Prologue
A clear morning was dawning, not that anyone being held in this makeshift prison would have known. There were no signs of time in the large, metal box of a main hall. A calendar with a frolicking puppy on it was the sole hint of the current month, January 1996. A day on the calendar had been circled in red pen. Three words had been scrawled beside it—"date of execution".
Nearly a hundred prisoners in baggy orange jumpsuits stood chained to the bottom of a steel wall. An electronic tracking device was strung around their necks, blinking intermittently. A warden dressed entirely in gray stood along the line-up. He tapped his pen against his clipboard.
"Seventy five, step forward," he ordered, monotone.
One of the chained prisoners took two slow strides towards the guard. He stood rigidly straight, his expression devoid of any signs of emotion.
"Here," he answered.
The warden looked the prisoner over, wrinkled his nose condescendingly and made a check on the page. He turned back to the line. "Seventy six, forward."
The prisoner at the front of the line stepped back while the man beside him moved forward in perfect unison. The one called seventy six opened his mouth, but failed to speak. The warden cleared his throat impatiently. "Prisoner seventy six, are you present?" he asked, annoyed. Seventy six didn't respond.
The warden leaned in continuously closer to the unresponsive prisoner, not blinking. He stopped just short of their noses touching and clapped his hands loudly over the prisoner's head.
"Did you die on your feet, seventy six? It's two weeks too early. Kick it today, and I'll personally resurrect you like I'm doctor freaking Frankenstein just to see you to the slaughterhouse you lot deserve!" he shouted into the prisoner's face.
What little color seventy six had left in his complexion flushed from his skin. His eyes drifted to the floor, clamming up. The warden grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward. "Seventy six!"
"Present," the prisoner answered between gasps.
"Damn skippy, you're present," the warden grumbled, letting go. Seventy six stepped back against the wall as quickly as possible. The warden rolled his eyes. "Genocidal pansy artificials, can't even take a little sleep deprivation like men anymore," he murmured to himself. He turned his head to his left, looking down the line. "Prisoner seventy seven, forward."
A well poised, copper-toned figure at the far end of the line took a broad step forward. Her chains jingled as she pulled against the wall. She bowed her head, obscuring her face with the bangs of her bleached platinum hair. "Israfil Del Rosario," she answered, firm yet solemn.
The warden lifted his pen from the page and came to a stop directly in front of her. He raised his pen to the prisoner and jabbed the back of the cap against her forehead. "You will answer as addressed, seventy seven. For all my purposes, that's your name, and my purposes are the only ones here that matter, so get used to it and answer me."
"Present, sir," she answered flatly.
The warden grabbed her beneath her chin, forcing her head to move upright. She kept her eyes focused on the floor.
"To my face, like a person. You remember how to talk, I take it?" the warden sneered.
Slowly, Israfil raised her head to stare directly at the warden. Somehow, the deep brown of her eyes seemed even colder than the cement walls. "Present, sir."
The warden scoffed, still annoyed. "Don't look so proud. You're a mosquito, a flea. You don't deserve a name. You barely deserve the kennel you're going down in. You get that, seventy seven?"
"Present, sir," she answered again
The warden paused in place. He bent over at the knees, lowering his head in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her face from below. "You have anything else to say, or are you going to keep repeating that like a goddamn parrot?"
"Present, sir."
The warden reached to his side holster and pulled out a taser. He pulled down on the trigger, hitting her in the chest with the extending coils, followed quickly by an intense electric shock. The girl's body teetered sideways and collapsed across the ground with a metallic clink. Her arm sparked against the pavement.
The warden lurched back abruptly, moving away from the line of prisoners. He kept one hand on his gun while he reached for his radio transceiver."Security base, we have a code red twelve, escaped prisoner. Keep to protocol. Seal all exits. And send for the second crew. Someone needs to check the cells. Some lunatic replaced themselves with a god-damn robot," he snarled into the microphone.
"Android prototype," prisoner seventy five mumbled lowly.
The warden turned his head away from the fallen body and aimed his gun back at the prisoner. "You have something to do with this, smart ass?"
Seventy five stared back at the warden, not budging.
"Copy, Tanner. Lockdown protocols initiated," a security guard answered through the warden's radio.
As the guard was finishing his sentence, all of the surrounding doors in the holding room slammed to the ground in a single crash. A siren screeched through the hallways. The muffled wail crept through the door and into the main hall. The warden snapped his head towards the nearest door, watching for someone who couldn't possibly be there.
Elsewhere in the prison, a security guard sat behind a row of bulky computer monitors, observing the main holding cell. The guard pulled one side of his headphones off of his ears and twisted in his chair, turning his back to the screens. He exhaled deeply into the back of his hands and hunched forward in his chair, settling in with a yawn.
Just as his eyelids began to flutter shut, a human shaped shadow passed through his peripheral vision. Mildly surprised, the guard opened his eyes back to attention. He stared into the darkness of the doorway behind him. No one was there. The guard turned his head back to the monitors. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
A platinum haired woman with the exact same face as the android hung from a pillar on the ceiling. She descended from the ceiling, landing directly behind the guard without a sound. She grabbed a pen off of his desk and stabbed it straight through the back of his neck. He barely had the time to gasp before his expression froze, dead.
The real Israfil reached her arms around the guard to reach the keyboard. She switched through the security feeds and shut down the cameras, pulling up a loop in their guard's headset began to buzz with static. A garbled message poured through the foam.
"Security base, where are the gates? We need lockdown," the warden demanded.
Israfil wrapped her hand around the top of the radio. She pressed the center button two times, sending a static buzz back. She pressed a red button along the control panel, activating the locks as she rushed out with the radio in hand.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" the warden had started to hiss. A second, lower-pitched beep and a red light flooded the room. The warden lifted the radio away from his ear. He glanced back to the prisoners, watching them warily. The crowd stared right back at him.
The radio static calmed to a faint hum as a new voice joined in. "Cell blocks B through K are secure, sir. No abnormalities. Should I report to holding?"
The warden turned the radio away from the crowd as he spoke into it. He kept both eyes over his shoulder as he did. "And the private cell?"
"That wasn't my responsibility, sir."
"Double check. I don't want that bastard getting out."
"Aye, sir."
The source of the voice stood outside a sealed, plexi-glass door. A waifish man with disheveled curly hair and faintly green eyes stared into the padded cell. An indistinguishable figure in a white straightjacket rest in the corner, his back turned to the wall, barely in sight.
The green eyed man knocked the back of his fist against the door. "Oi, Genghis. Wake up call from the evil overlords," he called through the door.
"Are the others secure?" the dark baritone of Khan's voice called back.
The green eyed man entered a pass code into a pin pad beside the cell. He pressed down upon the handle, opening the door. "Of course they're secure, they're imprisoned," he answered through a smile.
Khan stood from his spot and stepped forward, approaching the doorway. Even in restraints, he was an intimidating figure with slicked-back black hair and olive skin. He kept his stance relaxed as the green eyed man scrambled to unhook his restraints.
"There's a bomb in block D, adjacent to the main holding cell. The Bay is in the basement, north-west access point. We'll have two minutes for evac and two to launch before their re-enforcements are in range of access," the green-eyed man explained, his words so rapid it was miraculous they were more than a syllabic slur.
"Where is Israfil?" Khan asked.
"By the schedule, straight outside the holding cell. She'll escort the crew to launch any second now," he answered.
With his restraints removed, Khan raised his arm. He placed his hand firmly on the other man's shoulder, stoic yet seemingly sincere. "Thank you, Azrael. Tomorrow morning, we shall all owe our lives to you."
Azrael's smile widened hesitantly. He matched his pace to his commander's, walking half a step behind him down the corridor. "With all respect, my Khan, A, I already owed you mine and B, you probably shouldn't say that 'til this works."
Azrael's last words were interrupted by a thunderous boom. A stream of blue-tinted flame, smoke and rubble burst through the building, rocking everything in its path. Azrael paused mid-step, gaping at the scene ahead. "Though that is a step in the right direction."
The gap between Azrael and Khan widened as Khan continued to run towards the explosion.
"Azrael," Khan commanded.
Azrael blinked back to attention. He sprinted forward, rushing after Khan.
Smoke, gravel and rubble clouded the air of the demolished holding cell. What moments ago had been a wall was now a gaping hole into the hardly recognizable inner cells. The figures of prisoners and staff alike covered the ground, though one glance was enough to differentiate the two. The guards' faces were melted beyond recognition, scraps of seared flesh and visible bone where a body once had been. The prisoners were covered in soot, scrapes and gray ashes, but were clearly recognizable as human and otherwise intact.
As the smoke cleared, piles of ground began to shift, raising smaller puffs of dust and ashes as the prisoners rose to stand. Their chains rattled against the ground, no longer attached to a wall that didn't exist.
Israfil tossed her head from one side to the other, shaking her hair about. She ran through the obstacle course of support bars and fallen corpses to the center of the room. She stomped her foot against a chunk of the wall, kicking it aside. A block of nine stone tiles, surrounded by crevices, was visible against the floor. Israfil pulled out the security guard's half-melted radio from her pocket. She tapped at the jammed call button, forcing it down.
"Azrael, the access code?" she wiped her hand over the tile as she spoke, clearing the dust off of the keypad. She entered the numbers as she heard them.
"Seven, zero, then five and nine together, three, then seven and one together. Enter."
Israfil slipped her fingernails into the larger crevice beside it and pulled up on the floor board. A series of fluorescent running lights illuminated the stone tunnel below, showing a glimpse of the path.
The speaker in the next room over grew louder, the warning alarm spreading. "Freeze! Any attempts to escape will be shot on sight!"
Israfil rolled her eyes to the siren. She raised a hand into the air and waved it over her head. "Here, now!" she shouted over the alarm.
Most of the prisoners who had been standing turned towards Israfil. They ran towards the opening and leapt into the tunnel.
Once a steady stream had been established, Israfil ran back into the rubble to search for stragglers. A quick glance around was all it took for Israfil to find a blip of orange. She kneeled down beside the unconscious prisoner, wrapped both of her arms around their torso and struggled to pull them out from a large chunk of rock.
The alarm continued to blare behind her, overlapping with her voice. "Freeze! Any attempts to-!"
Exasperated, Israfil let go of her fellow prisoner. She reached towards the gun holster on a fallen guard, pulled out their pistol and fired across the yard. The bullet shot into the speaker, knocking the sound and the red light out.
With a heavy sigh, Israfil tucked the gun into her back pocket. She pulled the unconscious prisoner's arm over her shoulder to anchor him to her and sprinted towards the exit. She grabbed the inner handle of the trap door as she jumped into the tunnel, sealing the passage behind her. The running lights shut off, casting the tunnel in black. Israfil jostled the tracking collar on the prisoner she was holding, turning the flashing light towards the wall. The outlines of her fellows were barely visible around her, but they were there, and it was enough for her to see by.
The filtered lights of the SS Botany Bay filled the underground chamber. The ship stood proudly atop a folding metal platform, directly beneath a trap door. An external command center had been installed beside the ship; gleaming, state of the art technology surrounded by dirt, netting and just enough bars to keep the structure intact. A line of augments rushed on board, following the sound of their commander's voice.
Khan stood within the sleeping chamber beside a cryogenic pod. One of the augments sat within it, plugged in and lying still. He shut the lid of the chamber, enclosing them inside. He raised his head just enough that he could speak to the rest of the room while he moved to the next pod.
"File to the back of the room. Find an open pod. Insert the IV into an accessible artery. We are leaving to colonize. You will awaken when we have landed. Do not stop for questions." he called to them, enunciating every word with authority and determination.
Khan stopped beside the next full pod. His subject looked up to him with a solid stare, silently suppressing their fear. Khan looked to them as he fixed the latch. "I swear on my life, you will be protected," he told them.
It may have been Khan's imagination that he saw the fellow augment's expression relax, but for the moment, he chose to believe it. He placed both hands atop of the lid, slammed it shut and moved on to the next one.
Azrael raced to follow Khan's path, pressing a series of buttons to program each sleep cycle. He hunched over the control panel of the nearest tube, panting heavily. "My Khan, there's barely twenty seconds, we may want to-" he raced to say. Before he could finish, he was interrupted.
"There are three more. I won't leave them behind," Khan stated, still calm. He closed the tube and looked towards the door, waiting.
Azrael rapidly bobbed his head as he activated the last of the filled tubes. He shifted his eyes from his leader to the open door, apprehensive. He began to mouth the numbers, counting down—one, two.
Halfway through two, the faint thud of footsteps began to echo near the door. Khan positioned himself beside the last of the open tubes, removing the IV for access.
Israfil darted into the room, dragging her limp comrade beside her. Azrael chased after her to grab the body's feet. Together, they hoisted it into the open pod.
"He was the last," Israfil stated, speaking to Khan without making eye contact. Once the body was in place, Israfil grabbed one of the arms and pushed up his sleeve, allowing access to a vein.
"What of Kati?" Khan asked while he inserted the IV.
"She was held out of contact. Killed earlier today, most likely," Israfil answered matter-of-factly.
Khan slammed the door to the cryotube shut. He paused for a second longer, trying to maintain an outer calm. Azrael approached behind them, activating the tube.
While they were busy, Israfil walked away. She approached an open cryotube, removed the IV from its side compartment and held it over her head. "Khan," she called.
Khan turned to look at Israfil. His focus fell to the cryotube. "Step inside. I'll situate you."
"No. You," she stated simply.
Azrael stopped beside the control panel. Both he and Israfil stood at perfect attention, staring back at Khan with silent urging.
"Both of you get in your pods. I command it."
Azrael lowered his head slightly. "Due respect, someone needs to launch the ship. Someone being me."
"If we are found before launch, someone must be able to defend him and the ship. Your preservation is more important than mine. Please, forgive my mutiny," Israfil stated.
"I kept prototype tubes beneath the site. External solar sustainment should keep us stable in the rubble if we can ever be retrieved," Azrael added.
It was at that point that Khan realized this had been his team's plan from the start, and nothing he could argue would convince them otherwise. For the sake of his remaining people, he had to accept this.
"Your sacrifices will be remembered," Khan told them solemnly.
Israfil bowed in respect. "Thank you."
Israfil offered a hand to Khan, helping him to lie down inside the cryotube. She rolled up his sleeve, allowing Azrael access to jab the IV in. She shut the tube's door, locking Khan inside.
Azrael raced to the control panel and tapped in the new settings. He and Israfil both ran from the sleeping chamber, outside of the ship.
Azrael paused beside a few keypads as he went, typing in different codes to activate the ship's auto-pilot function. Three high pitched chirps called back to him each time. He sprinted after Israfil, chasing her down the corridor to the launch pad. "Ship's live."
"What's the plan now? Israfil asked as she smoothly rounded a turn into the exit corridor.
Azrael skidded sideways as he turned widely around the corner, struggling to keep up. "For you, get out, and don't touch anything!"
"Not much of a plan." Israfil drew her stolen gun from the back of her jumpsuit as she tread down the stairwell, taking aim at various points as she paced silently towards the controls. Azrael's footsteps thudded behind her.
"Not much of a critique. Stay put if you don't need to shoot something."
Azrael latched onto the railing for support while he trampled down every other step. Israfil stood directly behind the control chair, propping her gun against the back. Her narrowed eyes focused on the door, waiting for something.
Just as Israfil was lowering her head, Azrael slid into the captain's seat. He reached beneath the desk to flip a dial and then pulled two levers simultaneously. He craned his neck to look at an encoded circular screen. A single dot blinked in the center. He smiled in relief.
"Alright, radar's clear, trajectory to orbit should have them out of range in five minutes. Moving on," Azrael swiveled in his chair, shifting positions. He hunched over the keyboard and began to enter code. As he typed, the restraints attaching the ship to its launch deck began to disconnect. The engine whirred lowly with newfound life. "Engine's prepped, locks are removed, and that leaves..."
"What if that something is you?" Israfil interrupted in contemplation, her eyes shifting towards Azrael.
"What something?" he asked to the keyboard, not paying attention.
"The one I need to shoot."
Azrael shrugged half-heartedly "Then wait 'til I have this ruddy ship in the air. Launch site clearing, and," he paused in anticipation. The trap door above them began to split apart, casting flecks of dirt and daylight into the room. Azrael snapped his fingers in front of himself, grinning proudly at the sky. "Yes! Would've been a terrible time to fail."
Azrael peeked over his shoulder, looking to the wall behind him. "Isra, is the door clear?"
"No. It's metal."
Azrael failed to stifle a snicker. "Close enough. Dive under the platform, prep the tubes. Twenty seconds. I'll be there."
Israfil ducked under Azrael's control panel and sprinted towards the ship. She struggled not to sigh. "You have the least effective clock of anyone I've ever met, by the way."
"I've been a mole for three months, what do you expect?"
With that said, Israfil sprinted forward. She slid feet-first into a second pit beneath the Bay's landing platform. Azrael wrapped both hands around the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white from tension as the SS Botany Bay lifted into the sky.
"Three seconds," he murmured under his breath in awe and anticipation.
"Azrael!"
Startled from his trance, Azrael shot up to attention. He switched one final dial, setting a spark alongside the wall. He stumbled away from the desk, sprinted to the pit beneath the launch pad and jumped inside.
The platform cast a shadow across Azrael and Israfil, blocking the daylight and the spectacle of a space-ship from view. Azrael stumbled to keep his balance and failed, crashing to the floor.
Israfil stood inside an upright cryotube, her IV already plugged into her arm. She stared at Azrael with the closest thing to a glare as she'd come to expressing. "If you leave me alone here, I'll kill you."
Azrael grinned widely back at her, amused by something. "I'm not convinced you won't regardless."
Azrael pressed both hands against the ground, forcing himself back to his feet, chuckling under his breath. He kicked the base of Israfil's cryotube's door. The door clicked shut. Another siren sounded faintly in the distance. "Police. Worst they can do is be a lay witness," he whispered to himself.
Azrael lifted his head, trying to stare past the metal platform blocking the way to catch one last glimpse of his stolen ship rising into the cloud-covered sky. All he could see was the outline of gray tufts and a coming storm.
With a deep breath, Azrael reached into his pocket. He took out a cigarette and lit it, cradling the end between his fingers. "I wonder if they'll name a school after me. Or a city. A city might be nice," he murmured. He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled a single drag, savoring the moment.
The instant he had taken in what he could, he tossed the cigarette and the lighter across the room. He stepped into his cryotube and shut the door behind him. An artificial eruption boomed around him as the dirt chamber collapsed upon itself, burying the cryotubes in a cushion of darkness.
Two wires attached to the tubes ran through the dirt, rock and water to a point two miles away, into the center of a single, barren cactus. Needle-shaped sets of solar panels pointed to the sun, taking in the light and the blaze of a prison that supposedly never existed.
Two Hundred and Sixty Four Years Later
A pair of Federation excavators stood in the center of an eviscerated crater, sifting through the dirt. Fragments of pillars and faded netting were scattered through the dry soil. The younger of the two kneeled to the ground, picking up a thin, unfurling strand of net between his glove-covered fingers. "Of all the excavation sites the academy could pick, it's a desert. Again. Why aren't we ever sent somewhere nice, like Hawaii? They've still got sand in Hawaii," he asked through a sigh.
The senior officer continued to wave his metal detector, undeterred. "Stop complaining, cadet. They give us a job, we've got a job."
The cadet loosened his grip, allowing the net to slip from his fingers. He placed one hand firmly against the soil, grabbed a scoop from his pocket and plunged it through the surface half-heartedly. "Yeah, but, seriously. Why here? That prison barely even exists. What do they think we're going to find? Some super-mater disintegrator set to destroy mankind?"
The senior officer closed his eyes, ignoring the other as best as he could. "We don't know. That's why we're looking. It's risk mitigation."
"Then digging anywhere is risk mitigation. Nothing special about this place."
The officer turned off the switch on his metal detector. He paused to stare at the cadet's back. "No one's resting easy after that monstrosity got out last year. If he's got extra resources, the Fed needs to be sure they're sealed up damn tight. What if he got out again and he had something waiting?"
"I'd want someone else to have found it first," the cadet said frankly.
"Then you picked the wrong department," the officer started to snap.
As the cadet had been preparing to speak, he plunged his shovel back into the dirt. Any words that had been building in his throat were replaced by a metallic clink.
Startled, the cadet pulled his shovel from the sand. He pressed his hand into the ground to feel the spot under him. A chill passed through the leather glove, into his hand. He pulled his hand from the dirt and raised it into the air. Blotches of frost coated his fingertips.
The cadet's eyes widened, breathless with shock. He plunged his hands into the dirt and clawed frantically through it until he saw the surface. Two ice-coated cryotubes rest amongst the sand, their contents frozen in deceptive serenity.
The cadet pressed off of the ground and rose to his feet. "Uh, commander?"
"Yes, cadet?"
"I think this is what we were looking for…"
Fully expecting some kind of joke, the officer turned around. The instant he saw the dirt below, he froze in place. His metal detector slipped from his hand. "Holy shit."
A few seconds of staring later, the officer gathered the will to step forward. He planted his feet beside the cadet's while he stared at the perfectly parallel tubes. "Do you know what these are, kid?"
"It looks like a popsicle case, but for people," the cadet mumbled.
"That's… way more correct than it has a right to be."
The cadet adjusted his position, standing closer to his commanding officer. He turned his head so he was staring directly at him, waiting for a cue. His trembling hand hovered beside the officer's arm.
The officer turned his stare fully on the tubes as he began to explain. "It's a cryogenic freezing tube. Primitive technology. It's the same type of device that was holding the genetic…"
Three of the cadet's fingers burst through his glove, his fingertips reforming into sharp claws. The claws shot out in a straight line, piercing through the officer's arm, into his torso and finally out of his head. The officer gurgled, struggling and failing to speak. He froze mid-sentence, this time permanently.
The cadet flexed his fingers, melting the material into an opaque, viscous fluid. The talons retracted from the officer's body. Within seconds, the liquid pulled back into a set of seemingly human fingers. The officer's corpse collapsed to the ground.
The cadet flicked his wrist, shaking off the blood. He shifted his eyes from one side of the plain to the other. No one was there.
In an instant, his entire being shifted into a featureless human form of the same gelatinous material. A new face emerged from the mass. This time, his hair had shifted from his head to a goatee, his face was wrinkled with at least fifty years of age, his jaw was wider and his eyes were sharp with crows' feet markings, yet they exuded an undeniable kindness.
The reformed creature stepped into the spot between the two cases. He bent over and poked a single key on the side controls, releasing one of the locks.
A wave of mist burst from beneath the door, allowing the outside temperature to sneak into the cryotube. The internal heater churned with new found life. The heavy layers of frost melted away, revealing a much clearer image of Israfil's delicate, sleeping face. Within moments, her chest and throat began to move, breathing.
The creature reached his hand into the cryotube. He brushed his open fingertips against her jacket. Her rich brown eyes, almost burgundy in the sunlight, snapped open. Her pupils dilated instantly to the changing light. The creature smiled down at her.
"Good morning."