AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My methods were legitimate. Earth had used gene therapy for generations to allow humanity to adapt to a hostile environment. Happy little mutations. But I was vilified. For what? Because a handful of subjects suffered sudden cardiac arrest or developed cancer?” He paused, awaiting her response.
“Maybe because you called them subjects and not patients?”
“A few sacrificed for the greater good. Every passenger received my therapy. Every single one. Do you know how many lives I saved?” This time, he did not pause for a response. “Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven lives.”
She paused, the cloth hovering just over his brow. “How many did you kill?”
“They would have died regardless. Do you have any idea what radiation poisoning is like? The nausea, the headaches, hair loss, and the internal bleeding. You vomit blood until you have nothing left,” he said, completely avoiding the question.
“How many?”
“I saved those people, and they called me a butcher,” he said, conviction in his voice.
She nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, as she cleaned the blood from his face. His actions had been horrific, though justified. She packed it away for another thing to think about later, if they ever made it off this cursed mountain. “What happened next? How does Hal fit into this? I’ve read plenty about Radcliffe, about you, but no text ever hinted at a sibling.”
Again, he dodged the question. “We knew the planet had unusual properties. I modified the genetic code of everyone on board to tolerate—thrive—in our new environment. I hadn’t anticipated how the Nexus fluctuations would affect the mutations. Some suffered adverse reactions.”
Everyone? That was an astounding bit of information. Every passenger. Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven people. His experiment could have killed the entire colony before they even arrived.
The books all agreed that Radcliffe had experimented on a few unlucky passengers. Some died. Some were twisted into monsters. Only a few, though, which made the horror of it easier to compartmentalize.
Adverse reactions. The blithe tone in which he spoke so casually about the people who mutated into nightmare creatures irritated her.
“Every soul on this planet has been shaped by my hand,” he said, mirroring her thoughts. “Even you, sweetness.”
“What about the adverse reactions? People died.”
“They adapted. That is the human condition. Adapt or die.”
“But they weren’t human anymore, were they? Were you? And they weren’t happy. You were the most hated man on the planet. Is that why you changed your name? To hide?”
His expression darkened as he took the cloth from her and wiped his hands clean. “That’s enough. Fetch some fresh water. I’ll sew myself up.”
Charlotte did not follow orders. She stayed put. “You said you would tell me everything. What happened next?”
“Then you already know what happened next,” he snapped. “We arrived, landed on a continent just entering the spring season, and enjoyed three blissful months of terraforming and construction. When the summer solstice arrived, our technology broke. People changed. I changed. It was chaos.”
Again, nothing she didn’t already know.
“This?” She waved a hand to indicate the laboratory. “Why was this built? Why was your brother kept prisoner in a cage?” As she spoke, her voice rose higher in pitch, sounding dismayed.
“This was built because the mineral properties of the mountain act as a shield. We needed a safe place to keep our most valuable resources.” His voice lowered, turning menacing.
“You knew what would happen on the solstice,” she said. That was new information. Every text, diary, and witness account always expressed shock and horror at discovering the nature of their new home.
He shook his head. “Radiation can destroy electronics over time. The mountain was to protect from that. We had no idea how dramatic the Nexus energy fluctuations would be. What it would do to us.” His head lolled back, resting against the wall. He chuckled, a cold sound entirely without mirth. “Did you know we convinced the Hope’s computer to follow us? There’s an entire other ship in a mountain valley that we can’t use because all the equipment was fried. Such a waste. I wonder if the seed banks were compromised? Perhaps your cacao seeds are waiting to be discovered, sweetness.”
“There’s another ship? That’s real?” A strange excitement buzzed throughout her. Her father was right. His fringe academic belief was correct.
“Assuming it landed and didn’t crash. I wasn’t on speaking terms with the captain when she sent a retrieval team, so I don’t know.” Draven held out a hand. “Hand me the kit. We’re wasting time. It won’t be long before Stringer goes searching for us.”
With the kit opened at his side, Draven disinfected the gash across his abdomen. It looked nasty but less vicious than it had only ten minutes ago. He continued to speak, “To answer the questions you’re going to ask, I was tried and sentenced to execution. Luckily for me, the solstice happened, and I transformed. I was no longer Dr. Ethan Radcliffe. I was something new. Something better.”
He drew a needle and thread through himself, pulling the gaping wound together. It was horrifying and fascinating. She couldn’t stop watching.
“I escaped. A new name seemed prudent. I found Hal and learned that I was not the only one to undergo a transformation. While mine had been…a revelation, his was not. He was unstable. Filled with rage. A brute.”
Hal made a noise that very much sounded like a warning.
