Tooth and Nail

by Chris Bonnello

  *

  Oliver Roth’s keycard still worked against the Experiment Chamber exit. He took a long breath of fresh air and tore the Kevlar away from his chest, moments before the thermite fire chewed its way to his skin. He staggered into the Floor F corridor and collapsed from physical exhaustion, crying tears of real pain. Stripping to his bare chest and crawling on all fours, he reached a fire extinguisher outside the neighbouring room and sprayed its water all over himself in an effort to remove the heat from his body.

  I was so stupid! If he’d got me in my head or neck, I’d be dead!

  Why did I follow him in there when he was almost certain to die? Would the other exit even have worked?

  Roth lay topless on the cool tiled floor, looking down at the burn marks that were forming across his muscular frame. The thermite itself may not have touched his skin, but the heat alone had been damaging enough. There would be ugly misshapen scars across his chest for the rest of his life.

  As the minutes passed, the throbbing began to fade but his tears did not. Oliver Roth came to realise that he was no longer crying through physical pain, but through emotion. It was a level he had not sunk to since he was a young child, and he felt ashamed of himself. Lying half-naked on a corridor floor with burn marks that even a whole fire extinguisher could not sort out, crying because an older boy had outwitted him, Roth wondered what his bosses would have thought if they could see him at that moment.

  At least I had enough common sense to wear the Kevlar…

  As he spread his twitching arms and legs, his tired brain came to realise the unspoken benefits of a bulletproof vest.

  It hadn’t just saved his life. It had given Ewan every reason to think he was dead. And no doubt he would be showing off to his pathetic teammates.

  ‘Oliver,’ barked a voice on the other end of his radio.

  Roth looked down, surprised. Other than a few melted parts to its casing, his radio was undamaged. He sat himself upright, and took some time before answering. Iain Marshall could wait until he had steadied himself.

  ‘Oliver.’

  Roth wiped his tears from his eyes, and breathed slowly enough for the wobbling to vanish from his voice.

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘You sound miserable. Did your trap work?’

  The tears almost returned, but he fought them off.

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘And the Experiment Chamber?’

  ‘Up in smoke. But on the plus side—’

  Going by Marshall’s yells, which Roth didn’t bother listening to, he was not in the mood for silver linings.

  ‘…On the plus side,’ Roth said once Marshall had finished yelling, ‘the rebels think I’m dead. Ewan ran off thinking he killed me. Sorry sir, got to go.’

  Roth switched off the radio before his voice crumbled, and he collapsed to the floor again. The redness in his torso had not faded, but it had started to feel numb. He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.

  Either way, Oliver Roth relaxed his muscles, and smiled through his own tears. ‘Missing, presumed dead’ was a powerful position to be in.

  Chapter 21

  Alex was struggling to navigate along his improvised route, thanks to too many clone platoons blocking his original path. Lorraine and Shannon had done their best to redirect him, but with limited success.

  Thankfully, there was something familiar about the path he was on.

  Nothing about Floor F had been familiar, despite him having been there before. It was a gap in his memory, just like everything that had happened between being trapped in the clone factory control room and resurfacing in a bungalow somewhere.

  Nonetheless, something was familiar about the corridor he jogged down.

  It didn’t take him long to work out what it was. The clone factory control room was dead ahead.

  Alex’s common sense conflicted with his instincts. One told him to investigate; to gain clues about the gaps in his memory. The other told him to get the hell away from there.

  He went inside.

  His decision was helped by Kate’s assurance that time was no longer a factor. That, and he would probably never get another opportunity to revisit the place where his memory ended. The door was unlocked: there had been no reason to secure a door to a disused room.

  The Alpha Control Room was similar to how Alex remembered, as much as he could remember it. The layout of the control panels and diagonally downward windows all matched the picture in his head. The view past the windows, however, was entirely different.

  The clone factory was a metallic wasteland. Steel and glass lined the floors, with raised pads that had once been the bases of the clone pods dotted approximately across the factory floor. Chemical pipes that had been ripped apart still lay in place like gutted snakes. The monorail carriage stood at the station, charred and useless. But most striking of all was the silence: even behind the glass, the constant hums and hubbub of the factory floor had made it to Alex’s ears. It had since been replaced with deathly silence.

  Alex became aware of a feeling that had subtly entered his head without his permission. It was loss, anger, and panic rolled into one – and the image of Dean Ginelli lay under it all.

  Dad? Why am I thinking of Dad?

  Alex was no stranger to negative feelings about his father. But why they nagged him so strongly in New London’s clone factory, he had no idea.

  However, the papers in his left hand would give him some clues.

  Alex had almost forgotten about the report from the Central Research Headquarters. The half nine deadline was so firm in his mind that reading it had been an impossibility. He sat down in one of the swivel-chairs, kept one hand on his assault rifle, and started to read.

  Executive Summary Report: The Ginelli Project Last updated May 18th, Year One

  They were working on this yesterday !

  This document provides information relating to the following: • The cloning of insurgent Alex Ginelli from Terrorist Faction 001; • Events concerning the deal made between Alex Ginelli and New London Complex staff on April 25th; • Cross-references to the early experimental stages of Acceleration (see separate report); • Subsequent attempts to locate the insurgents’ base of operations (referred to by Ginelli as ‘Spitfire’s Rise’).

  By the end of the opening paragraph, Alex was so engrossed that he had forgotten he was in the midst of a battlefield.

  Deal? What kind of deal did I make?

  And why don’t I remember it?

  … What will I tell the others , once I find out what I did?

  A song tried to enter Alex’s head, but he managed to keep it out.

  Wait, what was that about?

  He read on, his heart thumping against his chest as if trying to make him stop.

  On April 25th, Year One, an intrusion was made by five members of Terrorist Faction 001: Alex Ginelli, Ewan West, Kate Arrowsmith, Jack Hopper, and Charlie Coleman (deceased). Ginelli was separated from his group and trapped inside the Clone Factory Alpha Control Room, and the decision was made to involve Dr Gwen Crossland (psychiatrist/experimental hypnotherapist).

  There was a whisper in Alex’s memory about a woman called Gwen, but no more. However, the mention of ‘experimental hypnotherapy’ frightened him.

  Dr Crossland’s previous interactions with insurgents had yielded no positive results, despite her unparalleled expertise. Her previous test case, Daniel Amopoulos (deceased) was unable to offer details about Dr Joseph McCormick or ‘Spitfire’s Rise’ due to his own lack of knowledge. He also did not consent to the cloning process before his death.

  A nd I did?

  In contrast, Ginelli’s resilience was soon worn down, and he was amenable to a deal whereby he would provide a new clone model – and information about his group’s whereabouts – in exchange for his own safety.

  Alex’s stomach started to disagree with him. Nothing in these words sounded like the person he believed himself to be. The real Alex Ginelli would last longer th
an Daniel, surely? Why did he volunteer himself to be cloned? How was his resilience ‘worn down’? And how could he give away the location of Spitfire’s Rise without knowing it himself?

  None of it made sense. Grant’s staff would not offer him a survival deal and actually keep him alive at the end of it. And Alex was smart enough to know that, so he would never have accepted such a deal.

  A song tried to enter his head again, and he dismissed it. He scanned through the document to get to the part where he was manipulated.

  Dr Crossland was instructed to use her experimental ‘two-track mind’ therapy to create two different memory streams: one where Ginelli would remember the entirety of his experience with us, and one where he would remember none of it. Ginelli would be forcefully switched between each memory stream depending on our purposes.

  Dr Crossland was able to glean Alex’s vulnerabilities using data from his old social media accounts. Two songs were chosen as triggers to switch Ginelli between his typical state of ignorance and his state of full awareness. His full memory would be switched on and off respectively by: 1) Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple, 1972) 2) Barbie Girl (Aqua, 1997)

  ‘ Barbie Girl ’ ?! Seriously?

  It made sense. Just two lines of that song made him want to shut down his whole brain, and he had probably told that to Facebook at some point.

  But he had found out how to get his memory back.

  ‘Smoke on the Water’. It was the same song he had spent the last few minutes trying to keep out of his head. He had known his brain was fighting against it, but not consciously realised what it was doing – in the same way that he had known about his memory gap for three weeks, but his brain had avoided thinking about it, so he had never realised.

  All he needed to do to switch his memory back on was sing ‘Smoke on the Water’.

  The prospect terrified him. It crossed his mind that he might prefer to live in ignorance rather than learn what he had done. But the situation was bigger than him. His friends would suffer if he didn’t do this.

  They may have suffered already because of me. But screw it, let’s see what happens.

  ‘Duh duh duuuh, duh duh duduuuh, duh duh duuuh, duh duh…’

  To an outsider, the scene would have looked ridiculous: a grown man sat on a swivel-chair, in an abandoned room above a burned-out clone factory, singing to himself whilst reading and balancing an assault rifle on his lap.

  But as the song entered his head, a sleeping part of Alex Ginelli woke up. He was met with the greatest headache of his whole life, as if he had absorbed an entire encyclopaedia in less than a second, and his brain switched over to its other memory stream.

  *

  Kate had better get out, he had thought to himself as he had clutched his sticky shoulder wound. Otherwise I got trapped here for nothing.

  He had not known what had become of Ewan and Charlie. Ewan had aborted the mission and told them to return to Floor Z where Jack was guarding the exit.

  A miniature army of clones had surrounded the door of the Alpha Control Room, and his only weapons had been rifles from the control room’s dead clones and their limited ammunition. But twenty minutes had passed, and the army outside had done nothing but wait.

  Alex had worked out that his fate would be similar to Daniel’s. If they wanted him dead immediately, they could have invaded and shot him.

  The phone mounted to the wall had rung, and Alex had swallowed his fear and answered. ‘Smoke on the Water’ had been the first sound he had heard, and then a soft, soothing voice spoke over it.

  ‘Alex Ginelli,’ she had said, ‘my name is Gwen Crossland. Listen very carefully. Your life depends on what you do next.’

  ‘Tell Grant no deal,’ Alex had answered. ‘Ever.’

  *

  The clone factory had been so much louder on the inside. And bigger too: from the Alpha Control Room, still visible to Alex somewhere in the distance, it had looked enormous. From the factory floor, it looked unending.

  ‘Are you ready for this, Alex?’ the soft voice of Gwen Crossland had said.

  Alex had looked sideways at Crossland, a four-foot-something, grey-haired old hag with a wicked smile and the demeanour of a nearly-retired headmistress. She was forceful without being loud, although the hundred clones behind her had helped.

  ‘You won’t remember it,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘You won’t even remember consenting to the deal.’

  Consent, Alex had thought, consent doesn’t count if it’s forced.

  Why the hell did I even say yes?

  It had been the pain, of course. Crossland had barked at him down the phone while the large clone model stamped on his shoulder wound, accurate and devastating like a surgeon with a hammer. Crossland’s idea had been simple: keep up the pain until he either agreed to the deal, or died from his wounds. Unfortunately the wound had not been deadly, so death would have taken hours. The word ‘yes’ would be instantaneous – and he always had the option later of running away and getting himself shot to death nice and quickly.

  He had not taken that option. The cloning pod was dead ahead.

  ‘Will my clones remember what I did?’ he had asked.

  Crossland had given a sweet smile.

  ‘We grow our clones without their models’ memories.’

  ‘So they’re not perfect copies after all.’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have the technology! Just like we could give them vocal cords if we wanted. But Grant and Pearce agree it would be a bad idea. The closer a clone becomes to a human, the more tempted we’d be to treat it as such. Besides, the memory transfer process would take a whole week of open-cranial brain analysis. The model would have to die first, and we’d rather it didn’t come to that. Plan A requires you to stay alive, even if Plan B does not.’

  My clones won’t know who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve agreed to…

  …or where I live.

  ‘Now,’ Crossland had continued, ‘it may have occurred to you to make a run for it rather than fulfil your end of the deal. But bear in mind we have no reason to kill you once we’re done. As a matter of fact, we need you to escape New London so your friends know you’re unharmed.’

  ‘How very kind of you.’

  Crossland had laughed.

  ‘If you spend several days in the Outer City walls, it will be obvious something happened to you here. If your friends think you’re dead and you later turn up alive, it’ll be suspicious. Your escape to the countryside will be a nice, peaceful way of keeping your friends’ anxiety at bay without affecting our deal. Now, off you pop.’

  Alex had given her a dirty look, and recognised his own powerlessness. There would be a chance to win, but it would not be then. Not that day.

  He had stepped into the cloning pod, and the door had sealed shut behind him.

  *

  He had been held against his will in the bungalow for two days. Although most of the time, he had not been aware of being imprisoned.

  In his regular state, the one in which he knew nothing about his capture, he had refused to leave the bungalow. He had believed himself to be acting on his own free will, staying in place like the loyal teammate he was, until the teenagers found their chance to escape.

  Each time he entered his fully aware state, he realised it was Crossland’s doing. Conditional thought, she had called it. Every thought that passed his mind about leaving the bungalow had been met with an instruction that had been planted there: ‘I will stay here until the teenagers need me.’

  The teenagers must have been dead, of course, but Crossland’s work would force him to stay put. It had been torture without a torture chamber. A prison where the prisoner believed he was choosing to stay.

  Forty-eight hours after his imprisonment, ‘Smoke on the Water’ sounded yet again.

  It had been speakers fixed to the top of the approaching vehicle, as normal. The memories had come flooding back to Alex: the memories of what he was really doing at the bungalow.
>
  Crossland had strolled through the front door as if she lived there, flanked by two clones on each side, and greeted Alex like a rebellious teenage son.

  ‘I have a treat for you today,’ she had said, producing a twelve-inch laptop from a pink and purple pouch.

  ‘A video of my clone children growing up?’

  ‘No,’ she had answered, ‘you are the child in this scenario. When was the last time you spoke to your father?’

  His birthday. Six months before Takeover Day .

  ‘The population of New Brighton has been declining for a while,’ Crossland had said, ‘some kind of disease did most of the work. Among the survivors, your father was easy to find.’

  ‘…You’re using my dad as leverage against me.’

  ‘That’s the sad thing,’ Crossland had said in a voice of genuine pity, ‘we can’t do any physical harm to you, otherwise when you revert to your ignorant state you’ll wonder where the cuts and bruises came from. We even had to give you the telescopic handgun you dropped in the corridor, simply because you would have taken it if you’d escaped independently. So we’ll have to use a different means of extracting information.’

  She had sat down at the dining room table, beckoning Alex to follow. There, she had powered up her miniature laptop.

  ‘Your father is up to speed on the situation, so don’t worry about explaining.’

  He knows I’m fighting against Nicholas Grant. That’s something , at least.

  And suddenly, Dean Ginelli was on the screen. Alex had felt his insides shrink, as if he were a small child in front of his taekwondo instructor once again.

  ‘Alex,’ his father had said.

  ‘Hi Dad.’

  No more words had been spoken.

  The video background had been a blank wall. There were no clues about where in New Brighton he was being held. Not that it would have mattered.

  Gwen Crossland had stood up, invited Alex into the chair, and towered over him as high as her short body was able to.