Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 

 

            Dustin managed to escape successfully with Topaz. Having lived in the outside world before, he already knew loss like the back of his hand. While it pained him to abandon his family, he knew that if he had any hope of escaping he had to abandon them all without hesitation. He never lost hope though. In his heart he strongly believed they were still alive and that one day he may be reunited with them.

            The first two years, Dustin ran to Sector Two. There were five Sectors that produced for the Ark and Sector Two was in charge of all the agricultural products. It was also where Dustin came from. Compared to some of the other Sectors it wasn’t that bad. Here, humans could live, not a great life, but they could live as long as they did their job. If you could meet your quotas you could keep the s****y life you had. Don’t meet them, and you’ll get transferred to another Sector where they will find better use for you.

            Dustin managed to find one of his real family’s old friends and offered to do work for them as long as they kept him hidden and fed. They agreed to help him and he worked for them for two years. During those years, he kept Topaz hidden from everyone. A human carrying a baby homunculus would only worsen his situation; humans would scorn him, homunculi would probably kill him. So he kept her hidden, and raised her in secret.

            Things started getting hectic in the Sectors though, with small groups of humans attempting futile uprisings and the Ark security getting tighter. They started doing check ups regularly on the citizens of the Sectors for any hint of rebel activity. Things started to get really hot around Sector Two and eventually Dustin was asked to leave the farm. He didn’t fight it though, he understood, and he was grateful for the two peaceful years, if you could call them that.

            The next three years he spent in the slums of Sector Two, fighting, hiding, and scavenging to survive. These were hard years because Topaz was still too young to take care of herself. The fact that Topaz was aging at all to begin with though was already a wonder on its own though. Homunculi didn’t age; it was as simple as that. It only meant he had to keep her safe that much more though. For Gem, his mother whom he didn’t know whether was still alive or not, he refused to let any harm come to Topaz. So for three years he lived the worst three years of his life to make sure no one laid a finger on Topaz.

            It wasn’t easy, and eventually he started becoming infamous around the slums. At first when the slum gangs started taking notice of him and many wanted to recruit him, but Dustin knew what it meant to belong to a slum gang. It was no better than being a slave to the homunculi. They used you until they no longer had a need for you. So he rejected them, one after another, until eventually they started coming after him. If you weren’t a part of their gang, you were a nuisance, and when things got too dangerous Dustin was forced to leave Sector Two.

            He spent the next year in the wilderness outside of the Sectors. He learned to hunt and build and made a home for him and Topaz. It wasn’t an easy life, but at least they could sleep at night without being too afraid. The only danger was the occasional Ark Hunters that went on patrol but Dustin could get around them easily. While living in their hut he genuinely believed they could grow old without anyone bothering them in the world. That dream was shot down quick when the Ark ordered more forest to be cut down for resources.

            Dustin was forced to flee once more. Traveling had become significantly easier since Topaz was older. Topaz wasn’t just aging, she was aging extremely fast. Dustin and Topaz traveled all the way to the outskirts of Sector One. Sector One was an ugly place filled with mines. Its main purpose was mining for crystals. Of course, Dustin couldn’t register for work since there was no such thing as humans who came out of town, anywhere. Humans didn’t traveled, they got transferred. To get passed this issue, Dustin used Topaz. He didn’t like the idea, but Topaz was a homunculi and unlike him could travel and speak with others of her kind freely. Dustin searched for the black market and paid for a fake identification for Topaz. Once she had citizenship, she could become one with society. Topaz employed Dustin as a slave so he could work in the mines. Dustin mined for a year selling the crystals he made until he realized that Topaz was aging far too quick and people would notice. After that they both left Sector One.

            Dustin considered going to Purgatory, the last home of the humans, but he wouldn’t be able to enter with Topaz by his side. Homunculi could not live in Purgatory, taken literally. Any homunculi to step in Purgatory died almost instantly. So instead they went back to Sector Two. They did the same strategy they did in Sector One and had Topaz register him as a slave for work. After doing so, they reunited with their friends with whom they stayed with before and this time legally stayed with them without having to hide. Dustin did not reveal anything about Topaz being with him the first time he stayed there and instead introduced her as a homunculus who helped him establish himself into society once again.

            Dustin spent the next three years of his life there. He eventually told the people that’d given him refuge so many years the truth about Topaz and how she grew unlike other homunculi. It didn’t take much convincing since over the three years Topaz grew at an amazing rate. They agreed to keep her truth a secret in thanks to all the help Dustin did around the farm. Topaz also helped a lot in getting supplies they needed from the homunculi markets. It felt good not to hide anymore. Life finally felt certain, like they wouldn’t lose it the next day, however tough it may be. It wasn’t until then that Dustin finally had time to think about where the rest of his family was once again.

 

 

            Solius was the birth of a new project. After his capture, he was transferred to Sector Three. Sector Three was in charge of technology development. That was its board title anyways; in reality it pertained to essentially all scientific experiments. Solius was to be made into the prime subject for a new breed of people. Reapers.

            A Reaper was a breed of human soldiers, raised and trained to kill at a very young age and enhanced with mechanical limbs. They wanted to create a being that was superior to humans but inferior to homunculi that didn’t rely on crystal fuel; of course it took many tries before they finally got it right. Solius was the test subject for every single time they thought they found the best possible method.

            Upon arriving in Sector Three they amputated Solius’s arms and legs and removed one of his eyes. They replaced it with remote control mechanical limbs and eye. At first the homunculi wanted to control their human soldiers but the delay in transmission from control to body along with the maximum distance from which they could control it proved fatal when tested in real combat, similar to when they tried the android method. There was also the issue of in depth control so they wouldn’t be restricted to generic movements.

            They quickly moved to the next obvious method. Let the human control himself. They implanted a transmitter control to Solius’s brain that sent radio waves to his mechanical limbs but the delay remained, and the lacking sense of touch made for uncoordinated movements. The idea was quickly abandoned and then after two years of development of trial and error they created organic machinery.

            Organic machinery connected directly to the nerves and created the same control and vulnerability to pain as a normal arm made of flesh. It worked, but required a lot of therapy before it could be used effectively. It took Solius four years before he could move his arms and legs and use them effectively in combat. Since he arrived, it had been six long years before he was finally a complete able person once more. The organic machinery was only the icing on the Reaper Project though.

            For Reapers, mental training was just as crucial. So for essentially every day in his life since capture, Solius was trained mentally to be nothing more than an obedient servant who killed his own kind without hesitation. They educated him daily in their society and his duty in life. When he didn’t give a satisfactory response he would get tortured. They told him stories about humans, how they constantly abandoned each other, only look out for themselves, are consumed by greed, but all those things went in one ear and out the other to Solius. The stories they told him, no matter how horrid they were, everyone was capable of doing because everyone had free will. The only thing that changed from hearing the stories was the realization to just how cruel people in the world could be, regardless of what they were. Ultimately Solius held allegiance to no side, he didn’t love humans just because he was one, he didn’t hate homunculi simply because they were in power, and he didn’t hate messiahs for s**t that happened hundreds of years ago. But he did hate them all. People in general just irked him. So he didn’t have much of conscience to struggle with.

            That part of the mental training wasn’t bad for him. He knew, as long as he told them what they wanted to hear and learned what they wanted him to learn, there was no extra pain to come from it. The worse part was how they turned him into everybody he hated. Each day they reminded him that no matter how much he hated all forms of humanity, he was no different from any human, homunculus, or messiah. A statement Solius once argued. After all, he valued nothing. He was their prisoner with no hope of freedom and little will to live. But he had spoken to soon.

            They put Solius in a room with four other humans without telling them why. They stayed there confused without food for days until eventually food was all they could think about. Then, they handed Solius a gun and told him, “Eat up.” The message was clear, kill them, these innocent humans you befriended in the last couple days, and eat. At first, Solius thought he’d finally found an escape, a gun was all he needed to put his misery to an end, one bullet to his head and he could finally part with the hell of a world he lived in, but then they showed him something that turned his life upside down, and all of a sudden, his life had value and he was no different from the rest of humanity. His twin sister in the captivity of the Ark.

            A video of her captive was all he needed to know it was true. He’d already learned how the world worked and knew they wouldn’t kill her. Just like his own life, this was just the beginning of her life under the Ark’s watch. Next to that which he loved another person’s life was worth little, and his own life, priceless. One by one he killed his new friends and ate them. The process was repeated until eventually they concluded there was no need for it. He was everything they wanted him to be. An obedient killer.

            By the time he finally had a complete working body and was mentally trained all that remained was to make him into a leader. Once he was considered a success, the Reaper Project was put into full motion and entered mass production. Children were transferred, mutilated, altered, and trained to become killing machines. He spent the last four years being trained in every form of combat and leadership skills until he was considered a formidable leader. After ten long years of torture and experimentation, he was finally a Reaper.

 

 

            After being left behind by Adam, Lilith was captured by the Ark Hunters and taken into Sector Five. The most inhumane of all the Sectors. The human farm. Sector Five was essential to the homunculi civilization. Without it, they would have no constant supply of human vessels from which to make homunculus. The ironic part was that Lilith was actually being taken back to the place she was born.

            Most humans were born in Sector Five. They would then be raised into whatever the Ark wanted them to be and be given a purpose. Depending on what job they thought the human would be most fit for determined which Sector they would be transferred to. It all depended on who bought you based on a profile. The most beautiful humans often remained in Sector Five to reproduce more appealing vessels or to Sector Four to become vessels themselves. For Lilith, beauty couldn’t have been a worse punishment.

            The instant Lilith got her first period she was put to work. Work in Sector Five meant being whored until you became pregnant. To call it work though would imply there was some choice or profit involved; sex slavery was the better term. You were forced to mate with whomever they chose and if you resisted…you were forced to mate with whomever they chose. It came down to whether you at least wanted the luxury to do the deed yourself. After the first couple rapes the children generally submitted and stopped fighting. Lilith was no exception.

            By the time Lilith was thirteen she had her first baby. She never saw it. At fourteen she had twins and was able to glance at them in a blur of pain as the doctors took them away. When she was fifteen she was hoping she’d get pregnant again. Pregnant meant you didn’t get fucked on an hourly basis and instead got pampered for the sake of the baby. Fifteen was a long year for her though, and it was almost concluded that she was infertile. In Sector Five, infertile meant you no longer held any value and would be transferred to another Sector or worse, killed. Luckily, she got pregnant almost at the age of sixteen after two miscarriages. Seventeen was also a good year.

            By the time Lilith was eighteen she caught on to the fact that she had gained some popularity. She could only assume that her children had become something of a desired object because her living conditions became significantly better and instead of being fucked by a line of random men on a list, she was fucked by very selective more attractive partners. The Sector started doing whatever possible to bring as much life to the empty vessel left of Lilith and it worked.

            At twenty, Lilith was the most beautiful and powerful she’d ever been. She abused her special treatment and took advantage of her worth. It came to no surprise that she became the most loved and loathed individual in Sector Five. The homunculi loved her for her beauty and ability to share that beauty with her children while the humans hated her with deep envy for her special treatment. There was no other human who chose her mating partners or what she got fed or how often she got fed or where she slept or how long she slept. Lilith had become something of a queen among the ants and she loved it. She loved having power and being independent and she embraced it without second thoughts. Some power was better than no power.