P 1.5 - Alba

  She was back at running.

  Not that a major crisis was unfolding. She had all the time in the world if she wanted. But overreacting had always been another of Alba’s specialties.

  “I can’t believe that—” *pant* “—of all people—” *pant* “—he is here!”

  Her thoughts spilled from her mouth through the gasps.

  “They didn’t kill him in the purges after all — I knew it!”

  To her, this was a dream come true.

  The Alter frozen in the maximum-security capsule in Block 9 had been the main character of many stories told by her grandfather.

  A first-generation Alter-human who fought and survived countless battles — in space, in the Belt, on Mars.

  The legendary commander of Eclipse — the most infamous Alter-human brigade, later turned mercenary. The organization that sparked the post-war Alter-human rebellion.

  A warrior who charged head-on through plasma-heated battlefields in the late second millennium, wielding a weapon that gave him his name.

  And that was the name she had read minutes ago.

  Zweihander.

  A hero to all who shared Alter’s blood.

  —To those like Alba.

  She sped through the corridors of the prison blocks and toward Block 9 to reach the maximum-security cell Zweihander was held in.

  Alba was an Alter-human, if only partly.

  Somewhere back in time, an Alter had a child with a human. Since relationships between Alters and humans were strictly forbidden, that child was hidden from the army.

  Her name was Ren — Alba’s grandmother.

  When she became an adult, Ren made the fatal mistake of joining Eclipse and the rebellion against UN.SY. She was killed close to the end of the rebellion, on the Principality of Ceres, along with all the Alters there.

  But her husband managed to escape before the worst happened, their daughter in his arms — mixing with the refugees from Mars and the Belt as they fled to Earth.

  Alba’s grandad was human, but her mother wasn’t.

  Because of their bloodline, they lived in hiding ever since reaching Earth. But even amid fear and chaos, good people still existed. Alba’s mom, Anne, eventually married.

  A UN.SY. Navy lieutenant, of all people — Caspar Fauster, Alba’s father.

  They settled in the American Western Conglomerate, carving out a life of relative peace, thanks in large part to Caspar’s rank. Alba was born during that time.

  But even that wasn’t enough to erase suspicion.

  Alba remembered the visits from Justice Bureau officers when she was a child — raised voices, heavy fists slamming against the table, the long silences that followed. Her father bargaining in hushed tones.

  And yet, compared to her parents, Alba had it easy.

  By her time, hatred had faded and the hunts had ended. Alter-humans were still considered illegal, but no one was actively searching for remnants like her anymore.

  She passed Block 10. Block 9 came into sight.

  “Advice: Technician Fauster, you shouldn’t run into corridors. It greatly increases injury possibi—”

  The Janitor’s voice echoed past her.

  “Aah! Shut it, Jan!” Alba panted, pushing forward.

  Alba’s choice to join the Navy hadn’t been easy. She despised UN.SY. — just like her dad. And he had joined for a quiet life too.

  As a technician, she could better hide in the gaps of that unwelcoming system — earn herself some decent, honest money. Thanks to her shady hacking activities, she already had well past the minimum required skills to join anyway.

  And having to deal with machines was better than having to talk with people.

  Engines and electronics asked no questions.

  Still, she couldn’t avoid interactions completely. Small, annoying things added up.

  Avoid medical checks. Darken her hair. Cover her eyes. Hide her menstruation.

  The physical traits were the hardest to disguise.

  She had pale skin and blonde hair from her Alter lineage — unlike her mother, green eyes too.

  Centuries of intermixing had darkened skin complexions overall, and people living in the MSSes or deep-space colonies often had an unnaturally tanned, reddish skin tone from years of low-gravity medication.

  But even if she took the same pills herself, Alba’s skin never showed the same tint.

  Her eyes drew attention as well. Green was rare enough; paired with fair skin and gold hair, the whole picture became suspicious.

  The nobility and upper classes could afford to preserve their genetics through partner selection or gene editing, stay untouched by the reddish tan with better pharmaceuticals — but Alba was neither rich nor an aristocrat.

  But anyway, she managed. The blonde regrowth often passed as stylish dye. The skin, a medical condition. The eyes on her ID? She made them brown — and when people saw the green irises, she said she was just altering the color for style.

  Her physiology was another story. Not as evident as hair and eyes — but a single mistake and she was done for.

  Fertility had grown uncommon in the thirtieth century — another anomaly her not-just-human body shared with the shrinking minority of women who still had menstruation.

  No one knew exactly why.

  Pollution, genetic tampering, radiation, war — take your pick. Some called it nature’s check on overpopulation. Some said it was evolution, like crabs losing their eyes after too long in the dark.

  The same had happened to males.

  Alba was actually happy she’d been given the chance to have kids — she just didn’t want UN.SY. prying into her… business.

  Those still fertile were monitored. Some were studied.

  And it was no coincidence that every officer chosen for Eden could still reproduce.

  The selection had been the only time Alba ever allowed an almost-complete medical check. For most of her life, she had forged all mandatory health records herself.

  At least her Alter blood had allowed her to board the Parvus in the end — and it was the first time it actually helped her.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Alba didn’t know who her Alter ancestor was. Her grandfather had only said he’d died in the War — not even a name left behind.

  But she knew what he had left her as inheritance: trouble.

  No fancy Alloy. No glowing eyes. No superhuman body.

  Just inconvenient hair, skin, eyes — and a reproductive system the Bureau wanted to put under a microscope.

  But the bastard must’ve been a first-gen Alter. Later generations were engineered sterile.

  What mattered was that she had managed to stay hidden and free.

  Even if all that hiding and faking had given her a permanent bad case of social anxiety.

  She grimaced at the thought of how many times she had flat-out run away from boys in her life — and that gave her energy to sprint faster.

  She had finally reached Block 9. Her boots squeaked on the floor as she made an abrupt turn to enter the sector.

  Alba had never had a single romantic relationship.

  It mostly came down to the fact that she didn’t want to put herself in trouble by misplacing her trust — or have the person she trusted with her secret arrested or worse.

  That’s where the… fascination with Alters came from.

  The damsel-in-distress fantasy had never appealed to her. If she was ever going to have a relationship, it had to be with someone who shared her burdens.

  It was shallow thinking — but a prime candidate had just shown up.

  “Just a little more!” Alba urged herself, legs burning now, eyes locked on the cell at the far end of the wide corridor lined with blast doors.

  Secluded from the other cryo-capsules behind a round steel door, it waited for her.

  She skidded to a stop just short of crashing, hands on her knees as she caught her breath.

  When her pulse steadied, she approached the access panel.

  The wall flickered to life — a primitive holo-display, static and non-resizable.

  “This could be risky. Whoever unlocks a door like this gets their ID logged by the Janitor… and I’m not gaining anything from my visit.”

  She tapped her fingers on the door, hesitating.

  “…I just want to do it anyway,” she sighed, then began typing on her omni-com.

  “What do you mean level two security passkey required!? Not even the head technician gets through without clearance?”

  Level two meant lieutenant commander or higher.

  When she’d copied Boris’s data earlier, she’d needed level three — Admiral Cornelius himself — but that had been easy enough after a small attitude adjustment.

  Of course, she’d had to undo everything, or even the sleep-deprived Ishigami would’ve noticed.

  “I’m sorry, Cap’n,” Alba muttered.

  A few taps, and a digital ID shimmered above her wrist. She sent Captain De Chevelle’s credentials to the panel.

  She’d stolen them years ago — out of habit, not malice.

  Reckless, yes. But…

  Let’s call it necessary, she thought, casting any doubt aside.

  “Greeting: Welcome, Captain De Chevelle.”

  The machine’s voice echoed down the corridor as the door split and slid open, groaning like a lazy animal.

  A gust of freezing air swept over her overheated skin, raising goosebumps — both from cold and from the thrill.

  Alba smiled through the shiver as she stepped inside.

  Fog rose quickly — warm corridor air colliding with the chill.

  Through the haze she could still tell the room’s shape: small; walls and ceiling arched like its entrance, bare.

  At the far end stood a cylindrical metal capsule, clamped vertically in place by four thick arms reminiscent of a ribcage.

  It felt less like a cell than a tomb.

  But the capsule didn’t hold a corpse.

  “Gyaaa!”

  Her shriek ricocheted off the walls as she flung herself at it, wrapping arms and legs around the frozen metal like some deranged mollusk.

  Beyond the glass lay more than a bedtime story — her personal, genetically engineered prince preserved in ice.

  An ancient fairy tale was about to be rewritten: the heroine saving the sleeping warrior with a kiss of life — and a lot of illegal hacking.

  She burst into laughter from excitement, the sound cracking eerily high.

  “What if I wake him up? He’ll have to marry me, right? He’ll marry his savior!” she mused.

  “Zweihander! They called you hero and rebel! They called you criminal! But I’ll call you my new—”

  *tzzzzccccc*

  —The hiss cut her short.

  A second later came the pain — her bare skin sizzling against the sub-zero metal.

  She cried out and stumbled back, clutching her arms and stomach where red burns bloomed.

  She’d forgotten she was wearing only a bra on top.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t attempted any kissing.

  Yet.

  The pain dragged her back to reality.

  “I’m sorry, Captain…” she murmured.

  Her tone softened as she looked at her blurred reflection in the frozen steel.

  “But if this man’s here… everything changes.”

  Alba snapped back into focus, putting the fantasies aside.

  Career, Eden, a new world — none of it would change anything for Alters like her. None of it would change UN.SY.

  By the time she walked out of the cell, she had already decided what to do once they reached the planet they’d been promised.

  —Free Zweihander, all the Alters she could. Escape the Parvus.

  With a leader, an inhabited planet, and some sort of plan, they could truly have a fresh start. A life where her chances wouldn’t be taken from her just because she needed to hide.

  All she needed was a way to do it.

  Two days to think.

  “Even if I want to free him — and others — doing it now would just get us all killed…”

  And by all, she meant possibly the whole ship.

  A fight between Alters and the UN.SY. Navy was not a desirable outcome.

  Alter-humans — first-gens like Zweihander especially — weren’t evil. But they were dangerous.

  She hadn’t checked every prisoner codename yet, but many of the “guests” appeared to be first-generation Alters.

  Alters being on the ship at all was strange enough.

  First-gens were beyond strange.

  It was unsettling.

  Of the three Alter-human generations, the first was the most unpredictable. Obedience hadn’t been a design priority. They’d been rushed into existence to support Earth’s combat automata and counter the Martian machines.

  Automata had unmatched firepower but serious drawbacks: they required maintenance, had no initiative, and when hit by EMPs or severed from their AIs handlers, they devolved into chaos.

  A single well-placed strike could wipe most of them out.

  Humans, on the other hand, were… human — they died too fast, adapted too slow.

  Three or four centuries earlier, technology lagged far behind, especially in space warfare.

  It was still an age when a single hull breach could doom a ship, and a tactical maneuver could take a couple of years to complete.

  The first generation of Alters was engineered with three priorities: combat prowess, survivability, and experimentation.

  They weren’t the first artificial subspecies born from the human genome, but they were the first designed purely for war.

  Trial and error were inevitable.

  They were unnaturally long-lived. Some showed animalistic features or instincts. Many possessed superhuman abilities.

  Those innate, genetically engineered abilities were called Alloys.

  Alba had read a lot about them out of pure curiosity, and she knew there were countless variants.

  Some allowed their hosts to regenerate limbs within hours, or granted enough strength to crush combat automata with bare hands.

  Others were more peculiar — like one she’d read of that made it possible to enter hibernation and survive months in open space without a suit.

  Piecing data together, she’d learned that some of the rarest Alloys were so powerful and complex they came with a sort of biological system to control them.

  Those Alloys had a voice of their own, whispering only to their hosts.

  A fascinating thing. And even more fascinating was the fact that, from Science Bureau records, not even their creators seemed to have any idea of how that worked.

  But Alloys were a first-gen phenomenon only.

  The second generation was what the Earth Alliance had probably wanted from the start: obedient soldiers.

  Cheaper, compliant soldiers bred from selected first-gen genes — but stronger and more resilient than common humans.

  Around that time, the H.O.Pe. project began too, forging a superhuman leadership class to command them.

  Then came the third generation — the final, disposable product.

  Barely more physical than humans, beings engineered to fight just long enough, then die on cue.

  That’s what I don’t understand, Alba thought, circling the outside of the cell.

  If Alters aboard were meant as emergency troops, the Bureau would’ve chosen second- or third-gens instead.

  At least those would follow orders.

  And Zweihander?

  He had led an uprising. His being here made no sense.

  Not much was known about him — not even his real name.

  But that could be said for most Alter-humans, especially the first generation, whose records were buried by the Earth Alliance long before the War ended.

  When the Alter-human purges were declared — giving scared humanity a new enemy to unite against — Zweihander and his Eclipse wouldn’t have it.

  Discontent had already been festering in the Alters’ ranks for years: replaced by docile third-gens, treated as military property instead of people.

  The moment Eclipse went mercenary and forced the Earth Alliance to pay them to continue the Mars campaign, the first fracture had formed.

  Then they rebelled.

  UN.SY. wouldn’t let the chance slip. It happily declared open season.

  They just happened to have millions of unnecessary superhuman soldiers civilians knew almost nothing about. Their existence could be twisted however the United System pleased.

  UN.SY. branded and eliminated every dissenting voice in the purge that followed the War.

  Eclipse fought back. For decades.

  So why would UN.SY dig up the leader of its greatest opposition now?

  Why bring him all the way to humanity’s new home?

  There had to be something Alba didn’t know.

  But it didn’t matter now.

  “They’ll probably collect the Alters as soon as we reach the planet. I don’t have time.”

  If they reached it alive, she’d have to find a way — and the chance — to make her move.

  Before the Science Bureau took them.

  “All these responsibilities… I already feel stressed.” She exhaled, shoulders sagging.

  Her brief moment of peace was cut short by a subtle pulse on her wrist. A message flickered onto her omni-com:

  “Technician Fauster Alba, by order of Admiral Cornelius Caius, you are assigned to take part in the briefing regarding tomorrow’s operation codenamed Eden drills.

  Please report in thirty minutes to bridge floor five, Briefing Room A.

  Sol Invictus.”

  Alba stared at Ishigami’s message in silence.

  Before heading to the briefing, she’d have to return to the AI core and erase her unauthorized access under the captain’s ID.

  “There’s no way…” She sighed. “I have to run again.”

  —

  Knowledge. Technology. Power.

  All of it.

  And none of it could save him.

  The world was not broken. His tools were not flawed.

  Man was.

  The human being had to change.