The Genesis Saga

The air was tense as Jyn and Adrian walked side by side through the ship. Not single word was spoken between the two as they did their best to ignore each other. Adrian questioned Jyn’s need to be the one escort him personally given how much he disliked him.

The afternoon had started out perfectly fine. He was watching a movie with Reya when she brought up the idea of him having an appointment with Kell so that he might be able to get some sleeping pills of his own on the next supply run. While Adrian had been extremely reluctant at first, Reya had managed to convince him otherwise.

Together, they’d contacted Kell using Reya’s data slate and she made the proposition. Kell had seemed ecstatic at the thought and was wholeheartedly onboard with the idea. Adrian could guess why and made a mental note not to let him get carried away.

Unfortunately, the end of that call was when things started to go wrong. Jyn entered the house and overheard that Adrian was to enter the ship. He immediately argued that Adrian was not to be allowed onto the ship. Despite explaining the situation and offering to have Adrian be escorted by Rann, Jyn only entertained the idea if he would be the one to do so instead. Kell offered to come get Adrian but was shot down by Jyn’s stubbornness over the issue.

With no choice but to accept, Adrian walked alongside Jyn and could only hope he wouldn’t get shot within the narrow confines of the ship’s halls where he had nowhere he could run. As the pair left the house, Adrian heard Reya call for Rann to let her know what was going on.

Jyn marched them straight to the med bay, giving Adrian no time to inspect his surroundings, despite his curiosity. All he saw were closed metal doors and white painted metal walls as their steps carried them closer to their destination.

Finally, they arrived at a large set of sliding doors that opened upon their arrival, granting them access to the room that lay beyond. Inside, Adrian found Kell seated at a small desk in the far corner of the room. There were several beds lined up in a neat row along one of the walls with IV stands parked next to them. The opposite side of the room had a large counter and cabinetry with glass doors, in which strange equipment and medicine bottles were stored. There was also an operating table in the event that surgery was required. Adrian shuddered at the sight.

Kell studied him curiously as he entered further. Jyn remained standing near the door with no intention of moving. Kell looked at him. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Jyn.”

Jyn scowled. “No. I’m not leaving you here alone on the ship with him.”

“Medical appointments are private, you know that. Now leave,” Kell ordered.

“And I said no. As your captain, I’m ordering you to let me stay.”

“And as the doctor, who has absolute control over their med bay, need I remind you, I am ordering you to leave,” Kell replied firmly, not giving in. “In here, I outrank you.”

“I said I’m staying.”

“Fine then, I’ll have you removed,” Kell said darkly. He picked up his data slate and contacted Rann and Beor, ordering them to forcefully remove Jyn from the med bay. He looked back at Jyn, who refused to budge.

Less than a minute later, the two soldiers entered the med bay. Rann took one look at the situation and understood what was happening. “Jyn, it’s time for you to leave,” she said, giving him a level stare. “You know that this is Kell’s jurisdiction.”

“It’s not like you’ve been following orders lately, why should I?” Jyn sneered.

“Rann, Beor, please remove Jyn from the med bay. I authorize you to use force,” Kell said calmly from across the room. Both soldiers nodded and turned towards Jyn.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Jyn said.

“Yes, we would,” Beor said. Together, him and Rann went on either side of Jyn and each grabbed an arm and forcefully dragged him out of the room. Jyn tried fighting back, yelling profanities as he did so, ordering them to stand down, but not even he could overpower the two determined soldiers.

Once Kell was certain that they were gone, he turned to Adrian. “Well, that just happened. Sorry about that.”

Adrian sighed. “That went about as expected. The guy really doesn’t like me.” He swiveled his head, inspecting the room curiously. Kell let him walk around and take his time when he picked up some of the tools left lying about on the counter. He raised his voice when Adrian was about to pick up something potentially dangerous. Kell noticed that he gave the operating table a wide berth, circling around it rather than walk near it as he wandered about the room.

“Are you ready to begin?” Kell asked from where he sat. “We could start with a simple physical, so I can get some baseline data for you.”

“I’m going to stop you right there, doc. I’m not here for a physical or to let you take any kind of measurements. I’m here because Reya said I should talk to you if I wanted to get some sleeping pills of my own on your next supply run.”

“I still need some information about you in order to properly prescribe you medication.”

“No,” Adrian said flatly, “you don’t. I’m not an idiot, I’ve been to the doctor’s before. I’m here for sleeping pills. What does thoroughly examining me have to with that?” Kell remained silent. “Look, I know you’re curious and all, but I’d prefer it if a foreign military didn’t have access to my vitals.”

“Fine,” Kell said begrudgingly, letting the matter drop. “Tell me more about why you’re here then.” He motioned to the empty chair in front of his desk. Adrian cast him a sidelong glance from where he stood before plopping into it.

“I thought it was rather obvious. I’m here for sleeping pills.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Because I can’t sleep,” Adrian deadpanned.

Kell shook his head. “I want to know why you can’t sleep. What’s keeping you awake? Is it racing thoughts? Thoughts of self-harm or death? Tell me the why.”

Adrian went very silent as he studied Kell, trying to determine how much he should divulge. “I have nightmares,” he said finally, in a quiet voice.

“What kind of nightmares? What are they about?”

“It’s about what they did to me. Every time I fall asleep, I relive what happened. Sometimes it’s something specific. Other times it’s them doing something completely new.”

“And how long has this been going on for?” Kell asked, starting to get a clearer picture.

“Since my time in captivity. I’ve been a light sleeper for a long time now. I was never sure when they would come for me. When I was awake, they defiled me,” Adrian said with a shudder. “When I slept, they were there too. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape them. There was always another experiment. Always a new way for them to torment me. I never had any say in the matter. I’ve spent so long not knowing whether it was finally time for me to die. But not before they made me suffer. I knew that however I finally went it would be horrific. The things they did to me,” Adrian trailed off, a faraway look in his eyes. “You’ve seen my scars. They did so much more than that.”

Kell nodded sadly as he watched Adrian choke out his last words. “The dreams have been getting worse, haven’t they?” Adrian nodded mutely. “Since when?”

“Since the moment I was freed. My dreams are filled with nothing but pain, fear and misery. I wake up multiple times each night, unable to fall back asleep. I don’t want to fall asleep, because I know what’s waiting for me. They never end well, my dreams.”

“How do you sleep? Do you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling? Or some other way?”

“I sleep on the floor,” Adrian corrected.

Kell frowned. “Why?”

Adrian shrugged. “I’m used to it. The bed feels too soft, too comfortable. I feel like I’m sinking whenever I sleep in it. Every time I fall asleep in bed, I end up crawling onto the floor to escape it. The last time I slept on the bed was when Reya found me and that ended badly. I haven’t been able to sleep on it since.”

“I’ve noticed there are times when you’re not all there. I’m not the only one. Can you tell me about that?”

Adrian looked at Kell blankly. He’d been unaware that his daydreams had been noticed. “Sometimes I get trapped in my own head,” he said distantly, “where all I can think about are the experiments.” His eyes had a faraway look in them, his mind elsewhere as he spoke. Kell waited patiently for them to refocus before asking his next question.

“Is that why we don’t see you for hours at a time, on occasion?”

Adrian nodded. “I lose track of time. I just – I need to escape sometimes. I have nothing against you guys but being surrounded by too many people can feel constricting. Being in the presence of so many used to mean that horrific things were happening to me. I feel trapped. It’s hard to shake that feeling.”

Kell continued to probe Adrian with his questions, getting clearer picture on his problems. He wanted to know how deep they ran. “Post traumatic stress disorder is a hard thing to live with,” Kell said finally. “I’m not going to sit here and claim I understand what you went through, but it’s clear to me that you’re suffering for it. I’ll find a way to get you something to help you sleep, but I’m not sure how the pills will affect you. You’ll probably have to try quite a few. Are you willing to do that?”

“If it will help me sleep, then yes. Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

“There’s plenty more I want to talk about, but I don’t think you’d be willing to answer my questions. Mostly though, I want to know what happened to you while you were experimented on.”

Adrian let out a sad laugh. “You’re not ready for that. Nobody is.” He stood up from his chair and made to leave the med bay. “If that’s all for now, I’ll take my leave. Thank you for letting me try some sleeping pills.”

“It would help if you opened up about it,” Kell said, before Adrian had the chance to leave.

“You can’t seriously be asking me that,” Adrian said.

“Why not?”

“Look at things from my point of view, Kell. I’m surrounded by aliens, some of whom openly hate me and are willing to hold me at gunpoint. I’ve been taken hostage by a foreign military and abducted, again, and sent to a house in the middle of nowhere. You repeatedly press me for answers you know I don’t have. What happens when I give you the ones I do? Do you strap me to an operating table and dissect me to learn my secrets? Do you lock me in a cell and experiment on me to replicate them? You can’t deny your curiosity.”

“We wouldn’t do that,” Kell insisted.

“And how am I supposed to believe that? Seriously, why should I give you the benefit of the doubt? How can I possibly trust any of you with my secrets when you can use them against me? You already do. I’m a hostage, Kell. You’re asking for a great deal of trust you haven’t earned.” Kell remained silent, unable to refute any of Adrian’s claims.

Adrian turned around and exited the room. He found Jyn, Rann and Beor waiting in the hall in tense silence. Jyn looked irate and ready to kill somebody. Adrian wisely remained silent. Jyn opted to remain behind on the ship, leaving Adrian in the care of Rann and Beor.

Entering the house, he was greeted by a worried Reya, who fretted over him, asking him how his appointment went. Not once did she ask for any specifics about the meeting. She focused solely on his wellbeing. He noticed that she’d kept their movie paused so that they could finish it together. Adrian smiled at the kind gesture as he filled her in on the details.

Connor clicked his pen in annoyance as he stared at the results of his latest experiment on the computer screen in front of him. He ran a hand through his short brown hair in frustration. “Why don’t these ever make any sense!” he cried to no one in particular. Ellie entered the room with two steaming mugs of coffee. She set one down on Connor’s desk and sipped on the other, relishing in the flavour of the piping hot liquid.

It had been seven years since Adrian had graced their halls. Seven long years of disappointing experiment results. More than once, Connor questioned their boss’s decision to stuff him in that pod and send him who knows where. Adrian had been their only true success, in spite of all the years he and Ellie had worked together.

To this day, their boss had not elaborated on how the pods worked. He’d been so focused on watching Adrian drown in the blue liquid on that fateful day that he’d forgotten to check on the other experiment that was to meet the same fate. Had he been more attentive, he might have gleaned more details from the process.

Their boss was keeping secrets. That much was clear to him. He yearned to know what they were, but was too afraid to ask, lest he become like rest of the failed experiments. Dead. With each passing day of no results, Connor felt that he was one step closer to being dressed in those white clothes his subjects all wore and cuffed in a cell alongside them.

“Maybe it’s time we try something different,” Ellie said. She was already halfway done her coffee. Connor didn’t know how she drank it that fast while he burned his tongue on his first sip. “Let’s face it, our theory clearly isn’t working out.”

“I refuse. It’s worked once before, twice even if you count the partial success we had. There must be something we’re not seeing. I’m convinced that we’re right.”

“We’ve tried dozens of ways,” Ellie pointed out. “They all end the same.”

“If only she would let us repeat the experiment that actually worked,” Connor lamented. He didn’t understand their boss’ reluctance at repeating their only successful experiments to date. He’d long grown bitter about the lost time at her insistence on finding new ways to replicate their results with Adrian.

“You know that it’s too costly in terms of resources,” Ellie said. “The subjects expire too quickly. That means they can’t be used in other experiments.”

“It’s just frustrating, that’s all,” Connor sighed. “We were so close. Without more data, we can’t isolate what factor determined our success over all the other failures. I’ve tried comparing it to the experiments that didn’t work, but it’s gotten us nowhere.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep on searching,” Ellie said optimistically.

“Doesn’t it bother you? Years of our lives, wasted! Gone, never to be returned to us. And for what? Nothing, that’s what.”

“Nothing’s ever wasted, Connor. Besides, I came here with good news. We have a new batch of test subjects. And another chance to prove our theories.”

Connor’s eyes lit up. “When are they arriving? It’s been ages since we’ve had people to run our tests on.”

“Sometime in the next few days. If we’re lucky, maybe we can get the boss to greenlight some of our more hypothetical ideas this time around.”

Connor stood up from his chair, his drink forgotten. Ellie tsked at the waste of a perfectly good coffee as he put on his lab coat and moved around him. Setting her mug down, she took his and continued savouring her favourite drink in bliss while he dashed out of the room. In no rush, she walked after him and found him waiting outside the office, unable to sit still.

“I swear, it’s like you’ve had more coffee than me,” Ellie commented.

“Wait, is that my mug?” Connor eyed the black mug in Ellie’s hands.

“It’s mine now.”

“Do you know where the boss is?”

“Nope. But I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to find her. She’s probably busy preparing for the new arrivals. She can’t be too far away.”

Connor and Ellie scoured the facility in the obvious spots they thought their boss would be. She was nowhere to be found, much to their frustration. Ellie had finished her coffee and was stuck carrying the mug. “Does it ever bother you that she’s so hard to find?” Connor complained.

“In this instance, yes,” Ellie chirped as she eyed her empty mug with a displeased expression. “Come on, let’s track down Ashford and see if he knows. One of the guards must know where he is.”

“You just want to go to Ashford because we pass by the coffee machines, don’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ashford had indeed known where their boss was. Leave it to the head of security to keep tabs on everybody’s movements within the facility. Connor knocked on the door to the office that she was currently in, waiting for the invitation to enter. When he heard her call out, he opened the door.

Before him stood a beautiful woman with long blonde hair held in a bun and striking green eyes who appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform and came up to Connor’s shoulders but seemed much taller as he stood in her imposing presence. She hadn’t aged a day since they’d first met. Connor didn’t know what kind of genetics she had, but she definitely won the lottery. He had no way of knowing how old she actually was.

Despite all the time that they had known each other, he still didn’t know what she actually did at the facility. At times, she played the role of a nurse, at others she was the director of operations. Yet he had also seen her in a lab working on experiments of her own, not that she ever elaborated on what they were about.

“Connor, Ellie, lovely to see you,” Ava said sweetly. “What do you need?”

“We heard that there was a new batch of subjects coming in,” Connor hedged. Earlier, it had seemed like a good idea to ask her for permission to perform some of their more questionable experiments, but now he wasn’t so certain.

“Yes, that’s correct. They’re set to arrive three days from now. There’s much to be done in preparation of their arrival. Tell me what you want, I don’t have all day.” Ava tapped her foot and crossed her arms, her impatience palpable.

“We wanted to know if we could repeat our experiments from seven years ago.”

“No,” Ava said flatly.

“How are we supposed to replicate our results if we can’t use the experiment that generated them in the first place!” Connor snapped.

“Figure it out. That’s your job. You’ve had years to work out a new method. Do you mean to tell me that you have no idea how to do your job?”

“That’s not it,” Ellie said quickly, before Connor could speak. “What he means is that it’s difficult to succeed without access to the same resources that we had before. We haven’t been able to use substance XN-05 since. If only we had access to more of it, then we’re sure we could figure it out.”

“That’s because there’s none left,” Ava said. “You used up most of our supply for your experiments seven years ago. What little we do have remaining I’ve been trying to replicate, but it’s quite an involved procedure without access to the proper tools and equipment. That vial was unique. I haven’t been able to get my hands on any more since.”

Ellie and Connor stared agape at Ava’s admission. They didn’t understand. Surely, there had to be more. If it could be created once, it could be created again. Ellie voiced the thought.

“The facility that the substance was made in has since been destroyed,” Ava continued. “It was discovered by the government and was scrapped to keep its secrets from falling into their hands. The only technology capable of creating it in the world is gone.”

The world fell out from under Connor. His chance at proving his theories vanished up in smoke. He’d been banking on the fact that they had access to the substance to carry out his experiments. He understood now why Ava was so insistent on finding new ways to replicate their results. “So there’s no way to recreate that substance?” he asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“I never said that. The technology that created them is gone and it is beyond our means to simply manufacture. I’ve been working on redesigning our current machines to be able to recreate part of it. It’s been slow going, however. Our benefactors are reluctant to release the technology to us, much for the same reason they don’t want the governments to get a hold of it.”

Hope blossomed in Connor’s chest. “How long until we can recreate it?”

“It could be years,” Ava said with a shrug. “It could be never. Now do you understand why you need to find a different way to generate the same results?”

Connor and Ellie nodded. “If that’s the case,” Ellie said, “then can we try some of our riskier experiments on the subjects?”

“How drastically does it increase their odds of dying?”

Ellie hesitated. “A lot,” she admitted, wilting under Ava’s glare. “But I’m positive that we’ll get results this time around.”

“That’s what you said last time. What makes this time different?” Ava asked, unimpressed. Ellie didn’t answer. “That’s what I thought. So no, find a different, less risky way. If that still doesn’t work, then I’ll consider letting you do as you please. I make no promises as to how many subjects will be left alive by that point, so keep that in mind.” Connor and Ellie nodded, pleased that their proposal was at least being considered. “Now leave, I have important preparations to make and you’re wasting my time.”