Realms of Eden: Home Fires B2A1-4

Sydney's thoughts rocked and rolled around in his mind. Kelsey's next words answered the questions in them. "Other people knew that she had survived the crash and they also knew about the punch that she landed on your mother. The cast was a ruse to stop them getting any more suspicious than they already were."

"How did they cover up for her non-injury from the hover crash?" asked Jo.

Kelsey smiled. "She was never there. You forget my family is very powerful and has very good friends in the right places. She never appeared on the reports and so no-one knew, except of course those trusted people that did the covering up. It appears though that one of them is still curious."

She looked drained and Sydney guessed that hiding that secret had been a big burden on her for the last few years. Giving her a warm smile he clasped her hand tightly in his own and kissed the knuckles when she returned to sit beside him. He tried to let her know that he was willing to help with anything that came up from now on.

Dr Evans cleared his throat again and explained to them that when he was doing tests for Sydney with Dr Collins he included some blood work for Bonnie in the tests and the results were quite astounding. His eyes sparkled as he talked about red and white cells and serum and the technical findings that her blood gave him as Alfred flashed diagrams and graphs up on the monitor behind him. Jo giggled and called out, "Patrick, Pat!"

Dr Evans looked at her and she politely reminded him that not all of those present had doctorates in biology and that his explanation was going over everyone's heads. Dr Evans looked sheepish and then his jaw dropped in amazement when Jenny stated from her position at Sydney's feet. "Her blood doesn't die."

"What did you say?"

"Bonnie is an angel, she can't die, at least not as we would from injuries. Every part of her is alive, some of those parts more than others," she gave Sydney a mischievous look and her left eye closed in a wink.

Sydney suddenly recalled the meeting he had had with the doctors and interns at the hospital before he had been allowed to leave. One of the interns had mentioned an angel, turning to Dr Evans he asked if it was the same thing. The Angel at that time Es revealed to him as being one of his!

"Yes Sydney it is," he answered. Opening his arms he addressed them all again. "The blood condition that we have found in Bonnie was called Angels Blood many, many years ago by a doctor in Sydney that discovered it in one of her patients. Unfortunately the doctor was not very discrete in her discovery and the poor girl was pricked and prodded by scientists and doctors from all over the country and eventually they broke her mind and her spirit. She died from a massive dose of fast acting poison that a sympathetic nurse supplied to her.

"Unfortunately speculation has been renewed about the use of Angels Blood in providing some assistance in some limb transplant work that has been going on with a group in Papua. All hospitals have been ordered to report cases to the government."

The members of Bonnie's family looked at him in shock. Sydney could feel the warrior in him begin to surface and Jenny had to grasp his face in her hands in order to get his attention and tell him to stand down! "There is no-one to fight here Sydney! Dr Evans is not going to give anyone Bonnie's details!" the little girl yelled at him.

Having calmed the big man she continued. "Bonnie doesn't know what she is yet. So far she is having nightmares about the crash and as much as I am trying to soothe her fears I can't penetrate her guilt over her surviving and her parents did not. I think I am going to need help of a different kind to get her through this," she said and turned towards Dr Evans.

He started to stammer a reply then stopped and softly spoke. "I have given her some drugs to help her sleep though I suppose that the nightmares will overcome them eventually. I am not sure what else I can do.

"I can't very well go to my psychiatric friends and say 'I need you to help an angel get over the fact that she didn't die when she should have', now can I?" He looked around appealing to all of them and all slowly nodded their acceptance.

Dr Evans continued. "With the government directive I dare not breathe a word of her condition to anyone, Jo I trust, but no-one else. Though to be quite honest I would like to know why someone in government wants blood that doesn't die for use in so called limb transplants. I cannot believe that will be its true use."

The group looked to Alfred. "I can't penetrate that system. it is not connected to the rest of the government set up, they don't know that I am still in there anyway," his expression was smug. Sydney grinned and told him that he would talk to him about it later.

"The point is," emphasised Dr Evans, "we can't let the world know about another Angel. But," and he waved his hands at the group in helplessness, "somehow we need to get her some help otherwise she is going to eat herself up with guilt and will in all likelihood become just as broken and depressed as the first angel. I guess you know where that may lead."

He sighed deeply, his appeal showed his love for the little woman. Desperately he needed some solution that would ensure that she would get the help he could not give her.

Jenny looked into Sydney's eyes. "You have to be her saviour! You have to replace her nightmares with something else and not just bouncing her up and down on your sword either." Jenny needed the warrior to focus extremely well on this problem, she could feel the man's mind struggling with something that she could not tell him yet. It would be something that the other would have to tell him when the time came. It was not her place. Sighing she looked into his eyes as he stared at her dumbly.

Sydney just stared at her not having a clue as to how he was going to accomplish what she was asking.

"Think Warrior," she whispered, "What was Thelma's gift to you?"

Blinking his eyes he saw the little red head waiting patiently. The penny dropped, dream casting. Sydney would have to begin to make a different world, a different set of memories for his to-be lover before she would unload the burden of guilt she carried. He nodded slowly, Jenny leaned forward and kissed him on the nose. "I will help warrior," she said softly.

She turned to Patrick, who by his look had no idea what had just been exchanged between the big dark haired man and the little girl, but by the look of their faces they had a plan. For Patrick it was enough and he waited for Jenny to speak. Her words set them all to giggling. "I need a drink!"

Chapter 2 -- Demons

As Oceania changed its political structures, pre- and post holocaust, the delineation of state boundaries became simply a way of defining an entire locality. Queensland was still Queensland, but there was no longer a state government to control vast areas that government officials from a centralised city never even got to anyway. Now the whole of Oceania had strong local authorities that reported directly to the central government led by the President.

There were 600 districts, as they were generally referred to, governed by men and women elected by the local population and given a broad range of powers. Those powers interlocked with central control. Emergency services, education, transport, social services and the military were central control concerns, however, local authority over these matters could dictate and even subsume central. It was a system that had been implemented, modified and tweaked for over 500 years. It worked reasonably well.

Thelma Daintree, smartly dressed in dark blue business attire of skirt and jacket over a soft cotton shirt of light grey, regarded the men and women who were eagerly awaiting her address. The group was in the auditorium of the army command centre based in the far north of what used to be South Australia, in the district of Sandrill. The district was chosen because of the large military presence and the training centre that was used by the military for its officers and special forces. It was ideal for the work that was needed to be done to investigate and begin the process of prosecuting the perpetrators of Project BF.

The location was also impossible to be penetrated by those who still operated parts of the insidious project, not yet aware that the organisational head had been well and truly decapitated. The people that Thelma addressed now were investigators, analysts and data collectors. She still had a massive job to collect all of the evidence required to bring the case against the main 11 players in this game to justice. It was her intention to ensure that all of them died by lethal injection and did so quickly. Having the case dragged out for 30 or 40 years to remind the people of Oceania of a black piece of history was not in anyone's interests!

Coolly she assessed the bright eyed faces in front of her. Many of the people were fresh out of university and had yet to be turned cynical and pessimistic by life's unfolding dramas. Realisation of how much her own cynicism and pessimism she had to hold down in order to convey her instructions hit home hard. Joyfully she realised that it wasn't as hard as she had initially thought and wondered briefly whether the vid call she had taken with her extended family in Brisbane last night had given her the optimistic and uplifting feeling she had in her now.

Thelma assigned the last of the present tasks to a team of doe eyed women led by Carmen Long. She smiled at the ex-policewoman, who had for nearly 5 days been taken over by the sex drugged alien, Esmeralda, and thanked her once again for her help. Carmen smiled. "Thelma, if you hadn't told me why I had a sore pussy and an almost broken jaw I would have badgered you for years to find out the story. You were honest to me, I want to repay your faith in anyway I can."

"I just hope Carmen that you don't find yourself spending years here," the woman sighed, then realised she had let her cheerful facade slip and apologised to the group.

"We will try not to," chortled Carmen turning to indicate her team. The woman added, "Some of us are finding the working together very beneficial." Blushes and giggles came from the women around her as they heard her comments.

Thelma laughed despite herself and patting the ex-policewoman on the buttocks warned, "Play when you can, but there is a lot to do!"

The women nodded and left to find the desks that had been allocated to them over the far side of the complex. Watching them go she sat down heavily in the chair behind the desk at the front of the room with a sigh. She had seen a similar group of young women yesterday, they had the same blushes and giggles, unfortunately they were not a natural response to the woman that stood among them as their leader.

She wept quietly as she recalled how they began to react as the first group to to undergo the deprogramming that would hopefully revert them back to the normal happy women that they should have always been allowed to be. Trying to banish from her mind their screaming demands for sex that degraded to begging and pleas, she got up. Wearily she gathered her notes and went back to her own offices in the underground bunker laughingly called The Enlightenment Centre.

It had been almost three months since Sydney and Es had left her, Greg and Martha in Townsville. It had been a sad night, as all realised that it would be a long time before they would get together for any more than a couple of hours over the coming years.

President Weir had called on Martha and Thelma to head up the team that would pursue the prosecuting case for the government. Something that Sydney had already known. With heartfelt apologies he had made love to the women, weeping with them in the dawn hours before they were to fly out on the hover jet that would take them back to central Australia.

Greg had been given the task of running the university. Repairing the reputation as well as the damage that had occurred in the stupidity over the attacks for money and drugs that did not exist. The task frightened Greg but he was glad to be given it to take his mind off the death of his wife. A hurt that was still too raw in his mind to be mentioned, however well-intentioned the person was. As Thelma's dyed brunette locks reverted to blonde, Greg withdrew even from that comfort. He did not see Thelma and Martha off on their flight.

He was pleasantly surprised though at the visit by Sydney a few days later when the man asked him to take him to the underground city. The pair had spent several days touring the complex before Sydney dropped his bombshell. "Greg, how would you like to populate this city with people from all over the world?" he had casually asked as they stood on a platform that looked down over the entire complex.

"Who would want to come here?" the man asked.

"Those who have had nowhere else to go for the last 500 years," Sydney said softly. "People who have been persecuted, ridiculed, hurt and exiled by their own government. I am not sure how many our anonymous friend has found homes for, but I am sure that a lot of them would like to come back.

"I had hoped also, Greg, that it might be a place for the families affected by Project BF to come to. Somewhere away from the gossip, the pitiful looks of their neighbours. A place where some of them can hide until they feel like they want to rejoin the world.

"If that happens the first things you will want to get going are the hospitals, shopping centres, day cares and playgrounds."

Greg turned to look at the man incredulously. "Do you realise how much work that will take?" he exclaimed.

"Yes Greg I do. Which is why I am asking you about it. You have more organisational skills than Thelma or Martha. I have seen how the university works, you drive it! Goodness knows how you do your other work, but I have seen Thelma and Martha defer just about everything but the most trivial to your judgement. I know that you can do this Greg. I think I can get you a lot more help than you have now." Sydney's voice was passionate, convincing. Greg realised that it meant a lot to himself as well as he had envisaged the buildings and streets below him noisy and colourful with lights and people.

Nodding he turned to the man with a grin and held out his hand. Sydney passed him a thick dossier instead of his hand to shake. "What's this?" Greg asked a little taken aback.

"The deeds," the young man smiled. Leaving the tall doctor flabbergasted he began to walk back to the access lifts to the world above them.

Greg caught up to him just as the lift opened. "This says some entity called Majestic Balance owns this place!" Sydney nodded and waited for the man to continue to read.

"What the fuck!" was the response Sydney expected as the doctor read further into the executive summary.

"Yes Greg. Me, you, Thelma, Martha and all the rest of those names own it! Lock, stock and barrel. I suggest you best take care of our investment," Sydney laughed at the man's expression all the way up the 1500 metre climb in the lifts.

Sydney had given Greg much more than the deeds, it was a list of names to be contacted for assistance in the set up, advertising for the start of the 'Bring them home' campaign as well as access to bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars to start the business of bringing the underground city to life. It had been sitting at the end of his bed when he returned from dropping Thelma and Martha off at the airport.

Leaving the man with a promise that he would get back to him as soon as he found time, Sydney had only two other bits of business to take care of before he returned to his impatiently waiting group in Brisbane.

Firstly he contacted Keith Richardson and gave him a list of the contacts for the underground army that Thelma had put together. Going through the list with the man he pointed out those that had proven to be Whitbourne's and Molby's spies. Only a few of them were actually still alive or not in custody. Richardson's first priority was to the eliminate them.

The big military sergeant looked at his supreme commander carefully before he spoke. "You want them dead, Sir?"

"If necessary, else locked up or at least neutralised. You will find that there are a few of the civilians in that list that are very good at that sort of thing." Sydney's eyes had turned cold and darker as he spoke.

"Keith, they cannot be left to start something like Project BF again. As it is I have quite a lot to do before this is truly over. I cannot do this as well."

"What about the leadership team?" Keith asked him.

"You are the leadership team Keith. You and you alone," the big man told him before he walked away into the darkness of the park that they had met in.

Keith Richardson grimaced as he watched the man disappear. "Lachlan is going to love that!" he said to himself as he made his way back to his hover.

Next using contacts supplied to him by Jo Jepson he arranged for the reconstruction of Thelma's beautiful house. Something he hoped would give his teacher the message that he was still her teammate despite the distance between them. He also hoped it would help the woman get through the struggles he knew she would face over the coming months possibly years.

Thelma was oblivious to the plans Sydney had made. She was confused when her insurance company told her that there was nothing further she needed to do about her house. The woman she spoke to refused to give her any more details other than it was being taken care of. With everything else Thelma simply put it on the back burner, a job to do when she finally got out of this mess.

Mess, it was not an adequate word for the web of deceit, blackmail and horrifying plans of a man who's sole purpose in life it seemed was to pay back his sisters for laughing at his small cock. Thelma read and re-read the psychiatrists' reports on their interviews with the ugly arrogant man that languished in solitary confinement deep beneath the ground at Sandrill. Not only was the army base a training centre, it also held the most secure jail in the country. Whitbourne was not even aware of who was in the cells next to him.

The almost pedantic requirements of Whitbourne to record everything that happened with Project BF was the thing that hung him. From the earliest meetings with key players, right up to the recorders running when the end game was played in parliament house. Everything was recorded either by public equipment or by surveillance vid that Whitbourne or his associates carried on them. It was obvious that many of the subjects did not know their words and actions were being captured by Whitbourne and his team as they carried out each carefully mapped out stage of their plans.

It was a habit that Whitbourne had started at an early age. Thelma reviewed the recordings of the women in his household cavorting on their parents' bed and the early humiliation of the man as his oldest sister held her vibrating dildo against the young man's small cock and laughingly told her sisters that is wasn't even a mouthful. The blonde couldn't help but agree as she saw the puny object of their derision. Surprisingly his father did not lack for equipment and Thelma could not help but wonder about a man who secretly recorded his parents lovemaking and their coupling with their more than willing daughters.

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands. of hours of recordings and Thelma had to carefully screen the groups that would be reviewing them. Whitbourne had, along with his recordings, also kept diaries of the events he recorded. Electronic documents that were carefully catalogued and indexed. Some of the political heavyweights in Brisbane would be very interested in getting their hands on the material and ensuring that they never saw the light of day. Conversely some of them would have paid dearly for the material to use as weapons against their fiercest political opponents.