Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten Read online

  My mama didn’t raise no fool!

  But, Dr. Ahmed Carlos Ball was the key, and this couldn’t be ignored either.

  And, because of that, he intended to find out why.

  “Take us to ground level,” he began, “I want to see the farms.”

  She shrugged and merged into a heavier stream of traffic, directing the Glide-car deftly, but a frown creased her brow. “Estefan, would you mind turning up the anti-Grav on you suit? Your weight is making the Glide’ drag,” she asked, the edge she’d carried in her tone momentarily absent.

  He mumbled that he would and began fidgeting with the lapel of his blazer until he found the correct sensor and, with a counter-clockwise turn of his forefinger, changed the anti-Grav within the garment from fifteen to forty percent. It effectively reduced his weight by nearly one hundred kilos. The Glide-car’s Grav-lifts became nearly silent.

  “Thank you,” grinned Flavia as she slid the Glide-car into the lane that would take them to the ground – the farmland – of Angel Free Town.

  Estefan wasn’t a large man or overly fat. He was Hispanic by birth and stood just a hair over five foot nine, bald by choice with dark brown eyes. He had delicate features for a man – thin lips, narrow face, and a thin nose, tapering into a round bulb at its end. He was lithe, his muscles more wiry than bulky with a slim waist and broad shoulders. It was a trait that ran deep in his family; all the males were built this way.

  Aside from appearance though, Estefan Ernando was different than your average, run-of-the-mill human. In fact, some would argue, he wasn’t particularly human at all. Back when he was a teenager and the first of these “differences” began to affect him and those he loved most, he had been branded an outcast, anathema to the human race itself. He had been stigmatized with the classification of Mutation, or Muto for short, which had put him in a caste stripped of rights and basic human dignity. For many years, he was hunted; many of the people he loved were slaughtered before him, because of the happenings within their bodies.

  He wasn’t alone, not by long shot, even when the changes in him first began. In fact, there were many like him – only the changes themselves were different. Then, those like him had been termed merely, Muto. As the years progressed, it became clearer that one Muto mightn’t be anything like those around him. Muto’s themselves began to classify one another. Some had two distinct abilities and were considered strong. Others might only have one, but be more potent than others possessing the same Mutation. Then, there were those like Estefan, who possessed three individual “powers”, and were considered the most powerful of all. Some would say this signified he was a titan among his kind. Some would say the Keeper was even moreso, because two of his mutations were the most potent to have ever existed within the Sixteen Worlds. What was universally agreed about Estefan, though, he was a mighty Muto and he was dangerous. Few bandied words that he was to be feared and loved at the same time. He was an enigma, a strange sort of dancer to the tune of the human experience. Many sought his protection, only to loath the forms in which it came – absolute, ironclad, and unshakable. It had been this way for most of his long, long life.

  First and foremost, Estefan was known as a Heavy – a Human Celeste whose body mass density was greater than normal humans, meaning, in layman’s terms, he was hard and weighed as much as a four hundred and fifty pound man. Yet, he, by appearance alone, seemed to weigh no more than one-eighty.

  Secondly, and this was why Estefan had memories that spanned centuries, was he was an Old-Timer – a Celeste who ages to his mid-thirties and then stops. He (or she) doesn’t age beyond that point. In fact, when they reach their second century, they began to regress in age a bit and finally stop looking as they would’ve at age twenty-four, give or take a few years in either direction. One can always tell an ancient Old-Timer by this trait – a timeless kind of youth that looks completely out-of-place, unerringly unnatural.

  Third, and probably most importantly, Estefan was also an Andro – a Celeste with capability to attract the opposite sex at will. Though, in his case, he’s considered an Arch-Andro - an Andro capable of attracting the same sex as well, a trait unheard of among Mutants.

  Combine those three aspects of him and not only do to you have a powerful Muto by human standards, but you have a powerful Muto by Muto standards as well. Thus, one could easily ascertain why he had risen from the ashes of his past to become one of the richest men to have ever lived. Who could stop him? How would you? Many have tried and their bodies are scattered all across the Solar System, most never to be found…

  Flavia was a Muto too, but wasn’t much like her one-time step-brother, except, she too, was an Old-Timer. Beyond being ageless, she was vastly different than him. She had the ability to see in any wavelength, whether it was infrared or ultraviolet or thermal. She needed no more than blink an eye or make a mental command and her eyesight would shift. Because of this, she was known, among their kind, as a Gazer - a Human Celeste with unbelievable vision.

  She was also known as an Anabol – a Celeste with incredible strength, though her prowess – like Estefan’s weight - was hardly visible to the naked eye. Other than the fact she was incredibly toned for a woman; no one would ever suspect someone as gorgeous and feminine as Flavia could not only lift the Glide-car they were riding within. She could throw it as well.

  Her sight and her giants’ strength were two of the most prominent reasons Estefan had named her his bodyguard. And, make no mistake, she was that in every sense of the word. His heartbeat, his breathing, his blood pressure, even his various brainwaves were all coded to be received by her and only her. She could tell, from a thousand meters, if he was screwing some broad or taking a shit. If she felt, during the course of either of those acts, he was in danger, she would come. She would kill. Nothing “touched” Estefan without her permission.

  Well, except for the other members of the Aegis Synod. They had free reign over his person, just as she, but the oaths of the Synod had been signed in more than mere blood. Three hundred and fifty years of unfailing loyalty made it so. The women of the Synod were above reproach. Each of them would lay down their lives for their Keeper. Each of them was a Muto titan just as she and him. And to a one, they loved him dearly, despite having to share…

  He was just as protective of them as they were of him. He was, after all, the bigger target; therefore, he was one in need of constant security. People had been gunning for Estefan’s head since he’d slain government officials with his bare hands at the green age of seventeen. He had just turned three hundred and eighty-four nearly seven earth-months ago, or so said the Gregorian calendar they still followed. It was easy to imagine just how big a target he’d grown into as the years passed and failed attempts on his life mounted. All the while, his wealth and influence continued to grow. Government’s had long been in fear of him. Their assassins had come in droves.

  “So what’re we going to do?” she asked, after they finally emerged from the sprawling transition of the parking complex and the grand vista of Angel Free Town opened before them.

  Though he had left the city he had help build into what it was today, he still marveled at the great leaps the Combined Human Race had made in both architecture and engineering since he’d been a child. The complexity of the megalopolis was breath-taking. There was nothing like this on the moon, where he made his home now. There was no need for “layered” cities, growing forever upward on a monolithic superstructure, utilizing the only space remaining when outward expansion had been exhausted.

  Fifteen layers, he thought as he gazed up at the “reflected” sky, knowing all the while another section of the city stood three thousand feet above his head, complete with its own “sky” and highways and streets and vaulted buildings. There were another thirteen layers above that one; just thinking about it boggled his mind, especially when he thought like the frightened boy from the twenty-first century.

  Flavia pulled onto Free Town Highway 5 (Level 2), which he rememb
ered as Interstate Highway 5 when he was a boy. It traversed on precisely the same route it had when he was younger. Only now, it was suspended three thousand feet above the one he’d ridden upon as a child in a combustion-driven automobile. The highway had multiple levels now, cutting a broad swath through the construct of Angel Free Town’s second level. The differences didn’t stop there though. This was no longer a thoroughfare of concrete and iron rebar. It was Grav just like everything else in this day and age, a thin alignment of particles whose gravitational charge was exactly opposite of the vehicles that traveled upon its surfaces. One alteration in this modern relationship between vehicle and highway was the particles allowed a Glide-car to not only change lanes, but change levels as well. It was a three dimensional method of travel absolutely necessary in a city the size of Angel Free Town. There were sixteen levels above them, all of them with the same amount of congestion, all of them busy - twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and that was just on level two of the city. On other levels, the highway towered even higher.

  Flavia swerved their conveyance into the proper junction point. She swiftly merged onto the spiraling connector-ramp that would take them to the twelve-level equivalent actually built on the soils of the earth. No suspension needed there. They were headed to the ground-level where stretched the great farms that fed the huge population living above them.

  “Take us all the way to the lowest level of the freeway,” commanded the Keeper, absently wondering if he could actually call the multi-layered river of traffic something as simple as “freeway”. It was so different from the highways of the century of his birth.

  Flavia grunted and did as he asked. She recalled how much he enjoyed those return journeys from age-old Disneyland when his family – their family – had been alive. It still amazed her how some of the smallest details of their past could remain so vivid in her mind. She remembered his smiles and animated laughter, glancing at her with flushed excitement as he relived the day. There had been innocence and youthful exuberance in his eyes…

  …Before the murders.

  Estefan sighed. “We are gonna find out more about this so-called Shadow Spark and go from there.”

  Flavia frowned. “You suspect the Shadow Spark is a farce?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Everything is farce until proven to these eyes,” he answered ominously.

  “Ooooo, how auspicious…,” joked Flavia.

  He clicked the roof of his mouth. “God dammit, Flavia, this is not a game!”

  “You don’t think I know that by the amount of money they are willing to pay us?” she retorted with nearly as much force.

  What a bi-polar bitch!

  He sighed, releasing some of his frustration regarding her. “2.3 quadrillion…”

  “Exactly!” she said pulling into the faster lanes of the second level of the highway, then flipped a switch and they catapulted down to the first level, so fast Estefan’s seat groaned, because of his weight, though its’ true nature was impeded by his suit.

  His eyes squinted as he looked out from the Glide-car to see the farms on the lowest level of Angel Free Town. He hadn’t seen them in a long time. It was nice to lay eyes upon the crops once again. For some reason, the prospect of growing food always seemed to soothe him. He had also loved traveling through the central valley of California for the very same reason. In those days, it had been called the bread-basket of the world. Now, all arable land on earth produced as much food as the fertile soils of the Golden State had centuries ago. It was the only way to feed the two hundred and eighty-four billion people living on the Earth. It was that way with most of the earthly surface of the planet now. Even the deserts had been transformed. It was the only reason why cities went “up” and not “out” anymore – farmable land. They needed to feed the masses and the only way to do that was to designate all the soils of the earth free of human habitation. Thus, populations had moved up and the cities of old had been demolished (or transported), their dirts turned and fortified, and now produced food for those living upon the Capitol Planet of the Sixteen Worlds of Sol.

  Of course, food was produced elsewhere throughout the Solar System. The alkaline soils of Mars had enough potassium, magnesium and chloride within them, so only a small amount of additional soluble minerals, heat, shielding and water, were needed to produce vast crops of Asparagus, strawberries and other acidic liking foods. Almost every outpost throughout the Sixteen Worlds had some sort of Greenhouse working in the typical two-fold capacity – one, provide food and two, provide oxygen. The upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere held sky-farms thousands of square miles in size. Each one consumed massive amounts of hydrogen, forever stoking the millions of turbines necessary to produce the heat so that hectare upon hectare of viable crops could grow at the very edge of space. Still though, those who could afford it, preferred fresh produce, meats and grains from earth over their out-world counterparts or the synthetic crap churned out by machinery or the “almost new” sustenance that had been preserved to the point it looked – and tasted - more like cardboard than anything else.

  Only food from the sea could be garnered from earth, because conditions in the oceans of earth were nearly impossible to recreate en masse. People had long since stopped trying to construct bio-systems of that sort, resorting to tanks instead. There were too many variables when trying to build an ocean able to produce seafood fit for consumption. Most of the time, what came out of them was poisonous to Humans – Celeste and Being alike.

  The one true exception was Europa, but that moon had been off-limits to the outside worlds for centuries…

  “Do you think Dr. Ahmed and his people have good reason to fear for the Shadow Spark?” queried Flavia, once she maneuvered to the fast lane and accelerated the Glide-car past 300kph.

  “That too needs to be investigated before a suitable answer can be applied to your question,” grumbled the Keeper, preferring to continue with his musings on plants and beasts and things of the waters, then to deal with the issue at hand.

  Flavia chanced a glance his way. “Hypothetically speaking then, Effy, would his people have reason to fear an outsider trying to get a hold of it?”

  Estefan considered her query, scratching at his bald head, traveling at such high speed always made his scalp itch. “If what he says is true, then it is possible many entities – government and private alike – would have a huge interest in garnering something as potent as the ‘Spark.” He paused to look directly at her. “But then again, if we decided to go after it, they’d have reason to be frightened just the same. We both know, they couldn’t hold out long against the Synod.”

  She nodded, and then her face bunched. “What about us, could we stop this so called Destro-Mancer the good doctor was speaking about?”

  He bounced with ironic mirth. “That would be bloody as hell, if everything he says about this creature is true. If not, then we’d crush him - or her - like a bug.”

  “Yeah, I figured the same, but what are we going to do about it?”

  He clicked the roof of his mouth again. She wasn’t going to give up, was she? “We’ll do nothing, for now. We will send out our teams to investigate these claims regarding the creature, while, at the same time, we consult the archives in order to attempt to learn more about the Shadow Spark. We need to see if the damned thing exists in the first place. We’ll go from there.”

  “It would be incredible and fearsome at the same time, if the Shadow Spark were real,” she ruminated.

  “Yeah, anything that can manipulate Celestial Mutations would be an awesome weapon…” He fell silent, a new thought stopping him for a moment. “Have we heard anything unusual coming out of Haumea?”

  She shook her head in the negative.

  “That’s another thing bothering me about this whole thing. We have eyes and ears everywhere, why haven’t we caught so much as a whisper about this Destro-Mancer? If it is, in fact, conquering the dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, why hasn’t word gotten back to
us?”

  Now, she shook her head with indecision, a gesture identical to the earlier one, but Estefan could tell the difference. Three hundred and fifty years together did such things.

  “And another thing,” began Estefan, waving his hand, “why come to us and not the Integrated Corporate Board of Directors? I mean, they have a military, they have security, and they have trillions and trillions of exchange units to burn on a mission such as this, why come to us when they could’ve gone to the government?

  “I don’t like this at all, Flavia.” He was nodding emphatically.

  Her answer was simple. “Secrecy, my dear, the government lacks the ability to keep things quiet, whereas, we… well; we’re specialists at making things disappear.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the Board has its secrets,” countered Estefan. They did… this he knew, because a good majority of them were involved the Synod itself. Flavia knew better than to be so naïve. Their children had infiltrated the governing body of the Sixteen Worlds ages ago.

  She changed lanes quickly, sliding around slower moving traffic, calm, collected, though they were hurtling down the highway. They had nearly reached the agricultural center of the city where the old Metro District of Los Angeles, the Staples Center, LA Live and so much more had once stood. All of that was now three thousand feet above their heads, carefully reconstructed, brick by proverbial brick – on the second tier of the megalopolis. Only six or seven minutes had passed. The trip would’ve taken them just under an hour back when he was kid growing up in Southern California. Already he could see the humungous processing plants and the forest of twenty-five hundred foot silos that seemed to make the mountains surrounding the Great Basin small, almost hill-ish.