Miko blurted impatiently, “Nothing, we just want to get out of here and survive the day!”
Laren would not be daunted. “Answer, G! If you created the Mentera, then who created you?”
“Locusts are trying to kill us. Shall we go?” cried Miko.
The being emitted a cold, lifeless sound. “The question you ask is a prickly one... I will remind you that the universe has no beginning or end. There is no ‘creator’ as you would think it. Any creator prompts the question, ‘Who created that creator?’ I always was. Life always existed in potential form. Material life just needed the proper spur to spark its manifestation. That impetus exists all around us, as it exists in your head and heart right now. I morphed into various forms over the ages, so far in the past that black holes have eaten their memories. I appeared to die, and then to be reborn into something new.”
Miko flapped his hands around in frustration. “Enough! These riddles are useless.” He turned anxious eyes to the battered door which bulged inward upon another forceful impact.
Miko, Star and Usk ran to the opposite door, twisting the shiny steel ring. But it gave not a millimetre. Star wailed, “It’s jammed.”
“Show us a way out!” Miko’s fingers curled on his stun gun.
“Ah, I feel your frustration, human. Impractical purposelessness haunts your psyche. So many aeons have passed where I contemplated these very questions. Coming to no satisfactory conclusion, I eventually gave it up, and resorted to amusing myself with one project after another, including those on your own world.”
The creature straightened its sinuous shoulders. “But I digress. The time has come for you to act and I fear the part you play in this pressing drama has only begun. The locusts come...”
Thuds pounded insistently at the door. The tortured metal still clung mulishly intact, but claws were curling around the edges and laser fire was sizzling holes in cabinets and components.
“Perhaps now, my duty will be done and these foolish, filthy creatures will destroy this place forever. But if not—a favour I ask. Arm the detonator with these codes, destroy this place, and I will in return show you an exit.”
Miko glanced suspiciously at the ten digit number that flashed on the cloud display. “Why not arm it yourself?” He stared at the console’s keypad, then trained his stunner on the horde soon to charge through the widening gap.
“Alas, the pioneers programmed these systems to disallow AI from initiating self-destruct sequences without a physical being present. As you are doomed anyways, I give you this chance.”
“What if we refuse?” huffed Laren.
“Then you will die.”
Miko cursed. If they armed the detonator and the AI double crossed them... He twisted anew at the portal’s shiny steel ring, but it lay stubbornly unresponsive.
Star moaned. Usk glared at the androgynous apparition that floated in the mist before them, grotesquely rendered, strangely omniscient. Usk’s red eyes flashed toward the buckling door, weapon gripped.
“Only I hold the key.” The thing’s expression remained impassive.
Stifling a curse, Miko tapped in the numbers on the console.
“Are you crazy?” Laren slapped Miko’s hands away. “How can you trust this thing?—”
Miko flung off Laren’s pawing grip.
Laren turned angrily to the AI. “Tell us your role in humans’ origin!”
“Enter the code.”
Laren shrieked, his face suffused in crimson. His mind seemed to have snapped and he emptied ray after ray into the thing’s ethereal form.
The Genetrix remained whole, a coy smile on its owl-like face. “You’d better hurry. They’re coming.”
Miko jabbed the sequence into the panel while Laren fumed and the door sagged on its hinges, exploding in a ringing clangour.
“Exit by the side chamber,” said the creature. “Enter this last sequence—” a shimmering number flashed across the cloud display “—You have twenty seconds.”
“You miserable—” hissed Laren.
Miko desperately punched in the release code. Within seconds, the locusts streamed through, garbed in airtight skin suits, wielding lumo-weapons in their pincers. Miko and Usk wrenched the released door open and Star and Laren staggered through. Usk turned and fired blasts at the clacking mob, mowing down the first wave.
Miko ducked stray laser blasts, jammed the door shut just as Usk squeezed his shell through the gap and the concussion of the last blast sent them writhing backward, knocking them flat on their faces and backs.
Fire smote the tortured metal. A wave of heat enveloped them.
Miko crawled painfully in the heat and dust. He half expected the corridor to erupt in flames. But it didn’t.
Ears ringing, he tottered to a crouch and hauled Star to her feet. “Let’s get out—of this hell!” He pushed Laren ahead who mouthed curses at the locusts, long dead aliens and Genetrix. Like phantom figures, they stumbled on, blinking and gasping in the dusty dark. Miko was hardly conscious of the long sterile laboratory hall down which they staggered.
“The blast—would have alerted more of the fiends,” Laren rasped.
Miko nodded. “We have little time.”
* * *
The corridor ran on a long way. While they stumbled on, Miko caught glimpses of crescent-shaped rooms behind glass windows. Through the glass, he saw surgical instruments and strange command pods and robotic arms of medical equipment that reached into low steel vats. Everything was frozen in time. Racks of consoles, displays, monitoring stations were likely those that seeded and nursed the first Mentera.
The chilling familiarity had Miko thinking of Zikri and Mentera battling over the equipment, willing to sell their souls for dominance. Chills ran up his spine. From what the alien presence, G, had said, this command bunker hadn’t been penetrated by friend or foe.
Not for long. The locusts would be coming soon, drawn like flies to the flame.
The fugitives’ breaths came in gasps and their headlamps cast eerie, slanting rays about the dark sterility.
At last they came
