This Mortal Coil is a post-apocalyptic Bio Punk YA novel and the debut work of author Emily Suvada.
In a World… Where staggering advances in nanotechnology and genetic engineering allow anyone to modify their own DNA as though it were code through forearm 'panels' implanted at birth, the Hydra virus has devastated humanity. This nightmarish pathogen causes its victims to linger for two painful weeks before they go off like a firecracker, while everyone else is physiologically compelled by the virus to kill and eat the infected — the only known way to gain immunity, and even then only for a matter of weeks. Society has all but collapsed, save for the sinister Cartaxus organisation and its network of underground bunkers where survivors are rumoured to languish in hellish 1984-style conditions, and a disparate group of stragglers on the surface, struggling to stay alive and avoid roving packs of Lurkers who have gleefully embraced the chaos and cannibalism.
Catarina 'Cat' Agatta has been living alone in the mountains of North Carolina for two years, ever since her father — the hyper-genius gentech scientist extraordinaire Lachlan Agatta — was abducted by Cartaxus to 'help' them work on a cure for Hydra. However, Cole, a Cartaxus Super-Soldier, turns up one day at Cat's cabin — not to finish the job, but bearing grim news. Lachlan is dead, and he's left behind an impossible task for his daughter: to unlock the Hydra vaccine he's developed, encoded within Cole, before the virus can mutate and render it worthless, or Cartaxus catches up to them and ensures the cure is distributed only to the population already under their thumb.
The stage is set for a journey showcasing the consequences of biotech gone bad in exceptionally gory detail as Cat discovers the significance of her father's enigmatic plans, Cole's Dark and Troubled Past, and the hidden truth of her own upbringing...
Heavy spoiler tags are required, since the book features many a Plot Twist, a Troperiffic Big Bad, and a massive Reveal near the end.
This Mortal Coil provides examples of:
- Always Chaotic Evil: The "Lurkers" are people with the misfortune to have a natural vulnerability to the Wrath (an In-Series Nickname for Hydra's Horror Hunger), and as such devolve into animalistic packs of marauders, gleefully killing and eating everyone they come across apart from each other.
- Automated Automobiles: Autonomous driving is standard issue on pretty much all vehicles in the setting, from Agnes' clapped-out old car to the top-of-the-line Cartaxus 'Jeeps'.
- Ambiguous Situation: Given that the first outbreak of Hydra was contained, it's unclear exactly how the apocalyptic pandemic of the virus occurred — the containment may have been broken, a sample may have been unearthed somewhere else, or it may have been released on purpose, perhaps by terrorists, as part of Lachlan's expansive Evil Plan, or by Cartaxus itself if it actually did want to Take Over the World. There's nothing in particular pointing towards any one explaination.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Lachlan's Evil Plan to install a Trojan into the panels of everyone left on Earth (as part of his grand goal of 'improving' humanity) goes off without a hitch, before anyone can realise what he's up to or even that he's still alive.
- Bio Punk: The book is overwhelmingly focused on the setting's super-advanced 'gentech' Bio-Augmentation technology, and all of its potential applications and implications, for good and for bad. Technically it's not a straight example of the trope, given that gentech is powered by Nanomachines which generate cybernetic components inside the body, as well as enabling almost-unlimited genetic modification capabilities.
- Body Surf: Certain gentech augmentations can be used to turn people into 'puppets' who can be controlled remotely by another individual, but the technology is so dangerous and so vulnerable to abuse that, pre-apocalypse, even the transhuman bio-hackers in favour of limitless genetic self-experimentation wanted nothing to do with it, and it was prohibited by international law. In the book, it's used by two Cartaxus scientists to communicate with Novak, and by Lachlan to fake his death again.
- The Chessmaster: Lachlan, who sets up an elaborate series of Batman Gambits to ensure that Cat doesn't discover that she's a Living MacGuffin until the time is right, she will submit to a Heroic Sacrifice to decode the vaccine, and that Cartaxus and the Skies will force its installation to everybody on Earth, allowing him to infect everyone with his sinister Trojan in one fell swoop. Lampshaded by Cat, who concedes that from his perspective, people are just "chess pieces being pushed around a board".
- Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Cole's weapon of choice is a high-tech Cartaxus rifle which fires nanite-infused rounds, nullifying any Healing Factor biotech the target might have equipped. This becomes a problem when a Lurker wrestles the weapon off of him and shoots him in the chest with it.
- Dug Too Deep: The first outbreak of Hydra occurred when researchers excavated a body preserved in the Arctic permafrost, which, unbeknownst to them, was infected with an ancient pathogen which came to be known as Hydra. However, given this outbreak was successfully contained, it's unclear where the current, world-ending pandemic of the virus has come from.
- Evil Genius: Lachlan Agatta is a peerless gentech programmer, who also happens to be an Unfettered Evilutionary Biologist who is determined to 'improve' humanity, and is willing to perform countless horrifying acts to achieve this.
- Evil Feels Good: Giving in to the Wrath — the physiological Horror Hunger compelling the healthy to kill those infected with Hydra and eat their flesh — provides a sense of elation and euphoria. This causes some to fall into it permanently, and become the Lurkers.
- Foreshadowing: Cat manages to find that Jun Bei's panel ID, encrypted, has been connected to the Skies' network. Of course, that's because she is Jun Bei, and has been using the very same network herself.
- Future Copter: The four-rotor Cartaxus Comox. It's essentially a very oversized drone with a pilot's seat (in case of emergencies).
- Good All Along: Played with. While Cartaxus does have a strict policy on non-approved gentech and often uses very harsh tactics, they are genuinely trying to protect humanity from Hydra, and haven't been trying to Take Over the World and turn it into some sort of a dystopia.
- Heroic BSoD: Cat, rather understandably, has a breakdown after discovering that Cartaxus was (mostly) Good All Along, and the people inside their bunkers have comfortable and peaceful lives, meaning all the cannibalism, near-starvation and general misery she had to go through was utterly pointless.
- Horror Hunger: Exposure to a carrier of Hydra will overpower any unprotected human with a desire to kill them and consume their immunity-granting flesh. Cat calls this "the Wrath", and certain unlucky folks can be permanently afflicted with it, degenerating into bands of Ax-Crazy savages known as "Lurkers".
- Meaningful Name: Lachlan's Playing with Syringes Artifical Humans project was called the Zarathustra Initiative. If you're aware where the name 'Zarathustra' comes from, you might have some inclination as to what sort of person Lachlan is.
- MegaCorp: Played with regarding Cartaxus, which isn't quite a corporation nor a governmental entity, instead a "massive international amalgam of technology and violence", according to Cat anyway. But as it turns out, it's a (debatably) Benevolent Conspiracy created with the intention of preventing the collapse of civilisation — they knew about Hydra before the epidemic occurred.
- My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: Cat is painfully aware that Cole's superhuman sensory perception means it's nigh-impossible to conceal her Inconvenient Attraction to him. Of course, the feelings are actually mutual, and it doesn't take long to become rather less inconvenient.
- Plague Zombie: Unusually Inverted — the nightmarish Hydra virus causes healthy people to succumb to the Wrath when they encounter the infected, killing and cannibalising them to gain temporary immunity. Some unlucky folks get stuck in the Wrath permanently.
- Playing with Syringes: The purpose of the Zarathustra Initiative. Five human embryos were successfully created using genetic material from the Hydra virus in a frantic attempt to develop a cure. The resulting children were experimented on in all sorts of horrible ways to determine the potential utility of their mutations. The whole thing was arguably Necessarily Evil from the whole 'creating-a-cure' standpoint, but Lachlan's ultimate goals for the project went much further than that.
- Plot Allergy: Cat has "hypergenesis", a rare condition which manifests as extreme sensitivity to the Nanomachines that power gentech, rendering her able to use only the most bare-bones Bio-Augmentation. Except the whole thing's a lie, and Lachlan made her think she had hypergenesis as part of his elaborate scheme — it was essential to stop her from poking around in her implants' systems and discovering she was a Living Macguffin too early.
- "Pop!" Goes the Human: The final stage of Hydra involves becoming a "blower", whereby the victim explodes and drenches the surrounding area in virus-laden particles.
- Tragic Villain: Marcus. A formerly-renowned surgeon who is forced to remain on the surface due to one of his daughters having a medical condition which requires unauthorised gentech, who ends up hacking Cat's augmentations out of her arm in a vain attempt to save his wife from a gentech 'cure' Gone Horribly Wrong. Though it was kind of a dick move to steal the solar panels from Cole's car.
- The Unfettered: Lachlan. So. Much. To him, morals are the purview of the weak and foolish, and it shows — there's literally nothing he won't do to further his ultimate goals. For instance:
- He mixes human and virus genetic material together to create five children born of unholy mad science. He then tortures said children for years on end to further his sinister research.
- He then overwrote the genetic code of one of said children and completely wiped her memories to essentially make her into his biological daughter (which is quite simply all kinds of wrong). Then, he wrote malicious code to make this Mind Raped 'daughter' believe she has a dangerous and painful allergy, to conceal the fact he's using her as a tool in his Evil Plan.
- He creates a vaccine which could be used to save everyone from Hydra. Then he takes advantage of this to essentially install a Trojan into the entire human population, which can be used to activate a Hate Plague on command, amongst God knows what else.
- And it's heavily implied that his ultimate aim is to forcibly rewrite the DNA of everyone on Earth to eliminate an innate capacity for violence he believes is present in all humanity.
- Unstoppable Rage: Played with. Cole and Leoben are both Cartaxus "black-out agents" with a suite of augmentations designed to make them into the ultimate bodyguards. When something threatens their Protectorate (which in Cole's case is Cat), the gentech floods their system with massive amounts of adrenaline and causes them to hyper-focus on the threat, turning their eyes black. As a result, they will not stop until the threat is eliminated, one way or another.
- Visionary Villain: Lachlan Agatta's grand plan is to unify humanity by eliminating the latent capacity for violence and evil he sees as lurking inside every man, woman and child... And there's no line he will not cross in pursuit of this goal.
- Warrior Poet: Cole is an arguably-human Super-Soldier jacked up on as many bio-modifications and implants as his body can possibly take... But also a skilled artist who was planning for a much more peaceful life before the apocalypse occurred.
