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  Mollie was watching in complete shock as Prime continued his massacre of the Hunters, she almost didn’t notice the lift had arrived until the doors opened next to her. She looked back at Prime who was running towards another Hunter, who was desperately trying to help his fallen comrade by covering the hole in his side. Prime arrived and pulled his head back by the helmets visor and smashed the back of the revolver into his jaw, breaking it instantly.

  “Prime!” She shouted, as she dove into the lift, the final Hunter also hearing her shout and making a B-Line for her rather than taking on Prime, who looked up and saw the movement.

  Prime ran, his posture that of an athlete, full speed towards the lift, Mollie and the Hunter. He had left Mollie unarmed by taking the revolver, if he could just run fast enough.

  The Hunter raised his machine gun at Mollie who, standing in the lift, had no cover to hide behind. She saw Prime catching up behind, but he was too far away, and with no clean killshot he could take without risk of hitting Mollie.

  She held her breath as the machine gun leveled, the sound of gunfire, the Hunter fell to the ground in front of her, his ankle had exploded in a mist of blood as Prime had shot him in the only place he safely could. The Hunter was lying on the floor screaming in pain as Prime arrived, lifting a boot, he thrust it into the Hunters head, a pool of blood and bone was all that remained.

  Mollie eyed him nervously as he entered the lift and punched the button to send it on its way.

  “Hey Moll, nice to meet you. See you soon,” he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Mollie could see the muscles on his face relax, and when he opened his eyes, he looked calmer, softer even.

  “Mollie? How’d we get here?” He asked, his voice back to its regular timbre.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember we were ducking away from the Hunters and then…” Prime paused, he could see fragments, snapshots of the fight that had just happened, almost as if he was just a passenger in his own body.

  “Peter?” He said.

  “Who’s Peter?” Mollie asked, motioning to take the gun from him.

  “I’m…not sure…” He passed the gun back to Mollie. “I think he’s a part of me.”

  Before they could continue the conversation, the lift stopped, and the doors opened onto the Boulevard. Mollie turned and looked out at the glowing neon which flooded her vision.

  The lift had come out just off the main Boulevard; it was used predominately for transport of goods to and from several of the retailers in the area.

  They stepped out and into clean and clinical world, which contrasted the Underpass completely.

  “Which way?” Prime asked, once they had took in sights.

  It took Mollie a little while longer to adjust to their new locations, eventually she stopped and checked the PDA.

  “This way, a few blocks down,” she led the way.

  The journey went with no more issues, other than Mollie stopping to admire several shop fronts and their wares. She couldn’t help but be taken in by the style and glamour of the Boulevards tech, compared to the low tech of the Underpass.

  “We’ll come back once all this is over,” Prime said, pulling her away from the windows.

  They arrived at the apartment block and made their way to number 91; the door was locked but Mollie gave it a kick and the lock splintered.

  “Let’s see what we have,” Mollie said.

  Inside, the remnants of a fight were obvious, a smashed tv and holes in the walls.

  “What happened here?” Mollie whispered.

  “Get in here Mollie,” Prime shouted, as he entered the bedroom and saw a man laying on the bed and a woman connected to him via a half damaged wire.

  Mollie and Prime glanced at each other, not knowing what to do.

  “If you would be so kind as to attach that PDA unit to my cerebral core it would be much appreciated,” Ava said, her eyes opening and looking directly at them.

  CHAPTER 34

  Ally

  Ally sat at the table opposite Razz, the debris of the attack still scattered around them. He had made them both some coffee, and they sat in silence for several minutes, just accepting the situation before either of them spoke.

  “It’s good to see you Al, it’s been so long,” Razz broke the silence first.

  “It has, but only because you told me not to come back,” she replied, unable to hide the slight resentment in her tone. Razz lowered his eyes to the ground, sadness overcoming him.

  “It was for your own good Al, I had to say that, couldn’t risk you coming back you know?”

  “What does that mean? Why would it be a risk?”

  “There’s so many things I need to tell you, things I should have told you long ago but I was too afraid,” Razz started into his cup, remembering the secrets they had forced him to keep.

  “Tell me what Razz? Come on, I’ve been attacked twice in the same day already!”

  “Attacked? By who?” Razz looked up, suddenly alert.

  “I don't know, some Sliders for all I know.”

  Razz put his hands on Ally's, looking her straight in the eye.

  “Tell me, were they Sliders or someone else? It’s very important.”

  “I don’t know, they had suits, didn’t look like any Sliders I’ve seen.”

  “Damit,” Razz slammed a fist on the table, “I thought they’d have lost interest. Stupid! I should have been more careful.”

  “Razz, tell me what the hell is going on!”

  Razz sighed, then took a deep breath.

  “It was your parents Al, they gave you to me, told me to keep you safe and away from the company. Of course back then they were only small fry, but they had connections.”

  “My parents? You knew them? I thought you adopted me from the orphanage,” Ally looked puzzled.

  “I did. Your birth name was Alison Henshaw, we changed it to Ally Sinclair after you got to the orphanage, to help keep you hidden. I knew you were there but had to wait some time before I could take you in. Had to, so it wasn’t traceable back to your parents. But I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.”

  Razz took a long drink from the cup and leaned back, digging his mind for the memories.

  “Y’see, when you were younger, your parents were working for a large corporation, at the time it was called Cyber Bionics, but you’d probably know them more as CyBio. They worked directly under Jacob and Owens, the co-founders. I was their neighbour and colleague in the Zeta district way back before the riots.”

  Already Ally was in shock trying to understand all Razz was telling her, but the floodgates had been opened and she couldn’t stop now.

  “Your parents couldn’t conceive, so Jacobs and Owens offered them the opportunity to be part of their tests in genetics. They created you by using the genetics from your parents, though there was much kept from them about the procedure and what they were doing. Once you were born in the laboratory, Jacob and Owens continued to experiment on you, against your parents' wishes, so they tried to take you back and away from the company. Jacob and Owens were not about to let them steal you, their prize experiment, so they sent a crew to take you back. Knowing this, your parents planned to hide you for protection. Before they got you away, Jacob and Owens completed the next stage of their work. Using your genetics they created another, a brother would be the best explanation, by altering certain genetic markers in your DNA.”

  Ally couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “How old?” Ally asked quietly.

  “I think you were about three at the time,” he said. “I can’t tell you what they did to him in there but I do know that he became slightly unstable, and the work they did on him is what caused the Jacob and Owens to part ways. Owens disagreed with the work and wanted nothing to do with Jacob, so they forced him out of the company. Around this time was when CyBio tried to tie up loose ends, which included your family. Everyone that was connected to the experi
ments was paid off or taken off the board if you catch me.”

  “CyBio murdered my parents?”

  “‘fraid so Al, I’m sorry. Just before they were killed, they contacted me and told me everything. They wanted you to be safe, so they sent you up to the orphanage with no paperwork or information, just before the CyBio’s agents found them. Of course they made it look like the work of the Zeta Army, which was convenient at the time, and maintained their image. They never found you though, despite their attempts. Having connections to your family, I was constantly under investigation for several years. It was only when I felt it was safe to do so I adopted you as per your parent’s request.”

  “And when the cafe was attacked?”

  “Bingo, they had been given a tip off from someone that you were hiding with me, they came guns blazing and I needed you to get as far away as possible, to not come back as I knew that someone was ratting on me and I couldn’t risk them finding you.”

  “What about my brother?” Ally asked.

  “He did some pretty bad things in his time afterwards. He had grown attached to Jacob, and they worked together for quite some time, he became somewhat of an apprentice to Jacob. Did many bad things, murders some say, but it seems that he vanished a couple of years or so ago.”

  Ally sunk into the chair and covered her face with her hands, it was as if her whole life was a lie. She could hardly keep all the pieces together in her mind.

  “And now it seems they found you somehow, though I don’t know how. I’m sorry Al, I did everything I could to protect you.”

  “You did more than enough Razz, you kept me alive all these years,” Ally walked over and hugged him. “But it’s too late for anything else now. I need to fight back, I need to face this.”

  “What do you plan on doing?” Razz asked, wiping a tear from his eye.

  “What was my brother's name? If he’s out there, I need to find him.”

  “Peter, his name was Peter Henshaw.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Peter

  Since leaving the shack, Peter had felt the connections take hold, the device in his brain had reconnected to the main server as they got closer to the main population of Metropolis.

  The signal strength increasing, he was starting to get incoming signals from all the clones. The main ones being at the Grand Falls Hotel.

  He still couldn’t fully trace Prime though. There were only snippets of the signal coming through, and not enough to make a location confirmation. He'd managed to send a message through however. Hopefully it had reached him and, ideally, triggered the sleeper program. The program was inside the cerebral cortex of all his clones and it allowed a virus to take hold and replace the current conscious with a copy of his own. If it had triggered, it would be only a matter of time before Prime was rewritten and the body would find its way back to the hub.

  Peter was sat in the back of the car and was staring out the window as he listened to the sound of wheels. He had been in the hole for too long, his mind becoming more and more lost in its own self.

  He recalled the first time he had met Jacob, back with Cyber Bionics. He was only four or five. Sat in a waiting room, he was called in and Jacob and Owens had explained to him what would happen, the tests made on his mental pathways. Owens was the friendly, welcoming, half of them. Jacob, on the other hand, saw him as nothing more than a part of the experiments, a lab rat to be tested on with no bias. Peter had always wanted to impress and make Jacob proud, almost despising the ease in which Owens treated him. The challenge was what mattered to him.

  As the tests continued and Peter’s mental facilities fluctuated from the constant wipes and reprogramming through to the initial cloning, Jacob slowly formed a bond with Peter. At first, simply in the psychological evaluations of his progress, Jacob became more involved with Peter’s feelings and personality.

  Then the day came when they successfully produced a perfect clone, one which stabilised further than the first incubation week and grew to a copy of Peter’s exact genetic sequences, matching the age and development. Prime, they called him, and for Peter, being able to look at an exact match of himself, made his mind snap a little further than it ever had. The months that followed saw them create many more clones, varying some part of the genetic sequences in a small way to cause variations on the clones; hair colour, gender, height and vocal structure to name just a few. With each alteration, the personalities were affected too, individuals with their own lives.

  The precautions put in place, a small cortex receiver in their brains, allowed Peter to access each of them if needed to regain control. This was created following the complete breakdown of a clone who had become more self aware of their situation and identity, causing them to lash out violently. It was then that Owens felt the work was becoming too unethical, that the clones were people who had their own rights and by neutering them with the Cortex Receivers, made them into slaves.

  Jacob and Peter continued the work but with little income, they needed to fund the work in other ways, so they put the clones into a workforce. What better way to bring money in and also to test the durability of the clones than with manual labour. So they opened a small hotel where they could monitor the clones interactions with real people, whilst keeping them all enclosed. By recording the cortex from several hotel workers, they created templates for all the various job roles that would be required which they could program into any clone at the start of a shift. Mind wiping each clone every day was done to make sure there were no remnants to allow self awareness to trigger. The hotel had been a success and the credits it brought allowed them to continue their work.

  What Jacob hadn’t known of during this time was of Peter’s developing aggressive tendencies brought on by a desire for knowledge. Peter had taken the minds of anyone whom he felt had a skill set he desired, utilising the equipment they had built, he stole skills of other people and assimilated it into his own. It had started innocently enough, taking the minds of scientist and engineers, whom he released afterwards, to help increase his skills in the work they did, but as the thirst for knowledge increased, he took more and more minds. One day, the patient he captured against their will was an unknown serial killer who worked as an engineer. The violence increased in Peter’s mind following the integration and he started to have a need to take the lives of the people he used.

  It was later that Peter was caught as a criminal, guilty of twenty murders of people who had no connections other than skills and knowledge Peter desired. Jacob had no choice but to allow justice to take its course, the MPD being in complete control of the investigation. Jacob found himself turning away from technology which had caused the problems, he prayed for help with Peter, knowing it was his own fault that Peter was the person he had become.

  When Peter was released following a report of the corruption within the MPD, Jacob saw his prayers had been answered. The reporter, Julian Travitz, had saved his son and given them a second chance. However, Jacob still felt that technology had been the key to the downfall of Peter, that trying to play God by altering the minds of people, had been a sin against God’s creations. He had thrown himself in the fight against technology.

  As for Peter, the violent tendencies were still present, and the clones which he still had a connection to, were at risk of the thoughts seeping into them. They decided it was best for Peter to be taken away from the risk and locked away from the world. Peter, out of respect for Jacob who had helped him through the situation, agreed that it was a penance for his crimes and agreed to the terms.

  Now he was free, the penance paid. He was returning to a world where he could continue his work. This time he would be better, he would work smarter. He no longer had a debt to pay to Jacob, but for now, he would bide his time, he would wait for the right time.

  CHAPTER 36

  Jacob

  The journey had taken an hour, and they had returned to the church. Jacob was happy to have Peter at his side once more, the man whom he raised as his
own. Tombs was waiting for Peter to join him in heading to the hotel.

  “Where shall we begin?” Peter asked, itching to get back into the world.

  “Soon, soon, first I have a surprise for you Peter,” Jacob said, as they walked into the church. “Our catalyst for the rapture is the Saviour who allowed you your freedom.”

  Peter was admiring the decor of the church, it was still a run down mess when he had last been inside.

  “Julian?” Peter said, his interest piqued. “He’s willing to be part of the cause?” Peter was dubious, knowing that Julian was pretty much half computer with his augmentations.

  “Oh, not quite, but we are being persuasive.”

  The two made their way down the steps to the lab underneath the church, Jacob unlocking the the door.

  “Also, another old friend is here, though you may not recognise him,” Jacob laughed to himself, deciding to let Peter discover who on his own.

  The door opened, inside Julian was lying on the table in front of them, still conscious but only barely. Owens stood beside him, monitoring his vital signs.

  “How is our patient?” Jacob asked, as they arrived.

  “Stable, he’s almost ready for the primary injection,” Owens replied, not looking up from the console.

  “We have a visitor, you may remember him,” Jacob said, barely able to conceal his smile.

  Owens looked up and saw Peter, the boy whom they experimented on throughout his early years. He’d always assumed that he had died following the trial, or that Jacob had mind wiped him.

  “Peter?” He said, raising from his chair. “It is really you?”

  “That’s my name,” Peter said. “Though I’m not sure I know you?” Peter scanned Owens' face.