Breeders

by Arno Joubert

  At the end of the passage, large double doors swung open, and they walked through what looked like a large mess hall, except there were no tables or chairs or cutlery. On the floor were a bunch of painted diagonal lines, stretching from one end of the mess hall to the other. Numbers were painted next to the lines about half a meter apart. Next to the numbers lay a plastic plate with a banana leaf on top. Five girls were sweeping the hall then laying the plates and leaves on the floor. They averted their eyes when Wattana walked past but looked up at Alexa in awe.

  Once they reached the far side of the hall, Wattana swiped a card over a card-scanning device next to the door and ushered Alexa and Neil inside. Three guards followed them inside, the other two remained outside.

  The office looked like something out of a vintage colonial photograph. A large mahogany desk stood to one side, and two leather couches partitioned the room off into a sitting area. A pipe and a box of cigars lay on top of a coffee table, and yesterday’s newspaper was tossed on one of the couches. Animal trophies hung on the wall: zebra, kudu, and eland. Above the desk was a magnificent African water buffalo, the horns at least a meter wide.

  “Sit,” Wattana ordered.

  “Could you please remove the cuff, it’s very tight,” Alexa asked.

  The guard gave a derisive snort. “Kak.”

  “Where are we?” Neil asked.

  “Welcome to my research laboratory,” Wattana said, waving his arms. “At the moment we’re inside Mueller’s Dam. We call this the research wing.”

  “The dam’s empty?” Neil asked with a frown. “But what about the water supply to the surrounding towns?”

  Wattana smiled. “It has been empty for years, since the early sixties, as a matter of fact.”

  “What type of a place is this exactly?” Alexa asked, looking around.

  Wattana chuckled. “Kennels.”

  “Kennels?”

  “Breeding kennels for some of the most advanced genetically-engineered human tissue available to mankind.” He sat on the large desk. “We plant fertilized ova into the girls; they then act as surrogate moms to supply us with the human tissue we need to do our stem cell research.”

  “So you’re breeding with humans?” Neil asked, disgusted.

  “Not exactly, Mr. Allen. We clone our breeders, and then the breeders produce the cytoblasts that we need. Unfortunately, the breeders have a high mortality rate, so we need to clone new ones every couple of months or so.” He sat on a couch across from them, casually resting his arm on the back. “Without a program such as this, it would take us years to perfect the research. We’ve accomplished what many scientists have tried to do in a tenth of the time.”

  “But you’re abusing young girls to do this!” Alexa shouted.

  Wattana smiled disdainfully, like he was addressing a young child. “You’re processing this in the wrong way, Captain. These girls aren’t human. They’re clones. They’re all sisters, bred and raised for one single purpose, and that is to reproduce the stem cells that we need.”

  He stood up and leaned closer to Alexa. “We need a thousand subjects to ensure that the genetic material doesn’t mutate, you know, to keep it diversified but still pure.” He looked down at Neil. “But these girls aren’t just any clone; they are derived from a very unique genetic template.”

  “And who would that be?”

  The doctor waved the question away with a dismissive hand. “Let me first give you some background; hopefully you will not judge me as harshly afterward. Our research isn’t new. We’ve known about the potential of stem cells since the early 1930s. When America decided to bomb Hiroshima, a very talented doctor called Ikuma Wattana decided to start experimenting with stem cells to cure all the hundreds of thousands of people that got hurt in the blast or suffered from radiation poisoning.” He folded his arms behind his back and started pacing the room, like he was delivering a lecture. “It was an awful time, you must understand. Children were born with defects, cancers, and tumors.” He turned to face them. “I reiterate, embryonic stem cells were the only cure.”

  Alexa snorted. “This guy, Ikuma Wattana, was he family of yours?”

  Wattana nodded. “My grandfather. I am simply continuing the excellent work that my grandfather and then my father have done. We are descendants of a very famous family of surgeons. The Wattana clan treated emperors and kings throughout the centuries.” He smiled and then winked. “You could say we were preordained to do this work.”

  He frowned at Alexa, tsk-tsking. “I see you do not approve.” He waved his hand. “Be that as it may. My grandfather helped Mengele do experiments on the Jews. We needed test subjects, so we chose the Jews with their inferior genetic makeup.”

  “Screw you,” Alexa spat.

  Wattana smiled. “Did I hit a nerve, Captain?” He watched her for a moment—assessing her, Alexa thought—then continued. “So we gassed the ones that we couldn’t use, that were either too old or too young to reproduce. And all the boys, of course, we had no use for them. We concentrated our experiments on the young women; they could produce the cytoblasts that we needed.”

  “You’re sick,” Neil growled, struggling against his cuffs.

  Wattana faced him. “No, Sergeant. What is sick is that America has halted research into the only biotechnology that could stop human suffering—a cure for all disease, cancer, AIDS. Think about it.”

  Alexa snorted. “By torturing kids.”

  Wattana closed his eyes then sighed. “Like I said, you shouldn’t think of them as human, Captain. They’re animals. That’s all. We call them ‘breeders.’”

  Neil was fuming. “How can you allow these children to suffer like this?”

  “The breeders?” Wattana asked. “They’re clones, get that into your thick skull. They’re not human. They’re lab rats. I do admit that they contain some of the most perfect genetic material available to humankind, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re clones.”

  “Clones of who?”

  “Myself,” Wattana said.

  “But they’re all female,” Neil said.

  “Yes, only females can have babies.”

  “So who’s the mom?”

  Wattana smiled at Neil and chuckled. “Oh, that would be my sister, Mitsu.”

  Bruce assembled the soldiers in the hotel room around him. “All right, men, I’m expecting a close-quarters battle. What weaponry do you guys have?”

  The men opened and fished through their duffle bags, retrieving an assortment of weapons and dumping them on the table.

  They were a bit of a scraggly bunch, except for Latorre. Two French special forces, Lieutenants Bellard and Roux, and the guy from Mossad. But they looked keen and ready to go.

  Latorre pulled three rifles from a large black bag and clattered them onto the table. “I have an HK G36 and a couple of M4s.”

  “OK, dump the G36, let’s take the M4s. They’ll be better in a CQB.” Bruce looked around the room. “Who’s the explosives expert?”

  A short guy with day-old stubble raised his hand then saluted. “Me, sir. Captain Max Rizak, sir.”

  Bruce studied the soldier. He wasn’t wearing army fatigues; he was dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a polo shirt. “You’re still on active duty, Captain?”

  “If you call signing leave forms and making sure the mess has enough stock, I guess so, Colonel.”

  Bruce chuckled. “You ready for some action, Captain?”

  The man nodded. “Always, Colonel.”

  “All right, Rizak, I’m going to need a couple hundred ounces of plastic explosives; we’re not going in quietly. It’s going to be quick: search, extract, retreat.”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  Bruce looked at the eager faces surrounding him. ”You ready, men?”

  They answered in one voice. “Affirmative, Colonel.”

  “All right then, let’s go.”

  “So why did you kill Alida?” Neil asked. He wanted to keep the man talking, buy them so
me time. Bruce would be here sooner rather than later, you could bet your bottom dollar on that.

  Wattana paced the room. He had a nervous energy, never sitting still. “She was getting too close, snooping around up in the mountains. When Eight One Three escaped, we knew there would be problems.” He took a sip of coffee from a polystyrene cup.

  “But why make it look as if she was offered on an altar?”

  He held the cup to his lips for a moment then chuckled. “As a matter of fact, she was offered on an altar, but that wasn’t me. That was my sister, Mitsu.” He shook his head and thought for a while. “She has some serious issues, that girl.”

  Alexa looked perplexed. “She killed her own daughter?”

  Wattana closed his eyes and shook his head. He seemed irritable, like he was explaining a very difficult concept to a bunch of six-year-olds. “More like her own sister. Alida, or Six Four One, as we usually refer to her, was destined to become a breeder as well. But Mitsu became lonely. Eben was always away on official duties. That oaf didn’t know what a gem he had in Mitsu. So we decided to give Six Four One to her. She raised the child as her own so that she could have some company.”

  Neil snorted. “Like a puppy dog.”

  Wattana ignored the comment.

  “So Alida was Mitsu’s sister?” Alexa asked.

  Another sigh. “Genetically, yes.” He spoke faster, more excitedly. “Look, Mitsu gets bored easily. We gave her some defunct breeders to play with. She likes slicing them up on that altar and offering them to who knows what. She probably wanted to become a doctor like her older brother, but girls weren’t allowed to go to university in our family. So this was the next best thing for her.” He shrugged.

  Neil saw Alexa gape. This was one sick bastard. She shook her head, like she was trying to clear her thoughts. “Why run fiber-optic and power cables in the pipes above ground?”

  Wattana turned to her. “Ah, you saw that. It connects the data centers of the research wing to the testing wing. You will notice, Captain, that we do not have any wires or glass in the plant or anything that the girls could use to hurt themselves with. They do tend to try to kill themselves, often, so we like to make it as difficult as possible.” He seemed deep in thought, looking down at the table, rapping it rhythmically with his fingers. “Unfortunately, it also leaves us at risk to our competitors who try to hack into the lines and sabotage the power, but it’s a small price we’re willing to pay to keep the girls alive.”

  “Why did you dump the container with the bodies into the ocean?” Neil asked.

  Wattana resumed his pacing. “They were a genetically inferior batch. Girls who were too old. Boys, we have no use for boys. When they’re young we’ll use them to sweep and clean, but then they become another mouth to feed and we exterminate them. We have to renew the genetic material every six months, so we exterminate thirty or so then grow new breeders in their place.”

  He threw the empty polystyrene cup into the bin. “Simple. But I digress. They were to be dumped much farther into the Atlantic, but then something went wrong and the pilot dropped them too close to shore.” He chuckled. “Trust me, that pilot has flown his last flight.”

  He turned to them and looked at them expectantly. “Any more questions?”

  “What are you going to do with us?” Alexa asked.

  Wattana shrugged. “Your genetic material is too inferior to be of any use to us—a Jew and a Gypsy. No, you’ll be scheduled for the next batch to be exterminated.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” Neil spat.

  “Oh, you’ll be close to death when we load you into the dispenser. I’m going to have my fun with you two first,” Wattana said and winked at Alexa.

  Neil bolted up and shoulder charged Wattana off his feet. The guards jumped forward, but Neil lashed out and kicked one of them in the groin and head butted the other, sending the man slumping to the ground. The other guards ran into the room and a scuffle ensued.

  “Stop or I’ll kill her!” Wattana shouted, a pistol pointed at Alexa’s head.

  Neil stood still and the guards overpowered him, pushing him to the ground.

  Wattana swore then rubbed the side of his head, waving the gun from Alexa to Neil. “I notice you two are more than close colleagues.”

  “Interpol will come looking for us,” Alexa said, straining against her cuffs.

  “And they won’t find anything. I have the local law enforcement in my pocket.”

  “Moolman?”

  Wattana chuckled. “Yes, and that good general of yours.”

  “Laiveaux?” Alexa asked incredulously.

  “None other, my dear Captain.”

  Neil smiled. Sure. “What about Eben de Vos?”

  Wattana’s face became hard. “That bastard’s more stubborn than a mule. How Mitsu took an interest in that man, I don’t know.”

  “Does Eben know that Alida was not his daughter?”

  Wattana turned to Neil. “You have a lot of questions, Sergeant.” He paced the room, looking bored. “My sister is a good actor. She faked the pregnancy. Eben knows nothing about this little operation we have going here,” he said, waving the gun nonchalantly. ”Mitsu doesn’t want him to get involved. I think she actually loved that buffoon.”

  Wattana called a guard then fiddled with his cuff link. “Enough talking. Take them to the cells. Put her in with Eight One Three.”

  The guards dragged them away.

  “You’re going down for this, Wattana!” Neil shouted as they dragged him outside.

  Wattana didn’t answer, he simply cackled a spine-chilling laugh.

  Jake parked his mom’s BMW in front of the lab then walked into the reception area. Andre’ was manning the desk. “Hey, Andre’, is my dad around?”

  The guy looked up from his girlie mag. “Jake, how are you doing, young man?” He put out a puffy hand. “Good to see you.” Andre’ had always been friendly toward him, but Jake knew it had more to do with his father’s position of authority at the plant than a genuine fondness toward him.

  Jake shook his hand and waited for him to answer.

  The guy smiled. “Oh, your dad. Yes, he’s in the lab.” He heaved his heavy frame from a protesting chair then trudged to the door. He reminded Jake of an oversized penguin. “C’mon, I’ll let you in.”

  He swiped a card over the scanner on the wall, and the doors opened silently. “Cheers, Jake, and I’m sorry about your girlfriend, man.”

  Jake nodded then went inside.

  Hannes Petzer was bent over a petri dish. He wore an apparatus that looked like an extra pair of glasses strapped to his head.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  Petzer looked up with a scowl. His eyes seemed abnormally large, like he was looking at Jake through a peephole. “Jake, what are you doing here?”

  “I brought you some lunch. Mom made it especially for you,” he said and showed Hannes the plastic bag with a lunchbox inside. “It’s lamb curry, your favorite.”

  “Oh, that’s very kind of her,” he said, pulling blue plastic gloves from his hands. “Very kind of both of you. How did you get here?” he asked, sliding the wearable magnifiers to the top of his head.

  “I borrowed mom’s car.”

  Hannes Petzer tossed the gloves in a trash can marked “Hazardous.” It had the same logo you saw on nuclear bombs. “Jake, how many times have I told you that you’re not allowed to drive without a license? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “It’s a holiday, Dad.”

  Hannes Petzer jerked his head sideways toward the table where his phone started ringing. He seemed preoccupied. “What the hell now? Why must I always be interrupted?” he muttered. He picked it up. “Hello? Yes.” He listened attentively. “OK, Doctor, I’ll be right over.” He looked up at Jake. “I need to go. We have a crisis that I need to deal with. You go straight back home now.”

  Jake nodded. “OK, Dad.”

  Hannes Petzer flew around and pulled a phone from his lab jacke
t’s pocket then started dialing a number. He barged through a door marked “Testing Facility” at the back of the lab without looking back.

  Jake stood still for a while, listening intently. He went to his father’s desk and shuffled through the drawers. It contained nothing important, except for a one hundred rand note. Jake pocketed it. He pursed his lips then made up his mind. He jumped up and strode to the door then opened it a crack and peered out. The coast was clear.

  He tried to move as quietly as he could, carefully closing the door behind him. He was in a long, brightly-lit hallway with various exits to the left. They were numbered “1-50,” “51-100,” and so on, all the way to 500. Next to each exit was a sink and some disinfectant soap, and a white towel hung on a peg against the wall.

  He tiptoed toward one of the doors and cracked it open. This place was darker. He opened the door wide and entered the area. The horrible stench wafted into his nostrils, and he had to pinch them to stop himself from retching. Faint lights covered by wire mesh shone dimly from the ceiling, flickering on and off. He tried to ignore the smell and went over to the door marked “1” with some reflective chevron tape. He bent down and peered through the hole at the top then jumped back in horror.

  Sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees, hugging them tightly, was a dirty girl with matted black hair. It was Alida.

  “Alida, wait, I’m going to get you out of here,” he called, looking around frantically for something to open the door with.

  The girl stood up and cautiously moved closer to the door. She said something that sounded like, “So was thee?”

  She started babbling, but he couldn’t understand a word that she was saying. He backed up to the wall but was grabbed on the shoulder by someone. He spun around, feeling dizzy. There she was again, staring wild-eyed out of the window of cell number two. He ran down the hall, breathing hard, peering into every cell. Alida was everywhere. “Oh my God, am I going crazy?” he thought. He ran at full speed down the passage and pulled open a door at the other end. It slammed closed behind him.