Chapter One

“Naomi?”

“Yes, Azrael?”

“Are you crying?”

“Yes, Azrael.”

“Why?”

“My children hate their own blood.”

“It is always this way before the end.  Do you remember the time when we were tested?”

“Yes.  Father cried for us as well.”

“Is that why you cry… because Father cried for us?”

“Yes… and no.  I don’t cry because I saw Father cry for us.  I cry because I feel pain for my children.  And I think that’s why Father cried.”

“Will they die, then?”

“Some yes.  But I am sending visions to one of my warriors.  He will answer my call… in his own time.  And there is another who might yet serve me as well.”

“This other has given his life to you?”

“Not yet.  His heart is good, but he does not know me yet.  If he chooses, he will be tested and enter my service.”

“What if he does not?”

“Then the evil ones will claim my children, and these worlds will die.”

Chapter One

Earth, New York

July 18^th, 2656 Standard Earth Time

5:00 pm

“Did you get a trace on that?”

            “Ya.  Came from Central Dispatch.  Apparently they have another body on their hands.  Wait a sec… seems to be missing its’ head too.”

            Ooh.  Sounded like someone had a bad night.  Speaking of bad nights, ouch!  Jackson had one of those moments where he exhaled and sat up at the same time.  Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem.  However, under the influence of a four-alarm hangover it was a whopping one.  Why did escapism have to have such bitter consequences?  It hurt to think about it.

            Jackson slowly stood up and walked over to where his nephew had plugged his brain into the wall. 

            “Who they sending out on this one?”

            Trigger squinted for a moment as the stream of information entering his hypothalamus through the fiber-optic implant burped out a visual and auditory display that only his eyes and ears could interpret.  “Looks like Deke and Slade are getting the nod.”  He reached backed and adjusted the link attaching himself to the hard-line coming from the wall.  “Of course, they don’t know they’ve been assigned yet.”

            Jackson leaned against the wall, his head bowed over and his left hand hand rhythmically massaging his forehead.  He could feel his heart beat in his eyeballs.  “I know Deke, Trig He’s a good guy.  Has a family to feed.  I think I’d have a hard time stealing bread from his mouth. Besides,” Jackson raised his head to look at his young partner,” this sounds a little messier than I want to get.”

            This, of course, was one of the advantages of being your own boss.  For fifteen years Jackson Kane had worked the field as a regular… a regular being a police officer employed by the government to protect and serve the general population.  He enjoyed the job, a little more than he should perhaps, but didn’t like the hours or the fact that his cases were assigned to him.  As a freelance investigator for the last ten years, he was able to pick and choose the Briefs he worked.  By law, unresolved criminal investigations were open to any qualified individual who wanted to take the case.  Payment went to the individual who successfully solved it.  Unfortunately, Jackson could be a little too picky sometimes.  They were in a drought at the moment and had an acute need for money.  Maybe he should take this game… maybe he should get an aspirin.

            Jackson turned and walked in the direction of his office.  “Keep on the band Trig,” he mumbled while closing the door behind him.  “Something’s bound to come up.”

            Letting the weight of the door shut itself behind him, he walked over to his chair and let gravity pull him into its leathery embrace.  He reached into the upper left drawer of his hardwood, cherry stained desk, and extricated a bottle of pain pills.  Popping the cap off, he downed two of the tiny tablets and returned the bottle back to its drawer.  Rotating his chair a hundred and eighty degrees, he turned his gaze to the rain soaked city outside his window. 

His office was on the two-hundredth floor of a no-name building in the good part of Historic Bronx.  He couldn’t see the streets below him.  He’d be hard pressed to make them out on a clear day, let alone a day like this.  An inner-city transport chugged by his window, not more than fifty meters away.  Off in the distance, a transport took to the heavens, probably destined for one of the myriad power colonies on the moon.

            Power was originally the only purpose for colonizing the moon.  In the old days, lunar collector arrays would glean energy from the solar winds and beam it back to earth on a microwave carrier, where converter stations would change it into something usable.

            Working a lunar power plant used to be hazardous duty.  Crews would have to be rotated out every six months so as not to become too accustomed to the moon’s low-gravity environment.  Of course you also had the solar radiation exposure, containment problems, micro-asteroids, claustrophobia, and general depression to worry about… made for an interesting time for whoever chose to be there.  Jackson smiled.  Pioneers, he thought to himself.  Every generation had ‘em; those who would go where nobody else found good reason to be.

It was a different age now.  Fission-based power reactors were replaced by fusion-based reactors more than three hundred years ago.  What had once been a dangerous, hostile, orbiting power plant was now no more than a huge conglomeration of retirement colonies and resort spas built for anyone rich enough to go there.  Rewards for such wealth; a place where you weigh twenty-five pounds for every hundred that you weigh on Earth, as well as a few extra years due to decreased impact on your cardio-vascular system.  All you had to do was turn off the gravity drive in your living quarters.  It was a feeling almost as addictive as alcohol.  It was also just as dangerous if you did it too often.  Too much monkey business with gravity and your body would start doing bad things to you… strokes, heart attacks – things of that nature.  Maladies Jackson would never need to worry about given his current financial situation. 

The ‘beep’ of the office intercom startled Jackson out of his reverie.  It also reminded him of his headache.  “What ya’ got for me Trig?”

“Wire fraud… maybe.  Some guy… an executive, I think, at Brahma Pharmaceuticals might have made off with a couple of patents.”

Jackson cocked an eyebrow.  “What do you mean ‘might’ have made off with a couple of patents?  Did he or didn’t he?”

In the next room, Trigger moved the appropriate finger, sending the appropriate nerve signal to his brain, cascading the appropriate amount of neurotransmitters necessary to alter his electronic interface with the cyberscape.  Security passes erected to stop digital intruders were circumvented by the assault of Trig’s brain.  As hackers went, Trigger was one of the kings.  With no more effort or pause than it takes to think a thought, he had an answer for his uncle.  “That would be a ‘did’.  The information theft was reported by the companies Holo-Security Net two hours and seven minutes ago.”

Jackson sat bolt upright in his chair, ignoring the thunder-claps it caused in his migraine.  “Two hours ago!  Hell boy, are you sleeping over there?!  You should have known about this before now!  Who’d they put on it?” 

Hell to pay if we miss out on this one! Jackson thought to himself.  He liked white-collar crime.  White-collar criminals usually put more thought into their sins.  That made the game a bit more fun… it also made the paycheck a bit more fat.  Of course, with information this old, he wouldn’t have a chance of throwing his hat in this ring.  Someone had probably already marked and found the perp.  As such, Jackson wasn’t prepared for his nephew’s response.

“Chill boss, no assignments were made.”

By now Jackson was back in the room with Trig.  “The hell you say?!”

Trig nodded his head in the affirmative.”  Straight up.  Brahma doesn’t consider the information significant enough to send the cops after.  Something was stolen but apparently it wasn’t that important.  They’re going to handle it internally.  To be truthful Jack, I think it’s a dead lead.  No voltage.  I didn’t catch it quicker because there wasn’t a priority signature associated with the signal.  My brain didn’t know it was a crime until the police closed the file.  When they did that, I authenticated an outgoing message that had no incoming match.  That’s when I checked it, and sent it to you.”

Jackson paused for a moment.  He had never heard of a research foundation that considered any information insignificant.  Especially in a day and age where the only true power was found in those who controlled the information. He made eye contact with Trig.  “What department took the loss?”

Trigs’ response was immediate.  “Human resources.  Employee files.”

Jackson took a moment to mull it over before responding. Human resources?  Identity theft maybe?  “What was stolen?  Names, addresses, income reports… what?”

“Brahma didn’t release that information, only the department.”

Again, Jackson had to stop and think.  Something wasn’t making sense. “Can you confirm the perp was an executive at Brahma?”

“Yup.  Oh, and uh, don’t bother asking for his name.”

“They didn’t release it?” asked Jackson.

“Nope.” said Trig.

This was turning into a waste of time.  There was still something about it that wasn’t making any sense however, and for that reason alone Jackson was having a hard time letting it go.

“Trig I need a favor.”

Trig looked up at Jackson from his seat.  “Hell Jack I’m already doing you a favor!  How many other bruthuh’s you know with a brain-pan like mine that work for crumbs?”

Jackson, lost in his own thought process smiled and shrugged off his nephew’s attempt at humor.  “Trig, hack the human resource department at Brahma and look at their employee files.” 

If Trig had been eating something, he would have choked.  After a few seconds silence, Jackson asked Trig if he had heard him.

“Ya I heard ya!  You want me to hack the department of a research giant that is currently under internal investigation for being hacked!”

Jackson smiled.  “Right.”

“And when they catch me, take this plug out of my head and burry it in my ass, to whom shall I send my doctor bill?”

“You’re not gonna get caught Trig.”

“And you know this because of why?”

“Because you’re not going to access their files, you’re just going to circumvent their security.”  Trig opened his mouth as if to say something else, but Jack cut him off.  “Think Trig.  Would employee files be stored digitally or holographically?”

“Digitally.  You don’t need holo-technology to store…” Trig stopped talking mid-sentence.

Jackson saw the lights go on in the kids’ eyes. “If the files reported stolen were digital files, then why did Holo- Security systems report the theft?”

Trig was already working.  “I’m at the gate.”

Jackson watched the kid go to town.  He couldn’t help but feel a little pride… and a little sorrow.  At the age of nineteen, Trig was already a light year ahead of any other hacker in the game.  He was also Jackson’s one and only nephew, and since the death of his sister, Trigs’ mom, he was the only family he had left in the solar system. 

“Jackson.  I’m at human resources.”

“What are you up against?”

“Just some pass protected codes, user instructions… and a Digital Security Net!”

Things started looking up!  “Good,” he said, his headache slowly being replaced with excitement.  It was still a little early to decide if this was going to go anywhere, but it was definitely headed in the right direction. 

“Now, back out Trig,” he continued, coaching his nephew carefully through Brahma’s electronic maze.  “Look at Brahma’s system wide security net.  What departments are shrouded with Holo-Security?  Don’t touch anything.  Just look.” 

Suddenly, Trig sat up and inhaled sharply.  Jackson stood.

“Talk to me boy. What just happened?”

Trig paused for a moment before answering.  “Two departments.  I got Human toxicology, and the other looks like genetic therapies.  No other departments at Brahma are protected with Holo.” 

This, indeed, was interesting news.  Jackson had a hard time imagining that any information taken from either of these departments would be considered inconsequential.

“Trig, it’s time to unplug.  I think we’re going to take this one.”

Trig took the jack out of his implant, and then disengaged it from the cyber-port in the wall.  “What case are you talking about, Jack?  Brahma’s not prosecuting anything.”

Jackson chuckled.  “Not yet, but they will be.”  Brahma was lying to the police.  Now he needed to find out why.  

In the eighty years that Brahma had existed, nothing like this had ever happened.  Their security was just… too… impregnable!  There wasn’t another word for it!  The very thought that an individual, one of their own, would lodge a knife this deep into their collective backs was unthinkable.  There had been psychological profiling, drug and cortical programming, extensive testing.  Not one piece of data ever collected suggested that Daniel was capable of this kind of betrayal.  In fact, if Conner hadn’t seen the security-holo himself, he wouldn’t have believed it possible.

Never mind that now.  The past was the past.  Instead of just one fire to put out he now had two.  Conner took a deep breath.  Clear minds would prevail here. Now was not the time for reflection, now was the time for damage control.  If his next few steps weren’t careful ones, he would lose his job, maybe even his life.  That was the way things were.  If you wanted to win big, you had to be willing to risk big.

Just then the door opened.  A young lady wearing a dark blue, satin dress came out into the reception room and addressed him.

“Excuse me Mr. Connor?”

It was everything Connor could do to keep the tremors in his hands from invading his vocal chords.  “Yes?”

“Mr. Crowley will see you now.”  With a gesture, she ushered Connor from his seat, through the door, and into the sizable office of Brahma Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer.  She showed him to a high back leather chair in front of a large mahogany desk.

On the opposite side of the desk was a tall white haired man who did not look altogether pleased to see him.  The tall gentleman looked to the secretary first.  “Thank you Shelly.  See to it that we aren’t disturbed.”  With a smile and a slight nod, Shelly turned and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

The older man looked Connor dead in the eye.  He didn’t say anything at first.  Only looked.  Connor wondered what he was waiting for.

“Tell me about containment, Mr. Connor.”

It had started.  Connor cleared his throat and began.  “As you know sir, the information in question was logged out of our system at 0200 hours this morning.  It wasn’t until 0600 that the HE-net realized that the pass key given for the data could not be authenticated.”  This was where things got a little sticky.

“And why, Mr. Connor, did our two and a half billion dollar security system not realize that it had been given a false security key?”

Connor could feel his insides reversing their natural direction of flow.  “It did not realize it because Daniel was the one who created it.”  Connor knew what the man’s next question would be.

“Mr. Connor, could you tell me who was responsible for Daniel’s behavior and thought modifications?” he said, referring to the hypnotic and drug therapies that Brahma used to ‘program’ employees in high security positions.

“I was, sir.”

The older gentleman paused here, and pointed at the seat across from his desk, gesturing for Connor to sit.  “An honest enough answer, Mr. Connor. Now tell me, what do the police know?”

“Nothing, sir.”  Connor quickly answered.  “They know nothing.  As far as they are concerned, we had a hack into our staff and payroll files, useless data, inconsequential.  We will not be pressing any charges or committing any external resources.”  As a side thought, Connor also added, “We told them that we would conduct an internal investigation, just to be sure.” 

Jamison Crowley leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.  An interminable amount of time seemed to pass before he opened them again, and locked his visage back at Connor.

“Mr. Connor,” he continued, his voice growing cold as ice, “do you know who I am?”

The question caught him off guard.  Given the circumstances however, as well as the abrupt change of subject, Connor felt it wise to proceed with bold caution… if that were such a thing.  “Yes sir.  I know who you are.”

This elicited a smile from the old man’s wrinkled lips.  “Then, Mr. Connor, do you know what I do?”

Connor got the feeling that he might be walking into an ambush, but there was nothing to do now but proceed.  “Yes sir.  You are the Chief Executive Officer here at Brahma.”

There was no change in Jamison’s expression.  Still the same amused look as before.  “So far, so good Mr. Connor.  Now, tell me what it is that you do.”

Connor visibly turned a shade paler than was natural for his Caucasian heritage.  He was glad he was sitting down.  “I am the Executive Vice President of Genetic Research and Engineering,” He stated, with far less conviction in his voice than there was before.

Jamison slammed both fists on the desk, and stood, the rage behind his amusement evident in his reply.  “And you really believe that!?”

“Let me tell you what it is that you do here boy,” the old man yelled, the smile fading from his lips as he leaned in over the desk, close to Connor, his face contorting with anger.  “What you do, boy, is find ways to extend life, and under vastly different circumstances, you create ways to destroy life!  That is what you do!”

 “Now, let me tell you what I do, boy!” Jamison said, lowering his voice to a sharp, venomous whisper.  “I decide who lives, and who dies!  As for what I am,” Jamison paused, his eyes drilling into Connor’s like twin charcoal torpedoes, “As for what I am, you don’t know, nor do you want to.”

He sat back down in his seat, letting Connor sit in silence for a moment before he continued.  Showing swifter reflexes than a man of his age should possess, Crowley reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a revolver.  Connor’s lips tightened.  Crowley could shoot him right here, right now; call in his assistant ‘Shelly’ to take care of the body; and no one would ever be the wiser as to how Connor had suddenly disappeared. 

Oh well, he thought for the second time in the last hour.  You want to win big, you have to risk big.  It was obvious his risks had not paid off.

Then fortune turned slightly in Connor’s favor.  The older gentlemen put the gun down, hilt first, directly in front of Connor and began to speak.  “I want you to find the man who stole from me, Mr. Connor.  What he now has in his possession is no more or less of a nightmare than can be found in the book of Revelations.  You find him, recover my property, and kill him before the beast is unleashed.  And Mr. Connor,” he continued, holding Connor’s horrified gaze as death himself would hold the skull of a defeated adversary, “if you don’t find him, you will find out who I really am.”

With that, Jamison turned his attention to a pile of paperwork on his desk, effectively ending the conversation.

Connor pocketed the weapon and hastily excused himself through the large oak door from whence he came.  As he walked back to the building complex that housed his offices, his mind mulled over his conversation with Crowley.  There were several immutable conclusions that he came to as he did so.  First: Jamison knew that Daniel had stolen the data.  Consequence - Daniel had to die, a sad casualty of business in the 27^th century.  Second: Jamison knew who had brought Daniel into the project.  Consequence… Connor shuddered.  He didn’t want to think about that particular consequence right now.

A solution would need to present itself, and quickly.  If one didn’t become evident, then Connor would have to create one.  Maybe he could hire out a bounty hunter?  No.  He couldn’t run the risk of a bounty hunter using the information to line his pockets with money.  Or, even worse, what if he threatened to go public?  If the public became aware of what Brahma was doing there would be nothing left but bones for the vultures to fight over.  At any rate, this would be difficult.  It was a large solar system, and Daniel could have gone anywhere.  Connor couldn’t help but replay parts of the conversation he had just participated in.  Do you know what I do?   Do you know who I am?  Connor knew very well who the man was.  Jamison Crowley was the Devil.

After Connor left his office, Jamison looked up from the busy-work he had, scattered all over his desk.  This was turning into a catastrophe of epic proportion, nothing short of a Greek tragedy.  If containment was not established in minimal time requirements, the consequences would be frightening. Best-case scenario, Mr. Connor would do his job, and the nightmare would end.  Worst -case scenario, world’s would burn.  There would be no chance.

For eighty-nine years Jamison had walked this planet.  He had grown up in an Edinburgh slum, the youngest son of a detached mother and an alcoholic father.  This is not to say that he didn’t have what people might refer to as a ‘happy childhood’.  Indeed not.  His mother had passed away when he was three years old so there was never any type of severed attachment to mourn.  Occasionally he would suffer at the abusive hand of a father who was even to this day the ‘monster’ that plagued Jamison’s dreams, but aside from that, he had no boundaries as a child and in fact no one who really cared what he did.  All these youthful experiences proved to do nothing more than modify the socio-psychopathic tendencies that were already starting to blossom in Jamison’s personality.

By the time he had turned twelve, it was evident that he was a gifted child.  He had a natural ability to think in the abstract, and a malignant desire to succeed, driven in no small part by his father’s willful neglect and Jamison’s fear of poverty.  He was accelerated through his primary and secondary education by the public institutions that looked after his education, and eventually graduated with a Ph. D in Biochemical Engineering and a Master’s in Business Administration.

It didn’t take long for him to move up the rungs at Brahma.  His superiors admired his work effort, and his peers feared to cross him.  In time, Jamison had positioned himself in such a manner that he neither had peers nor superiors left to vie for his authority.  He had deftly moved and manipulated all those who could stand in his way. Those who wouldn’t move, disappeared.

With no one else to decide the fate of Brahma, except for a ‘mock’ board of directors that lived in Jamison’s back pocket, he was allowed free reign of the directions the company took.  Having long since abandoned ethics in favor of profit, Brahma began to delve into dark markets and pseudo-legal ventures.  If the pay was right, there was not any entity in the solar system that Brahma wouldn’t court.  Ever the master manipulator, he played upon the current Earth-Mars relationship and planted seeds of bigotry, and malcontent between Terrans and Martians, while on the surface, always appearing to be the champion of humanity, no matter how it had evolved.  It was his idea to contact the Earth-Force Army and propose a contract.  It was his idea to ‘suggest’ that biological warfare against an alien species… such as the Martians… was in no way a violation of Earth Federation laws and charters.  “Besides”, he would say.  “They are probably preparing the same types of weapons to be used on us.”

As with any other problem that stood in Brahma’s way, given time, Jamison Crowley could circumvent it, and justify his behavior by offering the ‘cash-cow’ to his shareholders.  He currently had at his fingertips an inexhaustible amount of government money to figure out a way to perform genocide.  Now that he was there, and had at last a marketable product for the military, a complication had arisen.  Daniel.

The thought of that traitor made Jamison’s blood boil, and at the same time chilled him to the bone.  The blueprints and a viable sample of the demon itself were running about the solar system somewhere loose and unchecked and, to top it all, Daniel, Mr. Connor’s brother, was at this point unpredictable, and therefore uncontrollable.  Jamison hated uncontrollable and therefore hated Daniel and anyone associated with him.

Regardless of how this chapter in humanity’s book would end, Connor would have to be eliminated.  That could not be helped.  Connor had vouched for Daniel; brought him into the circle.  All other things aside, Connor had become a loose end, and Jamison Crowley had not achieved in this lifetime what he had, by leaving loose ends to dangle.

Once every thirty days or so, when orbiting the dark side of the moon, any light radiating from the sun, and any light reflected off of the Earth is eliminated, leaving behind a star plagued pallet, more dazzling than the finest diamond could ever hope to achieve.  No one who experienced it, could ever quite explain, let alone interpret the feelings born in their souls.  Outlanders, on their way from their mother planet to the outer moons of the gas giants for the first time, would develop a sense of diminutive insignificance upon understanding this first glimpse of what the Universe truly was.  For some, it was a spiritual event; others found it discomfiting.  In the end, the Cosmos was eternal… people were not.  Live or die, the Galaxy would continue, and all things in it would continue to quietly creep toward that final entropic state of being.

Madison Parker found comfort in the view it offered.  She looked forward to this point of her journey to the orbital platform where she worked.  Although a devout agnostic, she felt a sense of being in every aspect of study relating to her work in astrophysics.  Countless stars had to live and die before the necessary elements required to create life were available.  The heat, atmospheric turmoil, and pressure offered by the accumulation of mass just close enough to an insignificant, middle-aged star, offered the perfect primordial nursery to these elements.  Given time, these elements came together and formed amino acids.  Provided the carbon decided to lock itself in the crust, instead of suspend itself in the atmosphere, life would explode into being and the rest, as they say, would be history. 

If humanity was nothing more than the bi-product of these elemental forces, born in the fusion furnaces of various stars, then that made us their children.  More importantly, it made the Universe self-aware.  In Maddy’s mind, that was not a bad legacy - nor did she believe it was a legacy stamped solely into this area of the cosmos.  If it happened here, it most likely happened elsewhere.  It did happen. It must have.  Soon, they would be able to go looking for the proof themselves. 

It would not be long now.  The anticipation of the journey at hand was palpable.  She would not reach the CENTER facilities where she could continue her work soon enough.  She had good news to report.  The board of regents had approved her request for funding.  All the theoretical models that her team had been developing over the last decade were about to graduate from a virtual simulation, to an engineering reality.  All the systems had been prepared, ninety-nine percent of the work, done.  All they needed was the final permission to put it together, and they had just won that permission.

A smile crossed her lips as she realized the impact her creation would have on the solar system.  She let her gaze fall upon those objects just barely recognizable in the abysmal depths of the lunar shadow; galaxies, nebulae, alien solar systems, hundreds of thousands- no, millions of light years away.  Since the dawn of quantitative reasoning, since Tycho Brahe and Galileo Galilei first cast their eyes heavenward, the objects in their line of sight had always been out of reach.  Not anymore.  Mankind was about to author a new chapter in its history.  The Universe was about to reach a whole new level of cognition.  In just a few more months, things were going to change, and the void of space would not be quite so big a place.

She was shaken out of her thoughts by a soft voice over the intercom informing the passengers that they would be breaking lunar orbit for the Jovian moons in the next ten minutes.  All personnel out of the confinement of their seats were now invited to buckle in for the last stage of the journey.

Turning away from the viewing port, Maddy left the observation deck and returned to her seat.  Soon, they would be near Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons.  From there it would be a short flight to Io, and from there, orbital capture around Europa.  Maddy smiled to herself.  She felt like a kid at Christmas.

“Walker.”  There was no reply.  “Walker!  Are you there?!”  Daniel had not slept for at least three days.  All the emotional training and personality programming that he had received at the hands of Brahma’s clinical psychologists, under the direction of his beloved brother was starting to take its toll.  The guilt, pressure and internal confliction started to mount the moment Daniel had made up his mind to betray the ‘hand’ that fed him.  Despite the knowledge of Brahma’s virus and what it was meant for, the guilt of his actions were tearing him apart.  The hypnotic ‘tracers’ that were planted in his mind would not allow his conscience to clear until he did the right thing.  In this case, the right thing would be to go back to Brahma like a wounded dog and beg forgiveness.  Logically, he knew that that would be the wrong thing to do, emotionally, he felt like he had no choice.  It was still anybody’s bet as to whether the Id or the Ego in Daniel’s subconscious mind would prevail in this battle.

Of course, getting into Daniel’s subconscious thoughts would have proved a doctoral dissertation for some young genius, had anyone the thought to look there. 

Seven years prior to his coming to Brahma he had studied at MIT, doing a combined undergraduate and master’s degree in bio-kinetic, rate engineering.  He was the model student, bright, resourceful, and creative.  Underneath it all was the dying soul of a man with unjustifiable hate.  He hated Martians; hated the way they looked the way they smelled and the resources they had all to their own.  In his mind the biggest mistake mankind ever made was giving them their autonomy.  In his mind, it was just a matter of time before they outnumbered their own mother-species.  He could not tolerate that.  He was jealous of their longevity, and anything else that appeared to make the grass a little greener on the Martian side of the margin.

In the case of the physical world, opposites always seem to attract.  On an emotional level however, ‘dark’ gravitates to itself like scarabs to carrion.  So it was that Daniel fell in with, and found those people who shared his beliefs and opinions.  By themselves they remained embers, the majority of which would have probably burned out if left to their own devices.  Together, however, they created a flame that networked itself through all the major universities of Earth.  As most fanatics do, they blinded themselves to their own bigotry and justified their cause in the name of racial purity.

So it was that Daniel came to Brahma, already so entrenched in a psychological duality, that all the programming and emotional profiling in the world could not have picked up on his intentions.  It was easy to shroud from someone else the lies you were living if, in fact, you believed the lies to be truth.  It also came in quite handy to have a brother-slash-model-employee clear the road ahead of you.  Connor would probably be killed.  Oh well.  Small price to pay for the cause… small price to pay for the freedom of humanity.  Besides, Connor was an obnoxious prick anyway.  Daniel shook his head and squinted, clearing sweat from his eyes with his fingers. I shouldn’t be too hard on Connor, he thought.  After all, because of his brother, it only took him two years to be where he needed to be.  His networks of friends were in place, and had been for quite some time.  Twenty minutes after the creature and engineering prints were stolen he was on a moon-bound shuttle.  He knew he would be safe on a transit flight.  Even if Brahma found their precious virus gone five minutes after he lifted it, they would not dare to alert the authorities.  That would force their hand into the open.  Most likely they would wait for him to contact them, expecting him to make some sort of silly demand for currency in exchange for their “commodity”.  Despite the mental agony he was feeling, he smiled at his own clever devices.  They would expect him to try and sell it, perhaps to another company.  They would never understand his true intentions, and if they did, sheer horror alone would drive them into denial.

In stealing the virus, Daniel knew that he had condemned himself to death.  If Brahma didn’t find him and kill him, the end result of breaking his mental training would drive him mad and he would meet his fate at the hands of a brain aneurysm.  It would be worth it though, he thought.  To be rid of the ‘red menace’ once and for all… just that thought alone gave him a small measure of peace.  In his twisted sense of reality, he knew that he would go down in history as a hero, a martyr for the cause of humanity.  With these fresh, egocentric thoughts lodged firmly in his fevered mind, he bolstered his remaining mental faculties about him and tried the jack to Walker again.  It was getting harder and harder to make his mind focus enough to cause the mental transition from thought to electrical signal, due in large part to his most recent breach of Brahma’s psychological conditioning.  He had been in port for an hour now, but had made no progress in communicating with his comrades.  He tried as best he could to quiet his mind.

“Walker!  Are you picking me up?”  A response came in the form of a blistering pulse that hammered into his frontal lobe.  Daniel pushed through the pain and focused the incoming signal into rational code.

“Where the hell have you been Danny?!  We’ve been expecting you for half an hour now!”  Although Walker sounded mad, there was evidence in his voice that he was also scared.  One seldom crossed a pharmaceutical giant without paying the piper for it.  Walker knew his carcass was just as pressed to the line as anyone else’s if Daniel were to get caught.

The added stress of Walker’s mood was not helping Daniel maintain his link.  Nevertheless, he still was able to give his drop coordinates.

“Walker, I can’t maintain the line much longer.  I’m at LUNAR-6 deck-1a, the old part of the terminal.  I came here to avoid the crowd.”  His breathing started to come ragged now.  “Pick me up as soon as you can.”  He paused for a moment.  “I’m struggling here.”

Walker replied that he was on the way and then, with no small effort, Daniel severed the line, and removed the jack from the back of his head.  He felt something moist as he fingered the end of the palladium socket port, plugged into the back of his skull.  He knew what it was without having to look at it.

He was having a hard time keeping his vision focused now.  His surroundings were garbled, not unlike the air above a campfire.  Out of the observation deck just to his right, he could see a military convoy performing low-g operations out in the lunar fields.  The thought of turning himself over to their authority came to him unbidden, and for a moment he considered it; just long enough to turn down the furnace that was burning in his head.  The moment he knew that he wouldn’t do it, the mental thumbscrews started to tighten again and Daniel started to cry.  He knew that it would only take his friend a few minutes to get here, but it had already seemed an eternity since he got off-line.

“Hurry.”  He said to himself between choked sobs.  “Please hurry.”

Walker didn’t like the sound of Danny’s voice.  He sounded like he was going to crack, and that was not a good thing.  He had no idea the mental strain Daniel was under at the moment, but he had expected him to last longer than this.  Oh well.  It would just be a matter of ten to fifteen more minutes now anyway.  Walker was speeding toward LUNAR-6 in one of the myriad transport tubes that connected the lunar colonies of the moon.  There were thousands of miles of interconnecting Plexiglas tubes that would periodically surface and submerge on their course from station to station, alternately plunging the occupant into the depths of lunar rock and then freeing him out into the star-ridden fields of the cosmos.  It was during this time that Walker had made up his mind.  He was going to kill Daniel.  Ideally, Daniel would have shown himself a little more resilient to his impending psychosis, thus lasting long enough for his own body to destroy him.  The way it sounded however, that was not going to be the case.  Daniel would run screaming to the authorities… or worse, Brahma… if something wasn’t done about him soon.  Luckily for all, Daniel had chosen LUNAR-6 to wait for him.  It was an old area.  One of the original terminals built back when this colony was a power generating station.  People who didn’t have enough money to get off this rock were basically its only inhabitants; homeless… world-less if you will, they would wonder the empty, metal constraints, in some cases feeding on each other when food became scarce.  Without a pass card, this part of the moon was every bit as secure as a prison.  In fact it was, though nobody recognized it as such.  The guards stationed there were under orders to gun down any person who tried to make the shuttle tubes without a pass.  And they would.  Stealing a pass would do you know good.  They were genetically linked to the owner, and an invalid scan would get you killed just as fast as a rush on the guards, which was tried often enough to remind the inhabitants of LUNAR-6 why they should stop trying. 

It was hard to believe that just 12 kliks to the south one of the richest colonies on the moon was founded.  It was a long 12 kliks, however.  Aside from the guards, the only other way out was through the vacuum of space.  That type of security was better than bars.  Frequently a body would turn up here and there in this area of town and no one would think anything about it.

The whirr of the mag-lev propulsion system began to wind down.  He was reaching his destination.  As his coach came to a stop, a mechanical, female voice announced the stop as LUNAR-6.  The door slid open and he disembarked.

It didn’t take long for the scenery to get bad.  Shortly after the security checkpoint, things started to look sketchy.  Lights built into the ceilings and walls were in disrepair, half of them having burned out long ago.  Graffiti marked up the wall panels and stained the floor and ceiling.  The environmental controls in the area were out of alignment and the air was hot and stuffy.  There was probably an inordinate amount of carbon monoxide here.  From the smell of things, the air was not being re-circulated fast enough.

Walker let his left hand rub against the side of the wall.  He took slow deliberate steps, partly due to the intermittent gravity changes, and partly due to his surroundings.

The tunnel he had been walking up suddenly opened into what used to be a large waiting area for embarking and disembarking shuttles.  The north wall was a gigantic window in to the lunar fields.  Where there used to be hundreds of chairs bolted into the floor, lay the dregs of humanity.  Homeless men, women and children lined the walls some huddled together, others preferring their solitude.  No one took any notice of him, as they were all involved with other activities, mainly survival. 

A group of rough looking, half-dressed men eyeballed him with a hungry look in their eyes.  Walker pulled his coat back simultaneously revealing the firearm he had concealed and warning anyone who cared to look that if they attacked him, their dead carcass would be the ones fed upon, not his. 

Walker paused momentarily to scan the area and find who he was looking for.  It didn’t take long.  In the Northeast corner of the terminal Walker found Daniel sitting hunched against the wall, looking out toward the lunar fields.  He had a following of some individuals who could smell death on him.

“See something out there ya’ like Danny boy?”  He said, scattering the cannibalistic group that was closing in on Daniel.  It wasn’t until that moment that Walker noticed the military out in the field on maneuvers.  His casual attempt at conversation might have proved partially clairvoyant.

Daniel slowly looked up at Walker.  His eyes were void of life and Walker could see blood trickling down the back of Daniel’s neck.  He opened his mouth as if to speak but instead put his hands to his head and pushed as if he were trying to contain an explosion.  Walker waited.  Finally, Daniel was able to speak.

“In the bag.  It’s all in the bag.  The construction plans for the virus are on my computer and the bug is in stasis, all of it in the bag.  At this news Walker smiled.  Stealing the actual bug was not part of the original plan and the fact that Daniel had done it was a good thing.

“Is it completely ready to go then?  Walker asked, hoping beyond hope that it was.

Daniel smiled back.  “Not yet.  It lacks a vector.  No vector, no way to infect anybody.”  Walker bent over and picked the bag up.  “We’ll take care of that, Danny boy.”  He said, eyeing the bag in his hands.

He bent down and looked Daniel directly in the face.  “You did good Daniel.  The whole world is going to know your name for this, I promise.”

“Really?” said Daniel.  “Do you really think so?”  His lips turned upward in the slightest hint of a smile.  A little bit of blood mingled with a tear exited Daniel’s eye.

“I know so Daniel.  Now here, let me help you up.”  Walker stooped over to help Daniel stand, but before he could do so, he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun that until now, Daniel had carefully hidden from Walker’s sight.  Walker froze, suddenly feeling weak in his knees.

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere with you today, Walker.”  He pulled back the hammer.  “To be honest with you, I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere with you again.”  His eyes were starting to glaze over.  With one final breath he whispered to Walker, “Make sure everybody knows it was me.”

With that Daniel put the gun to his chest and pulled the trigger.  The sound of the concussion startled everyone in the terminal, but did not shake anyone from what they were doing.  The sound of a gunshot meant mind your own business.

Walker stood there in shock.  For a moment, he had not known which one of them Daniel was going to shoot.  He was glad it had been himself.  It saved Walker the trouble.  With no more than a glance at the bleeding body before him, Walker turned around and left the station terminal behind.  Depositing his money into the appropriate receptacle, and showing his identification to the appropriate security guard he boarded the next available transport, and left LUNAR-6 for what he thought at the time was forever, carrying something far more dangerous than he could possibly imagine.

After saying good night to Trig, Jackson sat down at his chair and got ready to wind it down for the night.  He still had some thinking to do.  He’d already done too much by anyone else’s standards.  The more he thought, the more questions he came up with.  The rain had long since subsided and the last, lingering side effects of the previous nights’ binge had worn off a couple of hours ago.

For the rest of that day, he and Trig had sat online looking for any hint or trace that this brief was going to go public.  It never did and apparently never would.  It had only been a half-hour or so since Jackson had come to this conclusion.  This was disconcerting to him.  Jackson was sure that the chances of this being petty records theft were slim at best.  But if he was right in his assumption, why wasn’t someone moving on it?  His mind kept recalling societies’ mantra.  ‘Those who control the information, control the Universe.’  If this in fact were the case, then why was this information considered inconsequential?  Maybe it was just employee records that had been taken; nothing else.  If so, then why the hell would they use a holographic security net to protect it?  It would be like spending money on a nuclear warhead to guard an outhouse; not very cost-effective.

Jackson shook his head.  He would go in tomorrow and find out for himself.  The biggest problem confronting him right now was what to say when he got there.  Walking into someone’s corporate headquarters and saying, ‘Hi, I was hacking your system the other day and noticed…’ didn’t seem like a good way to start.  If it were in fact inconsequential data, they would toss his hide to the wind.  Maybe a call would be more appropriate.  If it did turn out to be nothing, then at least he could remain relatively anonymous; well… as anonymous as Trig could make him anyway. 

He stood up.  No more sense thinking about it tonight.  Crossing his office, he shut out the lights, exited, and locked the door behind him.  He made his way down the hall and into one of the buildings’ external elevators.  The elevator was made out of the same transparent polymer used to fabricate the tunnels on the moon and Mars.  Jackson could see that even though the rain had stopped, it remained a cloudy night.  As he descended below the lower cloud cap, the city lights below him burst into view.  Lines of ground-based traffic came into focus, as well as the rows of air-based traffic that zigged and zagged all about him.  So many people; almost a billion alone on the eastern seaboard of North America and each one had their own story.

Jackson let his mind wander.  A taxi flew close enough to make the driver and his fare visible.  The passenger appeared to be in her mid-forties, tired looking and most likely on her way home.  Where was home?  What did she do when she got there?  Was she married?  Single?  Divorced?  Did she have kids?  Here was another individual living out the tapestry of her own life and if Jackson had not seen her, he would have never known that she existed.  Billions more like her were out there.  Nameless and faceless to him, but all major players in the realm of their own existences. 

A couple of minutes later, Jackson reached the plaza floor.  Exiting the elevator he looked up.  The taxi was gone.  He focused back in on his own reality, and feeling depressed about it, decided to stop at the liquor store on the way home.  Raising his hand, he hailed a cab.  It only took a minute before he found one, and became a passenger himself. 

That night, Jackson got drunk.  When he fell asleep, he dreamed.  It was an unusual dream.  Unusual, yet one that he could not call back into recollection from the spidery webs of sleep induced precognition.  It must have left an impression on him though.  It was 4:00 am, he was crying, and for some reason, or another, he was terrified.

At the same moment Jackson was having his night terrors, a young man by the name of Thomas Mishna was dying and he did not know it.  He was a file clerk for the Earth Force Army at their base approximately two and a half kilometers below the surface of the Martian planet.

He did not feel ill, and in fact would not start expressing any outward symptoms of a flu-like virus for at least another three or four days.  When the symptoms did come, they would come fast.  The doctors who would attend him would notice how dehydrated he was.  Shortly thereafter, he would become anemic and begin to go into renal failure.  The arteriole walls of his vascular system would start to atrophy immediately, and mercifully he would fall into a coma before and a cranial aneurysm would snuff out his life before the headaches became intolerable.

The physicians who attended him would worry because they would not be able to ascertain the identity of the microscopic killer.  The would not believe, nor could possibly know that they now were doomed to the same fate as their patient, despite having taken all the necessary precautions, and following all quarantine procedures. 

As it was designed to do, the virus would become infectious within an hour of generation, and then, five days later, quickly dispose of its host.  There were no vaccinations, no barriers that could be erected to stop it.  Its creators were not even aware of its virility.  When they learned of Thomas’ fate, they would initially dismiss it as “something else”, not because anyone believed that it was, but because to believe otherwise was sickening. 

Their worst fears would be confirmed, and by then of another week, they too would be dead.  Several men would kill themselves before allowing this to happen.  Some would go to the research board and try to figure out what went wrong.  Yet others would think a warning should be issued.   They were disposed of quickly, and within this top-secret community, not too quietly.

The last emotions to be felt would be unrealistic optimism, followed by hopelessness, and finally despair.  Pandora’s Box had been opened.  No one knew, and worst of all, by the time the public became aware of the oncoming crisis, those who knew the most about it, would be dead.

These events were as set in stone as the measures that lead up to them.  They would happen, given a little time.  As for the present, Thomas was finishing his shift and anxious to get home.  He had some leave time coming, and had arranged for his family to come in on a military transport from Earth to visit.  They would be here in the next three hours, and Thomas was looking forward to their visit.

“I’ve been watching your children, Naomi.  Did you know that they were soon to leave the star of their planets and run to the other stars of your creation?”

            “Yes.  Their potential is limited only by the boundaries they set for themselves.”

            “Where will they go first?”

            “Wherever their heart’s will take them.  Yet even in this hour, the enemy moves against them.”

“Has your warrior answered your call yet?”

“He has heard my visions and now moves toward one of my Temples.”

“And what of the other you spoke of?”

“He seeks to save my children, but not for the right reasons.  His heart is not yet in the right place and he will not find out the whole truth of the enemy’s plan until it is too late.”

“Take heart, Naomi.  Death is not final if the soul is saved.  Maybe some will even escape the coming whirlwind through their gate to the stars.”

“If she who builds it lives long enough to fulfill her dreams.  I fear the Horde will move against her next.”