The Clone

 

A cold winter night in all its distress… The snow was covering all the illegitimate plants, yet it was not dense enough to cover up the faults of humanity, such as dishonesty. The dishonest were everywhere, like they are today: There may even be one of them next to you, we are so accustomed to them that we do not realize… Yes, they were everywhere, still, in 2023, just like the woman I was looking at…

She was innocent when she slept, compensating the hypocrisy within her with an innocent face, a dreamy white skin and lips, as red as some blood on ice. When she was not sleeping, she was an “evil”; however nobody would dare to call her an evil when this spotlessly beautiful woman had spoken to them. She would dance every single word in her mouth before gently letting them out, she hypnotized the victim secretly, seducing the victim and blinding him… She had no female victims; she would use her body to her own advantage and eliminated the strongest men on earth. I did not want to do this to a nymph like this one, however she had been too naughty to be forgiven.

Inhaling deeply, I stared at my target’s peacefully sleeping body. I recalled the merciless assassinations I had been a part of, I recalled myself as a strong, sneaky agent who could break into everywhere and pass himself off as everyone on earth, but I was unable to think that the girl had deserved such a merciless kill by the silenced guns of a sneaky, rather unknown agent.

My pocket PC vibrated gently and I recklessly took it out, without considering the risk of waking my target up. I knew I had no time to lose, yet I felt the need of answering the call or the mail, despite the time I was going to spend. That was a mail from my boss, asking if I had been over with my target yet. “Not yet,” I smiled carelessly and put it back into my pocket without replying the mail. When I raised my head again, I saw her two green eyes, staring coldly at me.

“You are here to kill me, eh?” She gave a devilishly charming laughter. “You have made your move by entering without permission. Now it is my turn…”

She loved playing games. She was keen on them; too, she was really clever. When she was confronted, she would hypnotize and drag her opponent into the middle of a turn-based game, a game which she had been good at. She could calculate every single move to be done by the enemy or herself, quickly, yet carefully and inevitably she would win at the end. Yet, nobody could reject the idea of playing turn-based; they were seduced, blinded and hypnotized. This time I was not hypnotized, however I was going to play turn-based with her.

“My move,” she whispered, getting up from her bed. She was then standing in front of me. “Your turn.”

I drew my silenced gun out, however she frowned: “You do not calculate the steps, do you? I bet you do not want to be beaten again.”

“Why do you want me to win?”

“I am letting you to take revenge. Just don’t kill me, if I die you will be really confused.”

She was my target, I was sent to kill her. I repeated to my mind that I was not going to be hypnotized, no matter what. I had to kill her, not just wound and take revenge.

“Leave your gun drawn out and make another move.” That was it; she was calculating the steps and planning something to beat me. No, I was not going to make a move before her. “I’ve made mine already, now it is your turn…”

She inhaled, without moving.

“I will shoot you down,” I told sharply.

“I’ve just made one… I took a breath.”

“You… stop kidding me or I will really shoot you.”

“Is the scar still there, Jack? That gunshot, is it there?”

“I wonder why you haven’t killed me there.” “You don’t know anything… nobody has told you. Good.”

After some seconds of silence, I asked: “What should I ever know?”

“There is something about you… If you kill me your life will be ruined. If I kill you it will ruin me either. Move.”

I was not afraid to be ruined; all in all I was a secret agent and had already ruined my life by choosing this job. I shot her and escaped from the window through the night. Ensuring that I had not been followed, I called my boss. I was ordered to return to the headquarters then.

“She told me I was bounded to her somehow,” I began, “I wonder what it is.”

“I don’t think that there is a relation between you and her… Even your names, Jack, they are not related to them. She is Constance the Devil and you are Jack Rawson.”

“I don’t think there is a relation either… Anyway, how old is she?”

“Nobody can be certain about that… We have recently found a diary from the years 1993 or 1994 and the owner of it claims to have met her.”

“I don’t think it is possible… She seemed too young to be that old!”

“It is… We are in 2023 and people can keep themselves young by stinging themselves.” I did not expect her to be that old, though. I was shocked and after a pause I went downstairs to the archive room to see the diary.

“I am Nathan.” The diary had started with these words. As I read further I had come up with the name Constance:

“I’ve met this beautiful girl today; she has green eyes and mesmerizing white skin. She is clever in addition to this beauty and I feel relaxed when she speaks to me, as if I was hypnotized. I did not like only one thing about her: She wants to be called The Devil… I don’t know why.

“Anyway, she told me about a project to change the world. She claimed to have found an iceman recently and is planning to clone that. She told me she needed five clones for a better world without disclosing the details. However she will take me to the laboratory and I hope I will learn all the details about it soon!”

“Those five clones,” I thought, “they might be the answer of my question.” I rushed to my boss upstairs and ask him about the iceman. “Has anyone found an iceman or clones of that iceman?”

“A nonsense question… You would probably know it if we had found someone like that. However we have been searching that for years. Any other questions?”

“Not really,” I smiled, “Thank you, sir.”

I had to find that secret laboratory, no matter what. I felt, somehow, that the answer was within that laboratory to clone those five clones. I asked my question to myself once again: How was I linked to her?

I started to read the diary day by day to get more details about the project. Constance had disclosed some important details about the clones just before the last pages of the diary: The four clones were going to be able to control the four elements; earth, fire, air and water; and the fifth one was going to have mental powers and he would have the ability to wake all the four clones up before the Armageddon to save the world. The clones did not seem too malicious in the diary, then why was Constance my target? Yet I still had a more important question to answer, so I did not think about this one so much.

The four main elements... Constance the Devil did not seem too devil at all to me as she had wanted to prevent that day.

“The clones were made to prevent the Armageddon,” I told my boss.

“That is what she had told Nathan. In reality she was going to use those to get her malicious things done.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know either… However those clones do not sound good.”

 “And why did I kill her if she had wanted to save the world?”

 “She had gone too far, that is why. She clones humans to make them psychic soldiers, not saviors.”

“The clones are only five!”

“Five, but that doesn’t mean it was not her intention to kill people and convert them to soldiers by cloning. She was not a known scientist at all, she was authorized.”

Although I was not satisfied with these answers, I had to believe in them. I left the headquarters without a word, not to come back until the day I had called them to learn that they had found the laboratory and the four clones with it.

During my one-month holiday, I had taken the diary with me. Nathan was kind enough to tell us about what had happened when he had been taken to the laboratory, yet he had left us no address. He told how he had been injected to forget about the location of the laboratory and how the things had gone out of control. That page of the diary ended with this sentence: “After the injection, I have started to forget many things, not only the location.”

At that time, this could even mean that the operation was over. Without a decent address in our hands, we could not find the laboratory. I called my boss.

“Have you ever read this page?” I shouted. “It is no use to search then, we have no address, Nathan does not remember! It is a waste of money and time; we must stop this operation now!”

“Calm down,” Mr. Henderson sighed. “We already know about that page.”

“Then what?” I cried, scolding them.

“Good news is that we have found a suspicious laboratory. Only four clones inside the place. No trace of the fifth one.” This was enough to change my plans and go back to the city.

I was back to the headquarters again. “So, any traces about that fifth clone?” I asked.

“Not yet, but we have four in our hands.”

“I have a strange sense that Nathan was the fifth one. I mean he was injected to forget and stopped writing because she had told him so, seems like she had been trying to cover up something strange.”

“So?”

“They are the clones of Nathan… Do we have any clues on Nathan’s appearance?”

“You know, we are in 2023, we can change faces of humans… Probably knowing about Nathan’s appearance will not change anything.”

“I feel I have to see Nathan’s face… Do you have any photos of Nathan?”

“OK, sure… Follow me.”

Downstairs in the archive room, my boss took out some photos. “Here you are.” The smiling face seemed familiar to me; I thought I had seen the face before. “When?” My boss started to question me because there was an opportunity for me to have seen the fifth clone.

“I do not remember… But I have seen this face before. Anyway, what about DNA samples?”

“We have those of the clones, but we need something from Nathan to match the clones’ with Nathan’s.” I sighed; this was getting harder each day.

About a week later, I had already visited the laboratory several times. I had taken many DNA samples. All I needed was to find some samples from Nathan’s body and the diary had come in handy when searching for those: I had found some blood while I was reading the diary. As it was written above the bloodstains, Nathan had cut himself to say goodbye to the diary as he was told not to write anymore. I called my friend Jeffrey who was working as a scientist for Mr. Henderson. He assured me that the matching process would take so little time for him and offered me to watch him do that, knowing that being a scientist was one of my dreams for all my life.

I liked to watch Jeffrey find out many complicated details and join them together to lead us to the solution of a problem like this. He was quick and clever and because of his intelligence he had been offered to be an agent during his first visits here and he rejected those offers politely, he was happy with doing scientific experiments.

Anyway, I was in Jeffrey’s laboratory then. He was preparing the devices when I had cut my hand suddenly while playing with a small jackknife. He rushed and brought a Band-aid to me, however it was a simple cut so I decided to let oxygen pass through the little wound and not to cover it up with an unpleasant Band-aid.

“It is up to you,” he told, “however we must prevent it from getting infected. You know…”

“Never mind, just a simple cut and it will not harm me, be sure of that one.” I blinked and offered him to start the matching process. I took out the bloody piece of Nathan’s diary and gave it to Jeff.

When staring at the computer screen, he sighed. “Very strange…” Then he turned to take a glimpse at me. “The new drop of blood and the old one have similar DNA systems…”

“So?”

“So…” He paused a bit, probably he was thinking of a way to start to explain something important. He was staring at my face in a shock. “The clones and the blood of Nathan have similar DNA systems to yours.”

“Am I… Nathan?”

“You are probably the fifth clone, Jack; or Nathan himself.”

“Or both!” My boss had entered, murmuring this sentence.

“Both?”

“Yes, it is all clear now. The fifth clone is the psychic one and has the ability to invoke the others. The fifth clone was Nathan himself at first and then she had changed your face.”

“You also had the operation to keep young, Jack. It seems so.”

“Then how am I linked to Constance? I could not get anything from your words…”

“Can’t you see? If she had killed you she wouldn’t be able to clone you again and would have killed her boyfriend,” my boss replied in a shock. “I am sorry to tell you that we must keep you under control.”

“What does this thing mean?”

“We must… imprison you.”

“But why should you?”

“You are a forbidden clone, you were made without authorization, and you are powerful enough to destroy the world by invoking the other clones if you are commanded to use the power within you for devilish things! We must keep you away from everything until the day comes!”

In a dim room they had locked me up. I had been writing the story since then. They were kind enough to give me some papers. They did not let me starve. However the room was dim and I could hardly see what I wrote. Well, I had been inside for two years and the Armageddon had not come yet. However I still had many dark dreams and frightening feelings sometimes. It was because I am a psychic, I guess… Well, if I had not tried to kill Constance, none of those would happen. Yet I still did not know about Constance: I felt she was alive somewhere, I knew the one I had killed was another clone of her. Anyway, I didn’t know anything… I just hated it all.

Well I thought it was over, until that night. The hospital was burned down accidentally, yet I did not feel it was an accident. Someone who wanted me to leave the hospital must have had done it, as I was set almost free after the underground floor got burned taking all the photos and diaries in the archive. I was taken to a cottage near the hospital along with Jeffrey and my boss. Nobody could save the rest.

I had not been able to see the outer world for about five years and when I was first taken to the cottage I felt something was different. When I was fine enough to talk I asked Jeffrey. “The clones were awakened,” he could only say. “And then the hospital was burned down.”

“Who and why?”

“We do not know… We are suspicious of the real Constance. Anyway, we will continue living here. We’ve lost everything. Look through the window,” my boss spoke and as I looked through I saw the darkness was dominating. Dead were all around, without any trace of those clones or Constance.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“The clones are awakened and set free, which led the humanity to create stronger clones from the strong and kill the weak,” my boss told rapidly.

“You couldn’t look after four clones… Now they are eight hundred and four.”

“Probably more than that…”

“How can we find the real clones then? We can only destroy the world by finding those four clones!”

“Destroying?”

“That is the only way out, can’t you see Jeff?”

Yes, destroying was the only way out to stop all the madness. Maybe the clones were being misused by not being used to stop the doomsday, but this way we would stop the death of millions of people. I stood up wearing my dark green coat and covering my face with my hood. “I’ll search for them,” I hummed and dived through the rain and the wind.

How was I going to find the clones? I sighed and collapsed after getting out of my friends’ sights that had been looking through the window and watching me from the cottage as I walked down. I wished for a miracle and hoped to see the four clones in front of me.

While I was thinking, I heard the splashing footsteps of a violent person running through the rain. I hid behind some bushes to see who that was: A gigantic man with a rifle – probably working for one of the cloning laboratories. He stopped and looked down, checking my footsteps. “A villager was here,” he murmured, “Probably a strong one… or wearing heavy boots.” He looked around, and then shot the bushes, expecting to see the hiding villager. I was shot, but managed not to shout, so he was ensured that nobody was there. He turned back and began to walk away, when I couldn’t help shouting in pain. He quickly changed his direction and walked to the bushes, pointing the rifle at me.

“Surrender,” he shouted. “Hands above your head. Come out.” I searched for a way to escape, however I could do nothing at this point. My leg was injured too, which meant I could not be quick enough to escape. I hardly stood up; surrendering, then he pushed me into his van.

Three more people were there: Three more prisoners. They greeted me with happy and hopeful faces. Two women and a child.

“Where are they taking us?” I asked. “We don’t know either,” the woman with a black dress answered. “We’ve been in this van for two days…”

“Ever tried to escape?”

“We cannot,” the other woman replied. “The doors are locked.”

“Are you here to save us?” The child was staring at me in awe. I turned to the child and realized I had remembered his face.

“Kid, do you know me?” I asked foolishly. “Do you remember me?”

“Wait a minute…” the kid told and turned to the old woman in her black nightgown, speaking in another language. I saw the woman nod and stare at me and start to get anxious.

“You found me again,” she spoke minutes later. Yet, I could not remember her. “Nathan, the doomsday is close. You must save the humanity!”

“Oh my God, Constance?” The woman nodded again.

“Were you the one burning the hospital down? You killed many people…”

“To set you free, Nathan, because if you were still in the cell I could never have contacted you.”

“Why are you doing this? Why did you set the clones free?”

“I needed a normal army of clones. Many people were after me, but unfortunately I couldn’t control those four and now we have a sadistic army of them. Invulnerable, quick, silent and most importantly they are not working for humanity.”

“Then who is controlling them? Who is ordering them to grab people and clone them to add to the army?”

“Four scientists, Nathan. Each of them have found one clone and started cloning. Then they merged their armies and now they want to rule the world!”

“Scientists? If we take them out then it will end!”

“I don’t agree… but that seems to be the only way out,” the woman ended her words. Then she showed me the kid. “This is my son… Your son.” I was shocked and felt my air was getting thinner. With my eyes shut I felt my head hit somewhere hard and then lost my consciousness.

I woke up hearing someone talking near me, so not to attract attention I kept my eyes shut. “Is he dead?” a man with a Russian accent spoke. Constance replied:

“I guess so…”

“Let me check,” the man told and then put his hand onto my neck. I felt that it was the time; I could take him down and then disguise to find the scientists. In a few seconds I grabbed him from the neck, pulling as hard as I could. His neck was broken and I felt some trouble was on the way.

“Come on, get out!” I pushed Constance and the child out. “Hide somewhere and wait for me!” They left the van and ran away. More soldiers were coming towards the van and I had no time to hide the corpse away. I could not leave the van either, they could see me. Yes, I could act as if I was dead or unconscious. I waited them to arrive, lying on the ground.

“Igor… They killed Igor!” one of them shouted as soon as he had entered. “And ran away! We must find those captives.” They were acting as if they had not seen me and after talking to each other one of them ordered.

“Nothing interesting here. Let’s find the three captives, we should not waste time.” Surely, they did not see me.

When I was sure it was safe, I disguised as the Russian clone Igor and went out. I had to find Constance, so I yelled: “Constance, it’s me! Where are you?” Unfortunately a soldier had heard me. He turned and looked at me.

“Igor, you alive!”

“You… left me there unconscious.” I did my best to imitate the accent and it was spotless that he could still believe he was talking to Igor. “I know one captive’s name Constance... so I pretending one of her friend.” With a lot of grammatical mistakes I passed off as Igor.

“Well done,” the other soldier smiled. “With the intelligence your salary will… rise.”

“Yes sir!” I told and then went on shouting: “It’s me, come out!”

When everywhere was secure they had come out.  “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Better, but there are things I haven’t got yet.”

“For example?”

“The soldiers did not see me on the ground…”

“I told you, you are psychic. You can be invisible.”

“And why can’t I control it?”

“Because the operation did not go as clean as I had expected, OK?” She began to cry. “I couldn’t change your DNA into a psychic master’s. That is why you cannot control it.”

“Pull yourself together. We don’t have time to cry. Go, keep hidden! The map is shown on this soldier’s PDA and I will make it to the base.”

“How will I be able to contact you?”

“Kill a soldier, grab the little thing looking like a cell-phone and then find this device’s name… Let me see what its name is…” I took it out. “Igor Pokrovsky, D245.” Then I walked away, looking at the map.

That was it; I had reached to a laboratory. I decided to hide and ensure that there were no guardians around. While walking towards the bushes, I heard someone calling me: “Igor Pokrovsky! I thought you were dead!”

“Knocked unconscious,” I told.

“Just get in and have some rest.”

“Yes, sir.” This was what I had wanted. He had allowed me to enter, so no guards to block my way. I smiled under the strange helmet and went in.

“I want to see the scientist.”

“Why should you?”

“I have information about the missing captives.”

“Come with me,” the guard told and took me upstairs. He entered through the gate with me.

“I want talk alone,” I commanded. “This is classified.” Then he left me in front of the door, walking downstairs.

“Sir,” I entered. “If I may…”

“Pokrovsky, what are you doing here? We have missing captives!”

“I was nearly getting them. They knocked me unconscious. I know where they going.”

“Why don’t you pursue them then?” He was blushing with anger.

“I cannot. I need army.”

“Choose the soldiers and then you are free to go.”

I took the device out and opened the list of soldiers. I could take soldiers, kill them and then decrease the scientist’s army size and then take him out. I chose twenty names among the list and we gathered outside, near the door of the laboratory.

“We seek and destroy,” I began. “We search three captives. A man, a woman and her son. They are the last three in this city. I know where they are heading to, you have to follow!” Then I began marching through a forest.

We had marched for two nights and reached a wide river. “Across the water,” I told. One of the soldiers came near me and told that the water was contaminated and it could harm the devices.

“I don’t care, Markov! We must,” I commanded. After he had tried to change my mind I commanded him to go first for doing that. He dived. In the middle of the river he felt breathless so swam up. Then he turned back to look at us. Nobody was swimming, but himself. He ignored it and went on to swim. When he was just about to grab the stones of the shore, something pulled him back and deeper into the water. Then, Markov had disappeared.

I looked at the soldiers and lied: “I was not expecting that. You two! Go and see what it is.” I pointed at two of the ninety men, but they turned it down.

“We can’t risk a life. We are unique clones,” one of them told and then I contacted the scientist:

“Yuri Kuzmin and Alexei Lazarev don’t obey.”

“Send them back.” I turned at the soldiers and commanded them to go back, yet they went in the wrong direction and got lost and nobody could find them.

Anyway, seventeen men except me were waiting for my commands. I told that five men should go and check, and then five brave soldiers had dived through the freezing cold water. Two of them had made it to the shore, but three of them died.

“A monster,” one of them shouted. “And our devices are broken down!”

“Alright,” I shouted to them. “I’m sending some other to support you.” I commanded two more soldiers to cross the river. One of them could make it. Then, eleven people were standing on one side and three on the other.

“You search that part! I’ll take the rest,” I ordered, however they told me three people were not enough and I should send more. “Alright,” I smiled. This was easier than I had expected. I commanded five more men to swim and this time only two could make it. “Meet here in the morn,” I shouted and walked away with the five men.

We had arrived to a canyon and I told the men to have some rest. While they were sleeping, I threw one of them off. With the scream, the remaining four had been woken up.

“I tried to hold him,” I told. “I was late.”

I contacted the scientist to tell that Ivanov was dead too. “We crossed the river, came to a large canyon, Ivanov has fallen down, I couldn’t hold him.”

“Damn,” he yelled. “We have already lost too many soldiers for three captives. Come back immediately!”

“The monster, sir, is blocking our way.”

“Where is it?”

“In the river.” I was lying, but he should know that we were only five people who could make it to the shore. Otherwise he could kill me for leaving the soldiers across the river without protection.

“Are you close to them?” the scientist asked. He had changed his mind.

“We are almost there, sir. We cannot return at this point.”

“Alright, keep me informed,” he told. Then, we were only four. We went on to walk and search more.

“Are you sure we are going to find the captives?” Alexei asked.

“Shut up,” I commanded, “You must obey me.”

“Sir, we are starving. We should hunt,” he replied.

“Negative, soldier! The sound will indicate that we are close to the captives. So, they will run away.”

“Right,” he told, “I’ll go hunt something down to eat. By myself!” He went away.

One down, I thought, two remaining. I contacted the scientist to inform that Alexei was not willing to obey me. “I left him behind, sir,” I added, “He will come back if he wants to.”

As the dawn was fading into a cold morn, I heard the remaining two soldiers yelling at me.

“We are starving, sir. We are tired,” they were yelling. I tried to ignore the angry screams, yet I could not stand them for the following five minutes. I turned at them angrily and shouted:

“Soldiers, if you are tired return to the lab without me! I have a captive to find!” They went silent…

“And I don’t care about your hunger, those captives are important than your lives! You are clones, remember? In the lab they have many Alexeis, Smirnows and so on! They can create you, but not the captives!” Yet, I was not expecting to talk like that myself. “Now,” I yelled, “Who is with me?”

“Sir, Andreyev is going away. May I call him back?”

“Leave that to me, Tarasov,” I sighed after seeing Andreyev miles away from me. I inhaled deeply and roared out his name.

“Sir Lyosha Andreyev… Where do you think you are going?”

“I’m going back to the lab, Pokrovsky, as you ordered a minute ago.”

“You have become irritating, soldier. Come over here!”

He kept on walking away from me.

“It is an order, come here!”

“I don’t care,” he told. “I witnessed what I should. You are killing people!”

“Oh, now what? A soldier accusing me of being a killer? Stop it, Andreyev.”

“You are changed, Igor Pokrovsky. You were not a dictator before. I’m going to the lab now, if someone ever touches me to pull me back, I swear I will kill him!”

I took out my gun; this was the chance to shoot one of them down.

As soon as the gunshot had been heard, Tarasov started to search for the PDA to contact the scientist. I aimed at him and shouted: “Throw that away.” He threw the PDA to my feet.

“And now give me your guns, you filthy clone,” I cried.

“I knew it,” he mumbled and after throwing all his guns onto the ground he had started staring at me.

“This is better,” I was about to say, but he had interrupted me:

“Who are you?”

“I’m Jack,” I told. “One of the captives you are looking for.”

He cursed and went on to question me with his hands above his head.

“Where is Igor?”

“Dead. I killed him. Now, walk with me. I need your help, but if you betray me you will be dead like the nineteen soldiers and Igor of course.”

“I have,” he began, “Already done that.”

“What?”

“Let me take my mask off,” he told. Unbelievably, he was Jeffrey.

“You cheater,” I told and pushed him onto the ground. “You will pay for this!”

“Jack, stop it. I was caught and they killed Mr. Henderson.”

“Get up,” I said after kicking his face and spitting at him. “You will be of help.”

We entered a cottage, Constance and my son was staring at me.

“This kind soldier has agreed to help us, so I left him alive,” I told as soon as I had entered.

“Your face is bleeding,” Constance told. “You didn’t make him help, did you, Nathan?”

“He fell down on our way here and hit his face onto a rock. He uses a Russian name in the headquarters, but his name is Jeffrey.”

“And you, madam?” he asked.

“I guess you already know about Constance… This is her and this one is my son,” I replied.

“Con… Constance the Devil?” I nodded.

“Why are you so excited, son?” Constance asked.

“I’ve heard the name before… Nice to meet you two.”

When everyone was sleeping I woke Jeffrey up. “Come outside,” I told. “I want to talk to you.”

“So, everything is clear now,” I began. “I’ve found my real target and learned who I am in reality.” He nodded. “And tell me why I was pulled into this hellish situation? Because of you.” He could not understand. “The clones, Jeff. They were awakened because of you. If you knew how to protect them then none of this would happen.”

“I’m sorry…”

“And you also locked me up… I am the only one who could control the clones. You should have set me free when the clones had started to destroy!”

“You are right…”

“And in addition to all the mistakes you’ve made, you have betrayed me too.”

“Right, but this time I had no chance.”

“No chance? Of course you had. You could set the captives free and hunt the scientist down. I thought you were my friend.”

A long moment of silence had begun. I saw Jeffrey crying.

“I killed many men in two days,” I began, “I don’t regret any of them. Yet, if I kill you now, the sorrow of having killed a friend will live within me forever. Just like Constance has said before… If I kill you, I’ll be ruined. If you kill me, you’ll be ruined.”

He was staring at me with wet eyes. “I need your help, Jeffrey… Which element is your scientist working on?”

“Air…”

“Then… could you help us bring the original Air Clone here?”

“What is your intention?”

“I’ll bring all the clones here and then go back in time… when I was working as an agent. I’ll do my best not to make this happen again.”

“What about us, Jack?”

“You are not a human anymore. Constance will die soon. I’ll miss my son, though, but I don’t care. I’ll save this world. I just need your help. Can I… rely on you?”

He nodded and then we went back to sleep.

The next day we were woken up by a warrior’s violent chant. Constance looked through the window and told us that she had bad news. The soldiers were moving towards the house and our ways out were blocked. I looked at Jeffrey, who nodded and murmured that he had a plan.

“You three hide somewhere,” he told, “I will do the rest.”

I grabbed my son and ran towards the ruined cupboard. I did not see where Constance was going.

I heard Jeff open the door.

“Tarasov, where have you been?” a soldier asked Jeff.

“I was… lost. I found this house; my PDA is out of order.”

“Alright, we will take you back to the lab. Do you know where Pokrovsky is?”

“I told you, he left me alone!”

“Strange,” he told, “he kept killing our soldiers. Anyway, what happened to your face?”

“Dogs attacked me yesterday,” Jeff replied, as quickly as a professional liar.

“Dogs attacked you, you say. I don’t feel it.”

“Feel it or not, they did.”

“How can you prove that?”

“I don’t have to,” Jeff giggled.

“I can, you were supposed to wear your helmet.”

“I left it. It was heavy. Anyway, how could you find me?”

Yes, good question, I thought. Yet, I knew the answer. “We were searching for the captives here.” I did not believe it, something was going absolutely wrong and I could feel it.

Here it came again, a stabbing headache. Whenever I had this headache, I would accidentally use a psychic ability.

“What now?” I thought, praying to get rid of this pain. No, my prayers were not working. I was fighting the idea of screaming in pain, yet I could not be the winning side. To make things worse, the soldiers had realized someone else was in.

“You liar,” they shouted at Jeffrey and one of them had punched him, at least it sounded like a delivered punch. I was still suffering, I had collapsed onto the ground, yelling. Suddenly, I felt my soul being pulled away from my body; I was staring at my corpse. My son was crying silently next to me.

“What the hell?”

Were I dead? Was that an out-of-body experience? I couldn’t decide. The soldiers were just in the doorway, which meant I had no time to decide.

“What is this thing?” I thought. “What am I supposed to do?”

I couldn’t see the soldier walking towards me; he was just at the verge of penetrating my spiritual body. Yet, something was strange. I couldn’t see him penetrating either. When I looked down, I understood: I possessed a soldier’s body.

“Nice,” I thought, then began to command. “He is dead, nobody else… We should leave now.”

As soon as the soldiers had evacuated the old country house, I returned to my own body. My son’s face had changed quickly, after seeing me alive.

“Daddy you are alive!” He pulled my arms to help me get up.

“They have taken Jeffrey away from us,” Constance murmured when becoming visible again. “We must find the original air clone by ourselves.”

I was freaked out, swearing and punching the walls, ignoring the “Calm down” sentences of my son and Constance.

“Calm down… Now that you have learned how to project, you can go there without being seen,” Constance smiled, however she shut her mouth up after realizing that I could not control my abilities.

“Why don’t you tell them that you are the fifth clone? Maybe the scientist looking for the psychic clones can teach you!” This was my son’s idea and although it did not sound so well at first, after thinking about it I realized he was a genius. The armies were going to merge, weren’t they? If I had joined the army of one of the scientists, then it would be easier for me to reach the clones. We were going to be within the same army of clones.

When I had stated Constance that it would be easier, she reminded: “There are only four scientists, not a fifth one to clone the psychic one.”

Yes, she could be right at this point, yet one of us could still be the fifth scientist. I smiled confidently to Constance: “You know how to clone, right?”

“Are you sure, Jack? It might make the things worse!”

I inhaled deeply, she was right again. However this was the only plan we could think of. I nodded. “We must find captives to change their genes into mine, right?”

She inhaled deeply. “We need a lab first of all. I need some devices!”

“Of course,” I told, however where could an empty laboratory be? A laboratory… I felt something flashing in my brain. Yes, the ruins of our previous laboratory which was burned down by Constance. That could be rebuilt and we could obtain devices.

“The ruins, you say.” Constance stared at me. “Impossible idea. First of all it is really far from…”

“I know, but that does not mean we are unable to return.”

“Your cover is blown, Jack… You are not Igor anymore. Secondly, there is not a laboratory. Only some ruins.”

“Only ruins.” This sentence reminded me something else. Something that I had totally forgotten about, something I had heard before when I was still working as an agent. The “Secret Lab” downstairs, even beneath the place I had been held before the other parts were burned.

“There used to be a secret lab,” I explained to Constance. “Maybe it is still there!”

“It is not safe to go and check. We need some firearms…”

“Or just a kid…” I looked at my son. He could go back to the lab and seek the area; he was the sneakiest kid ever.

“No, we can’t risk our son,” Constance tried to tell, but when I insisted she had to change her mind. While this kid – Constance had told me his name was Richard later on – was outside, we could provide some weapons. Constance and I, we were both psychic – Constance had made herself one before burning everything down. Yes, it was a good plan. “Try to return in a week,” she told before Richard had left. “And if you cannot reach us within a week, we will consider it as a sign of trouble.” The kid nodded and left the house wordlessly.

That night, neither Constance nor I could sleep. She kept asking me the same question:

“Do you think he will make it? I don’t think he knows the way.”

“The PDA… he has taken that, remember?”

This conversation had repeated itself for about an hour. Then, Constance got up to drink some water. Just two seconds after turning on the light, she screamed.

I got up to see what was going wrong. As soon as I had entered the kitchen, I was stabbed by the things I saw on the table:

Two PDAs were lying on the table; Richard had left without a map.

“I told you,” Constance said. “He does not have a map!” She began to cry. I did my best to calm her down, yet nothing seemed to be working.

“Calm down,” I told for the last time, hugging her. “I will find your son.”

“Our son,” she mumbled and drew away from me. “Go and find him!”

I was outside again, with a map. The good thing was I could see where the soldiers were located on the map. The bad thing was the weather and the time… A cold and rainy darkness. Too wet, believe me. Too wet that it could break the device down.

No, this was not a sign of giving up. I was going to find Richard, no matter what. I started walking in the woods, hiding behind some bushes whenever I had needed to. Yes, I was shot and my leg hurt, although the bullet couldn’t make it through my skin. Just a little wound there was, but it really hurt.

While walking, I was listening to the sounds around me, hoping to hear a kid yelling for help, although it was impossible for such a sneaky child. I had never heard him talking much except a few necessary sentences. He did not like to talk, probably, or maybe I still had been a stranger for him.

Suddenly, I heard a childish scream near me, and a gunshot just a second after that. I began to follow the voice and ran through the wet darkness.

A kid was lying on the cold grass. I ran towards him without looking at the map. Yes, that was my son. I grabbed him just before realizing that we were surrounded by snipers and some other soldiers. I ran with the kid, the bullets were almost shooting my feet. Moving fast, I could make it through a mass of bushes, the soldiers who were following me did not think of diving through the bushes. Fortunately.

I looked at Richard, he could hardly breathe. “Daddy,” he spoke. “Am I dying?”

“Stay with me. We will reach to the house. Just don’t let go.”

“It hurts, daddy…”

I looked at him; his white shirt had already turned into red with blood. “Exsanguination,” I thought. I was late. Yet, I still had time. I grabbed him again and started to sprint.

“We are close, stay with me,” I told. Really, we were really close to the house. “We are nearly there. Breathe deeply.”

“I… cannot…” he could hardly say.

“Don’t talk! Just breathe, stay with me!”

I was crying while running and then with a real effort we were “almost there”. I could see the house. I stared at the kid after he had tried to speak:

“Leave me… here. I’m… dead…”

“No, you are not!” I yelled at him, however it was too late. His eyes were closed, he had become cold. I was just in front of the house, holding the corpse. I froze. I was late.

I couldn’t move. This was my fault; he was dead because of my stupid plan, because of my own stupidity when not checking if he had taken one of those devices with him. He was dead because I was late to bring him back. Just ten minutes early and he could be alive then. I… killed him.

I collapsed, putting the corpse down and sat there crying, for about an hour. I swore at myself, started to lose faith. This was enough for me, I thought. Suddenly, after recovering from this “freezing” shock, I ran to the door and started knocking continuously.

Tap… Tap… Tap…

Nobody was answering.

I tapped three times again, but faster this time. No answer.

“Constance, where are you?” I shouted, knocking again. No, she was probably not in. I turned back to look at my son for the one last time, where could this woman be?

I decided to break the door. With a “power-punch” I smashed open the door.

As soon as I had entered the house through the dust of the smashed door, a paper caught my eyes. It read:

“Richard and Jack, I need to leave. The soldiers seemed to be on the way. If you manage to get this letter, I must say that we should be separated for a while.

“Jack, take Richard and hide. The soldiers must still be on the way. Until everything seems safer; I need to hide. We’ll meet here. Take good care of Richard, he is our son.”

I felt something was wrong with this letter, my head started to hurt. As quick as a flash, I saw a soldier writing something. I saw Constance being taken away. This letter could be fake, if my mind was telling me the truth. I escaped, leaving the kid’s corpse behind and got hidden near the house so that I could understand whether this was a real letter or a fake one.

In minutes, some soldiers had arrived. They stared at the corpse and one of them shouted: “Only one left.”

The letter was fake and I silently thanked to my mind for showing me the reality. “What next?” I thought. Constance was captured, Jeff was called back to the Laboratory of Aerokinetic Research and Richard was dead. I was alone. I was alone… again.

When the soldiers around the house were searching the area, I decided to do that myself. I was going to pretend as if I was surrendering, that was the only way for me to reach the army since then. I came out, shouting to the soldiers to draw their attention.

“Comrades,” I began. “I’m the one who you are searching for. I am the fifth clone, the clone that can start the process. The psychic one.” The weapons were pointed at me in a moment.

“I surrender, don’t shoot.” I put my hands up, showing that I had no weapon.

“Why surrendering now?” one of them asked. “We have made an effort to find you, you could have surrendered before.”

“I have no way out, I realized. Take me to the lab.” In a minute, I was handcuffed and being dragged to a van. Then, they made me pass out with some pills. I was not expecting that one.

I woke up on a bed, in a hospital room. Some parts of my body were wrapped by bandages; I realized I had had an operation while “sleeping”. “They must have cloned me too,” I thought, “A fifth scientist has started to work.”

When I tried to get up, I realized I was tied onto the bed. As I had heard some voices coming closer, I closed my eyes to pretend I was sleeping. Two scientists had entered; I could see that with my “third eye”. They were talking about the four clones.

“This is Nathan, the fifth one!”

“How could you find him?”

“He surrendered.”

“So you mean he has the power to control the other four. Nice, after having an army of psychic Nathans we will own the world with the power of these clones! Who is working on this clone?”

“I am unsure… A man called Jeffrey something, but people claim that he has another name… Tarasov, I guess…”

I was shocked. Jeffrey was still betraying me. I needed to get untied and go to see Jeffrey. I heard what I had needed to hear, so I opened my eyes.

“See? He’s gotten up!” one of them told.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Professor Starke, the manager of the Aerokinetic Lab. And this is Professor Halligan, from the Pyrokinetics.”

“Pyro… what?” I asked.

“I mean… he is from the Fire Clones’ Lab. Clear now?”

“Yes, that is better.” I sighed as my two targets were staring at me. “And why am I tied? Where is my son’s corpse? Where is Constance?”

“Chill out,” someone entering the room had told. That was Jeffrey, the manager of the Telekinetic Clones section. Jeffrey, who had been my friend some days ago.

“I can’t believe it… Jeffrey?”

“Jack Nathan Rawson. Good to see you here.” He blinked; I felt he was just pretending. “His intention must be to help me,” I thought and it seemed that I was right. I felt really confident.

“Constance is being kept downstairs; she turned out to be a psychic too.” Yes, he had taken Constance to his lab too; he had gathered us in the same place. “And we will have a ceremony for your son. You will be invited. Now, Starke and Halligan, would you be kind enough to leave us alone? I am going to talk to him about his mission.”

They left the room and Jeff checked if they were listening to our chat. When everything had seemed secure, he came towards me.

“I guess you have understood my intention.” He smiled to me. “I managed to gather everyone…” He paused, remembering my son. “Almost everyone,” he went on with a sigh. “I am sad to hear about him.

“Anyway, there is an ongoing conflict. No time to cry. We made it to the psychic base. They found you, which means they will bring the clones here. When they bring the clones, pretend you are obeying them, and then when you feel strong enough go back in time. Things get worse and worse each day. We must avoid this. Go back in time and find the real Constance, kill her. Then, kill me too, because we are tied to these incidents. We caused these all.”

“Not you,” I told after a short pause. “It is me. If I was not the fifth clone, Constance would not free the clones to control them. If I go back in time and kill myself, maybe…”

“Stop it, do not accuse yourself. I don’t want to see that happen.”

“Can’t you see? I am the problem itself!”

Jeffrey nodded. “You might be right,” he told with a sigh. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I can only save this world that way… I will save you, Jeffrey! Isn’t that good?”

He looked at me for some seconds and left the room wordlessly. Killing myself would be a good idea, I thought. Yet, I had to find a new idea, such as “destroying the clones” after going back in time, rather than myself.

The next day I was woken up by Jeffrey. He told me that I had to go to the “training area” with them to try to control the Aerokinetic clone. They gave me something to wear rather than the pale green patient robe I had.

“Good to see the light again,” I thought when I had left the hospital area. The dawn had just risen and I was willing to learn what I could do with the other original clones. In a huge steel crate the Aerokinetic clone was taken out of the special van. Jeffrey quickly nodded his head and then a guard started to unlock the crate.

“He is sleeping now,” the guard told. “Yet he will wake up with some adrenaline…” He took out an injector and stung the clone. In five minutes, the clone had opened his eyes. He inhaled deeply and got out of the crate himself. Walking, he stopped in front of me.

“My name is Enlil,” he told. The name was just describing himself: The God of air, in the ancient Sumer language. “You must be Suriah.”

I looked at Jeff, what the heck was Suriah? He must have understood me, so he told: “The God of energy in Hinduism. Enlil tried to mean that.”

I nodded, I was controlling the energy. That was what telekinesis was about. My new name was Suriah then, rather than Nathan or Jack. “Yes, I am him.”

After a minute, Professor Starke stated that nothing was happening: “Don’t you know how to get the clone working? I don’t see anything happen!” What were they expecting? A tornado? Anyway, I looked at Enlil with desperate eyes. So, he decided to teach me how to.

“First, you need to touch my head.” He was bald. He kneeled in front of me and I put my little palm over his head, his skin was cold. “Now, concentrate. Feel that your energy is flowing through your hand and feeding my head, my third eye.” I closed my eyes.

When I had reopened them, I saw him spinning, wrapped by a thin white tornado, he was levitated and had gone away from me. I looked at Jeffrey and he told me I had succeeded. The clone was initiated and was able to use his power more efficiently. In a minute he was back onto the ground to be locked up in the crate again.

I had found one of the clones; I had known where to reach it since that day. One was gone, only three were left, and finding them was the easiest task.

About a month later, the other clones had trained me to use my abilities. Although there were some exceptions, I was able to control my “psi” easily.

The day had come; I was sitting on the bed in my patient robes. The training area was ready for us to try the power out. Except me, all the special clones were gathered there. Jeffrey entered.

“We are really close, Jack,” he told. “I did everything I could; the rest is up to you.”

I nodded and followed him to the “garden”, where I could see some sheep biting the grass.

“These are the training dummies,” Jeff told. “When you are ready, try and take one out.”

I connected to the four clones and became as one. In a deep trance, I let my energy “explode” near one of them. Whatever I did was going to be multiplied by four, so that little explosion was enough to kill all the sheep around us. We could use our power.

The other scientists nodded when I had turned to stare at them. “And now, with the other clones’ power we will own the world,” one of them yelled. “Have you cloned enough Jack clones?”

“I have.” He stared at me and he blinked in a subtle way. “That woman, Constance, resisted at first, but now she has Jack’s abilities within her. A successful clone, I tell you.”

“We need more than Constance, remember the deal,” Halligan told. “If you betray us we will ruin you.”

Ruin you. Suddenly a tornado span in my head. I was lead back to the past, to the time when Constance had told me the same thing. Then I saw myself grabbing my black coat to find Constance, when leaving the ruined house in a flash. My son’s face appeared then, his last moments, myself holding him and so on. Ruined me. Everything had ruined me. I had had enough of it all, I desired to stop the flashback but things kept flashing in my head.

I saw Jeffrey betraying me in the forest, I saw him being punched when we were hiding in a cheap house, and I saw myself taking my coat again…

Taking my coat! This image was enough to stab me then. How could they bring my coat there when the house was under the flamy attack? My coat was there in the ruins, how could that be? With a headache I kneeled, my eyes were shut.

When I had come around, I saw Jeffrey. “What were you thinking?” he scolded. “You were almost harming yourself. Psychic abilities are not toys!”

“What did I do? I don’t remember!”

“You did something with your mind and kneeled and cried in pain! What was your aim?”

“Flashbacks,” I said. “One of them has stabbed me in the back.”

“Tell me more, I’d like to know.”

“My coat,” I began and then told the rest. I finished my speech with only one word: “How?”

“I’m impressed,” Jeffrey told me. “I couldn’t realize these before.”

“So what do you think this is?”

“I have got only one idea… Someone is controlling it all. Someone had known that you were going to be taken to that ruined house and everything.”

“Do you think it will be over one day?” I sighed after a pause.

“Well, this flashback means we should change our plans… We must find who is behind it all.”

“Just answer my question, don’t tell me about the plan. Do you think it will?”

He was just at the verge of answering when Starke had come in. They talked for a while, I could hear them talking, but I could not understand. I felt strange, maybe desperate. No, not desperation. I had felt that one before, but the feeling then was different. I could not name it; I had to understand what it was first. I shut my eyes and got back to sleep.

I could not understand the reason of it all. Why could someone want to make things this bad and then torture everyone? Who could that be? Jeff was right; the flashbacks had discovered that we were controlled. “We must,” I thought, “We must find the king!”

The following night, Jeffrey had woken me up. “What now?” I barked with a whisper.

“I know how we can find the king. The power is within you.”

“What do you...?”

“You are psychic. You are a clairvoyant! Concentrate and find the king so that we can defeat him!”

Jeffrey was right again, so I shut my eyes to focus.

After a few minutes of darkness, I had started to see. Someone in a red dress was sitting on a bench; pink leaves were around her on the white ground. The sky was brightly white, as white as her skin. Her dress had long sleeves, as if it was a windy September afternoon. I saw her get up and walk away, yet I felt that it was just an illusion. No, that one was not the “God”; the king had just wanted me to see her, to accuse her. Secondly, I could not recall seeing her face before.

I opened my eyes and told about the woman to Jeffrey. He looked at me, a moment of wordlessness, and then he sighed.

“We must find that woman, no matter what!”

He did not reply. He just left the room. Something was wrong, I could feel it! He knew something, for sure! I tried to concentrate once more and saw another scene with another people, some scientists staring at a human in a glass tube, they were gathered around it. One was writing something with the computer keyboard near the tube. The scientist who was writing had seemed familiar to me. When I had returned to my patient room – mentally, I realized Jeffrey had betrayed me again. He was Jeffrey, that was why his face was familiar. I realized nobody was trustworthy, I delivered a paranoid attack.

What was that place? Who was in the glass tube? What were Jeffrey and all the people trying to do? The voice inside me was commanding me to wait before attacking Jeffrey. Maybe I had mentally arrived to a wrong scene – maybe that woman was the right one. I could still remember the woman’s face. I could still concentrate. I closed my eyes…

When I had woken up, my headache was stabbing me. I had had a nightmare, or maybe it was not only a nightmare – it could even be the truth, after all things I had gone through. No, this woman was a fake image from the future. I saw Jeffrey once again in the lab. While I was getting used to the sunlight blurring my eyes, I heard the doorknob be turned.

“Morning, clone five. How are you?”

This was Mr. Starke. He pulled the curtains down after seeing me struggling to keep the sunlight away from my hurting eyes.

“I feel weird,” I told him, but I needn’t have to. This made him ask why I was feeling “weird” and I could not make up a lie to cover up the strange dream. Yet, I could deny knowing it. “I don’t know, my head hurts…”

“It is possible, you are psychic,” he simply told. “So, have you seen Jeffrey this morning?”

“Why are you asking to me?”

“I haven’t seen him around since I got up. He should have been in the lab already. I thought you could be the one to know, because I always see you two talking.”

Nice, Jeffrey was missing. He had probably understood that I was after him. What was I going to do without help? Just wait, I commanded myself. Everything would become clear with time.

“May I get out?” I randomly spoke. I did not even think about it, it just came out in seconds. “I want to take a walk in the garden. No worries, I cannot escape.”

“Well, it is good that you know you can’t. If you ever try to, the guards will kill you. I don’t want to lose the fifth clone.”

In half an hour I was outside, walking in the green square called garden – a garden without trees, but only a carpet of grass and the garden on which I was trained to use my power. I did not know why I wanted to take a walk; I had not even felt the need of taking a walk.

In a minute, I realized it all. My son was calling me: I saw the reveries of his soul running from the middle of the garden to the walls around it, through the walls and then disappear. I sat down, how could I leave this garden?

As I saw the reverie of my own son running through the walls numerous times, I had realized that I could do the same. I could project; I could send my soul after him. I concentrated.

I ran through the wall doubtfully. What if I could not pass through the wall?

“Don’t think about the possibilities,” my son shouted. “Just run!”

I took some steps back, shut my eyes and ran. Within seconds I felt I was passing through a wall of liquid. I flowed to the other side and that was it, I had escaped mentally.

“I have something to show,” my son told me after I had passed through the wall. “Follow me.”

Minutes later, I was led to a tunnel – a long one. “This explains everything,” my son told before we had run through that tunnel.

On the other end of the tunnel, I had reached the cell I had been kept after I was discovered to be Nathan. I was in the headquarters; it was not damaged at all.

“Where am I?” I asked my son.

“Where?” he sighed. “Are you asking where you are instead of when you are?”

I wondered what was next, but the voice inside me was hissing that I was going to regret learning it.

“This is the present time, the real present.”

I was confused so my son agreed to tell me all about it.

“You were projected from a garden, remember? That garden may seem so realistic, maybe too realistic to be unreal. However, it is unreal, just like everything else.” He took me to the room with the glass tube – the room I could see when concentrated.

“You were taken here from that cell, for a test. The body within the glass tube is yours.”

“Why are they testing me?”

“They want to see how strong you are. That garden, the dead Russians, Constance and many other things, almost nothing is real. Only you and yourself, daddy. It is all a test and you have to stop all the madness, because if this test reaches an end the world will…”

He had vanished; he had been erased from the “game” for telling me the truth. I knew I was not going to see him again, but he could tell me the necessary things: I had to stop this test!

I went near my body and was at the verge of letting my soul enter it, but I was taken back to the unreal garden by a stabbing pain on my back. One of the guards had realized something was wrong and then he had chosen to kick me. I returned with a headache.

The next day, I tried to project to the tunnel again. This time it was successful, I had locked the door of my room before projecting. I ran through the tunnel and then got to the laboratory. The room where my body was kept was empty – they were probably at lunch.

I entered through the glass tube and reached my body – the one in the real world. I pushed the glass lid as hard as I could and let myself out. I had not raised an alarm yet, it was still safe for me to walk around. On the table next to the tube, I could see piles of documents. When I had approached, I saw that all of them were marked as “Secret Files”. I had no time to read in details, but shortly the secret project was to kidnap kids, clone my genes and make the kids like me. Yet, they needed to test my strength before turning their genes into mine.

“The kids are kept in a room and treated until they are brainwashed and healthy,” it read, with the help of the map on the wall I could understand where I should go.

I melted the code panel near the room to unlock the room in which the kids were held. The door was gently opened with my telekinetic powers.

I was shocked to see many glass containers lined up on the walls on both the left and the right sides. The corridor was not wide, but long, which also meant there were many kids in this room. I decided to walk to the other end of this unpleasant, freezing corridor.

While I was walking, I heard a cracking noise behind me. It was nothing though, when I had turned back to check. I went on walking.

Once again, I heard the same noise. I turned back and stared at the door I had just gone through. When I had decided to keep on walking and turned, I saw one of the kids break his glass container and approach me. He hissed: “You are not going anywhere.” Quickly, he jumped and disappeared. He reappeared again, as quickly as a flash, behind me. He grabbed my neck and began to choke me.

“Stop it,” I yelled.

“Nobody was supposed to enter except the scientists,” the boy replied. He was too strong for his age. To save myself, I knew I had to hurt this boy. I concentrated and threw him away from me telekinetically. He had hit his head and was knocked unconscious. His death had raised an alarm and I got hidden in the nearest shady area.

While waiting for the guards, I had realized I had been brainwashed too when I had been in the glass container. I could not remember may things from the real past – the time I had been working for Mr. Henderson, the time before I had been locked up in a damp cell. I could not remember my name, first of all. I could not remember why I had been taken to the cell downstairs, and many other things. Yet, I knew I had to find the exit after destroying the lab to secure everything.

When I was talking to myself, Jeffrey and all the other scientists had arrived, along with some armed men. I was in trouble for real. I stayed in the dark and tried to make no sound.

“He’s still here,” Jeffrey told. “The doors are locked when the alarm is raised.”

“Seek and destroy,” Starke commanded.

When they had come too close to me, I could go invisible. Though, the ability of “charm” could not last long: I had a headache. Hoping that I could stay invisible for long, I “vanished” when they were close to me.

“He’s not here, sir.”

“He is invisible, he has the power,” Jeffrey replied and commanded the female scientist to turn the Psi-Proof System on, to prevent me from being invisible. I realized that the female scientist was Constance herself, a younger one. “Operation,” I thought while I was probably taking my last breaths.

I was afraid; the temperature of the room was changing when the system was turned on. It was getting hotter and hotter each and every second and I could not go invisible anymore.

“Sir, we got him!”

The armed men had seen me and aimed at me. They were standing still, as cold as walls. I was shivering.

“Put down your weapons, I want to make a deal,” Jeffrey commanded. Wondering what was next, I had put my hands down too.

“Jack Nathan Rawson,” Jeffrey went on. “Congratulations, you have passed all the previous tests. We all have realized you are strong and intelligent. You even escaped, all by yourself from the container. If you thought that we could allow you to escape that easily, it was just a test.

“This is your final test, Jack. If you reach the four clones and destroy this lab before we find you, then you will be left alive, but if we find you before that, we will start the experiment on kids and you will not be able to stop us. Are you in this mini-game?”

“What if I say I don’t want to play?”

“Jack, no time for bravery,” Constance had begun. “We all know that you will be knocked unconscious and put back into the container again if you do not accept. This is your last hope, Jack, so choose wisely.”

I nodded. I had no other choice.

“Alright, hide and seek. Richard, would you usher us to the labyrinth?”

Some other soldiers were aiming at my son, Richard. “This is what we do to the traitors,” Jeffrey told. “We make them suffer. He is going to watch his father die.”

“I thought everything was unreal,” I murmured.

“Not everything. Richard is your son, but he is not dead. Constance is your beloved, but she is not that old yet. Thanks to the operations Starke has arranged.”

We were led to the labyrinth, a confusing long one.

“On one side, there stand the clones. If you reach them before we reach you, you will win the game. However, you have to be quick, because you might find our soldiers standing next to the clones.” I stood on the entrance on the labyrinth and he had told me some other instructions. “You have two minutes to get yourself hidden in this labyrinth. If you just stand there and wait, we will shoot you down.”

I dived through the path when I heard him command me to start. I ran with all my power to push myself from the entrance. Soon, I heard the mechanic voice: “Soldiers enter in ten seconds. Nine. Eight.”

The labyrinth was dark and had the Psi-proof system on, not to let me cheat. I had realized that the system was on after trying to project. “As you have experienced, we cannot allow you to cheat,” Jeffrey told after he had seen me try projecting. While I was walking, he had done everything to frighten me.

“Oh, I see a soldier near you, will he get you?”

“Stop it,” I mumbled.

“I see some soldiers are getting close to the clones!”

“I told you to stop it,” I yelled that time.

“Oh, will you possess us mentally? Try and see if you could!”

I looked at him standing in a control room above the labyrinth and behind a clean huge glass window.

“Don’t oppose me,” he was speaking to the microphone, “I can contact the soldiers and tell where you are!”

I ignored his voice and went on to turn right.

I turned right. Then left. Then I took the second left.

I could hear footsteps behind the walls next to me. The soldiers were near me, like Jeffrey had told me before.

I took a turn once again. I could see that I was led to my last steps… Or, were those the last footsteps of the scientists? I could see the clones in front of me. I tried to run towards them, but something was blocking my way.

“You are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to know that we can’t let you reach the clones that easily. The invisible thick glass is preventing you now, do you have a plan?”

I was yelling with anger, but not fear. I should have thought about it, I should have expected that from Jeffrey the Traitor.

“You damn cheater!” I turned to the glass window, yelling.

“No, I am not. There is one other way, the one without anything to prevent you, but I see you are too far from that path. Maybe you should have taken the first right instead of the second left. Oh, wait a minute, don’t go over there again. I see soldiers there.” He spoke in a mocking way; I could understand it by the way he sounded. I did not believe his directions – probably the misdirections – and tried to find the way all by myself.

Before turning, I checked my path and saw a soldier. So, I took a different path not to be shot down.

Right, left, left, second right, left. Led to nowhere.

Returned to where I had come, left, left, right, left. Dead end.

Returned, left, right, left, third right. Yes, that was it.

I was running to the clones when I had heard Jeffrey’s sneaky voice: “Congratulations.”

The rest of it was like the final scenes of an exciting computer game. I realized my memories had come back after seeing the clones. I remembered the diary, the thing which had started it all.

“Is there something you want from us, for the last time?” Jeffrey asked.

“I want you all to answer my questions… Why did you betray me? Where is Henderson?”

“We did, because you were our last hope to dominate. Mr. Henderson had an accident and got himself killed.”

“I feel it was not an accident.”

“Congratulations, you have now realized we turned the Psi-Proof system off. He thought it was an accident, but we had to take him down. He knew too much.”

“I want to take Richard with me, too. Untie him, he is innocent.”

The soldiers had untied the child and in five minutes he had been already ushered to the end of the labyrinth, where I was standing.

“Lead us to the exit, among with the clones. This ends here.”

I used all the clones’ power to blow the lab up. The clones, after blowing it up, could not take it and died. My son Richard was staring at me, he had grown up in a few days from his life. He was not a child anymore.

Let me give you all a secret: I had taken the diary too, before the explosion. I am reading that everyday to bring all my suppressed memories back. I started to remember the day Richard was born, his birthday is on September 20, and it is also the anniversary of me and Constance. Before you go, I have some other things to say: I still write on that diary. I have changed my name, too, not to hear the names Nathan and Jack anymore. All my memories before I have been locked up are back, so I decided to prepare this little story for you. Thank you for reading.

                                 

 

                    Jack Nathan Rawson, a.k.a. Nick Flamer.

         

Reviews

[J.Black]

Wow this was awesome! I'm really into clone type of books. My favourite author for that would be Carol Matas. She has written books such as "The second clone" and "Cloning Miranda". You should look into those. You're story really did remind me of that series I read.
Loved the ending!

Thanks for sharing this.

[Sara]

wow, i like the twist at the end. the alternate reality and the computer game references reminded me of 'Heir Apparent' have you read it?
it's one of my favorite books, so that's a compliment. :-)
great ending, im happy for nick and his son,
but did constance die?
-sara