CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They coughed as black smoke engulfed them both, the heat from the explosion piercing their already tender skin. Damien stood up with great difficulty as the smoke began to clear, letting him see the damage that was done to his home.

He stood up with great difficulty as he bled from his leg, holding his now blackened wall to support himself. He was leaving when he saw his attacker laying on the floor, with a huge piece of the table lodged in his leg.

Damien was about to leave him there when he called out to him.

“Please…” he said, holding his hand out to him.

Damien wasn’t sure if he wanted to help someone whose mission had been to kill him. he was about to leave him there when he suddenly changed his mind. It was clear the attacker had been following someone’s orders.

Grabbing what was left of the table, he pulled it up having to put all his strength into it because of how heavy it was. He succeeded in finally lifting it before he pushed it to the side and it landed with a thud.

He grabbed the man’s hand and pulled him up. The man swayed under his weight as the table had very nearly crushed his leg. Damien swung his hand over his shoulder and held up some of his weight as he helped them both leave the house.

Damien spotted his car which was parked a few miles away. He thanked his stars for not parking it in the garage this once and headed over to it.

He out the masked man on the passenger seat of the car, he carefully lifted his wounded leg and tucked it into the car.

“Who sent you?” he finally asked the man. He did not answer for a while, contemplating whether, to tell the truth, or not. But he realized that Damien had helped him instead of leaving him to die in that house, plus his cover was already blown.

With shaky hands, the man lifted his mask and threw it on the floor. Damien gasped when he saw who it was.

“Luke?” he called out in disbelief. There was no way Luke would’ve betrayed him like that. This only meant that all those while he was being monitored.

“Who sent you?” Damien asked, his voice strained with the hurt of being betrayed by someone he trusted.

“It was Nathan, I had no choice. He threatened to kill my family,” Luke answered, bowing his head in shame and unable to look Damien in the eye.

“I’m guessing he told you to take me to the wrong location?”

Luke nodded, his face downcast.

“You know where Harry is,” Damien said, it was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, I’ll tell you everything,” Luke pleaded.

Without a word Damien got into the car, they were flying down to his hometown to save his child, even if that was the last thing that he did.

****

Damien sped into the building, half expecting to see Nathan there. He had flown down to their house the second he drove off. Luke had told him that Nathan’s lab was hidden just below his garage.

He had found that hard to believe. That the one place he had searched for nearly two years was right there under his nose. As Damien took two steps a time before stopping at their door.

He didn’t have to knock for the door was already wide open. He pushed it further open with caution. There were broken glasses everywhere as he carefully stepped over them all. He went further into the room to see the mass destruction that dwelled in the space.

A few steps and he left, he didn’t want to wonder what happened there, or to Nathan, he was there for a different reason.

Damien went to the garage, which was already open, indicating that Nathan could be down there. He brought out the gun he had tucked into the band of his pants and held it in front of him.

She found the already open door on the floor and lowered himself into it. He crawled through till he got to another open door and pushed himself through.

He was shocked at what he saw. It was Lauren tied to a chair with Nathan beside her, tied to a chair too.

“Leave!” Lauren screamed at him. but he stood there, not understanding how it was possible that the woman he had seen die in front of him was alive and strapped to a chair, someone somewhere had to be playing a cruel choke on him.

“You can’t be here,” he whispered, taking a step back as she kept shaking her head. He wondered if Luke had directed him here on purpose to make a mockery of him, he was after all working with Nathan but that was the confusing part. Nathan was strapped to the chair too and he could barely keep his eyes open.

“What do you mean I can’t be here?” Lauren asked angrily at him.

“You should be dead,” he whispered. “I saw you die with my own eyes.” A tear fell from his eye as he tugged his hair in confusion.

“He’s playing with us all Damien, that’s not even the real Nathan we’ve been with all this time,” she said, trying to make me understand.

“It was my clone you saw die, not me,” she said shaking her head “I’m here and very much alive and I need you to get out of here before he comes.”

“He was not the real Nathan?” Damien asked, stuttering as he looked at the Nathan that was strapped to the chair. He looked like he barely had any life left in him.

“Yes, Nathan’s clone had him locked up here for God knows how long! Our Nathan would never do something as cruel as this, I should’ve known.”

Damien walked towards them instead “I don’t know what is going on but I’m getting you all the hell out of here!”

“NO!!” Lauren screamed, “You have to leave!”

But Damien didn’t listen, and in his bid to save them, he didn’t see Nathan’s clone come up from behind him with a sinister look on his face and hit his head with a hammer.

*****

Lauren watched the clone tie Damien up, and she cursed under her breath. He should’ve just listened to her and left when she asked him to.

Nathan was about to pass out beside her when the clone brought out a syringe that was filled with a colorless liquid.

“Leave him alone,” she yelled when he got close to Nathan that seemed to be unaware of his surroundings.

The clone chuckled and continued what he was doing. She pressed some of the liquid into the air before piercing the needle into Nathan’s neck.

Lauren thought he was trying to kill Nathan when he stopped breathing for a couple of seconds, but after a while, his body spasmed before he coughed and opened his eyes. Lauren looked at the clone. That was how he’d done it.

That was how he managed to keep the real Nathan alive and under here all this while. He wouldn’t let him die but he wouldn’t let him fully live either. She glared at the clone.

“You’re just so evil aren’t you,” she spat out “This is how you treat someone that created you? All for what. Do you not have any compassion in that heart of yours? At least to your owner.”

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? If you must know, you’ll die anyway, so stop feeling sorry for him.” He squats in front of her and took her to chin roughly. “You should be worried about yourself honey.” He bent towards her and Lauren pulled her head back but he grabbed her tighter.

“Why do you deny me my right my dear wife,” he said sweetly like he was in love with her and they were the perfect couple.

“Don’t call me that ever!” she yelled.

“So much for being friends since childhood and you didn’t even know when he was no longer there. You believed so easily take he would do all the bad things I did, what kind of friends were you?” he asked, disgust written all over his face like he was one to judge.

“Why did you kill Harry?” she asked instead of replying to him “He was just a little kid that nothing to you,” she whispered.

“Well if I left him alive what would be the fun in that?” he asked, he stood up and went over to Damien before injecting the same liquid into him. he coughed slightly before opening his eyes, blood dripping slowly from his wound.

Damien looked from the clone to Nathan sitting on the chair. There were two Nathans and then Lauren that he thought were dead.

“What kind of sick game is this!” he yelled making the clone turn his attention back to him.

The clone stood in the middle of the three “Oh, it’s a game that just properly begun.” He clapped his hands in excitement. “I’ve been waiting for this part since I started all this, we can’t let Nathan have all the fun, can we?”

“What do you want?” Damien asked him.

The clone smiled before answering. “Nothing but a bit of fun,” he answered truthfully. He clapped again, once this time “Let the fun begin!”

“Right here is a love triangle,” The clone said, gesturing between the three of them. He pointed at Damien “You love her and Nathan loves her too but she chose you, which broke our poor Nathan’s heart so I decided to help him, he made me after all.”

“Something I’ve regretted since you opened your eyes,” Nathan said, his head tilted to the side.

“Oh, don’t be so unkind to me. Everything I did was for you. I knew you wouldn’t have the mind to break them both apart so I volunteered and did all the dirty work,” the clone said, a hint of hurt in his heart.

“Unkind?” Nathan laughed “You chained me down here, under my own house like an animal for years, you hurt my friends the people I love so much and you’re telling me that you’re doing this for me? you can take your kindness and shove it up to your ass,” Nathan said, his voice rising high with each other as he was unable to contain his anger.

“If that you wish then,” the clone said turning away y from them all “Just remember you pushed me to do this Nathan.” He turned back to them but this time he was holding a similar device to the one Damien had caught Luke with.

“You all have a bomb attached to the back of your chairs,” he started, “But don’t worry you all won’t die, not today at least.”

“Look, all this can just end now. Set us free, and we won’t tell a soul what happened,” Lauren said. “You can go far away, start a life there, and… I don’t know, just let us go,” she cried.

“That was sweet love but no thanks, there’s no fun in doing that. I can always make a clone to replace anyone that dies and no one will suspect a thing.” He looked at Nathan. “All thanks to you, my genius.”

Nathan struggled in his seat but couldn’t do anything other than that.

“Now, I’ll leave you all alone, you have 30 minutes to decide who gets out here alive.”