To Be A Champion

Chapter 30: Dear Alice

"Frances, can you see us?" Sam pants. His grip on my hand is so tight it's damn near painful.

We're running across a series of metal catwalks, which causes our footsteps to echo so loudly it hurts. I'm breathing hard, my eyes still burning. I keep trying to think it through, grasp everything that Cassandra said about me, about what I am, why I was her favorite. But I can't. It's too much.

Too much!

I thought I was ready to know about the Feive Project. I thought I couldn't possibly be more horrified to learn more about it after learning I was a clone that was artificially inseminated and birthed by a woman who genuinely believes she is my mother. I thought learning that I was designed for a specific purpose, that my entire existence was due to a science project, was the worst thing I could discover. I was so sure that nothing could shock me more than fact that I'm deteriorating because the project failed...

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

I look around at the vast, rocky cavern we're running through. The rocks are covered in red fungus, overflowing to the point that some rocks are nothing but crimson.

"This isn't unsettling at all," Sam mumbles, looking at the covered cavern walls. The color seems to shine like a red light in his eyes. Onyx eyes flicker back to me, a small bit of resentment still lingering in them, only thinly covered by concern. I sniffle and blink back stinging tears before pulling my hand from his. He lets me.

"More drones are coming," Casper says, his green eyes wide with fear. "There's at least a dozen chasing us now!"

"Why would they even make drones like this? Were they expecting to be overrun by zombies?" He pauses. "Oh, wait. They probably thought their immortality experiments could go wrong and... yeah, I get it."

"I can see you on cams," Frances says. "You're over one of the underground storage bays. The fungus overran that part of the base weeks ago."

"We always thought the scientists created the red fungus. An experiment gone wrong." Casper wipes the sweat from his forehead. "But from the data log in there, it seems that they brought it here."

Janine lets out a dry cough. She's looking worse. She was sweating bullets a few minutes ago. Now though, she's stopped despite still running hard–a sign of her dehydration getting even more severe. "Indeed. And the data log specified Mor Island as the fungus' original home. And according to Pro. Feive, she replicated something similar and placed it in Five and the other clones within her project."

"And very nearly undetectable unless you know what you're looking for," Nicole adds. "Must've been, considering how many times Singer's blood has been sampled in Abel and no one ever found anything suspicious. And it can't be contagious or recognized by the V-Types seeing how many times they and regular zoms have tried to kill her. It might be a good idea to figure out just how similar whatever Feive created is to the red fungus."

"The red fungus data logs need a retina scan," Frances says. "I should be able to register my own retina scan in the system and use it and the passwords for Feive's files and Van Ark's. But I won't be able to do it before you leave. You need to get Janine to safety. Casper, you're close to the high-security labs. Do you think-"

Casper's eyes widen. "Dr. Leeland's experiment?" He bites his bottom lip, although the zapping electricity of the drones' taser rods gets him nodding within seconds. "A risk, but it's our best chance. Everyone, there's a stairwell built into the rock wall. We're going to head down it, towards the prototype testing labs."

Something flies by Shona's head, and she helps. It jams inside into the metal railing of the catwalk. I only get a glimpse of it before I'm running past it.