Sub Terra: Et Reditus

Seventeen

Gus

"Gus, I'd like you to listen to this, too. You two will be the only ones to get to hear my story." Mr. Sterling told. I nodded.

He let out a heavy, violent cough. Danny reached his arms out to support his dad.

"No, I'm fine," he denied. "Let me start."

He took a couple seconds to collect his thoughts, before continuing.

"After I  tripped and fell, I was taken directly into custody by the HEF. You know that much, right Danny?"

"You were tripped? I was told that you slipped, or something like that."

"I was tripped, by your Uncle Jack's leg. The truth is... I could've gotten up and ran back to him and our acquaintance and escaped. But I didn't. I didn't want the Officers to take the three of us."

"Uncle Jack?" Danny asked. "You mean Mr. Watanabe?"

"Mister-- oh, Mr. Watanabe, huh? So... that's how it is. I guess he didn't want to you to have a strong bond with him. He didn't want you to get too attached to him."

"How was he my uncle? You and him aren't even from the same background."

"We aren't blood brothers, of course. He's the closest thing I have to one, though. He and family loved me like I was their own."

"I see. What happened after the HEF took you away?"

"For about a couple years, they kept me in their specially allocated detention camps, up on the surface. For two years, I tore down old buildings in different parts of California so they could be used as construction material. They made us destroy old, important buildings."

"That's so... so terrible! They were doing that behind the scenes while the Citadel citizens were going about their lives?"

I could hear the subtle anguish in Danny's voice.

"Yes, and it only got worse from there. 17 years ago, they sent me to their labor camps up on Mars?"

"M-Mars? They sent you to another planet?" I muttered.

"They did. When I wasn't mining for minerals deep inside the crust of the planet for half the day, every day, the Administration made sure I was kept busy."

Danny and I were silent.

"Even though the Narks were long gone for the most part, they made sure to keep the legacy going. They had an entire scientific operation going on up there. They wanted to try many different things. Terrible... awful things. Here, look at this..."

He turned himself to show his bare back. Multiple surgical scars sprawled across his skin, looking like someone had slashed a knife across a wall multiple times.

"They operated on you?"

"Yep. They implanted organs in me. Nark ones. Grown in labs."

I hid my gasp, clamping my lips shut to not let the air escape my mouth. Danny stared at the floor at his feet silently.

"What did they do to you, Mr. Sterling? Why did they do it?" I couldn't stop myself from asking.

"They used my body to keep Nark organs in so they could incubate pathogens inside me. Pathogens that could wipe out towns in a matter of days. A process that all-"

He let out another monstrous cough.

"-all started inside of me."

I understood what he was trying to say. They used him as a biological weapon.

"How did- how did it not affect you, then?

"For the longest time... it didn't. The Administration kept the remedies of these pathogens to themselves, made with information found in Nark medical textbooks that were left behind. So as soon as enough of that stuff reproduced in me, they'd give me the cure and give me time to recover, and they'd start it all over again."

"Dad... it did start doing something to you eventually, right? I mean-

"Yes, it did. It's exactly why I'm here on this bed today. Please, allow me to continue."

Danny nodded.

"In between getting my... well... vaccinations, I was forced to work in the home of a Nark Prince, up on Mars. That coincided with my recoveries, and it started wearing down my body. It wasn't much at first, but then, something happened about 14 years ago."

"Huh? A Nark Prince? On Mars? I always thought they returned to their home planet. You're telling us they're still around?"

"Trust me, they may be very, very weak, but they're still here. There's a handful of his kind still there. They're always watching- or should I say, were watching us. The Mars settlements were coordinated by the Nark royal family and three of the City's governments down here on Earth. But anyways, that Prince ordered for his slaves to be relocated to a work camp. There were twelve of us, and he decided that we weren't useful to him anymore,"

He took a short pause to catch his breath.

"So they hauled us in to one of his personal Crafts, ready to be transported. One of us — a guy we called Sampson — decided to take the damn thing over and help us escape."

"You let him do it? All the way back over to earth?"

He told us Sampson was a veteran of the Terran-Nark War, so they had full faith in him. He killed the entire crew of the Craft by himself, and took control of it. It was already a lost cause by the time it left Mars' atmosphere, since the Cities didn't allow the Narks leave its surface. It was a journey of about two months — something that would've taken three times as long 60 years ago. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to land it properly, given how foreign the technology was, so it crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Africa. They survived in an escape pod for three weeks before ending up on the shores of Morocco. They wandered the land for even more weeks, before miraculously, a man from Aït Benhaddou tending to his crops found them and took them in. It was a near fully functioning society, almost as if it hadn't changed from before the War.

"The effects of all that, trouble, for a lack of better words, started to catch up to me five years ago," he continued. "It was all thanks to Dr. Caldwell that I'm still breathing. He's a great-

A knock resonated through the door.

"Gentlemen, your 15 minutes is up. I'm afraid you've got to leave now." Sammy's voice echoed.

"I'm glad we had this conversation, boys." Mr. Sterling smiled.

"Thank you, dad." Danny said softly.

"Please, visit me again soon. Both of you." He said, struggling to lift his hand up and place it on his son's shoulder.

We left the hospital in silence, although I knew both of us felt a little more satisfied. But I couldn't help but think of the scars on Mr. Sterling's back.