Alien Research

CHAPTER 86

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” LaRue definitely sounded nervous.

“You’re who’s come up with the first version of Surcenthumain and all the other versions, too. You were probably assigned to find and turn Herbert Gaultier to the cause, right? I mean, he wasn’t always Doctor Mengele.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Amy said quietly. “But I think Chuck called it right—by the time we were all in high school, he’d started to change.”

“He found a better option.” LaRue smirked.

Heard the sound of a lot of footsteps before Amy or I could think up a suitably cutting comeback. Buchanan, Amy, and I turned to see a variety of people toting guns come around the corner. It so figured that I wasn’t even surprised.

“What the hell took you so long?” Reid snapped. “We called for you at least ten minutes ago.”

“Sir, we were dealing with explosions in the main laboratory.”

Risked a glance over at Serene. Who was looking her usual Innocence on the Hoof self. She caught my eye and winked.

She had read the maintenance and security manual, hadn’t she? And “difficult” wasn’t the same as “impossible.” There was so much more to her than most of us ever saw. Wondered how much of it Brian saw.

But big guns being waved in my face tended to drag me back into the moment and right now was no exception.

“What the hell did you do?” LaRue growled. “Turn around and answer me!”

Did as requested and shrugged. “That’s for us to know and you to find out. See? I can do it, too. So, what do you plan to do with all of us? People do know we’re here.” Well, Mom knew but she was busy. Dad knew, too, though, and when we didn’t get back, he’d tell Mom and Jeff, and someone would figure out how to come after us. Right?

Chuckie would figure it out, for sure. So, great, no worries. And then, of course, he and Jeff and the others would come into a trap because by that time the Crazed Super Twins would have alerted whoever else they had on their speed dial that the facility was under attack. Presuming that hadn’t already happened, which was a big presumption, really.

Time to work our way out of this before the cavalry arrived.

“Well, as for what we’re going to do to you,” Reid said, “I’m going with torture. But that’s just me. LaRue might have other plans.” Nice to see that they’d ensured this Reid was exactly like the old Reid, only probably more so.

She rolled her eyes at him. “You are so weird. Amy I think we’ll want to save, so that we can make another one that will be a lot easier to handle. Oh, but don’t worry—it won’t upset your late father. He never really loved you, or your pathetic mother.”

It was a good thing Buchanan was still holding onto Amy, because she tried to lunge at LaRue. Who smirked. She was big on smirking. This was really like being back in high school, only the “cool kids” were scary sociopaths with a lot more power than I had. Wait, come to think of it, this was exactly like high school. All we were missing was Chuckie getting beaten up, and if we didn’t get out of this before too long, I had a horrible feeling that was going to happen also.

“Is Amy’s dad actually around?”

LaRue did the teenaged giggle thing. “No, we didn’t need him. Cloning is expensive. We only use it for vital personnel.”

“There are a lot of bodies around here.”

Reid smiled. “Yeah. There are actually more ways to clone than the two your small minds came up with.”

“Well, isn’t that extra special? So, what, you have these bodies around as spares?” Just like Gaultier had had in the Secret Lab of Hot Zombies.

“Shut up,” LaRue snarled at Reid.

“What happens to the grunts?” Buchanan asked. “Do you use them for parts after they’re dead, or before?”

“We’ll kill the guy,” Reid said quickly, apparently doing his best to get them back onto the List of Upcoming Horrors track and to keep said grunts from thinking about Buchanan’s very appropriate question. “He’s just a human. The others we can use.”

“True, but no matter what you’re going to want, we have to keep your girlfriend alive.” LaRue nodded toward me. “We’ll need to use her to get the data Ronaldo and his team couldn’t actually find.” She shot me another evil little smirk. “They all trust you, after all.”

“How fast do you possibly think you can create a clone from any of us?”

They both looked at the bodies on the hanging beds and in the tanks, then back at me. “Fast,” LaRue said.

“It won’t be as good as we are,” Reid said. “But it’ll do the trick. We don’t need it long-term. Just long enough to get our data and the other things we really want.”

“Your children,” LaRue confirmed.

Heard a growl from the cage. Realized it was coming from Serene—she looked almost as crazy and ready to kill as when we’d first met her. Abigail hugged her, possibly to keep Serene from throwing herself at the cage to get to LaRue. Claudia and Lorraine just looked furious. Adriana looked as though she was trying to determine how to short their cage out. I couldn’t see Naomi; she was behind Claudia and Lorraine.

On the plus side, I was now enraged. Still had no idea of what to do, but at least I’d be able to do it at full hyperspeed.

“You’re not killing or using anyone else,” Naomi said. “And you’re not touching those children, ever. I won’t let you.”

Both teenagers smirked now. “What are you going to do to stop us?” LaRue asked. “Other than give us all your DNA, I mean? We’ll let you watch us dissect your brother before we render you for parts, though. Graves are so easy to rob.”

Took a good look at the girls. Still couldn’t see Naomi, but all the other girls now looked worried, but differently than they had before. But the many guns all cocked, which brought my attention back to imminent death.

“You two women, step over near the others,” Reid said.

“Um, no thanks. Not into the whole Laser Cage idea.”

“Well, you can stand there and be riddled with bullets,” LaRue said.

Thought about it. Moved so I was behind Buchanan and therefore directly in the line of fire. “You don’t actually want to kill me. Not yet. And I’m not letting you kill my friend.”

Amy joined me. “Me either. I’d rather die protecting someone I care about than live like you two do.”

“I’d rather you two got into the cage and prolonged your chances of staying alive and being saved,” Buchanan said softly.

“Too bad. Not doing it.” Reached back and took his hand in one of mine and Amy’s in the other. “Better to die like this, anyway. I know how Leventhal there likes to kill his female victims. Going down in a rain of bullets is far, far better.”

“Fine,” LaRue said. “Kill them all. We can still get their DNA from their dead bodies.”

The men with the guns didn’t look as if they’d have any issues shooting us all dead. But they never got the chance.

All the guns pointing at us glowed—first golden, then bright red, all in about a second. As the men holding them started to scream, the weapons blew up.

Buchanan pulled both me and Amy down and did the protective huddle, but there was no need—a glowing shield was around the three of us—blood, shrapnel, and body parts hit it and either bounced off or oozed down, but they didn’t reach the three of us. The men holding the guns weren’t so lucky—they were cut to ribbons.

I could finally see Naomi—her sleeves were pushed up and unlike the others she didn’t look worried. She looked angry and determined. She also had a syringe in her hand. And there were at least a dozen more at her feet.

Got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Mimi, what did you do?”

She looked at me. “What I had to.”