The Rain In The Sky Read online

  But suddenly he doubted everything, something wrong had happened upon the Island obviously and he struggled to make sense of it.

  It just seemed a little too fantastical to be thinking of it as a biohazard leak, yet it felt equally as fantastic to even consider the concept of, dare he say it, a terrorist attack. Why would anyone attack the Island?

  “I’m coming, I want to be there during this entire operation,” the general informed. The sound of a car door shutting echoed over the phone line.

  He was already on route. He was going to have to suffer the intolerable bastard’s company all evening then… His mood soured significantly.

  “Fine, we’ll expect your presence soon,” the CEO answered with polite, yet still accommodating, disdain.

  “Don’t fuck this up Alex, I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been cooking up on this island but I’ll raze the entire island if I have to… You’re on very thin ice… You and your little pet projects, I can raze them from history quicker than you can pull your pants up…”

  The general made it sound personal and Alex didn’t know what he’d done to deserve being on such thin ice with the man, perhaps it was because he’d inconvenienced the bastard on the other end of the line? The two of them had never gelled very well from the minute they met. He suspected the old man was just hungry for anything to hang him out to dry with…

  If this entire affair wasn’t resolved soon, then the old man would get that opportunity.

  Alex hung up on him abruptly and pocketed the phone. That probably pissed him off, but Alex was beginning to lose patience.

  He stepped into the new laboratory he’d travelled to during the conversation..

  “Is she awake?” he voiced to the woman unpacking at her work station.

  “Yeah she’s awake,”

  “Responsive?”

  “She’s perfectly fine Sir,” she continued to unpack snacks and knick-knacks at the computer desk. The woman was a redhead, slightly bookish and attractive in an odd way. Quiet and timid like a mouse but fierce like a bear when the situation called for it. She had been the handler on plenty of missions and nobody else was as efficient at being a soldier’s eyes in the sky. She was dressed in a grey outfit, drab and uniform. A silver cross glistened against her small chest. She adjusted her glasses as she unloaded yet more popcorn and sweet snacks to one side of her desk.

  “Keep a close eye on her Eve, she’s a prototype…”

  “Yes Sir,” just like a teenager who was sick of being nagged about stuff she already knew.

  He hesitated, suddenly without direction. He took an awkward moment and then opted to leave the room by the way he entered.

  Just a prototype… He dwelled on that thought. Was she? Or was he just scared to admit she was finished after a decade of tweaking and perfected?

  Sky was his pet project, a female super-soldier. She was the second iteration of the same science that had created Rain, the super-soldier whom he’d seemingly lost to Encarta Island. The entire clone project was based on the DNA of his deceased daughter, a soldier who had tragically died twenty years ago. Fiona Kirkman had been a fantastic soldier, a superb markswoman and a rising star within the ranks. Her bright future had been cut dramatically short by a mysterious illness she’d contracted. Wolfparkers disease, a gruesome disease that affected the biological working of its victims. It had been utterly devastating to him and his wife for their daughter to have been cut down so brutally in her prime, especially by something as random as a disease. A cruel and debilitating disease that had set about shutting down all her bodily systems and organs as it disrupted her biological workings.

  He understood it was ethically questionable that his research on clones was based on his daughter’s life, but it had been the very work he’d started trying to cure his ill progeny that had led to the cloning breakthroughs. He had almost perfected a cure for the disease that had slowly begun to seep further and further into the modern world, he was so very-very close to abolishing it forever. It was the necessity of working with cloned cells and studying the disease’s impact upon them that led to the deal with the government. It was when the government came on board with their desires for a super soldier that the research became twisted. It became a compromise, Alex could make his clones if he could also clone them an army too. Every clone Rain corporation made was as much satisfying his desire to rectify the disease that suddenly incapacitated his daughter as it was satisfying the super soldier interest. While he had managed to isolate the genome and remove the disease from his clones, he hadn’t quite figured out how to reverse and cure the already infected. One day he hoped he would have that cure.

  The moral question of whether Rain, and Sky, were his daughters or merely reflections of his one true daughter was something he could never answer. He wasn’t even sure there was an answer and he did his very best not to dwell on it. Much like he never paid much attention to the concept of souls and what that meant for his clones. The idea of his creations being soulless was better left to philosophical minds, not his.

  Alex Kirkman found himself in his office suddenly, he hadn’t even noticed he’d travelled here till he came around from his thoughts and found himself sat upon his desk. He was absently staring out of the window into the London night sky. City lights glowed and stars twinkled in the sky. Another beautiful night in the metropolis.

  His gut had settled a little and now he just felt nervous. He was apprehensive about sending his Sky into the mess. Was she ready for it, her first field exercise? Biologically she was stable, but was she mentally? It had been the hardest thing to conquer; the cloned mind. The clones always came back to life resuming the moment they originally died, it took several weeks of gentle conditioning to achieve mental stability. It had been an inflammatory debate for many months whether the clones should be informed they were indeed clones, or whether to leave that topic well alone. Ultimately it was deemed unethical to not inform them they were clones. But it created a messy ball of human rights and contradictions in its wake.

  The giant question was whether they were even human? Was a being cooked up in a lab as much a human as a baby conceived by IVF? Were these clones the Fiona Kirkman they were based on, or were they were daughters of her’s? After numerous decades researching the science of clones perhaps Alex should’ve had answers for those questions, but he didn’t…

  He viewed them sometimes as reflections, as a being from the other side of the mirror come to life. Every time he felt he saw his daughter in them, they would do something that would seem so out of character. It was always jarring and he had to remind himself they weren’t his daughters…

  He blinked slowly and glanced at his smart watch.

  He wasn’t religious but he felt compelled to say a small prayer…

  CHAPTER ONE:

  Sky watched the plane disappear into the horizon, vanishing into a thick pink morning cloud. The slow-rising sun felt warm on her skin even if the breeze was a little cold. She turned on the spot and began uncoupling the parachute straps. She was dressed in a thick dark-grey armoured body suit, an all in one piece that was pretty stylish despite being built for function over form. It fit her perfectly, or perhaps she fit it perfectly? With a final clink the parachute straps fell to the floor. She adjusted the harness, it had ridden up slightly and caused the two holsters under her armpits to move out of line. In each holster was two pistols, handpicked Sig Sauer P226R’s. They were slightly customised with extended loading clips. Jet black, they blended nicely in the black holsters and the grey suit. She carried additional ammo clips on her utility belt, as well as a small first aid box and a concealed blade. She was tall and muscular, shapely in the right places not that she had any interest in pursuing romantic interests. She stooped and adjusted a buckle on her mid-shin length boots, before she walked purposefully to the rooftop edge. The slightly salty breeze danced through her short brown hair, it was a dark chocolate brown and fell to the top of her shoulders. She had a startling white stran
d of hair that served as something of a fringe. Her parting was slightly off centre. Her face was smooth, her eyes large and deep blue. Her eyebrows were shapely and her cheekbones were very well defined. Her lips were a little too large for her face and sent her proportions slightly off. A little faint scar ran from her left ear into the middle of cheek. It was a scar she’d never suffered personally, but something she’d inherited from the life she was derived from. She knew how it came to be, a stray bullet, but it hadn‘t been her life. It wasn’t her scar. It was Fiona’s.

  It was Sky’s conclusion that her life as a cloned soldier began the minute she first awoke in the stasis tank. Everything before that moment wasn’t part of her life, but it was part of her back-story nonetheless. Like the vast volumes of human history, it was all worthy but had only the most subtle of impacts on her present. Without the former life though she would’ve been born nothing more than an adult with the intellectual capacity of a baby. It was easy to forget that every life form would need to learn the basics of movement and language. Sky had been born with a distinct advantage of Fiona’s memories.

  Sky dragged a wayward strand of hair from her eyes and pulled it behind her ear as she peered over the edge. She had landed, purposefully, on the tallest building on the Island. She had been given the mission specifics; restore communications, investigate the potential situation on the Island and rescue survivors if applicable. She thought this was a good spot to scope out the Island before she set about completing any of those objectives.

  Encarta Island was a self contained ecosystem. It housed 283 people, of which 150 were Rain Corporation employees. The remaining numbers were family members and other related personnel. In the centre of the thirty mile wide island was the residential complex. Four tall towers of apartments with a cute, and exceptionally well maintained, park in the middle. To the East was the industrial block, the array of buildings that converted the wind farm into usable electricity for the island and also housed the giant satellite responsible for communications on and off the island. The turbines were still spinning so the island was still fully electrified.

  To the North was a large, and fantastically designed, building built from tall white panels and slices of frosted glass. Sky knew it was the Main Laboratory.

  The West was the only concession to the muddy history of the Island, the Arlow Mansion. In a thriving landscape of modern architecture stood the ugly and old fashioned mansion. The Island had originally been owned by the Arlow family, but crumbling finances forced them to sell long ago. Unfortunately, because the mansion was protected, it couldn’t be razed from the Island. Instead it had been abandoned and shuttered off. It was surrounded on all sides by a tall chain link fence in an effort to prevent anyone from visiting it. In a pale effort to try and disguise the ugliness of the building, a small shopping complex had been placed in front of it. A small cluster of shops; the atypical English corner-shop and a few general stores. There was even a clothes shop, and it didn’t just sell Rain Corporation branded items of clothing.

  To the South was a fishing pier, a bio garden where a group of scientists both raised crops for the island and also researched genetically modified crops. There was also a small but perfectly functional port.

  Sky was facing South and it took her a second to identify a strange boat-like-shape docked at the pier. She removed a set of binoculars from her utility belt, unfolding them from alongside the first aid kit. The shape warranted a better inspection. It wasn’t commercial, it looked like a military ship that had been poorly disguised as otherwise. It was her first clue.

  Interesting, she remarked to herself.

  The rest of the Island was empty. No, deserted even. A ghost town perhaps? It was rather curious but a quick glance around with the binoculars offered no explanation.

  Where is everybody? She asked herself.

  She decided that exploring this boat was probably the best place to start.

  She turned and headed for the rooftop’s door. It was locked from the inside, but it didn’t matter. She took a step back and kicked it forcefully. The door rattled and buckled a little but it didn’t yield. She kicked again. It crashed and tumbled down the small stair case.

  Sky had heightened strength and reflexes, a deliberate choice by the people who designed her. They had cultivated her from a single cell, then cherry-picked her genetic build-up and customised them to make her a super-soldier. A super-human.

  Perhaps in the next iteration Sky would be able to fly and shoot lasers from her eyes? She wanted to believe that was impossible and firmly in the realms of fiction, but who’d have thought creating a living and functioning super-clone was possible either!

  She descended the steps efficiently. The steady rhythm of her descent was militaristic.

  She took to the main stairwell and noted how every door was shut. There was no signs of a struggle, not here or anywhere else on the island. It struck her as odd. Where had everybody gone? Her initial suspicion was that the island had been attacked, but so far there hadn’t been a single indicator of one.

  She made a neat ruckus of footsteps as she headed down the numerous flights and arrived at the bottom. Nobody was disturbed by her noise, nobody came out to holler. The tower block was silent. She took the communal door and headed out.

  The morning sun was still slowly rising and it coated the park in a pink glow with elongated hazy shadows. It felt a little eerie seeing abandoned swings swaying gently in the breeze. Eerier to note not a speck of litter anywhere. It felt like a catalogue page, a perfect photograph in the flesh. She hesitated for a second and scanned around her. Still not a single soul to be seen. Just where was everybody? The million dollar question; how do you get an island’s worth of people to just disappear?

  She headed away from the park towards the pier. A quick press to her headpiece in her ear told her the communication lines were still severed. She placed restoring communications as the second item on her list of objectives. First she would investigate that mysterious boat, then when she restored communications with operations centre she would have something to report. Sky was often quite pragmatic.

  She crossed an abandoned road, noting the complete lack of visible cars or other vehicles. There were a few registered vehicles on the Island but they were mainly HGV primarily used for transport. The island wasn’t big enough to warrant many vehicles, everything needed was quite within comfortable walking distance. The island was very neat and self-contained, Sky thought to herself as she left the residential blocks behind. She was greeted by two lush green hills and a road that carved its way between them. One of the furthest points of the island was the port, of course. It was going to be a little bit of a hike. She began to jog towards the hills. As she passed a discarded bicycle, the first sign of potential distress on the island, she considered using it. It certainly looked useable, but instead she decided to keep jogging. It would warm her muscles up and she quite enjoyed exercise.

  It was her choice for a state of zen, much like it had it had been Fiona’s.

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  The boat was not a military type she could identify. The paintjob and small-time customisations had successfully obscured its original guise, even if it hadn‘t managed to pass it off as a commercial boat. It was painted in a gaudy and ugly menagerie of graffiti symbols. The insides offered no further clues either. No fish nets or any other fishing gear. No weapons either, no anything. It was a boat mysteriously absent of any purpose. If that wasn’t suspicious she didn’t know what was.

  She hopped back off and landed on the wooden deck.

  “What are you?” She asked herself aloud. She had a soft very-English accent, speaking with a little high-class accent that had caused Fiona to be mocked continuously for. She had been named as the posh girl, the assumed socialite playing solider. The posh girl who had been written off by her comrades before she even started, but had then gone and wiped away their smug little smiles when she outdid every singl
e one of them on the firearm training. The same posh girl who had outlasted majority of her male comrades on the endurance tests too. That posh girl, the one who had surprised them all… Sky had that very same voice as her. And that firearm training too.

  She was just stepping away when she spied something lodged in the gaps between the planks. It was golden and as she plucked it up she identified it was a bullet. A discarded bullet, like someone had cocked the barrel and ejected it. Carelessly…

  “Hmm…” she appraised it. No distinguishing features. And while she was super-human she wasn’t quite capable of identifying fingerprints by eyesight, that would’ve been arguably more useful than the potential eye-lasers.

  She glanced back to the boat. Who exactly had come to the Island? Whoever they were, they came armed. If they came armed, they came prepared for a fight. To fight who? Perhaps they were aiming to overthrow the island? She scanned the boat again, just how many had come aboard the Island and how had they managed to overthrow the security detail…?

  Something elsewhere in the port fell over and crashed to the floor loudly. She bolted up onto her feet and instinctively unbuttoned the holsters. Whatever had happened was on the other side of the nearby building. There was a brief indistinguishable noise, a muffled shout perhaps. Then nothing. The return of the silence and nothingness made her senses tingle. She hesitated while listening intently, only there was no following sounds but that didn’t fill Sky with confidence. She set off to investigate. The source of the noise was around the nearest building as she theorised and it appeared to be a door that had fell on its face.

  She stopped at the corner and glanced up and down the cluster of industrial buildings. There was a slight scuffling sound and abrasive scraping coming from nearby. She crept forward gingerly. Within several steps towards the fallen door she reached a dirty and obscured window. She glanced quickly but couldn’t see anything inside. The inside was dark and far from inviting. She pressed on to the doorway. A strong smell of fouling fish greeted her.