Thermophile

Seventeen: Goals

I floated in the endless darkness, a vast space devoid of anything. The light feeling was the best one I'd ever felt so far, an eternity in here wouldn't bother me at all.

"...Five." An echo.

The same voice spouted something incoherent and sounded far away.

"Thirty-Five."

But like a rubber band snapping back into place, the voice suddenly became clear and loud. It was as if it was very close to me.

I took deep steady breaths to calm my surprised heart and slowly opened my eyes. My sight focused on the fluorescent light and then to the orange pipes above it.

"You good?" I turned my head to the direction of the voice and came contact with a pair of amethyst eyes.

"Your face is still as beautiful as ever." I got up, not minding the momentary vertigo and hugged my friend. "Elliot."

He held me as much if not tighter. "We have two additional agendas now beside our main goal of living in the norm."

"Mmm." It had been so long since I last saw him that I thought... Our last encounter was Nathan's betrayal.

I lightly pushed him to end our embrace but he kept his hands on mine. Speaking of that booger Nathan, "Do you know where he is?"

Elliot shook his head. "No, they are masking their location wherever they are." He looked down on our hands, a wrinkle appearing between his perfectly shaped and positioned eyebrows. "I fear that they might be close and we won't have any fight if ever they find us."

I mimicked his expression. How could he say that? We were indestructible. "Why? There's only him."

He looked up and worry was evident on his face. "He managed to make others, Thirty-Five." His hold on my hands tightened. "He slaughtered all the people in the laboratories throughout the years and took over, it was my luck that he wasn't around when I decided to get you out. Our only advantage now is that their cloned DNA is only fifty percent of yours."

I processed the information Elliot gave me and didn't talk.

I looked around and noticed that we were still in the grocery slash mall we took shelter in earlier and seated on the same orange couch.

He let go of my hands and passed me a bottle of water.

I accepted and unscrewed the cap. "How many do you think were created?" I asked him before taking a drink.

"More or less five hundred." He paused. "We should get going, there are wires."

I looked at him questioningly.

"Wires means there is the presence of electricity, when there is electricity there is transfer of communication and data, thus they can easily locate us whenever we are within their zone."

Ah.

My eyes landed on the burns on his shirt. "Nice prints."

Elliot stood up and began to walk away. "Your fault." Were his words that echoed throughout the place.

As we were already at a shopping area, we decided to change clothes but Elliot told me that the one I was currently wearing was heat proof up to four-hundred degrees Celsius and suggested I kept wearing it.

So, no wardrobe change for me, just a pair of white combat boots and white trench coat.

"As I was saying earlier, we have three objectives now."

"Okay."

We were a little bit farther from the building we came from and we were walking at a normal speed. The piled snow didn't get any thinner, instead it got thicker as we trudged beyond. It came up to my mid-thigh while it was a couple of inches above Elliot's knees.