Gene. Sys. by Aaron Denius (best ereader for comics txt) 📕

said. I really haven’t given anyone else a chance to speak their thoughts. Maybe one of them could have had a better idea that would have helped us succeed in the Hologram Battle.

“How are you feeling about the Ragnarok coming soon?” she presses.

“I’m scared.” I stop myself before I say anything else. She caught me off guard. I furrow my brow in disappointment with myself.

“It’s okay to be scared, Atom. I am too. We really don’t know what is going to happen,” she tries to comfort me.

Something she said piques my interest. “What do you mean we don’t know what’s going to happen? Nuclear weapons will be detonated all over the world, killing pretty much everyone but us twelve Genesys. Then we have to start it all over.”

“Right.” She thinks about how to proceed. “I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen with you after it’s all done. We will be gone and will have no idea as to whether you were successful or not.”

I stare at her for a few moments, trying to read her. “Why are you scared?”

Dr. Kivuli looks down at her hands. “I don’t want to die, Atom. I never was given a choice in the matter, but I guess we all have to die sometime.”

“Do you wish Rene wasn’t going to set off the Ragnarok?” I push. I feel that I’ve hit a chord.

She looks hard at me; her expression turns sour. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I keep my eyes glued to hers. Dr. Kivuli seems to be reading me as much as I am reading her. Eventually, she looks away and stands.

“I think that’s enough for today.” She walks toward the door.

I stand, a small smile on my face. I walk past her and through the door. “Have a good night.”

“You as well.” She closes the door behind me.

Adrenaline shoots through my body—I can’t wait to tell Ev what just happened. I sprint back through the hallways to her room. She opens her door a few seconds after I knock, and I barge in, taking a seat on her bed.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she closes her door.

“So last night, I was walking around the compound, and I overheard Dr. Kivuli and a scientist named Joey talking about the attacks and maybe organizing more. They are definitely both part of the Mutineers,” I say in one breath.

“Dr. Kivuli? Really?” She takes a seat next to me on the bed.

“Yes!” I nearly shout. “Plus, I just had a session with her, and she admitted that she wasn’t a fan of Rene’s plan and didn’t want to die.”

“No one wants to die, Atom,” she responds condescendingly.

I look at her, not appreciating her tone. “I know that, but this is different.”

“I suppose. I’m just surprised, that’s all.” She stands and pulls up the personnel database on the wall. “We should probably go through all the scientists and see who we think might be involved.”

“Yeah. Plus, Rene said that there is more than one Joey, so we need to see which one it was,” I add.

“So I have already looked through the database once. There are nearly one hundred scientists here.” Ev calls up the file to every scientist on the wall.

“Are there really?” I’m surprised. “I thought that maybe there were only about thirty or so.”

“I did too. I guess most of them work in different parts of the compound. Remember, we didn’t even know that the Center for G.O.D. existed until Rene took us down there,” she says.

“There were at least a dozen scientists down there,” I think out loud.

“Exactly! So there very easily could be other parts of the compound that we don’t know about,” she adds.

“Like the monitor room that I saw Grant go into,” I say.

She stares at me with accusing eyes. I guess I forgot to mention that to her. She opens her mouth to say something but then thinks twice about it and turns her attention to the wall.

“So what should we do?” I ask, realizing after the fact that it’s what Dr. Kivuli suggested I start doing.

“We make lists of the scientists. One pile for the people we know or suspect of being a part of the Mutineers and another pile for those we don’t,” she says to the wall.

“What about the people neither of us knows? I don’t think it’s fair to make an assessment based on just a picture.” I shift my body on her bed so that I am on my stomach, facing the wall.

“Right. We make a third pile then.” She taps the wall, and the first picture comes up. It’s Rene.

“Mutineer!” I blurt out with a big smile. Ev looks at me, and a small smile graces her face.

“Very funny.” She turns back to the wall and, after moving about a dozen scientists to the ‘don’t know’ pile, another familiar face pops up. It’s Grant.

“No,” I say.

“Agreed.” She continues flipping through the scientists. More and more scientists get moved to the ‘don’t know’ pile, and we add a couple other scientists to the ‘no’ pile; Grant’s husband and Dr. Cicca. Finally, we come across our first Mutineer, Dr. Kivuli.

“I still can’t believe she’s one of them,” Ev states.

“I’ve never really trusted her, but I know what I saw.” A part of me is happy for being suspicious about her from the beginning. “Just be careful what you tell her when you meet again.”

“Right.” Ev goes back to the wall. She continues to move scientists into the ‘don’t know’ pile.

“Stop!” I nearly stand on her bed. “That’s him!”

Ev brings up the file she just had, and we both stare at a picture of ‘Joseph Relli,’ one of the scientists in charge of surveillance and security.

“Are you sure?” Ev asks.

“Yes. He has the same build. He must work in the surveillance room.” I lie back down on the bed.

Ev moves his picture to the Mutineers pile, and the next image that pops up is Hawk’s. We both stare quietly