Liam was trying to keep up with the quick pitter patter of Mrs. Deus as she ran along the halls. Unlike anyone else in this place, she didn’t care that his body was still half-broken. Eventually, she stopped in the middle of an empty hall, pressing against the wall and, to Liam’s surprise, manually pushed it inwards and struggled to pull it aside. Why every other room in this massive dome had automatic doors while this one didn’t baffled him. After a few seconds of comical struggle, the door finally to allow for the sight inside. “This room here is where I do all my experiments! Come along.”

Oh, what the hell.

“Where the hell is this? You expect me to go in there?” Liam muttered as he entered a room so full of mechanic clutter that he couldn’t even see the other walls. Mrs. Deus hardly seemed bothered. “Aw, don’t be shy, boy. None of it bites.” The small woman just charged right in, though, either completely unaware or uncaring of his judging remarks. He cursed as he had to crouch in order to follow her, a pair of hanging parts of what seemed to be unfinished hands hanging over head.

That didn’t stop him from smacking headfirst into another useless contraption, closing over his head with something that resembled sharp teeth. It was a struggle to remove it, and by the time he did he couldn’t even see the teacher anymore. “Hey! Watch it back there! You do not know how expensive all of this is!” The damn woman yelled out, somehow sounding miles away. This place seemed to be like her own little jungle, considering how quickly she moved through it all without a sound.

…Damnit. He really wished he’d had instead stayed in the resting area. His chest still felt like it had been caved in, and his body was still sore, so having to be methodical while moving around in this dumpster fire of a room was not a good feeling. “Whatever the hell you called me for, it better be good, teacher!” He shouted out into the mechanical void, only to hear her snickering laugh in the background.

“Trust me, it is! And what is taking you so long!? What good is that Ego body for if you can’t even use it!?”

He gritted his teeth at the distant, shrill taunts. Forget helping her, at this point he was just trying to catch up to take his anger out on the woman. Another painfully slow minutes went by until the clutter finally started sparsing through, and what came in front of him was… strange, to say the least. It was at least cleaner than everything before, but with the giant machine in the middle, shooting a large beam of light out of it that was holding a black cylinder about the size of a test tube…

Well, at least Mrs. Deus seemed to find the situation not so ominous. She was sitting cross legged on what seemed to be an autonomous chair precariously moving on one wheel as a balancing act. It had seemed way too balanced to actually be that way, though. She was moving around with an insane speed, grabbing tools on the floor that looked strangely too much like torture devices and tossing them into a big metal chest.

He almost asked what it was all for, until the woman suddenly appeared him with such speed that he was surprised she hadn’t been thrown off the seat. She hadn’t even been nudged by the force. She slapped him on the back with what seemed a good amount of force, but his Ego body barely felt it, even with the injuries. “It’s good that you’re finally here, boy! I’ve been racking my head over your clone so long that I almost went insane with my own thoughts!” He took a step back from her as she suddenly lurched forward again, scared that the chair would run him over if he weren’t careful.

She had taken the time to fiddle with the massive machine in the middle, opening a blue screen filled with words that she seemed to control with the armrests of her chair. “The clone was subservient to my every command, though it seemed to obviously find distaste in some a lot more than others! Despite that, it never seemed to become bored of the request, It can’t eat, either, so it can’t truly be called human. That still meant I couldn’t rule out sentience, which forced a million other tests to be done… It was quite a learning experience, honestly. What I learned most was that clones really… really don’t want to die, at least when you order them to.”

The blue screen grew bigger, showing a plethora of images of a bald Liam with an exhausted look in their eyes. Some were of it doing basic exercises or actions, like lifting a box over its head and setting it down. Others… “What are you making it doing here?” He said, pointing to an image of his clone in… an unflattering pink dress, holding their arms up in what seemed to be a clap.

“Ah… That was… I was attempting two tests. One of memory, and another to trigger a shame response from the clone, as to garner if it was capable of a wider arrange of emotions. I just had it watch a replay from and old dance and… made it wear the dress.” He looked back to the image, watching the clone’s steely, gaze as it seemed to be sheening with sweat. It looked as if it had spent its whole life ready for that moment.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“He had redone it perfectly, first try. Even the small mistakes of the dancer. It was actually quite fascinating, and I really think you should delve deeper into your power’s limits. I’m sure we could find a… I’ll stop talking now.” Liam was trembling with shame, now in front of the screen that was wider than he was tall. This woman must have really wanted to trigger a shame response, because from that point on the images all had that same stupid dress on, in different states of disrepair.

“I look like a… Why didn’t you take it off?” He shakily said out loud, to which the woman shrugged. “Didn’t seem relevant at the time? And honestly, I had no idea that you would have ever gotten to see my research in the first place. But something happened that was just too crazy for me to ignore. Watch!” Her fingers swiped over her armchair repeatedly, and suddenly the blue screen scrolled to the right for about twenty seconds straight.

There were just that many photos of him, apparently.

He calmed himself when the dress made it out of the picture at some point, left with a Liam clone only in it’s boxers and a few pink scraps of cloth around it’s body. It was still shameful, but nowhere near the dress-up act the damn teacher had forced the clone in. She singled on one of the final images and pressed it so it filled up the screen. It was just his clone standing their, looking none the worse for wear, until…

“Jump.” A feminine voice rang out, coming from inside the screen.

The clone complied, hopping around three feet into the air.

“Fly.” The voice rang out again.

This time, the clone crouched to the floor before jumping again, reaching a full ten feet before falling, this time landing on it’s back while extending it’s arms outward.

The woman in the video giggled, as it hit the ground, and he could see the camera zooming to the side of the clone to get a better look. It had sat up at that point, staring at the camera with an intensity that Liam was familiar with. “Attempting to increase drag to keep itself in the air longer… Smart thinking, Liam!” Liam flinched when he heard his own name, and he turned to the teacher in anger before turning back to the screen.

“-Much more efficient than the last eight times. Ok, final order, clone… Die.” The voice was hesitant, as if it still wasn’t sure if it had wanted to ring that order out. The camera had quickly moved back to it’s older spot, as if afraid it’d get in the splash zone.

The clone… complied, in a way. It slumped back towards the ground, not moving as it kept its eyes open. It stood that way for a while, and a few minutes went by before Mrs. Deus had finally spoken again inside the video. ”Hm… Pulse still stable, heartbeat has slowed, but isn’t anywhere near dangerous levels… Didn’t know what I was expecting. Ok, clone, please get up and-” The video suddenly lurched backwards as the clone almost seemed to implode, crunching under it’s own weight like a sick house of cards.

It was horrific to watch, the head seemingly turning to black jelly as it melted back into the body. The noise wasn’t anything to sneeze at either, beneath the shrieking of the teacher in the video, he could hear the snapping and squelching of the disgusting creature as it became more and more compact. The skin and muscle turned jet black, and slowly the clone became smaller and smaller until…

He turned to the machine in the middle of the room, holding the black cylinder in the air.

The video paused, and he heard the whirring sound of the teacher’s chair falling close behind him.

“Yep, that’s your clone. Crazy, huh?”

He nodded absentmindedly, unsure of what to think after seeing all that. He felt cold, watching that, like watching a family member or a close friend die in front of you. No, this was worse. That was him there, a perfect copy of him, at least. As the scene took place, he could almost imagine himself feeling every moment, every small crack and break inside his body… It was too vivid, almost too much to be called imagination.

Eventually, his mind came to one conclusion, the only one that didn’t make him feel like throwing up.

He turned to her slowly, his pale face shakily holding an angry look. He could barely keep that emotion on his face as his mind swirled with thoughts of his own death again, unwanted thoughts that made him want to curl up in a ball and hide. He needed a distraction.

“H-how many of these are videos? Delete them. All of them.”

He wanted them gone.

If he couldn’t do anything about his damn clone dying then he’d at least be able to hide the evidence.

The woman patted his back consolingly, and for some reason he didn’t push her away. “I felt the same. I just thought you kids from district 3 were used to these sort of scenes.” He nodded, wiping the sweat from what he now realized was a soaked body. “Death is still death, teach’. Especially when it’s yours. I just stood there and… died. Ain’t no fixing that.”

She nodded, but the grin on her face seemed to suggest otherwise.

“Oh, I believe there is a fix for that, though?” She pulled out a small box from the side of her chair. It was one of the boxes Liam had been forced to give blood to in order to be an actual superhero-

“No way…” He groaned out. Had Wyland really betrayed him like that?

The woman chuckled, shaking the box around and letting him here the sound of the liquid inside. “Let’s just say that wasn’t the last time I heard your little clone combust like that.”