Synthetic: Dark Beginning

by Shonna Wright

  Kora wished she'd been more open with Gus when she had the chance. “It's hard to explain. I didn't think you'd believe me.”

  Gus paced the floor in front of her. “I don’t know what to believe, Kora,” he said. “I saw with my own eyes how you blasted Caleb down the hall into the lab. Just look at that crack.” He hobbled over to point at the fissure that appeared to be spreading through the wall.

  “I’m as shocked as you,” said Kora. “I didn't know I was capable of such things, though I did do something similar to Vaughn when we first met.”

  “What?” Gus stopped pacing and stared at her.

  She needed to keep her mouth shut. Every sentence was making things worse. “I haven’t been hiding anything—I swear.”

  “I think you’ve been hiding everything. You were right. You’re not what we thought you were. I should have believed you when you said that.”

  “I didn’t mean that I was dangerous or anything. I meant that I was…”

  Gus waited. “What? What the hell are you, Kora? Tell me. I’m listening.”

  “I don't know. That's the honest truth, Gus. I came here to find out and now I'm just more confused than ever.”

  “Well, so am I.” Gus closed his eyes and tipped his head back. “Look, I’m tired as hell but I should go up and see how Caleb’s doing. There might be something I can do to help.”

  “Please ask Ivan—”

  “This is a time for family. You should go back to Mirafield where you belong.”

  “Family…yes of course.” Kora’s cheeks stung as if Gus had just slapped her in the face.

  He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “We didn’t find the catacomb, but we found where Ivan hides all the car keys. Here’s the one to Ruby’s Rolls.” He tossed it and she caught it in midair.

  “But I don’t know how to drive,” she said.

  The hint of a smile crept onto Gus’s face. “It pretty much drives itself.”

  Kora smiled back. She would miss him. “Thanks for everything you’ve done, Gus. You’ve been a good friend.”

  He nodded before disappearing into the hall. Kora heard the quick pop of the secret panel and then silence. She looked down at the key in her hand. She couldn't go back to Mirafield now. Not with what she knew. Alex would have a party if she found out Kora was synthetic. Probably get Randall to beat the hell out of her. Kora shuddered at the thought.

  “Having a rough evening, my dear?” Ruby drifted into the lab from the direction of her office holding a large goblet. “I thought I heard an earthquake a few minutes ago, but the epicenter seemed to be somewhere down here.”

  Kora wondered if everyone within a mile radius was on their way to the lab tonight to destroy her. “You should know better than to get drunk the day before an operation,” she said, making no effort to sound welcoming.

  “Won’t hurt anything.” Ruby took a large swig from her cup. “It helps shrink the brain tissue so there’s less swelling.”

  “Go back to your room and sleep.”

  “How can I rest when it sounds like a boulder slammed through my basement?” Ruby spun around until she spotted the crack in the wall left by Caleb’s head. “So there was a boulder.”

  Kora wasn’t sure what to say so she kept quiet. The last person she wanted to explain anything to was Ruby. Luckily, Ruby seemed to have other things on her mind.

  “I wanted to ask you,” Ruby staggered forward until she was standing directly before Kora, “will I know myself when I wake up after the operation? Will my memory be damaged like yours was?”

  “I’ve never performed the operation before, remember? If I do it, you probably won’t wake up at all.”

  “Of course you’ve done it before. I think you finally know that, don't you?” Ruby took another drink and wiped her lipstick-smeared mouth.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do.” Ruby’s face twisted into a grimace. “You saw your little old self when you visited my storeroom today, didn’t you?”

  It unnerved Kora that Ruby knew about this trip; she’d forgotten that everything in the house was bugged except her lab. “Gus said that you made models of all your mutants before you created them.”

  “All my favorites. And you, my dear, were Caleb’s blushing bride. Unfortunately, none of the arachnids or cephalopods worked out. It would have been fabulous to have that giant spider roaming the castle. But what did you think of yourself?”

  Kora shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Since you don’t seem to remember, sweet daughter, I’ll fill in your memory. You were ghastly. After you finished Vaughn, I convinced you that the poor boy would die of fright the moment he awoke and saw your face, so you agreed to hand him over to me. You didn’t have long to live anyway. Like all the others, you were dying in the most hideous way imaginable. You left a trail of slime everywhere you went like a big slug.”

  “All thanks to sloppy science in that movie set lab of yours.”

  Ruby snorted before descending into a coughing fit. She took a drink from her goblet that cleared her throat. “Mirafield let you build a new body. It was supposed to resemble your old one but, as usual, they didn’t follow my orders.” She looked Kora up and down with a sneer. “But what a waste. You could have made something like that Alex, but instead you turned yourself into this mediocre thing. And because you no longer stink of carrion and vaguely resemble a human, you think Vaughn will fall for you?”

  “I don’t think that at all,” said Kora. She wished her voice sounded stronger, but it cracked under the strain of the question.

  Ruby’s hazy eyes hardened into slits. “You may have made him, my dear, but I know him far better than you ever will. He goes through women like cheap wine, and your pathetic transformation from a rotting corpse into a wallflower falls far short of what Vaughn requires in a mate.”

  Kora rested her fingers on the gurney where Vaughn lay the night she switched his stomach with that of the synthetic. “I guess when this is all over, you’ll be the woman for him? Is that what you’re hinting at, mother?”

  Ruby frowned when she noticed Kora standing beside the gurney. “What was that used for?”

  Kora ran her hand over the pillow and pinched a dark wavy hair between her thumb and forefinger. Ruby stumbled toward it, her eyes struggling to focus on the thin strand. “That looks like Vaughn’s hair.”

  “It is.”

  “What was he doing on this surgical bed?”

  “I operated on him last night. I had to in order to finish your new body. Even if I knew how to synthesize a blood-digesting stomach, there wasn’t time to grow one in two days so I took a shortcut.”

  Ruby looked down at the pillow, then back up to the hair still gripped between Kora’s fingers. “Tell me you didn’t ruin him!”

  Kora smiled. “He’s probably eating a big burger right now with extra pickles.”

  Ruby lunged at Kora until her snarling face hovered mere inches away. “Change him back or I’ll tear you to pieces.”

  Kora didn’t flinch. “Now mother, you and I both know he wasn’t meant to be a vampire.”

  Ruby’s face relaxed and she tipped her goblet high into the air, emptying it before tossing it onto the floor. “You want to fuck with me? Fine. I’m always up for a fight. After the past few days, I’ve gotten used to having my plans demolished. First my reality show and now my vampire.” She strutted back toward her office. “You just killed your boyfriend.”

  A lump swelled in Kora’s throat. “This is between you and I, mother. There’s no need to bring Vaughn into it.”

  Ruby paused at the door. “I’m the director, here, and I’ve decided he no longer fits the part.” Ruby swept her hand dramatically through the air. “I have no use for a man who isn’t a monster and once my creations are no longer useful—”

  “You throw them away.”

  “No, I store them in my basement. You, of all people, should know that.”


  “What do you mean?”

  “The catacomb was your realm, Kora. Everything else is fake. You're a fake with your second rate body, big penthouse, and dreams of a white wedding.” Ruby drifted back, her eyes alight with some mad plan. “Go back after my surgery, and I'll let him live.” Kora opened her mouth to protest, but Ruby waved a finger at her. “Vaughn's not human, Kora. I could kill him and no one would care.”

  “Back where? What are you talking about?”

  “Hell. Where you belong! If you don't, I'll just follow your suggestion and have Randall dismantle Vaughn at Mirafield along with Ivan and Caleb. It's time I cleaned house.”

  “This is between you and me!”

  Ruby faded into the darkness and Kora jumped at the sound of her office door slamming. She ran down the hall and yanked the door open, but the office was empty. Ruby had slipped away through a secret panel.

  “I told you I don't know how! If I do this surgery, you'll die,” she yelled into the emptiness. Kora cursed herself for thinking she could manipulate the old witch. Was Vaughn safer with Ruby dead or alive? When Kora failed during the operation and killed her, Randall was sure to carry out Ruby's orders and have Vaughn and the others dismantled. Especially when he found out Kora had feelings for the former vampire. Her only option was to disappear, never to be seen again. With Mirafield's golden goose missing, Randall would have bigger concerns than destroying a handful of synthetics. But where should she go? She ran her thumb over the key to the Rolls in her pocket. She could drive anywhere... but Gus had failed to consider the prison force field. If she hit that, the car would probably blow up. Then she thought of Caleb, standing in the doorway, desperately spewing Mud's name and signing how he wanted her to be free. If Humphrey was right about all of Ruby's creatures getting buried in the catacomb, then she knew just where to find him.

  Kora dashed back to her lab, grabbed a flashlight wrapped in a plastic bag from the back of a cupboard, and continued on to her cell. She stuffed extra clothes in the bag and the skull Humphrey had given her. She sealed the bag and fastened it over her shoulder, then ran up the lava tube to the service entrance where she tugged on the door handle, but this time it didn’t budge. Next she tried the door to the stairs that led up to the living room but someone, probably Ivan, had locked the door behind him.

  She backtracked down the hall to the secret panel Gus always opened with such ease, and stood glowering at it. “You better open or I’m taking this wall apart with my bare hands.” Kora hit the panel and it glided open. She snatched a torch down off the stand and stepped in, shivering with cold. Within seconds, the panel closed and Kora stumbled forward, holding her torch high as she navigated the twists and turns through the solid rock.

  She sensed that the stairwell was somewhere in a southeast direction and continually shifted her path to the left. Her instincts paid off when the carved stair appeared around the last bend. She wound her way up several floors and stepped off on what she hoped was the main floor of the house. She sped through a series of tunnels between the wooden walls and opened a panel decorated with a painting of a book.

  The room smelled of dust and decaying paper. Tall shelves surrounded her on every side and a massive card catalogue sat in the center of the floor with several of the drawers hanging open. She edged past a long table littered with dirty coffee cups and plates of half-eaten sandwiches. Gus obviously spent a great deal of time here while Ivan didn’t.

  A sliver of light glowed along the floor and Kora pushed open the grand doorway. She paused, scanning the massive room to make sure Ruby wasn’t wandering drunk through the couch maze, then hustled toward what she hoped was the main door to the castle. She skidded around a corner and smacked into the marble wall where the front door hung open, a flood of dead leaves and plants blowing over the checkerboard floor. Max had told the truth about how he got into the castle.

  Kora launched herself down the stairs and within seconds, had skirted the entire building with nearly the same speed as the night Vaughn chased her. When she reached the beach, she stripped off her clothes and stuffed them into her plastic bag. The water felt warm after the hot day. She swam over to some rocks she’d noticed beside the mark Humphrey had made on the castle plans. Following a strange impulse, she dove straight down and spotted a massive pipe trailing along the sea floor directly below. She explored all sides until she found a hole gouged in the thick metal large enough for a man to swim through. Then an uncomfortable pressure gathered in her lungs that forced her back to the surface.

  Already tired from treading water, Kora tried to concentrate on the moment she’d sent Caleb sailing across the lab. Her limbs hummed with power at the memory of it. Though she wasn't sure why, she'd wanted to do that for a long time. If she ran out of air halfway up the pipe, she felt certain some mysterious burst of strength would save her. With renewed confidence, Kora took several deep breaths and dove. She swam into the pipe and up the narrow channel like an eel, squeezing through tight openings where debris had washed down, over the years, forming dangerous obstacles. After a few minutes, she felt a heavy strain in her lungs and knew she wouldn’t last much longer. She prayed for strength, but instead grew weaker and more disoriented until she lost track of which direction was forward. Panic clouded her brain and she bashed against the pipe walls, hoping she could break free and find her way back to the surface. Her wild thrashing burnt up the last of her precious air, and soon she was bobbing helplessly against the top of the pipe like a trapped bottle.

  Her last thought, before her mind folded into blackness, was of Vaughn lying in bright blue liquid with closed eyes, his face serene like that of a sleeping child. She reached out to touch him but everything went dim before her hand could reach his cheek.

  Chapter 25

  Vaughn walked into his bedroom completely worn out. He’d managed to haul Caleb up the stairs and tip him into bed where Ivan fussed over him like a frantic mother. He didn’t want to think about Kora, but the more he tried to block her out, the clearer he saw her face as she hurled Caleb down the hall. It wasn't her strength that surprised him, he'd experienced that the first night they met, but her expression. She looked triumphant, as if she'd always dreamed of tossing the giant with such ease. There was more going on between those two than any of them knew.

  Gus stuck his head through the secret panel. “Kora isn’t here, is she?”

  “No, why would she be here?”

  “You and women, I was just hoping.”

  “Isn’t she down in the lab?”

  Gus shook his head and lowered his eyes. “I told her to go back to Mirafield where she belonged. Gave her the key to the Rolls but it’s still parked down in the garage.”

  “Did you forget that we live in a prison with a huge force field surrounding the property? Are you trying to kill her?” Vaughn tried to control his anger, but Gus had screwed up again and he was losing patience.

  “I was angry and I wasn't thinking,” Gus said mournfully. “Where the hell could she have gone?”

  Vaughn climbed off the bed and stared out the window.

  “She said Caleb spoke to her,” continued Gus. “At the time I didn’t believe her, but why would she lie about something that weird?”

  “What did Caleb say?”

  “Something about this dead Mud guy. I can’t figure it out. What it all means.”

  Vaughn bounded onto the deck. “She went to find him on her own.”

  “You don’t think she went looking for the catacomb? I told her the vent only led to the garage.”

  “Then she's taking the only route left.”

  “The pipe? Let me come with you. This is all my fault.”

  Vaughn put his hand on Gus's shoulder. He'd punished him long enough and could tell he was as concerned about Kora as he was. “Can you swim?”

  Gus held his arms out like a pathetic gull. “I float like a beach ball, but swimming has never worked for me.”

  “Stay here and do what you can to help
.”

  Vaughn jumped over the railing and Gus called after him: “I just remembered—you can’t swim either.”

  Vaughn ignored his words but when he reached the shore, he paced back and forth on the sand like an anxious lion. Kora's fresh footprints disappeared into the water. He was right. She was out to find the catacomb on her own. He rushed into the water and the waves crashed over his head. He struggled hard to swim, but sank like a stone through the murky depths. He thrashed toward the surface, but his efforts proved about as effective as trying to flap his arms to fly on land. Then Vaughn realized he’d been underwater for over five minutes. He felt his chest, amazed to find that his heart had stopped beating and he had no desire to breathe. This was a surprise. Vaughn had always been so alarmed by his lack of buoyancy that he avoided water, but it wasn't so bad stumbling along the ocean floor. Even sort of fun. After half an hour of wandering, he smacked into a curved wall half buried in rocks and realized he’d found the pipe Gus mentioned. He followed it another twenty yards out to sea and discovered a large opening. Kora had passed into that dark chamber not long before. He could feel it.

  The inside of the pipe was large but full of so much sand and junk that he had to dig a larger opening in order to climb through. His journey was slow and when he was over halfway through, he sensed something ahead and reached into the pitch black where he grasped a small, limp hand. He pulled Kora into his arms and wished for even the smallest stream of light so he could see her face. She felt dead in his arms as he trudged the rest of the way up the pipe, bent over like an old man.

  When he surfaced everything was still dark, but he could tell he was in a large cavern from the way the sound of the water echoed off the walls. The air was rank with the smell of rotting trash and seaweed, so he ran his hand over the flat surface beside the pool to clear a spot where he could lay Kora down. She was breathing again but her eyes were closed, and he decided the best thing he could do was find somewhere warm where she could dry off.

  Accustomed to the motion-activated torches in the castle, Vaughn waved his arms but nothing happened. Then he remembered the plastic bag wrapped around Kora’s shoulders and opened the sack. He rifled through her clothes until he found a flashlight, switched it on and hoisted Kora over his shoulder. He entered a wide tunnel and trailed the flashlight over the walls that were cut with deep, earthen shelves covered in dark shapes. When he looked closer, he saw the shapes were dried corpses curled up on their stone beds, mouths twisted open in silent, eternal screams. After that, he kept the flashlight pointed straight ahead.