Reclamation: Mind Jack: Hybrid Genesis, #0

By E. L. Strife

Marci, a super soldier and escapee of the Astral's bio-enhancement military program Zedger, has found new purpose in rescuing others like her. But she can't do it alone, and not without parts. In need of special supplies to repair the soldiers the Astrals discard, Marci must travel to the last standing city of Tellurians. There, in EsoTerra, she must fight for her right to trade with others for what she requires.

 

She tries to hide her identity, mask her skills, play down her expertise, but too many have heard rumors of her. Soon, she finds herself helping other soldiers that have been dumped from Zedger. Recently disposed soldiers have lost their minds somewhere in the Genesis Hub. Marci must deep dive their cerebral enhancements to figure out why and salvage everyone she can. What she discovers when searching the Genesis stream alerts Astrals to her position. Lead rain falls from the sky in the form of BloodTitans.

 

Can Marci save the soldiers and her people? Or is this the Tellurians' last stand?

 

Features cursing and violence.

 

"Excellent story with a kick ass heroine and a world that is interesting and compelling... can't wait to read more about Marci. This is the second book that I've read in this series and it just keeps getting better and better."
-Goodreads Review (5 stars)

• Language: English
• Publisher: E. L. Strife
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201926403

Book preview

For the little girl

Who once knelt to Darth Vader.

Deep Dive

1

IAM NOT WITHOUT MERCY . I think it until it’s all I hear.

On my exam table lays a shivering, blistered soldier, the whites of his eyes as red as our irradiated homeland, his irises the blue of the shields protecting Astrals’ High Cities. He’s young, not quite twenty, and the Astrals already discarded him—a failed subject of their military bio-enhancement project: Zedger. I’m out of sedatives and painkillers. I’ve coated his sunburnt skin in homemade lotion, but it isn’t enough for the agony he’s in.

I should’ve gone for supplies last week but couldn’t. My latest surviving patient was in no shape to be left unattended. Lenny leans in the doorway, now on crutches, watching everything.

Marci— Let him go. Houston, my assistant, has been with me the longest of what normal Tellurians would call friends. He stays close to Lenny in case he needs help.

You know I can’t, I say, adjusting the cerebral uplink band on the soldier’s head.

Won’t. Houston’s the one person who knows my secrets. All the others are dead, or they’re Ingrid, the Astral who redesigned me into a soldier over a decade ago.

Whatever. My recent rescue twitches and jerks on the table, constantly throwing the positioning of the sensory band off. I need to know what the splay tech the Astrals inserted into the back of his brain is doing.

I get a decent connection and see what I usually do, to my relief. On-screen, I get a readout of the man’s splay which is snugged to the occipital lobe in his brain. The pin at the center of the unit is lit like an overclocked CPU.

Typical. Genesis programming is trying to shut him down. It happens to every soldier when Astrals are done with them. Some survive the disconnect. This is what happens. This is my life. I snatch up my port-to-port cable and clip one end to the connection just below his splay at the top of his neck.

Again? Houston scratches his balding head.

I trust Houston because he’s older, he’s lost everything like us, and he’s stuck by my side no matter what I ask of him out here in the red zones. Houston has no agenda, no stake in the Astrals’ war. Survival and defiance drive him like most Tellurians.

I check the bio-stats on the array of screens around my exam table. He doesn’t have any damage to his splay, but Genesis is trying to kill him like it always does. I have to. You know that.

If this man rips out the plug that will join our minds and let me deep dive his system, I’ll lose any progress I make. He’ll likely die from the trauma. I must strap the soldier’s head into a brace on the table.

His eyes burst open when I do. He claws blindly in the air. The heart rate monitor beeps its warnings.

I don’t have to like it. Houston worries what deep diving a soldier’s mind does to me. Unless the person is already dead, I have to try. I’ve seen too many of us die at the Astrals’ hands and mine when I was indentured. My guilt won’t let me quit.

The soldier’s uplink to the Astral’s central Genesis Hub is broken, or he wouldn’t be here. Astrals never dump a body with that kind of vulnerability to their system intact. I have to switch off the local Genesis programming in the pin and remove that tiny unit from the splay before this latest soldier will be truly free.

I lift the plug to the back of my head, pause, and glance at Houston. On my six.

He frowns but nods. I’ll disconnect ya if necessary.

I clip the cable into the port at the base of my skull. The clunk-snap pulses through my brain.

Was I that fidgety? Lenny asks.

Houston strokes his long silver-white beard. Every one of ya. Every time.

Lenny shifts a crutch under an arm. Why don’t I remember?

Local Genesis had control, I say, not looking up. By how this soldier’s skin shifts from pale olive to slate black, I figure the Astrals designed him with a dermashield in mind. I can’t say if it works. It fluctuates every few seconds in patches all over his naked body. Astrals never dispose of soldiers with clothes on. We figure it’s to reuse the equipment and to humiliate us further. Nothing else makes sense.

Always upgrades, Houston adds, canting toward Lenny. This is the only way she can save what’s left of each of you upstairs. So long as ya ain’t fractured part of your splay.

I’m cautious to avoid touching the round scars on the soldier’s skin as I steady him on the table. I don’t need to trigger memories of his mutagenesis. I won’t make his terror worse by tying up his entire body. I can’t risk sending him into shock. I do what I must to safely deep dive and move forward.

Sheya, he rasps. He has no critical injuries other than the frayed, bloodied skin on the back of his head, exposing the gray splay Astral’s ripped into to initiate shut down, and the sunburn I’ve done my best to treat. The damage is primarily mental.

His gaze dances throughout the lab, unfocused. He grimaces, and his face reddens. A tremor runs through him. I wait. After a moment, he calms to his prior squirming.

The surges have begun. I’m running out of time.

I turn his head to the side and wipe the drool from his mouth with a cloth. I don’t need him choking while I’m under. Hang on. You’re almost free.

Houston protests again. His grizzled face sags. The bones in his hands lethargically pulse red, a miner’s natural mutation. Lenny’s a muscular lump, hobbling closer. He monitors the patient with interest and a desire to help. He knows he can’t.

The soldier clings to my sleeves. I close my eyes, ignoring his attempts to pry his way free of pain. There is one escape for him. I’m it.

The back of my head hums, and my temples throb from the rush of code streams and memories I chase. Deep diving was a strange sensation at first, years ago when I got my first splay. Now it is a simple walk through a stormy, mental realm, even without one—a dream I can control that belongs to someone else.

Images, moving and still, rip by me like trash in the spark-laden, alphanumerical wind. They are the pieces of this man, who he is, who he’s loved, his home, his friends, his regrets. Genesis, the bands of bruise-blue gales, sort and shove the muted colors of memories around, trying to file them away before I can interfere.

I am a mutating virus in the system. Once Genesis conceals him like it’s programmed to do in the event of invasion, it will switch its full force to eliminating me. If it succeeds, it will barricade itself in typical Astral fashion. I will be locked out of the splay, and the man will die.

Genesis cannot touch me without my pin or splay.

His splay is a maze of dark tunnels and alcoves lit by electric memories and code. The path from the port to the pin is familiar—a splay model I have mind-mapped before.

My skin prickles from the effort of my search up the digital streams to the gateway of his pin. In powerful minds, memories will be threads of bold color in the Genesis river. Few snippets pass me here.

The man twitches and grunts. Genesis thoroughly scrambled him.

Houston’s voice is a distant distortion of sound as if he shouts through water. He yells at me to pull back.

I can confine the programming. I can shut it off and give this man back his mind. He can’t reclaim it without my help because of what I am and what he is not. But I’m unable to control my body once I’ve descended. I have no way to reply to Houston. I have to trust him not to pull me out early.

The Genesis river tightens and narrows as I map the soldier’s mindspace. I search what is active in his primitive splay until I access Genesis’s source. I dare not try to check on the status of his memories until Genesis is off, or it will find the backdoor with me, and I will have to start over.

I pray this man’s mind hangs on as I initiate the kernel code that switches Genesis off. It’s a simple touch of my hand to the wall and envisioning the code I’ve memorized. A red tracer encircles the tunnel.

The world of light and numbers I am in dims and sputters out like a stalling hover engine.

His writhing stops. His hands fall from my sleeves.

A deep sigh fills the dark hallways of his splay.

I stand in the quiescence, listening for any signs he is still with us.

A little girl dashes by me, giggling and carrying a bouquet of singed yellow daisies. The sunset is as amber around her as the wheat that rustles at her feet. Then she is gone.

Sheya echoes after her.

This man used to be a farmer.

I blink awake and disconnect us.

His short, dirty hair stands in stiff tufts like the tawny grains our kind toil over for our hungry bellies and the Astrals’ who won’t leave their shelters. His family is most likely dead. He has everything and nothing in this moment. It is the most fragile this man will be. For several minutes, I just let him breathe and take in his mind once again.

We recover the soldiers from the blistering basalt flats south of the mountains we hide in. He is one of the hundreds of Crispers I’ve treated. The Astrals dump failed experiments away from their sterile, shielded cities to die and be scavenged by the mutated creatures of Tellurian red zones.

Can you tell me your name? I ask.

His head tilts toward me, eyebrows furrowing.

He doesn’t remember it.

This is how they wash their hands of us. They force us to live out here in the toxic lands formed by the world war they raged against other Astral countries then turned against all Tellurians worldwide. Now they control us with a leash made of cybernetics, so we have no choice but to obey, protect, feed, and fight for them.

We are not lesser. They are not greater. It is naturally the opposite.

How are you feeling?

F-feeling— His nose wrinkles as though he doesn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue.

Fear controls Astrals. They tried to rise above the weaknesses of their flesh with technology, building in security measures, backups, reinforcements, and upgrades until the essence of their humanity couldn’t be found beneath the trace work. They use us as rats. Astrals train us not to feel. They have Genesis conceal our personalities and then put us through such excruciating testing that we are often apathetic when we draw metal through the meat of even our own.

What is your mission?

The cybernetic rings in his irises don’t move like they should when paired with a splay. It may be the reason he was dumped. Astrals don’t take the time to work through every problem, only the most common ones.

His gaze drifts over the ceiling. I don’t know.

Astrals can go anywhere with their technology. But they don’t. They could work the fields, the mines, the assembly plants, do all their own militaristic maneuvers with the equipment we and the Alluvials build for them at their demand. Instead, they make us do the labor while keeping the best shielding for themselves.

Who is Sheya?

Sheya— A tear rolls down his cheek. Sister. Dead. Nine years. She— She was the last.

Whether we work out here or we’re forced through Zedger to join the Operational Cybernetic Corps, we work for Astrals. We mutate. We die.

He clutches my wrist. The soldier’s voice is rough and strained. Please, end me in this moment of peace.

Anguish grips me when it should not. I should feel nothing. I have killed hundreds of my kind at the Astral’s commands. But I cannot help a burst of fury undermined by helplessness when I see a Tellurian make the most dishonorable choice of our kind.

Yet I remember his pain. I want his misery to end. I know how hard it is to be alone.

Hold still. I straighten and check his stats. The scanner swivels around the table, quietly humming, assessing his injuries and his brain for any life-threatening bleeding. I steady my laser and lower the safety shield attached to my table. Removal requires delicate finesse. Any damage could interfere with how his splay and mind interact.

I cut the pin free from the center of his splay. The steady amber-red beam sends up a wisp of smoke with only a dusting of sparks. It’s a clean removal, and he’s released from Genesis and Zedger.

He draws in a shaky breath. Let me see Sheya again. Let me die. Please.

The unit I toss in the cart beside the exam table is heavy for being the size of a port plug. I don’t have a sterile enough lab for total splay removal. He will have to live with his like Lenny and all the others.

We endure countless tests and upgrades during Zedger until we can’t remember what parts of us are still our own. When we have a moment of silence, we know it will be short-lived. They will tweak something soon. Add something new. And the cycle of misery will begin again.

Not here. Not with me.

You are free, forever, I say. This isn’t a Zedger lab. I will protect and heal you as I have all others. At any cost to me.

When I sit back on my rolling stool, I sense his doubt. He clutches his arms. His respiratory rate increases. He thinks this is a trick by the Astrals to get him to break.

You are at my cabin in the mountains of Nahodi. You are in the red zone. I point out the window to where pines grow in the hills. The radiation isn’t as intense at higher elevations. But it is a cold and hard land to traverse or farm with so much rock. The mines are here. It is the perfect place to disappear, to heal the broken, and set them free.

The red haze is visible beyond the trees, and I hope it is enough to convince him.

Do you hear Genesis? I ask.

He gently shakes his head.

Because you are free. You can do anything you want now.

There are too many memories. He braces his head, curls up, and sobs. I hurt so many of us.

It’s uncommon to encounter a soldier upset by the pain, surgeries, Cerithymite conditioning, splices, or mutagens. It is always the same thing: guilt over killing our own. Our population falls every year. We may outnumber Astrals in total, but once the sick and the indentured are removed from that count, we are half. Tellurians have big families because they know most of their children will die.

We used to be equal.

I touch his shoulder, and he jolts at my contact. We all did. Don’t you want to get back at Astrals for what they’ve done to us?

He has no idea how many I killed, what I’m capable of, or who I am. I never tell them everything. I rarely tell them anything.

His jaw bobs. His face screws up. I can’t think!

You’ll feel better tomorrow, promise. It takes a few days for the brain to reset after Genesis is disconnected. He’ll be a mess for a long time, maybe forever. But he can recover with the proper treatment and care.

I survived, I add. Lenny, too. And I can fix anything that doesn’t work to your liking.

I point to the men in the doorway. Lenny tries to stand a little straighter. His legs are weak. The regulator I built him is insufficient. I need special parts from EsoTerra to make it function optimally.

Houston gives the soldier I’ve pulled out an encouraging nod. Few live to be Houston’s age. He’s a specimen our ancestors would be proud of.

The soldier gives Lenny and his legs a glance. Then he reaches back and rips the splay from his head. Metal threads and flesh snap.

My eyes squeeze shut as pangs cycle through my brain—loud, high-pitched reverberation that’s chased by pressure like the compression wave of a close-range shot. Hot tears rush forth. I gasp and wheeze through the adrenaline kick from my Cerithymite, which tries to combat the sensations.

Damn it. I hang my head in defeat and know he is dead. The steel of the table