The Rain In The Sky

by Antony J Woodward

“How about we just get out of here?” Nat floated.

  “I can’t… not until I know why Rogue came here…” Sky answered firmly. For a moment Nat didn’t know who this Rogue was, but then she recalled that Sky was tracking down a rogue Sky clone. The moniker worked and helped alleviate some of the confusing parts of the clone identities.

  “Then lets find her,” Nat nodded. She would’ve greatly preferred to have escaped this facility, but she was prepared to stick by Sky instead. Besides, the first time around Sky had benefited her greatly. Maybe she would be able to do the same?

  Sky departed the office, taking one last small glance at the dead dog before heading through the cages and then exiting out into the long corridor. The only unexplored door that caught her interest was marked with the words “Level Three Staff Only.”

  It was a pair of double doors made from thick green steel and they were situated at the end of the corridor. She lead the way to it, but found her key card didn’t work. They had come to a disappointing dead end. Sky studied the key card, she had no idea what level of access it was. Who’s had it been anyway? And why had it been on the outside of the facility?

  “Hello?” it was a female voice and both women sharply turned to face it.

  A blonde girl, looking to be in her mid-twenties, waved shyly. She was thin and leggy, dressed in pair of black trousers, a white blouse and a slightly off colour lab coat. Her blonde hair was perfectly straight and came down past her naval. She was pale but pretty.

  “Hello,” Nat called back. Another person?! She’d assumed judging by how empty the place was that the facility had been abandoned, or evacuated. She was very surprised to see another human. Especially an employee…

  The blonde took the greeting as an invitation to come closer. “I’m looking for my brother, have you seen a guy who’s about this tall,” she gestured to just above her own head, “Kinda large, long curly hair. He’s called Ashley,”

  Nat shook her head but was surprised when Sky answered “Yes, I’ve seen him. He’s looking for you. I last saw him in the Main Hall,” Nat turned to look at Sky in surprise. So there was someone else haunting the empty corridors of this facility?

  “Oh thank you!” was the relieved response from the girl Sky assumed was Zena. She began to turn away.

  “Hold on, what are you doing here?” Nat enquired. “Where is everybody else?”

  “I’m looking for my brother. I’m one of the researchers here, well… I was, before this place got shutdown,” she drifted off wistfully.

  “Where is everybody else then?”

  “Majority of the personal left, there’s only a few stragglers like us left behind,” she answered with a small friendly smile. She didn’t seem perturbed to note that Nat was dressed in a gown and lab coat. It never occurred to question it.

  “Do you know what research was underway here? I mean we just found those animals…” Nat pushed wanting an explanation to her own presence in the facility. The mention of the animals made Zena’s face morph into a strange and unreadable expression.

  “Cell engineering mostly, mostly…” she trailed off and stared at a spot beyond the floor, “and we were doing so well, until she came…”

  “Who?” Sky probed, “who came?” Rogue?

  Zena roused from her vacant stare, she offered a little smile. “I shouldn’t say. It’s all classified, I‘m afraid I can‘t say,” She bowed a little and turned away. She didn’t know these two women and she was not prepared to confide in them. Only now was she prepared to question their presence here, but almost immediately she discarded it. She had more pressing matters to attend to, she had to find Ashley. She didn’t trust that white haired bitch not to have crossed her and done something terrible.

  For Sky it was yet another employee avoiding questions, she sighed softly.

  “Wait! Do you have clearance for this door?” Sky pointed to the door behind them with a thumb.

  “I do actually. You might as well look around, whoever you are… I mean there‘s not much left to see anymore. Here I’ll give you my key card,” she smiled warmly but there was an distinct edge of disdain. She rushed up to them, taking two key cards from a pocket. She handed hers to Sky and kept the one that bore Ashley’s face. “Keep it, maybe you’ll find the answers you seek down here. Or maybe you‘ll just find… Hell, like the rest of us…” Her eyes rolled around the ceiling as she contemplated the miles of earth overhead. Talk about melodramatic, Sky and Nat thought. “If you do see my brother before-”

  “-We’ll tell him, don’t worry…” Nat promised. She tried to be endearing but Zena wasn’t responsive. She cast an icy glance, before affixing a small smile back on her face.

  The blonde tipped her head gratefully and then hurried back towards the main hall.

  “I didn’t think there was anybody else here…” Nat commented when the blonde disappeared down the corridor. The facility had felt so empty and desolate.

  “Her name is Zena. I bumped into her brother earlier. They’re the only two employees I’ve met. The place has been shutdown, or evacuated…”

  “Shutdown? A huge facility like this… just shutdown?” Nat found it hard to believe. Sky knew that feeling. “How long ago?” Was it merely hours prior?

  Nat was struggling to grasp the concept of the timing, had she awoken in an aftermath of something? What had gone on down here?

  “I don’t know, but I suspect it hasn’t been all that long…” Sky answered.

  “I wonder why it’s been shutdown? Why did everybody just up and leave?” Nat asked aloud not really expecting an answer.

  “They were fired,”

  “Fired? For what?” Who the hell just comes to work one day and fires everybody? Unless you was burying something… Something you didn’t want anybody else to have.

  “That, I don‘t know…” Sky returned as she swiped this new key card through the card reader. The doors unlocked. They entered and found themselves at the top of a new set of stairs. Another layer to this wonderland it seemed. The stairs were made out of cold and dirty concrete. It was the first area, excluding the bloodbath of an office, that felt unclean.

  They descended the first flight and turned around, the stairs turned back on themselves to descend to the next floor. This new floor was partially flooded, the water had risen to knee height. There was no way about it, they were going to have to get a little wet. It soaked into Sky’s boots as she stepped down, instantly her feet turned cold as the water seeped in. It was an unpleasant squishing sensation as she stepped onto the lowest level.

  Whatever Sky was feeling was nothing compared to the sensation of Nat’s slippers submerging. They squelched and sponged underfoot. As she stepped onward it felt like she was walking on two large sea slugs.

  “This is like the bio dome…” Nat commented to herself.

  “The bio dome?”

  “Back on the Island… The spore contagion that Rain attacked with, it somehow infected a hybrid plant…” she trailed off as she vividly recalled fighting in the basement of the bio-lab, it felt like only a few hours ago. Yet it was clearly not.

  “What was this spore?” Sky asked as she persisted through the flood towards the metal door before them. It was locked with a key card, so they swiped their way in. She pushed it open, it groaning in protest against the volume of water.

  “I can‘t remember its exact name but-” Nat was cut off in surprise when the door opened and revealed a giant flooded room. It was huge and almost completely filled with semi-warm water. A little room further ahead on the balcony beckoned. It was mounted up onto a raised part of the walkway they were stood on. Nat glanced and couldn’t see the floor of the room through the deep pool of water. There was no way of knowing how deep this giant room actually went. Sky led the way, pushing against the water as she strode on.

  They made a great amount of noise as they persevered on. It attracted the attention of the other inhabitants of the room.

  “Sky, do you see that?” Nat pointed
to a shadow of movement a little ahead.

  “It’s a dorsal fin…” Sky identified. A shark? Here in the flooded room? Why was there sharks here? It was yet another strange revelation to wrap their heads around.

  “…and another…” Nat announced with a calm push of urgency.

  “Keep moving. They don’t look that big…”

  Another fin emerged nearby and began heading in their direction.

  Sky reached the suspended room, hoisting herself out of the water and onto dry land felt good. Nat was close behind. A quick glance back told them the sharks had stayed at a safe, but curious, distance. She almost questioned their presence aloud, but she’d seen enough insane shit to just let it slide. After mutated plants, shape shifting cats and infected rabid civilians - sharks in an underground basement was nothing!

  The door opened and they were looking at a control panel and a ladder down. The controls were for the room and a quick scan of it told Sky they were controls that were pretty much pointless in the event of a flood. There should’ve been a giant tank in the centre of the room, now the room itself was the tank.

  Sky took to the ladder. They descended and reached an observation chamber. A large window into the tank showed the true extent of the pool of water. The vast majority of the room was now submerged in the murky tank-water, various laboratory equipment and research data was irreversibly ruined and lost. A large frenzy of hammerhead sharks patrolled the destroyed room, circling like sentries. They were average size and showed no sign of experimentation, which was a relief to Nat who’d experienced many strange mutated life-forms and was relieved to have finally caught a break. Mutated killer sharks might have been one monstrosity too many. The sharks paced the perimeter endlessly, disappearing into the gloom before returning. They were hunting for food that was probably never going to arrive now the place was shutdown.

  Miles underground Sky certainly didn’t expect to be faced with sharks. It was incredulous the lengths C3LL had gone to with this place. But was Rain Corp any better? A whole Island dedicated to scientific research…

  But then, that was a relatively feasible idea in the wake of building a secret complex miles underground. It dawned on Sky to wonder just why it was underground. Was it a failsafe? Was the company working on some form of contagion that they wanted to prevent from escaping? Perhaps it was easier to bury something already underground completely unnoticed by the rest of the world than it was to raze an entire island and then have to answer as to why…? It made sense, but Sky was unsure what exactly she expected to find here. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly dangerous down here, confusing yes but not dangerous. The place had simply been shutdown after all, there hadn’t been an outbreak nor was there any signs of a great scale attack. Just one dead employee and a host of animals. The other employees had simply upped and left…

  All very civil and orderly.

  But what had they all been working on that necessitated working in a place like this?

  And what did the sharks have in common with the crazed soldiers and mutated animals? Obviously everything in this place was connected in some way. She just didn’t know how…

  “Come back have you?” suddenly a gun was against Sky’s head. She’d been too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice footsteps.

  “Hey!” Nat recoiled.

  “One wrong move and I’ll blow a hole in your skull, bitch,” the woman warned angrily.

  Sky kept very still. She would’ve normally bolted to disarm the woman, but if she managed to get off a round in the fight there was a high chance a stray bullet would crack the huge window. That would be utterly disastrous, the pressure would be lost and the window would crumble and the water would drown the women long before the sharks got to them.

  “Please lower the gun,” Sky calmly requested.

  “So you can throw me back in there? With the sharks again?!” The woman hissed.

  “I didn’t throw you in anywhere…” Sky calmly replied.

  “Sure, you can pretend in front of whoever this dumb bitch is, but I ain’t fooled… I know the truth,”

  “Please lower the gun, Sky means you no harm. We’re just trying to find someone who might’ve come here…” Nat urged. She stepped into view of the woman.

  She was tall, blonde and tired looking. Her clothes were damp and she was shiny with sweat. Her blonde hair had once been carefully maintained with dye, now it was scraggly and slightly green from exposure to chemicals.

  “What is your name?” Nat tried a different tactic. The woman’s thunderous expression didn’t change in the slightest. She was staring darkly into the back of Sky’s head. It was a fight not to pull that trigger it seemed. Why was she so incandescent with rage? Had Sky already been down here? Nat was suddenly jolted with the acknowledgement this wasn’t the Sky she knew. Perhaps this clone had already been down here and had indeed thrown this woman to the sharks? She had to remind herself she didn’t know this woman.

  “Oh keep your mind-game bullshit,” the woman dismissed, “You can’t befriend me.”

  “I believe you have me mistaken with someone who looks very much like me…” Sky calmly stated her case.

  “What, identical twins?” the woman snorted in derision.

  “Something like that… Now if I really did throw you to the sharks, why would I return with a witness?”

  “To tie up loose ends…”

  “You were surely as good as dead down here, why would I return? If my objective was to simply eradicate you I’d have left you to die out down here… Not bring a witness to make sure you were finished off…”

  Sky’s reasoning made sense but the woman didn’t relax the gun.

  Nat recognised the same display of logical argument, Sky had it used it on her. Maybe she did know this Sky after all? Maybe it was like someone had just reset their relationship back to zero.

  “I trusted you Rain but I won’t make that mistake again,”

  “Rain?” Sky’s response was swift and she went to spin her head. The woman pushed the barrel of the gun against the base of her head to stop her.

  “Don’t fucking move,”

  “-But she’s dead?” Nat added in surprise.

  The woman’s attention turned to Nat. Why was she so surprised? Genuinely surprised too.

  Sky turned around on the spot while the woman was distracted. When the strange woman came to from her thoughts, she realised Sky hadn’t disarmed her but was calmly stood before her with the gun pressed to her forehead. Her eyes were burning darkly with surprise, this woman was genuinely shocked too that she‘d been called Rain.

  “You said Rain?” Sky confirmed.

  The surprise to both of them was undeniably genuine. Both of these strange women were utterly surprised and the woman couldn’t fathom why. Why did they think she was dead?

  What wasn’t she seeing here? Perhaps the picture she was looking at was incomplete…? She thought on that for a second. What if this was a doppelganger, and this woman was right that she wasn‘t the same person? What if…? What if…? Their response was too genuine to not be real.

  After a moment of silence from all three, she slowly stepped back and lowered the gun.

  She’d gone with her gut instinct, she didn’t understand what was happening but her gut knew they were being honest.

  “My name is Annette, and I’m one of the lead researchers of this facility.” she introduced herself solemnly.

  “My name is Sky, this is Nat,” Sky introduced them both. She glanced and saw Nat was eyeing Annette cagily.

  “Please tell me everything that has happened here,” Sky implored gently as she slowly relaxed now that gun was out of her face. The resemblance between the woman she’d called Rain and this woman called Sky was uncanny and Annette felt confusion solidify in her mind. What vital clue was she not seeing? How could they not be the same? How did this stranger with Rain’s face fit into everything? And the woman dressed in a gown and lab coat, who was obviously not one of h
er team. She didn’t have a clue who she was. She decided the best way to understand any of this was to start at the beginning.

  “Five months ago, C3LL was approached by an individual who went by the name of R, she wanted to invest in our research. She had resources and alternate data we could use, all she wanted was a working sample,” Annette began. She crossed to a nearby stool and sat on it. It creaked a little under her modest weight.

  “With her data we managed to perfect the Usurper Agent, you see it was shark’s blood that provided the breakthrough. Their blood contains a special enzyme which we can utilise,” she glanced up and saw Sky was watching her intently. A shark drifted as if one cue near the glass and then swam back out of view.

  “What is the Usurper Agent exactly?” Nat enquired.

  “It’s a compound that can facilitate the overwriting of cellular properties found in DNA,”

  Both Sky and Nat were only just comprehending what she’d just said.

  “It was her, this woman, who demanded that we use the first human test subjects. We needed willing candidates and she provided soldiers for us to experiment on, it seemed they was her own from some private militia or something…” There was an element of sober shame in her voice.

  So that explained the soldiers in the prison cells. The two women bristled in disdain.

  “We found the only way to successfully overwrite cellular memory was to go direct into the source…”

  “So you injected it straight into their brain…” Nat elaborated.

  “We injected the DNA of the nearest available source, which unfortunately was-”

  “-The criminally insane…” Nat finished her sentence. She’d read this in the files.

  “So you in essence transferred a criminal identity into the body of those soldiers…?” Sky confirmed.

  “You could say we was transferring consciousness… yes.” Annette nodded.

  “Via cellular memory, that’s incredible…” Nat murmured to herself. What a breakthrough.

  “R collected her first sample three months ago and then disappeared. She then returned two days ago and demanded more of the compound. When I’d finished cooking it up for her…,”