Mimics of Rune 02- Surrender

by Aimee Laine

  “I miss you, Cael.”

  Not a sound returned.

  Okay, remember what they said. Connections can go wonky. Play it cool. Always.

  Lily shivered at the idea that she’d been jailed, her line of communication taken, and Maggie had run off. The moment’s thought only served to distract her for a second as she caught sight of a green, blinking light in the corner of the room.

  Lovely. They’re watching everything I do, too.

  To the left, a queen-sized bed covered in a velvety, blue cover waited in a side room. Lily craved climbing in and falling asleep to replenish her energy, yet at the same time, she wanted to curl up in a ball and wait for Cael to save her.

  You can do this, Lily. You really can. You can deal. Pretend you’re Charley. What would Charley do?

  She’d look around, get the lay of the land and fake whatever she needed.

  Because she’s so much better at this than you.

  Lily fisted her hands.

  Okay, enough chatter in my head.

  She drew in a deep breath and spun around in one big circle, taking in every ounce of detail possible.

  To the right, another door waited, closed but there. She had no interest in finding out where it led, but since she’d decided to do as Charley would, she forced herself toward it.

  A twist of the handle unlatched it.

  A push opened it right up.

  Lily ran her hand up the inside of the wall, hit what she figured would be a light switch and pushed it up.

  “Oh, my god.”

  • • •

  “Shit!” Cael’s curse came for the fifth time as both the audio and video feed from Lily remained solidly dead.

  “You aren’t helping,” James said. “And we still have Maggie’s audio.”

  “Too bad dogs can’t talk,” Wyatt said.

  James tapped keys on his laptop. “I hear breathing.”

  They all quieted, the sound of the plane’s engines and the slight bump of turbulence making the only noise. Cael leaned over James’s seat as Charley and Wyatt both pressed themselves forward. Four adults staring at one laptop screen left little room to maneuver.

  A whimper broke the breathing, but no light or color appeared on the screen.

  Indiscernible scratching came with a long, low sigh. “Reconnaissance,” Maggie said in a low whisper.

  Cael’s eyes opened wide as James tilted up to him.

  Charley leaned forward toward the blank screen. “You okay? What’s going on? Is Lily okay?”

  “One question at a time.”

  James tapped the brightness key. “Video’s not working.”

  “I’m in a closet. Give me a minute.” Rustling, like the crumbling of paper, came through. “Okay. I’m going out.”

  “Wait!” Cael leaned over the back of James’s chair. “Are you naked?”

  “Of course. How else am I going to get someone’s attention so I can steal their lab coat? I saw a couple guys walking down a hall I passed. If I’m going to go check out the building, I gotta look like them.”

  Fury pumped through Cael. “This isn’t what we agreed to. You’re supposed to stay with Lily.”

  “Lily’s in lockdown.”

  The video feed livened up again. The wide angle lens didn’t give much of a view and distorted the edges. From what showed, Cael took in a stark white hallway bathed in a soft pink light. “Why is her communication working and Lily’s isn’t?”

  “Gimme two seconds, and I’ll explain what I think. Just gotta make contact.”

  “Maggie, don’t!” James and Cael both said.

  “Leave her be, guys. This is Maggie we’re talking about,” Charley said.

  A white lab-coated person appeared on screen.

  “Pssst,” Maggie said.

  The person stopped. His or her head cocked to the side.

  “Come here.”

  The person pointed to himself.

  “Yes, idiot. Hurry up if you want to have a little fun.”

  “Mags, you really should be nicer.” James quieted at Cael’s wave.

  The man approached, his face filling the screen, a giant grin on his lips.

  “Wanna have a little fun?” The flirtatious sound would have won any human over—male or female.

  His interminable smile responded before the video went dark again.

  James palmed his forehead. “Good god, what is she doi—”

  The camera bounced, giving Cael the sensation of being inside a bottle in the ocean at high tide.

  A grunt. A moan. A crunch.

  “Okay, gimme a sec,” Maggie said. “Just gotta move …” Whatever she moved, they couldn’t see. “… Frank here into his temporary home.” More shuffling and clanging. “Fuck. This means I gotta be a guy.”

  “Take one for the team, Mags,” James said.

  “Fine, but I’m not adding the junk.”

  Wyatt’s brows furrowed. “I thought only Cael could be a woman.”

  “I can. Maggie is one of few women who can be men. It’s an odd one-way street,” Cael said.

  A few seconds later, she said, “Phew,” and returned to the hallway. “Dude, you guys stink, you know that? What is it with men’s bodies and their smell?”

  Charley chuckled, though Wyatt, Cael and James stoney-faced her. “What? She’s not wrong, though some of you smell really good.”

  “Okay, enough of that.” Maggie’s voice dipped low, matching the few sounds and syllables that had emanated from Frank’s voice. The edge of an electronic tablet appeared within the camera view. It rose in the air an inch at a time as if to show off or record its contents. “Pretty, ain’t it?” Maggie asked.

  Charley pointed to the screen. “What is that?”

  Her laugh came out soft. “Guess this guy was going to check on our home-away-from-home’s occupants. I now know what rooms, in this area at least, have people in them.”

  “Well, go get Lily.” Cael wanted to throw his hands up in the air and say ‘duh, Maggie, next step is save the princess.’

  “Can’t.”

  A boiling fury took over Cael. “What do you mean—you can’t?”

  “She’s in her room. Locked in her room. And I don’t think Frank here would be letting just anyone get out.”

  “You’re not really—”

  “Maggie’s right,” Wyatt said. “She’s got to play the part. Tell us about the lockdown.”

  “You know, the kind where they throw you in a room and lock it?” Only Maggie would be so simple in her descriptions. “I saw it coming when the two goon-girls approached and the red lights popped on with each door we walked through.”

  “That’s probably why our transmissions are failing,” James said. “Radio signals go through walls better than video. But how are we seeing yours?”

  “I’m in a hall full of green lights. I’m going to make my way through this building, get the lay of the land, pee in a real toilet, eat something, then go back to puppydom.”

  Charley chuckled as Cael’s lips involuntarily curved up.

  “So, just listen and watch—you are seeing, right?” She reached a set of double doors.

  “Intermittent. Lily’s feed is totally gone,” James said.

  “Told you. The hallways are wide open, but the doors to the rooms look sealed. Some have red lights, some green, and some look off above the doors.”

  Cael adjusted so he could look at James. “They keep the halls open for communication and prevent it within the rooms? Why?”

  James shook his head and shrugged.

  “I’m heading back toward the big huge room. Took a few too many turns as doggie-girl, so I gotta get myself reoriented.” The white hallways zoomed by as Maggie roamed. At a door, Frank’s hand and key card showed up in the frame of the video. A swipe and a beep put her through.

  “What room?” Wyatt asked.

  Maggie described what she and Lily stepped through before all of Lily’s communication died. “A lab maybe?” Maggie’s vi
deo feed froze.

  Another white-coated person appeared. His form grew larger as he closed in on Maggie.

  She said nothing.

  “Hey, Frank” He tipped his head up.

  “Hey.”

  “You hear the boss found the girl. The girl. I’d swear I heard him whooping it up in his office an hour ago.”

  “Of course I heard that.” Maggie’s deep voice had the audio waves bouncing on James’s screen.

  The man, Cael couldn’t make out the name tag, offered a slight laugh. “Oh, right. She’s in your pod. Duh.” He hit his forehead with a tablet he held.

  “He’s not the brightest in the bunch, is he?” Charley asked.

  “Yeah, well, I gotta go.”

  “Right. Yeah. Hey, you going to pod two?”

  “I am. Need to check on … something.”

  The man went quiet. A second later, he held out his hand, his eyes darting every which way. “Will you drop this at the desk? It’s for that girl. You know they’re related, right?”

  “Dude, who do you think I am?”

  The man laughed a small, self-conscious sound. “Right. Sorry. You are The-Man-of-The-Mom-Wing.”

  “Exactly. And I’ve got it covered.”

  “Right. Later then.” The man disappeared from camera view.

  The floor filled the screen. “Well, shit,” Maggie said.

  “What?” all the plane occupants said.

  “I’m in the mom wing, aka maternity wing. M for moms make Mimic miniatures.”

  “Huh?” Cael and James said at the same time.

  “I was shuffling papers while Mark there chatted me up. This is the “M” wing. The ‘mom wing’ as he called it. The M is for maternity.”

  “A breeding facility?” Cael asked.

  “That’s sick,” Wyatt said.

  “Or something else?” Charley asked.

  • • •

  An empty crib had been tucked against the far wall. Painted clouds covered that side of the room and up onto the ceiling. A rocking chair waited in the far corner along with a dresser and changing table.

  What do they think I need this for? What are they doing in this place?

  Lily drew in a deep breath.

  Don’t get over excited, Lil. It’s probably just in case. That’s all. Was Maggie right when she said ‘create a child’?

  She backed out of the room, flipping the light switch down and darkening the space again.

  Passing the ocean took concerted effort. Lily wanted to stop, to place her hands against the glass and stare at it. More, she wished she could breathe in the salty air like she had in California and let the night’s coolness cover her body.

  Instead, she pushed herself through to the bedroom.

  It boasted nothing unusual or new, merely another view of the ocean. The bathroom held only simplicity except for the giant garden tub.

  Back in the kitchen, she propped herself against the island and pulled open the fridge door. Cans and bottles of soda, fresh fruit and cheeses, meats and breads filled the box. The cold air sent a line of goose bumps up Lily’s arm.

  She grabbed a bottle of water, twisted the cap off and focused back on the beach.

  “It’s like a hotel room with no exit. You can stay, but you don’t get to leave.”

  • • •

  “You’re grasping at straws, Maggie,” Cael said.

  “Nope.” The page filled the camera view again. Across the top it read ‘M’ just as she’d said, but in the first box, it also had ‘Malia, B, 35W’. “I’ll go with mom’s name, the sex of a baby and her gestation. This spot is Lily’s.” The camera focused on a door with an ‘A’ on it as Maggie continued walking.

  Maggie went left. She turned right. Every once in a while she’d say ‘aha’ and keep going, though the camera showed little of what she saw, just enough to give them an idea.

  “You keeping up with me, Charley?” Maggie asked as she pushed through a set of doors.

  “I’m counting steps, turns and everything.”

  Cael placed his hands on Charley’s shoulders and kneaded. “Thank you for being a part of this.”

  She sighed against him. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else. Well, except on the ground with Lily.”

  Maggie stopped again at a door marked with a giant ‘2’ above the frame. The shuffle of papers came through the microphone before a sheet waved back and forth in front of the camera, slow enough that Cael could glance at the information on it.

  A similar series of words showed up. Name. Gender. Number.

  “No ‘W’,” Cael said.

  The page disappeared but reappeared with a new set of details.

  “Stop!” Cael pointed to the laptop. “There. Tenth door on the right. Leigh, F, 13. That’s her.”

  The plane banked to the left, a bump of dropping altitude forcing Cael back in his seat.

  Charley sat up straight. “We’re almost there. Keep going, Maggie, and we’ll—”

  A scratchy squawk came through the speaker system. “Ah, Charley, can you pick up?” Their pilot asked.

  Charley grabbed the intercom phone and pressed the speaker button.

  “We’re not cleared to land. I’m being diverted to an island about twenty miles away.”

  “Can you land anyway?”

  “Not unless we want to be shot down by two F-16’s.”

  Cael stole a glance at James.

  These really are our own guys.

  Charley drew in a deep breath. “Get us on the ground somewhere. We’ll figure out how to reach the island from there.”

  “Sounds like you guys got problems,” Maggie said. The doors in front of her opened up. “I’ll keep going.”

  As she passed through the doors, her video and audio went out.

  “Maggie?” James whirled the laptop back toward him. “Mags?”

  “Shit,” Cael said

  “Us or them?” Wyatt asked.

  James shrugged but typed away on the keys.

  Charley picked up the receiver. “Pat? Get us down on the ground wherever you can safely land.”

  21

  Cael paced along the outside of the plane and back, his feet sinking into the wet sand with each step.

  After landing, they’d been approached by ‘local authorities’, who forced them to park the plane near a small building at the end of the runway, as well as shut down the engines and all their equipment within it.

  Wyatt and Cael had both flashed their US identification along with their law enforcement badges. The ‘locals’ had taken them away—James and Charley’s passports, too. Every time one of them moved toward the single-story airport, a fatigue-dressed soldier walked out with machine gun in hand.

  From that point, they’d staked out their spots and watched the sun come up to brighten their stressful night.

  James sat against the wheel while Wyatt stood at the plane’s steps, and Charley sat on them. Though neither James nor Cael had managed to sleep, Charley and Wyatt had caught some downtime in the plane with Pat, their pilot. Cael didn’t blame them; humans needed rest that Mimics could do without—at least for a night or two.

  “This is ridiculous.” Cael kicked sand along the sandy ridge of the asphalt. “We’re on a private strip.”

  “Which is attached to a US Naval base,” James said from his spot. “We’re lucky we didn’t get shot down.”

  “We filed flight plans.”

  Wyatt padded to the edge of their platform and back. “Doesn’t matter. You know as well as I do, if they want to hold us, we will be held. We should’ve been better prepared. We shouldn’t have jumped after Roy so fast.”

  “Always one step ahead,” Charley said.

  She had a point, and it grated on Cael’s nerves. He kicked at a rock. The stone flew toward the chain-link fence. “The other island is only twenty miles away.”

  James huffed a laugh. “Across ocean water … there is no swimming to it … and we don’t have any way to communicate with Lily o
r Maggie if we do make it.”

  Charley hung her head. Her quietness and lack of answers, or even ideas, added to Cael’s anxiety over the entire situation.

  “They could keep us here indefinitely,” Wyatt said. “Especially now that they’ve got our IDs.”

  “We should have gone with them,” James said.

  “Right …” Charley laughed as she slid her cheeks into her cupped palms. “Chasing after three guys with machine guns would have been a really smart idea.”

  Pat poked his head out of the cabin door. “You said you need a boat? There’s always the emergency life raft.” He chuckled as he disappeared back inside.

  Cael looked to James, who lifted his head as Wyatt stood straighter.

  Charley raised up. “Not a good idea, guys.”

  “But it’s the only one we have,” Cael said. “We have compasses. All we need to do is go from one giant rock to the other.”

  Charley waved her hands in front of her. “Listen to yourselves. That’s not thinking straight, that’s thinking emotionally.” She shuffled down the stairs and stood on the tarmac with them. The breeze blew her hair as she followed the same path Wyatt had to the sandy area and back. “We need to give Lily and Maggie a little time.”

  Cael marched forward, fury taking hold of him.

  Wyatt stopped him with a hand to Cael’s chest. “You’re not getting near her with that look in your eye.”

  James rose, too, and stood between Cael and Charley. “Come on, man. Now’s not the time to get mad at Charley.”

  “You can’t keep saying Lily can do this.” Cael tightened his hands into fists.

  Charley wormed her way around James and Wyatt until she stood between them and Cael. She’d never feared him, or at least never showed it. Both James and Wyatt rolled their eyes as Cael laughed, breaking his own tension.

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “You’re fearless, aren’t you?”

  She patted his chest. “Only when it comes to you. I’m not going to see you get hurt because you’re rushing for an answer.”

  “So then, we have to wait?” he asked.

  Charley nodded.

  “But how long?”

  • • •

  Lily would have sworn a dog barked.

  I don’t have a dog. I must be dreaming.

  She rolled over, flung her arm against her pillow and focused on the details of herself, in Cael’s embrace, their naked bodies sliding against one another. She brought to mind his face, his muscles, the way they flexed under her touch. The softness of his skin. The hardness of his stare. The love that pierced her soul.