The Genetic Experiment

by E S Richards

  Zahyra nodded, agreeing with Cain’s intentions. “This corridor should lead us back towards that white room they held us in,” she told him. “That was near an entrance so I’d guess there’d be some SUVs nearby?”

  “We can only hope,” Cain replied, “I don’t know whether this is the same entrance I arrived at the other day. This place all looks the same and to be honest it confuses the hell out of me. We’ll find a way out though.”

  “Asher, you stick with me, okay?”

  Zahyra turned to her brother who had been resolutely quiet ever since shooting their father. Zahyra wasn’t exactly surprised but she was extremely worried about him. Her brother nodded, doing his best to stop his body from shaking and prepare himself for what was on the other side of the door. Once the three of them were prepared, Cain at the front and Zahyra just behind him Cain flashed the card against the door panel and waited for it to slide open.

  The mechanics were silent and as soon as the door had opened wide enough Cain slipped through, not waiting for it to open all the way. His eyes found a door on the corridor straight away and he ran towards it, Zahyra and Asher on his tail. Reaching the door he yanked it open, providing the three of them with cover as the soldiers started to shout over at them.

  “Drop your weapons!”

  “Step away from that door!”

  “We don’t want to hurt you!”

  “Come out with your hands up!”

  Different cries rang out from further down the corridor as the three of them stood pressed up against the wall. The door provided a small amount of cover with the angle they were stood at, but luckily for the time being no one had opened fire. Unfortunately the door had opened outwards and towards them, meaning the room it led into was beyond their reach. Zahyra leaned into Cain as they sheltered behind the small door, knowing they didn’t have long before something happened.

  “What should we do?”

  “Well,” Cain spoke quietly, “we either start a shoot out now or pretend to surrender. We’d make a bit of ground doing that but things would likely be harder to get out of.”

  “Right,” Zahyra mused for a moment. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Her gun felt like a sack of bricks in her right hand as she lifted it from beside her and checked the clip. She was only down one bullet – the bullet that was in her father – and she swallowed, preparing to dispense several more. Asher was trembling beside her and Zahyra looked down at him for a moment, unsure about how to handle the situation.

  “You move when I move, okay bud?” She spoke to him in a sincere voice, trying to put across how serious things were about to become. “If you lose me, go with Cain. We’ll both keep you safe.”

  Asher nodded, looking at the gun in Zahyra’s hand rather than in her eyes. Zahyra scowled, she hated that Asher had had to shoot their father. Already what it was doing to him was awful. For a boy his age he had witnessed far too much.

  “There’s not much cover,” Cain spoke up, glancing through the crack between the door and the wall. “But I can only see five soldiers down here.”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Cain stepped out from behind the cover of the door in a split second and fired off two shots down the corridor. Zahyra heard a groan and a body hit the floor before Cain returned to their cover.

  “Got one,” he said bluntly as the sound of rifles being prepped rang out down the corridor. Then a warning shot blazed through the door they were using for cover, creating a hole just between where Zahyra and Cain were stood.

  “Get down Ash,” Zahyra spoke instantly, a look of panic in her eyes. If bullets could get through the door they were screwed, the soldiers knew that was where they were all standing and it wouldn’t take long for one of them to be hit – even by accident.

  “Here!” Cain suddenly pushed Zahyra backwards a step and she nearly fell over Asher’s body, which was crouched low behind her. She watched as Cain fired a shot through the door, causing wood and splinters to fly up into the air. He then rammed the butt of his gun into the hole he had created, making it larger until his gun could just fit through it.

  “Use that,” he said over his shoulder to Zahyra, then stepped outside of the door again and fired at their assailants.

  Zahyra grinned at Cain’s idea and stepped forward, pressing herself closely between the wall and the door. The end of her gun fit perfectly through the hole Cain had made and stood on her tiptoes she could see through the first hole one of the soldiers had made too. She scouted the remaining soldiers carefully, noting that only three of them were now left.

  Holding her breath she squeezed her trigger, cursing when her shot went wide, her aim dodgy due to how she was sighting her gun. With a shake of her head Zahyra changed the angle of her gun slightly, although the small hole she was aiming through didn’t allow for much movement. She let out her breath and set her gaze on one of the soldiers, her head and chest poking out from behind the boxes the soldiers had moved into the corridor for cover.

  Slowly Zahyra compressed her finger on the trigger and watched the woman fall to the side, clutching her shoulder where Zahyra’s bullet was lodged. Before she could squeeze off another shot Cain stepped out from the door and fired at the woman, his bullet finding her head and ending her misery immediately. Then Cain fired another shot, killing a third soldier before stepping back behind the door.

  “There’s some cover freed up,” he spoke as he reloaded his gun from a crouch next to Asher. “I’m going to make a move for it.”

  “Cain, are you sure?” Zahyra didn’t even try to hide the uncertainty in her voice as she replied, unhappy about Cain moving away from her.

  “It’ll give us the advantage,” Cain replied looking through one of the holes in the door quickly. “I’ve got to go now, give me covering fire!”

  Before she could respond again Cain was on the move and Zahyra quickly repositioned herself behind the door to shoot through the hole. All of her shots went high and wide as she desperately tried to draw the fire away from Cain, who was painfully exposed as he ran down the corridor.

  One of the soldiers fired just as Cain was about to reach the cover and Zahyra saw him tumble to the ground behind the box, clutching at his left arm. Her eyes went wide in horror as she saw blood begin to dampen his grey uniform and she almost stepped out from the door to go and help him. She couldn’t lose Cain like this. Then she saw Cain shaking his head in her direction, knowing she would be watching him.

  She looked on as he shrugged the rucksack off his back and pulled out a bandage from it. Zahyra sighed as she thanked herself for remembering to pack them. Once she was certain Cain was able to bandage himself up she stuck her gun out once more and pulled the trigger. To her dismay it clicked empty and she sank to the floor beside Asher, reaching into her pocket to reload her gun. The clip she found only had four bullets left and she groaned, remembering the rest of them were inside the rucksack Cain was carrying.

  “Are you okay?” Asher asked her as she groaned and she looked at him. Fear was obvious on his face and his hands were clutching one another so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

  “I’m fine, Ash,” Zahyra said as reassuringly as she could manage. “This will all be over soon, don’t worry.”

  She crouched down even lower then as two bullets tore through the door, her body instinctively moving to cover her brother’s. Asher let out a small yelp as the wood splintered, the door shaking from the impact. More gunfire sounded as Zahyra finished sorting out her gun and looked at her brother once more.

  “Just give me two seconds,” she nodded at him and leapt to her feet, pressing her face up against the door so she could see what was going on. The corridor was now silent and she saw Cain scanning the area in front of him. After a minute he stood up and stepped forward, moving quickly behind each box with his gun outstretched.

  “It’s clear!”

  Zahyra let out a sigh of relief and turned back around to her brother. His eyes were squeeze
d shut and she got down on one knee in front of him, putting her gun in her pocket and her hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s clear bud,” she said as Asher slowly opened his eyes, “come on let’s get you up.”

  She slowly helped her brother climb to her feet and bent down to give him a hug. Cain then appeared, pushing the door closed and revealing the empty corridor to the two of them.

  “We’re good to move a little further down at least,” he said, giving Zahyra a look that meant they would likely find more soldiers as they continued. She nodded briefly to him, more concerned about taking care of Asher just for the time being. Cain shot her a look of understanding and she smiled; she was so lucky to have found someone who she was this comfortable around, who fully understood everything she meant without even saying a word.

  “Let’s go,” Asher mumbled into Zahyra’s sleeve, pulling his body away from her.

  Neither of the others needed to be told twice and began moving down the corridor, carefully stepping around the five bodies of the fallen soldiers. Zahyra was grateful that she didn’t recognise any of them and instead turned her attention to Cain.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s just a graze,” Cain smiled at her. “Good job you put those bandages in, it’ll be fine for now and then I’ll give it a proper clean once we’re out of here.”

  Zahyra smiled back; pleased she had also packed some disinfectant solution into the rucksack. The medical supplies didn’t amount to much but she hoped they would be enough to get them out of the safe haven, once they were free in the outside world they could then deal with their other problems accordingly.

  She wondered where they would go. Would Cain’s cabin be a safe place to retreat to or would the safe haven somehow know about it? What would they even do when they were away from the facility? Zahyra wished she could just forget about it and leave everything behind but with everything she’d learnt about the place she was worried for the lives of everyone else. She knew they had plans to weaponize something and now that they had another Zero her T128 trial could be easily completed without her.

  She also worried about whether they had created any other Gen 6 mutants and what would happen to Asher as he continued to grow up. They had some pills that Zahyra hoped were the right thing to help control his mutation – and Cain’s too – but she also knew how dangerous it could be to take the pills not knowing what they were.

  As they neared another door at the end of the corridor Cain slowed down and peered through it. This one was significantly smaller and had a clear window at the top meaning Cain could check out what was on the other side. The window was too high up for Zahyra to see through so she waited patiently as Cain surveyed the other side of the door. The look on his face did nothing to still her anxiety as he pulled away from the window and looked back at Zahyra and Asher, his expression relaying that their situation had in no way improved.

  Chapter 27

  “What is it?” Zahyra whispered, conscious of keeping her voice low so whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t hear her.

  “Well,” Cain started, a serious expression on his face. “The good news is that the vehicle bay is just the other side of this door. The bad news is there are about twenty soldiers from the red band in there,” he paused, “and they’re all armed.”

  “What’re we going to do?” Zahyra asked desperately, knowing the three of them – two of them really as Asher couldn’t get involved – didn’t stand much of a chance against twenty of the safe haven’s soldiers.

  Cain pondered Zahyra’s question for a moment, trying to come up with a way he could get her and her brother to safety. There were two options running through his mind: neither of which he liked. Neither of which he could completely rely on either. Cain shook his head, leaning against the wall slightly and trying to figure out what to do. Maybe he had made the wrong decision coming back into the safe haven and trying to escape with Zahyra and Asher. Perhaps their father had been right; they would have been safe in the facility.

  They were fed, looked after and had comfortable beds to sleep in. Even if he did manage to get them out of the safe haven Cain had no idea where they would go. He thought about his cabin and wondered whether it would be safe there, whether the safe haven would already know about it somehow. He then also thought about the mutant base he had technically betrayed. What would the commander do when he found out Cain hadn’t been loyal to him. Repo would certainly tell him the next time he made contact, if he hadn’t already. Cain had only spent just over a day with the mutant, doing very little to help him achieve the commander’s goals.

  “What’s the matter?” Zahyra asked quietly, pulling Cain from the torment circling around his mind. There was real concern in her eyes and it warmed Cain inside. He had definitely made the right choice in coming back for her; he knew his life would have never been the same without her by his side. Asher too. Now he just had to be strong and get them both out of there; get all three of them to safety.

  “I’ve got a couple of ideas,” Cain replied slowly. “But I don’t like either of them, I don’t think you will either.”

  “Well what are they?” Zahyra asked in a straightforward manner. “Let’s discuss and see if we could make anything work.”

  Cain nodded at the girl. As always she was to the point and rational about what they should do next. He admired that in her as he took another step away from the door and began to explain his options.

  “The first thing we could try is sending you and Asher out first. Pretending that you had escaped me and wanted to stay here in the safe haven. Apologise and hopefully they’ll give you mercy. Then I’d come out when you were near a vehicle, you could get in and I’d just have to get across to you.”

  “That’s stupid,” Zahyra cut in immediately. “I’m sorry but that would mean you’d have to take on all of the soldiers, and how would we even manage to get inside an SUV? No, that’s stupid. You’d be putting yourself in too much danger. What’s the other option?”

  Cain shook his head. “The other option is even worse.”

  “Go on,” Zahyra urged him to explain.

  “Well, you two could stay out here and I could go in. I could lose control… of my mutation. That way I’d stand more of a chance against them and you and Asher would be safe out here. If you kept hidden I wouldn’t even try to get through to you. I wouldn’t even remember you were hidden here. Then, when it’s all over and I’d calmed down you could come through.” Cain paused. “That’s stupid too though I know. I don’t know what to do.”

  He sank back against the wall with his head in his hands as Zahyra observed him. He was right; she thought both of his plans were stupid and reckless. He was too willing to put himself in danger to save her and Asher and she didn’t like that. She respected it, but she wasn’t willing to let Cain risk his life anymore just on the off chance it meant she and Asher could escape. Without him Zahyra didn’t even know what they would do.

  “You can’t just put yourself in danger like that,” she spoke softly to Cain, filling her eyes with concern for him. “It’s too risky. You don’t know what would happen if you lost control. You can’t make any assumptions about yourself like that.”

  “I know but I don’t see any other options!” Cain threw his hands up in the air in frustration. The more he thought about it the more him giving in to his mutation made sense. He was certain that if Zahyra and Asher remained hidden he wouldn’t try and attack them – especially with the number of soldiers he would already have to fight.

  Previously when he’d had breakdowns he knew he only focused on the immediate threat to him, his mind didn’t allow him to think rationally or reason about what had got him into the situation. He dealt with what was in front of him and that was it.

  The three of them remained in silence until Asher let out a loud yawn. It was the middle of the night now and the events were beginning to take a toll on all three of them, Cain knew something would have to happen sooner o
r later. He watched Zahyra move closer to her younger brother who was now sat on the floor. Zahyra sat down next to him and put an arm over his shoulders, allowing him to rest his head against her.

  Just watching the two of them together strengthened Cain’s resolve that he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. Nor was he willing to put them in anymore danger, thereby ruling out his first idea of them faking an apology to the safe haven.

  As he leant against the wall Cain thought about his mutation. One part of his mind was always concentrating on it, always forcing it to remain hidden, trapped in another part of his body. He knew that within five minutes he could relinquish that control. It was something he’d done regularly before meeting Zahyra: he’d disappear for a few days and let his mutation reclaim control of his body, making it easier to monitor when he needed to. It was when he didn’t have the chance to let himself break down that he lost control of himself involuntarily. In a way if he gave into it now it would make the next part of their journey safer.

  He contemplated the pills in his rucksack as well but knew it was too risky for him to take them. Ultimately he had packed the pills on a whim, rather to take them away from the safe haven than benefit from them in any way himself. He knew if they weren’t what they hoped then they could make his mutation much worse, give him a new mutation or even cause him to suffer an injury in some way. They would have to be a very last resort unless they managed to find out more about them – an almost impossible task once they left the advancements of the safe haven behind.

  “Stay here,” Cain said quietly to Zahyra and Asher as he pushed himself away from the wall.

  “Cain, you can’t –” Zahyra started, moving to get up from where she sat.

  Cain stepped in front of her and shook his head. “Zahyra, we don’t have any other options. We need to get out of here and we need to do it now. The longer we wait the more time we just give the safe haven to establish more barriers to try and stop us. For all we know they could be closing in on us from the other side right now. Just let me do this, please.”