The Rain In The Sky

by Antony J Woodward

  “Oh sorry!” the man stammered as they collided into one another.

  He went a bright shade of red and practically shrunk into himself in embarrassment.

  He was young, maybe mid-twenties. He was clean shaven and had let his curly hair grow long. He batted his hair from his face with a pale, and chubby, hand. He was carrying a few extra pounds, mostly around his torso. The shirt, trouser and lab coat attire clung in the wrong places and wasn’t flattering. His brown eyes raised to Sky and then slid back down almost immediately. He wasn’t unattractive but it was quite clear he didn’t prioritise his appearance. He didn’t seem comfortable maintaining her eye contact.

  “I’m ever so sorry,” he stammered again. He stepped to her side, trying to put some distance between them awkwardly.

  “Do you work here? Where is everybody?” Sky was surprised to see another human being. Perhaps this place hadn‘t been abandoned… She wasn‘t sure what would happen if the place hadn‘t been abandoned, security might detain her. She had managed to unintentionally stumble inside, so perhaps the security detail was light? Yet, the place felt empty.

  “I did work here, well before they shut us down,” he couldn’t bear to maintain eye contact with her. He was dreadfully anxious and he was beginning to sweat.

  “Shut you down? What exactly is this place?” Sky probed. She was trying to be friendly but it did little to alleviate him.

  “It’s a research facility, top secret… Well, it was…” he adjusted a badge on his left breast, “Now, it’s just a ruin I guess… Everything is over. Done.”

  “So what happened here? Why was you shutdown and where is everybody?”

  “Everybody just went home, some woman came and that was it. She just shut the place down, we were all fired and well… y‘know the rest. Didn‘t you get the memo? We emailed everybody…” he shrugged.

  “Did you know the woman, the one who fired you?”

  “No. I didn’t even see her…” he shrugged again. He coughed nervously.

  “So you didn’t see what this woman looked like at all?” Sky was curious whether it was Rogue he spoke of. She was only floating a seemingly far fetched idea towards him. She expected he wouldn’t have any form of answer.

  The man shrugged once more, “Not really. I think she had white hair but… I’m not really sure. I’m kinda busy, I’m looking for my sister…” White hair? That was curious…

  Sky studied the sweating male before her, judging by his social anxiety she understood why he hadn’t seen the woman who’d fired him. He couldn’t have coped with it, he probably avoided people as best as he could. Still, she wished he had managed a better look.

  “Your sister, is she missing? Wouldn‘t she have left with the others?”

  “I can’t find her. She should be here. I know she wouldn’t leave without me…” he stressed.

  “Has everybody left?”

  “I told you, the place is shut down. Nobody really stayed behind, nothing here for us…”

  “What about those soldiers in the containment cells?” Sky enquired.

  The scientist drew a blank. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “The soldiers in the cells upstairs…” She prompted.

  “I’m-I’m a researcher, I don’t know anything about any soldiers…” he stammered.

  “Researching what?” Sky changed tact, she remembered she was stood in one of C3LL’s private research centres. This was C3LL’s ‘Encarta Island’, a facility dedicated to research and science. A secret facility that had seemingly drawn Rogue’s attention. What had brought her here? It was all rather mysterious…

  “Look, I’m kind of busy. If you’re asking me those questions then you probably aren’t allowed to know. If you happen to see my sister will you tell her I’m looking for her… please?” the man went from rude to pleading in one sentence. She was bemused by it. It clearly seemed he was more interested in finding his sister than divulging the finer points of his work here. She was a little disappointed but something told her that he wouldn’t suffer further interrogating. So she let it drop.

  Perhaps if she found his sister, he’d be more willing to talk?

  Quid pro quo?

  “Does she have a name, your sister? What does she look like? I‘ll keep an eye out for her,” it surely wasn’t going to be that hard.

  “Her name is Zena, she’s blonde. This high. Very pretty. She got all the looks. And the brains. Tell her Ashley is looking for her, tell her to meet me in the main hall…”

  “Ok,” Sky agreed. With that Ashley was unable to endure the conversation a moment longer and he brushed past her and headed off. He went for the door nearest the front door.

  “Wait!” she hollered but he ignored her. How was he to know she was waiting for him? It seemed like a pretty big flaw in his plans… She considered following him for a moment, but she felt he might be better left to his own devices. He seemed highly agitated after all. He had disappeared into the room that had been the dining room topside. She was only a slight curious as to learn what its remade purpose was down here.

  So the place had been shutdown, she mused to herself. By a woman, with possibly white hair? All the staff had been let go, the entire facility which was no doubt worth billions - just emptied just like that. It didn’t make much sense.

  But not a lot of any of this really did.

  At least if the place was shutdown it would be highly unlikely she encountered any security personnel. Or opposition in any form. She might not meet a single other soul… It might just be her and Ashley roaming the abandoned halls. She wondered how long the place had been shutdown, Ashley made it sound like it had been recent. But how recent? And why, why had a multimillion dollar investment suddenly been shuttered?

  She stepped through the door that Ashley had come through, she entered a new and long thin corridor. She became aware of how surreal it felt to be following the exact layout of the asylum overhead. It had been replicated in every dimension. She stopped and turned her attention to the wall where the panel had been. The secret passage to this secret facility. So many unexpected secrets.

  The wall was flush and contained no secret doors, panels or switches. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or not. What would she have done if there was yet another rabbit hole to go down? Would she have kept chasing like Alice running into Wonderland?

  She idly glanced into the rooms she passed, they were mostly living quarters and offices. Nothing of note. For a secret complex built underground, it was very… dull and nondescript.

  She swiped herself through the next set of doors and was greeted by a large laboratory. Sections had been cordoned off with slices of glass, it was more open plan than most labs she’d seen. It was filled with the atypical paraphernalia and she paid it no heed till she passed a cubicle that snagged her eye.

  A stasis tank. She was familiar with them, for it was a stasis tank that had birthed her into this world. It was stood horizontally and the contents were hidden to her in dark blue water. Curiosity got the better of her. She stepped inside the cubicle and scanned the tank. Upon closer inspection she found a brunette woman floating in the water, asleep in suspended animation. She was naked, not a stitch on her body. She bobbed gently in the water, looking very peaceful and serene. It was not a face Sky recognised, not that she expected to. Sky lived a pretty lonely and sheltered life. The closest thing she had to a friend was Eve her handler, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Eve was just going through the motions with her. Perhaps she was, how many times had she befriended a clone? How many times had she invested in a new relationship with a new reflection of the same person? Sky couldn’t answer but she just felt that Eve was holding back.

  It did nothing to alleviate that dull ache in her heart that niggled at her in quiet moments; loneliness. Sometimes she could feel the need for human stimulation build up to a scream in her throat, but she never let it loose. What she wouldn’t do for a normal life…

  Was that
even possible?

  She had only known the brief sporadic moments of life outside sleep, but they had been filled with training, exercises, examinations and tests. Surely she could have a life of something more?

  She turned and plucked the nearest file up. Now was not the time to let those thoughts in.

  “Female. Found outside Encarta Island. Unknown origin.” the first line read.

  Sky glanced back to the sleeping beauty. A survivor from Encarta Island? Everybody had been classified as dead…

  She was suddenly presented with a peculiar conundrum. The records on Encarta Island were incomplete, nobody fully knew what had actually transpired upon the island. The rogue Sky clone had called in that Rain, the original clone, had betrayed the company and initiated a bio-attack. But Rain was dead and now the Sky clone responsible for her death had gone rogue before fully debriefing the events. Nobody knew what had happened on the island, nobody knew what bio-weapon had been unleashed either. Nobody knew anything.

  So this survivor might be able to shed some further light on the events of the Island.

  But. Why had she been brought here to a secret facility owned by the C3LL corporation? What interest did C3LL have in this woman from Encarta Island? Something didn’t make sense. It was becoming the theme of the day…

  She decided that Eve, and other personnel back at base, might offer some insight to this peculiar mystery. She checked her watch that served as a communication device, but typically there was no signal. But she was hundreds of feet underground she reminded herself. So she was on her own, she had no means of contacting them back home. It was going to have to be her decision and her decision alone. She puckered her lips as she weighed up her options. Wake the sleeping survivor in the hope she might have further information on the Island, or not? Should she let the sleeping beauty lie and wait for the corporation to extract her later? Just what was C3LL doing with her? Why had they recovered her from the island…?

  It was a wholly new and surprising layer to the enigma she was embroiled in.

  She decided, against her own character, to be daring and wake her up. Was it the desire for truth, or the desire for human interaction that compelled her? Did she feel a kinship with the sleeping beauty in the tank? Something in common between them both. She didn’t dwell too much on the thoughts lest they incapacitated her with doubt. She recognised the model of the stasis tank, recalled the afternoon spent reading the manual in the lab because she had had nothing better to do. She then entered the input to begin the rouse mode.

  She turned her attention back to the document in her hand.

  The document went on to detail how the female’s remains had been retrieved from a crashed helicopter off the coast of Encarta Island. She’d been retrieved by the salvage crew, along with two unidentified males. The remains of all three had been kept by the Rain Corporation as they struggled to identify them. Then a shell organisation, working on behalf of C3LL, procured samples of the female’s remains, which had then been used to clone her back to life. The transaction was dated just shy of three weeks ago, and the clone had been placed under indefinite suspension until someone named R reviewed her. It was remarkable how quickly the company had managed to cultivate a fully formed human life form in such little time. She wondered how C3LL got the tech, or were all the major organisations now secretly cooking up clones in their basement? She closed the notebook. What stood out to Sky the most was the fact that the woman was unidentified. Hadn’t she been an employee of the Island…? Or was she just a third party? If she was a third party, then she would’ve been identified as all non Rain Corp visitors had already been documented and identified. So who exactly was she?

  Sky watched the water drain away into the piping and recalled how the operations centre had spotted a helicopter inbound minutes before the Island exploded. Had the helicopter come for this woman, but if so why? How they did they even know to collect her? The island had been completely dark… Who was she?

  If anything, Sky wanted to know that more than anything else.

  Her head was spinning with all the tangents and branches of the mystery.

  Sky dropped the document and picked up a small bundle of photos. They were ID shots of the 200+ employees of Encarta Island. She glanced through them all and found no match for the sleeping survivor. She was proving to be something of a rather suspicious presence on the Island? Why had she been on the island at all?

  And why had someone gone to such lengths to retrieve her?

  The stasis tank made a soft tone that signalled it was done draining.

  Via the power of science Sky never would understand, the tank entered the next stage of the awakening process. The top half of the stasis tank slid down.

  There was a few seconds of nothing, then a spurt of REM before she woke up. She bolted up with a jolt, her hands clawed out violently reaching for nothing. She coughed, her body rejecting the liquid present in her throat and nose, and she spluttered to a waking reality. The look of horror and surprise etched on her face slowly faded into confusion as she became aware of her new surroundings. Clones always awoke from the last moment they had experienced life. This woman’s final seconds had been of the helicopter crashing down to the ocean after being buffeted out of the air by the explosion. Two memories, two very different moments of time were suddenly stitched together in the blink of an eye. She was falling one second and then she was awaking in a tank staring at a grated ceiling the next. There was no in-between.

  She coughed again and slowly looked around her.

  Her confusion took on a sudden colour of surprise. “Sky?” she recoiled in surprise.

  Sky recoiled, stepping back. How did she know her name? The two had never met. They were perfect strangers and Sky was a corporate secret, a classified secret that barely anyone knew about, let alone knew on a first name basis. The look of surprise on Sky’s face made the woman’s brow crumple.

  Did they have history? But how? How did Sky have history with this stranger? Especially someone who’s entire presence on the island was draped in mystery?

  “Sky? It’s me Nat…” she prompted spitting another mouthful of water into the tank.

  Sky took a further step back. Who the hell was this woman?

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  “What’s going on? Where are we?” Nat bombarded Sky with questions, she went to hoist herself out of the stasis tank but her legs didn’t feel cooperative yet. “What happened to me, why am I…?” She trailed off breathlessly. She felt a bit mind-fucked. In the blink of an eye everything had changed. It was such a violent mental juncture that her brain was accelerating into a brick wall as it tried to comprehend events. Falling to her death and then… life?

  “It’s a long story,” Sky finally answered. She didn’t know how to respond. She was still surprised that Nat knew her.

  “Did you get Rain? Did you stop the bitch?” Nat turned her attention back to Sky. Her eyes were dark and serious. There was no denying how Nat felt about the original clone.

  “She’s dead…” Sky nodded. She bristled and stepped away a little, anxiety was starting to multiply in her chest. She felt greatly uncomfortable and didn’t know how to process the current predicament unfolding around her. She’d never dreamt that this sleeping stranger would somehow know her. Well, know of her.

  “What’s wrong with you…? You’re looking at me like a complete stranger…” Nat pushed in disbelief. There was a pregnant pause and Sky bristled, it reminded Nat of a caged wild animal. There was wild and frightened uncertainty in the soldier’s eyes. It only made Nat more confused.

  “We’ve never met, yet you somehow know who I am…” Sky answered uncertainly.

  “What do you mean we’ve never met? We were together on Encarta Island…-” Nat stopped, she suddenly felt everything overwhelm her. Moments ago she’d been running, then clambering into the helicopter, then the explosion had blasted the helicopter out of the sky. For a second she could almost hear the screams of mayday over th
e radio ringing in her ears. Then there was silence and this moment. “You don’t remember do you? Not any of it?”

  In Nat’s mind she saw the ocean rush up to greet her once again, and then in a split second she was here in this moment. It was like she’d woken from a terrible dream, bolted back into the waking world. It kept looping in her mind and every time it made her question her very own sanity. Had she gone crazy…?

  “I don’t know any of it…” Sky answered weakly. She didn’t know what the woman expected her to remember. They weren’t her memories!

  “You’ve forgotten…?” Nat remarked. She gently reached up and touched her own face. Her mind was like an onion shedding its layers, every layer that peeled away caused her pain. It was hard to reconcile the two separate moments in her mind. She pinched her cheek, she wasn’t dreaming. She, this, all of it - was real.

  It was just as hard and confusing to process that Sky had forgotten everything that happened on the Island. Nat once more considered the possibility it never happened at all, that it was all some form of nightmare. She glanced down at the stasis tank around her, where exactly was she?

  Nothing suddenly made much sense.

  Her fragmented self was whirling around in her mind at a dizzying rate.

  She suddenly wanted to be sick.

  “Why don’t you remember?” Nat whispered. She was struggling to keep a hold of something, something to anchor her in the stormy sea of thoughts and this was it. She needed some singular thought to hold on to as she orientated herself.

  Sky adjusted her jacket in discomfort but she didn’t have an answer.

  “Was it that… that liquid that Rain made you inject? Is that’s what’s wrong? Is that why you can‘t remember?” Nat offered. “Did she poison you?”

  “Liquid?” It was the first Sky knew of any liquid.