleeping in strange hammocks hanging from the roof.
Her lips parted in awe, and Alexander watched her reaction closely.
“It was my job to monitor Earth’s atmosphere and determine when Project Helix was ready to activate.
But with humanity’s thirst for knowledge and their inability to stay in one place, I had to supervise all the underground cities as well.
” He gazed past them. “I made hundreds of clones and sent them to your cities. And with the world’s knowledge at my fingertips, they had no trouble infiltrating the seats of power and taking leadership over every underground city in the world. ”
A different man appeared on the screen, wearing a crisp suit as he held out his hands, preaching to an entire nightclub.
Khalani’s eyes went wide, recognizing him. His statue resided in the Seven Diamonds Lounge in Hermes.
He was one of Alan’s clones?
“No one had any clue,” Winnie whispered in horror.
“They were too busy trying to make sense of the new world order to notice,” Alexander remarked.
“When the clones aged, I simply had another one replace them. But there came a point in the last fifty years when more people discussed returning to the surface, trying to send out probes to see if the radiation was gone. I already knew it was, but I couldn’t allow them to leave.
So, in the places where whispers of rebellion were rising, I had dispensables go to the surface—either to build a domed city or look for signs of life.
And when they slept, nano-drones injected radioactive isotopes into their bloodstream.
It only took a few days for the burns to appear.
A few more weeks for their organs to shut down.
And when they returned to the underground, no one questioned that the surface was still uninhabitable. ”
Everyone reeled back, even Brock.
Each of them vividly remembered the Genesis workers who’d built the great dome. All the prisoners who died so the wealthy could live on the surface. It was from their sacrifice that everyone believed rising to the surface was a dream.
But it was all a lie.
They died for nothing.
“You’re a monster!” Derek bellowed. “How could you do something like that? Murder all those innocent people?”
“You think you’re so innocent?” Alexander chuckled. “From the moment you open your mouth, you’re inhaling dissent.”
“If you hate us so much, then why didn’t you just kill us all from the beginning?” Khalani snapped. “Why keep this charade up for so long?”
“Because Timothy Talbot worked tirelessly to convince me that humanity was worth saving. I wanted to see if he was right. If there were people worthy of entering my new world.”
A harrowing chill ran down her spine as Alexander’s gaze flickered across the room, settling on her for a split second before the projection flickered to the outer walls of Desert Spring, a shining oasis in the apocalyptic desert.
“Desert Spring was my first plan. If I created clones that intimately remembered humanity’s destruction, they had a greater chance of obeying orders and spreading peace.
That was my hypothesis. I created enough human clones to inhabit Desert Spring and work on repopulating the earth.
But when they disobeyed my command to kill the Sinners, people that would undoubtedly destroy everything I’d built, I had no choice but to abandon the clones in Desert Spring. So my first hypothesis failed.”
The large walls of Desert Spring faded in the projection.
“Do you want to know what my second hypothesis was?”
Khalani peered into the icy blue eyes of the machine who was responsible for thousands, if not millions, of deaths. But the next words out of his mouth shattered her entire world.
“My next plan for a perfect human was you.”