Evolution Prologue

Prologue





Sam had no idea what time it was.  He knew the coming morning would be the last he spent at the centre.  So much had happened over the last six years.  It still seemed unbelievable to him. In the next few hours he could see himself being in prison, in space or dead.  He had no way of knowing which it would be.  He only knew that all three possibilities terrified him.

He remembered the first day.  The day after he and David had completed their Zoology Masters Degrees.  Their professor, Dr Chris Simmons, had invited them to his house and offered them a job.  It had seemed so innocent.  Observing endangered lion and tiger species in a captive environment seemed a good enough first real job.  How could he have known then that he would have some part in the possible destruction of mankind?  He knew nothing he had done had led him here.  He had become trapped in world he barley understood with no way out.  Was the guilt he was feeling from knowing he was alive?   

He wondered if David felt the same way.  They had become friends during their undergraduate years and were similar in many ways.  They were both twenty six.  They had met through the Universities fencing team in their first year and had been friends ever since.  Their appearances were close enough that they had sometimes been mistaken for brothers.  He was almost six foot with David slightly taller.  They both had short black hair.  He had blue eyes and David brown.  They had both been from middle class families, trying to fit in, in an upper class establishment.  They had enjoyed the same sports and through numerous girlfriends had been surprised to develop a passion for horse riding as well as fencing and rugby.

Their job had led them to an animal research centre in the middle of the Chinese jungle.  It had quickly become apparent that the centre was not an ordinary sanctuary and research station.  The professor had explained that the centre was owned by an independent pharmaceutical company knows as the IBTRF.  Sam had been shocked at first.  A chemical lab was more known for experimenting on animals than preserving them.  His professor had assured him the centres morals were in tact.  It hadn’t been long before those morals were shown to be somewhat flexible. 

A virus had been discovered almost thirty years earlier.  It had the capacity to absorb DNA from one form of life and pass it onto another.  It would then begin to mutate, mixing the two DNA strains together.  When the virus was discovered the mutations it caused had left only mutilated corpses behind.  The IBTRF had spent almost thirty years working on the virus it nicknamed Darwinium.  They had been searching for a way to control its affects.  The claimed final aim had been towards being able to target specific DNA traits and enhance them to help eradicate hereditary diseases or birth defects.

They had heard about Darwinium shortly after arriving at the centre about.  They had been forced to sign work contracts and non-disclosure agreements before being told.  They had been horrified at first at spent their first weeks in depression at the position they had been manipulated into.  The animals they had been left in charge of had been altered at a genetic level by the virus. 

The development of the animals had been much less like an animal and more like a human child.  In the near six years they had been at the centre they had watched as the animals learned to walk on two legs.  They had been astounded as they had watched them learn to read and write.  They were almost surprised that as yet they had not learned to speak.  The animals of both species had developed along similar lines.  Their physical appearance had remained much like their normal forms.  Their body shape had adjusted to walking on two legs and their paws had developed a thumb like claw allowing them to grip objects and tools.  The changes hadn’t affected their size or natural strength.  Thankfully to everyone at the centre their development had also followed a pattern of behaviour similar to that of a human child.  In all their time at the centre only Jiao had been injured by one of the animals.  It had been accidental but had left her with a deep gash in her upper right arm.  It had healed but left a long ‘V’ shaped scar across her bicep.

As time passed they had adapted to life with the animals and developed a bond that allowed them to work with and love them as they developed.  The development had been so complete that the animals had eventually lived alongside their observers and not in their artificially created habitat.
Their time at the centre had included many highs as well as lows.  They had made many new friends and both had found love.  He had fallen for the daughter of another of the researchers.  Wu Jiao and her father Wu Shen were both Zoologists and were also observing the animals there.    She was three few years older and four inches shorter.  She had long black hair that shone in the light and reached half way down her back.  Her face was thin but full of colour and her wide eyes, sleek nose and full lips made her always look attractive.  She was Chinese with a very western accent.  Like them she had attended Oxford and had left two of years before him.  She was at the centre with her father to work towards her doctorate.

Her father was in his late fifties but wasn’t short like the typical Asian stereotype. He was nearly as tall as Sam, a couple of inches shorter at the most.  His black hair was thinning and he always wore thin rimmed glasses that sat under his equally thin eyebrows.  His brown eyes were stretched at the corners with signs of crow’s feet.  His face always glowed with a confidence which looked almost misplaced on his thin frame. He may have been tall but he was beanpole thin.

David had also found love at the Centre.  Carla Watson was a close friend of the professors.  They had gotten together a year after he and Jiao had.  She was the same height as Jiao.  Her hair golden brown hair was cut to her shoulders and always tied back.  Her face was usually covered with a light coating of make up.  It made her thin eye lashes stand out and emphasised her green eyes.  The powers that ran the centre had discouraged workers from becoming involved.  They had been worried that disagreements or loyalties would risk invalidating any collected data.  It was part of the reason it had taken years to get together but their love had blossomed and wouldn’t be quashed.

The altered Darwinium virus had been injected into the animals they had been asked to look after.  The professor had claimed it had been forced upon them.  Both he and David had doubted his conviction until the reason for it was accidentally made know to them.  The experiments with the virus had never meant to be taken as far as they had.  One of the geneticists involved in the project had been dating the daughter of the senior geneticist.  Rebecca Mulgrave was the niece through marriage of Dr Julian Fielding.  He was black, at fifty year old and fiercely intelligent.  He was as tall as Shen and although not overly fat was overweight.  Sam had once thought he had a Barry White style figure but didn’t have the strength in his facial features that seemed to make the singer attractive to the ladies.  His thick black curly hair was always tied back into a long ponytail.  He was from the deep south and his Louisiana accent was filled with base.
Rebecca was white and the same age as Sam and David.  She was short, a little over five feet tall with wide rimmed glasses and short brown hair.  Her face showed signs of having suffered a little from acne in her youth and she looked ever so slightly over weight.  Her face was pale and chubby with well rounded cheeks and nose.   

She had been rendered infertile due to suffering from Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.  The disease had caused her fallopian tubes to swell and become blocked.  She had secretly taken an embryo from her uncle’s lab.  She convinced her boyfriend, also a geneticist on Julian’s staff to impregnate her with the embryo.  The professor had told them the embryo’s had been created to allow the IBTRF’s scientists to experiment with identifying DNA traits leading to birth defects.  They were kept frozen and would never have been allowed to develop beyond the very earliest stages of their development.  Her boyfriend had been fired from the centre but Rebecca had been unwilling to have the pregnancy terminated.  The centre for the lion and tiger cubs had been created as a cover for her.  It had been almost five years before he and David had discovered the existence of Samson.

Samson was almost six years old when his existence became known to many of the centres population.  It was a small site with twelve staff in the middle of the Chinese jungle.  They had been outside one of the sites buildings when Rebecca had ran screaming from a laboratory building.  Only Julian, his assistant Zhang Hui, Rebecca, the professor and an ex English Special Forces Officer who looked after the sites security had been allowed in the building.  They had heard her high pitched wail as she ran, her arms waving wildly about her body.  Sam remembered the moment.  He had been with Jiao, David and Carla.  They had been petrified as they ran towards her.  She had been in a blind panic and not registered their presence.  Her face was gashed and bleeding from her own finger nails, one of which was stuck in a deep cut.  David had been forced to wrestle her to the ground to allow someone to get her medical help.

In the confusion Samson had sneaked out of the building to be with his mother.  They had all been shocked when they saw him and more so when the professor was forced to explain his existence to them.  Chris was in his early sixties by then.  His body was showing signs of age and his thin frame and pale face always gave him an almost ghostly appearance.  He had heavily thinning long grey hair that stuck to his scalp in the hot weather.  He wore thin round glasses to aid his failing eye sight.  He had looked paler than usual as he struggled to explain. Samson’s development had led to an enhancement of his mental functions.  The strain of Darwinum given to him had allowed his mind to develop a sponge like quality for retaining knowledge.  He could learn anything he heard almost from birth.  By the time his existence was discovered he matured to the level beyond those around him.  His knowledge about his own creation and existence rivalled that of his creator Dr Fielding.  He had developed as quickly as he had because the virus had triggered portions of the brain usually dormant.  The effect had been to give him a partial telepathic ability.  He could almost absorb the knowledge from the minds of those around him.

The affects to his mother had been caused by a nightmare.  Samson had been bitten by a spider in the jungle.  His nights sleep had been ruined by a nightmare of being attacked by spiders.  His mother had stayed with him expecting a difficult night after his experience.  Her proximity had allowed Samson to unconsciously transmit the thought to hear waking state.  The injuries caused had been accidental and although he was mature in mind he was still a child at heart.  His anxiety for his mother had overridden his knowledge of the need to keep his existence as secret as possible and he had rushed out to her aid.  The outrage he and David had felt when they had first heard about Darwinium had resurfaced.  It had been many months before they had been able to accept the professor’s explanation of events.

It had to have been inevitable.  Sam’s thoughts worked through to the time he had first felt in danger at the centre. He had never expected it to come from within.  Julian and the former Special Forces officer Robert Makin had made a deal with the Chinese Military through Zhang Hui.  One of the animals’ genetic make up had reacted badly to the Darwinium.  The Lion cub had suffered from a form of schizophrenia.  His behaviour had grown wildly erratic as time passed.  It had only been diagnosed after the incident that had left Jiao with her scar.  The Chinese Military had sneaked into the complex one night.  Max had been taken and a dead lion left in his place.  Only he and David had known about Julian and Robert then.  They had been out walking in the night air, unable to sleep.  They had had many nights like it after Samson’s existence had been discovered.  It had been a frightening experience.  They had been forced to hide in the pitch black of the jungle while men with machine guns had secured the ailing animal.  They hadn’t known who to tell about the incident.  They had heard Julian and Robert discussing ‘informing the others’ but had no idea who the others could have been.

The next two months had been filled with dread.  He had worried deeply for himself and his friend and even more so for both of their partners.  They had both agreed not to tell Jiao or Carla.  As much as they had both wanted to tell, it was not impossible that one of them was involved.  Carla had been a close friend of Robert and Jiao had links to the Chinese military through her grandfather.  Shen’s father had been a Major in the Chinese Air Force. 

Jiao and Carla’s innocence was only revealed the night before.  Sam had been out walking with Jiao.  They had been headed towards a hot spring behind the centre.  It had often been used in the moonlight as a romantic locale for misadventures.  They had overheard Julian and Robert arguing about the coming events.  He and David were to be framed for leaking information to the press about the existence of the centre and its occupants.  David had been furious when he heard.  He was only stopped from confronting Julian and the Englishman by a visit from Samson and the professor.  They had always been aware of Julian’s plans and Samson had allowed them to progress at his insistence.  He wanted to leave the centre.  Julian had followed his own contacts to arrange with the American Military to be moved to the International Space Station.  It had been bought by the American government for their own advancement of space exploration.  Samson had been drawn to the idea of being around a limited number of minds.  All of whom would be experts in diverse scientific theories.  The opportunity to absorb the knowledge offered was too much for him to resist.  Samson had assured them that he had put measures in place to ensure they would not be held to blame.

The thought of how he had got here faded as his mind clouded with the need for sleep.  He still didn’t know the time and although every inch of his body was crying out for sleep his deepest thoughts struggled to keep him awake.  It could well be the last night he would ever see.  In the pitch black of his room the thought gave him little comfort.