In Nadir's Shadow (The Twilight Years of the Commonwealth, Book One)

Chapter Fourteen - Part One

"What will happen if I put it in?"

"I am not sure. You may hear a voice, or see an image. Nothing may happen, since this place is very old."

Sage wasn't as useful as it claimed to be. Still, she had no other ideas. She found the opening and inserted the device.

A sigh echoed through the space. Seruya found a wall to put her back to and drew her weapons. No one was present to have made that sound. She glared around, expecting an attack.

"There is no immediate danger. As I explained, the information on the device is recorded in the form of a voice. It is like a memory kept outside your head. I suggest we listen."

"I don't quite know where to begin," said a deep voice. Exhaustion and resignation weighed heavy on its tone, and Seruya could barely penetrate the slurring accent. "I suppose I might introduce myself. Hiam Antipin, Director of Biotech Weapons Research, Human Enhancement Division. I had a not-insignificant part in the mess we made for ourselves. I assume you're aware of what I'm talking about, or maybe you're hearing this hundreds of years later and it's all ancient history." He sighed again. "I dearly hope not. In any case, the reason for this recording is that I won't be leaving here, and I want to leave behind something of a record for the benefit of anyone that might make it this far. If you're here, it means you've made it past the Marauders outside, which means you have substantial motivation. Either that, or they've all died, but I can't believe that. Not for a moment. Those things are a nightmare, and I can't help but believe that you're here because of them, because you're trying to exterminate them and you're having a difficult time. The good news is, you came to the right place. Sadly, there isn't a grand secret I can tell you that will solve your problem."

Seruya blinked furiously, trying to understand. Half these words she'd never heard before.

A sloshing sound filled a pause in the man's words, followed by a wet cough and a pained grunt. "All right. A brief history lecture. Once upon a time, there existed two schools of thought in regards to biological weapons. One held that microscopic entities held the most promise. Too small to see, and hard for the enemy to identify even when engaged. Diseases, bacteria, all such unpleasantness. The other concerned itself with enhancing the capabilities of the human body. The theory was to multiply the strength, agility and intelligence of a human being, while retaining an independent mind that could analyze situations and make appropriate decisions, even if circumstances developed beyond the scope of the initial assignment.

"I suspect I sound biased." A loose chuckle. "That's because I am. The human enhancement program was mine. The Ascension program. The microscopic technology program was headed by someone else. I'll discuss it further shortly. What we did was collect a group of the local primitives and place them in a controlled environment. We needed healthy specimens to work with. We took the strongest, healthiest young adults, and we changed them. Although I'm tempted, I'll restrain myself and leave out the technical details, since I'm a bit too drunk to do twenty-three years of research any justice.

"Now, depending on your moral standard, you may think that this was uh, cruel. That we didn't have the right. And you'd be right to think that. Those people were perfectly happy where they were, in their rainforest. Which we were cutting down a few thousand acres at a time." He paused. "What to say? What can I say? Nothing. I did it. And I understand now. But I won't regret having done it. If not for my work, those things out there would strip the world bare in less than a hundred years. Not to mention... I never would've..." The voice trailed off, and paused in favor of a slurping noise. "The technology failed in one specific way. We hadn't intended for any of the traits we were enhancing to be hereditary. As it turned out, nearly all of them were. Inconsistently so, and it was entirely possible for an Ascended to have unenhanced children. But even these unenhanced children could produce Ascended offspring.