“You cannot change what has been done. Yes you may prevent the next step of infection but you will never ‘Fix’ it completely”.
“Yes I will”, I said matter of factly, “Now, let them out of the incubators”.
“No”, he told me, “I will work on you and make you work for me just like Kaley did”.
“She broke through it though didn’t she, yes you manipulated her for a while but she was stronger than what you give her credit for”.
“I will perfect it this time and you will not break though”.
“You’re wrong, you now work for me”.
He laughed, “I think not”. He held up a small computer looking chip, “This helped me control Kaley, and with a few tweaks I will be able to control you. You will be my Queen instead and we shall rule over the lands together with our army”.
“You cannot control me with a chip Enok”, I told him.
He lifted out yet another syringe from his pocket, “Once your sleeping like a baby, I will implant it”.
“You cannot make me sleep Aksel”.
“Wanna bet”, he snarled stepping forward and stabbed the syringe into my arm and forced the liquid into me.
“Watch and learn Doctor Enok”, I summoned everything inside me and forced the liquid back out of my arm. The liquid dribbled down my arm and hand to finally fall to the floor in drips. Then I raised my hand and used my new-found power and pulled him to me gently. His feet moved in unison with my mind and he made a shocked noise in his throat and desperately tried to walk the other way but he couldn’t refuse my power. Once his eyes were level with mine I peered into them and opened his mind to mine, his eyes fell out of focus and a small line of saliva dribbled down his chin.
“Let them out”, I commanded and without a moment’s hesitation he went to a small computer screen by each of them, tapped in some commands and the fluid around them began to drain away. Once all the liquid was emptied a mechanical hiss sounded as the glass door dropped slowly open bringing them with it. “Find them some clothes”.
He done as I said and brought over two more hospital type scrubs and laid them on a chair.
Kian was the first to awaken and breathe on his own, quick sharp gasps flooded in and out of his lungs. “Where is his hand?” I asked.
Doctor Enok went to a desk, turned a key in a draw and pulled out my friend’s artificial hand and handed it to me.
“What’s happening?” Kian asked looking up at me, his eyes adjusting to the clinical lighting of the room.
“We going to fix all of this”, I told him.
“But I thought you had or… Kaley had?”
I shrugged, “I know the real way to fix it and she sacrificed herself for me to show me how”.
“Ok”, he replied with an uneasy look, his eyes narrowed looking over me and my new demeanour as he climbed up and out of the incubator. I passed him the clothes and he quickly dressed. “What’s up with Doctor Enok?”
“He’s my servant now”, I explained.
Kian’s brow furrowed, “Huh?”
“Kaley helped me, to show me that I too could possess a gift like hers, I just had to open my mind to it, although if I’m honest I think it was growing in me all along, she just…accelerated it a little”.
“So you’re like her now?”
I nodded, “Yes, she opened my mind to 100%, I can do whatever it is I wish”.
His eyes widened at my response, a little worry and fear crossed into them, I could feel his fear, taste it on my tongue.
“But”, I continued. “It won’t last forever”.
Then his face dropped, “What are you saying?”
“This type of power consumes, it’s why our brains don’t normally run at this percentage, we as humans could not handle the power. But due to my brain power growing the infection also accelerated and I can feel my body fighting the virus as it tries to take me over. We only have limited time until I will be Stacie no more, I will be a creature and a powerful one at that. I know how to stop myself but there is something we need to do first”. My mind replayed the scene with Kaley as a death tree. If that happened to me before I could finish this there would be no hope for anyone.
“You will have to kill yourself, won’t you?” he asked.
I looked away from him, from the pain in his eyes. I could feel he felt something for me and that hurt, “Yes and when I do there is something I need you to do for me”.
“Anything?”
“To look after Cain”.
He put his hand out and took one of mine and made me look at him, “Of course…”
“You’re dying?” Cain’s little voice piped up from his incubator. He now sat up on his elbows looking at me. “But I thought it was Kaley”.
“She did, she’s gone… But only to show me what to do. She made a great sacrifice for me”.
“Oh”, his little voice sounded heartbroken and I felt the tears well up inside me.
A ripple of pain suddenly thrust itself in my mind, a scraping, crippling pain that filled my whole body and made me collapse to the floor.
“Stacie”, Kian called out. “What is it?”
“We don’t have long”, I said hoarsely.
He nodded, “Ok, Cain here put these on we need to go”.
Cain quickly dressed and then they both waited for me to recover.
Once ready I made them both huddle in next to and I told Doctor Enok to do the same.
“Why is he coming?” Kian asked.
“Because I want to show them who it is they’ve messed with”, I told him. “Now I don’t know if this will hurt or not but just try hard to hold onto me the whole time”.
Cain looked worried but Kian just gripped his sleeve, “It will be fine”, he told him.
“Ready?” I asked them. They both nodded but I could feel the panic inside them both. I then turned to the doctor, “Hold onto me and don’t let go”. He done as he was told with a blind and non-existent soul.
I then took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Back to the beginning, back to the beginning, back to the beginning, back to the beginning… I told myself them words over and over again as I sent out my gift and flooded it through a hole in the wall of my own creation. The feel of air moving quickly hit us at such force it felt like we couldn’t breathe. Cain’s hand un-flexed from mine so I gripped it tighter… I couldn’t lose him now.
I could feel a spinning sensation like being on a ride at a fair, the ones that spin you so fast it feels like your stomach is going to fall right out of your mouth. I could hear strange noises deep in my mind, screams, wails, cries of pain and I knew we were getting closer. Then the noises changed. Cars moving, people talking, electricity in the air and the smells, no more sickness and decay but fumes of the old world, slightly fresher but in a different sense.
Then I opened my eyes… To seven years before Svalbard.
~
Doctor Aksel Enok sat in his lab in the underground facility that was ‘Home’. His uncle Russel had come in to inspect his work but it wasn’t his alone, many other scientists and researchers had put in man hours to make this cocktail of a virus. R.A.I.N they had called it. Rabies and Influenza Neurotoxin although his uncle was now calling for the A to be changed to Acid! Because they had found a way to inject it into the air to cause just that, an acid rain event and they knew exactly where they were going to send it first. To the UK, the so called United Kingdom which wasn’t so united anymore since they had caused a Brexit to leave the E.U. And in effect from that other countries too had decided to leave causing a money shortage that the E.U. wasn’t used to.
“So it is ready?” Russel asked smiling. He hated the initials E.U. and knew soon he would be taking over full control and would call the European Union, Enliven instead. He liked the flow of it better and for him it would mean the beginning of a new time in history, an infected time but one that was so powerful it would re-write the whole Earth making it a blank canvas for him to work on, to have only the hu
mans that he thought fit enough to be there.
“It is”, Aksel answered.
“Then prepare it for the planes, tomorrow they leave for the UK”, he smiled.
For a split second both nephew and uncle wore the same expression. Until Russel remembered how much he couldn’t stand Aksel and looked away in disgust. He was about to leave the lab when a call came through his walkie-talkie.
“Say that again Fernandez?” he asked.
“Someone has breached the perimeter, their heading right for the facility”.
“Can you see who?”
“A girl with long blonde hair and… Aksel sir… She has Aksel Enok with her”.
Russel looked at his nephew who too looked confused.
“Impossible he is sitting right next to me”, Russel barked.
“Sir, I’m not lying she has Aksel…” he was cut off by a scream of static.
“Fernandez…Fernandez come in?” But there was nothing, no more static. Then the lights went out. A few seconds later and the generators kicked in with the backup lighting.
“Uncle shall we go and greet our new visitors?”
“Yes, we shall”.
Minutes later Russel and Aksel had both made it to the main lab where hundreds of scientists and their workforces sat making monstrosities. The incubators all held different people with different stages of the infection they were about to spread out into the world. They had wanted to study it and make sure it done as they wished before releasing it.
Before Russel could ask where Fernandez was they were greeted by a something being thrown in from the main lab doors. It rolled until it stopped at Russel’s feet.
It was Aksel’s head.
Russel turned to his nephew who had grown pale.
“Who goes there?” Russel asked.
Silence sounded out for a moment before a slim girl of about twenty appeared before them. Her clothes were of the same hospital scrub’s they issued here, her hair was long and blonde and hung around her body like a cloak. A large scar was swept over her forehead and down to one side, dark veins throbbed in her neck, her eyes were darkened and her skin deathly pale. In all honesty she looked like shit.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Russel asked, “And what is the meaning of this?” He pointed down to the head by his feet.
“I thought you of all people would recognise your own nephew”, she smiled.
“I do indeed but what I don’t understand is this, he is standing next me alive and with his head but his head is also on the floor”.
She waved her hand to the door, it opened and in walked a headless body. She then let her hand drop and so did the body. “That was Doctor Aksel Enok from nearly seven years from now. Sorry Russel but he out lived you but only by a day or two”.
“What?” Russel snapped impatiently.
“I know all about the Acid Rain and eventually the so called C.U.R.E but maybe even you haven’t got that far yet”, she mused.
“What do you know about the R.A.I.N?” he asked.
She turned away from him and walked over to one of the test incubators and frowned deep in thought before saying, “I know how it infects people and either turns them into mindless creatures or”, she then turned to him. “Mutates them”.
“What do you know about the mutations? And how do you know?”
“Because I lived in the UK when you dropped the first Acid Rain bombs, I watched my friends and family melt and be turned, taken away from me. I too became infected”, she explained. “But I bonded with it, maybe due to my blood? I am one of the rarer blood types you know”, she giggled, “Or maybe it’s due to the concoction of drugs some other crazed doctors had given me? It made me faster…” And she moved vanishing from sight.
“Where’d she go?” Russel stammered looking at Aksel.
“Made me stronger”, she whispered in his ear and shoved over one of the insanely heavy incubators. It crashed to the lab floor and made it shake, the glass shattering and the poor infected soul slopped out shredded to pieces.
“Quick, contain the blood, contain the virus”, Russel ordered moving away from the bloodied mass on the floor.
“Oh, there’s no need for that, your all going to die anyway whether your infected or not”.
“Why?” Aksel asked.
She then stopped and came to him in a blur of movement.
“Revenge”, she smiled, “Isn’t that obvious?”
Aksel leaned away from her, “But who are you?”
“My name is not important, what is important…Is your demise”. With that she closed her eyes and took a deep breath and commanded something with her hands.
A few gasps and screams echoed all around them. Russel and Aksel both turned to see where the screams were coming from. The back wall had crumbled away revealing a swirling dark mass which howled and wailed like the winds of a storm.
“Shoot her!” Russel ordered and the security team assembled holding their guns up ready and aimed. A flurry of hundreds of bullets rang out and flew towards her but she didn’t flinch as they hit her, in fact they flew right through her and came out the other side, hitting the costly computer equipment and the people beside them. Blood sprayed up all around her and began to float in the air like a red mist. Bits of the building began to shudder and crumble falling off the walls and ceiling, spiralling around her and the large gaping void that now lay before them all. With each passing second the vortex grew larger and larger, sucking in everything closest to it, desks, computers, incubators, people, doctors… Just as it began to consume the whole building it was nearly over and all that was finally left was a small tiled platform of her and the Enok family she opened her eyes which were deathly black. “Back to the beginning, so there is no end”.
“Please have mercy on us”, Russel shouted and fell to his knees, begging like a coward.
“No mercy on the devils children”, she answered and lifted her hands.
“NOOOOO!” he screamed as the darkness reached out with dark vein like tendrils towards him and pulled him in to the void, she could still hear him screaming after he had vanished. Then she turned to Aksel.
“Any last words?”
“You are the greatest creature I have ever lain my eyes on”, he said in awe.
“Yeah, you told me that before”, she snapped rolling her darkened eyes and closed her fist. Within a heartbeat Aksel was sucked off his feet with an invisible current and pulled into the void.
She finally stood before it, the void it called to her and all the tortured souls sang out like deathly angel’s whispers, telling her to join them, it was her time, yet she lowered her arms, “I will come to you soon but not yet. I have some things to clear up first”.
Chapter Twenty…
Dwayne sighed with relief as the camp back in Tonbridge came into view, he was nervous and excited all at once to be home, all he wanted was to see his little lady. He didn’t really care if the others thought he chickened out or not, he just knew he had to be with her. The lookouts had spotted him coming and had the gates ready and open for his arrival.
As he stepped in he was greeted by the Doc and his wife, they both looked worried and concerned.
“Is that it? Is it done? Did they survive?”
Dwayne shrugged, “I don’t know… I made a mistake going, I couldn’t handle the thought of not seeing my daughter again. Stacie told me to come home”.
The Doctor’s face warmed and smiled, “Then go to her… It’s good to have you back”.
“Daddy?” A little girly voice squeaked from across the street.
“It’s me”, he smiled and ran arms out wide open, she ran too, and he caught her up in his arms and held her tightly, “And I’m never leaving you again”.
He kissed her on the forehead before a light washed over them all and time erased all the pain and death that had been bestowed upon them all.
~
After wiping out the whole Svalbard facility Stacie then collected Kian and Cai
n who sat awaiting her return in the woods. Then they all returned to England in a flash.
“Is that it?” Kian asked when they all landed on their own two feet.
Stacie fell to her knees and took in long deep breaths, “Almost. There are a couple of other things I need to settle first”.
~
I held the list in front of me, most of the names crossed out but only one remained.
1 – Aksel Enok
2 – Russel Enok
3 – Enliven
4 – Hugh
5 – Lucas
6 – The Prime Minister
7 – Danny
8 – Christian
9 - Drayton
10 – The Big Guns
11 – Doctor Demetri
Only Doctor Demetri remained. Which wasn’t surprising how I was now sat outside the old Brighton Hospital watching patients go in and out. I got out of the car that I had stolen and went inside, using my mind abilities to nullify the camera’s so they would never see me arrive or leave.
I took the all to familiar journey through the maze of the hospital and found the room I was looking for. I opened the staff room door and inside Doctor Demetri sat on top of a woman his hands encircled around a young woman’s throat, who was sobbing and crying.
“Now Doctor Toni don’t disobey me anymore, I don’t want to have to hurt you”, he sneered.
“Please, I told you I’m with Micah now”.
“A nurse, a goddamn flipping nurse over me?”
“Please don’t hurt me”.
“Hey”, I said calling out to him, “Doctor Death, remember me?”
He spun his head to look at me, “No, should I?”
“Guess not but it doesn’t matter now anyway”, I laughed, and I walked up to him and peered into his eyes, “Now it’s my turn to finish you”. And I sent my power into him and snapped his arteries to his heart. He fell off of Doctor Toni on to the floor with a satisfying thump, he didn’t even breathe his last breath.
Toni looked up at me and went to scream but I held up my hand, “I forgive you for all the trouble you caused at the Sanctuary, you only done it as you were heartbroken but remember this. Don’t let any sort of power get to your head”, and with that I looked into her eyes erased the memory of me killing Doctor Death but left her the message.
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