The Rain In The Sky

by Antony J Woodward

  At least that was what she hoping, she didn’t fancy her chances of combing an ocean bed in pursuit of a hard drive and memory stick.

  After that business concludes, perhaps she’d just lay low for a while.

  Figure out a way to keep tabs on Rain, learn more about her. The interest was personal as well as business, Rain was a jackpot. All the data she’d compiled would be a huge pay packet on the black market.

  Nat suspected that she would run into Sky again in the future too. She felt like she was suddenly entwined with Sky and Rain’s lives, which wasn’t a pleasurable thought. She didn’t like relationships, or complications. And this ménage trois was one hell of a complication. Still, she felt a kinship to Sky and she couldn‘t deny it. They had been through some incredible living nightmares together, that was a bond that could never be broken.

  And they were both clones, the pair of them. For better or for worse, they were very similar.

  Nat decided on her path to the kitchen to find some paracetamol, the first thing she would do when she left the facility is find a bar and have a stiff drink. She’d earned it.

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  “A drink?” the man offered her a shot of bourbon. His female guest accepted the offer and sat herself in the nearby chair. He poured the two shots and took a seat at his desk opposite her. He handed her the glass and the pair of them cheered. He was in his late sixties but you’d never have guessed. He’d had the odd nip and tuck and majority of his wrinkles had been frozen away with botox. He was dressed in a t-shirt emblazoned with his company’s logo, jogging pants and red silk dressing gown. He was a little overweight too, having indulged in one too many charity buffets in his time. Yet, he was still quite attractive. Maybe some biological charm or something…

  “Well, what can I say. A job very well done,”

  “I’m a professional, ” the female answered with a warm smile. She drained the bourbon and enjoyed the burn down her gullet. She licked her lips, not meaning to look seductive. It didn’t matter, this old man was nothing she couldn’t handle.

  “And this research… Well, my dear, it’s something else entirely…” he lovingly patted the stack of hard drives on his table.

  The woman deposited her empty tumbler on the desk and kicked back in the leather chair. The room was smart, orderly and old fashioned. Hard wood, green leather and the smell of dust and paper. It was as beautiful as the rest of his residence.

  She was dressed in a long black coat and grey trousers. She’d styled up with a pair of white heeled shoes. Her stark white hair was left to fall around her shoulders.

  The man was Arthur Williamson. He was the CEO and director of the technological giant WILLBITECH. Or Williamson’s Biological Technologies to be exact. He was a shrewd man and a powerhouse in the industry, if there was anyone who could threaten and topple RAIN’s monopoly on the industry, it was him. And now thanks to Rain’s help, he had the means to do it.

  “I certainly hope we can do business again my lady… And may I say, you’re looking very refreshed since last time we met.” he gushed.

  Rain smiled and pretended to be embarrassed.

  He may have been a powerhouse but he was still an idiot. He didn’t realise it was all part of her plan. When they’d struck a deal, he had no idea he was being played.

  She wanted him to destroy RAIN corporation, that’s the only reason why she’d given him the means to.

  “Oh I’m sure our business ventures together are far from over,” she promised. No, she had more in mind for him. She was a powerful woman, as she’d demonstrated by orchestrating the elaborate plan to secure herself a new body. She knew the art of war. She would play WILLBITECH and get them to suffer the cost of battle, then when the timing was right she would swoop in and claim her prize.

  She got up to leave.

  “And the spore? Did it work as well as predicted?”

  She stalled and dwelled on that question. It had certainly made Encarta Island interesting, the zombified civilians added a layer of danger and urgency to proceedings. But she didn’t think it was viable as a B.O.W. Too messy, too bland. There was merit to infecting a population and weaponizing them sure, but she liked a little more flare.

  “It worked efficiently,” she concluded.

  He smiled warmly. Why was he taking pride in it? He’d not so much as glanced at a research note let alone made it. Typical smug kingpin she thought to herself.

  “I’ll be in touch Arthur,” she bowed her head.

  “Sure you don’t want to stay for another nightcap?” He was at least three times her age and the thought repulsed her. She couldn’t believe he had the gall to suggest it. But wasn’t that always the case of the rich, that unfathomable belief they’re entitled to the world. She gave him a long look and shook her head.

  “Don’t mix business and pleasure,” and she departed. She checked her watch as she was led out of the mansion by a waiting butler. The dark evening was a refreshment to the senses when she emerged from the bowels of the manse. It was getting late and she anticipated her project “Scythe” had begun. This new project was of great importance to her and she needed to head out quickly. As she climbed into her car she checked her smart watch again. She found the tracker chip had settled in one spot, one spot she had been waiting for. One swipe and the screen returned to a clock face, then when she started the engine she inputted a set of coordinates into her GPS. It led to a flat in North London, about a forty five minute drive. So she had finally returned home Rain concluded, her business in the lion’s den was over with… Now was the time to collect.

  She was going to be very important in the things to come…

  She put the car into gear and drove off the grounds, she joined the quiet country lane and put her foot down. The car accelerated sharply. She could feel nerves fluttering in her gut. She needed to reach the woman before the transition was complete. It was of the most utmost importance.

  For this project “Scythe” would come in very handy in the upcoming battles with Sky. It had been no surprise that Sky had emerged victorious back in the factory, she was a super-soldier after all. Whether Rain liked it or not, she was very much her equal. The yin to her yang. But it wasn’t ever about winning that battle back in the factory.

  No, it had been about disarming the RAIN Corporation of one of it’s biggest assets.

  Which is exactly what had happened. The factory had been wiped clean and everything started anew, that would cost them time. From her tangled network of contacts she knew Sky had not returned and instead had gone AWOL. Their greatest weapon was now missing.

  It was exactly as she had planned…

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  Sky was stood in the graveyard trying to feel something in her heart. Yet no matter how many times her eyes scrubbed over the name on the tombstone, she just couldn’t feel anything. There was no kinship, no sense of belonging. It was just a name, a name that she had once used in a previous life.

  She bundled the coat around herself tighter, the cold wind was cutting.

  Wasn’t she supposed to feel something? This was the woman her entire life was based on.

  She closed her eyes and sighed. She felt very lost. Cutting free of the corporation had been liberating at first, but the freedom quickly became overwhelming. She had laid low, hiding from everyone she had ever known. Cut herself off from the only people she had ever known, because they were part of the company… She wasn’t sure if she missed them, or whether she missed the structure they represented. The only person she’d deliberately sought out was Nat, but there wasn’t much of a trail to follow. Just as Sky had expected when she hacked into the servers of RAIN Corp she’d found absolutely zero trace of her ever working on the Island. The woman didn’t exist, and because she’d never existed she had simply disappeared. Nat had visited RAIN not long after the events of the factory, but the questions she answered shed very little light on Encarta Island. Not once did
anybody in the company realise she was the unidentified corpse stored in the treatment plant. Not once did anyone think to question her alibi of a lost in transit job application. Not once had anyone suspected her of anything.

  The company wasn’t cut out for it, it was like watching bumbling idiots.

  Perhaps they had no right to suspect her though?

  But Sky was pretty sure that Nat had been up to something on the Island.

  Despite these deep suspicions, Sky still felt drawn to her. That mysterious woman was the closest thing Sky had ever had to a friend. Now she had vanished off the face of the earth…

  It made Sky feel incredibly lonely and deserted. A new sensation to replace the stifling and imprisonment.

  “I knew you’d come here,” it was a voice she recognised and she tried to disguise her alarm. She didn’t turn to face him.

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” he had a little cough, a cold had sunk its teeth into him, “I know why you ran… I get it. I know you won’t believe it, but I won’t harm you.”

  They sounded a lot like promises, but they threatened to be very empty, “I know it’s really you…” the man continued.

  The graveyard was empty except for them two.

  “How do you know its me?” She felt her disguise of a blonde wig and a brown fur hat was good, how could he be so sure?

  “Because you came here, to her grave…” he answered in a small voice.

  Sky didn’t answer. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She wasn’t sure if she trusted his words. Was a private platoon about to descend upon her and capture her? Or was he being genuine?

  “I just want you to know that you can come home. You can come home when you’re ready…” and with that he began walking away. She heard his footsteps fade out of earshot and she dared a glance. He was walking away, heading towards the entrance to the cemetery.

  Did he mean it? Or was it just a trap?

  Hadn’t she sprung enough of them?

  She slowly felt her gaze return to the grave.

  She was suddenly so unsure about everything. Unsure of how she felt regarding him, or what her place was in this world. Unsure of what to do next, unsure if she wanted to go home because that’s all she knew? Unsure if she was even herself or just some strange extension of a dead woman…

  So much uncertainty. She glanced and he was disappearing in the distance.

  No platoon or private bodyguards had arrived to attack her…

  So maybe he was telling the truth?

  EPILOGUE:

  “Look I’m not having this argument here!” Alex hissed angrily. His wife’s face was of pure thunder, red and puffy with rage. She tossed a book at him in a fit of anger.

  “Goddamit Alex! When does this madness stop!”

  He went to leave but she blocked his exit. The conference room felt claustrophobic with their confrontation filling the room.

  “You can’t start again! You can’t just make more of her!”

  “What am I supposed to do? We made a deal with the government!” He snapped back. His wife grabbed his arm and squeezed. Once upon a time she had been beautiful, but those days had long gone. Now she was bitter and malicious. When they’d met she’d been a vibrant redhead with a lust for life and adventure, she’d gone on to become a doting mother who had raised her daughter exceptionally well. She’d been a partner in the business who was calculating and brave. She was everything he had ever hoped for in a wife.

  But their daughter’s illness had drove a deep wedge between them. She was now a bottle blonde who was as cold and emotionally grey as the suits she wore. Her fingers pinched sharply in his arm. “Let her die Alex,” she hissed. “Let her memory die…”

  “I can’t…” he snapped. He wrenched free from her vice grip.

  “Bastard! You don’t have the right to keep using her DNA like that!” she yelled.

  “I have no choice! She’s the only genetic combination we ever got to work!”

  “She’s our fucking daughter! Not a slab of meat you can keep taking slices from!” Amanda screamed hoarsely.

  “What would you have me do?!” He pinched her chin and put his face into hers.

  “Grow a set of balls and pull out of the deal… Let our daughter die in peace,”

  “I can’t do that and you know it!”

  They should’ve divorced a long time ago but Alex couldn’t bear to do it. As horrible and as toxic as their relationship was, he had faith it would one day turn a corner. He had faith one day he could make it all better.

  “What happened to you?” she bit angrily.

  “I’m trying to make it right. I’m trying to fix it.”

  “You can’t fix it. And bringing our daughter back time after time… I just can’t take it. I can’t watch it anymore Alex! I don’t want to see your latest project be some clone of our daughter. AND I CERTAINLY don’t want to have to watch a crew go along and kill versions of our daughter… because somewhere along the line, we fucked up and made a monster…”

  She was referring to the harrowing footage of the clean-up crew wiping out all the clones in the factory. The entire factory had been wiped clean, there was no other way to make sure Rain’s contamination was stopped. The factory had restarted production a few days after and that was what had sparked this argument. It wasn’t what Alex wanted to do, he wanted to concentrate on the one clone from the factory unaccounted for. The one clone who had escaped the factory and was loose somewhere in the world. One clone who was probably infected with Rain’s consciousness.

  “I can’t handle it anymore Alex. They’re clones but they’re our daughter too!” Amanda wailed.

  Alex closed his eyes and stepped away.

  “I’ll try and work something out…” he vowed defeated.

  “Let our daughter die Alex. Let her go…” She urged desperately.

  He left the room and headed down the many corridors towards his office.

  He couldn’t do as she asked. He couldn’t do it! He needed to figure it out, needed to figure out how to make it all better! Goddamit, if he quit now, it was all in vain!

  Tears welled up to his eyes and he struggled to keep them at bay. He locked his office door behind him and crossed to the back wall. He slid a painting to one side and entered a long string of digits into the numerical keypad.

  A wall panel slid away and he stepped into the chamber.

  A brief decontamination occurred while he waited. He held his breath as it happened, the smells of the gases were pretty noxious. When the procedure was finished, the wall panel slid down and the chamber opened into a perfectly sterile room.

  There was a single occupant of this room. Alongside one wall several monitors were mounted and they displayed current vital signs. The whitewashed room was bright and airy, kept at a perfectly cool temperature. The patient was on a state of the art bed that was composed of rolling plastic pillars that adjusted continuously and prevented pressure damage from the perpetual bed rest. She was covered in a white sheet but was naked beneath it. Once a day he bed-bathed the patient, as he was her sole carer.

  She was comatose, but very much alive. As she had been for several years. Frozen in time, frozen before complete failure. She was still pretty, but then again he was biased. He had always found her the most beautiful girl in the world. He gentled touched the long trailing brown hair that was the colour of rich chocolate. Her face was smooth, her eyes large and her lashes long. Her eyebrows were shapely and her cheekbones were very well defined. She’d inherited her mother’s lips, they were a little too large for her face and set her proportions slightly off.

  “I can’t do it… I can‘t let you go…” he announced to her. Only she was never going to respond. The mysterious illness that had attacked her neurological system was deeply ingrained and she was lost to it. “I can’t let you go,” he continued as he approached. Tears had risen to his eyes.

  He knew his wife wanted her nightmare to end. She wanted her daught
er to stop returning in the shape of the clones, she wanted to mourn and grieve for the progeny she had lost. What she didn’t know was that Fiona was still very much alive. Alex had faked her death, even to his own wife. Alex had stolen her away and hidden her from the entire world.

  Nobody could ever understand the passionate bond between father and daughter, and how that drove him to such a despicable act.

  “I think… I think I might nearly have a cure…” he whispered as he took her hand.

  Deep in the heart of Africa, in a lab so secret that only he knew of its existence, a cure had been synthesised. A mutagen that his company had developed to repair unhealthy cells. While the initial results were a little disappointing, they were on cusp of figuring it out.

  He knew with a little further work on the barebones of the programmable cell research, they could crack it. They could combine the two inventions and create a cure.

  The inspiration for it had occurred to him shortly after he’d visited the Sky clone, if Rain had figured out a way to make her cells overwrite others - then he could create a cell that went around fixing others. He needed to get his hands on that data she’d no doubt stolen and then he reckoned the cure would be complete. In the meantime, his labs were working hard on perfecting the cell.

  His new plan was to find Rain, with her research he could then cure his daughter.

  “Soon my darling, soon…” he promised.

  ABOUT THE RAIN IN THE SKY:

  This book, or rather this story, has been knocking about in my skull for a decade. In my late teens my ambitions were to be a computer games designer and this story, and its cast, was to be my magnum opus. (Oh to be young and so full of ambition and confidence!) And it was quite the plot, spanning something like 5 games and then a reboot, but over time majority of that crumbled away. Now over a decade later I work in healthcare (pretty far removed from computer games I know!) and I never got to use the story.