The days underneath the ground had been heavy. He was hungry and worn down, but he knew he’d made the right choice to leave the group. There was a feeling inside him, something that urged him to follow his gut.
He saw the gleam in Virgil’s eyes. The man seemed sorry for the pack. That type of glance usually spelled death. He just hoped the man didn’t have it in him to actually kill. No, he was far more devious than their predatory leaders.
When he ducked into the water, he waited and searched for a sliver of light. There were two paths that he saw, and he chose the one they’d neglected to visit. He grabbed ahold of a small, rusted ladder that led to the surface. He pulled his weight and found air. What he also found was an image he couldn’t wrap his head around.
Killian opened his eyes to face an unknown structure of brilliance and beauty, a tall and metallic assembly rising at least a hundred feet in the air. There was more than enough electricity down there to power a whole city, but that wasn’t what shocked him. He kept walking toward the center until he reached the source of light, a blue orb that floated within the metal confines. He recognized it almost immediately as the glass womb those bastards drowned her in on television. Only, this time, it was full of blue luminescent liquid and not her body.
Above the artificial womb was the inscription: EC23.
Killian didn’t know what to say. Rae hadn’t been called that since the days of Cassian, but those programs were shut down. Lost in a trance, he slowly placed his hand against the glass before darting it away again. When he realized it could not hurt him, he reached out again, and, this time, he felt the warmth against his palm. In his eyes, the blue shone bright and innocent like the morning star above a village. Suddenly, he wanted to feel the water, to dive in and never come out again. It was so heavenly.
Killian stared in silent wonder. Like a child, he had nothing to say. The structure was so magnificent in scale, so clandestine in location he almost wanted to applaud its architect. He was just about to climb another set of stairs when a woman’s voice broke the silence.
“They’ll put her back in her place. You know that, right?”
Killian spun around and aimed his rifle, but he did not pull the trigger. A youthful blonde woman wearing a lab coat walked toward him. “Please, don’t attack me. I’m not here to turn you in,” she said.
Killian tossed the rifle aside and faced the woman. She held her hands out as if to say she was a friend, but Killian had too many friends these days and wasn’t in the mood to make any more. “Who the fuck are you?”
The woman bowed politely but did not smile. There was heaviness to the dark gleam in her eye, one that suggested she had gone through a great deal of trauma. How she ended up in here, he had no idea. Part of him never wanted to know. “Helen Kurtfield, specialist,” she said.
“You…” Killian wiped the sweat off his forehead. Now, they were face to face, and he could see her clearer than ever before. Her dainty nose arched perfectly, and even though her eyes weren’t symmetrically set, she carried a certain beauty that threw him off guard. “I remember you from before. You helped clean the corpses of the … the milking chambers.”
“That wasn’t… me. There are many of us here,” she revealed. “We are registered under the same name.”
Killian swallowed, stomach shifting. The hairs on his limbs suddenly stood up. “So, you’re all her copies,” he said. “And above us is that dreadful place my pack-brothers and I saw just days ago.”
She nodded, nostrils widening as she inhaled. The resemblance was off, but it was there. “Yes,” she said.
“I thought all of you were killed during the final raids. I saw the bodies at the nightclubs,” he said.
“We aren’t as stupid as the public may think,” she said. “Did you believe all of us were killed?”
“I doubt the public thinks about the past at all. They seem to barely be able to get through the week,” Killian replied.
“Some of us escaped,” she said.
“But not you. You must have found a way out, but that still doesn’t explain how you ended up here. How were you caught?” Killian asked.
He placed his hand across her cheek and felt the softness of her skin. He was not aroused at all, only disturbed and a little bit confused. An extreme level of shame hit him directly in the heart when a tear rolled down her cheek. She grabbed her blonde hair by the root and removed the wig, revealing the luscious strands of amber hair. Killian backed away, dizzy.
“I remember the night we were brought to the nightclub. Men, very rich alphas traveled all around the world for the experience of a lifetime. For a full year, we were expected to service them and smile. The ones who opened their mouths were beaten until rendered completely inert. It was hard enough watching my sisters die, but it was somehow even harder watching the ones who were spared lose the bit of life they had inside them,” she said, gaze dropping to the floor.
“What happened after the bombs fell?” Killian asked.
“We hid in a pile of rubble until the sounds dissipated. Then we split up. A few of us went toward the sewers underneath the city. I’m sure they were killed, but I have no proof. It’s just something I feel.”
Killian nodded. “I’ve been feeling a lot of things lately.”
“You were an Ouroboros. You were never trained to feel.”
“I was an orphan, ripped from his home and thrown into the trader sectors. I played my role as well as I could, but these things tend to fall apart when the curtain closes,” he said. “When I met their prized clone, I felt love. Maybe you don’t believe me, but I’ve been trying my hardest to change ever since I felt her breath course inside of me.”
“They took your children,” she said. “Yes, I know all about you. I’ve been asking about your lot ever since they locked you up.”
“How do you know who I am?” he asked.
She led him into a long hallway of seemingly endless rows of documentation. “A man used to visit me. He told me things were starting to unfold, that something was on the rise, even if it didn’t seem like it. He would give me updates every week. When he stopped coming around, I knew it had begun. I suppose that was around the time you escaped,” she said.