RB Chapter 115 Monitoring

"Anyway, I plan to at least try. The people in my clan aren't those who were exactly close, so most of them scattered upon the crumbling of the clan." Leah said, gritting her teeth. If she had a few supporting her, she wouldn't have needed to partake in this race without any followers! 

"...Leah, you see, I am moving forward, that's what I feel, but you are stagnant, you aren't moving. Is it the grief or your cautious personality?" Elena asked curiously. Her eyes were still vigilantly scanning the terrain. 

"I...don't know. But I do know one thing, I want revenge!" Leah's eyes lit up as if burning. 

"Do you have any idea on how to start your revenge?" Elena asked.

Leah breathed in deeply and spread her arms in defeat. She didn't know how to even start.

"I need money, reputation and backing, but I don't have any of those." She answered after some time. They were walking slowly, making their way through the grassland. Due was coating their lower bodies, bringing a chill which even managed to seep through Leah's scales. She could feel her metabolism slowing down, making her feel sluggish and sleepy.

They had woken up at 7:00am sharp, showing that they had somehow started to adapt to the wilderness, or it could be that they hadn't managed to get any sleep since they had been abandoned.

-----

"So, Eric, do you have any plan, like, something you are going to research about?" Chloe asked curiously while following the road south. Her face was glowing from the orange glow of the rising sun. For some reason, she seemed joyful.

"Mmmm...I have some ideas." Eric put his fingers under his chin.

"I am thinking of doing research into genes, mostly the addition of new bases into the genetic code." He continued. DNA is composed of four base pairs, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine. Adenine bonds with Thymine and Cytosine with Guanine. Every single strand of DNA carried each of the four and bonds with another strand. They only unravel when creating new proteins. 

What Eric was going to research, was the addition of new base pairs, pairs which aren't supposed to exist in any natural life form.

"I don't know much, but I wish you luck." She said with a smile.

'She truly has a unique charm.' Eric became infected from her smile causing his lips to curve into one.

-----

Today was the 11th, September, 2199...

Currently it was 11:00am and the sun was up in the sky, burning with such ferocity that it rivalled after noon hours.

In the southwest of the country. A troop of lifeforms was moving in a place sparse with vegetation. The nearest trees to each other grew about 10m apart, and they were short and stunted. The lifeforms were tall, a bit over 3m, the adults, while the young were in between 3m and 1m.

Except for one, the rest all had a black fur coat. The exception had white fur, almost bordering on silver. Its eyes had a glint of intelligence as it led the group. They were the gorilla troop that had decided to move from the Bwindi forest reserve. Due to the sparse number of trees in the area, they were moving on the ground.

'I must try to at least make my name relevant in the world. I don't want to die in mediocrity.' The white furred gorilla thought as it paused to stare into the sky. The others paused along with it.

It grunted and groaned as it communicated with the others after sometime. After that, they sped up.

If you looked at the front, you could see a water body in the distance, a lake or river. They were making their way over.

-----

Meanwhile in Egypt, at the highest part of the Cairo supercity, the highest office, shaped like a triangle, the conference room had been dismantled, the devices which had projected the holograms of the new federation members had been removed, leaving a spacious room.

It had been remodeled and given a new great interior finish. It had been given a kind of desert like feel, with all the oranges, browns and the desert vegetation. 

Behind a brown table, modern with a desert brown sandy looking texture, a woman was seated. She had short Cleopatra styled black hair, brown eyes and light brown skin. She was adorned in a white blouse, with a dark bra faintly visible underneath. The bra appeared to be struggling to hold her two massive mounds. 

Her face had a very serious expression on it as she looked through the documents. Except for the sound made by the stylus at her table, no other sound was present. Everything in this age had been digitized, even documents. 

Digitizing the documents had led to many hackers stealing many secrets until someone had come up with a way of digitizing genetic code and replacing the conventional signatures, of course, the most secure was still quantum encryption.

"This is too troublesome!" The woman complained after some time as she ruffled her hair. Frustration was thick in her voice. To the onlooker, she was truly not someone you would expect to be seating in an office, handling documents.

"Why didn't I just hire a someone else to do everything?" Her voice once again reverberated in the office. She raised her brown eyes and stared out the window, faint fluffy white clouds entered her vision. They were a few meters under her office, a testament to the height of the building.

The woman was the one who had hosted the first Federation conference, Cleo, also its incumbent speaker.

She stood up and moved away from the table, causing her lower half to come into view. A short brown skirt, covered her lower half, reaching just before the knees. Her legs were very long and athletic, plus the way she walked gave her away as an expert, not another pretty vase needing saving.

Her pretty feet became visible with nails painted brown. She was standing on a carpet which resembled the sands of the desert. The feet took her to the edge of her office and her vision widened when she stood near the window.

'I wish I could step on them.' A trace of yearning appeared in her heart when she gazed upon the fluffy looking clouds.

TING!

The sound of the elevator reaching her floor entered her ears, but she didn't turn away from the nice view. She knew the person who had arrived, since she was the only person allowed to take the elevator to her office.

Heels produced beautiful sounds as they touched the ground. Her secretary had arrived. She was dressed in all black, from the blazer to the short pencil skirt, down to the high heels. Even the blouse peeking out of the blazer was black. Her chest was moderately sized and glasses covered her eyes.

"Miss Cleo, there have been some developments on the youth you asked me to monitor." She pushed her glasses a bit, as they had sunk to her nose.

"Eric, the youngest boy, has dropped out of the race and is making his way to the underground city, to become an apprentice of a bioengineer. Elena and Leah are on the fence...plus, Eric met with Michael, that spectrum warrior from the south." She had continued upon gaining a nod from Cleo. All the youth from the ten master clans had no idea that the patches on their arms were feeding real time information to Cleo. 

"Oh! Is it that boy from that clan which used electricity, the Masanyal...something clan?" Cleo asked, her interest piqued. Her gaze though, was still out the window.

The secretary's eyes bored through Cleo's back. She was puzzled. Her boss never took an interest in anything, this was the first time. But why was she interested in these youth? She didn't see anything interesting about them.

"But bioengineering? That is hard, I wonder whether that boy will be able to succeed? That is a journey which will be interesting to watch." Cleo said. Excitement in her voice.

"Ah! I almost forgot! That young boy, Eric, underwent a peculiar transformation, even breaking into the spectrum warrior level in one fell swoop." She moved and stood a step behind Cleo.

She offered the tablet in her hands to Cleo. A video was playing, blurry and grainy. It was showing a peculiar humanoid monster, covered in dark scales, horns sprouting out of the forehead, violet vertical slitted eyes, and electric arcs slithering across its body. The image appeared for an instant before becoming blurry due to interference. But the secretary had placed it on a loop, so Cleo was once again looking at that same form.

"Perfection! So far I haven't met anyone who has filled their genetic slots with such an exquisite arrangement!" Cleo exclaimed. Her eyes were shining with emotions unknown, but excitement was one of them.

"But, I wonder who did something like that?" The secretary, subconsciously had her curiosity leak through her voice.