by J. M. Pierce
His soldiers had been reassigned along with him, each of them granted position in the most secretive and covert unit the military had ever known. Their mission was solitary and defined: locate Test Davis and capture him dead or alive. With Dawson being promoted to the head of Project Ghost, a new field commander was chosen from the ranks and everything was put in place. The unit then began scouring the globe for signs of Test, but months went by with no sign of him. Finally, one evening the news was awash with scenes of a bright meteor streaking through the skies of New Mexico. Every bit of intelligence that they could collect, every expert in the field of meteorology and astronomy, told them that this was no meteor. Within hours they were mobilized and on their way to New Mexico.
It wasn’t until days later that the incident in Kansas City revealed to him that Test Davis was not the only “ghost” in existence. Unfortunately, though the Union Station building was littered with security cameras, the release of energy by the numerous “ghosts” within the building interfered with their operation. As the events inside unfolded, Dawson was able to screen the recorded footage from the hour prior to the picture going completely blank. He was able to count up to five beings. His heart sank.
Looking back, he knew that if he couldn’t contain one of them, he was foolish to think that he had a chance in hell of containing five or more.
Walking away from Kansas City empty handed was yet another black eye. It wasn’t, however, the last straw. That was to come months later.
His good standing with his superiors shaken, he relied on the hope that the cloning would be successful. Over the next two months, several fetuses had been successfully generated only to fail to make it past two weeks of age.
Dawson refused to give up. Everything had become experimental. His team of scientists broke new ground every day. With the initial plan to implant the fetuses into surrogate mothers shot down, they quickly developed methods to grow a fetus from first stage cell division to a full term baby. Feeling encouraged, the most ground breaking move was to experiment with altering strands of DNA to expedite the fetus’ growth rates.
Eventual success led to accolades. Four fetuses were successfully cultivated. The feeling was short lived as one by one, they perished. The cause was different for each. Final hope rested on the fetus the scientists referred to as PG15. He was the fifteenth fetus created since the project’s beginnings and seemed to be as robust and healthy as any human child could be expected to be. Within a matter of weeks, his growth had exceeded expectations and, when at only eighteen weeks of age, he was the equivalent of a new born child.
He had done it. Time would tell if the child would have the abilities of Test Davis, but Dawson was certain as if it were an absolute fact that he would. He watched the child daily as it fed on formula, defecated, and cried like any other normal human baby would.
Five days later, his glory would fade. He was awakened by the sound of his telephone ringing. The voice on the other end shook frantically as they tried to mutter the words they were so obviously afraid to say.
“He’s gone. PG15 is gone.”
Review of the security tape of the nursery revealed nothing but a hand covering the lens, followed by a fierce red light. From that point the screen went blank.
Shortly after this final incident, Dawson was relieved of his post and forced into retirement.
****
This was Dawson’s routine. Every night, he started at the beginning and walked it through in his mind to the end. The only three things he had left were the bottle of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes, and a lifetime of torturous memories. His days had become filled with an overwhelming emptiness and his nights filled with loneliness and a growing hatred of the beings that had ruined his life.
He yearned for revenge and vindication.
Chapter 7
After months of constant moving from town to town, the twins had decided to settle in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. Casper had scouted the area for a few weeks or so, looking for just the right home. The size and price of the home didn’t matter; he wasn’t looking to buy. Instead, he searched for someone that was isolated, rarely left the house, and most importantly, someone that never received any visitors. When the pool of prospects was narrowed to two, he even went so far as to sit in the room with them from time to time, hiding out in the realm of the dead while the person stared blankly at the television. The unlucky winner would be the one that received the least phone calls. To his great pleasure, candidate number two (a small elderly man in his late seventies) didn’t receive a single call or visitor in the final week that he was watched.
****
Casper entered their somewhat modest home with a smug grin and an arm full of groceries. Stealing was easy and fun for him. He’d simply phase into the spirit world, walk into a particular house when no one was home, search the home for cash, take it, walk out into the back yard, and burst into the sky with his plunder. He saw himself as a new age pirate and certainly thought highly of his talents. He was smart about it; never hitting the same area (or even town for that matter) within the same month. The thefts were unable to be linked so it gave him more of a security free environment in which to do his thing. Today, however, he’d been relegated to grocery shopping and that was something that he felt was beneath him.
“Here’s your stuff,” he huffed as he dropped the groceries on the floor and plopped into the recliner.
Ashley sat on the floor, trying to occupy the child in front of her. “Aren’t you going to put those away?” she asked.
Without response, Casper picked up the remote control and turned the TV channel.
“Fine,” Ashley replied bitterly as she got up on her knees. “You occupy Destin then!”
Before Casper could reply, the young boy spoke up. “I don’t want to play with Casper. He cheats.”
Casper grinned widely and winked at the boy. “Just trying to teach you while you’re young!” he quipped.
Destin stood and stretched, his arms reaching as high into the air as they could go.
“Look at this,” she said, tugging at the cuffs on the boy’s pants that were three inches above his ankles. “We’re going to have to get new clothes again.”
“Jesus,” exclaimed Casper. “I just got him some last week!”
“Well look,” replied Ashley, tugging at little Destin’s waistline. “The button’s about ready to pop!”
“It hurts, too,” said Destin in a matter-of-fact and timid voice.
Casper lowered the footrest on the recliner and leaned forward. “Did those scientists mix fertilizer in with his DNA or something?” he quipped again.
Ashley rolled her eyes. “That comment got old about six months ago.”
Ashley looked at the boy and tried to fend off the urge to dispose of him right then and there. She thought that perhaps as he got older, he would be able to occupy himself more, but she’d discovered the opposite was true; the kid wanted attention all the time. The fact that he looked more and more like Test with each passing day didn’t help suppress the urge either. The only thing that prevented her from getting rid of him (this time and many before) was her desire for revenge.
Destin let down his arms and walked to the side of the recliner where Casper sat. “Do you wanna play a game?” he asked.
“Nah, kid; I’m tired,” Casper replied as he leaned back and lifted the footrest again. “Why don’t you go and take a nap or something?”
Destin’s head dropped in disappointment as he turned and walked away. He walked past Ashley and towards the narrow hallway that led to his room.
Ashley watched him pass and as her eyes surveyed him, she saw a small blush of red light on his forearms. Quickly turning to Casper, she glanced over her shoulder and waited until Destin had left the room.
“Did you see that?” she asked in a hushed, but excited voice.
With his arms behind his head and eyes closed, Casper replied lazily. “Nope.”
Ashley reached out with
her left hand and gripped the front of the foot rest with her energy, tilting it forward until it touched the floor. Casper jumped up from the chair.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he shouted.
Ashley stood and grabbed his arm, pulling him close to her.
“He’s getting his powers,” she said with gritted teeth while staring him straight in the eye. “I saw his energy.”
Casper looked at her with a blank expression. “So? It’s about time, right?”
The two of them had expected Destin’s powers to come in much sooner. The reason that their fallen leader had wanted Test so badly was because his powers had come to him while he was still in the crib. With little Destin being a clone, they’d assumed that everything would play out in his life as it had in Test’s.
Ashley pushed Casper back and into the recliner. “You’re worthless. You know that?”
Ignoring his sister, Casper simply leaned back in the chair and resumed the position he was in before he was so rudely interrupted.
Tired of her brother’s lackadaisical attitude, she picked up the groceries from the floor and went to the kitchen to put them away.
As she emptied the bags, she couldn’t help but think of how agonizing their lives had become since Destin had arrived. More importantly, she fantasized about what he’d become.
****
After learning about the government’s capture of Test, both Ashley and Casper had become fearful about what the humans had possibly learned from him. The Reaper’s numbers had once made it so that they had no fears—no worries. Now that it was just the two of them, it was fear that sent them to the government facility.
Locating the facilities whereabouts wasn’t as difficult as they’d originally thought it would be. They were aware of the agent that had been tracking Test, Agent Dawson, and under the stealth of walking in the spirit realm, entered his home and found documents that gave clues to its location.
Their entry into the compound was simple, however, finding the right section of the building proved to be difficult. The energy required to spend long periods of time on the other side was exhaustive, and they had to abandon the fact finding adventure on the first trip. Having eliminated a good portion of the building on the first, the second visit proved to be monumental.
The original plan had been to sneak in, collect what information the government had accumulated, and then destroy it. Ashley was shocked to find, within the cordoned off section in the lower levels of the building, an infant. This infant had a wrist band that read “Ghost: PG15”. The infant rested inside of what looked like a large incubator. Hanging on the side of the apparatus was a clipboard. She glanced at the top and read:
PROJECT GHOST
SUBJECT: PG15
DONOR: TEST DAVIS
A chill went through her as she came to the realization that the “ghost” portion was referring to a Shadow. Part of her wanted to giggle at the irony, but the thought that the humans may know what they were was sobering.
The two of them quickly decided that they would leave and plan a third visit. This visit would be different from their original plan in that they would take the child. They knew that if this child had any portion of Test Davis’s DNA, that the chances of him having his power was there. Should he gain a Shadow’s powers, and they were able to mold him as a Reaper, their dominance could once again return.
Taking the child was as easy as breathing for them. They simply phased, walked in, phased back into the human world, disabled any surveillance in the room, and promptly destroyed anything and everything that could contain any information on Test. From there, Ashley took the child into her arms, phased to the spirit world, and rushed out of the building. Having taken so many lives in this manner, she knew exactly how much time she had before the infant died in her arms and, in less than a minute, she and Casper were miles away, getting into a car they’d stolen from a factory parking lot.
They’d chosen the name Destin to call the boy. She felt that it was their destiny to have him. They also found it somewhat comical that, since he was a clone of Test, they could call him “Dest” (though they rarely did) for short.
Of course, Destin was a burden. Ashley loathed the changing of diapers, the waking up in the middle of the night, the screaming and crying. Casper was of no help. He refused to do anything more than grocery shop. She’d found herself hating Destin; the only reason for continuing was their hope for power.
The boy grew at an incredible rate, and this presented challenges all of their own. A box of diapers would be too small by the time the second box was even used up. Though they didn’t know the exact reason for his growth, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that if the government could clone a person, there were probably a great number of things that they could do that the general public wouldn’t know about. It didn’t matter. In fact, they viewed it as a bonus. Increased growth rate could translate into a faster maturation of the boy’s powers.
****
The sound of Casper shouting in the living room snapped her back to the present. As she put away the last can of beans into the cupboard, she was anxious to go to Destin and talk to him about the coming of his abilities. She didn’t know if he’d used them yet, or if he’d even noticed anything different for that matter. She assumed that he hadn’t because he would surely have bounded into the living room and proudly displayed his new found ability.
Destin had spent his short life watching the two of them use their powers, and when he began to speak (from babble to sentences in less than two weeks) one of the first things he asked was why he couldn’t do the things that they could. She’d told him that his time would come. She would later realize that it was in that moment that she’d realized Destin’s presence was fate. Her only wish was that the sparkle in his eyes when he asked about his powers wasn’t so innocent. It made her sick to her stomach.
Regardless, now that the moment had arrived, the time for shaping the child had begun. Destin’s future, as well as hers, was rapidly becoming the present.
As she walked into the living room, she stared down to Casper who remained in the recliner with eyes closed and seemingly oblivious to the world.
“What were you shouting about?” she asked.
He didn’t answer so she kicked the footrest.
Without so much as a flinch, he opened his right eye. “What?”
“A second ago,” she replied. “What were you shouting about?”
Casper closed his eye and rubbed his face. “It was nothing. The kid kept bugging me to play with him and I just told him to go play in his room.”
Ashley folded her arms across her chest. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to occupy him now and then, especially now that he’s getting his powers,” she snapped with disgust. Without a reply from her brother, she turned away and walked across the living room towards Destin’s room. “You know,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “You’d better be careful. Before too long he might be able to kick your ass.”
“Whatever,” Casper replied. “Please.”
As Ashley entered the hallway, she felt a swell of energy come from the end of the hall and stopped mid-step. The waves continued to grow until the television behind her began to vibrate on the stand. With a panicked look, she turned back to Casper who’d sprung from the chair. Before she could open her mouth to speak, the horrific screaming of a child came from the room at the end of the hall.
Chapter 8
The small living room of Test’s home might as well have been a cardboard box with all of the people crammed into it. The dim yellow walls were darkened by the brown carpet under foot which made the room feel even smaller than it already was. The small wood stove that occupied the only corner of the room that the couch and chair left open looked like a toy more than a functional unit. On the far end of the couch was an old end table that had been painted white. It stood on four rickety legs that wobbled whenever someone sat down next to it. Resting atop of it was a lamp with a tan sha
de with an orange southwestern geometric pattern adorning its edges.
Test sat in his usual spot on the couch next to the lamp with Prim on the other end. Iku sat in the chair across from them while Cliff and Alyssa stood in front of the wood stove.
A heavy silence weighed the room as everyone looked around; no one seemed to want to initiate the conversation. Behind the chair in which Iku sat was a small window that was covered with curtains so sheer that they might as well not even be there. Through them, Prim and Test watched as Lauren passed by ten or so feet outside.
Never one to mince words, Cliff had grown tired of the silence.
“So, what exactly is it that we’re supposed to be afraid of?” he asked gruffly. “I realize that we’ve always been worried that the twins would cause trouble again at some point, but so what if they have a kid? Now, I’ll admit that it’s strange that the kid’s growin’ rate is different, but…” The old man paused and searched for the words. He shook his head while scratching his cheek as he continued. “I guess I just don’t understand the situation.”
Prim glanced to Iku whose eyes were locked on him, obviously waiting to follow Prim’s lead.
“Lauren was right,” said Prim. “We haven’t told you everything.”
Her nerves causing her to react opposite of what the seriousness of the situation would dictate, Alyssa’s voice chimed in like a bright sounding bell as she asked, “She is pregnant, isn’t she?” She immediately threw her hand over her mouth as everyone in the room glared at her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, covering her mouth with one hand and holding out the other. “Go ahead,” she said to Prim.
