I scrambled, slipping on the floor, feeling something warm and wet under my feet. I slipped, falling against the bedside table, my shoulder slamming into the hard oak table. I glanced back, Claire was starting to get up slowly.
I ripped the drawer open, my hand closing around the grip of the P99. I yanked the gun out, simultaneously pulling it out the holster and pointed it mid chest at the doppelgänger Claire as she turned to face me.
She laughed, looking at the gun pointed at her chest. "Go ahead. Pull the trigger. Kill the woman you love."
I shook my head, my voice coming out harsh from the damage done to my throat, "You aren't the woman I love, Alistair." I slid my finger down to the trigger, taking up the slack, "I will kill you. Where is Claire?" In the moment I suddenly panicked that Alistair had Claire strung up somewhere. God knows what he had done or was going to do to her.
The evil Claire laughed, "I am honored you think I am Alistair, but I am sorry to disappoint." She rushed towards me quickly, her knife hand raised at the ready, "No more wasting time."
I squeezed the trigger, one shot lit up the room like a firework. It hit her in the chest off to the right of her heart, stopping her.
She looked down at the growing dot of blood on her shirt, fingers grazing the blood. She held them up to the light, seemingly entranced by the blood covering her fingers. I went to squeeze another shot off when her right hand flicked.
The knife landed in my right bicep, effectively paralyzing that arm. I dropped the gun and screamed at the pain that shot through my body. Claire moved closer to me, reaching and pulling the knife free from my shoulder, her smile returning as I knew she was about to finish the job. I swung my body slightly, reaching for the gun with my left hand.
That's when I heard my Claire's voice yelling mixed with her fathers. The doppelgänger looked up at the door, then to the window.
Wasting no time, she ran towards the window, jumping through it in the blink of an eye. I heard her land a few feet down, followed by the sounds of hurried feet running over the gravel and snow below.
I stood up, scooping up the gun with my left hand as I ran towards the window. I was bleeding from my shoulder and as I climbed to the edge of the sill to jump out, I noticed the left side of my shirt was soaked in blood. Lifting the edge, I saw I had a large gash down the top of my hip. I was bleeding profusely from where I had landed on the knife when I threw the evil Claire to the ground.
I shook my head, "Fuck." This was bad, I was losing blood fast.
I had two choices, follow the doppelgänger and maybe bleed out, or sit and wait. Wait for Claire and her father to come in the room.
I looked up at the doppelgänger hobbling across the large expanse of the backyard. A light coating of three inches snow from earlier in the night making everything pure white and clean. It also reflected the moonlight, lighting the backyard up like it was the dusk of early morning.
I sucked in a breath as all the fears of my past came rushing back. The times I didn't act. The times I choose to wait and not act all rushing back in. Robert, Callum, Stansfield, Claire.
I shook my head, forcing my body to climb up the window sill, broken glass cutting into the edges of my feet. I whispered, "I made too many promises to stop now."
I threw myself out of the window as Claire and her father kicked the door down.
I hit the ground, landing on the large bushes below. It was only a four foot drop, but I was thankful for the cushion of the bushes below. Rolling out of the bush, I felt the branches dig into my skin and add to the pain of everything else, but also adding to the adrenaline that was now fueling my body. The cold air did nothing to stop me, even as I was still only in a t-shirt and underwear.
I heard Claire scream at me from the bedroom window, screaming at me to stop, screaming at me with tears in her voice. Her father yelling at her mother to call an ambulance and the police.
I didn't look back. I only kept my eyes forward. The doppelgänger was a few feet in front of me, struggling with her own footing in the snow and the gunshot I gave her.
I ran as fast as my body would allow me, ignoring the cold air and the way the snow seemed to soak into the cuts on my feet. I gripped the gun in my left hand, fighting a thousand different things in my mind to recall my training with non-dominate hand shooting. I had one mission, to disable before I killed.
I ran through the backyard, both the doppelgänger and I moving closer to the edge of the yard where it dropped off into a private beach. I was confused about why the doppelgänger would run that way, the water was still frozen. There was no feasible exit there.
As I was a few feet behind her, I raised my left arm, pointing the P99 and pushing my hand to stop shaking from the pain and the cold temperatures making things that much worse. I found my target, let out a quick breath with a short prayer and squeezed the trigger twice.
The sounds of gunfire broke the silence of the night like a hammer on glass.
The doppelgänger stumbled when the shots hit the chest. Then as if I hit pause on the world, the doppelgänger dropped to her knees and fell forward in the snow, letting out a strange grunting groan.
I ran faster, stumbling over my own feet until I slid and fell next to her. The snow doing little to cushion the fall to the frozen ground underneath.
She was still alive, breathing slowly and laughing. I sat up on my knees, looking down at the torn face of Claire. The mask had been ripped, chunks of it hanging off to reveal the true identity underneath. I shoved the doppelgänger over on her side, frozen fingers ripping at the closest lose edge I could find, tearing off the mask as she laughed harder.
I pulled most of the mask off to reveal a younger woman smiling at me as blood bubbled in her mouth. The woman had burn scars running up and over her cheeks, her skin pinched tight in the way burn victims who didn't have the proper skin grafts looked. Waxy and puckered.
I pushed my vocal chords, "Are you Alistair?"
The young woman laughed harder, coughing on her blood, "We are three. We are one. All in the same, all as none. But always one." She looked down at her chest, the blood completely covering her pale blue button down.
She dabbed her fingers at the bloodstains, "Too bad this little bee missed the regeneration day." She dropped her head down, rolling it to stare deep in my eyes, smiling with a bloody grin, "You will find out who I am, soon enough, Caitriona. My death will only spur the anger and the revenge harder." She reached up to grab my face with a blood covered hand, I cringed, backing away. "You are smarter than you were back then. You don't let love cloud every thought in your head." She coughed hard, blood sputtering past her lips, her hand falling away from my face and into the snow as she gasped out her last breath.
I fell back on my butt. Looking away from the blood in front of me and towards the frozen ocean. The ice glinting under the moonlight made the world around me look perfect, peaceful and cold. I closed my eyes, the adrenaline falling out of my system at an accelerated rate. I squeezed them tighter as the pain surged through my body. I heard voices in the distance mingling with sirens.
I let out a slow breath, dropping my gun and falling to my side.
The cold felt like nothing as I sank into the snow.
All I knew as fell into unconsciousness was I didn't fail this time.
My father’s strong arm blocked my path out the window. "Claire, don't you dare jump out the window!”
I grabbed his forearm, doing my best to pull it out of the way. My focus was on Kit as she ran across the massive snow covered yard, chasing someone with blonde hair and wearing the same blue button down and jeans I was.
I shook my head, my fingers clutching into the fabric of his sweater, "I have to, she's bleeding. Kit is bleeding."
"I know." My father shoved me to the side, "Doesn't mean you're the only one who can help her." With two steps he yelled at me as he jumped out the window. I stepped to the window, watching as my father rolled out of the smashed bushes below, rolling to his feet
and taking off towards the two women still running in front of him.
"Oh god, what happened?!" I turned to the sound of my mother's panicked voice. I wiped my tear streaked cheeks, not daring to look around the room as my peripheral picked up the pools of blood on the floor. I pushed out words, "Did you call the police?"
My mother held up the phone, white knuckled in her hand, nodding, "Ambulance too." She looked up and around the room, gasping as she took in the damage of the walls, the broken glass, and the blood. She held out her hand to me, opening her mouth to say something when both of us jumped and cringed at the sound of two gunshots shattering our last nerves to pieces. I ran back to the window, my mother grabbing my arm to stop me.
I reached the window in time to see Kit collapse next to the woman in the snow. There was blood everywhere. My father running faster towards them.
I climbed the edge of the sill and was stopped again by my mother, "Dammit Claire, wait."
I turned, about to yell at her. Instead I watched her grab the blanket off the bed and circle her hand around my wrist, "Let’s go, if we don't hurry, Kit won't stand a chance with in these freezing temps. Hypothermia will set in quick." She pulled me to the window, climbing up she threw the blanket down on the bushes before jumping out. I didn't waste a second before throwing myself out the window.
My mother pulled me up to my feet as I reached back, grabbing the thick white down comforter. We ran towards my father, who was already lifting Kit from the ground. I swallowed the need to scream and cry, clenching my jaw. Running faster.
My father met us halfway, he met my eyes, pure fear radiating in his pupils. I looked at Kit in his arms. She was bloodied and unconscious, blood smearing her face and covering most of her body. The fight and the cold had pushed her body to its limits and she had fallen into shock. She was shivering, her lips turning a light blue, then I saw the large dark bloodstain on the ragged Purdue shirt.
Memories of Tennessee hitting me hard, but this time I had enough time, I had exactly what she would need to heal. I shook my head, clearing my thoughts, wrapping the thick comforter around her. I could hear the faint sounds of sirens and the obnoxious air horn of fire trucks and ambulances. I shook my head, they were still too far away. "Take her to the guest house." I looked at my father, his head nodding slowly to acknowledge exactly what I was telling him.
He hefted Kit tighter in his arms, "Everything is still as you left it Claire. Under the stairwell." He looked at my mother, "Go and meet the police, give me a few more minutes to get Kit there." My mother nodded, running back to the house as the sirens came closer. My father turned back to me, "Claire, you might want to look at the other woman before the police do." He pushed past me, rushing towards the guest house that was just a short jog to our right.
I resisted the urge to follow him, but as I laid eyes on the lifeless body in the snow a few steps ahead of me. I knew why he wanted me to go it first, the closer I moved to the body, the more my heart lurched into my throat.
I knelt in the snow, my heart pounding as I looked at the woman. I was staring at a morbid replicant of myself. My face torn in the middle to reveal a young woman. She was dead, her dark blue eyes open and staring off into nothingness. There was a slight smile on her face, pulling at the burn scars littering her cheeks. Her chest was covered in blood from two gunshots to dead center mass.
The woman's hair, body type, and clothing all matched mine. This was Alistair's work and it was highly possible the dead woman was Alistair. My mind raced over the clues I was mentally photographing as I scanned over her, trying to figure out a million different things in the matter of seconds.
With a shaking hand, I tore a piece of the mask off and wiped a corner of the woman's mouth with the rubbery, spongy piece. Soaking up the blood I would need to identify the woman. I stood up, looking over my shoulder to see my mother wave me away from the glass doors of the back patio. The sirens now louder as they pulled into the front driveway.
I turned and ran towards the guest house, turning my focus from the dead body in my parent’s yard to the living body that needed me. The one that had risked her life again for me.
I reached the guest house just as the police exploded into the backyard. Swarming the area and the woman's body, yelling at my mother to stay back.
I locked the front door to the guest house, crouching past the windows to avoid being seen. I made it to the oak paneled stairwell and pushed the small button under a drab painting of hunting dogs chasing ducks. The oak panels whispered open and the hidden staircase lit up.
The underground bomb shelter my great grandfather had built became my first hidden lab when I turned seventeen and it became apparent the CIA and many others were far too interested in my silly science project.
The room had a fully functioning laboratory graciously bought and built by my father when I was young. It slowly morphed into a bedroom and a fully functioning living space for the times I chose science and chemistry over daylight and the world above me. It was where I first discovered the key foundations of the work I was now doing. It also had the original serum formula tucked even deeper into the ground.
I ran down the stairs, turning the corner to see my father wiping away some of the blood on Kit's face. She was buried under thick quilts and blankets on the large bed that was tucked next to the lit fireplace filling the room with heat.
He looked up at me with fearful eyes, "She's warming up, but it doesn't look good. I don't know if she has frost bite and that cut on her hip only stopped bleeding because it's so damn cold out." He motioned to the large lab table off to the rear of the large underground room. "I pulled everything you will need, kiddo."
I nodded. Moving to the lab table, I first set the piece of mask with the DNA sample in a small glass jar. "The police are here, you might have to help mom." My voice trembled, wavered. I had to hold it together in front of my father. The last thing I wanted was to break down in front of him, especially since he was doing his best at not being my father and demanding answers to what the hell was going on and if I was safe.
My hands shook as they worked on their own, setting up the serum Kit needed. I dropped a glass vial, scaring me when it hit the floor and shattered. I bent to the floor to pick up the pieces when my father's hand covered mine, pulling me up. I went to shake my head and say something, when I was wrapped up in his arms. I fell apart the moment I felt his strong arms squeeze me like he always did when I was little and crying.
He whispered against my ear, "You don't always have to be the superhero, Claire. It's okay to be human."
I closed my eyes, hugging my father back. "It's hard, Dad. There's so much that I am scared of." I looked over his shoulder towards Kit in the bed. She was groaning as her body began to warm up and respond to the pain. I backed out of his arms, hurrying to the lab table. I cleared my throat, "You should go upstairs, Dad. Help Mom."
He appeared next to me, grabbing the larger black steel box that was the first complete serum processor I made years ago. "You need help here." He motioned to Kit, "She needs our help." He picked up the steel box, "Your mother can handle the police." He smiled and winked at me, "You've forgotten, Chief Winston was her high school boyfriend. Still pines after her some fifty years later." My father walked over to the bed. Looking down at Kit as I came up behind him, rolling the blankets back to see that he had already covered her worse wounds with bandages. I didn't bother to look at her injuries, I knew if I did, I would break again like I had in Tennessee. I was losing the strength to look at Kit when she was hurt and let the doctor take over. Do what had to be done without emotions getting in the way.
I took some of Kit's blood as my father spoke, "You know Claire, your mom and I are glad you found Kit." His voice was soft and oddly comforting.
I swallowed down the tears wanting to come out. "No, dad. I'm glad she found me." I dropped her blood into the steel box and waited as the large glass vial filled with a darker violet liquid. When it was ready I slid the vial in
to an old injection needle and held Kit's arm, her skin flushed with fever. I dipped the needle into her skin and released the serum, letting out a massive breath the moment I could tell the serum was flooding her system and racing to the places it was needed.
I repeated the process a handful more times while my father stood watch over Kit and I until I had enough vials to keep Kit healing. She would take longer to heal than the night in Tennessee. I didn't have the tools or advanced technology to make a large batch of the serum.
When Kit's face returned to a normal color and her sweating stopped, I scooped up the small pile of violet vials while my father covered her in blankets. The whole process took less than ten minutes, but it felt like hours. I walked back to the lab table, setting the vials and steel box down. I was tired, my emotions wearing thin. It seemed they did that a lot lately, I leaned against the cold steel edge of the lab table trying to calm down.
I spoke to my father, my eyes drifting to the glass jar with Kit's attackers DNA, "You should go up, deal with the police. I will be up in a minute after I run this." I looked at him, picking up the jar with the small flesh colored piece of mask. "I think this has most of the answers we have been searching for."
He nodded, "I’ll make sure you have the time you need and tell the police that you and your bodyguard left the property when the attack happened. No one will bother you or Kit until you are ready to be bothered."
I smiled weakly at my father as he walked to the staircase, pausing on the first step, "And when you are ready, it's time to tell your mom and I what the hell is going on. All of it." He gave me a stern look, the same one I would get on the rare occasions I misbehaved.
He didn't let me answer, just climbed the staircase and left me in the silence of the room and the soft crackle of the fireplace. I let out a shaky breath, turning to the bed. Kit was deep asleep, the serum doing its job of allowing her to sleep peacefully while it mended her body. I stared at her, I hated that this kept happening to her, that she kept risking her life for me. Risking her life to find the answers in this dangerous mystery that had become my life.
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