Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn Read online

  Ellie Quin: A Girl

  Reborn

  (Episode 5 in the

  Ellie Quin Series)

  By

  Alex Scarrow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.

  © Alex Scarrow, 2015

  @AlexScarrow

  © Cover Image and Design Alex Scarrow, 2015

  [A Digi-Media fragment – ‘Shuttle Stop 7’]:

  ‘…But I loooove you Captain Riley…’

  Captain Riley, dressed immaculately in officer whites, lifts his firm and masculine jaw. ‘And what about my ship? She’s as much my mistress as any woman can be.’

  The young woman, Darlena, athletic, dark-haired, beautiful…in a word, stunning, and wearing a tight-fitting green pvc corset that frames her ample cleavage and moves closer to the impossibly handsome Captain Riley. She dips her head seductively onto one of his gold-braided shoulders.

  ‘I love your big ship too….it’s so, big. So, big and round and…’

  ‘Drinks anyone?’

  A waitress with a tray of exotically coloured cocktails intrudes on our would-be lovers. She is shorter than Darlena, slight and plain. A wholly unremarkable looking young woman. The sort of face you'd forget in an instant.

  Captain Riley hasn’t even noticed the waitress is there. ‘Darlena…if you want to be with me, you’ll have to say goodbye to your homeworld. You’ll have to accept a life in space.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ Darlena swoons. ‘Oh, my babeee! My handsome hero! I’ll ride with you to any corner of the galaxy.’

  The waitress sighs wearily, unnoticed, unseen by either character, she moves out of shot…

  [End of media fragment]:

  OMNIPEDIA:

  [Human Universe open source digital encyclopedia]

  Article: ‘The Legend of Ellie Quin’

  The above holo-media clip, retrieved from the recently discovered digital storage archives of the Laangstrom Institute, has been verified by a number of expert ‘Quinologists’ as one of the very few remaining pieces of digimedia of Ellie Quin.

  It is all too easy for an amateur historian to be seduced by other media clips that claim to contain images of her; clips that present her as larger than life, heroic, charismatic even. Clips presenting a tormented genius, a passionate mind-poet, a Joan of Arc-like martyr bravely confronting the forces of evil.

  A good historian must instantly be skeptical of such footage (and there is much of this kind of ‘scam-media’ to be found on Omnipedia) since Ellie was no more aware of her destiny at that time as any other young person might be.

  In this clip she appears to be playing the character of a waitress aboard a ship in a type of drama show that was commonly referred to as a 'sopa-dram'. These appear to have been popular at this time; endless, episodic narratives featuring stock characters; spaceship pilots, femme fatales, heroic adventurers, and romance-obsessed waitresses.

  If this is a genuine clip of Ellie Quin, then it is a mystery as to how she ended up on such a show, but since she appears to be still very young in this clip, and this would appear to be the only clip of her in such a show, her career as an actress must have been short-lived and must have occurred during the time she was on the planet of Harpers Reach or somewhere in the Seventh Veil system.

  It is known that the Administration, at this time, were already closing in on her and that she somehow managed to evade them and escape the city of New Haven and her HomeWorld. However, she would have been trapped within this system as the authorities had imposed a system-wide quarantine.

  User Comment > Anonymous

  !!!!!!!!UggBugg!!!!!![buy it now for all cross-species STDs]

  User Comment > Liz T-Pup

  Itsa-hoax vid. EQ never was in one of those stupid holo-sopas. I reckon its government proper-gander. they want her to look like some silly little fame-crazy girl.

  User Comment > MeisterGleister

  T-Pup…she was just a very normal girl. You know that, right? In every aspect apart from her ‘purpose’, she was just a normal girl. So I guess, she could have aspired to be a soap star, or a singer, or a drag-wag. Fame…who wouldn’t want it?

  User Comment > Random Dot

  I always wanted to be famous…no one ever notices me.

  User Comment > Anonymous

  Dot…no one ever notices me either.

  To read more of 34,567,984 User Comments? – Register with Omnipedia Here

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘Hufty, it’s me, Ellie. I’m not going to lie….I’m kind of, a little bit, creeped out. No, swipe that. A LOT creeped out right now.’

  She looked out across the receding meadow, a picture-perfect and sun-drenched haven, alive with flappy, hovering buzzy-things and flowers she couldn’t even begin to identify or name.

  She looked up the sloping grass towards the hedged gardens at the edge of the central plaza, at the little village at the top and beyond that at the smooth and slender elevator column at the centre of the biome that led up towards the deep blue sky. At the very top she could see the round shape of the control deck; it’s 360-degree windows glinted reflections of the projected fake sun.

  The column was the only way up to WonderWorld’s nerve centre and the only way down to the service decks below this pleasant piece of heaven. The service decks were a dark and utilitarian labyrinth of cold corridors and storage rooms. Below the service decks was the fabrication deck where all the weird and wonderful creatures of this world were made in endless tubes and vats of biomass gloop. Below the fabrication deck was the power reactor.

  Shelby had half-jokingly said (although she struggled to tell when he was attempting to be funny or deadly serious) that if you thought about it, the structure of WonderWorld mirrored Dante’s level’s of Hell.

  Ellie didn’t know who Dante was. Nor did she know Hell had ‘levels’. It kind of made sense though. Everywhere seemed to have ‘levels’. New Haven had; the richest lived at the shiny top, the poorest at the grim and ever-shadowed bottom. First class wasn't just the front row of seats in a Skyhound, it was the front row of seats in life.

  She focused back on her macabre find, down in the dark labyrinths below. ‘Hufty, I found a room down there. Down on the service decks. It’s…it was weird. A room full of things that belonged to the dead crew.’

  There was that small unmarked storage room with a creaky bulkhead door that she suspected hadn’t been opened in years. Inside she’d found a bench and on it, laid out carefully, almost ceremonially, were things that had belonged to the caretaker crew that had all been alive and running this place ten years ago. Her first thought had been that it reminded her of some psychotic murderer's trophy room. Back in New Haven, Jez had made her watch a horror-dram called SplatterMan. There'd not been much plot to speak of.…there w
as a creep who got his kicks out of luring people down to his 'special place', and then laser-sawing them into bloody chunks.

  Nice.

  The storeroom reminded her very much of SplatterMan's special place.

  She’d stumbled back out of that room in a blind panic, terrified that she was going to back into either Shelby, or Gray. And that they’d be wearing one of those disappointed I-really-was-hoping-you-wouldn't-stumble-upon-this smiles.

  She’d grabbed the elevator back up into sunlight and after an hour of hyperventilating she’d managed to calm down a bit. Perhaps all she’d discovered was some kind of memorial room. It was quite possible one of the two men actually did have a sensitive caring side and had secretly put together a place to mark and remember those unfortunate technicians who’d died in the accident.

  Still fregging creepy though. She was certain she hadn’t been meant to find it, and even more certain that, for now, she’d better keep it to herself. Both she and Jez were marooned in this remote theme park world for several more months if Shelby was to be believed. He said the annual automated supply shuttle was due to drop by soon. Said…..

  ‘I think I’m going to tell Jez about it. But not the other two. See what she makes of it.’

  Jez would probably laugh it off. Tell her she was being a jumpy-mump or something. Of course she would…because Jez was busy having a fine old time with her sex-on-a-stick, heart-throb, Gray. Getting her cookies well and truly baked and playing with all the design machinery, creating a freak-show of creatures in that freaky world of his no doubt.

  Maybe she was jumping at nothing. Maybe a part of her was on edge because they were stranded here in this insanely wonderful and weird place, while out there in the ink-black universe, Bad People were combing every planet, every city, every spaceport in this system looking for her, leaving nothing unturned in their search.

  How long before an Administration ship decided to drop by and check in on this place?

  Now, that's something very real to be worried about, Ellie. What if the Administration does come knocking?

  Once more, Ellie found herself playing back the events of the last couple of months of her life. The ambush in that remote relic of a colonial outpost on Harper’s Reach. Their frantic escape to Harvest City spaceport. That weird old man who’d approached her out of nowhere and told her she had to get off world and out of this system before it was too late.

  Mason. That's all he'd told her about himself. That his name was Mason.

  Then there was that mad-dash pursuit through the spaceport with those hitmen firing their guns at them…escaping aboard that automated orbit-barge, the last few weeks aboard the system freight ship, then being unceremoniously dumped out here….in the weirdest place in the the solar system.

  ‘Fly Ellie…fly away as fast and as far as you can. And stay alive as long as you can. God, I wish there was more I could do to help you.’

  The old man had managed to bribe a freighter to make space for her and Jez, aboard one of their barges. The crew aboard the ship had said they were going to be dropped off at GateWay. That was their only way out of this system. But instead they’d been thrown here.

  ‘Fly Ellie…don’t let the Administration catch you…’

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘The Reborn faith is an amalgam of the main strands of the Old Earth religions,’ said Deacon. ‘Christianity, Islam…the Hebrew faith, Hinduism. Do you know much about pre-colonial Old Earth history, Leonard?’

  The young man nodded. ‘I…I like Old Earth history books, Deacon.’

  ‘Good. Then I presume you know those old religions all shared common belief principles; that a benign power they called God, Jahwah, Allah, Jehovah - they had so many different names for him, but essentially the same entity - controls everything. That he created a number of prophets who came down to Earth to show us all the way to enlightenment?’

  ‘Yes, Deacon. One of them was called Jesus, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. Another was called Mohammad. There were a number of prophets and all these faiths told a story that had the same 'endgame'…a final prophet who would come just before an apocalypse and take with him all the good and the faithful to live together with God in heaven and leave the rest of us to burn for eternity in hell. Lovely bed-time story, don't you think?’

  ‘Not…really,’ replied Leonard, missing the irony.

  Deacon smiled. The young man sitting opposite him didn’t get subtleties. His savant mind was almost computer-like; brilliant at crunching masses of data and extracting patterns that no one else could spot. Rubbish at detecting irony though.

  ‘The Rebornists have mangled these historical religions into their own home-brew faith…and taken the same central narrative; that the universe is heading towards a big messy armageddon and just before it does the last of all the prophets will finally arrive and lead the Rebornist faithful to eternal bliss.’

  ‘The prophet…that is the girl we are attempting to find?’

  Deacon nodded. ‘Exactly. Ellie Quin. The Rebornists, or more precisely, the extremist faction of their faith, The Awoken, appear to be utterly convinced that this girl is their final and greatest prophet.’

  ‘Why her, Deacon?’

  ‘Why indeed, Lenny. Very good question.’

  Leonard smiled gratefully, like a dog, pitifully intent on pleasing his master. ‘There must be a reason why they think this girl is their prophet?’

  Deacon shrugged. ‘Who knows why any particular individual ends up considered great, divine, sacred. Simple chance maybe? A random combination of coincidences? Why does one random, anonymous person suddenly become spectacularly famous, and another equally deserving person remain unknown?’

  Leonard’s eyes lit up. ‘Just like that Betsy Boomalakah?’

  Deacon sighed. On this crappy, provincial planet, Harpers Reach, in fact, throughout this whole damned system, everyone seemed to be humming the same wretched brain-dead tune…sung by a squeaky-voiced teenager who’d come from obscurity. Leonard was right, there were perhaps some similarities between her and this Ellie Quin. Both were teenaged girls with nothing outwardly remarkable about them. Both suddenly, catapulted into the lime-light. And both appeared to be equally bewildered by the whole experience.

  ‘Except, only the Awoken know Ellie’s name.’

  ‘And Professor Edward Mason.’

  ‘Yes, Lenny…and Mason.’

  He looked around at the evidence they’d collected from the terrorist cells' safe house in that abandoned block in New Haven. There'd been images of Ellie from a freshly tube-grown and delivered baby, to a young girl with freckles and pigtails, helping her father on his oxygen farm and visiting a farmer’s fair with her younger brother and sister. There were pictures of her as a teenager, her face now less prone to spontaneous gap-toothed smiles, but instead like a locked door, a kid deep in thought. And pictures taken by the young Awoken agent who had posed as her close friend…the first signs in those images, of her growing up, maturing from childish cares and interests and becoming a young adult.

  In those latter images, Ellie Quin yet looked so young for her years. Her hair cropped short like a boy, her expression thoughtful and faraway.

  Mason meddled with your mind, didn’t he, Ellie? Created a child with an unquenchable curiosity, a burning nomadic desire to never stay put. To never stay still. To never be content. To never be happy. What a poor tormented creature you must be.

  Deacon was certain Mason must have been involved with the Awoken from the very start of his project. More than that, Deacon was certain that the insane old fool wasn’t even dead; that he’d faked the crash and his disappearance back on Pacifica so he could make his way here to Harper’s Reach in order to watch over the girl as she matured and became ready for….whatever goal Mason and his terrorist friends had in mind.

  Ellie was Mason’s Frankenstein creation. He’d designed her DNA from the ground up. Created this girl with her unknown purpose. Frankly, the least worr
ying scenario was that she was some grown-to-order prophet. If that was all…if she was just a girl with genetically enhanced charisma, or had a face that resembled the androgynous prophet depicted in their holy book…then that was a quantifiable problem. But Mason - he felt like he knew the old man intimately now - must have engineered something extra-special into her DNA.

  Something dangerous. Something that would threaten the Administration.

  If only they’d managed to catch him too when his men had zeroed-in on the cell's safe house. He must have been warned and escaped in the nick of time, that, or they’d just been unlucky and the man had been out on some errand at the time.

  Capturing Mason would have been almost as good as capturing her. If anyone knew where she’d gone to ground, if anyone in Human Space knew where she was hiding right now, it would be that crazy son-of-a-bitch.

  More to the point…Mason would be coerced to tell him what genetic time bomb was waiting to go off inside her.

  CHAPTER 3

  Mason looked up at the walls of the small meditation room of the Rebornist Prayer Hall. There were only half a dozen such places dotted around the poorer lower-street neighbourhoods in New Haven.

  Not a particularly religious city…this one.

  The Prayer Hall was little more than half a dozen habicubes bolted together, the floor of the top ones and the ceiling of the bottom ones removed to create a higher, ‘grander’ ceiling. The cold, corrugate carbosteel, walls were adorned with the yellow and amber prayer robes of the Rebornist faith. More discreetly, in places that could be concealed at a moment’s warning, was the symbol of the coming prophet; the silhouette of the androgynous spread-eagled figure, arms spread wide, legs parted and straight.

  The symbol for the Awoken.

  This was the only Prayer Hall in the city he knew of that had a direct link to the group. The only haven he could turn to now that their safe-house had been raided by the Administration.

  That had been an unmitigated disaster. He could so easily have been caught in the raid. He’d stepped out of the abandoned apartment block to stretch his legs, to walk the crowded streets and think about his next move - how the hell he was going to get off Harpers Reach and follow her to GateWay. He’d been gone only ten, fifteen minutes and returned to find the Colonial Marines had locked down the entire area, their command and control ships hovering around the tower block as troops flooded inside and carnage raged within.