Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4) (21 page)

The house was small and he doubted his search would take long.  He did not know what he would find and worried that the couple had committed unspeakable acts of brutality against them.

“Gabriel! Melissa!” he shouted as he walked down a corridor. 

All of the doors along the hallway stood open, except for one.  He entered each of the three opened doors and found two furnished bedrooms and a bathroom, but no Gabriel or Melissa.  The rooms were neat and tidy with no personal effects such as photographs or fragrances.  The closets were organized meticulously and by color shade with shoes lined in pairs below.  The overall appearance was sterile.  Yet, as he inspected the rooms, a decidedly unsterile, pungent odor lingered.  Foul but distinct, he placed it immediately.  It was the smell of decaying flesh.  The scent grew stronger the farther he moved down the hallway and became overwhelming as he stood before the remaining door.  Made of a different material that the others were, the door was locked from the outside.  He called out again for Gabriel and Melissa, but was met with no response.  He could not guess what awaited him beyond the door and tried to steel himself against his worst imaginings.  Then, holding his breath, he unlatched the door and turned the handle.  He was immediately greeted by a wall of rank air, the worst he’d ever breathed.  He placed the crook of his elbow over his mouth and nose and tried to filter the stench with his shirt sleeve.  But his effort was useless.  He opened his mouth to callout but gagged several times instead.  Tears burned his eyes from the retching but he noticed that dim light shined.  A staircase led down to a cellar.  He held tight to the railing and steadied himself as he stepped down each stair.

“Gabriel!” he yelled and fought back the wave of nausea that racked him.  “Melissa!”

His voice sounded strangled to his ears, but two familiar voices answered and recognized his.

“Yoshi!  Is that you?” he heard Gabriel call.

“It’s me, brother,” he answered.  “Why the hell does it smell like dead bodies down here?”

Before anyone could reply, he’d reached the bottom of the steps and his question was answered.  He saw three dead bodies, swollen and stricken, piled next to the bottom landing.  The hideous sight of the rotting corpses, along with the smell that accompanied their decomposition, caused him to gag uncontrollably until his considerable breakfast had been purged.

“Ah man,” Gabriel said. 

“Whoa.  That’s a lot of puke,” Melissa winced.

Yoshi ignored the comments.  He was too nauseated to be embarrassed.  He’d found Gabriel and Melissa and they were safe.  As soon as the queasiness abated, he would tell them about Alexandra.

After a seemingly interminable spell of sickness, he wiped his mouth and managed to speak.

“You alright, man?” Gabriel asked.

“I’m fine. Can’t you tell?” he joked and half-smiled.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Melissa said excitedly.  “I’d hug you but you’re, well, puke-y.  No offense.”

“None taken.  But how I look and smell pales in comparison to that,” he said and gestured to the bodies solemnly.  “We’ve got to get upstairs.  Jack’s on his way.  We have a problem.”

“No kidding,” Gabriel said. 

“Where’s Alex?” Melissa asked.

“That’s our problem.  They have her!  They have Alex!”

“What?” Melissa panicked.  “Oh my God!”

“It’s another cop!  He took her!  We have to go and find her,
now
,” he exclaimed
.

Yoshi did not waste any more time.  He ran up the staircase with Gabriel and Melissa in tow.  They filed down the hallway, through the living room and dining room, stepped over two dead creations and passed the kitchen and out the broken screen door. 

“What the hell happened in there, Yoshi?” Gabriel asked.

“They caught me on a really off day,” he replied cryptically without breaking stride.

They walked around the property until they reached the front of the house just in time to see Jack pulling to the curb.  His rusted pickup truck wheezed and sputtered to a stop.

“Get in,” he ordered.

No one questioned him and climbed in.

“We have to get my wife and your friend,” Jack rumbled.  “And then we kill them.  We kill them all.”

Dr. Terzini stared impassively at the monitor of his ultrasound machine as he glided its transducer across Dawn Downing’s abdomen.  He was careful to keep his face blank, expressionless, to exude the utmost of calm outwardly, while inwardly, a firestorm of emotions had been triggered.  The three-dimensional image on his screen was disappointing at best.  Dawn’s fetus appeared to be rejecting the genetic material he’d introduced and, while it wasn’t in mortal danger yet, it did not appear to be thriving either.   In fact, cell maturation had all but ceased.  The cessation was obvious, glaring.  The fetus’s size and form had remained unchanged.  By now, it should have shown marked growth and development, accelerated progress.  Instead, it remained unaffected, seemingly impervious to his augmented gene therapy and amniotic fluid.  Imperviousness to his treatment meant only one thing to him, that the fetus would die.  Under normal circumstances, he would not have wasted further time and resources on a dying subject.  He would do as he had in the past: tell Dawn of her fetus’s impending death, of her own failure, assure her that she would be mentioned in his research notes and then promptly leave the room only to fill it with unscented, toxic vapors. 

But Dawn was differed from his other subjects.  He was reluctant to both end his time with her and inform her of the status of her fetus.  After all, she had been such a willing participant in his experimentation.  Her willingness and cooperation had been a first for him.  Moreover, she had seemed intrigued by his explanations each time he had visited.  She had not screamed or thrashed since her initial moments in his facility, since he explained to her his purpose, his goal, and the role she would play in it.  Instead, she had remained still, just as she was now, a porcelain-skinned tribute to an otherwise dreadful society of beings. 

He glanced down at her pale, swollen midsection and felt a rush of heat flush his face and neck.  Blushing was a reaction he’d never been inclined to have before he’d met her.  Now, each time he looked at her, he forced himself to look away quickly as the response occurred spontaneously, and regularly.  Often, when his skin touched hers, his cheeks would burn with such intensity that he feared she would take notice and comment on it.  But thus far, she had not.  And he doubted she would.  He braced himself for another episode of high color as he looked to the screen a final time.  With no new data to collect from the dismal image pictured on the screen, he would print his findings and conclude his work with her fetus.  Upon conclusion, he had made a habit of wiping her belly clean of the water-based ultrasound gel before noting her vital signs and other relevant information.  This day would be no different.  He breathed deeply, and quietly, then pulled a paper towel from his cart of supplies and began gently swabbing the gel from her belly.  Twice his fingers grazed her bare skin.  Both times a shockwave bolted through his fingertips, up his forearm and sent a jolt to his chest.  He struggled to name the precise phenomenon that had occurred not once, but twice.  Such an incident had never taken place and was completely foreign to him.  He felt his face and neck ignite at once, his skin undoubtedly ablaze with crimson steaks.  His reaction was so strong, he felt his eyes warm and blur as well.  He finished clearing the gel from her body and quickly turned from her.   He needed to regain his composure before conducting any further diagnostic assessments.  He busied himself first with sanitizing, then organizing the instruments he’d just used.

But try as he may to avoid looking at her, she appeared in the reflection of the blank monitor screen.  Her appearance was not dulled by the darkened screen.  Instead, the darkness created a uniquely breathtaking contrast.  Her flaxen hair and equally fair skin glowed ethereally from the blackened oblivion.  She lay like a perfect porcelain doll, picturesque and unmoving.  In that moment, he wanted nothing more than for her to be the first mother of the new race, the bearer of his ambition.  But logic dictated that she be destroyed.  He had always relied on logic exclusively, and ignored intuition.  Now, however, intuition beckoned him.  It indicated that Dawn was different, special, that she had arrived to him not by chance, but by design.  He did not believe in fate or destiny.  Such beliefs were reserved for the weak-minded in need of cosmic explanations for failures they were unwilling to accept or accomplishments they were too foolish to assume credit for.  He knew he could be categorized among neither the simpletons nor those too stupid to shoulder recognition.  Rather, he believed
she
had somehow facilitated her capture, even if on an unconscious level.  He felt certain that she wanted to birth the first organically grown member of his new race as much as he wanted her to.   But want did not yield empirical evidence.  And it did not produce a flourishing fetus.  Dr. Franklin Terzini found himself at a crossroads.   He needed to make a decision.  But first, it was imperative that he leave, distance himself from Dawn physically.   Her presence had a confounding effect on his thought processes.   He did not need to be confused further.  Confusion was maddening.

Without completing his evaluations, he fled the examination room that doubled as her confinement cell.  He wheeled his car to the center of his lab and abandoned it.  He chose instead to bypass his desk and moved swiftly past tables, shelving units and development tanks until he found a door painted black and locked from the outside.  The door stood out, its rich, dark color stood out against the pale, institutional shades he had selected.  His color choice was intentional, of course.   It acted as a beacon, a constant reminder of what awaited beyond it.  He unlocked the door.  All the while, his insides trembled and trilled excitedly.  Once the door was open, he felt along the wall until he found a light switch.  He felt the knob and lifted it and a fluorescent light fixture flickered several times before lighting a short corridor at the end of which a single door stood open.  He had visited the room infrequently, and reserved such stays for emergencies.  Emergencies were few and far between, particularly ones that required counsel.  For his current predicament, he sought guidance.  And only one person existed in the world that was intelligent enough to advise him.  That person was him.

He pushed past the door and started briefly.  Sitting before him, like the picture of self-possession, was a nearly identical representation of himself.   Protective glass, plastic and shatter-proof, was the only barrier between them.  He felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck raise as his clone looked up from the book he was reading and leveled his gaze at him before returning his concentration to his book.  The look was brief and meant to be a mere acknowledgment, but he could not help but feel that a touch of disdain marked his twin’s features.  He wondered whether his clone was growing tired of confinement, resentful even.  He would find out soon enough.  They would speak in just a few seconds, as soon as he properly organized his thoughts and planned his strategy for seeking guidance without seeming weak.  The fact that he cared what his clone thought was somewhat of a mystery to him.  After all, it was really himself who he sought advice from.  The only difference was, because of his isolation, the clone existed as a completely objective entity.  Objectivity was needed to make the decision he needed to make.  As soon as he realized he was lacking it, he turned to his clone.  He rarely found himself in a position where in which objectivity evaded him, but this was among them.  He needed his clone’s impartiality. 

An internal communication system had been installed and on both sides of the partition, an invisible microphone transmitted sound and a flush-mounted speaker broadcast it.  Only when the outer unit was activated did the inner unit function, a necessary relay design that he deemed vital to his clone’s obedience.  Obedience had not been an issue thus far.  But he suspected discontentment brewing just below the surface of his clone’s calm veneer.  Harsh words had not been spoken.  Actions had not been taken; yet.  But when dealing with a person with exceptional intelligence, the possibility of rebellion always existed. Without unbreakable glass and silence-ensuring technology, he feared his clone would devise an escape plan, a
successful
escape plan, or worse.  His clone possessed duplicate DNA to his own and was therefore as motivated and ruthless as him.  Because of these attributes, his clone had never, and would never, agree to be his subordinate, and to remaining captive. 

Terzini had cloned himself before, but not for the purpose the second clone had been developed.  Incapable of speech and devoid of higher cognitive function, the first clone had been little more than a shell of a human being, of himself, and would not have been capable of coming up with a plan of escape if he’d spent a lifetime trying to do so.  His first clone’s purpose had been to die.  He had burned to death in a fire at his first laboratory in the Russian Far East, part of his elaborate plan to fake his own death.  Once the fire had been extinguished, a charred body with his dental records had been recovered and the world-over believed him dead.  The clone before him had not been created to die in a fire, or die at all.  This one, grown from his exact DNA, as the other had been, had been designed to advise him on the infrequent occasions he needed advice.  The clone was identical to him in every way with regard to cognition and thought processes.  But Terzini had taken the liberty of making slight improvements.  This replica was more driven, more aggressive, and far more verbal than even him.  The clone also more closely resembled him when he was a decade younger.  Fewer creases lined his face and his sight was perfect, making the use of glasses unnecessary, though the clone opted, for unknown reasons, to wear frames that matched the ones he wore.