Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2)

by Matthew R. Bell

  ‘My sister,’ I whispered.

  ‘Come here,’ my father beckoned to me.

  I pushed my murderous thoughts from my brain in hope for my sister’s life. When I reached the monitor beside her, my father grabbed a needle and inserted it into her arm. It didn’t draw blood, but at the other end of the tube was another sharp point. Without any hesitation, Richard pierced the needle into my arm and stood back as blood slid from me into my sister.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘You and your sister are described as twins,’ he started, ‘but even though you both are strikingly similar in looks, it has more to do with coincidence, being related that is, than the fact you are twins. There are two types of twins…’

  I was agitated. I didn’t want a lecture.

  ‘Yeah I know,’ I seethed. ‘There are fraternal and identical twins. Identical twins come from the same egg, and have almost identical DNA. Whereas fraternal twins are two different eggs that are fertilised at the same time, but have completely different DNA. Identical ones cannot be of two different genders because they come from the very same egg.’

  ‘Very good!’ Richard feigned shock.

  ‘What exactly has that got to do with this?’ I spat.

  ‘I was getting to that when you interrupted,’ Richard replied. ‘While you aren’t identical twins, the both of you are still related, and share genetic markers in common. Think of this as another test before you kill me.’

  I growled.

  ‘Another test!?’ I shouted, but remained still. ‘You mean this might not help? Whatever it is?’

  ‘Your DNA has been altered. Think of the idea like a flu vaccine. The vaccine contains the virus, so that the developing antibodies know what to fight. I’m trying the same with your blood, hoping that with similar genetics and the same blood type, Hazel’s DNA will learn from yours. It’s a long shot, and a bone marrow transplant would be more ideal, but we’ve seen long shots work before now, haven’t we?’

  ‘Why are you doing all this?’ I whispered, overcome with emotion.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ my father cocked his head, confused and agitated, ‘I’m doing it for you. Oh, how the future is going to be ironic. If this works you’ll have an effective ally.’

  Ironic? Ally?

  ‘What?’ I gasped.

  I couldn’t comprehend what I was hearing.

  ‘Before I kill you,’ I said uncertainly, ‘where are the video files from your notes?’

  ‘Ah,’ my father smiled, ‘is my old employer giving you a hard time? I hoped they would. It meant I could stay under the radar, but you’re here now, so here.’

  My father’s hand slipped into his pocket and returned with a DVD. He slid it into my jumper and retreated.

  Did he just help me?

  ‘I apologise for all the running around I’ve had you do,’ Richard continued without an ounce of regret. ‘It was necessary. I had to keep you busy while your sister went through her experiment, so I could effectively collect data. Giving you scraps here and there, and then Anna’s brother, well, predictability as I’ve said is your weakness, son; always charging into things without all the facts.’

  A commotion suddenly erupted out in the corridor, and both my head and my father’s snapped in that direction. Guards must have appeared once I’d reached the floor, and there were shots echoing into the room. A beautiful redheaded woman and a battered but tough man turned the corner and advanced with guns raised. I saw that they were only tranquilizers, so the men outside hadn’t been harmed badly.

  I felt my heart warm up and tears rim my eyes as Anna and Chris stopped not far from where I stood. They looked furious, and although I hadn’t wanted them to come, they had. Why I was surprised I had no idea.

  ‘Wait,’ I said as Chris aimed at Richard. ‘He says he can help my sister.’

  Nobody moved but Richard as he unplugged the needle from my arm, and then did the same for the sleeping woman.

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  Richard shrugged and replied, ‘Seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years, decades, never.’

  I freed the gun I had brought and aimed at my father. I let the tears that had built up when my family had come to help fall, as the emotions I felt around my father finally overwhelmed me. I was shocked at how much I’d held in, and I gasped and choked before I broke into a tirade of screams.

  ‘I loved you,’ I shouted at Richard. ‘You’re supposed to be my Dad! You’re supposed to protect me!’

  ‘I am protecting you,’ Richard returned with a growl.

  ‘Really!?’ I cried incredulous.

  ‘Look at what you have now,’ Richard replied, but he had started to sweat with panic. ‘Abilities you couldn’t dream of, strength in other ways you couldn’t understand. If I told you everything you wouldn’t believe me, I am doing my best.’

  My hand itched on the trigger as I scrutinised my father.

  Just pull it!!

  I was on the edge of a metaphorical cliff. The choice I had in front of me a defining moment in my life. Was I a murderer?

  Before I made my choice however, a rattled cough erupted from my sister. Hazel’s eyes fluttered open and scanned the room dazed. We all waited without breathing, we waited for the guttural screams the changed made. Instead, my sister’s eyes fell on me, and they widened.

  ‘You,’ she gasped.

  Did she recognise me? Know who I was?

  For a second she looked faint and weak, her eyelids drooped as she struggled to keep them open. I remembered that feeling; right after I’d finally came back to my senses once my body had changed. For me it had left almost instantly, and by the look of triumph on Hazel’s face, it had passed her too.

  Quickly and deftly, she slid from the chair and pulled the monitoring equipment from her hand. She kept her eyes trained on me, wide with wonder, and her lips pulled up at the sides.

  ‘You,’ Hazel repeated more evenly.

  ‘It’s me,’ I whispered, smiling, ‘it’s your brother, Hazel.’

  ‘You came to me,’ she replied.

  I nodded.

  ‘Of course I did,’ I laughed. ‘I’m here to save you, to take you away from our father.’

  ‘He’s not our father, he’s a monster,’ Hazel stated.

  I nodded my head again as she slouched over to me, when she reached me, she started to circle.

  ‘What is this?’ Richard Bishop whispered.

  My attention was taken from my sister for a second as I stared at my father. What the hell had he planned?

  ‘I’m a monster too,’ a voice whispered in my ear.

  I was still scrutinising my father’s face, that at first the voice didn’t register. Had my sister just said that? I heard screams, Richard’s face fell and his eyes widened as he rushed forward. Why did he move so slowly?

  I felt pressure around my torso. I couldn’t breathe. I looked down as blood dripped heavily from an arm that had erupted from my body. I squinted, confused. What…

  Then the thing I’d readied myself for, the thing I’d said I could handle happened, and I had lied. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t.

  But then everything vanished, and I died.

  The Intervention

  I had no way to explain how I knew I had died, but seeing my sister’s fist erupt from my chest said it all. There was no doubt about it, I had left the living world behind, and then, well then I had no idea. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, smell, taste or touch anything. The world was just black, a dark abyss that I floated through.

  It was like coming down with an extremely debilitating fever. My senses were useless, but there was a certain feeling to being dead, a clogged sense of euphoria. I was free.

  ‘No matter what, I love you,’ a woman’s melodic voice whispered from the depths of the darkness.

  It was familiar, and if I had a heart I could swear it filled with warmth and love. I couldn’t reply though, and I wanted to. The voice… I wanted to be closer to it, t
o find the source and clasp on completely.

  ‘What are you doing honey?’ the woman said, it was like the sigh of an angel. ‘Come to me.’

  With those words the air filled with an almost inaudible hum, and as if I’d been slapped in the face with them, my senses returned. The air turned thick and warm, and my eyes picked up a claustrophobic yellow light. The ground I was sprawled on was dirt-ridden. I pushed myself up, my limbs like jelly, my usual heightened strength gone.

  When the ground stopped spinning, and my eyes adjusted, my stomach dropped. I let out what sounded like a whimper and closed my eyes. I couldn’t be there, not again. But when I pulled my eyelids back up, nothing had changed. I wondered fleetingly whether I’d survived my sister’s attack, and been dragged to another replica of Greystone, because that was where I was.

  I looked up to be sure, hoping I’d see balconies circling the maze, but there was only the dark and dirty ceiling above my head. Had I died and went to hell? Or was I locked in some nightmarish part of my mind? Both choices were dismal, but I seriously hoped for the latter.

  ‘Honey?’ the woman, but louder since my senses were back. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  The hairs on my arms and neck stood to attention, and I abandoned my previous thoughts of finding that voice. I didn’t want to be there. I had left that nightmare behind!

  ‘You haven’t left anything behind, Lucas,’ the woman replied.

  Had she read my thoughts?

  ‘Okay,’ I mumbled, ‘that’s not creepy at all.’

  ‘Find me.’

  The pipe-laden walls on either side of me seemed to be closing in, and I hesitantly started forward. It wasn’t long until I reached a long, low room. I clocked it instantly. The memory flooded my mind the way horrors usually do. The room I stood in had been the final resting place of Dr Terry Harris. He had been a good man and one of the survivors of the initial craziness that swept my former town. He’d been murdered to send me a message, strangled by Grace and then hung from the pipes to make it look like a suicide to all but me.

  I tore my eyes away from the place Terry had been cut down, and they drifted helplessly over to a small blood stain on the wall. Another memory flashed, myself attacking the wall once my mother had been changed into one of the creatures that had tried to kill us. I shook my head.

  Please let me out.

  I turned, ready to go back to where I’d woken up, to find an exit, anything. I just knew that going forward was something I didn’t want to face.

  ‘You have no choice,’ that familiar voice echoed.

  And I didn’t. The hallway I’d walked down was gone. There was only one way to go, a doorway on the other side of the room. The charged air only seemed to escalate with heat the more I staggered forward. I barely noticed the black arrows that pointed the way. They shimmered, slithering like snakes as they twisted along the wall after me.

  I knew where I was headed. I knew who that voice belonged to. I knew I couldn’t face it.

  The hallway kept stretching, growing before me and messing with my vision, prolonging the emotions that barrelled around inside my stomach. I was almost ready to collapse and scream when I came to a corner that glimmered with the light from the room beyond. I reached it, and turned.

  I had to close my eyes against the blinding white, but I could recall the room with almost crystal clear clarity. In front of me, halfway up the wall would be a glass balcony, an almost sideways dome that housed my father’s workspace. It was white, and sterile, buried in the heart of the underground labyrinth beneath Greystone. The room it looked down on, the part I stood in, wasn’t as clean. The pipes that ran the whole length of the tunnels grouped together there, circling the walls and disappearing through them at the sides of the balcony, conduits that powered the place.

  ‘You came,’ the woman sang.

  The light dimmed slightly, and I scanned the room for the woman. I couldn’t see her, but I could see major differences in the room. The pipes bulged and moved, no longer ending at the balcony but completely overtaking my father’s workplace. The glass balcony was shattered, a feat I’d done myself, and the shards glittered as they hung in mid-air and turned slowly.

  ‘I’m glad you came, son,’ my mother said, and she stepped from the shadow of the balcony.

  That was where I last saw her. Not only saw her, but fired a bullet into her changed mind. I winced at the memory.

  ‘It’s not like I had a choice,’ I replied with venom. It couldn’t be my mother.

  Rebecca Bishop sighed, tilted her head and pursed her lips in a sympathetic expression. She didn’t look like the monster she became, but like her former self. In her mid-forties, my Mum didn’t look a day older than thirty. Her dark brown hair cascaded in luscious locks that cradled her face, and her kind, mahogany eyes smiled.

  ‘You always have a choice honey,’ she replied. ‘Sometimes all the options are just hard to see.’

  ‘This isn’t real?’ I asked. ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘You were dead,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Hazel nicked your heart, it stopped, briefly.’

  ‘I’m not now?’ I said.

  She lifted her hand and made a so-so gesture with it. I shook my head as pain bloomed behind my skull.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I gasped.

  ‘Think of it like a mental intervention while you’re down for the count,’ Rebecca said. ‘We have quite a lot to work through.’

  I went to reply, but couldn’t. Just when I’d thought the world couldn’t get any crazier, it always did, in spectacular fashion.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning, hmm?’ my mother smiled.

  The room exploded, and I jumped back with a yelp. The walls broke into huge chunks of concrete, and they spun with deadly speed around the darkness. The glass I had seen twinkling in the air shot towards me and my eyes widened. Before I could react, the shards stopped inches from my head. They flew backwards, chunks breaking off from one another as the concrete blocks rushed forward. All merged together, and before I knew it, I was standing in the kitchen of my childhood home.

  The kitchen wasn’t large, but it was well-furnished. The sink and worktops lay beneath the windows that looked out to the back garden. Sunlight streamed through the glass, and lit up my mother with a godly light. She stood where I’d last seen her smile with unconditional love.

  ‘Work out what?’ I burst before the earth shattered again. It was safe to say I was no longer in reality.

  ‘We’ll get to that,’ Rebecca replied. ‘First, I’d like to remind you of something.’

  She slouched forward and took a seat at the dining table, motioning me to do the same. I did, and she clasped her hands on the surface.

  ‘Remember when you were ten?’ she asked. ‘That time you and a friend of yours ignored everyone’s warnings and went down to the burn?’

  As she asked the memory swam up to the surface. It had been a hellish weekend, with lightning storms and torrential rain. Samuel and I decided to go out anyway, to have an adventure down at the river not far from my home. We had been warned of the danger, but we hadn’t anticipated the rising water level a storm could bring. When we had set our eyes on it, we had filled with excitement. As children, the danger only escalated our feeling of adventure, I mean, what was the worst that could happen?

  We played for hours, laughing and seeing who could go the furthest into the unstoppable water. The sun dipped, and it was time to go home. No one had been hurt, and the fun would live forever in our memories. Then we heard a strangled cry. It tugged heavily at my heart and I searched frantically for the source. It was a dog, a tiny terrier that had been dragged into the rushing river, and had become stuck. It had cried and cried as it clung onto the rock across the water.

  I hadn’t even thought about it. Against the screams of my friend I threw myself against the waves. The fear had almost crippled me, but the terrier’s call for help trumped it all. Once I’d reached it, I grasped the rock it was holding onto with all the s
trength a ten-year-old could muster, and the dog and I stayed there together, partners against death. I shielded it with my body, and kept it from tumbling away. I hadn’t really contemplated the concept of death at that point, but I knew if I didn’t help, no one would.

  Thankfully, Samuel had rushed for help. My house hadn’t been far, and one quick phone call and my father raced into the water after me. I had saved that dog, and the memory would forever warm my heart. My father, on the other hand, had been livid with rage. Didn’t I know how bloody reckless I’d been? How I could have died? My mother had sat in the very spot she was sitting, and while there had been terrified tears in her eyes, there had also been a smile. A smile that she mirrored once I’d came out of the memory.

  ‘You were so brave,’ Rebecca whispered, ‘my little good-hearted soldier. I guess we understand the anger your father exhibited. He couldn’t have his precious subject dead now, could he?’

  It did make sense. Richard had had Greystone planned for a while. Then, when the government had ditched him, he started his injections on me, and then threw the town to fate.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ my mother replied and stood.

  The sun outside vanished in an orange flash, and moonlight took its place. My Mum faded from sight, reappearing by my feet, beside the dining table. She sprawled immobile, blood pooled at her shoes, but her eyes were open, and she stared at me. My head snapped to the doorway to the hall. It was open, and in the shadows stood my father, as if waiting for something. I then realised he was. He was waiting for me. The moment that was being recreated was the moment I had crashed through the house on the day everything went to hell.

  ‘Tell me honey,’ Rebecca said from the floor, and my father’s deep voice echoed every word. ‘Do you want to die?’

  My head moved from side to side as if I was in a trance.

  ‘Do you want to die?’ they both repeated. ‘Do you want to die? Do you want to die? Do you want to die? DO YOU WANT TO DIE!?’

  The Others