“What’s happening?” Rick called out.
“That child!” David shouted on his way down. “He got back up!”
Colter was still in the doorway, shooting away. He clipped off three grenades, threw them one by one, and slammed the door. Instead of running down like David, Colter jumped down a whole flight of stairs at once, hitting the landing, and doing it again.
“Is it following you?” Rick asked them.
“What the hell do you think?!” David shouted. The stairway lights went off, leaving the bright red exit signs like beacons in the dark. The whole building shook so violently they could barely stand up. They heard a huge explosion above them, and pieces of metal rained on their heads. Each flight of stairs began to break apart from each other, and suddenly everything was floating. If Rick hadn’t pulled Henric back, he would’ve plummeted to his death. Everyone stopped in place and looked up to see that the door had been replaced by a gaping hole in the wall and the child was hovering in the air. Scowling, he muttered something under his breath and everyone fell, thousands and thousands of feet into nothing.
17
Colter held onto the railing with his left hand and shot the stairs above him with his right, trying to break them apart.
“Got a plan?!” He shouted. “Anybody?!”
“We could try to jump onto one of these doors!” shouted Rick. “But they probably wouldn’t budge, plus we could get flattened by the stairs above us!”
“So this is it? This is how we die?!” David screamed, holding on for dear life. Henric was petrified, his eyes were closed, and he didn’t even make a sound.
“Have any of you taken the serum?!” Colter yelled down at them.
“What serum?” asked David.
“Yes!” Rick replied.
Colter stopped shooting and dove off his staircase, landing on David’s. He threw himself off of it and landed next to Rick, who helped him regain balance.
“Are you serious?” Colter asked him, staring directly into his eyes.
“Yeah. In pill form.”
Colter shook his head. “One little pill doesn’t-”
“Oh, it was way more than one. I damn near died. Kinda like now, so if you have a point GET TO IT!” He screamed.
“We might be able to tank this. We could shield the others-”
“I’ll stop you right there. I don’t give a damn about the rest of you! If you hadn’t followed me, this wouldn’t have happened!”
“But it has happened, so help me think of something!” Colter barked at him.
Rick looked down and caught vertigo. It still looked like an empty void but the red exit signs and rushing wind made it worse. He had been handling it well up until now. He could fill his stomach churning as he leaned against the railing.
“Okay, okay. This is obviously very long, we’ve been falling for a while. Maybe, if we find a way to climb back up, all the stairs will pile together. We won’t be crushed by anything and we might not be flattened by fall damage!”
Colter nodded. “It’s worth a shot.” He pried Henric off the rail and motioned for David to catch him. Henric screamed as he flew but David managed to catch him.
“Now how do we get back up?” Rick asked Colter.
“I can jump it, but I take it you never trained for anything?”
“No. I took those pills today.”
Colter’s eyes widened. “How the hell are you standing?!”
“HEY SOLDIER BOY!” David shouted. “WE GOT MORE PROBLEMS!”
Colter and Rick looked up and saw a bright white light at the edge of the gaping hole. It was the ghost man, and he didn’t look happy. He extended his hand and siphoned the boy’s light from him. Instead of attacking, the boy surprisingly ran. He floated down to one of the staircases and began running down, hopping from one staircase to the next.
“No, No NO! Take the clone back so I can jump!” David shouted. Henric was still too terrified to move.
Colter caught him and David and the other clone jumped together. Colter pulled off his last grenade to throw it when the ghost man materialized in front of him.
“SShhhhhit!” Colter fell backwards down the steps dropping the grenade. The clone caught it in his left hand and Rick stopped Colter from falling. When the boy saw the man he stopped and tried to run back but it was too late. The child was pulled in like a tractor beam, lifted off his feet and suspended in air. His face was expressionless and his light continued to fade. The ghost man raised his hand and placed it on the boy’s head. In a fraction of a second, they both disappeared and suddenly they were rising back up, all the stairs flying back to the way they were before. Everything clicked back together like dusty legos and the lights flickered back on. Everyone laid down on the stairs to rest.
“I’m not sure if I even want to know what just happened.” said Colter. “But I’m glad I’m not dead.”
“Yeah well, I got about two hours.” said the clone, staring longingly at his wrist. “Hey kid,” he looked at Henric. “What’s your number?”
Henric still a little shell-shocked, frowned. “I don’t have a phone number.”
David and Colter chuckled to themselves as the clone tried to explain what he meant.
“No, I’m talking about the number that they identify you as in the lab. Your duplicate number.”
Henric stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what that is. I’ve never had one.”
They sat in complete silence for a while, too exhausted to move. The entire time, the clone was fixated on Henric’s bracelet.
“If you don’t mind, could I see your bracelet?”
Henric obliged, showing the clone his wrist.
“Ah. I see.” he backed away slowly and put his head against the wall, closing his eyes.
“What? Is there something wrong?”
“No, it’s just… you’re not like me. I mean, yeah you’re a clone but you were actually born. You came out of a womb, I came out of a test tube. You technically don’t need a bracelet. You’ll live a full life.”
“What about you? You can’t?”
The clone shook his head. “That’s why these bracelets were made, to tell us and our superiors how much time we had left before our bodies give up on us. Some have heart attacks, some have strokes. Some die peacefully while others beg to be put down. That’s just how it is.”
They heard shouting above that put a pause on their conversation. Colter reloaded his gun and got up.
“I’ll check, make sure we aren’t being followed.” He jogged up the steps like he was preparing for a marathon.
“Is there anything to do? Like medicine, or a procedure that extends your life?” Henric asked him.
“There is one drug they use, but they only use it on clones trained in combat special ops. It’s provided by the military, but it’s too late for any of that though.”
The clone started breathing heavier, clearly struggling. He slid his right arm under his leg.
“Hold on, wait, how much time do you have left?!”
The clone's eyes drooped, like he was getting sleepy.
“I don’t want to know,” he muttered, closing his eyes completely before Henric shook him.
“Stay awake, come on, my dad worked in this lab, maybe he could-”
“What’s your name?”
“Huh? It’s Henric. Henric McCathey. What’s yours?”
The clone laughed a little, still swooning.
“I told you. I’m just a number. They never gave me a name. I’m not important enough.”
“In my dad’s office, didn’t you say you had three hours or something? It hasn’t been three hours, there’s no way!”
“That’s the biggest flaw in these bracelets.” the clone mumbled, practically gone. “Their accuracy’s a little off.”
The door above them slammed open and they looked up in time to see Colter’s head get shot off, chunks of brain and blood raining down on them.
18
Henric screamed out whi
le Rick and David got into position. David had Colter’s last grenade, and Rick was ready to fire.
“If you’re thinking about anything stupid, don’t.” a voice called out, using some sort of loudspeaker. “We have you surrounded. In fact, we had an entire crew waiting for you in the museum below. Nobody expected you to take a nap on the stairs,” the man laughed. “But here we are.”
David and Rick whispered to each other, trying to come up with a plan. Henric tried to wake the clone up, but he was gone. His bracelet started beeping and Henric lifted his wrist. The screen read, COD: Respiratory Failure.
“If they killed Colter, I know they don’t give a shit about me!” said David in a hushed whisper. “I might as well shoot myself now.”
“If you think you can make it all the way down, you can’t. We’d drop a bunch of grenades down and you’d be dead before you reached the bottom.”
Rick and David looked down the endless flight of steps and came to a silent agreement. They slowly walked up the steps but Henric wouldn’t move.
“Come on.” Rick demanded. “He’s dead and there’s hundreds like him.”
Henric reluctantly stood up and walked behind Rick, who slipped the gun in his pants. Rick glanced back to make sure he was still following.
“Raise your hands. I’m sure they want us alive.”
They made their way to the top and David quickly dashed behind both of them.
“Let’s just see how they respond first, okay?”
Rick muttered something under his breath but moved in front of the doorway.
“You can’t be serious. I’m so sick of clones.”
In front of them were two clones and three soldiers. The soldiers had on very dark red gear, unlike Colter’s blue gear. One clone had the same gear as the soldiers and the other wore a suit. He was the only one not holding a gun.
“You are slightly mistaken. I am the original.” The man showed his wrist and the clone showed his, revealing which one had a bracelet. “My name is Melvin. We aren’t here to kill you two, we work for Lavaunzier, not Bickerstaff.” Melvin made a gesture to his crew and they lowered their weapons. “Your friend is a coward by the way. Hello? You hiding behind the kids? We see you.”
David quietly stepped forward, scowling. “Bickerstaff threatened to kill me, and seeing how you shot Colter’s head off, I was sure I’d be next.”
“We aren’t here for you. You shouldn’t be here at all. Lavaunzier can handle it’s own problems, we didn’t need Bickerstaff butting in.”
“Yeah sure. Tell that to your mini me’s running half naked around here.”
Melvin’s smile disappeared. “You’re trying to get killed, aren’t you?”
“Why are you tracking us? What do you want us for?” Rick demanded.
“We’re just here to take you to your dad. That’s all. If you want to know how all of this happened we can tell you on the way.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Henric “Let’s go.” Rick, Henric and David walked alongside Melvin while his crew trailed from behind.
“Shouldn’t they be in front, in case something attacks us?” asked David.
“Nonsense.” Melvin replied. “The only things out on these two floors are the Bickerstaff cleanup crew and the clones. And that’s because the clones are the only creatures smart enough to escape. Fortunately for us, the clones running amok have all but expired. They don’t keep the good ones here.”
“Where do the good clones go?” Henric asked him.
“Military bases, other labs, some in the Belway network and some not, space… everywhere. I’m glad these are dead though. I get sick of seeing my own face every now and then.”
They passed by their dad’s office and saw that the door was fixed. The hallway wasn’t littered with blood, bodies and bullets, it was completely clean. No damage, no destruction.
“Why is everything back to normal? This area looked like trash when we left it.” said Rick.
“It was the clean up ghost, clearly. I’m calling it that because I don’t know what else to and the scientists gave it a long ass number instead of a name. I don’t know how, no, nobody knows how or why he does what he does. Everyone that tried to experiment on him disappeared.”
“Did you see the kid just like him?” asked David. “That thing almost killed us before we could make it down the stairs.”
“Oh, I have seen it.” Melvin confirmed. “Tacarria makes the creepiest crap imaginable.”
They made it back to the elevator without encountering anyone, or anything else. Besides the people around him, it felt just like it did when Henric entered some time ago.
“I need two of you to stay up here and dismiss any more Bickerstaff agents that come by. We’re trying to keep this discreet.”
Two soldiers walked away as Melvin pressed the down button. They entered and Melvin repeatedly pressed the down button, revealing the scanner Henric had seen before. Once he put his card against the touch screen display changed. The map disappeared and a list of areas popped up on the screen. Melvin kept swiping until he got to the bottom of the list and clicked on Mermaid Aquarium.
“Those can’t all be real places.” said Henric. “The museum only had four exhibits.”
“That’s because those exhibits are the four last levels of this lab. The scientists that oversee those floors are grouped together, and the museums are made to show investors progress. Well that, and to inflate their egos.” Melvin replied. “There are twenty floors here, and most only know about three. It’s much easier to make five stops instead of twenty, especially with an elevator this damn slow.”
“But what was my... our dad doing this whole time? I’ve been through both of his offices and the lab, and I haven’t seen a sign of him anywhere. Why didn’t he come for us?”
“Henric stared Melvin down, his eyes demanding an answer.
“I’ll explain when you meet him, but you have to do exactly as I say after that.”
“And if we don’t?” Rick replied, scowling. Melvin looked at him coldly.
“Then you’ll die like everything else here.”
19
When the elevator dinged it opened up into the aquarium room Henric had been in before he found Eve. Rick stopped walking abruptly and so did the soldier. Henric stood by him while Melvin, David, and the clone continued walking, blissfully unaware until Rick spoke out loud.
“Why are all the clones based on you?” David looked back but Melvin and the clone stayed still.
After a small pause he finally answered. “Because I was a success. They weren’t snatching DNA from every employee, they were trying to cure diseases. They used sick people, people they thought they could help. I had human immunodeficiency virus and lung cancer. I probably had the shittiest luck imaginable, but somehow they saved me. I can’t even begin to tell you how many failed.”
Melvin raised his hands, and they were paler than a vampires. “By the time Lavaunzier had killed over ten thousand people before they realized that they were wasting time. Wasting resources. Their biggest success was me, so they began producing clones with my DNA which lead to big results. Let’s keep walking, shall we? We’re taking the long way, I have to make sure I’ve done everything I was sent to do.”
“You just said you couldn’t tell us how many failed, but then said over ten thousand died.” Rick told him.
“That’s because not all the failures died.”
They walked past the big camouflage door Henric had left open and entered the mermaid facility. No one gazed around at the tanks in surprise and no one showed any fascination, but of course they wouldn’t. They’ve been here already. Including Rick. After a long moment of silence, they made it to the cylinder and spotted a big splotch of half-dried blood with that outlined a human body, like a demonic snow angel.
“Oh my God,” said Melvin in horror. “What did that?”
Rick turned to Henric. “Is that where you fell? From the tank?”
Henric n
odded.
David and Melvin looked at him in astonishment. “How are you still alive?!” David asked him.
“The robot, I mean automaton, found me and carried me to the hospital ward.”
“Why would you try to climb up there, anyway?” Melvin asked him. His clone walked away and examined the blood.
Henric accidentally looked up at Eve’s corpse, her hair still swaying while she was being surrounded by tiny fish. The water had gotten much darker as time passed, and that made Henric realized he didn’t know what time it was, or the day. He looked away from Eve and tried to hold back tears.
Glass Back Page 7
