The Rain In The Sky

by Antony J Woodward

  “I’m wondering why Rain funded the research here and then attacked Encarta Island…”

  “Perhaps it was an elaborate ruse to acquire the research on the Island?” Annette shrugged half heartedly. The progress bar jumped a little and was nearly ¾ done.

  The research? Sky felt a lead manifest just before her nose. The research on Encarta Island. What was it? It was all classified information, information she obviously didn’t know. If only she had access to base, she could ask them how it connected.

  Her eyes came to idly rest on Nat, there was something on the tip of her tongue. What was the research on Encarta Island? Had Rain attacked the Island as a cover for stealing the data? Was that her game all along? She blinked. Nat was a survivor of the attack! She might know what research they was pursuing on the Island!

  “On the Island, what were they researching?” Sky’s question was so intense it made Nat bristle a little unintentionally.

  “You mean what the labs were making?”

  “Something made Rain visit the Island and stage the attack, what if it was a cover-up for stealing the research?”

  Nat glanced around the upturned room. Rain had staged quite the event on the Island, was it to steal the research like Sky suggested? It made sense, hadn’t that mercenary the survivors imprisoned referred to the incident as a trap? But what need did Rain have of a programmable cell?

  “They had created a prototype of a biologically programmable cell…” Nat answered, “ a kind of organic nano-machine…”

  Annette’s expression lifted in surprise.

  “So she took the research from here… to the Island, to the programmable cell… So she could…” Sky trailed off, the plot was starting to come forefront. Why had she taken this compound and combined it with the programmable cell? The soldiers came to mind - to implant something? Nat’s words echoed in her mind, the injection. Rain had made the clone inject herself with some mysterious liquid. Everything clicked into place suddenly!

  “Rain made the clone inject herself with a combination of the programmable cell and Usurper Agent,… So she could transfer her own cellular DNA into the clone.” Sky remarked aloud, she paced over to the wall of screens, “so she could transfer her consciousness into the clone. That’s why the Sky clone calls herself Rain and knew how to finish off Rain’s plans… It was all part of the plan. She is Rain. Rain has overtaken the clone. The bio-attack on the Island was to lure a clone to the Island so she could transfer into a new body… Because hers would’ve been failing…” Rain, the original Rain, had been something of a prototype and had been genetically engineered with a biological fail safe. She had required a certain serum on a regular basis to keep her cells from turning cancerous and her body from decaying. The new versions, both Rogue and Sky had been created without that biological failsafe. So that was why Rain needed a new body, hers was dying.

  Annette and Nat were speechless.

  “She‘s the Rogue clone now?” Nat pushed after a pause.

  Sky nodded solemnly.

  “So why did she want more agent?” Annette posed.

  “…To build herself an army of duplicates.” Sky answered slowly. She was right and she knew it. How did she know? She knew because she was a variation of Rain and that was the best idea. She could clearly see the merits of an army composed from Rain’s DNA. And now she immediately knew where Rain would be headed next.

  She needed to ring base and warn them! She glanced to her watch but instantly remembered there was no signal this far down.

  Was that part of the plan too? Was that why Rain led Sky down here? To some place where she couldn’t get in Rain’s way… Another trap! It didn’t matter if Sky figured out her plan because it would already be too late! That’s why the key card had been left, that’s why she’d momentarily blipped on the radar despite travelling off the grid up until then!

  “I need to get back to the surface immediately!” Sky stressed.

  “There’s a tram, it leads to a station outside the Black Forest. It’s how the personnel move in and out. I’ll have to restore the system, it’ll be stuck at the other end because of the evacuation procedure.” Annette answered.

  “Be quick, we don’t have much time…” Sky urged. She had no idea just how long ago the new-Rain had left, or even how close she would be to her goal.

  The system finished rebooting and a log in popped up on all the screens. Annette quickly logged in and the system restore was complete. Almost immediately all but one of the screens displayed CCTV live feed. The women were treated to a very through and very invasive view of every corridor and every room in the facility.

  Annette busied herself with the only screen dedicated exclusively to the operating system. She set about restoring the tram.

  “Where’s Ashley…” Sky commented in slight alarm. It made the other two women recoil.

  “He’s gone…” Annette confirmed, she sounded just as alarmed. Sure enough the camera focused on the main hall illustrated that Ashley’s body was now gone. She turned her attention back to the operating system.

  “Where did he go…?” Sky studied each of the screens systematically, but there was no sign of Ashley. He had vanished into thin air.

  Where had he gone? Every room was accounted for… except… this one.

  “Done!” Annette confirmed.

  “Zena?” the sob made all three women jump in surprise. Sky’s gun was already removed and levelled when she spun sharply to face the voice. Annette and Nat were braced for an attack themselves, even if they were far more vulnerable being unarmed. Zena rushed into the room and crouched beside her dead self. She began to weep softly. “Zena… No…”

  What the fuck?

  Sky slowly lowered her gun but she didn’t holster it. None of the three women knew what to say as they watched the blonde sob hysterically over her dead self. It was surreal even if it was just another punctuation mark in the weirdest of days.

  “Zena?!” Annette’s greeting trying to sound warm but instead came across as a little fearfully surprised. Her presence was unexpected, of course it was. Annette hesitated, what did she do?

  “She’s dead…” Zena sobbed into one hand, the other one resting on her shoulders.

  Had Zena really cloned herself and was now lamenting over her dead doppelganger?

  “Zena, I’m… sorry,” Annette raised up from the computer.

  Nat stepped back, she‘d long decided she‘d reached her limit of the bizarre. Her gut was churning in fear, every fibre in her body was screaming danger. She noticed Sky hadn’t lowered her gun completely and that only reinforced the notion. She slowly crept back into a corner, away from the girl.

  Annette however was slowly closing in.

  “She’s dead. She killed her. Said she was a loose end, said I was better off without her,” Zena sobbed to herself. Why was she talking like this?

  “I‘m so sorry Zena…” Annette slowly approached, she had rounded the table and was gently closing in.

  “Killed her, took all of her work. Then said we could be together forever…” Zena shook her head. She was now rambling to herself. She wiped a fat tear from her eye.

  Sky sensed something was changing in the air. She silently willed for Annette to stop approaching, for she couldn’t speak. Something was suddenly very off with Zena and Sky didn’t trust her. Her gut was screaming to put distance between her and the scientist.

  It was also screaming to fire a round straight into her skull, but she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to be a killer, she didn’t want to be a slave to her own impulses and violence.

  Her gut rolled over, like a typhoon churning her organs.

  She was also beginning to worry that Sky and Rain looked identical, and Zena could easily mistake her for the clone who betrayed her. She was in grave danger and it was blaring in her ears like foghorns. She partly hoped that Zena didn’t look up and see Rain stood before her… Maybe that was why she hadn’t shouted for Annette to back away…?
Didn’t want to bring Zena’s gaze upon her. Sky also suspected her logical arguments wouldn’t save her from the wraith of a pissed off Zena.

  “She killed her. Stole our work. It was all a trick. Tricky bitch. Bitch. So then she made us. Made me. Made…” Zena was whispering now and it was growingly increasing incoherent. Sky gestured for Annette to stop approaching and step back. Annette looked to Sky and realised the gravity of her mistake. It was too late. Zena snarled and threw herself at Annette, her hands suddenly circling around the woman’s already bruised neck.

  “N-ygh!” Annette squirmed and tried to push off but Zena was inhumanly strong. The two women fell to the floor, Zena on sat on top and easily pinning the scientist down.

  “Let her go!” Sky ordered raising the gun in a flash.

  Zena only laughed manically in response. Her pretty eyes were dark with rage and she grinned devilishly as she choked the life out of Annette. “You were just a tricky. Just as tricky. Bitch. Cunt. Wouldn’t like me. Not good enough for you. Not like Jim. Cunt. Bitch. Tricky!”

  Annette’s eyes widened in horror, why was Zena saying these things? Things that sounded like they would’ve come from Ashley!? Fear kicked in and reverberated deep, she felt the fight for life raise up. Her hands came up, she went for Zena’s eyes.

  “Let her go!” Sky commanded a second time.

  Zena managed to avoid Annette’s desperate fingers, even managing to grab one of them between her teeth. Annette knew it was happening the minute her fingers felt teeth touch, she knew by the darkness in the blonde girl’s eyes that it was a fatal error. Zena bit down. There was no air in her throat to make a scream as her finger was bitten clean in half. Her mouth contorted and her eyes bulged, but no sound played to the horror.

  “STAND DOWN!” Sky roared again. Zena ignored her, seemingly throwing her head back and swallowing the half of finger she’d just bitten off.

  There was no words to describe the surreal and violent scene that was playing out. Nor did there appear to be any other way to stop it other than violence.

  Sky opened fire, shooting Zena in the shoulder.

  There was a whelp of pain and she tumbled off.

  Annette spluttered back to life and coughed violently. She was crying, hysterical sobbing that sounded like a broken car trying to splutter to life just that one last time. She coughed that hard and strongly that she vomited a glob of phlegm and blood. She rolled over and was suddenly emptying pure bile onto the plush carpet. With eyes streaming, snot running, blood spurting and her throat burning hotter than Hell, she managed to compose herself enough to start crawling towards Sky. That fight for life had kicked in. A tough grit had worked its way into the scientist. Slowly Zena staggered to her feet.

  “You!?” Zena’s voice was deep and unnatural. It sounded almost demonic, that particular kind of penetrating deepness and strangeness to it. She was pointed a crooked finger at Sky. “You killed us!”

  Sky was right to assume Zena would mistake her for Rain.

  Zena let out a war cry and charged forward. Sky opened fire once more and Zena toppled backwards. She’d shot her just above her left brow and it should’ve finished her.

  Only Zena didn’t die, she squirmed and writhed on the floor instead. She screamed a shriek that managed to break Nat from the dumbfounded spell she’d been trapped in.

  “Nya!” Zena screamed again in that deep voice. It sounded like two voices at once. Her body spasmed violently and a startling metamorphosis swept up her. Her skin literally bubbled and expanded like heated cheese, shifting her shape. Clothes morphed beneath the mutation, folding into the organic matter. After a few seconds Zena sat back up and revealed herself as a perfect copy of Ashley.

  “You!” he roared, climbing onto his feet.

  What the fuck…?

  The bullet hole had disappeared! In some amazing feat of biological magic Zena/Ashley had transformed it away. He charged, his hands outstretched to grab Sky. She retaliated with a gunshot, blasting him once more in the head. He slammed backwards and ricocheted off the bookshelves. Only Sky knew it wasn’t going to down him for good. She threw her attention to Nat who was scurrying to intercept Annette.

  “Move! Take Annette and get the tram operational…” Sky ordered to Nat. Nat nodded as she dropped to help Annette clamber onto her feet. “Here!” Sky threw the key card at her. It landed at Nat’s feet.

  Nat hoisted Annette up, grabbed the card and fled. The pair of them departed out of the room as fast as they could not even glancing back.

  In which time the Zena/Ashley had taken on a different transformation. Zena rose from the ground, the bullet hole long forgotten already. She was fast, much faster than her larger brother. She lunged forward, low and feral. She ducked under the gunshot and smacked Sky backwards. Sky landed against the monitors with a slam that cracked a screen and smashed another in a shower of sparks. She was a little winded when she landed on her knees, but she wasn’t badly injured. She threw herself to the side and avoided Zena’s kick. Sky felt a hand grip around her ankle before she could retaliate or scramble further away. With strength impossible for a normal human being, Sky was thrown to the other side of the room. She collided with the opposite wall hard enough to leave it cracked and some dry plaster dislodged.

  Sky coughed as dust filled her lungs. Already Zena was charging at her. The look in her eyes was feral. There was no time for a headshot, so Sky shot the woman’s ankle. Zena yelped, tripped and fell forward. Sky, with her own reflexes too sharp for a standard human, spun on the floor and brought her foot to meet Zena’s plummeting face. The woman’s head snapped back, teeth arced in the air complete with trails of blood and she flopped limply to one side.

  Sky threw herself onto her feet, unsurprised and a little frustrated to see Zena’s transformation instantly start. This was like the peculiar cat, only on a larger and more terrifying scale. What the hell had happened to her? How was she capable of changing shape like this? Was this the kind of biological terror the Usurper Agent was responsible for? It seemed every single injury that Sky inflicted was transformed away, it was looking like it might be a losing battle.

  Hopefully Annette and Nat had enough of a head-start by now, it was time to join them. She dashed out of the room, skidded against the banister and pegged it to the stairs.

  “TRICKY BITCH!” was Ashley’s thunderous reprimand. He launched himself out of the room, bounded over the balcony and sliced through the air before he landed at the bottom of the stairs, directly in Sky’s way. He was exhibiting such impossible superhuman abilities that he made Sky feel normal in comparison. She reacted quickly, firing two shots. One in each knee and dropped him. She launched herself from a couple of feet away and brought her knee up to connect with his face. Her knee struck hard, they slammed to the ground, him on his back and she atop, before she elegantly rolled forward and sprinted to the main door. She was relieved that Nat had wedged it open with a crate.

  “GYAH!” The scream was stereo with two voices. His and hers. She glanced back and saw Zena had morphed into an uneven combination of both herself and her brother. There was two heads upon the uneven and mutated body. Was this fight, and the strain of repairing the injuries, disrupting the monster’s biological functions? Was she overloading it? Sky bolted through the door and was greeted with an industrial tram station.

  She turned, kicked the crate into the main hall and let the door slam behind her.

  Would that keep it at bay?

  “SKY!” Annette called loudly. There was a rumbling in the air, something was rumbling down the tracks towards them. The tram, it hadn’t arrived yet! There was no time to take stock of the various crates, boxes and other building materials housed in the make-shift station. She just sprinted across the tile floor emblazoned with a C3LL logo towards Nat and Annette.

  Her fears of Zena/Ashley giving chase was confirmed when it launched through the door and clean broke it off the hinges.

  “What the fu-” Nat shouted in surprise.
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  Sky spun 180 and fired two more shots. She struck one knee but missed the other. The creature slammed to one knee but quickly hoisted its bulbous frame up once more. It had ballooned to twice its original size. It began to charge. It was as frightening as staring down a charging rhino.

  The ground was trembling underfoot and the tram was screeching on its approach, yet it wasn’t here yet! Just a little longer!

  Sky fired. The hammer hit on an empty chamber.

  Shit. It was Sky’s single thought before the creature slammed into her and sent her flying. She soared through the air towards the tracks, before she landed with a violent slam precariously close to an electrified train track. The sound of her gun clattering away was lost against the screech of brakes on the oncoming tram.

  “SKY!” Annette hollered desperately. The tram was almost at the station!

  “Annette move!” Nat shouted hoarsely as the creature turned its attention on the two women. It charged forwards and only Nat managed to duck out of the way. It slammed Annette into the floor, before it wrenched her off the floor with its hands.

  The tram was almost here, the screech of its brakes was thunderous.

  As Sky threw herself off the floor and at the platform opposite the women, the creature took Annette up by the throat. She was suspended by the throat, and for the third time she was being strangled. Sky hoisted her leg onto the platform and rolled, just in time as the tram came in. A second later and she’d have been crushed. The screeching of the tram’s brakes pierced straight through her and deafened Sky. There was no time to think on it, she let herself become one with her instincts. Let her survival and fighting instincts take over. She rolled to her feet, she couldn’t see the others past the tram. Fuck!

  Machine gun fire suddenly turned the entire situation on its head. She scrambled forward, reached the corner of the tram and watched a trio of soldiers barrel out of the tram on Nat and Annette’s side, firing their machine guns at the monster awaiting them. They were dressed in white camo trousers, black boots, luminous green sweaters and black flak jackets. They were wearing helmets, goggles and gasmasks. They were also armed to the teeth. They shot indiscriminately, peppering Annette with bullets as much as the mutated monstrosity that had her by the throat. The creature fell but almost instantly was consumed by more transformations. Its skin yielded and bubbled as its form changed and grew more monstrous. Any sense of genetic order had been lost, it was now growing and changing randomly. Its biological system was going completely haywire and it was losing control! Sky’s theory was right!