Seeing Double (The Perception Trilogy Book 1)

by Alyssa Lynn

  The man gripping his right arm punched him in the back of the head and Jeremy felt the sharp pain of the impact before he drifted off into a deep sleep.

  Marcus picked up his phone and rang the front desk. When the secretary answered, he began with more directions. “We need to move the file for Jeremy Barton from ‘employee’ to ‘experiment’. Be sure to get the process started as quickly as possible. Nate and Roy are taking him upstairs to the prep lab now to get things started.”

  “Yes sir,” replied his secretary, confirming her assignment.

  “And Lydia?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Be sure to finalize the background documents we have on the individuals related to Demo Twelve-Fifteen. We’re sending out the additional agents now.”

  “Sir? Additional agents? I haven’t sent anyone out on this case yet,” she responded, feeling the nervousness build up inside her. Marcus wasn’t a boss that handled employees not doing their jobs and Lydia not only knew that, but had witnessed the outcome of those who failed to perform satisfactorily.

  “Yes, additional. Don’t worry, my dear, this wasn’t a task that needed to be processed through the regular system. This agent already has his eye on the target and is moving in. We’re right on schedule.”

  CHAPTER six

  E arth-shattering news usually tends to send your mind into another dimension. Questions and concerns are mixed with memories and emotions as you wrack your brain for an acceptable response to what you were just told.

  After being silent for a few minutes, Demo wasn’t sure what to do so he led Ava to the couch in the living room. Still, having said nothing, he grabbed one of the snacks from the kitchenette and brought it over to her.

  “You’re his what?” Ava snapped.

  Startled at the volume of her voice, Demo jumped and threw the fruit bar across the hotel room. “I’m going to need you to stay calm. I know that’s a lot to ask, but we’re both working through this together.” Ava simply nodded in agreement. Swallowing hard to keep to yelling at his ridiculous comments.

  “The men in blue blazers that you saw walking around the building are the founders of Marcus Creations,” he replied. He walked over to retrieve the snack. “When I say that I was hatched, I mean I was literally created in an egg-like contraption.” His voice trailed off as he walked over to the counter in the kitchen and swapped the fruit bar for the envelope he put there when they first arrived. Leafing through the contents, he removed a piece of paper that had a captioned picture on it and handed it to Ava.

  She took it and looked at it with a horrified expression. It was a picture of a room that was filled with nothing but large sacks of fluid. Rows and rows of them lined the entire area with a large counter top that sat in the center of the room, and small hoses stretching from the wall to the sacks.

  “It looks like something you would see in a movie,” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. “I saw a few of these on the computer monitors when I first broke into the building, but not as many as this.” She let the information sink in for a minute before she looked him over and landed on his eyes. “So, you’re not Jett. You’re Demo?”

  He nodded and kept taking more photos from the envelope to hand over to Ava. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Shifting her eyes up to Demo, she could feel herself begin to shed sympathetic tears.

  “When I walked through those hallways, right before you dragged me out of that building, I was looking at the development of… of clones?” She said the word cautiously, like it was going to burn her tongue if she said it too loud.

  “Well that’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “What do you mean, ‘find out’?” She looked at the strong features in his face; strong jaw line and hard cheekbones. Only features that a man would have; not those of a child in his teens. “Haven’t you been there for over twenty years? You sure look to be about my age.”

  “I’ve been there for just under ten years.”

  “Then you’re ten years old?” she asked, attempting to do the math in her head. Looking back at him, she said, “I guess whatever they put in your water has a way of aging people quickly.”

  “That’s the basic gist, yes. However, I’m twenty-seven, and it’s not the water that has this effect on us.”

  Ava dropped her face into her hands and grumbled, “This is making my head spin.”

  “Let me attempt to explain this. When we’re created, they can leave us in that egg sack for as long as they want us to age. It’s like a bourbon barrel; the longer it cures in the barrel, the better it will be.” Ava said nothing, but continued to stare. “The chemical formula that they inject into the hoses that connect to the egg sacks will age us quicker than a normal human would.”

  “So how long were you in the egg sack?”

  “Nine years and one month.”

  After a moment of quick calculations, Ava said, “Those egg sacks will age you three times the normal aging period.”

  Jett could see her mind racing with questions and curiosity. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers to any questions you may have. That’s why I planned to steal that envelope of documents. I had a feeling there would be something inside that would be of some use to me.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I want to know the purpose of the clone creations. I want to know what they intend to do with us. You saw that photo; there are hundreds of us being created. For the last year, I’ve basically been brainwashed to learn what they wanted me to learn; basic reading and arithmetic with the occasional day-to-day scenarios and how to respond to them. It wasn’t until recently that I took notice to the realization that something wasn’t right. So I started to formulate a plan in order to get the answers I was looking for.”

  “How do they get the DNA for the clones?”

  “They get it from the individuals that they kidnap or that come into the building unannounced. Didn’t you notice how easy it was for you to break in?”

  Ava gulped hard and her mind began to race with thoughts of what would have happened if he hadn’t dragged her down the hallway. “They kill them and use their DNA to replicate them?”

  Demo nodded and looked to the floor. Her lips parted and her mind continued to weave through awful scenarios. “So, can I ask a question?”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” Demo replied.

  Ava ignored his attempt at sarcasm. “Why did you put forth such a valiant effort to save me?”

  Demo looked at her, knowing she would eventually ask this question. “If you knew someone was walking into a trap, would you let them? Or would you do everything in your power to save them?”

  Ava nodded her head, understanding his reasoning. “Okay, so what is the outcome of the people they kill? Don’t they have people looking for them? Warrants or wanted posters?”

  “Those people then go on a list of missing persons, and eventually fall off the radar.”

  Ava stared at him in horror. She could have been next. Reaching for the file, she emptied the contents into her hands. Turning page after page she wasn’t finding anything that may have answers for Jett. Until they got to the last folder marked “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL”. Ava handed the folder over to him and he took it without hesitation.

  Opening the folder, he frantically started sorting through the pages. Ava watched his eyes get bigger and bigger as he got closer to end of the folder. “What is it?”

  He didn’t respond, but instead dropped the folder on the floor and stood silent in front of her. Ava reached down and picked it up. She opened it with caution. The first page was a photo of step one in the process to create a clone. Small dishes were laid across the tops of the counters with notes written across all of the pictures: Failure. Success. In Process. The second photo was of the hoses that stretched from the wall to the counter in the center of the room and into the egg sacks. Each hose was labeled with a formula that didn’t make any sense to Ava.

  “What
do the formulas me-,” but when she looked over at Demo, he had a frightened expression, so she decided it wasn’t important that she ask him right now.

  She noticed an up-close picture of the different colored connectors that sealed the ends of the tubes with the wall. Each one connected to a lever that seemed to control the amount of liquid that was able to pass through the tube at once. It appeared that what started as twelve tubes coming out of the wall, had merged and formed a total of four larger tubes that connected with the sack itself. She concluded that the liquids inside the tubes were being mixed in larger tubes before being injected into the sacks.

  Ava almost dropped the stack of photos when she came face-to-face with an up-close shot of what looked like a baby alien inside one of the sacks. The eyes were closed and it didn’t seem to be fully developed. What Ava assumed were the veins and beginning phases of limbs, looked like a large pile of yarn.

  Glancing over at Demo, she looked at his arms and legs; appearing normal, no signs of weird veins showing or gills on the sides of his neck. She was relieved that he didn’t look like the thing in the photo.

  Flipping to the next one made Ava feel queasy; people in white coats were cutting into the egg sacks and letting the fluids and tiny deformed humans fall to the floor while they were still connected to the tubes. “Dear God.” She gasped as she stared up toward the ceiling and took a few deep breaths.

  She looked back down and continued to scan the photos. Across the page was a big red stamp that read, “Failed experiment. Evidence discarded.” The lump in Ava’s throat grew bigger as she tried to swallow it down. This is basically a mass abortion, she thought to herself.

  Not wanting to see anymore photos, she placed them aside and turned to the folder in the back. Opening the front flap she saw the same thing Demo had seen. A hand-drawn blueprint of the room that showed four rows of individually labeled egg sacks. Each row placed into one of three categories: Cancer Treatment Testing, Misc Medical Treatment Testing, Organ Transplant Parts (discard remains). The first two rows were labeled for cancer treatments, the third row was labeled for miscellaneous medical treatment testing, and the final row was labeled for organ transplant parts.

  Reacting the same way that Demo had reacted, the folder, once again, hit the floor. “I am so sorry. I honestly don’t know what to say.” She couldn’t help but feel sick to her stomach. This corporation was creating people to be used for spare parts; like a human junk yard.

  “There’s nothing you can say. I suppose I got the answers I was looking for.”

  Just then, the hotel room door flung opened and Kaycie and Ethan came walking in with bags of food. “We didn’t know what you would be hungry for, so we got a little bit of everything.” Kaycie said. She plopped the groceries down and the counter consisted of nothing but plastic bags filled with food. “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking over at Ava and Demo.

  There was a moment of silence before Ava looked over at the somber clone on the couch who gave her a slight nod, indicating he was okay to talk about it. They spent almost twenty minutes of continuous discussion to bring Ethan and Kaycie up to speed on what they had come to realize.

  “You can close your mouth, Kaycie. I know it’s intense, but Jett and I are trying to come up with a solution.” Demo looked at her, “Sorry, Demo Twelve-Fifteen and I are trying to come up with a solution.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Ethan asked the group.

  “Our plan is in the first stage at the moment,” Ava replied.

  “And what exactly is the first stage?” Kaycie asked.

  “Knowing we need to come up with a plan,” Ava said, plopping down on the couch next to Demo. “What did you bring for food?”

  Kaycie did a few facial exercises to stretch it out, since it felt as though it was dipped in concrete and left to set. “We brought sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese restaurant down the road, but only because they were running a special, and each meal came with two egg rolls instead of one. We also picked up a pizza, but that was mainly because we can all eat cold pizza the next day without complaining about it. Then, we stopped and got snacky snacks from the little shop at the end of the road; pretzels, chips, dip, granola bars, ice cream, and Oreos.”

  “Did you leave any food for the rest of the population?” Ava asked with a grin on her face.

  “I think there was a crumb on the one shelf. I had to stop Kaycie from taking that too,” added Ethan.

  Everyone looked over at Demo. “What do you like to eat?” Ava asked him.

  “I’m not a picky eater. We were always served oatmeal and fresh fruit with a side of chicken at most meals, because it filled us up and gave us a source of protein and fiber. The fruit was mainly our option for dessert. Using the term ‘option’ lightly, of course.”

  “They really like to keep you healthy there, don’t they?” Ethan asked. He began unpacking the bags in the kitchen area and organizing them into groups of sweet and savory.

  “They liked a lot of things,” Demo replied. Getting up, he walked into the kitchen, “Let me assist you with the groceries.”

  “How did you come to know the things you know? Like the difference between clones and the rest of the world?” Kaycie wondered out loud.

  Demo’s shoulders were sagging lower and lower the more he talked about his life there. Now that he was out, he was beginning to see that it wasn’t as luxurious as they had attempted to make it seem. He felt almost free, just sitting in a hotel room with three other people. It was against policy for him to be in another room with a female, much less two females. Marcus was against male-female contact, for fear of reproduction. That’s when they came up with the idea to ensure all clones were infertile prior to allowing them to roam freely around the facility.

  “Each day we had a two-hour class, or at least that’s what they called it; where they would show us things in the ‘real world’ that we would supposedly someday be exposed to. Things like what a building is, what children are, what animals are, and the differences between the individuals in the building versus the individuals outside. Showing us picture after picture and cramming our brains with information in such a short timeframe. It was comparable to learning an entire lifetime in one year. Now I’m out in the real world and I’m seeing everything firsthand, and it’s nothing like what they were telling us.”

  “What kinds of things were they telling you?” Ethan wanted to know.

  “That basically anyone that came inside those walls was the enemy and needed to be discarded. Holding up a photo of that thing you almost killed us in, a car, and said to never get in one of them because they will detonate and kill us.”

  “Jett-,” Ava said, but stopped herself and dropped her eyes to the floor, “Sorry… Demo. That was just a car. We use those on a daily basis for transportation to and from our destinations. They will not detonate and they won’t hurt you.”

  “Actua-,” Ethan started to say, but was elbowed by Kaycie and both girls glared at him with silent threats. “Damn. If looks could kill,” he grumbled.

  The three then did some damage control with Demo to explain to him which of the things he was taught were factual and which were false representations.

  After about an hour of non-stop conversation, Ava’s eyes moved over toward Demo who sat next to her looking like a toddler that was just informed Santa wasn’t real. “We don’t mean to word vomit all over you, but you need to know the truth about where you are and what you’re up against. Those people lied to you in order to scare you out of running away. They wanted to make sure your environment seemed better than the actual reality.”

  “Looks like we’ve got some work to do,” Kaycie said. “I think we need to take him out on the town and show him what he’s been missing.”

  “You honestly think that’s a good idea?” Ethan asked. “I mean look at him. He’s as white as a ghost.”

  “How about we all sleep on it and we’ll reconvene in the morning,” Ava suggested.

  “
Aren’t you afraid they’ll find us here?” Kaycie asked.

  “Terrified,” Ava replied, “but it’s not like we jumped to the neighboring street. We drove for a few miles and tomorrow we’ll be even farther away. We just need to make it to tomorrow morning and hit the city. Even if they somehow find out we’re in Chicago, they will struggle to find us downtown in a sea of people. If it’s that top secret of a place, they won’t want to cause a scene in a highly populated area and get the media swarming them. Now get some sleep. We’ve gotta introduce Demo to the rest of the world tomorrow.”

  He looked at Ava and smiled nervously. “I will take on whatever you feel will be best for me. I’m a stranger to this environment, but I’m willing to give it a chance. I need to blend in; otherwise, we will make it easy for them to point us out.”

  “We will attempt to allow you to live a ‘normal’ life for as long as we feel comfortable.” Said Ava.

  “Knowing that it will take them a hot minute to find us, we will have some time to pretend like we’re not on the run,” added Ethan. He put his hands on his hips and looked around the room, “So, what exactly are the sleeping arrangements for the night?”

  Ava was antsy to learn more about Demo’s genetic makeup, but was almost afraid to ask. After convincing herself that it was now or never, she looked over at Demo and put on her innocent voice. “Before we discuss sleeping arrangements for the night, I want to ask a favor.”

  “What would that be,” asked Demo.

  “Would you be opposed to letting me draw blood and send it off to my lab for analyzing?”

  “What would you do with the results,” asked Kaycie.