Genocide

“That concludes this journal. I hope it adequately explained the cause of extinction of the Daemon, Human and Seraphim races. May God have mercy on me for my part.”

Dr Hazel Ward concluded her final log and reached out, painfully, to finalise the DVD. Only a few months ago it would have been a simple process, but now she had difficulty seeing the keyboard and typing was agony. Still it was finished now. She could rest - until her father came to check on her at least.

Hazel smiled to her self in spite of the pain. Last year Hazel had cared for him. Now it was the other way around. Her pain killers were not working very well and she had been unable to sleep last night. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

Half an hour later a middle aged man slipped silently into the room with a cup of tea. He smiled fondly at the woman. She should be young and beautiful. He could see the beauty but she was so old and frail suddenly. He had watched her aging at an accelerated rate and raged at the injustice, but there was nothing he could do.

She was brilliant in her field, but all the combined minds of Earth had not been able to stop the plague which had infected all human females, from babies in the womb to aged, old crones. They aged at an exponential rate.

Those who were elderly or sick when the plague started had died in a matter of days. Any female who had been over forty was already dead. Hazel was in her early thirties. She didn’t have long left. He shuddered involuntarily at the thought.

“Honey, I’ve brought your afternoon tea.”

The scientist didn’t stir. Perhaps she was going a bit deaf, he thought, old people often went deaf. He called louder.

“Dr Ward.”

There was still no response. He put down the tea. Fear paralysed his throat. He reached out and gently shook her arm. Swallowing past the fear he tried again.

“Hazel.”

She was gone. He knew it in his head, but his heart refused to believe.

“No!”

He screamed and fell to his knees at her feet, burying his head in her lap. He cried then. All the tears he had been unable to shed while she lived for the brilliant, kind and courageous woman before him.

Hearing his cries, the others in the complex arrived. They all knew what had happened, but they came anyway to pay their respects to this woman.

The other scientists pretended not to notice the tear tracks on their leader’s face. One had already made the call to have her body collected. It had become a far too familiar routine. Nobody had remained untouched as every last mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover and friend aged and died. The human race would be extinct in less than a century; when the last of the boy babies reached old age.

The Daemons would last a little longer, as their lifespan was one hundred and fifty years. The only satisfaction either race had was the knowledge that the Seraphim were extinct too. Extinct: An ugly word with an even uglier reality.

Simon looked at his daughter for the last time. She looked serene. Her physical pain was over at least and for that he was glad. He hoped there was an afterlife where they might meet again. Although he worried what awaited Hazel if there were such a place, after what she had wittingly and unwittingly done. Never had somebody so pure of heart committed such terrible deeds.

Hazel sat in a wheelchair at her workstation. She’d been working right up until her death he was sure. A scientist to his very core, Simon wondered what his daughter had been doing at the end. He wanted to know what was important to her. A quick command to her computer found the last thing she had done. It was a video file; not what Simon expected.

A closer examination of her records uncovered a series of files dating back over the last four months since the release of the aging plague. Then he noticed the empty, open DVD case on her shelf.

Simon opened the DVD writer and removed the disk. He slipped it into the waiting case. It was simply labelled Journal.

The he sat close to the screen and prepared to watch the recording. It was a hard thing to see Hazel as a healthy, young woman once again knowing the reality of her death.

“Hello. I’m Dr Hazel Ward. I’m a geneticist and a chemist. I’m also directly responsible for the imminent extinction of three species, including my own. It isn’t something I’m proud of or happy about but it does mean that, whoever or whatever you are, you can be sure I know the events which lead up to this point.

Our first encounter with Daemon kind was when they invaded our world through multiple inter-dimensional portals on the 4th July 2010 and declared war upon our planet.”

Simon remembered the event well. They had been making a presentation to a pharmaceutical conference with delegates from all over the world. Those from the USA had been unhappy that the conference had been scheduled for one of their public holidays.

The conference was in a prestigious hotel with an international airport attached. It was an ideal location for foreign and indigenous delegates alike. It was also the location of one of the inter-dimensional portals. Daemons had streamed out in wave after wave of red-scaled death. They marched in lines of ten, each wielding a huge sword.

The only thing that allowed their escape that day had been the lack of projectile weapons. The Daemons needed to catch you to kill you. Once caught though you were undeniably dead. The Daemons towered over their human adversaries. They were immeasurably strong; chopping through torso, neck or limb with a single strike of their deadly blades.

There was no battle just a massacre. Airport security guards with their guns made almost no impact upon the Daemons. The rounds failed to penetrate Daemon scales. Only those hit by chance in their horn or eyes died. They collapsed leaking streams of yellow ichors, but these were their only weak spots and there were so many Daemons.

A precisely co-ordinated attack, the portals had simultaneously opened at every airport, train station, bus station and port in the world. Their obvious objective was to cripple transportation.

Military bases were not specifically targeted, as if the Daemons did not consider them a threat. Where their intelligence had come from was unknown, as was their origin.

Humans named them Daemons as they resembled demons of Christian faith; bipedal with a black horn in the centre of their forehead and a counter balancing tail. Flat faced with insect like compound eyes and a maw lined with pointed shark like teeth. They appeared huge, evil, ugly brutes seemingly with no compassion, set on the death of all in their path and leaving destruction in their wake.

Simon returned his attention to the screen.

“We didn’t know at that time where they came from or that they were the slave army of the Seraphim. We only knew that Daemon Portals would open and disgorge seemingly never ending armies of almost indestructible Daemons, which fought tirelessly until they died.

My father and I were called in as part of a multidiscipline panel by the military to study a captured Daemon and try to determine any vulnerability they might have so we could fight against them.

The list of vulnerable points is very short - eyes, inside the mouth and the horn. Their hide is practically impervious to bullets, heat, cold and anything else we tried.

Daemon males are highly intelligent. There are no longer any Daemon females but they were totally different to the males in every respect from anatomy and physiology through to intelligence.
This is a photograph of a male Daemon.”

Hazel’s image was replaced by front and rear views of a Daemon who called himself Grack, he was the one they had studied at the research facility until he escaped, abducting Hazel in the process, and returned through a portal to his own world with her.

Her voice continued in the background.

“And this is a photograph of a female of the species.”

The image was replaced with one of a creature resembling a black maggot. He had never seen one in the flesh, but he knew they grew to about six feet in length and three feet in diameter. They were not sentient. Literally the creature emerged from its mother’s chrysalis, ate and defecated until it reached maturity when it bred. This process involved secreting a liquid which hardened into a pupa and then undergoing a metamorphosis into a litter of Daemons - a lifecycle of about five years.

“This is a photograph of a Seraph. They are hermaphrodites so there is no male and female image”

The screen image was replaced with a front and rear view of a beautiful being. If Daemons were Christianity’s demons the Seraphim were the angels; humanoid with a pair of feathered wings. The features could have been the model for a fresco by Michael Angelo.
The resemblance was purely physical. Far from being ‘good souls’ they were a cruel race. They had enslaved the Daemons for millennia using chemicals to control them. Genetic weapons were to be the downfall of all three races.

“The other race in this triangle is mine. This is a human male and I am female.”

The Seraphim was replaced by a picture of an unknown man. Then it returned to Hazel.

The journal entry continued to describe physical attributes of each species in detail, along with strengths and weaknesses. Simon lost interest in the content of the journal for a while and concentrated on his daughter’s beautiful face and soft voice.

She was noticeably older already on the journal entry.

“We had given up hope of finding an exploitable weakness. The general had given the captive’s termination order and despatched soldiers to carry it out. They raised the alarm that the Daemon had collapsed in his cage and seemed to be having difficulty breathing. Scientists carried out mass tests as this might be something we could use against the enemy but could not find a reason for the collapse.

Finally I decided a different approach and asked him what was wrong. To my surprise he not only answered, but spoke our language perfectly.

Grack told me he needed Elixir to live. Daemon males have three stages of lifecycle, like an insect. They emerge from their mother’s chrysalis as larvae, later they form their own cocoons and emerge in their mature, bipedal form.

In their natural state Daemon males care for their females who are defenceless and only have two states larvae and pupa. The females are unable to communicate verbally; they secrete substances that inform the males of their needs. In return for care, the female also secretes Elixir, a chemical compound that the males require to live. Grack had been a prisoner for just over a week now he was dieing.”

Simon remembered how upset Hazel had been both at the termination order and then subsequently the Daemon’s illness. She was such an innocent. Hazel had known she was supposed to be finding the Daemon’s weaknesses and she had genuinely wanted to protect and save her own kind, but she hated that the Daemons would be harmed too.

She had asked Grack if he knew the chemical composition of Elixir so she could synthesise it for him. He didn’t, but he told her it was possible because ‘the masters’ had done just that to enable their slaves to work on other worlds away from the pits where the females were kept.

That was when they found out about the Seraphim ‘race of masters’ who enslaved the Daemons using drugs. There were two in use. Synthetic Elixir that allowed the Daemons to live outside the pits and Synthetic Aphrodisiac used to punish errant Daemons as physical punishments were ineffective.

Unlike Elixir which had to be ingested, Aphrodisiac is airborne and once inhaled causes mating frenzy. Without a female to mate with the male becomes incapacitated and remains in agony for several days until the effects wear off.

Previous attempts at rebellion against their Seraphim masters had been put down by releasing Aphrodisiac into the atmosphere. The chemical compound overrode the higher consciousness of the Daemons; they fought each other, often to the death, to prove superiority. Then if there was no female to mate with, the males suffered withdrawal leaving them weak, dizzy and in pain for days. Exposure too frequently was fatal.

Hazel had found what they were looking for, two weaknesses to exploit, without even trying.

Hazel’s recording continued.

“Grack lapsed into a comatose state after that conversation. He was wrongly pronounced dead and left unguarded.”

“I wanted to take a sample of the ichors that pass for Daemon blood. I hoped to compare it to a sample from a newly arrived Daemon. I might be able to determine the composition of Elixir from the difference between the samples.

Unfortunately, when I stuck my needle into the roof of Grack’s mouth he woke up. Using my security access cards and taking me along as his prisoner Grack escaped the complex and dragged me through a portal back to his dimension and world.”

Simon recalled his terror as he watched the Daemon fade through the portal with his daughter. They had been unable to reach the portal due to the number of Daemons pouring out of it. He had thought never to see Hazel again.

She had returned to him ironically only to die a scant few months later.

“Grack had decided I might be able to help free his people from Seraphim control. He took me to a disused Seraphim laboratory and obtained samples of Elixir and Aphrodisiac for me to study. He volunteered to be my guinea pig and brought several of his friends along too. The only thing he wouldn’t do for me was let me go.

I concentrated my efforts on Aphrodisiac. Without it as a deterrent the Daemons would rebel against the Seraphim. They had no interest in conquering other worlds for themselves and only wanted to return to their pits.

I intended to develop an antidote; what I created was an immunisation against the effects. None of the Daemons I tested my drug on responded to Aphrodisiac. They did not become aggressive or go through the chemical changes that enable a Daemon to mate. Namely the Daemon did not produce the spores in his horn necessary to fertilise the female. I had produced a drug preventing Daemon reproduction.”

Hazel went on to explain in detail the chemical composition of the drug, how it was developed and changed into the required antidote and tested etc.

This was recorded barely two weeks ago but Hazel looked fifty. She had aged twenty years in a fortnight. Simon admired her determination. Even in unbeatable circumstances she had never given up fighting and now she was leaving a record of events and her part in them for who or what ever followed humans as the dominant intelligent race of this world.

He wished he could say he had never given in but after Hazel had been abducted Simon had lost interest in the war effort for a time. Death and atrocity surrounded him. The human race was being wiped out and Simon no longer cared.

He had neither known nor cared whether Grack had told the truth about the Seraphim until the worldwide announcements began.

The alien signal hijacked every channel of every television and radio station. The broadcast was simultaneous, continuous and repeated in every language.

Elegant in its simplicity the message simply stated.

“We are Seraphim. Surrender to us your masters. We will deliver you from the Daemons and rule. Resist and perish.”

On the third day the message changed. It became localised, stating places in each country where people could surrender.

The mortality rate in the war had been tremendous and pitifully few humans remained. Most of those congregated in the surrender areas.

Seraphim appeared in each of the locations heavily guarded by Daemons. Worldwide domination was almost complete.

Simon would rather have died than submit to slavery and without any family to worry about, other than Hazel who he believed dead, he chose his method of death - fighting the Seraphim.

A natural leader he gathered the like minded together; scientists, civilians and military alike formed a small cell of rebels. They fled underground determined not to submit but not knowing how to fight back.

Simon forced his attention back to the recording once more. He had missed minutes of the journal lost in thought, but his brilliant girl had just started to explain how she had provided the means to fight back.

“Despite the number at their disposal, the Seraphim had noticed the defection of their troops. They attacked the supposedly empty pit where we were hiding and released Aphrodisiac. Of course it had no effect because of the newly perfected antidote, but the Seraphim had no way of knowing that. They waited twelve hours, the period it normally takes for Daemons to become incapacitated and invaded.

The Daemons expected the attack and feigned illness. The Seraphim walked straight into the ambush. In a hand to hand fight the Seraphim faired no better against Daemons than we humans did. Wings don’t give much of an advantage in a pit.

The Seraphim from the punitive force were captured alive and these captives were turned over to me to study in the hopes that I could find their weaknesses.

It was going to be far easier to get blood and tissue samples from Seraphim. They were not covered in almost impervious scaled armour to start with; instead they had skin which was as vulnerable as that of a human. Study and experimentation were not going to prove necessary though.

The two sentient life forms on that world were very different anatomically, but the basic cell structure was similar. I found a weakness without looking for it.

The airborne chemical I had been testing on the Daemons was still in the air of my makeshift laboratory. It took several days to break down into its component parts.

It was an antidote to the Aphrodisiac drug in Daemons but it had a very different effect on the Seraphim captives; they took a few breaths, collapsed and died.

I warned the Daemons that the chemical was still relatively untested and should not be used until we were sure of its effects in the whole of the planet’s eco structure.

I also warned that the Seraphim were dangerous and would not give up their slaves easily. Threat of rebellion could be counter productive until they had at least one stronghold off world and the means to continue their race.

They refused to listen and declared their freedom and independence from the Seraphim. The Daemons warned the Seraphim they had a chemical weapon of mass destruction and returned the corpses of the dead Seraphim as proof.

Daemons were forcibly bred for years to increase their numbers for use as soldiers and slaves so they outnumber Seraphim hundreds to one. Now if they should rebel those numbers could be used against the Seraphim.

In the past their domed citadels, advanced weaponry and synthetic drugs had rendered the Seraphim unbeatable, without their main method of control the Daemons finally had a chance at freedom.

The slaves were kept in foul conditions and terminated at the first sign of illness or injury. Daemons were deemed an easily replaceable commodity and their life had no value to the Seraphim and very little to themselves; death was the one sure escape from their horrendous existence.

The soldiers fared no better. Being unimportant, they were used as canon fodder and frontline troops in any and all wars such as the one with us. The Seraphim did not care how many soldiers they lost as they bred quickly and were not valued as living beings. The only blood that mattered to the Seraphim was that of their own race.

Enraged that their lowly slaves had dared to rebel and incensed at the loss of Seraphim life the Seraphim decided their whole current race of slaves was expendable. Now they had less dangerous human slaves to replace them. They committed genocide.

The Seraphim are highly evolved and intelligent and they have been experimenting on their slaves for a very long time. They already had a control solution in place.

All the female Daemons lived in pits owned by Seraphim. The slavers released toxins into the pits murdering all the females. Without a means to reproduce the Daemons were practically extinct.

In retaliation huge vats of the chemical compound deadly to Seraphim were produced and released into the domed citadel’s atmospheres. The effect was instantaneous. There were no survivors.

There were Seraphim off world though, and being hermaphrodites they can all reproduce. So the Seraphim race was not exterminated. They planned their revenge against the race which had allowed the Daemons to revolt: Humans were to be destroyed utterly.

Using a two pronged attack a virus was released into our atmosphere and water which accelerates the aging process. It was intended to affect all humans, but it wasn’t quite perfect. Only women are affected but every woman is infected including me. You will have noticed me aging as this journal progresses.

Well over half our female population is already dead and the rest will soon follow. We are as extinct as the Daemons. Even girl babies in their mother’s wombs are infected, their cells growing old and dying before their little bodies can even form. Most are stillborn but the few that survive age in their cots and will not live long enough to reproduce.

In retaliation the Daemons and Humans joined forces. Using the chemical I developed as an antidote for the Daemons they hunted down and destroyed every known Seraph. To my knowledge the race is extinct and to my shame I made this genocide possible. The alliance has not relaxed its vigilance though. They search diligently for Seraphs to kill.

That concludes this journal. I hope it adequately explained the cause of extinction of the Daemon, Human and Seraphim races. May God have mercy on me for my part.”

May all our gods have mercy on us, thought Simon.