The Genetic Experiment: Book 2 in The Generation Series

by E S Richards

  “Mother is already gone as a result of what you’ve done. You banished Cain back into the outside world just because of his generation number, yet you say they don’t matter to people here. Clearly they do, or else he would be sitting here with me now. He wasn’t a mutant; he was just unlucky. And now he’s alone because of you.

  “Then there’s Asher… don’t even get me started on Asher. I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done to him.” She paused, letting the words sink in. “Those people were my family, are my family. Not you. Maybe you used to be a long time ago but so much has changed. In this world you get to choose your family and I have chosen mine. You don’t get to choose for me.”

  Emerson took in a sharp intake of breath as he watched his daughter speak. He opened his mouth once again to say something else but then thought better of it, lowering his gaze and shaking his head.

  “I’m very sorry you feel that way,” he eventually whispered as he started walking towards the door. “But to me you’ll always be my family. You and your brother, and I’ll try every day to make you see that.”

  With his final words Emerson pulled the door of Zahyra’s room closed behind him and walked away down the corridor. Zahyra stared at the back of the door unmoving, her heart racing.

  What had happened in the last hour didn’t make sense to her. Her father had been gone. Dead, lost, abandoned. Whatever had happened to him it hadn’t been living in the safe haven. Living a life of luxury whilst his family struggled to get by in the outside world. A family that he had injected a mutation into, all in the name of science.

  Her blood boiled as she thought of it again. Of her father reaching over Asher’s body when he was just a baby and injecting him with a mutation. Then fleeing into the night like a coward, leaving her and her mother to deal with what he had done.

  Her heart ached for her little brother. Knowing that he was somewhere nearby, equally if not more afraid and nervous about the safe haven than she was. The one saving grace Zahyra had taken from the conversation with her father was that he had at least not told Asher he was the reason he was now a Gen 6 mutant. But she couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling just from meeting his father for the first time.

  It was ridiculous how much the safe haven was responsible for and how much it was continuing to destroy Zahyra’s life, her brother’s life and even Cain’s. She hadn’t thought about Cain for a while, but now that she did her heart ached for him too. She wished they had never travelled to the safe haven. She wished they had just gone back to Cain’s cabin and settled down there. She would have had the people she cared about most and that was now all she realised she needed. Her father had spoken about the wonders of technology that the safe haven offered but she knew none of it was worth it if she was forced to endure it alone. Without Cain, without Asher, there was no safe haven. There was no safety. Only secrets and deception and pain.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning Zahyra woke to Heather standing in her room. Back to normality she thought, no more knocking as people came into her room. Surprisingly she was happy to see Heather. She never thought that would be the case but after the meeting with her father yesterday she was just glad it hadn’t been him who’d come to wake her.

  Breakfast was waiting in her room and Zahyra wondered whether she would ever be allowed back in the mess hall again after fleeing from it during the alarm. Heather informed her that once she had eaten, showered and dressed she would be shown more of the facility and then possibly return to T128 in the afternoon.

  It was at her father’s wishes apparently, that she learnt more about what went on in the safe haven in order for her to be able to fully appreciate everything they did there. Zahyra furrowed her brow at the idea of her father being able to command what she did with her day, however the promise of being shown more of the safe haven appealed her and she accepted Heather’s proposal without argument.

  Heather then decided to wait in the room whilst Zahyra ate and showered, taking her clothes into the bathroom with her to change. Zahyra wondered whether this was Heather’s own doing or if it was on instruction from her father instead. She didn’t ask. In fact she didn’t speak to Heather the whole time she was getting ready. Just solemnly nodded her head on occasion and tried to avoid her awkward stare as Heather watched her eat.

  As they walked through the main atrium Zahyra noticed the mess hall was filled with people wearing black and white armbands. Knowing her father had to be in that room made her toes curl and she quickly averted her gaze to where Heather was leading her.

  They took another corridor Zahyra had not yet discovered and Heather inputted a code into a keypad on the wall, allowing the door at the end to swing open. It opened into a huge warehouse and it only took a second for Zahyra to realise they were in the soldiers department.

  The walls were lined with glass units, each one containing weapons of different descriptions. Zahyra recognised a few of them, various types of guns, small daggers and round objects she assumed were grenades. Most of the items she didn’t recognise however and her thoughts slowed so she could process the volume of weaponry the safe haven must have.

  “This is the arms room,” Heather said in her typical monotone voice. “As you can tell we are equipped to deal with any and all interferences, in whatever form they come. Our weapons date back to The Before Time, along with several new additions I doubt you’ll have heard of. They are things we have developed within the safe haven to help us deal with more advanced mutants on the outside. Certain weapons will render certain mutations inactive, hence giving our team the upper hand in combat.”

  Zahyra gaped at the sheer quantity of weapons in the room. No cabinet was left unfilled, with every inch of the four large walls covered by one item or another.

  “Once T128 is completed you will be allowed to choose a band. Given that your skillsets match what is required of that band you will be accepted into it. You’ve seen what goes on in black, grey is fairly self-explanatory. Now you will experience the red band.”

  Zahyra was slightly annoyed Heather hadn’t thought to explain what the bands meant to Zahyra. She was lucky she’d met Zac who’d told her everything. She was also unsure why Heather thought it was a good idea to let her experience the life of someone in the red band. She found it odd that she would be taught about the safe haven’s offensive abilities but then maybe they were trying to use it as a deterrent should she be tempted to break the rules again.

  “Have you ever shot a gun before?”

  Heather’s question caught Zahyra off guard and her mind instantly took her back to the scout hut in the forest. She had shot a gun, yes. And killed a man. Three, actually. The last in close combat. An involuntary shiver ran down Zahyra’s spine as she recalled that day.

  The faces of the mutants she had killed still haunted her and she wished she could take back her actions of that day. Stabbing the first mutant to save Asher and then shooting the second wasn’t so bad when she remembered it, but the fight with the last mutant had been both the most exhilarating and scarring moment of her life.

  She nodded her head to Heather. Who promptly responded by withdrawing a handgun from somewhere within her uniform. Zahyra’s eyes widened. Had Heather always carried that gun? She had no idea it was hidden in her uniform, its outline completely masked by the folds of the material. Heather smirked slightly at Zahyra’s response and proceeded to take apart her weapon, laying each part of it down on a table to the side of her.

  What followed was a very tedious lesson on the workings of a gun. The different parts it consisted of, how each bit worked, how to clean it properly, how to aim, how to fire. Zahyra followed Heather’s instructions closely, completing tasks as they were laid out for her but her heart wasn’t in it.

  She knew on some level this was an important lesson and it could benefit her at some point in the future if she knew how to properly handle a gun. At that moment though using a gun just didn’t feel right to her. She didn’t like the weight of
it in her hand or how the metal made her fingers smell. It felt wrong, like she was a child playing with an object she shouldn’t be allowed to touch.

  Heather explained that although the safe haven had developed new weapons, they were only used on special occasions. Each team was equipped with them when they left the facility but guns were the preferred apparatus, being easier to replace and maintain. Once satisfied with Zahyra’s handling of the gun Heather led her through a small door in the side of the warehouse and into a shooting range. She handed Zahyra yellow tinted glasses and ear protectors before instructing her to aim at the target at the other end of the room and shoot.

  Zahyra stared at the image in front of her. It was a cut out of a man with small round targets drawn onto various parts of its body. The glasses gave it a sickly look, the ear protectors heightening her other senses as sound was removed.

  The faces of everyone she’d seen murdered danced in front of her eyes as Zahyra held the gun in front of her. The young girls around the bus, each one with their throats slashed viciously. The mutant Cain had shot when he rescued her, his blood seeping into the desert sand around his lifeless body. Everyone Cain had killed in the city, most of them without even using a weapon. Then the three mutants she had killed herself in the forest. The one sent to kill Asher, the one she had shot and the one she had fought in hand-to-hand combat, dancing around the trees as he turned invisible.

  Zahyra had endured all of those deaths to save her brother and now she wasn’t even allowed to see him. Everything she’d done, all the horrible things. The nightmares would be worth it if she had him by her side. But she did not.

  Heather shouted something at her as her hands began to shake holding the gun. Her words were muffled but Zahyra got the gist of what she was saying. She re-sighted the gun. Tried to think of something, anything that would remove the stench of death from her nostrils and pulled the trigger.

  Even with the ear protectors on the sound was deafening, just as Zahyra had remembered it. With the sound of the gun firing the images spun back into her mind. The bodies of countless dead mutants staring at her, blaming her for their deaths. Zahyra ripped the ear protectors off and shoved the gun into Heather’s hands as she walked over to the wall. Pressing her forehead against it she allowed the cool rock to calm her down, reminding her that it wasn’t real, she wasn’t outside anymore. The reality of the safe haven didn’t make her feel much better, but at least there was no one trying to kill her in there.

  “You missed.” Heather’s voice finally reached Zahyra as the blood stopped rushing around her head. Zahyra didn’t turn to look at her but felt her fingers curl up into fists. In that instant Zahyra was overwhelmed by a desire to hit something. Anything.

  She stalked back towards Heather and pulled the gun from her hands. Turning towards the target she fired three bullets, each one hitting the image of a man in the centre of the head. Her ears stung from the noise without the protectors on but she didn’t react. Clicking the safety onto the gun she placed it carefully on the ground and walked back out of the door into the main warehouse, leaving Heather staring at the target lost for words. A gaping hole now occupied where the head should have been.

  Zahyra didn’t know what had come over her. She felt like she had done back in the forest when she was fighting that mutant. In the moment it had just come so naturally to her, like it was something she’d been doing her entire life. Now, afterwards, she felt strange. She felt uncomfortable. And she resented Heather for making her do it.

  The woman appeared a minute later, carrying the gun and Zahyra’s ear protectors. She removed the glasses from her face then and handed them silently back to Heather. Neither of them said a word about Zahyra’s outburst. Either Heather was too shocked by the way Zahyra had handled the gun or she disapproved of the manner in which she’d done it. Either way Zahyra didn’t care, she was finished trying to win any kind of approval from the woman.

  For the next couple of hours until lunch Heather bored Zahyra with details of what went on in the everyday life of someone in red band. Zahyra suspected this had been Heather’s band before she was promoted, the way she spoke of it sounding wistful and longing.

  She didn’t understand how anyone could yearn for a life that put them in constant danger, although from how Heather described it the red band was just a glorified security detail for the safe haven. Heather reeled off some statistics about how often there were security incidents and it didn’t sound like a life that was filled with much drama.

  As the time drifted closer to one Zahyra wondered whether she would be led back to the mess hall for lunch. It had been two days since she’d ran away during the alarm and moreso than anything else she just wanted to be surrounded by other people. Even if she didn’t talk to them – which she didn’t really plan on doing – the chatter of other people had always made her feel more relaxed. Zahyra had never been very good at being on her own, finding herself often lost in her own thoughts. Which these days brought her more pain than pleasure.

  As Heather checked her own timekeep she nodded to Zahyra.

  “You’ll stay by my side?” Heather asked Zahyra although she only expected one response. Zahyra nodded, only just stopping herself from giving Heather a mock salute, she didn’t think it would be received well.

  Satisfied Heather made sure all the cabinets in the warehouse were still fastened shut. She had withdrawn a few other weapons to show Zahyra, although none of them she’d been allowed to try like the gun. Not that she had really wanted to.

  Heather then led her briskly to the mess hall, Zahyra already struggling to hide her smile as she was allowed to re-enter the room. It wasn’t anything special but just being able to eat in the presence of other people was something to look forward to. She liked watching people and a part of her also hoped she could listen in on a few conversations, find out more about the safe haven that wasn’t just scripted propaganda from Heather.

  Heather led Zahyra to a table with two other women, both wearing red armbands. They addressed Heather politely as their superior and inclined their heads to Zahyra in acknowledgement before returning to their own conversation.

  Both Zahyra and Heather ate in silence, neither of them wanting to converse with the other. Zahyra instead chose to listen to the conversation between the two red banded women as they discussed some recent excursion they’d been sent on. It sounded like they had carried out a raid on a group of advanced mutants who were settling down near the safe haven’s borders. Zahyra didn’t know how large the facility actually was, or how much ground it covered outside of the mountain so she couldn’t determine how much of a threat the women had regarded the mutant gathering.

  From the sounds of things though they had entered into some kind of agreement with certain members, referring to them as ‘party delta’. Zahyra was puzzled by this, unsure why anyone within the safe haven would want to set up a deal with any advanced mutants. From everything that went on within the facility – solidified by them removing Cain – she thought there was a zero tolerance policy for anyone ranked above Gen 3.

  Sadly much of what the women said after bringing up party delta was spoken about in a sort of code. They mentioned mission statements and checkpoints, along with arrival and departure times. Perhaps the red band had more to offer than just facility security and Zahyra found herself wishing Heather had shown her more of it rather than just the scope of weapons they carried.

  After Zahyra had finished eating she waited patiently for Heather to finish her own meal. The two women said their polite goodbyes and made their exit, at which point Heather leaned forward in her seat, turning towards Zahyra.

  “I’ll give you two options now,” she said while finishing off her last mouthful of bread. “You can return to T128, but I’m sure Professor Welbeck will expect some form of apology from you before she restarts the trials.” She spoke with a disapproving stare, clearly still upset by Zahyra breaking into one of their screens the other day. Zahyra acknowledged the
first option, waiting quietly to see what else she had up for grabs.

  “Or,” Heather continued. “I can show you what the white band does.”

  Zahyra thought for a moment. She knew the white band was the medical personnel and while she didn’t have much interest in what they did she didn’t feel she was quite ready to swallow her pride and return to Professor Welbeck. She was also unenthused by the idea of another T128 trial. Her experience in the small heated room before had been less than pleasant and she dreaded to think what Professor Welbeck would do now that she’d broken onto her screen.

  “I’d like to learn more about this place,” Zahyra spoke in a sickly sweet voice, trying to appear grateful to Heather for giving her the options. “Seeing what the white band does would be good.”

  “Very well,” Heather gave her a curt nod and then rose to her feet, leaving her plate of food on the table as usual. Zahyra followed her and soon enough there was someone wearing a grey armband clearing up their mess behind them. Zahyra didn’t think it was really fair leaving certain people to do all the small, unthankful jobs. She knew it was necessary to keep the facility functioning properly, but it wasn’t too much effort to clear your own plate away at the end of a meal.

  When they reached the medical area of the safe haven Heather deposited Zahyra once again with Grant Tapton, the young medic who’d performed her examination after she arrived at the facility. Zahyra felt a little awkward around him, having had to remove her top in front of him already. But if the medic shared any of her feelings of awkwardness he didn’t exhibit them, seeming very happy to show Zahyra around his place of work.

  Grant busied himself finishing the paperwork of whatever task he’d been working on before her arrival and Zahyra leant casually against a wall while she waited. Thankfully Heather had removed herself to go and deal something, so she didn’t feel under pressure from her ever-watchful eye.