The General ruled that publicly, the Queen and her supporters were executed. Laura had a grudge against Val but more against TTA as a whole. She had much pride in the Lunar Initiative and to have the win to be stolen by us was unsettling to her. As consolation, we agreed that the public should believe it was the Lunar Initiative that ended them Queen's reign. This satisfied Laura but I could still see her agitation in our presence. Ok I get it! She's a spoiled sport. Good thing Alene wasn't.
TTA should and always will operate in the shadows but for the good of humanity. Our existence will remain hidden from the public eye. I felt the end of this war was near if not already over. But as I learned, this was furthest from the truth. Project Gene helped us up to this point but they became recluse the moment we marched on Holy Manor.
Returning to Project Gene's HQ in sector C. We learned that James and Erin vanished. They were fighting a war in two fronts. Their only help was the Lunar Initiative in helping them escape. To where? No one was talking but Project Gene left behind a legacy of enhanced individuals the public commonly called "aliens". The ones that were the most numerous were the lion-human hybrids known as the Genese. Next were the Nexus, at face value, they looked like regular humans until you took into account their super powered traits—that being their enhanced reflexes and occasional elemental or mental powers.
There were other larger monstrosities not of the latter that ran amok. Many believed the Lunninghams faulted the General for abandoning them to fight those rogue government factions who always had it out to harm Project Gene and the Nairan Cult. As a result, it was found that most of them left the space station in mass before the final battle. Security footage showed that half of them went with Eric and the other half went elsewhere but Erin was nowhere to be found. Where did all of them go? Into deep space I think if not somewhere on Earth or the lunar colonies.
The most chilling of all of this was what the government agents found—evidence of other "test-tube aliens" created by both scientists. Both Eric and Erin had nearly an equal amount of species created under their names. The most puzzling was a single chimera file the Raylorian government found—Erica. Out of all that Erin successfully created, Erica was never released. Or was she? The file only mentioned that it was a calico cat. But there was something that this file didn't explain. What made Erica so special? Why was the file encrypted unlike the files on all the other species? Most importantly, what happened to the project and why it never saw the light of day?
For now, we had to find this secret lab within the compound. It was rumored that the premises had a lot of hidden rooms for solitary experiments within soundproof rooms. Some rooms were found in them dead or dying beings strapped to chairs or tables while others reeked with the putrid odor of decay. My team and I were called to search the Project Gene compound with the help of Laura and Alene. The government helped with the search on the upper levels. We looked for any clue that could lead us to the truth. The further we traveled into the place, I noticed Laura being a bit apprehensive.
Was it fear of the unknown or something else? I would soon find out. We found a stairwell leading to place not yet explored. At the bottom of it was a biometric scanner connected to a large titanium door. I assumed that this biometric scanner only let trusted people in like the Lunningham's or one of their projects. We tried using DNA prints from both doctors but were denied access. Out of frustration, Laura punched the console and unknowingly unlocked the pad. To our surprise, the computer recognized Laura as one of the Nexus. Wait—what?! How?! I thought she was human!
Laura explained to us that her dealings with Project Gene were what made her a target of the Queen. Out of depression and drowning in her sorrow of not being able to cope with her troubled past, she picked a fight with a humanoid beast known as Avan Sorre shortly after she was brought to the space station. He knew Laura was trying to get him to kill her and he tried many times to talk her out of it but she insisted. When he refused, she attacked him. His feral instincts kicked in and granted her wish. However, just when she fainted from the blood loss, she awakened hours later to be in a new body. Erin transferred Laura's consciousness into the body of a Nexus being created in the image of her old body.
Before the war, Naira knew something was different about Laura. Upon further inspection, her men found she wasn't human anymore. They captured Laura and had her incarcerated. The bad lifestyle the public was told Laura was jailed for was a cover. Naira always had a problem with the Lunninghams and did everything in her power to economically sanction them in efforts to force them off the space station like they did the Evanston's family and their supporters. Exile wasn't possible because the Lunningham's "children" protected them. After the war, the Lunninghams had enough and left on their own volition.
The last remaining mystery led back to Erica. Searching the lab, we found a tall, cylinder like vessel hooked to a deactivated computer. On a panel below it read, "Erica". When Laura touched the computer screen, it lit up. It showed progress bar at 100%. The words "transfer complete".
Francis insisted on finding a body. He believed it would still be hooked up to it. Before we could we heard Erin's voice on the computer. It was a will and testament to her greatest invention, Erica the Calico Cat Chimera. She explained that Erica had the ability to absorb all types of energy and use it to reshape reality. However, the only con that it would age her and make the body more human. She can be functionally immortal through the energy she absorbs but she would lose her car like appearance. She boasted that not even her bother was this smart to come up with a superior chimera as her. The only problem she saw with Erica was her feline traits that would sometimes over power her human intellect. She believes Erica would grow into her human side the more she matured.
The transmission ended and another one started. It was recorded from one of the Nexus with her. They were urging Erin to hurry as the Hill-Adegans were nearing their location. They recount that her brother already left with his "children" to a place called Beta Prime. When the footage got to where Erin was, she was on the table with a bottle of nano-cyanide in her hand on her chest. Suddenly, a Calico cat speaks to them after coming from under the table. Telling them it's her and said the project was a success. Immediately, one of the Nexus kneels down and lets Erica climb up on them. Several swampy moss-like humanoid creatures join the Nexus. They ask her where should they go.
Erica commands the moss humanoids, she calls the Gridth, through a different portal to the Vortex Galaxy. She jumps onto the shoulders of one of them. Erica apologizes to the Nexus for jumping ship but she believes her powers would flourish more in a place swarming with all types of cosmic radiation than on Beta Prime. Plus she's still mad at her brother for leaving her to fight the Queen all by herself.
One of the Nexus asked Erin if she was still mad about Lunningham using the Zephyran to wipe out her Atlanteans in the past and Erin said she forgot all about that debacle but believes their descendants, known as the Echna'quis of Planet Quang, will have their revenge one day. Their civilization needs to get stronger than their adversaries, which she believes will be very soon. They already have the time travel tech to hunt the Zephyrans. For now they're safe in their home deep within the Andromeda Galaxy. Both the Nexus and the Gridth go through different portals and the transmission cuts before the Nexus holding the camera steps through the portal.
The videos were interesting to say the least. The problem we find is that the Lunningham's left much of Project Gene on the space station, making these monsters our problem when they decide to terrorize the public. Still, better times were ahead. There was a long road before us during this period of reconstruction. The Queen's reign left a bad taste in everyone's mouth and it was found that not all of her supporters were rounded up. The General went to great lengths to expose and trick many of them out of hiding and successfully did. Some chose exile while others chose death. Either way, the space station was finally rid of this cancerous cult.
As the years progressed, the General's health deteriorated. He started having seizures, severe blackouts, and muscle weakness. In the fall of 2025, General William Raylor Mellis Sr. died of a brain tumor. Many of us reflected on the second chance he gave mankind to start over in a society set out to be our utopia. Even though the civil war divided the nation, the Raylorians came together and overcame those odds.
Inside the family soon became a totally different struggle. Many wanted the General's eldest child, Will Jr. to lead the nation but he dean of the space station's university. Will Jr. wanted to focus on education, not politics. Renaming the lunar space station's university was in order and the next leader would have a say so in that. The lot then fell upon the General's youngest boy, Raynard. He vehemently opposed leading because he was a very apolitical person. Furthermore, he was a break-dancer, co-owner of the space station's largest club known as Club de Rayloria, with his wife Jeannine. The club was named after the eldest daughter of the General, Zyra, whose middle name was that.
Zyra took this opportunity to step up into the role of leader of the space station. She already had a law degree and knew much about politics. The changes she made after being sworn in were massive like the cosmetic ones. All mentions of the Lunar space station were replaced with Space Station Zyra or Rayloria. That being said, the Lunar Space Station was now known as Rayloria or Space Station Zyra.
Non-cosmetic changes were as a precaution to any Iscariots in office. If found guilty of treason or any felony, all of a politician's polices were erased from law. With that being said, every policy the Queen ever made, include the ones she made before the insurrection were null and void. Many cheered this day, as the highly restrictive Nairan Code was now defunct. That still didn't stop anyone else from adopting anything from it. TTA was guilty of keeping some of those codes as Zyra believed these specific ones kept morale higher.
Last year in 2024, an unfortunate thing happened when old supporters of the General, who called themselves the Raylorians, started displaying cult like behavior like the Hill-Adegan supporters did. They don't agree with Zyra's policies, nor did they like having Naira II as her defense minister. They despised anyone who was part of that family, regardless if they supported the late queen or not.
This group clashed with the rest of the nation who considered being called Zyrans far superior. Also, the Zyrans supported all of Zyra's policies and defended Naira II against the Raylorian cult mobs. In this uprising, Zyra's stepmother, Anne, was killed. It was at this moment Zyra lost her cool and ordered this cult to be jailed. She loved her stepmother very much and losing her I saw made a part of Zyra die.
My team and I didn't get to known Anne much. We knew that she kept Will and Raynard safe during the war along with the rest of the family who weren't on the front lines. She was a nurse practitioner and knew her job well. The General seldom talked about his family but Zyra did say she had siblings but we never met them. Besides, we were busy working. People in her family said she looked just like her birth mother, Jewel, who died in a car accident when Zyra was a newborn.
When Anne was killed, I felt something ominous brew inside of Zyra. Like she was on the verge of doing something she would never come back from. As if successfully jailing this entire cult wasn't enough. Someone had to pull her away from the abyss. That same murderous look in her eye was the same I saw in Val's. In Zyra's case, she had much more to lose. I learned later that Zyra opened up to Zahra about her fears and her loss. Zyra was able to see that the best punishment for these lunatics was imprisonment and possible reform. Seeing Zahra work not just in this regard but in others made me fall in love with her even more.
Francis and I were out patrolling the streets the other day. He wondered when I was gonna make it official. I eat lunch with Zahra every day but Francis believed I still regarded her as a friend. Hmm… is he that slow? So I had to tell him. Zahra and I have been together for the last several months. Francis acted like he wasn't surprised. Or was he? All he could do was congratulate me on my "score".