The truck takes us past the lake and toward one of the tall, jagged mountains behind the colony. Even as I contemplate how a whole city within reach of the colony has been hidden, I realize how unnatural it is that the hybrids haven’t spread out more. Phydus didn’t just make them obey the FRX—it killed their sense of wonder and exploration.

We don’t speak again as the truck drives through a long, dark tunnel cut into the mountain and emerges into a populated area. We are the only vehicle on the street but are surrounded by people and vast buildings made of glass and steel—factories, mostly, judging from the grime and sweat on the people who emerge from them.

They shuffle straight ahead, their eyes and faces directed forward. Even though they all seem to have a purposeful direction, their shoulders slump and their arms hang limply at their sides. They look more like zombies than any monster I’ve seen in a horror film. The driver stops the truck in the middle of the largest intersection of the city. There are so many people around that I expect the city to be loud, but when Zane opens the door, the only thing I hear is the rhythmic pounding of feet on pavement.

Something bumps into the door Zane still holds open. A woman with short curly hair and blank eyes—they’re crystal-blue eyes, with oval irises, but blank all the same. Her feet keep going up and down, up and down, but she doesn’t seem to notice she’s not moving forward. She doesn’t even really notice the door that’s blocking her path. Zane slams it—no one even flinches at the reverberating sound—and the woman plods forward as if nothing was ever in her way.

“Why are you showing me this?” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“I wanted you to see what we were fighting for,” Zane says. His voice carries, but no one even seems to register his presence.

I’ve seen Phydus. I saw the City on Godspeed, I saw the blank stares, the empty expressions.

This is worse somehow. I think because of the open sky above us. Eldest had made the use of Phydus almost excusable behind the steel walls of the ship. But nothing like this can ever be excusable in a world without walls.

Zane turns his attention to me. He’s t

rying to make his face as emotionless as those of the people walking around us, but it’s not working. “Did you know the drug you call Phydus—it was developed in part from research the first colony did on some of the plants they discovered here? Phydus wouldn’t exist without this planet, and yet it’s caused . . . all this. ” He moves his hands weakly, indicating the whole city.

I look up and out, trying to determine how many people are in this sprawling city. Thousands, at least. All drugged by Phydus.

Zane takes in my reaction before continuing. “They mixed the Phydus—which I suppose they eventually wanted to test out for use on Sol-Earth—with gen mod material. ”

I flinch. I don’t know what’s worse—his assumption that much of the population on today’s Earth might be just as doped up as the zombie-like people before me or his mention of the same gen mod material my mother helped develop before she ever set foot on Godspeed.

“The combined drug was designed to attack the adrenal and pituitary glands, as well as the senses, and as a result, Phydus becomes a natural part of the body’s response to stimulation, creating passivity instead of individual thought. ”

“The first people were infected generations ago,” Chris says. “The FRX didn’t count on people like us—the ones who have defective glands. ”

“It’s a mutation. ” Zane shrugs. “It would have happened eventually. ”

The empty shells of people move robotically down the street. They hardly seem human.

I look down at myself. My muscles still ache, my bones still throb from the effects of the hybrid solution I’ve been injected with. Who am I to judge who seems human or not?

Zane stares at something high up, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s looking at a pole embedded into the sidewalk with a giant speaker perched atop it. “They used to have people from the FRX here at all times,” he tells me. “They would live here until a shipment was done, then new masters would come to give orders until the next shipment was complete. Now they don’t even bother with that. They know all they have to do is say what they want, and my people will do it. ”

The way he says that—my people—reminds me of how Elder felt about the shipborns. I swallow down the lump rising in my throat.

“For at least a decade, they’ve just used the satellites to issue orders. Now they can’t even do that, but my people keep working anyway. ”

And I know they will all continue working, because even without the FRX telling them to do so, the Phydus in their systems won’t let them stop. “The Inhibitor formula Bartie’s bringing will work,” I assure Zane.

Zane shrugs. He’s not willing to get his hopes up. “I am glad, at least, that the humans from the FRX aren’t here anymore. ” He looks down at me, forcing me to meet his gaze. “It was bad when they were here. I wonder, sometimes . . . ”

“What?” I ask. It takes me a moment to recognize the feeling that’s welling up inside me. Sympathy.

“I wonder if the only reason the rogue hybrids like me mutated is because the humans from the FRX . . . ” He turns away, unable to finish speaking.

I don’t need him to explain his thoughts, though. If there were FRX leaders here, seeing to the day-to-day operations of the colony they’d turned into mindless slaves . . . I rub my wrists. The women who lived here, born with Phydus already in their systems, were nothing more than dolls to the slave masters on Centauri-Earth. The kind of men who had no problem turning people into mindless automatons would have no problem doing exactly what they wanted with the women, the women who could not even think to protest.

I swallow dryly. I can do nothing about the past. But I won’t let this sort of thing ever happen again on my planet, my home.

73: AMY

The peace negotiations go surprisingly well. Zane has a team of his own scientists read over the Inhibitor formula that Bartie gives him, and they seem confident that the meds will work.

Even so, negotiations take hours. Mostly because I insist that everything be written down, witnessed, and signed by all present. I leave nothing to chance or spoken promises.

Tags: Beth Revis Across the Universe Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net