She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet. She walked over to where he phone lay in plastic shards on the carpet. “I was due an upgrade anyway,” she said.
“What happened?” said John.
“I was just standing by the window when everything went bright. Next thing I know I'm laying on the floor. I guess there must have been an explosion.” She rubbed a hand over her face and looked at the empty hole where the window had been.
“Safety glass,” he said.
“You think of everything,” she said.
He grabbed her hand again and led her out of the room. He couldn't believe how close he'd come to losing her. In the brighter light of the corridor he could see she hadn't even been scratched.
John put his hands on her face. Her skin was warm and soft. He brushed a long strand of dark hair out of her face.
“I have to go,” he said.
“I'll come with you then,” she said.
Neither one of them looked away. They were so close that he could feel her gentle breath on his face.
He shook his head. “Not this time.”
“Why?” she said. “I can handle myself.”
“I know you can Marla but the man I'm going after, he's not exactly low profile.”
“You figured it out then?”
“Not exactly but I know who's behind it.”
“Should I ask?”
“Probably not.”
She put her hands to his face and pulled him down to her. They kissed, first on the lips but then more passionately.
“Promise me you're coming back,” she said, panting slightly.
He couldn't do that so he kissed her again. She seemed to understand.
“Is there anything I can do?” she said.
“Just stay in the house,” it was the safest place he could think of for her. “Be here when I get back?”
“Of course.”
They kissed again. He didn't want to let her go but eventually he forced himself to. One way or another he wanted to end this tonight.
13
Marla sat on his desk and watched him while he got ready. He swapped out all of his guns, checked the power packs and added a couple of conventional pistols for good measure. When he was done she followed him down the stairs and through the house to the garage.
“Are you sure you don't want my help?” said Marla.
He nodded. He was leaving his house armed to the teeth to take on a monster, finally he was doing something that he felt comfortable with. “I'll be fine,” he said.
“Don't promise me something you can't guarantee,” she said.
“I didn't promise,” he said and then kissed her.
He switched on the light and she followed him into the garage. There was the standard blue hatchback that he used for food shopping. Next to it was his bike. A 1979 Triumph Bonneville.
He kissed Marla a final time and put on his helmet. He opened the garage door and started the bike. He could feel the roar of the engine in his chest. He smiled at Marla and drove out of the garage.
John took the bike at a leisurely speed through the quiet residential street. When he reached the main road he opened it up, changed into fifth gear and took it close to its top speed of 110mph. He didn't have to worry about speeding tickets tonight.
He raced through Wreathing, not paying attention to anything except the road. He could feel the damp wind against his neck and on his bare hands. He lost himself to the sensation and it became like meditation.
Gregory Sanctuary lived outside of the city in the countryside. He had a very big house and plenty of land. There was no traffic on the road, it was as if everyone had realised that something was going down tonight and that it would be in their best interest to stay out of the way. It took John just half an hour to reach the mansion.
He parked his bike on the country road on the edge of the Sanctuary estate. He dropped his helmet beside it. His eyes adjusted to the complete darkness and he was able to see the wooden fence that surrounded the property.
“Is there security?” he said in a low voice.
“No sir,” said Timothy. It might have been John's imagination but he could have sworn Timothy sounded upset.
Apparently the fence wasn't there for security; it was made of two horizontal beams about half a metre apart. John climbed through the top gap and scanned the grounds.
The house itself was about five-hundred metres away. It was a glass and steel shell that seemed at odds with the natural surroundings. There were three smaller buildings on the property that looked much older.
John pulled out a pulse gun and checked that it has charged. Then he set off across the lawn towards the house.
When he reached the house he stopped behind an oak tree and waited. There were three cars parked outside one of the buildings which from this distance John could see was a garage. One of the cars he recognised as the black Humvee he and Marla had chased Ranulph in. Seeing it he felt sure that he had been right and that Sanctuary was behind all this. It also meant that Rudolph Ranulph was responsible for Marla nearly being blown up.
John realised that he was squeezing his gun tightly and forced himself to calm down. He couldn't see any security outside the front of the house but he had Timothy check again.
“Negative sir,” he said.
“How many in the house?”
There was a pause before Timothy replied, “I can't get an accurate reading sir.”
Sanctuary must have had some kind of electro-magnetic shield installed to stop scans. It meant that he probably had access to other advanced equipment.
John checked his gun again and then left the security of the oak tree and approached the house.
He tried the front door but it was locked. There was a doorbell and for a moment he considered ringing it and announcing his presence but he decided to remain anonymous for at least a little while longer. There was also an iris scanner and a thumb print reader.
John heard footsteps on the other side of the door and he walked over towards the garage where he could take shelter behind the Humvee and in the shadows.
He watched as the front door opened and a woman looked out.
She was tall and had long blond hair. She was wearing a silky top and matching trousers. Her bare arms were exposed as was a lot of her chest. It took John a moment to get to her face and see that it was Sandra or Sabrina.
His froze. His breath caught in his throat.
The woman turned her head from side to side, looking for something in the dark. John realised that the door probably had a proximity sensor alongside the iris scanner and thumb print reader and that his presence would have been detected.
Apparently satisfied that there was no one out there the woman closed the door and disappeared.
John stood still for a moment and considered what he had just seen. The woman couldn't have been Sandra or Sabrina and, unless they had a third sister neither of them had mentioned, she must have been a clone. But the ones he had seen in the lab had been younger, teenagers at most. This woman had appeared to be in her thirties.
There was no time to figure it out now. He had to get inside and find Stafford. That was the reason he had come here, he reminded himself. He couldn't bring Sandra or Sabrina back from the dead but he could rescue his friend.
He ran around the side of the house, keeping low and moving quickly. He scanned the walls for an open window but didn't expect to find one. He stopped when he heard voices.
John pressed himself up against the wall and listened. He could see the edge glow of a light in front of him and hear men talking. Smoke caught in the light and seemed to freeze. He could smell cigars.
“What language are they speaking?” he said.
“English sir,” said Timothy.
“Why can't I understand them?”
“They have a device installed that is scrambling their words.”
He nodded. “Can you translate?”
“No sir.”
; He was sure that Timothy was being shitty with him but as long as he continued to function he could live with a little attitude. Well here goes nothing, he thought and raised his gun.
He stepped around the edge of the house and into the light. He squinted as the light momentarily blinded him but his eyes quickly adjusted and he saw four men; Rudolph Ranulph, Gregory Sanctuary and two that he didn't recognise.
There were two women sitting with them. One wore a long black dress and high heels, the other a short skirt and low-cut top. They both had blond hair and they were both Sandra or Sabrina.
The sight of them momentarily shocked John but he quickly recovered. “Put your hands in the air where I can see them,” he said.
The two women glanced at him. The men stared at him with menace in their eyes but then some invisible force seemed to break the tension and they started to laugh. None of them put their hands in the air as John had instructed.
“I said, hands in the air.”
They continued to laugh and John started to get angry. He aimed at the table which was covered in odd shaped glasses and pulled the trigger. The table and everything on it turned to ashes before their eyes.
“Grab it,” said Sanctuary. He was a heavy man with long dark hair. He spoke with a public school accent.
A hand reached for the pulse gun. John tried to resist, counting down the seconds before it would be recharged and he could fire it again, but the hand taking it from him was too strong. The gun was pulled away from him.
“Piece of junk,” said the stranger who now held John's gun.
Two soft hands took his and pulled them behind his back. He didn't need to turn around to suspect that they would belong to another perfect copy of Sandra / Sabrina.
“Well Mr Kable,” said Sanctuary. He walked casually towards him and took a cigar out of his pocket. “I hoped our little warning would have put you off but apparently not.”
Sanctuary lit his cigar.
“Check him for weapons and bring him inside,” said Sanctuary.
The men followed him into the house through the French doors and John found himself alone in the garden with the three perfect replicas of Sandra / Sabrina.
He tried to pull his arms free but they were as strong as they were beautiful and he couldn't move. The one in the short skirt bent down in front of him and patted his legs. John found himself with an unobstructed view of her chest as she pulled out his knife and conventional gun.
The one in the long black dress took his other pulse gun out of his jacket while the one behind him held him.
“This way,” said the one in the dress and he found himself being pushed towards the house. He didn't resist, he couldn't overpower one of them let alone three. Besides, he wanted to get into the house and there was no sense worrying about the conditions of his arrival now.
14
Gregory Sanctuary's house was impressive. It was openly filled with the kind of high-tech equipment that John kept locked behind false walls in his office. There were weapons that he had never seen before, more modern versions of his pulse guns that probably didn't have the forced five-second recharge counter.
The Sandra / Sabrina clones took him through one room and then another. It was like a maze. Each room seemed smaller than the last.
“Sir,” said Timothy in his ear. “I've got a location for Stafford.”
He couldn't respond but that was good news, assuming of course that his friend was still alive and that John would at some point be able to get free and find him.
The clones pushed him through a final door and he found himself in an office. Gregory Sanctuary sat behind a giant desk in the middle of the room, leaning back in a green leather chair blowing smoke into the air. Rudolph Ranulph was sitting in an armchair beneath a window with his legs crossed and a smile on his face.
“Thank you ladies,” said Sanctuary.
They pushed John into a chair and left the room. He heard the door close and lock behind him.
Sanctuary leaned forwards and looked at John, seemed to examine him as if he were some rare specimen in a museum.
“I know what's going on here Sanctuary,” he said, with more confidence than he felt.
Gregory raised his eyebrows, “you do?”
“I saw the lab” he said. “You're cloning your wife.”
Gregory settled back in his chair and rested his cigar on an ashtray in the middle of it. “You certainly seem to have a handle on my little operation here,” he said.
John had questions that he wanted answers to and a suspicion that once Sanctuary was done with him he would be killed. Getting answers and staying alive, for once, seemed to require the same course of action.
“Do they know they're clones?” he said.
“Some do, some don't. It may interest you to know, Mr Kable, that I do not consider myself the villain of this piece.”
“Of course you don't,” said John. “But you're the one growing clones, you're the one killing them when they do something you don't like.”
“Ah, you mean our dear wives?”
John said nothing. He hadn't even mentioned kidnapping and attempting to kill Marla.
“That was regrettable but hardly murder.”
“You killed them.”
“What did they die of Mr Kable?”
“Their hearts stopped beating.”
“But there was nothing else wrong with them?”
John said nothing. He was listening. For the first time since this mess had started he considered the possibility that he had been chasing a shadow, a bad guy that didn't actually exist.
“My wife was a clone,” said Sanctuary. “The clone of a great woman but a clone nonetheless. I loved her dearly.”
“So why did you kill her?” he said, feeling less confident with each word.
“I did not kill her,” said Sanctuary, his big face suddenly red. “Clones have a reduced lifespan. I did everything I could but I couldn't save her.”
“So you thought you would grow another one?” He thought about the six in the lab and the three that were working in the house. “Maybe keep a few spares for when the next one fails?”
“Research Mr Kable,” he said, slamming his palms on the table, causing his cigar to wobble on the ashtray. He was out of his seat now but seemed to force composure and sat down again. When he spoke again his voice was calmer. “It was research Mr Kable. If I was going to save my wife then I had to know why clones suddenly failed at thirty-five years.”
“Did she know?” said John. Despite himself he was starting to feel sympathy for the man, he was not at all the cold-hearted bastard he had expected.
Sanctuary shook his head. “She had no idea. She was raised in the lab and thought it was a children's home. She and Sabrina were the first to survive the adolescent stage.”
Each statement seemed to raise further questions but John sensed that he was running out of time. Sanctuary was regaining his cool and soon he would want to put an end to all this.
“I loved my wife very much, Mr Kable. Is it a crime for a man to do everything he can to save the woman he loves?”
John shook his head. He wondered what idiotic thing he would do if he knew Marla was going to die. “You kidnapped a man,” he said.
Sanctuary shook his head, “I reprimanded a member of staff. He broke into a restricted area. As you know the human law holds no jurisdiction over non-humans. Would you have me let him get away with it?”
“You bombed my house,” he said.
“A regrettable incident. You understand that I just lost the woman I had hoped to spend the rest of my life with. I wasn't thinking clearly. I will of course pay to have it repaired and match the original specification.”
There was still the matter of the message he had received that started the whole business but his head was swimming and he was prepared to let that remain a mystery.
“I trust you find this matter settled to your satisfaction?” said Sanctuary.
John nodded b
ut he wasn't satisfied. Something still wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it but there still seemed to be an important part of the puzzle missing.
“Excellent. Now Mr Kable, you've waisted quite enough of my time. I am grieving after all.”
He opened a drawer and John expected him to remove a gun. Maybe nothing illegal had been happening here but that didn't mean he was going to be released.
John looked around for somewhere he could run, escape or hide. But the door was metal and locked, the windows he recognised as the reinforced glass that only a bomb could get through. He was trapped.
Sanctuary didn't remove a gun from the drawer. He pressed a button and then nothing happened.
John was confused, had whatever it was failed? He waited for Sanctuary to get angry but he didn't. A moment later the door behind him opened and a clone walked in. He assumed by the clothes that it was the same one who had opened the front door.
He wondered how Sanctuary could stand to be surrounded by these women who looked identical to his wife. Did it make it easier for him or harder?
“Show our guest out please,” said Sanctuary.
John stood up and walked around the chair. At the door he stopped and turned back to the man. “One more question,” he said.
“One more then,” said Sanctuary.
“What's going to happen to Stafford?”
If he had said he was going to be 'taken care of' or 'disposed of' or some other euphemism for killed then John didn't know what he would have done. He was being escorted off the property by a beautiful woman with the strength of ten men that Sanctuary apparently controlled. Fortunately for John he didn't say any of those things. “Would you like me to release him?” he said.
John nodded.
“Well then, let's call it an apology for breaking your window.”
“You'll let him go?”
“You have my word Mr Kable. Now, may we say good night?”
The clone led John firmly out of the room and back through the house. Outside he found his motorcycle parked between the black Humvee and a silver Merc. He looked back at the house and saw the woman standing at the door, watching him.
Three Stories Tall Page 13