Anthem's Fall

Chapter Seventy Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kristen

The skyward crashes expelled any chance the Lutvak ballroom had at regaining its composure. Much like the open avenue outside the tall windows, the boulder of rationality within the ballroom had been tipped over the precipice; now it rolled out of control with seemingly no end in sight.

"Maybe we're winning," Madison said. "Maybe the Army or—or the Air Force is fighting them."

Kristen shrugged, her hands intertwined against the belly of her sweatshirt. "It's possible, but I seriously doubt it. I think it's safe to say Vengelis and his people are powerful on a scale beyond our reasoning."

They were standing in the sunlight near the windows, their attention turning from the unspeakable madness out in Times Square to the news broadcast on the projection screen above the stage that was now reported failing infrastructures and widespread rioting in every major city in the United States. Every so often an Emergency Alert System message would disrupt the CNN studio. It advised people to stay in their homes, to lock their doors, to think of their own survival.

Still there was no sign of Vengelis.

"I know what you said about us not being able to comprehend technology of a more complex people," Madison said slowly. "But Vengelis and those giants aren't technology. They're people. How can people be so strong?"

Kristen acknowledged that Madison had a point; it did not seem to make any sense. Vengelis had told her technology itself was inferior when compared to his inherited abilities. The nature of his power was inescapably far more complex than anything she knew, but that did not mean it could not be understood.

"He said their power was derived within their heredity, that it's in their very genome. Sejero genetics, he called it. He was hesitant in discussing it, guarded, like he didn't want to reveal too much to me."

"You would really want to know more?"

Kristen turned to Madison skeptically. "You wouldn't?"
"Well, yeah, I suppose I would. But as you said, it's technology beyond our reasoning. What does it matter?"

"That's exactly what I'm not so sure about." Kristen stared expressionlessly across the arguing researchers in the ballroom. "What if it isn't so much advanced technology as it is a foreign technology?"

"It's not technology at all," Madison insisted. "Those monsters brought down the buildings in Chicago with their bare hands. I cannot bring myself to believe that's the result of technology."

"Maybe," Kristen said. "But think about it. An ant can lift something five times its body weight over its head, and drag something twenty-five times its own body weight. That would be equivalent to, say, a human lifting something one thousand pounds clear over her head with ease, and dragging around something that weighed over five thousand pounds."

Madison rolled her eyes. "Yeah but—"

"All I'm trying to say is that disproportionate body weight to strength ratios do exist, even here. So does flight, along with any number of the other things we've seen them do today, albeit not on their scale. But evolution works by fostering diversity, and it isn't a directed force. Vengelis's people have obviously found a way to tamper with genetics and expand their possibilities on a grand scale."

"How could they go about doing that?"

"I'm not sure. I've spent the majority of the last few years figuring out how to replicate genes, not figuring out how they came to exist in the first place."