Alpha 9

by Rebecca Bosevski

  Bea’s right arm hung loosely from the shoulder, her hair a matted mess with what looked like blood and dirt.

  “Alpha, no. Go, get into the lab, secure our future,” Bea cried out to him.

  Doctor M tightened her grip around Bea’s neck, her eyes rolled back into her head.

  “Let her go!” Alpha screamed but Doctor M twisted Bea's other arm and the crack of it breaking echoed through the cries of those fighting around him.

  “Go Alpha!” Bea screeched, her voice becoming hoarse as Doctor M brought both hands to tighten her hold on Bea’s throat. As Bea’s eyes closed, Alpha turned on his heel, he didn’t look back. Alpha dashed towards the panel.

  He had to be quick. Doctor M was unnaturally fast. Alpha pressed his hand against the wall, revealed the panel and punched in the code. The wall hissed as Alpha felt arms around him and a pressure at his back.

  “Thanks,” Bea whispered, a hint of smugness in her voice, then everything went black.

  ***

  Alpha woke inside a pod, unable to move. The once life-sustaining fluid filled the chamber, but without the connections of the system, the fluid would drown him in a matter of minutes.

  Alpha struggled against the glass of the pod. He thrashed and bashed against it. The glass moved a little and Alpha’s heart raced with hope. He continued to beat at the section that budged as the slime rose quickly.

  It sloshed against the sides of the pod with every move he made. Some splashed over his face and he struggled to blink away the thick fluid.

  The glass continued to shift little by little, finally it moved enough so that Alpha could slide his fingers underneath it and heave with all his might. The glass fought to close on the pod, but Alpha’s strength won out and the screech of it retracting sounded its defeat.

  Alpha threw himself over the side of the pod as the sludge splattered to the floor around him. The glass crunched closed and the remaining space filled with the fluid that almost killed him.

  Alpha tried to stand but slipped on the goop. He crawled to the wall where he knew the clothing panel would be and pushed. The snaked lines appeared as the section hissed and revealed the drawer.

  They blue gear inside was for a Delta, but it looked like it would fit. He stripped off his goop covered clothes and pulled on the Delta dry ones.

  The gear came with the basic combat blade and Alpha used it first to remove the name Delta Seven from the breast of his jacket, and then to short the controls to reveal all the panels in the room.

  The door hissed opened and Alpha stood at the wall beside it, hesitant to move into the line of fire.

  There was a crash and thud that echoed from the corridor and Alpha chanced a quick glance. There was someone down the end and they lay in a heap on the floor.

  Alpha waited for more sounds. When he was about to check the hall again, an arm reached in and pulled him into the corridor.

  Alpha lashed out. He kicked out and got them in the ribs. Whoever it was keeled over and dropped Alpha’s arm, but before he could strike again he saw who it was.

  “Kilo!” Alpha said, reaching for his friend to help him stand straight.

  “Wow, I am glad we are on the same side,” Kilo joked, gripping Alpha’s arm for support and standing upright. His other arm hugged at his middle.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know it was you. Man, you got the stealth thing down didn’t you?”

  Kilo smiled. It was the same smile he had given Alpha when he had helped with the totems in the trails.

  “Bea?” Alpha asked, catching up to what had led him to be back in a pod. “She tricked me, she was working with Doctor M.”

  “Man, you have no idea,” Kilo said, starting to walk towards the other end of the corridor. The wall was blank like it had always been except for a small green light at the end where Kilo led him.

  “Well, as you know, Bea and Doctor M are both duplicates, like us,” Kilo said, lowering his voice and creeping stealthily up the hall.

  “Well, it looks like Terminus didn’t just create us, they created a way to live forever, and the real Doc, the one that gave you all those fancy codes and such, well before she did all of that, she copied herself. But instead of a pure copy, she tried to do for herself what Terminus did to us.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Alpha asked as they slowed their step to pause by the glowing green doorframe at the end of the hall.

  “You see, when we got inside, the Doc, she went all nuts at Bea. Screamed at her that she was reckless, that the lab was what they had worked for and her plan to trick you into getting in cost more lives than she was willing to give.”

  “Bea was playing us from the start?”

  “Yep, but that is not all.”

  “What?”

  “Bea told Doctor M to give her the Bravo Two sample and the unallocated embryos and she would leave. But the Doc laughed, said she wasn’t giving her anything. Then Bea shot her.”

  “Really?” Alpha asked. "Is she dead?".

  “Yep, one shot right to the chest. Then Bea took control of the lab and the Annoronians. She used our lab's technology to show them that she is immune to the toxin, a hybrid of the species like our Bravo Two, and she has promised to help the Annoronians to rebuild their species, using the Terminus facility, but only if they stand with her.”

  “Wait, how long was I out?” Alpha asked as he struggled to grasp all that had happened.

  “Maybe an hour at best,” Kilo grinned. “It took me a while to find you. I then had to disable the video feed so no one would be watching when I got you out.”

  “Okay, so if Bea is going to help the Annoronians then it is over, that’s it, right?” Alpha looked at Kilo confused.

  “Not exactly, Bea doesn’t want to help the aliens, she wants to use the lab like she always intended, to make more of us, to breed super soldiers.”

  “But why?”

  “I overheard her talking to that guy--Armond--the one that didn’t like you back underground. They plan to make an army and imprison the Annoronians.”

  “So what are we doing here, what is behind the door?” Alpha asked as Kilo held his hand up to the green light that illuminated the frame's edge.

  “This is how we can stop her,” Kilo said as he pressed on a section of door and it hissed as it retracted into the ceiling.

  Alpha stood back taking in what he was seeing.

  “That can’t be,” Alpha said, a sly smirk rising at the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh it can,” Kilo said, slapping Alpha on the back and forcing him into the room.

  “'bout time you showed up,” Bravo Two said, stepping around the enormous control board and walking towards them. “You ready to get this party started or what?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “How?” Alpha questioned as she strode towards him. His heart raced faster with each step she took and when she was within a meter of him the air-conditioning sent a wave of her sweet smell over him.

  “You okay there Alpha?” Kilo asked, elbowing him gently in the ribs.

  Alpha nodded but no words would come. His gaze dropped down over her and he frowned, her jacket and pants were splattered with a mix of both alien and human blood. The sleeve of her left arm had a burnt hole and the skin underneath was blackened.

  “You are hurt,” Alpha finally said as she stopped a breath from him.

  “I am fine,” she said, raising her arm so that he could assess the damage. She was not fine, but it was not as bad as it first looked. The skin was black, but her enhanced body had already begun to heal itself.

  “How did you find this place?” Alpha asked them both.

  “Kilo hacked the system as soon as we got inside, he found a huge power drain coming from here and thought it might be something important. He had no clue it would be this. So, when he saw what it was he redirected their feed to hide this place and with all the Doc-Bea drama, no one seemed to notice.”

  “Almost no one. Who was the body at the end of the hall?”
Alpha asked Kilo, remembering the heap he had seen.

  “One of Bea’s men, Marco or something he said his name was.”

  “You knew his name?” Alpha asked, frowning.

  “I asked,” Kilo shrugged as he looked from Alpha to Bravo and back. “He followed me down. He wanted to know why I was headed down here and I said I saw someone run this way. We were making chit chat as they call it when your door opened. When he saw it he took off, I had to stop him.”

  “Well, thanks,” Alpha said, realising then that he hadn’t said it earlier. “So, do you think it’s all still connected?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Kilo said as the three of them headed towards the enormous control board in the middle of the room.

  They each took a section of monitors and panels. Alpha and Kilo brought up the overrides for the main pod sections and the DNA storage.

  “This is incredible,” Alpha said, fingers flying over the keys as the codes came to him quickly. “This system overrides any secondary control rooms in the facility.”

  “I’ll work on containment,” Bravo Two said as she pressed a few keys then glanced behind her. The doorway to the room closed and disappeared.

  “Perfect, But what about the green glow?”

  “Already disabled,” she replied.

  “Great, now they will have no idea where the door is, even if they do get down the hallway,” Alpha said, smiling at her.

  She smirked back and his insides spun.

  It took everything in him to turn his attention back to his screens. “Good thing it was here, or we would have had to fight our way to getting control of the lab.”

  “We still might have to, but first, wait. Look, there,” Alpha said, pointing at one of his monitors. “The cool room storage. And look. See there.” Alpha placed his fingers onto the touch screen and dragged outwards, zooming in on the tubes surrounded by coolant gas.

  “Look at the colours,” he said as the others glanced over from their own work.

  “Some are green,” Kilo said, punching a few keys on his own board. “Annoronian?”

  “Maybe, I am having trouble finding the files that tell us what exactly is in those tubes,” Alpha replied, pressing a few more keys and the images changed. “We have to secure the area. Kilo, see if you can redirect the defences in the phases to protect that room.”

  “On it,” Kilo said as he frantically typed. There was an echo of sounds from outside the room and Bravo brought up the camera on one of her screens. Bea’s men stood throughout the hall, they all held blow torches and were aiming them at sections of wall.

  Bravo pressed the keys faster than Alpha’s eyes could track and he watched on his monitors as the sprinkler system deployed and doused the men and their weapons in depressing foam.

  “Nice work,” he said as he brought up a series of files on his main monitor.

  “It won’t hold them off forever, but I set the thermo reaction to go off at the slightest increase; they won’t be using blowtorches again any time soon.” She swiped at the screen and it changed to an area of the lab Alpha had seen before: the pod room, where several of their duplicates were ushered through doorways by Bea's men.

  Alpha scanned through the files on his screen. “Is she herding them into the entry rooms, the ones we woke in?” Alpha asked Bravo as he continued to search through the files on his own monitor.

  “It looks that way, she has pulled all of the Bravos to one side though, it looks like they are being taken to the command room where Bea is,” Bravo said, switching between monitors to track the duplicates.

  “Right, once they have the duplicates inside those rooms close off the doors to the area and open the access panels to the Trials.”

  “Wait what?” Kilo yelled as he immediately stopped typing and faced Alpha. “What are you thinking, we barely survived the Trials now you want to send them through it?”

  “Relax,” Alpha said, smiling. “You are going to follow them via your monitors, once they are in each section you can deactivate the defence system, keep opening the doorways to the way out.”

  “But there was no real way out remember?” Bravo Two slowed her keypresses. “And the maze, how will they get through the maze, even without the threat of recycling?”

  “Kilo can direct them through it all, remember the real Doc’s projection sent us through each section, Kilo can adjust the message to guide them.”

  “And where am I guiding them to exactly?” Kilo asked as he brought up the various trials on his monitors.

  “There,” Alpha said pointing to the nature trial. Get them to the cave. From there we can get them to cool room storage and keep them away from the central lab areas.”

  “Why do we have to keep them away from those?” Bravo asked.

  “Because in a few minutes, they will be full of water,” Alpha said, pressing a few more keys. A large fan popped up on his screen and Alpha pressed it, it turned on the monitor, he swiped it to the side and brought up images from cameras throughout the main labs.

  The facility had a few tricks left up its sleeve. Water from the harbor was drawn in through pumps under the structure. The water followed the pipes to the room Alpha had designated and it quickly began to gush from the ducts. The Annoronians and rebels inside looked confused but dashed from the rooms to dryer places. Bravo Two closed off each room as it became vacant, securing it from reopening.

  “If we can force most of her followers back out of the Opera House, she will be virtually defenceless,” Bravo said pressing more buttons and sealing more areas. A small map of the facility was shown on a lower screen and as she locked off the space allowing it to fill with water, the section on the screen turned red.

  Kilo was frantically sending messages through the monitor to the duplicates, he used the Doctor’s image but changed her words. They didn’t know him, and though there was some Kilos amongst them, he thought best to send them an image that didn’t look beaten and dirty.

  “How are the duplicates coming?” Alpha asked Kilo as he moved a few files and codes around on his own screens still searching for answers to what was in the tubes.

  “Almost at the cave, you were right, with direction and no recycling, they got there pretty quick. But there is a problem.”

  “What?” Alpha turned to see Kilo’s screen.

  “To get to cool room storage I must send them though there,” Kilo said, pointing to a section on Bravo’s map that was glowing red.

  “Hmm,” Bravo said, swiping at the screens in front of her. “Give me one sec.”

  She pressed and tapped and swiped and swatted at the screen and after less than ten seconds the red light faded from that section.

  “Okay, they will have about five minutes to get through, and then the seals on the surrounding doors will give way to the water pressure, so get them moving now!”

  Kilo did as she said and sent the duplicates on past the cave and through the section Bravo had cleared for them. When they reached the entrance to cool room storage, they all filed into the cold room.

  “They are in place,” Kilo said to Alpha who had returned to his frantic pressing.

  “And we have forced most of her followers out of the facility. Some tried to warn her that it was flooding, but I think I stopped them,” Bravo said, pressing a few last keys. “So what now?”

  Alpha looked at them both sucking his top lip in to bite it slightly holding back a smile.

  “What?” Kilo groaned.

  “When I press this button,” he said, pointing to a large red button at the top of the control board. “All of the facility doors will open.”

  “But I flooded all the sections except where Bea is, where we are, and the cool-room storage.”

  “Exactly,” Alpha grinned. “Kilo, tell the duplicates to prepare to transport the samples. They should enclose the trolleys to secure them but then they should wheel out easily.”

  “And where are they wheeling them to?”

  “Out,” Alpha said, swi
ping again at his screen. “There is an emergency access door at the back of the storage area. The humans installed it in case of an evacuation, that way they didn’t lose any of their samples,”

  Kilo set to work relaying the directions to the awaiting duplicates.

  “And us?” Bravo Two asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “We get to go for a swim.” Alpha laughed.

  “You are kidding, aren’t you?”

  “No, when the door opens, the water will rush in. Once the room fills we will have to swim our way up to the secondary control room and force Bea out of the lab. The secondary control room is the highest point in the lab, it will be last to flood, and Bea will probably still be there trying to reverse everything we have done. Look,” Alpha said, pointing to a screen that showed Bea and the Bravos trying to access monitor after monitor to undo the flooding.

  “She doesn’t know which ones are like us does she? Which ones are immune like her, like me?” Bravo asked, Alpha touching the screen of women that looked like her.

  “No, and she doesn’t care about the other duplicates, her only focus is your immunity and finding those embryos,” Alpha answered, hovering is hand over the big red button.

  “Wait,” Kilo said. “If we destroy the lab we destroy any chance to rebuild either species, don’t we?” he asked, trying to wrap his head around it all.

  “Not exactly,” Alpha said to the confused stares of both Bravo and Kilo.

  “How do you know any of this?” Bravo asked.

  “The files I was searching through, the codes I had in my head let me open the humans’ top secret research. They did it. They released a toxin when they left. They wanted to cleanse this world so that they could return once they had cultivated all of the resources of the Annoronian home world. The Earth was over populated and under resourced. They saw an opportunity to shift the upper class of humanity to the Annoronian world while they cultivated the powerful ores within the planet's subsurface.”

  “They started a war, moved ninety percent of the surviving population, tried to exterminate an entire species all for rocks?” Kilo asked, perplexed by the lack of rationality.