Chapter 45

Familial death can be heartbreaking. It’s not only painful for those leaving us. Those left behind can also suffer. Ryan felt for the doctor. Briefly.

Then he recovered.

“I’m sorry for your loss, but that changes nothing.”

“No, I didn’t think it did. I’m not telling you for sympathy, and I wouldn’t expect it. I’m saying it purely to show you we’re all human. We all experience loss. We all have a stake in what we’re doing here. We could even, possibly, have saved your wife and child.”

Wasn’t that just a kick in the bollocks? Firstly, she tried to bring her own mother into the conversation. When that didn’t work, she thought mentioning Brioni and Clara would work on him. She couldn’t be more transparent or ineffective.

“You don’t get to speak about them. Do not mention them.”

Bradley nodded, slowly.

“Of course. I’m sorry, but I need you to understand. We could, potentially, have saved them.”

“If you say so. Why didn’t you, then?”

“Because…” She paused and frowned, then shook her head. “Their injuries were too great. They had already passed when we got there.”

“Fuck you. You should have left me there with them.”

“We couldn’t. We don’t refuse anyone we can help.”

“You didn’t help me. You took me for your sick experiments.”

“Look, believe what you wish. The clock is ticking.”

“Tick-fucking-tock. I don’t care about your timetable.”

“Perhaps not, but it isn’t my timetable,” she said. “It’s yours, and your time is up.”

She swept her hand in a broad arc, as if presenting something with a flourish. It stopped with her pointing towards the other Ryan. His body began to tremble. His eyes opened wide, then began to bulge. His mouth opened as if screaming, but only a faint croak could be heard. His eyes suddenly burst and, as the trembling became more violent, blood oozed from them.

Ryan couldn’t feel the obvious pain the other him was experiencing, but felt he should have been able to. Its absence emphasised the other’s suffering, and he clutched the edge of the vat.

“Make it stop,” he said. Then, louder: “MAKE IT STOP!”

“It’s too late,” Bradley said, with genuine sounding emotion in her voice.

“Make it fucking stop!“

Ryan lunged, spun her and put his arm around her throat.

“Now!” he insisted.

All guns were instantly armed and aimed at him, but Bradley raised her hand to stop them from being fired.

“We can’t,” she said, calmly. “You activated it too soon. It’s not ready.”

“What is that meant to mean? Just do it! You tell me you can perform miracles, so prove it. Show me! SAVE me!”

“Ryan, that’s not you, not yet.”

He squeezed, applying pressure to her neck. She made a choking sound, but still waved her hand as Pedra stepped forwards.

“Of course it’s me. Just look! You know it is!”

“It isn’t, Ryan,” said Pedra, lowering her gun. “Not yet. It hasn’t matured enough.”

“You’re bullshitting. You’ve cycled me too many times. You’re fucking lying!”

“Ryan, let Dr. Bradley go. Let her explain. And just look!”

He looked. He had no choice. Other him, whatever Pedra said, was writhing in the liquid. Vein-like threads were appearing all over the body, thickening. There were still no real sounds coming from the mouth – even though the ‘person’ was obviously Ryan, he couldn’t think of it as either a ‘he’ or ‘it’ – which only made the scene more intense. The skin started to split along the limbs, and blood leaked out, quickly turning the water red.

Ryan relaxed his hold, then dropped his arm, releasing the doctor. She rubbed her neck, but didn’t say anything, allowing Ryan to bear full witness to his actions, uninterrupted. She stepped away and, while his attention was on his clone, gestured for Pedra to pass her weapon over.

There was a strange slopping sound as the stomach’s skin also opened up. When the rupture had stretched from neck to navel, it spread wide and the creature that had eaten its way in emerged. The arms were first, making it seem a spider was coming forth from a dark, gruesome cave. The illusion was shattered when the remainder slopped out, slung into the liquid, shaken off by the trembling of the host.

It had a voice. Its jaws opened and a shrill screech invaded their ears.

Ryan covered his, noticing that the others, apart from wincing slightly, showed no reaction. Bradley pointed the gun Pedra had given her and fired two shots. One was in the clone’s head, neatly between his eyes. The other, more hesitant, was into the creature’s mouth.

The shaking and screeching stopped. Ryan dropped his hands slowly, too shocked to respond to the double killing.

“Look what you made me do,” Bradley snapped at him, tossing the gun back to Pedra.

“Me?” Ryan gasped. “What’d I do?”

“Yes, you! You have no idea what you’re doing here. That embryo wasn’t mature! You had been cycled too recently, so that was the last you until we could grow another, and the implant was too fucking young. And you made me kill them both.”

“You’re the ones playing God! You can’t blame this on me!”

“Ryan, we are not playing.”

Ryan was done. Bradley and her father may well have been performing miracles. That did not give them the right to kidnap and murder in the name of their pseudo-science. Her response was not lost on him, either. It was clear they did think of themselves as gods. Creators.

And as gods, they felt they had the power to do anything they liked. The thing was, as Ryan could see, they were doing the things only real gods were supposedly able to do.

Things they should not be able to.

He looked down at the now dead other-him and parasite. He’d been here himself, in one of these tanks. Maybe even this specific one. He was only hours old, really. He had one of those things inside of him!

Well, no more.

He shoved Bradley, hard, into Pedra, sending the pair sprawling to the floor. The guards closest rushed to their aid, while the others were distracted by them. Ryan bolted, running to the next pod and slamming his hand against the button.

“No!” cried Bradley, scrambling to her feet and pushing the helping hands away.

Ryan was already at the next pod, and the next. One of the guards shot at him, missing and, suddenly triggers were being pulled and bullets were flying. Ryan ducked, still hurrying across the room to activate the mechanisms. Until the floating forms were up and about and conscious, albeit with those monsters inside them, they were not people. They were simply vessels. He had no compunction against ending their existence.

“Stop fucking shooting, you morons!” Bradley screamed. “You’ll hit the implants! You’ll hit him! We need him alive!”

The firing stopped, but not before vats had been punctured, leaking their solution over the floor. And not before a number of clones – or embryos – and implants – or monsters – had bullets hit them.

The guards, led by Pedra, fanned out, searching for Ryan. Within seconds, however, the injured creatures began to scream.

The sound of one might have been bearable for them, but so many together created a high pitched cacophony that had everyone, including Bradley, falling to their knees with their hands pressed over their ears.

Ryan had crumpled into a ball, too, and his own cries joined with the others. His ears started to bleed and he could feel cramps in his stomach as the implant there reacted to the pain inflicted on the rest of its kind. Everyone else doubled over, their own internal parasites similarly screeching.

Ryan’s suddenly stopped its squirming and pulsed, giving out an electric jolt through his nerves. He yelled, but his cry was lost in the noise.

It pulsed again, the sensation, this time, feeling more like energy than pain. It pulsed a third time, and, this time, the energy came with knowledge.

The implant knew.

It was sentient. It couldn’t control him, but it could direct. It could show him. The tests both he and it, together and separately, had been subject to. All the other versions of each there had been, and how all had been experimented on for science and for progress and just because there was no-one to stop it. And it told him that they were also the very first, though the details of that were abstract images he was unable to decipher. Another pulse was directed at Ryan’s ears, staunching the bleeding and making them more tolerant of the screams that were beginning to die down, anyway, as the embryos and implants died.

Ryan knew the others would soon recover, so he didn’t have long. He had to continue. His symbiote, because the relationship between them had dramatically altered, showed him he had to continue. He had to stop it all.

He reached up to the control for the pod closest to him. Before he could press the button, a hand took hold of his wrist. He looked up.

Dr. Ian Bradley was looking down at him. He was smiling.

“You don’t need to do that, son,” the man said. “Not anymore.”

His voice carried over the still diminishing, but very present, cries. Ryan could feel the warmth and sincerity in the words while also being aware of who was saying them. The last man he would ever trust.

Bradley released Ryan’s wrist, then pressed something on a small remote control he was holding. A blue, crackling light filled every pod Ryan had activated and the massive room was abruptly silent. Ryan pulled himself up by the vat closest to him in time to see the nearest activated one, and presumably the rest, empty their contents through a large drain that opened up in their bottoms. The drain then closed, the pod refilled and the tube feeding it throbbed. It was starting again! Carrying on as if nothing at all had happened.

“Nothing has made any difference, has it?” Ryan asked, resigned.

“Dear Reece,” Bradley Snr. said, smiling like a genial grandfather. “Everything has changed.”

“You could have done that sooner, father.”

Ryan, still not accepting ‘Reece’ as his name, turned to see a shaky Fiona Bradley walking towards them. Pedro and the guards were slowly regaining their feet.

“Where would the fun be in that, darling?”

When his daughter reached them, she stopped in front of Ryan. For a moment, nobody said anything, then:

“I fucking hate you,” she said calmly.

Ryan wasn’t sure she was actually speaking to him, even though she faced him. Still…

“The feeling is mutual,” he said in return.

Suddenly, she lifted her hand and Pedro’s gun was pressed to his forehead. Ryan didn’t flinch. At that point, he thought she could do as she pleased. He no longer cared. His efforts had been for nothing. Besides, this death would be real, and he welcomes the chance to be with his wife and daughter.

“Put it down, darling,” Ian said softly.

“I don’t think I will.”

“Put it down,” Ian repeated, the request becoming a stern, undeniable order from someone who expected to be obeyed.

Reluctantly, she acquiesced, lowering the weapon, slowly. She stood firm, however, glaring at Ryan.

“What now,” Ryan asked.

He fully expected to be returned to his cell and the experimentation to begin again. A new cycle.

“Now,” said Bradley Snr., “we welcome you to your new home.”

He pressed another button on his controller, and a large door opened at the far end of the room. Bright light flooded in, making Ryan squint. He shielded his eyes, temporarily blinded.

When his eyes had become accustomed to the light, Ryan realised he could see sky and greenery. He could hear birdsong. In the new entrance way, a young girl stood.

Clara?

“Welcome home, son,” Dr Ian Bradley said.

THE END

Ryan or Reece? Who knows if his real name is either of those, and if it’s not still a game to both Bradleys?

What I know, is book 2 of my Cure Collection, CULT, is well under way, and finds our man struggling to understand his place in a world without his family, whilst surrounded by true believers. But, who are those cast out? Why are they kept away, and who is leaving him messages?

Before we continue that story, however, we will learn what brought Dr Ian Bradley to dedicate his life to the curing of all disease – at any cost?

CULT will, hopefully, be coming in 2026.

Here’s a peek (written on my ViWoods AIPaper Mini)……………………!