The Covenant of Genesis

‘Like I said, leave her.’ He started towards the helicopter, before delivering a parting shot over his shoulder. ‘There’s a two-seat F-15 waiting for me in Germany - I’ll be back in Virginia before breakfast. As for you . . . I wouldn’t be in any rush to get home. You won’t enjoy the reception. Goodbye, Dr Wilde.’

He disappeared into the black helicopter’s red-lit interior. The soldiers quickly scooped the two corpses into body bags, one man using a high-pressure spray of some pungent chemical to disperse the blood. The guns were retrieved, even the leather case and ziplock bag taken away. The whole process took barely two minutes before the last soldier boarded the chopper, which left the ground before the hatch had even fully closed. The aircraft swung over Nina’s head, blasting her with a hot wind before being swallowed by the dark sky, the thud of its rotors fading within moments.

She stared after it, left alone.

Completely alone. Dalton was right. She had nothing. No proof.

No Chase.

Slumping against the railing, she began to weep.

Epilogue

New York City

Nina blankly watched the endless bustle of Manhattan passing the coffee shop’s window with a feeling of complete disconnection. Even though she was surrounded by crowds, she was isolated, alone. Hollow.

It was now three weeks since she faced Dalton at the waterfall, two weeks and six days since she had endured a hostile interrogation at JFK and an unpleasant confrontation with a press pack of mocking jackals as she emerged from the gate, all prepped with questions about her suspension - now permanent - and the deaths she had caused and her crazy theories that were an insult to every decent American. Dalton’s people had done their job well, a pre-emptive smearing to make her look a fool, a dangerous crank, a joke.

She didn’t care. About anything. Nothing mattered any more.

The media interest died down quickly, simply because she had nothing to say. Cable news pundits still reviled her every so often, but the mainstream media had moved on. Disgraced scientists were less of a draw than drunken actors or pregnant singers or the contestants in the latest talent show. It had been two days since anyone had recognised, or insulted, her in the street. Dr Nina Wilde was old news. Forgotten.

She stared into her coffee cup, swirling the last dregs around its bottom. Her reflected face looked back at her without expression.

That, she knew all too well, was just a facade, a shell. She couldn’t allow herself to feel anything. Because if she did, she knew what emotion would consume her.

Despair.

She had thought her anguish would fade over time. She had been wrong. Instead it had mutated, a cancerous tumour in her psyche, poisoning every moment. It took all her willpower not to give in to it . . . but in moments of loneliness, she couldn’t stop the awful darkness from rising.

She gulped down the final mouthful of coffee, then summoned the strength to return to the apartment. The empty apartment. Sometimes she kept walking the streets of Manhattan for hours to avoid having to go back to it, but in the end she always had . . . because she had nowhere else to go.

Nina was walking to the door when something made her pause. Dalton’s name.

It was hardly the first time she had heard it since returning, loss and loathing flooding back at each occurrence. But there was something different about it now, a buzz as it spread through the customers. She turned. People were talking on phones, scanning news pages on laptops, spreading the word. She tried to pick out details through the growing hubbub.

‘- the President -’

‘- he slept with -’

‘- terrorist -’

‘- might have to resign -’

‘- a video -’

‘- all over the Internet -’

‘- I found it, I got it here!’

People clustered round one man, who tilted his laptop’s screen so they could watch. Nina hesitated, then joined them. She could barely see the screen through the throng, but a glimpse was enough.

She turned away, heading for the exit as the grainy video of Sophia Blackwood and Victor Dalton, faces and naked bodies clearly visible, played.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘I dunno, but it’s all over the place. YouTube already pulled the original, but there’s hundreds of copies up, it’s on the torrents, everywhere!’

‘Is that - that’s her, isn’t it? The bitch who tried to nuke us?’

‘Is that really the President? It can’t be. Can it?’

‘It’s him, it’s really him!’

The voices faded behind Nina as she left the shop and stood on the street. The word was here too, a verbal virus leaping from person to person. Shock, laugher, disbelief, intrigue - everyone had a different reaction.

But everyone had a reaction. Everyone knew.

Nina hurried towards her apartment, the tiniest seed of an emotion she hadn’t felt for some time taking root inside her.

Hope.

By the time she reached home, every shop window TV, every radio blaring from a passing cab, every overheard cell phone conversation was about the same thing.

The President of the United States had been filmed in flagrante. That he hadn’t been president at the time was immaterial; that the woman with him not only was not his wife, but had almost succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in New York, most certainly was. The video had spread across the Internet in a matter of hours, a digital hydra spawning new heads exponentially. A news story so big that whatever a network’s political biases, it could not be ignored.

Nina rushed to the TV. She had avoided the news channels since her return, but now sought them out. There was only one story.

A caption told her she was watching a live broadcast from the White House press room, the familiar blue curtains behind a flustered man in a suit: the White House press secretary. Questions were being shouted at him, voices overlapping. ‘One at a time, one at a time!’ he cried, almost pleading. ‘You, Pete. One at a time.’

‘Is the President going to resign?’ someone yelled.

‘The Pres - the President will make a statement concerning this - this fabrication later today,’ the press secretary stammered. ‘That’s all I can say right now.’

‘That’s the official line, that it’s a fabrication?’

‘It is, yes.’

‘It’s a fabrication, or it’s the official line?’

Another voice chipped in with a loud aside of, ‘If it’s a fake, it’ll win the Oscar for special effects.’ Laughter erupted around the room.

‘Will the President resign?’ someone else boomed. The question was repeated with minor variations from what seemed like the entire press corps. The man visibly quailed.

Nina stepped back from the TV. ‘Gotcha,’ she whispered as she switched it off. If Dalton had Sophia’s recording, then the only way a copy could have been made was . . .

A reflection in the blank screen told her she was not alone.

‘Ay up,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Don’t I get a kiss hello?’

‘Eddie!’ Nina screamed in delight as she spun to see Chase sitting casually on a chair in the corner, looking as if he’d just come back from the 7-11 rather than the dead. She ran to him. ‘Oh my God, oh my God! Is it really you?’