Immurement: The Undergrounders Series Book One (A Young Adult Science Fiction Dystopian Novel) (21 page)

I catch a glint of something in the clones’ eyes and sense their triggers tightening before it happens.

A volley of fire erupts behind me. The four clones fly backward.

I dive for the floor, dragging my hostage with me. Dr. Lyong groans beneath my weight, but I don’t dare shift an inch. My heart knocks against my ribs for what seems like an eternity. I’m not sure if the Schutz Clones are dead or waiting on me to make a move.

“It’s over, Derry.” Mason towers over me, his face drawn. “Sven took them out.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and roll onto my back. Dr. Lyong smacks his gums together, sucking for air, and then lets out a gasp.

I clamber to my knees and bury my face in Tucker’s neck.

“Gotta hand it to you,” Mason says. “You’re quick on the draw.”

Not trusting myself to speak, I give him a curt nod by way of response. He stretches out a hand and pulls me to my feet. I glance over at the dead clones, and shiver. Even from where I’m standing, I can tell they’ve already assumed the same bloodless pallor as Ramesh.

I turn my head and spot Sven swirling his fingers over a screen at the back of the Crematorium, his forehead creased in concentration.

“What’s he doing?” I ask.

“Rigging the cameras. So the Sweepers don’t see the bodies.” Mason reaches out a meaty fist and hauls Dr. Lyong to his feet. “Where are the Undergrounders?”

A scowl cuts across the doctor’s decrepit features. “You’ll never make it out of here alive.”

Mason gives a wry grin. “You have that wrong. And we have your cloning expertise to thank.” Mason sticks his face in close to Dr. Lyong’s. “Sven can reconfigure your software faster than you can string together a new genetic code. Except, he doesn’t ever screw up.”

Dr. Lyong’s eyes bulge in their sockets. “Mutant fool! You’re turning your back on a new and improved planetary civilization, and for what? To run with a pack of subversives bent on killing each other off faster than we can replenish humankind?”

“You’re nothing more than a trafficker in body parts.” Mason’s voice quiets to a whisper. “I’d rather take my chances with them than you.”

“Done with the override!” Sven yells. “Let’s hit it!”

Mason narrows his eyes and swaddles Dr. Lyong’s neck with one fist. “
Where
are they?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

I step toward him. “A boy, blue eyes, sixteen, thick blond hair, extracted a few days ago, and an eighteen-year-old dark-haired boy with a black eye, heavy bruising on his face, extracted yesterday. He’s my brother.”

I place my hand lightly on Mason’s and, reluctantly, he releases his fist. Dr. Lyong hunches over, clutching his chest. A cold sweat breaks out along my spine.

Please don’t die on me. Not yet!

After a long minute, he straightens up, waxen but alert. When he speaks, his breath hits me again, like toxic fumes from an abandoned mine. “Your brother’s in Sektor Sieben.”

I throw a baffled glance at Mason. The look in his widened eyes sends a rod of terror up my spine.

“What’s Sektor Sieben?” I ask.

“Time to go.” Mason brushes past me, grabs Dr. Lyong by the shoulder, and drags him over to the Crematauto.

“Wait!” I call out. “What about the other boy?”

The doctor twists his scrawny, loose-skinned neck around and peers at me through half-lidded eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

Didn’t make it
. The room swivels. Voices ebb and flow around me as I hover on the edge of blacking out. I can almost hear my heart rupture inside my chest. For days I’ve pushed through hunger and exhaustion, faced every fear I’ve ever imagined, some I never dreamed of, clinging to the hope of finding Jakob alive and bringing him home. Now I’m deflating, adrenalin leaking from me like air from a spent tire. My voice shakes when I try to speak. “What … did you do to him?”

The doctor gives an impatient sigh. “He never made it here. He evaded the sweep.”

I take a few shallow breaths, my head swimming in confusion. If Jakob’s not here, then where is he? If the Sweepers didn’t take him, who, or what did? I push the thought of wolf packs out of my mind. I have to believe he’s safe. I can’t lose hope now.

“We gotta go!” Sven’s voice jolts me back to my senses. He reaches for my elbow to guide me to the Crematauto. Tucker bares his teeth and snarls at him.

I take hold of his collar and reassure him Sven’s not a threat, then lead him over to the Crematauto.

Dr. Lyong’s scowl deepens when I climb in. Tucker takes a quick sniff at him, and then pulls back abruptly like he’s caught a hint of something rotten. Mason takes out a piece of rope from his backpack and secures the doctor’s hands, even though it seems a pointless gesture. Lyong’s hardly much of a threat without his Schutz Clones to back him up. In fact he looks as close to death as possible for someone who’s not already in the first stages of decomposition.

I narrow my eyes at him. “If you’re lying to me, you’ll regret it.”

Dr. Lyong lifts his bound hands and carefully wipes a dark-colored drip from his nose. My stomach trips and I almost gag a second time.

“I can assure you, your friend is not here.” He lets out a heavy sigh and closes his eyes like a dying man worn out by conversation.

Sven slides behind the controls of the Crematauto and the back door seals shut.

“What’s Sektor Sieben?” I ask Mason again, as we take off.

He hesitates, a moment too long for someone who has nothing to hide. “Research mainly.”

Dr. Lyong lets out an extended cackle. Tucker repositions himself behind me, tail tucked beneath him, as if unnerved by the odious rasping.

“Allow me.” Dr. Lyong straightens up, and gestures elaborately with his bound hands. “Mason is somewhat reticent about our greatest accomplishments. Sektor Sieben houses our Cybernetic Implant Prototypes. You see, cloning is only one approach of many we are investigating in a bid to regenerate humankind.”

He dissolves into a coughing fit, and I shrink back in disgust from the spittle flying from his lips. When he catches his breath again, he wipes the back of his bony hand over his mouth and sighs. “We can now integrate many useful technologies into the human central nervous system to replace failing organs and tissues. One day very soon, we will have the capacity to live forever, and eliminate the need for cloning entirely.”

I furrow my brow. What does integrating technologies into humans mean exactly? My mind races back to something Mason hinted at—
deviations
he called them. I pictured them as failed cloning experiments, but maybe they’re some kind of half-human forms the Sweepers are building with technology. My pulse races. If they’ve even laid a finger on Owen, I won’t hesitate to tear Lyong apart with my bare hands. Maybe it’s time he knew that.

I grab a fistful of the doctor’s lank hair, and jerk his head back. “What have you done to my brother?”

He blinks at me, his eyes bloated and watering. “Why don’t you stop by Sektor Sieben and see for yourself?” He heaves a breath, his emaciated frame wracked by the effort of talking under duress. I reluctantly release him, and recoil when he slumps toward me, gasping for air.

“He’s toying with you, Derry,” Mason says. “Don’t believe anything he says. Owen’s probably still in the Intake Sektor.”

I wipe a hand across my brow. “We’ll check Sektor Sieben first, just in case.”

A shadow passes over Mason’s face, but he doesn’t try to talk me out of it.

The Hovermedes slows to a stop and I hear Sven exchange a few words with someone. There’s a series of electronic beeps, and the sound of doors opening.

“Security guards?” I ask Mason.

He nods. “Access to Sektor Sieben is restricted to research scientists, and the Crematauto. It’s a steel vault, soundproofed and windowless, no way in or out other than through these doors.”

“The guards didn’t ask Sven too many questions,” I remark. “Just waved him on through.”

Mason shifts uncomfortably. “Nobody asks questions when you’re driving the Crematauto. Even the guards don’t want to have to look at what you’re transporting from the laboratories.”

The vehicle glides to a halt and Sven climbs out, leaving the door wide open behind him. Dr. Lyong blinks and looks around furtively. He opens his mouth, but before he can say a word, Mason’s hand envelops his face. “You even squeak and I’ll tie your vocal cords in a knot so tight you’ll never make another sound.”

Instinctively, my fingers curl around the barrel of my gun. I’m not sure if Mason suspects there’s someone in here, but he’s not taking any chances. Tucker raises his head off his paws and looks at me expectantly. I motion for him to stay down, and carefully cock my gun.

Pop! Pop!

My heart shudders to a momentary stop. The sound, two shots in quick succession, ricochets around the room. Tucker barks sharply, scrambles to his feet. Mason locks eyes with me, and gives a curt nod. We jump out of the Crematauto together, weapons raised.

“Don’t shoot!” Sven calls out from across the room. He raises his hands, holding his rifle above his head. “I fired the shots.”

I follow Mason across the high-gloss floor of a spacious foyer with a large u-shaped monitoring station positioned in front of steel security doors. Sprawled on the floor between the station and the doors are two bodies, clad in white, bloodstained scrubs. I let out a gasp and sink to my knees beside them to check for a pulse. “They’re dead.”

“I had no choice,” Sven says. “They pulled their weapons on me.”

I shrink back from the blood creeping out from under the bodies. My mind flashes back to Ramesh’s bloodless pallor when he expired. “They were humans, not clones,” I say, my voice low and strained.

“Scientists,” Mason replies, an edge to his voice.

I stare at him. “Is there a difference?”

“You tell me.” He turns abruptly, and strides back to the Crematauto.

My chest tightens. I hate what the Sweepers are doing as much as Mason does, but I can’t help wondering if some of them are here against their wills. Surely not all their hearts are as dark as Lyong’s.

Sven sits down heavily at the monitoring station. He ploughs his fingers through his hair, and then pulls a surveillance screen on a flexible arm toward him.

Mason drags Dr. Lyong out of the Crematauto and shoves him roughly against the side of the vehicle.

“I’m only gonna give you one chance to punch in your authorization code and get us inside.” Mason squeezes the doctor’s throat. “After that I’m going to put you out of your misery so fast you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.”

I hold my breath while Dr. Lyong hobbles unsteadily over to the steel security doors. He jabs at the keypad with a skeletal finger. Seconds later, an electronic chime rings out. The steel doors slide soundlessly apart.

“After you.” He gestures for me to go first, his eyes glinting.

I take a hesitant step in the direction of the doors leading to Sektor Sieben. I’m not sure what horrors lie within. Everything inside me is telling me to turn and run. But deep down I know if I falter now, I’ll always falter.

I summon my courage and cross the floor. Tucker breaks into a trot, psyched by the remote possibility that he might be about to get out of here.

“Wait!”

I freeze at the foreboding note in Sven’s voice. “You’d better look at this,” he says, his gaze fixed on the security camera screen in front of him.

“We’re too late!”

“Is it Owen?” I yell, as I race across the high-gloss floor to the monitoring station. My eyes dart over the chaotic images on the surveillance screen in front of Sven. Swarms of people spilling out of a stadium of sort. Behind them, several hundred Schutz Clones in black fatigues goose step into view.

My heart pounds like a gavel in my chest. A group of scientists in lab attire, flanked by twenty or so Schutz Clones, merge into the corridor that leads to Sektor Sieben.

Sven inhales a deep breath. “Ten minutes at best before they get here.” He pulls an ammunition clip from his coat and reaches for his assault rifle.

“There are too many of them.” I look first at Mason and then at Sven as they ready their weapons. “We can’t fight them.”

My heart races as I weigh our options. We’re in a vault, with no way out. Our only other choice is to hide.

“In here,” I yell. I grab Tucker by the collar and make a beeline through the steel doors that lead into Sektor Sieben. Sven and Mason follow, dragging Dr. Lyong by the arms. Inside, Mason punches the automatic wall panel and the doors vacuum seal behind us with a soft whoosh. I glance around skittishly. The space we’re standing in is a sixty-foot long corridor, laid out on either side like solid steel cattle stalls. Each stall has a door with a viewing monitor shaped like a giant eyeball.

A mausoleum-like silence descends. It’s peaceful here, in an eerie sort of way, like the viewing room in the funeral home where they took Gramps when he died. A long time ago, before the world changed.

“What’s in those rooms?” I ask.

Mason averts his eyes. “Participants.”

My heart thuds.
Participants?
I can’t imagine anyone volunteering for cybernetic implants.

“Is there any place to hide?” I dash to the nearest door and peer into the dome-shaped viewing monitor.

Two young men and a young woman lie stretched out peacefully in white cocoon-shaped beds, the material molded to their bodies like the seats in a Hovermedes, each sandwiched between metal frames. Tubes run from their torsos into a tower of medical equipment and feed into a series of flush-mounted wall monitors. Whatever’s going on in here, at least it’s not the body parts canning factory I had envisioned.

I move the 360-degree orbital eye and explore the rest of the space inside the room. “What about the cabinets?” I say. “Think we can fit inside?”

Without waiting for an answer, I reach for the handle and push the door gently open, not wanting to startle the participants. Their eyelids remain glued shut, their faces frozen.

Mason squeezes by me and wrenches on the cabinet handles. “Locked.”

I stare at the upturned face on the nearest bed. The pallid features have a strange, vacated look to them. A shiver crosses my shoulders. “They must be heavily sedated. They haven’t flinched since we came in.”