Evolutionary

Ch. 12 - Dawn of Fire

They emerged from the subway, shaken but intact. The memory of those kids was fading quickly, Carlson had much more on his mind. He gazed upward at the overgrown building he had once spent so much time in.

"There it is, or was." Carlson said to Liz, who was only half paying attention. They walked up to the green tinged glass doors. Carlson dug in his pocket for his wallet, flashing it on a sensor underneath the handle. It flashed green and a mechanical voice emanated from it. "Welcome back, Doctor Carlson."

He opened the door and walked inside, their footsteps echoing into the dimness of the lobby.

"This place is huge!" Liz shouted, her voice amplified by the vast emptiness.

"It's no big deal, the lights are over here." He said as he walked over to the large, circular front desk. He hopped over the top of the desk and rummaged around for the switch. Instantly the entire lobby was lit by bright white lights. Soft lounge music began to play on the speaker system embedded in the walls. Behind the desk a waterfall wall began to flow and screens in various locations around the room began to play a promotional video in sync about how Bionetics will change the world.

"This place is incredible!" Liz said

"Never been in the city before?" Carlson chuckled.

"No, not really, I never saw a reason to come here; I was content with the suburbs."

"Fair enough."

Carlson started to walk towards the elevator bank just behind the front desk. He pressed the button indicating 'up' and after a brief wait the doors opened with a chime. Liz and Carlson shuffled inside and Carlson hit the button for floor thirty-seven. They waited in silence, the cheery background music ignored by Carlson. However Liz seemed to enjoy it.

The door opened and chimed: "Thirty-seventh floor. Have a nice day."

Carlson started walking down the massive hall, the lights turning on as he walked under them. Liz followed closely, confused about where he was headed. Eventually he reached the lab and took out the samples he had collected. Liz asked what he was doing with them.

"I need to find out what happened." He replied.

"Whatever." Liz shrugged. She walked out of the room and began to wander around.

Carlson prepared the samples on a glass slide and examined them carefully under the microscope. He was shocked at what he found. The cell structures of the samples were completely different than what he had ever seen before. The world had evolved billions of years.

"Astounding, isn't it?" Carlson recognized the voice. He turned around and noticed that Liz was no longer in the room.

"How are you John?" The shadowy figure said, stepping forward out of the background.

"Smith..." Carlson muttered.

"I must provide my thanks to your work; it was exactly what I was missing. I tell you, without you John, I could never have brought upon the new age, the rebirth of nature. Thanks to you I was able to give mother earth a chance to start over, to repair our damage."

"Impossible!" Carlson shouted, rising to his feet furious.

"Oh but how possible it was." Smith replied, quickly drawing a large revolver, pointing it straight in Carlson's face. "Take a seat."

Carlson slowly sat back down, his anger ready to boil over. "Why and how?" Carlson had many questions but these two were the most prominent to him.

"Why? The same reason as you, dear boy. To save the world, return to blissful green! Allow nature to thrive, with no one to quell its progress. You said it yourself, that you were going to bring the revolution. Well I think it's more of an evolution! I constantly looked at the world in disgust. I witnessed how humans themselves crushed all those beneath them. Destroying and consuming the very thing that gave them life. I knew the only way to save our planet was to eradicate the source of the problem, us. I needed a way to switch shoes, make us inferior. As it turns out your growth gene was exactly what I needed. I just mutated the virus and added the evolution trait, simple really."

"You're bloody insane!"

"No John," Smith said as he placed the gun's barrel to Carlson's forehead, forcing him to look on in horror. "It's not me that's insane; it's the rest of the world, thank-you again for your services John, and good-bye."

Smith pulled the trigger, spraying blood across the work desk. Carlson's body remained seated as Smith exited the way he had entered.

Meanwhile, Liz had ran to the roof. She heard the gun shot echo through the halls when waiting for the elevator. She assumed Carlson was dead, mourning in the elevator.

"One-hundredth floor, roof." The elevator chimed.

Liz scrambled onto the roof, alone and scared. She ran to the edge of the roof, contemplating suicide. But as she gazed upon the sea of green she noticed it was burning. Helicopters hovered over the trees, spewing flames. She looked down and could barely make out military personnel in the streets, killing harvesters. The rattle of gunfire and the thump of tanks echoed from the distance. The hell disguised as Eden was burning to the ground.

>T9!