Red On Black

Chapter 9

Rehtaeh:

They made it to the settlement fairly quickly. Everyone spread out, Carolyn, Shazza, and Johns headed to the skiff to get it into working order. Imam and his eldest boys started to work on the water well to see if they could get it going. Jack and the youngest of the Imam's kids were doing whatever, where ever together.

She walked away from the group, found a quiet place near the skiff and opened her pack. She pulled out the small computer and opened her files. She was oblivious to what was happening around her as she read. She had already read that her biological father had been a Genetically Created Super Soldier, she and her brothers were his only viable children. All of the others had either died in the womb or turned out greatly disfigured. She and her brothers had not been any type of genetic miracle for anyone but her mother, even then she had known about the experiment. At birth, her brothers were considered a success for the progress in super soldier creation while she had been considered a possible genetic mutant. There was some discussion about having her destroyed, but the plan was vetoed when she turned out to be the physically healthiest of the seven.

As they grew, the children were monitored by doctors, teachers, scientists and her results were always at the top of the class, above even her brothers. The GCSS Division had her scores altered in the public system in order to keep the government officials and any enemies off of their trail. When her extra sensory abilities started becoming amplified during puberty, the scientists began watching her progress more intently. Especially when she went AWOL at thirteen, having ran away from home and took out a riot gang during the Vancouver Protests by herself. She had killed only those who attacked her first, proving that she had enough control of her mind and body to decipher the enemy. And yet she had not listened to orders from her higher ranking officers and had not backed down until her mother and youngest brother had arrived on the scene. That was when they decided that she would be the perfect candidate for the genetic control in the off-planet habitation experiments, along with her brothers as the recipients of her mutations.

Everything about her life in cryo was included in the computer, yet so was everything about her brothers. There were video logs, digital pictures, family feeds, journals and diary transcripts. She saw the faces of her brothers, and she heard their voices. There were pictures of their families, wives, children, grandchildren. Yes, they had lived full lives, without ever knowing that they were part of an even greater experiment. They had been told that she had been killed along with their parents, that her body had been donated as per her request to help them create any and all vaccines that might be required for their planet. Each one had mourned her death along with their parents, having no idea that their sister was still alive, in a state of imprisonment.

Of the 53 experiment regiments Rehtaeh had undergone, twenty-nine of them had been experienced by her brothers, fifteen by the following generations and the remainder of the experiments had been for the other planets. Including one non-authorized procedure that she had forbidden in her contract, the removal of her ova. The note in the file said only that five of the eggs were taken to assist the women of an undisclosed planet with a fertility problem. Ultimately millions of people had been adapted to foreign worlds using her genetic abnormalities. No one realized that her preternatural genetic code continued to change and amplify as she grew older and stronger. Not until the planets were populated with what those from the Alliance called a 'superior race' or gifted populations.

Besides the fact that she had overstayed her original sentence by four hundred years, there were two reasons she had been released from her prison. The first was because one of her doctors had been convicted of sexually abusing her and harassing her other doctor. Rehtaeh had wondered what had happened to the touchy-feely asshole who had worked with Dr. May, now she knew. The second was because, for some unknown reason, the planet her brothers had founded was now considered 'dead' and 'cursed'. All of her sacrifices had been for nothing. There was no one left. She had been hoping to see the planet that her brothers had built, to see and feel their history. It would never happen. The events that lead to the death of their world were only transcribed in a summarized version in her file. It was an invasion of mass destruction that left the planet desolate and half alive. There were thousands upon thousands of files to look at and read through. It was overwhelming to look at, much less think about.