Sky held back as three more soldiers poured out of the tram.
Who the hell are these?
“What the fuck is this thing?” a male voice recoiled in disgust. His comrades didn’t have an answer. They didn’t care for Annette and hadn’t spotted Nat cowering behind a nearby crate.
They had a logo on the back of their uniforms. “C3LL”.
They were the clean-up crew. A little late…
“GYAGH!” The monster burst from its transformation in an even more disfigured and ugly shape. Its hands had mutated into long claws made out of bone. Its rotund body was now larger and bursting against the skin. It had spawned more heads and disfigured faces all over its body. Each mouth began to seep white frothy gunk. It lashed out enraged and decapitated two of the soldiers in a simple sweep of its claws.
Gunfire erupted once more, but the bullets weren’t having much effect. It seemed to absorb them, merely shrugging them off. Because of its uneven size and shape it struggled to move itself forward, yet it still managed to slice open the nearest soldier’s abdomen with a quick lash of an arm. Organs and a river of blood fell out of him and splattered on the floor. The rest of him hit the deck quickly after.
Nat appeared from behind cover and glanced to Sky. They made eye contact. Despite their unreadable and overwhelmed expressions, they were thinking alike. Both of them knew they needed to get onboard the tram. It was just the monster and the three remaining soldiers were in the way. Sky glanced to the fight, saw all participants were caught up in it. They had to make a move now. She beckoned for Nat to hurry over to her. Nat hesitated, then glanced twice before hurtling over. She kept low, giving the fight a wide berth and straying around the edges of the station. She ducked from crate to crate, using them as cover. She reached Sky and slid up against the tram beside her.
“Go smash a window. We’re gonna hijack this tram from under them!” Sky pushed her to start moving.
“What are you going to do?”
“I want a machine gun…” Sky answered. She turned and headed towards the fray. She wasn’t going to get involved, she was only going to steal a machine gun from the nearest corpse. One of the decapitated bodies, she wasn’t picky.
She was almost there, nearly had a machine gun in hand, when she was spotted.
“Hey!” A soldier shouted in surprise. He paid for his lapse of attention with a chest full of spikes and he died on the spot. But his shout hadn’t gone unnoticed. The other soldiers saw her and so too had the creature. She snatched the gun and threw herself backwards on her ass. She rolled and quickly threw herself back around the corner.
Now she was armed she felt much better.
Gunfire and screams echoed from behind.
A window loudly smashed and she knew Nat had smashed a way in.
She rounded the other side of the tram in a flash and hoisted herself into the broken window. Nat was on her knees, keeping out of eye-line, while she figured out the controls. So many levers and buttons and she didn’t know where to begin.
“Take this you ugly piece of shit!” a solider shouted outside, “take cover!”
Sky tugged Nat down to the floor sharply and sure enough two seconds later an explosion blasted up against the tram. It blew all the windows, so little fragments of glass rained down in a mist of glitter. The tram rocked up onto one side briefly and for a split second both women feared it would overturn and they would be doomed. Instead it came crashing back down on both sets of wheels.
“Ah!” a solider shouted in pain. The creature wasn’t dead?! Sky thrust Nat at the controls and headed into the carriage. She spied enough weaponry to outfit a small army, but none of it looked overly useful against the monster. It was mostly contained this side of the carriage, near the cockpit. Despite the plethora of weaponry nothing stood out to her.
Until she spied a flamethrower. That would do perfectly to overload the creature’s biological functions, sending its body into a frenzy. No organic being would be able to sustain unchecked and unrestrained continuous mutation. She was just heading for the flamer when an injured soldier slammed his way back into the tram, falling against a nearby stack of ammo and scattering it. He was clutching his chest, holding together a deep laceration. If he saw Sky he didn’t show, he just began scrambling as best as he could in her direction.
A crash and crunching of metal signalled the monster had begun punching its way into the tram after him. It was now three times the size it had once been. The size of the monstrosity worked against it in the confines of the tram, its movement was difficult with its bulk.
“NAT!” Sky hollered loudly. “We need to leave! NOW!”
In the driver’s cabin Nat continued to panic over the buttons. She felt overwhelmed and she couldn’t concentrate hard enough. So many buttons and so little to go on! It didn’t help everything was written in German!
Sky took the flamethrower up and ignited it.
The tram rocked as the monster squeezed its way on board, slowly closing in on the soldier and Sky. It was an ugly sonofabitch and Sky wasn’t sure if the grenade had caused it any damage at all. She stepped back and adopted a good firing position. The solider was in her way, but if she kept the flames high enough he would be ok. He’d feel the heat for sure but he wouldn’t alight. Not that he deserved sparing.
She pulled the trigger just as she saw the monster was beginning to bleed. If it was bleeding surely it was becoming seriously injured. If she could overload it now, then it might not be able to rejuvenate. She quickly covered it in a thick plume of flames, then let go of the trigger. It was alight and the cabin was suddenly full of the smell of its burning flesh. It didn’t make any sound, it didn’t make any response at all. It dropped to its knees, but it didn’t die. It slowly began to crawl towards them. The flames snuffed out and left its skin charred, it bubbled as it slowly slithered forward. It still made no sound, it just slowly inched closer and closer.
There was a jolt underfoot and suddenly the tram was moving.
Nat had finally done it. There was a screaming of brakes and then the tram began quickening. There was miles to go yet and they were still stuck with the creature onboard.
The soldier inched closer.
“The grenades!” He called weakly.
Was he stupid? She couldn’t use a grenade in the small confines of the tram. It’d kill everyone! She had dared a plume of fire in the small confines of all the ammo, she didn’t think using a grenade was the best idea.
“Something like that… can’t reach the surface!” the man added. He desperately gripped Sky’s ankle.
He was quite right! But that didn’t mean Sky or Nat had to die. Again.
Besides she had to reach the surface and warn base what Rain was going to do. If she didn’t do that, all hope would be lost!
The black charred marks of the fire had begun to fade on the creatures skin and its smouldering ugliness continued to advance. She’d thought fire would’ve killed it, hoping that it would have overloaded it or irreversibly destroyed the cells so it couldn’t transform and repair them, but it seemed that was not the case. However, its mutations were slowing down. The bubbles of flesh were much slower and delayed.
It seemed she needed a different method of killing it.
“RAIN?!” It moaned in one disturbing groan. It threw her by surprise. Somewhere in the midst of that flesh and horror was Zena, was a human. Or two… Ashley’s DNA made up part of this creature.
What had Rain done to them?! Had she used the completed agent, their own creation upon them, but mixed it with something else? Only this wasn’t just a transferring of consciousness, this was something else entirely! This was some form of an unstable mutation, Zena had been injected with something new. No, it hadn’t been Zena at all. It had been Ashley… Rain had killed Zena, then injected Zena’s consciousness into Ashley. The completed Usurper agent had made Ashley become both him and his sister. Only Rain had definitely used something new, something that exacerbated the mutational pro
perties of the cells. Pity washed over Sky for a moment, poor Ashley.
Why had Rain done this?
Or was it all part of the plan? To slow Sky down, or even better kill her?
“A grenade!” The man roared again. She snapped back from her thoughts. The mutated Ashley had persisted, dragging its slow and bulbous self towards them.
She kicked his grip off and engulfed the monster in yet another burst of fire. It still persisted in its slow advance. She dropped the flamer and turned her attention to a nearby shotgun. A pile of shotguns in fact. The flames had already snuffed out, but its skin was black and blistered. Now to destroy the overloaded cells. She reached for a shotgun, a Remington Model 31.
“Hello!” She cooed as she plucked it up. She loved a good shotgun, there was something about the kickback of one that she adored so much. She checked it, it was loaded. She turned and fired.
Each blast was like a pocket of thunder in the carriage, but it didn’t matter.
She blasted a hole in the middle of the creature and it finally recoiled and staggered backwards. A giant hole had been punched into it. She fired again, this time a little higher aiming for major organs, if it had them. Whether that would work she didn’t know. She dropped the shotgun, there was no time to reload.
She grabbed another. She fired. Then again.
Another shotgun hit the floor as she reached for another. More gunfire filled the tram and the hole in the middle of the creature was torn bigger and bigger. Each round of shotgun fire punctured the flesh, but it didn’t regenerate. She went through five shotguns, blasting more and more of the creature away until it finally raised up and flailed in the air.
“…A grenade!” The soldier called weakly once more. He angrily shook her ankle and refused to let go. The creature slammed down on the deck.
She had one shell left in the gun. She shook her foot but the soldier refused to let go. With no choice she brought the butt of the gun down in the soldier’s face, he slammed unconscious. She then carefully closed in on the creature.
It appeared to be dead, but she‘d been fooled before. Thick black globs of blood were seeping out of every pore and it was slowly beginning to dissolve into itself. But she wasn’t entirely convinced.
Sky took a deep breath, but regretted it. She could taste burnt human flesh in her nostrils and mouth. The kind of smell that churned your stomach.
The silence was a welcome reprieve, even if Sky’s ears were ringing.
Nat came to stand beside her. The sight of the dissolving black and bloody pulpy body was disconcerting. She gently placed a hand on the small of Sky’s back, like it was a signal the nightmare was over.
“You did it!” She remarked in breathless delight. “But what the fuck was it?”
“It was once Ashley…”
“Oh,” Nat recoiled.
“Rain injected him with Zena’s DNA, mixed it with something else…”
Nat bristled, she wondered what this other thing was. A genetic accelerator… it touched a nerve and made her uncomfortable. This Rain, even reborn into the rogue clone’s body, was quite the formidable force. She had a private reflection on the resources available to this woman. She had infected Encarta Island with some spore that had zombified the residents, she’d then managed to transfer her own consciousness into a new body. She’d successfully combined two different projects for her own gain, and then used it as a weapon too. She had access to a lot of interesting toys. She was quite the someone a girl like Nat would be keen to keep an eye on, perhaps even meet. No, that was a definite. Rain had cloned her back to life for some reason, she was hungry to find out why.
What did this very remarkable and conniving bitch want with her?
As the creature dissolved Nat concluded that Rain was dangerous, very dangerous…
And she was loose.
It was a sobering thought, Nat slowly looked to Sky who was staring intently at the monster.
Sky lowered the gun slowly. She was confident it was indeed dead. Ever so slowly the creature shrank and dissolved into thick gloopy pus and slime. Sky’s barrage of firepower had overloaded its rejuvenating mechanism and killed it. The strange and vile creature would soon be nothing more than a pile of mush and flesh. That was a comforting thought, the world didn’t need a creature like this…
The tram continued to rattle and roar along the track and it was a comforting sound suddenly. It meant they were heading for the surface.
It meant they were getting out of this weird little underground Hell…
Alice was leaving Wonderland.
CHAPTER TEN:
Six hours later…
Sky was dressed in a black tank top, black cargo trousers and her usual boots. She had small black gloves on because she suspected she might need them. She had two Sig Sauer’s in holsters under each arm, she also had numerous ammo clips to spare too. As she stepped off the helicopter, she was ready for the fight. She knew it was coming and she was prepared for it. The helicopter took off and she tightened the short ponytail at the base of her neck. Her white fringe, as usual, refused to be restrained.
It was about six hours since she called base from outside the Black Forest, but she knew Rain was still here. The small army unit that had been sent ahead of Sky had been taken out and contact had been lost. As Sky descended the stairs down the side of the factory, she saw the first casualty. A headshot. He’d probably barely made it off the helipad before he was killed. He’d plummeted several feet and landed on the harsh stone beach.
This factory wasn’t an ordinary factory. It was a highly secured facility that housed and grew the Sky clones. It was Sky’s place of birth. But all the defences in place hadn’t been enough to stop Rain’s intrusion. So here Sky was, at the very place she’d been born seeking an enemy who was much her as she was. There was quite the artistic flair to it, she was seeking out her dark reflection on the grounds of her birthplace. And she was bringing death to the place of birth.
It had been a complicated theory to relay to HQ, but she had done it nonetheless. She knew she was right and her palpable belief had brought Eve onto side. She’d stood by Sky’s theory, despite how preposterous it had seemed. Of course the corporation hadn’t bought it, only merely humouring her theory but then they lost their security team.
Because the corporation needed to protect their biggest asset, and they’d swiftly lost link with the factory as Sky had predicted, Sky’s theory soon became fact. They were scared of the potential ramifications of Sky’s theory, so that’s why they sent the squad up first, to apprehend Rain while Sky returned from Germany. They too, of course, had failed. It was a rather daring plan of Rain’s to seize control of the factory, but she was a super-soldier and highly capable. She was undoubtedly one of their best. Their own weapon had turned against them.
Rain was here, at this factory, because she planned to inject her cellular self into all the dormant Sky clones. She would quickly amass herself a squad of exact replications of herself, built on the foundations of super soldiers. Sky didn’t know why Rain wanted it, but she knew she had to be stopped at all costs. One super-soldier was troublesome, a whole army of them was almost apocalyptic.
She entered the only door on the walkway and stepped into the top floor of the factory. The factory was barely lit, instead it was decorated with soft blue lights, hazy shadows and pervading darkness. Underneath her, visible through a huge plane of glass, stood several dozen stasis tanks. They gave off low blue ambient light and looked somewhat pretty from above. Almost stars underfoot.
Sky un-holstered her guns and crossed the panel towards the nearest set of stairs. With a pistol in each hand she traversed down to the ground floor, her senses on edge the entire time. She couldn’t hear anything beyond her own footsteps and her own breathing. That did not mean however that she was alone.
She stepped around a nearby tank, ignoring her sleeping clone floating in the water.
The factory was very dark and sparsely lit, intentionally no
doubt. Her vision, and thus her aim, was limited. There were stasis tanks all around her, at least three hundred were contained in the factory. The soft blue lights glowed in all directions.
She proceeded on, stopping every so often to sweep 360 around her.
Where was she? Where was Rain hiding?
She headed towards the main console, the first of many computers that regulated the clones. Everything was functional. She carried on. The next section of clones were in progress, they hadn’t finished developing. They were all in different stages, some had fully formed facial features while others had a mixture of skull and facial muscles visible. Some were still growing and developing arms, none of them had legs. It was a little disconcerting and a little nauseating to see versions of herself not yet fully developed, to see her own self being grown in a test tube. She tried to shut them out but the images persisted in her mind. She had been like this once; a creature half made in a tank, not born from a man and woman but from science and technology.
“Frightening isn’t it…” it was Rain. Their voices may have been identical but Sky knew by the sound of her slightly different tone it was Rain. The tanks threw off the acoustics and disguised her whereabouts. It was enough to take Sky’s mind off the clones and she sharpened her attention.
“…That was once us. A creature in a tank…”
Sky slowly crept on. Judging by the amount of echo it became apparent that Rain was talking through speakers. That meant she was above in the control room, the only place that had access to the tanoy system. She began to head for the stairs, passing by more and more stasis tanks. She’d underestimated how dense the tanks would be in the factory. They were everywhere… The idea of Rain having the means to creating all these sleeping clones into copies of herself wasn’t worth considering. It was frightening. One woman alone had managed to destroy an entire Island and a secret facility. A few hundred of them would be catastrophic.
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