Olivia began to stir, and he knew that she would be alright.

  “What do you mean by your Olivia?” he asked Blue.

  “We’re all given the option to take care of a clone of Olivia. Mine died trying to get up here.” His head drooped and if he could cry, he probably would have.

  “Mine died from a snake bite right after arrival. That’s why I’m white, in her memory,” said White, watching as Olivia stood up shakily.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense, I had an Olivia, who went missing, and then this one showed up,” Dustin said, nodding towards her.

  She was looking back and forth between them in confusion.

  “Maybe one of them didn’t get an Olivia, so you got two?” whispered Blue, as if it were a miracle.

  “If I’m a clone, then why am I getting memories of past trips?”

  “We don’t know how they make the clones, or how it works. You might be able to find out in one of the other labs,” said White.

  Dustin shook his head in frustration, and then headed back towards where they said number 15 was. If a bomb was implanted in each of their brains, then he wanted to know how to remove it.

  The first thing that hit him, when he saw the tank, was that the guy was human, not a hybrid like the rest of them. He floated there, as if asleep, with his brown hair waving around his face.

  “Is that what you looked like?” asked Olivia softly. She had been strangely quiet from the moment she woke, up, and he had been slightly worried.

  “Yea, don’t you remember from the news headlines of the Lady Killer?” he asked, glancing at her.

  She shook her head. “Those memories are faded. I can’t remember them very well…so we have bombs in our brains?”

  “I’m not sure. But this guy has the answers. Look, I’ve gotten several upgrades since you passed out. Do you want them?”

  “Of course! I don’t want to stay a munchkin forever! I can change into my last form, but if yours is better, then of course I want a copy!”

  He paused to give it to her, then turned his attention to the man floating before him. He needed to get him out if he was going to question him. Setting to guns down, he looked over the monitor.

  “An alarm is probably going to go off if you release him. We’ll be off, if you don’t mind. We don’t want to get melted today.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Dustin waved at them as they faded into the dark, towards the door, already lost in thought on how to get the guy out. As he leaned forward, to touch the glass, he was hit with a memory.

  -He was strapped to a bed, with electrodes attached to his head. He was breathing hard, as pain coursed through him.

  -The electricity flowing through his system spiked, and he bowed his back in a scream.

  -Figures, possibly Josagn, were standing around him in white medical coats, with clipboards, watching him. When he tried to scream at them, he found his mouth full of something, a ball? A mouthguard!

  Dustin jerked back, breathing hard. Olivia was standing next to him, in the same form as his, looking at him worried.

  “Fuck!” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why that keeps happening, but I’m sick of it! These Josagn are sick bastards!”

  Looking over the monitor, he had to shake his hands to get them to stop trembling.

  “When I release him, there will probably be an alarm that goes off. Your new form can fly, and it can camouflage. You need to get the AI robot and hide near the ceiling. I’ll grab him and join you as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll take the guns too,” she said, picking them up with the AI robot.

  Dustin started typing, ignoring the alarms that immediately started going off. He could hear the door lock, but ignored it. The hiss that started filling the room, caused him to pause though. If he could have sweated, he was sure he would be, as his attention on the monitor focused to a laser point. A few minutes later, he had managed to hack it, and the hiss stopped.

  The fluid in the container started to drain, and the man sagged noticeably. As soon as he could, Dustin smashed the glass and picked him up. Noise at the door, had him flying straight up, holding the man to his belly, as he sandwiched him between him and the wall, then camouflaged. No sooner had he finished, then the door opened and Josagn poured in, wearing face masks, waving their guns around.

  The man woke slowly, but seemed to realize something was up, because he didn’t make any noise or movement to give them away. Dustin was uncomfortable holding him like this, but he valued his life more than his comfort. He was just glad the shadows helped to hide him.

  “The alarms didn’t lie! The specimen has escaped!”

  “It must be the intruders! Find them!”

  “Scans show nothing in the room! Even if they were in here, there’s too much interference from the other specimens to pinpoint them!”

  “The floor sweep is complete! They must have escaped somehow!”

  “Impossible! The door didn’t unlock until we punched in the code!”

  “Could they have escaped with the specimen before the alarm went off?”

  “Possibly, everyone outside, span the entire area! They can’t have gone far! We’ll put guards outside the door to catch anyone who comes or goes! We can’t afford to miss them again!”

  As they started filing out of the room, there was a commotion at the door, and Dustin was able to turn his head just enough to see Olivia shooting them as they tried to reenter the doorway. Because she was still camouflaged, they weren’t able to see to shoot at her before she got them.

  “Idiots, the lot of them. They’ll all come pouring in to their deaths until not a one is left,” whispered the man, 15, watching the scene as well.

  “We need to get out of here before they lock the door again,” he added, looking at Dustin.

  Flying towards the door as the last of them died, Olivia joined them and they fled the room.

  “Over there is a small lab they hardly ever use, you can probably hide there for a bit till things calm down again,” 15 said, pointing down the hall to a door near the end.

  “How do you know that?” asked Olivia, before Dustin could.

  “I know this damn station like the back of my hand. I explored it in great detail before they were able to catch me. I was hoping to find a shuttle or ship of some kind to escape in, but never did.”