Darklife

## Summary

Deep in the American Underground, a primal darkness boils and festers. This darkness is taken to the surface and unleashed, by the corporate lord of America, Devin "Dev" Autumn. Darklife tells of Jack Tylys, Zinnia Rogue, and several of their allies' journey to discover what has befallen America, unveil the evil plot behind it, and finally, destroy it once and for all.

## Prologue

Life, not-life. Polar. Yet that's not all. This was discovered by one of the most unlikely people, in the most unlikely place, in the most likely time. His name was Jack Tylys. The year is 3456. The place is Chellite-occupied America. Jack wasn't a scientist. He was just a lowly sub-engineer. His job was to work the deep, dark regions of the American Underground. But down in those depths, something festered. Ages of darkness coalescing into a malevolent form of life. Dark Life.

## Chapter One, Labor

The atmosphere in which Jack worked was incredibly depressing. Fortunately, it was his last year there. Soon he would be upgraded into the higher levels of the Underground; Electrical Control. But still, the dark had not ceased to *get* to Jack. It seemed to eat at his soul if he stayed there too long. It always followed him like a stench, and it would not wear off until his days off. Sorrow seemed to hang in the air like smoke, and there was many a ghost tale from the pipes and landings where Jack labored. The Underground was the sewer, foundation, basement, and more for the massive country-wide city of America. There were mile-wide pipes, dekameter-wide wires, and almost immeasurably large air ducts. There were also huge drops, bridges, and other strange things of unknown purposes. Jack didn't have any particular job in his wandering of the Underground, but every day he had a new task. Sometimes it was cleaning out the strange, honeycombed chambers known as "The Lockers". Sometimes it was checking leaks(a surprisingly varied job), and sometimes it was to monitor the massive Powder Tanks, which were filled with all manner of strange particulates. But every now and again- and today, Jack had to go to the deeper levels. The darker levels. It was here where Jack was, when he started this insane journey. Later he would think how ironic it was, that his journey began and ended in the same place, in this darkness that penetrates all.

As Jack patrolled the dark hallways, only a narrow beam of light to guide him, sometimes he would stumble upon a haunting memory from the surface: rotting bits and pieces of clearly dyed objects, abandoned tools from previous workers.... and human skeletons. It was one of these skeletons that first alerted him to the strange situation. Of course, he wouldn't actually know the truth for a long while, but the first stirrings of suspicion arose within him from that point. And then it all started.

*Crack.* The loud noise rang out, startling Jack into dropping the flashlight. The front broke off, widening the beam, but weakening it. It pointed straight at the form of a girl.

"Gah!" the girl screamed and ran.

"Wait! What the hell are you doing here!" Jack runs after the girl, stopping only to pick up the flashlight, "You could get hurt, and I don't want another death under my patrol!" He hadn't been running for too long, less than a minute, when he heard a none-too-distant scream. "Holy shit, not again..." Jack says as he runs towards the direction of the scream. A few seconds later, he comes up to a huge Chasm, one that started very high up in the Underground, perhaps level 3, and went down all the way into the tens of thousands. If anyone fell off, they had a long way to go. Immediately, Jack saw the girl, clearly now, hanging over the edge of this abyss, only by her fingers. "Hang on, I've got you!" yelled Jack as he prepared to pull the girl up. The girl did not speak for the effort of holding herself up. Jack had to use all his strength to lift up the girl; she was his age and Jack wasn't known for strength. Still, it seemed almost as if something were pulling her down further. He had thought then that it was simply the inevitable pull of gravity.

How very wrong he was.

When Jack had finally pulled up the girl, after what seemed like ages, though it was maybe a minute, both were out of breath, and the girl affected by more sheer terror than exertion. "Who are you anyway? No- I don't care who you are. What the hell are you *doing* here?" asked Jack.

"I-I'm Zinnia." replied the girl, her red hair standing against the blackness of the Underground.

"Didn't I say I didn't care who you were?" Jack's eyes narrowed. "How and *why* did you get here? I mean, this is level 2000 or so. *2000!*"

"I-I was brought here." replied the girl, looking away from Jack's prying eyes in an obvious lie.

"Zinnia." said Jack, standing up and approaching the girl, "Tell me the truth."

The girl stood up cautiously and said, "Fine. Meet me on level -3 directly above here." She then ran off, and, ignoring Jack's calls, entered the nearby elevator, careful to not let Jack inside at the same time, leaving him alone in the darkness that penetrates.

But little did Jack know that something had started, something irreversible, and that him and Zinnia were just pawns in a universal game of chess. But other forces were at work too. Forces that Jack only realized of when his *real* journey started. Three major forces. The light, the dark, the corrupt. Even down here, a faint memory of the surface still exists, and this is all that keeps the deeper darkness at bay. A deeper darkness penetrated by the creators of the Underground, and left to stew for nearly a thousand years. Such darkness rarely manifested itself in the dimension of the physical, but instead remained in the emotional. But that would change. When light enters a dark room, the darkness doesn't die. It runs. And down here, instead, the darkness rebels. A great force of light would force it to chaos, anarchy. But as always, it is not the only catalyst. The third force, the corrupt, always plays a part. And this is not the side of money, nor politics, but science. Yes, Science, Curiosity, the urge of discovery, the trade of geniuses is the true corruption. Because in every choice there is what could have been, and in every happening there is someone who wonders why. And someone will always go too far in finding the answer. They will always want to know more. They'll fall right into the darkness. The darkness that penetrates, the darkness that rebels. Darklife. The very reason why ignorance is bliss.

## Chapter 2, The INCORPorate

*Zinnia.... Who the hell is she....* thought Jack, sitting in his favorite chair at home. *She'll probably be out of the Sector by Monday... Unless she was adamant about having something to show me, but I somehow doubt that.* Jack glanced around the room, basking in the glorious lighting that set him apart from the dark Underground. His room was very unorthodox; he was the owner of many antiques from his parents. An example was the leather chair in which he sat, which was obviously hundreds of years old. The quality of the leather was such that cows of this age could not produce it, due to evolving mutations. If a robber were to attempt to rob his house, a very rare happening due to the harshness of security in this age, he would find himself quite overwhelmed at the strange furniture that lay before him. In fact, the personal friends that Jack had had through the years had been surprised by his odd collection when they came to Jack's residence.

Jack happened to glance at his clock, also an antique, and he noticed the progressed time, and the possible severity of his tardiness. He jumped from his chair and left his house. As he walked, he thought despairingly of his terrible job, the chore entrusted to him via the wills of his parents and his father's parents before them.

*It just wasn't fair!,* he thought, shaking his arm at a likely drunk car driver on the lower skyway that he walked next to whom nearly crashed into the curb. He continued his walk to the warehouse above the place where he had met that strange girl.

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A tall, tanned man sat in a swivel chair, his feet on the desk in front of him. The desk had a multitude of objects scattered across it, old letters, paper clips, broken pencils, and other things that you might expect to see on a desk. But there was one strange object that seemed to defy explanation. Next to the man's left foot, in danger of being kicked over, was a small orb on the pedestal. It was made of a glittery, argent metal, and had an inscription upon the pedestal:Αυτό Orb είναι δροσερό. Now this inscription was illegible to anyone of the age, as the language it was written in was long dead. But that wasn't the only strange thing about this orb. It had some unnatural powers, some of which had been documented by its former owners, some of which were only rumors. Personally, the man didn't believe in any of the stories or documented powers, nor would he care if they turned out to be true. The man had far more on his mind. He was the controller of INCORP. INCORP was the corporate giant of 35th century America, dealing in quite literally everything. The main thing that this massive company worked in was scientific research on weapons, whether they be bioweapons, nuclear weapons or computer viruses. But the owner, Beldor Johnson, knew nothing about the company that he "ran". The man at this desk was not Beldor Johnson.

This man was the one with the real power at INCORP. Devin Autumn, known to many as simply "Dev". He was the true lord and owner of the facility, operating out of the public eye, directing bioweapon experiments, while Beldor was simply the mascot. And the big thing being worked on now was known as BRANE. Of course, the public new none of this. But INCORP was priming America for World War VII. And the rest of the world was still reeling from World War VI. INCORP had started way back in the 26th century, and has played a part in every world war since then, so why would the seventh be any different? In fact, it may even seem a bit puzzling to a few. Why would they want war? The answer is simple. They want war because of all that they produce. They produce weapons, they produce ammo. And they would sell their superweapons.

But now, the one big thing on Dev's mind was the Underground. Some of his workers had gone deeper than anyone had ever had need to go before. Previously, there was only maps down to level 8000 or so, and not even documentation of levels below 9000. But INCORP had done scans down to 12000. These only could scan a small area of the Underground at that level, but it was enough. The levels that had gotten a visual scan had been reported as "dirty", almost as if they'd been there longer than the rest of the Underground. But that wasn't the case.  Dev suspected that the only way to solve this was to go deeper. To the bottom of the Underground, whatever level that is, be it level 13000 or 1000000. And that Dev would do, or at least get someone else to do for him. And there was someone that he thought could help. David Liss, the glorious founder of the Lissassin Corporation. And Dev had something to do before Liss could be allowed to set foot in his company.

Dev pulled a small communicator from his pocket and tuned the dial to 2076.

A woman picked up."Hello?" came the voice.

"Srah Able, is this the number?" replied Dev. On the other end, the woman pursed her lips.

"It's Sarah. Sarah Able."

"Sarah?  Never heard that name.  I thought it was Srah."

"I get that alot."

"Sorry about that." He didn't sound like he cared. "I have a job for you."

The woman blanched, many yards away. "A-a job?"

"Yes, are you deaf? I want you to find something for me."

"F-find what?"

"Chord 395."

"W-what?!"

"You heard me right. Chord 395. Find it. End of story." Dev hung up.

# DO NOT READ YET

BRANE was a biotechnological brain that creates itself a unique implement of destruction, and rampages throughout it's enemies. And that's just Stage One. In Stage Two, the BRANE creates an impenetrable fortress around itself and infects every inhabitant around it, manipulating them to the will of the BRANE's programmers. And then there is Stage Three.