The Life, Death and Life of Amelia Hollow

by Edward James Bowman

  ***

  Cacey had completely soaked through the fine handkerchief Sven had given him. He resorted to the nice grey jacket Tamarax had bought him to soak up the dark blue blood. Sven, who was used to seeing alien blood, wrung the blood out his old handkerchief. The poor blue boy was probably not going to stop bleeding for a while. His blood was thin like water and was not going to clot so easily.

  After putting on his glasses he was able to see Cacey clearer now. The boy had been wearing a dark grey t-shirt under his jacket. Now that his jacket was off, Sven could see the end of his golden flame tattoo along with dozens of scars. The poor boy looked like he had been mauled even though all the scars were different ages.

  “I think aldorens are more resistant to pain than humans.” He explained when he noticed my father looking at his scars. “Even now the pain has numbed.”

  “The blood flow slowing yet?”

  Cacey pulled his jacket away from his face to check, but no. It was not easing.

  “I can’t see out of my left eye.” He laughed as pressed the jacket back to his face.

  Won’t matter for much longer.

  “We can get that fixed.” My father reassured him even though his eyes revealed his actual feelings.

  “Why do you need those?” Cacey pointed to the glasses.

  “To see better.”

  “On your planet can you not fix your eyes properly?”

  “We have the technology.”

  “Then why haven’t you gotten your eyes fixed? You got your skin fixed.” He asked curiously.

  My father ran his hand across his cheek. How could the blue boy tell he had used anti-aging cosmetics?

  “Because glasses are sexy.” He joked before readjusting his spectacles.

  “Okay.” The boy nodded along, cheerfully swinging his legs.

  Veck sighed and rested her head against the wall. The cadet cells were so silent that they could hear Sven and Cacey’s conversation perfectly. Most of them had figured out that Sven was happily playing into Cacey’s flirting. They could not blame my father. They all felt their death was near so he had nothing to lose by chatting with the smitten slave clone. Donn knew my father was married which is why the situation made him uncomfortable. However, he was not aware that the relationship had shattered so Sven was on the rebound. – And he had told Geraldine he wanted to be alone. Haha… My father did not seem to know himself well enough.

  Kel had stopped crying. He was just sitting silently in the corner with his head hidden in his arms and legs. He could not get the image of Nis being tortured out of his mind. The little golden boy had been sent to his death and it was his fault. Out of everything that had happened in Kel’s life the death of such an innocent boy had really affected him the most. It had affected all the cadets. They all prayed to their different gods hoping that a miracle would save him.

  Everyone in the cellblock perked up when there was a loud clanging noise. One of the large doors to the cellblock had been opened. Some were hopeful while others were fearful. Was it Tamarax? Was Nis with her? No… it was Chorst and I coming to save the day.

  My own father did not recognize me with my helm on. He thought it was one of Tam’s smaller soldiers until he saw the USM emblem printed on my chest plate.

  “Hi daddy!” I said like a little girl when I saw him. It was a relief to know he was still alive.

  “Amelia!” He practically screamed. He ran for the cage door before he remembered it was electrified.

  “Am?” Other voices in the cells past him began to question. Tamarax had told them all I was coming but they hadn’t believed her.

  “How did you get here?” My father asked. Cacey now stood behind him.

  “Long story.” I muttered as Chorst fiddled with the panel that controlled the cage doors.

  “Are you okay?” He asked curiously. He was not just worried about my physical being. My father feared for my mental health. Although he could not see my face from everything he had heard he knew something was wrong.

  “Feelin’ fine.” I told him. Thank God he could not see my eye twitch. “You?”

  “A little confused and overwhelmed.”

  He squeezed me as soon as Chorst got the gate open. I hugged him back. My father was the one thing I truly missed when I went to Starside Academy. I did not ever have to see the Earth again if he was not on it.

  Cacey remained in the cell timidly. The gate was open, yet he still felt trapped. My father did not notice. He was more intrigued by his daughter appearing at the most feared terrorist’s station.

  “What beef does Tamarax have with you?” Sven muttered as Chorst’s fingers danced across the panel to open Donn and Kel’s cell.

  “Dad,” I began calmly. I did not want to give anything away, “I promise I’ll tell you everything once we’re safe. Just trust me.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. My father knew there was so little time for us to talk about all the drama in my life. He decided to just start with the simple questions. “Why did Tam capture me and the cadets?”

  “A lot of reasons.” I said. “For her own insane reasons she wants me to see you guys die.”

  And you’re bait to keep me from my actual mission.

  “Wait.” He raised his eyebrows. “She knows you’re here?”

  “Yeap.”

  “Then why haven’t the alarms sounded or why aren’t guards coming?”

  “Give us a sense of false hope.” Chorst answered for me.

  My father turned to look at the impassive boy working away at the panel. His voice sounded so familiar and his tall lanky appearance allowed my father to instantly know what species he was.

  “That’s Frenchy?” He whispered quietly in my ear.

  “Yeah. You should see him with his helm off. His eyes are to die for.”

  “Chorstand Metccli.” The trinard said. He had heard our conversation. “We have met before.”

  My father knew the surname, but he did not know the boy. “We have?” He asked curiously.

  “You joined Jacoden during a holo communication once back when you were an ambassador. We discussed the habitat of the dome on Okevella.”

  “Your father is Jac?” My father asked gape-jawed.

  “You were an ambassador at the same time as Jac?” I asked. It was interesting to think my father and Chorst’s father had worked together and… oh. Oh God!

  “You slept with Jac?” I said sharply.

  My father looked surprised. There was no way I could know have that. He had never told anyone that he had touched that trinard and he doubted Jac had said anything because sex was meaningless to his species. I was not supposed to know that part of my father’s history, but the information Bennu had given moi was leaking into my brain.

  “Sort of. First bisexual experience at least.” He said with a slight smile. He leaned in so Chorst could not overhear us. “That’s why I know trinards aren’t fun to have sex with.”

  I was stunned. Of course my father had slept with the pale boy’s father. That’s just how it had to be. My father and I were so similar that we were intrigued by the same men.

  “Am!” Donn leapt out of the cell and wrapped his scrawny little arms around my chest. He had not overheard my conversation with Sven. He was too excited to get out of the hellish prison. “How did you find us?”

  I patted him on the back and ignored the question. I noticed Kel at the back of the prison cell. All the other cadets had filed out but he had remained. – Just like Cacey in the other cell. They both felt they deserved to stay.

  Veck glanced at me when Chorst got their cell open. She and I had been the harshest on Kel out of all the cadets.

  “You know your way around technology.” Sven noted as Chorst stepped away from the third panel he had hacked. “Your father taught you how to do that?”

  “It is genetic.” He said impassively. “We must go hastily. Now that you are all free Tamarax will want to kill you.”

  “Eh?” Donn looked at the trinar
d in confusion.

  “Tamarax is intentionally letting us free you because she intend to have you killed in front of Amelia just as we are about to escape.”

  My father sighed. “Then how are we gonna get out of here?” Sven and the cadets were all less reassured now. We had come to save them only to watch them die.

  “Firstly, use the dub crew spaceship we stole from the USM as a distraction, then move stealthily into the nearest hangar and steal a spaceship that can accompany all of us.”

  The nearest hangar was hangar four: The one Tam knew we were going to be heading for.

  “Okay.” Sven nodded along. The plan sounded very faulty.

  Zand stepped in front of the other cadets. “We can’t leave without Nis.”

  Chorst looked to her without saying a word. He knew what had happened. “What direction was he taken?”

  The Jell-O girl pointed forward in the direction Chorst and I had come from.

  “I will retrieve him alone.” He said coldly before passing his stun gun to Zand. “You and Am will protect the cadets and Sven and get them to hangar four. I will meet you there with Nis. He may already have entered grey state though.”

  “We need to take him back to Starside.” Zand insisted while accepting the stun gun.

  I overheard this conversation. It helped explain why Kel was so down. I had absolutely no idea what to say to the phallic… Probably not addressing him as ‘phallic’ was good for starters.

  “Up and at ‘em, Kel.” I said cheerfully.

  He did not reply, although he did look up. His black and yellow eyes had never looked sadder. I had not heard the story on why Nis had been taken. I could only presume that Kel was feeling more guilt than the other cadets because he had done something that had gotten Nis taken away.

  “I’m not gonna leave without ya.” I told him firmly, but with heart.

  Not wanting to make a scene, the algrin stood up with his head hung low and followed me out of the cell. Surprisingly, my father was having a similar incident in the cell next door.

  “It’s okay, Cacey.” Sven said to the meek little blue boy. “We’re gonna protect you.”

  Cacey shook his head frantically while still keeping his jacket attached to his face: “The USM doesn’t like slave clones. T-they kill us.”

  My father raised his eyebrows. He looked back out at me and the other cadets. Chorst had already vanished to go get Nis. We did not have time to try and convince the little blue boy to come, but my father did not have the heart to leave him.

  “Now, who told you that?” He asked as if he was addressing a child. “Tamarax? She’s a liar. I worked for the USM. They’ll find you a home.”

  My father was lying about Tamarax being a liar. The United Systems of Mel only spared around twenty per cent of slave clones discovered. Most had to be euthanized due to the diseases or injures they had. Most were mentally unstable and the USM did not put much money into making institutions for slave clones so they were euthanized as well. Sven knew this, yet he was sure the USM would save Cacey. The euthanizing was for massive bulks of slave clones that had nowhere to go. Cacey was just one little boy. My father would fight to save him. He would ask Della Vis Homen. She was not just an ambassador. She had taken on a second job as the Hashtish Alliance representative for the Ministry of Customs, Immigration and Asylum Assistance (MCIAA). The Hashtish Alliance had a small chain of asylums for freed slave clones on their planets. They required a lot of paperwork to get into, but Sven would do work to get Cacey there. – This was all providing that he and Cacey made it out of Tamarax Station, of course.

  My father outstretched his glove-covered hand. “Trust me.”

  Cacey stared at him with his one good eye. Sven’s heart sunk when the blue boy turned around. He thought he was walking further into the cell. It turned out the aldoren was actually just going back to pick up the blood-stained handkerchief he had left on the bench. Putting it in his pant pocket, he took my father’s hand and walked out of the cell. I looked at my father suspiciously. Obviously something had happened between him and Geraldine if he was so happily holding an alien’s hand. Oh well, now was not the time to ask about that.

  “Zand, you guard the back. I’ll lead.” I said.

  “Got it.” She replied in a semi-amused tone. She was an aggressive girl who actually wanted to take on Tamarax’s henchmen.

  “Great,” I clapped my together around my stun gun before, “then let’s ge–”

  My worst fear. The alarm sounded. My first thought was of Chorst when he tried to show me his emotions through telepathy. I was snapped back into reality when Veck put her hand on my shoulder.

  “We need to move!” She screamed over the siren.

  We ran like hell out of the cellblock. I had not expected Tamarax’s attack to be this conspicuous. She seemed like the kind of woman who would want to surprise us with her attack and then have a huge monologue to explain her evil plan.

  “Wait!” Cacey yelled as I tried to lead the group down one of the ways in the labyrinth. “This way is less used by henchmen.” He said while pointing in the opposite direction.

  I looked at the map on my wrist computer. The small corridor the blue boy was pointing to was apparently so insignificant that it did not even come up on the map. I wondered if he was trying to lead us into a trap, but the jacket he was using to cover his bloody face said otherwise. For so many years he had waited for a way to escape Tamarax Station. He did not want to lose his one chance at freedom.

  I became less stressed when the sirens calmed. “All security personnel report to hangar four.” The robotic voice said. – I was not so sure about going to hangar four now.

  “It goes through one of Tamarax’s smaller bioengineering labs.” He explained.

  The other cadets looked suspicious of him as well, but I nodded and led the way down his route. Zand was at the back with her stun gun ready, constantly looking around for any henchmen.

  We all relaxed when we realized Cacey had just saved us. A dozen beastly henchmen jogged by from the direction we had originally come and went down the corridor I had originally suggested.

  “We shouldn’t go to hangar four if they’re going to meet us there.” Veck muttered as we quickly strode down the hall.

  “They’re gonna meet us at any hangar we go to.” I said. “And we told Chorst that we’d meet him there so we have to.”

  The corridor turned out to be a supposed dead-end. The door to the bioengineering lab was locked and only a computer genius like Chorst would be able to hack it. None of us were too anxious about henchmen coming down this hall seeing as it wasn’t even on the map. For me, it was simply a matter of time. Catching up to the ‘comet’ with the 4th dimensional being in it was not going to be easy.

  “You wouldn’t by any chance know the password would you?” My father asked the slave clone.

  Without a word, Cacey passed his bloody jacket to Sven. Some of the cadets gasped when they saw the left side of the blue boy’s face. The blood flow was finally slowing even though his face was still drenched with the dark blue blood. His eye was what really disturbed us all. Cacey would have to get surgery if he wanted to see out of his left eye again, but I doubt surgery like that would be provided for a slave clone. If it was up to the USM he would not even be alive.

  Chorst would disapprove of how Cacey dealt with the panel. He smashed his blue fist into the panel and broke the screen. Surprisingly, the door made a clicking noise that suggested it had unlocked.

  “Tamarax showed me how to do that.” He told my father as he took his jacket back and pressed it against his bloody face again. “Everything always breaks around here.”

  “Not bad.” I praised while trying to yank the door open manually.

  The bioengineering lab was something out of a horror movie. Like a child I took a step closer to my father as we walked through the carnage of alien animals and humanoids. This lab appeared to have been mainly for creating implants for soldiers. I knew th
is because one of the dead creatures was stuffed full of electronic implants.

  “These are Tamarax’s personal experiments.” Cacey sighed as we weaved between the benches.

  Most of the cadets felt very nauseous at the sight of the carcases, but then there were others like Veck. She trailed her hand across the various weapons of pain before picking up an electronic stick. She tossed it between her hands to test its weight before carelessly switching the button on the side of it. We all jumped when a purple alien carcass jittered like it had been struck by lightning. The electrocution was so powerful that it melted the skin. The smell was nasty and we quickly moved away from the rotting corpse.

  “Must be some sort of thing that makes sure the USM get no survivors.” Veck stated. I ignored her. – There was no need to melt a corpse.

  When Cacey said the bioengineering lab was ‘little’ he meant it was little compared to all bioengineering labs at Tamarax Station. This one was narrow yet long like a corridor. Its black walls made it seem smaller than it was. It was the perfect work environment for a madwoman like Tam.

  We all held our breath when we reached the ‘kennels’ at the end of the lab. Some of the small cages had alien animals in them while others had obvious humanoids. All the creatures had strange implants or scars covering their sickly bare bodies. The humanoid aliens retained no humanity. Most of them appeared to have been lobotomized. Their impassive staring made me feel sicker than if they had looked sad or scared.

  It was good that Chorst was off looking for Nis, because the sight would have made him enraged even if he didn’t show it. A trinard female in a little kennel stared blankly at us as we walked by. Well, out of her one good amethyst eye. Her other eye was an electronic blue one. Her head was completely shaved to reveal the implants in her skull while her missing hand was being used for an experiment across the room on a blood-stained bench.

  “We’ve gotta get them out!” Jhan squealed before trying to run toward the trinard’s kennel. Donn grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back. He knew better.

  “They’re dead.” Kel said lifelessly from the back of our group.

  “But,” Jhan tried to worm out of Donn’s grip, “we have to save them. We can’t be monsters!”

  “Look at them.” The algrin continued even though none of were sure how Jhan saw if she had no eyes. “There’s only one way to save them… and we don’t have time to do them all.”

  “What are you talking about?” Or turned around and asked the sullen boy.

  “Death is their only escape.”

  We all knew he was right even though I chose not to think that way. My father put an arm around me. He had forgotten how harsh living in space was. He had managed to block out all of his horrendous memories and only remembered the highlights. Sadly, none of the imagery we had witnessed today was new to him. Cacey seemed used to it as well even if he did look solemn. On many occasions Tam had brought him into a lab to show him her new ‘achievements’ and he would have to pretend to be impressed even if he felt like vomiting.

  “We can’t kill them.” Nor squeaked, almost in tears.

  I felt a little uncomfortable to have all eyes on moi for answers. Apparently I was leading this mission so the fate of the ungodly experiments was up to me. Thank God my awkwardness was hidden by my helm. I avoided the gaze of the poor creatures in the kennels. Although they had all lost their sanity a part of them knew we were not to be feared like Tamarax was. They were intrigued by our presence.

  I took a step back to address my fellow cadets, Cacey and my father. Little did I know that on the bench behind me was a tank of overgrown insects. No one bothered to mention this so I didn’t notice.

  Zand, being the leader she was, joined me at the front to address the others on the situation. Who knew that in the end Zand and I would be able to work so well together? At Starside Academy we had probably been enemies because we were so similar which meant we were equally stubborn. I saw now that she was a great ally. Even Chorst trusted her seeing as he gave her his stun gun to protect the group. There was a reason she was going to become a captain in the USM Navy, and I knew what it was now; she was a badass.

  Even the Jell-O girl was surprised by my decision: “We leave them how we found them. They’re not our problem.”

  Harsh words. Even though the dark voice inside my mind had actually said that, I agreed with it this time. If I was sane I’m not sure I would have agreed with my alter ego. Maybe me and the dark voice were finally merging minds and not duelling it out for my body… or maybe the dark voice was about to take over my body and I would become the voice at the back if its mind… or maybe I’m paranoid.

  “Am?” Donn asked as if he was not sure it was me.

  If the cadets had not known I was losing my sanity before, they knew now. They all wanted to aid the poor abominations in some way and yet I just chose to ignore them. I sounded like the perfect USM employee.

  My father wished he could see my eyes. There was something not right about me. He wondered what had happened to his daughter. Sadly, I doubted there would be time later to explain to him what had happened with the tear in the space time continuum.

  “We’re wasting time even talking about them.” I said coldly.

  Everyone I stood in front of gasped when Zand picked up a scalpel from the bench behind us and jabbed it into my back. I doubted the scalpel could penetrate by armour, but I still spun around like lightning to face her. To my surprise an overgrown insect was at the end of the scalpel and Zand had taken it off my back. I was relieved she was helping moi instead of trying to literally stab me in the back.

  I nodded in understanding. “Thanks.”

  She chucked the scalpel and the overgrown insect aside. “Anytime.” She replied placidly.

  “Let’s move.” I said before making my way around the insect-infested bench and towards the end of the lab.

  Despite the fact no one agreed with my decision, they continued followed me. Besides avoiding the looks from the creatures in the kennels, I also ignored my father’s judgemental gaze.

  “Amelia…” He began.

  “What would you have me do?” I hissed sharply. “There is no good ending for them.” I pointed to the kennels. “Releasing them would accomplish nothing and murdering them would accomplish less.”

  Sven said no more. He was not sure what he would do if he was in my position.

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked Cacey as we reached the door. “How far are we from hangar four?”

  “Well, how fast do you want to get to the hangar? We can either go directly through the corridors which will most likely get us caught or we can go through the second part of the lab across the hallway which will take longer but we are less likely to get caught.”

  The fact there was a second part to the bioengineering lab made my stomach churn. Tamarax had a lot of experiments going in such a ‘little lab’.

  I sighed. “Looks like we get to go through another lab. Hooray!”

  Cacey nodded and opened the door with his free hand. Luckily, the door to the second part of the lab was only a few feet away. What really intrigued me was the monitor to the side of the door. It was like the one Chorst and I had seen before that had the map on it, but this one had a message about the USM raid on it. Wait… what USM raid?

  “Are we the USM raiders?” Veck asked, almost joking.

  “No.” I said with a smile that nobody else could see due to my helm. “I know who the raiders are.”