85 Heart of Iron

I grabbed Idil's gun from the ground and left the scene, walking towards the inner parts of the facility. On my way, I checked the gun; the magazine was full. I hastily put everything back together and kept walking fastly with the gun in my hand. Most of the doors have already been unlocked either by the evacuating personnel or The Community. I encountered no one in the corridors for a while.

I was still feeling the rage, anger and the need for revenge. There was no way for me to calm down anymore. I couldn't think about anything else, but... a part of me was still wondering what Cansu was doing.

The surroundings were looking a bit familiar, but I was in a part of the facility I've never been to before. But the people trapped in capsules, placed near the walls... It was the same technology I had seen before Cansu had rescued me. But the ones here were mostly empty.

I encountered a locked door ahead. I walked straight up to it, and the door automatically opened, most likely with the power of The Community.

Inside the room, I saw three people in front of consoles apart from each other, trying to do something in a hurry. They heard the door opening, and curiously looked at me. I stared back at them for a few seconds. I was feeling nothing. I would give them the same value they gave to people they worked on... Their lives meant nothing!

They were standing still, like they were waiting for me to say something. A quick glance revealed that they were completely defenseless, despite their superior numbers.

"May I help you?" a young man with glasses softly asked.

I raised the gun. He stepped back a little and raised his hands, looking directly into my eyes.

I didn't even hesitate. I pulled the trigger and shot him in the head. One of the two remaining men tried hiding at the opposite corner of the room, while the other one tried to charge me. I quickly aimed and shot the attacker in the chest, twice. He dropped dead. I walked into the room, and approached the other man. He noticed me and stopped trying to hide. Instead of trying to hide, he looked at me, sitting on the ground with a sad look on his face.

"Please d-don't kill me, I will do whatever you want, p-p-please don't..." he was talking really fast. He was shaking, sweating.

I aimed at his head. He closed his eyes and kept pleading for mercy. I didn't pull the trigger for a while, just to watch him suffer. He couldn't even talk properly anymore, poor guy could die from his fear... After a few seconds, he stopped talking and opened his eyes a little, perhaps hoping that I might have spared his life. When he saw the gun, he screamed and closed his eyes again.

I pulled the trigger and shot him in the head. His blood bursted out of the other side of his head and painted the wall. I looked at the body in disgust for a while. I wasn't calming down, furthermore, I was feeling more pain every second... A part of me was feeling empty, still wondering about Cansu. Maybe she had realised her failure and went into exile...

I walked around and examined the consoles. There were numerous buttons, some sliders, and one of them had a small lever; but most of the controls had no labels. And the ones that were labeled were generic things, like control on/off buttons and console brightness sliders. I didn't touch anything and kept walking towards the inner parts of the facility.

There was another room just next to the room that was filled with consoles. The door wasn't locked, so I entered to take a look. It was a big room that was resembling a library. There were folders and papers all around the room. It was most probably some sort of database, or an archive. It wasn't very well organised, it seemed like someone had scattered everything around on purpose. Perhaps they were trying to save the important documents, now that their facility was falling apart.

A small folder named 'CLONE ARCHIVES' drew my attention. I grabbed the folder and opened it. In the folder there were information about the cloning process, and various people that were cloned successfully. Most of those people were test subjects, but some of them were facility personnel.

The cloning process described here was much different than the classical method; though I couldn't understand much of it, it was clearly way more advanced than asexual reproduction. The method didn't just create organisms with exact same genetics, but it also allowed multi-cellular organisms to be reacreated as exact replicas almost instantaneously. Exact replicas of people, perhaps more look-alike than twins...

I continued turning the pages, and noticed that there was a paper for every person that has been cloned. Every page was containing the photo, name, gender, height, weight, age and health information of an individual. And, at the bottom of the page, the number of clones and the locations they were sent.

There weren't many pages, so I had enough time to take a look at every one. I turned the page, trying to recognise people.

I finally recognised one of them. It was the man I called 'The Librarian'. Supposedly, he had one clone that was located in another lab section. But it didn't matter anymore, since both instances were already dead.

I kept turning the pages. After the facility personnel's pages, I started seeing test subjects. As far as I could tell from their photos, I could tell that they certainly didn't have good times.

"Come on." the deep voice of The Community said. "We have to go."

"Just let me look at this for a minute." I said.

"No. It doesn't matter. These things already happened, and the longer you look at that folder... you will only find more pain." she told me. "We are on the verge of victory."

"I have to see." I said. She didn't reply. I turned a few more pages, and encountered pages about failed cloning attempts on some subjects.

"Are you done yet?" the voice said.

"Hold on..." I said.

I turned a few more pages, and suddenly, I dropped the folder. I was startled by what I had seen. Idil was on that list; like some other subjects, she was also cloned once... The clone was supposedly located in Cell Block B, where I have encountered her the first time!

I rushed out of the archive room, with the folder in my hand.

"Wait!" the voice yelled. I didn't know what to say. I was going to retrace my steps all the way back to where she was killed.

As soon as I got out of the room, I saw a gun in my face. With that panic, I dropped mine.