CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The trio just stared at each other, unbelieving of the situation they just put themselves in. Nathan looked away feeling responsible for everything that happened and putting them in this situation.

“Don’t apologize,” Damien said suddenly “I can see it in your eyes Nathan but don’t apologize, it wasn’t your fault he turned out psycho.”

“If I didn’t mess around with the experiment then we wouldn’t all be here.”

“It doesn’t matter, you’ve had your fair share of suffering. I can’t begin to imagine how long you’ve been here. You don’t need to add guilt to the list of things you have to endure,” Damien told him and sighed.

He didn’t know why Nathan had been messing around with clones but it had cost him so much. Hopefully, if they all survived after this, they would have a proper conversation.

Lauren suddenly laughed, causing the two men to look at her with worry. “I married him you know,” she said to no one in particular.

Nathan glanced at Damien with worry and he shook his head to tell her to let it be and express whatever she was feeling.

“Harry’s dead you know,” she said making Damien turn sharply to her.

“What do you mean Harry’s dead?” Damien asked.

Lauren laughed bitterly, “He killed him.”

Damien tried to stand up, but the rope tied around him stopped him. “He wouldn’t dare!” Damien roared. There was no way the kid he had held just once after he found out that he was his was gone from him, forever. That was a pain he could never recover from.

“I saw it myself you know,” Lauren continued, laughing in the process. “I couldn’t breathe for a solid ten seconds.” She looked at Nathan now for emphasis. “It was like my entire world had stopped and I was just stuck in the middle of it all.”

Lauren turned back to stare at the bare wall “He was barely two, had only seen his father two times his entire life,” she broke into tears now, not bothering to hide it. She cried uncontrollably as Damien tried to process the fact that he would never see his little boy again.

“I didn’t know you both had a kid,” Nathan said, his voice low.

“I didn’t know myself until a couple of weeks ago,” Damien said, regret in his voice. “I should have held me that last time. If only I…”

The clone entering cut him off. “I see you’ve all concluded.” He looked around impatiently like they were wasting his time. “So who is it?” he asked.

“Me,” Damien answered. He didn’t have a life to live anymore, and he couldn’t let Lauren or Nathan die. Maybe this would make up for the bad father he had been. He deserved to die alongside Harry.

“Don’t listen to him!” Lauren shouted. “It’s me. Take me instead!”

“I created this mess in the first place so I should be the one to fix it,” Nathan said.

The clone laughed like they were all cracking jokes instead of offering themselves to be killed instead. “You all are cute but…I think we’ll just do this my way.”

He walked into the hallway, and into one of the transparent rooms that Jane was sitting down, clutching Harry to her chest.

Jane eyed the man that opened the door that she learned was just a clone of Nathan. After what Nathan had told her when she found him strapped to the wall, she had become scared of the man that was slowly advancing towards her.

She held Harry tighter fearing for their lives. She didn’t know whose kid she was but she wasn’t letting this crazy clone hurt him. It was crazy how the child’s green eyes reminded her of Damien, they would have been married now.

“It’s time,” he said and motioned to the door. She didn’t dare question anything that he said for fear that he would hurt her. she carried the child with her and left the room before following the clone to wherever he was going.

They finally reached the open space just at the entrance of the lab when she halted. She saw Damien strapped to a chair with Nathan and another girl.

“My dear friends,” the clone announced, “you just got a new competitor.”

Damien stared in shock at Jane. There was no way she was here, alive and holding his son. She was supposed to be dead, wasn’t she? And Harry too, or maybe that were just clones.

“H-Harry,” Lauren stammered, she shifted in her chair trying to reach him, she prayed that that was indeed her child and not her mind or the clone playing games on her.

“I would let you guys catch up but we do not have much time,” the clone said, making everyone quiet. “This game is simple, who’s going to survive? Now since you couldn’t choose earlier, I made the stakes higher. Each of you will choose who will die or the baby and the lady…” he pointed to Jane who instinctively moves a step back and away from him.

“Will die and of course, I will do the honors of pulling the trigger,” he finished.

Nobody said anything. They knew that he was right, so much was at stake here especially when Harry turned towards Damien and said “Dada.” That right there broke Damien’s and Lauren’s hearts.

If they still needed confirmation that the kid she was carrying was their actual child, then this was it. Damien looked at Jane maintaining eye contact, he had to find a way to get her to release them.

Jane caught what Damien was trying to tell her but with the baby that she carrying it was practically hard to get anything done with him.

Before anyone could do anything, the clone brought out a gun, and before they could process what was about to happen, a shot rang in the air.

Lauren was relieved when it wasn’t shot in Harry’s direction, but when she looked at the others, they were looking at her in shock. That was when she looked down and saw the blood that was currently seeping through her dress.

“No!” she saw Damien scream, his voice felt like he was moving far away from her. she touched her stomach where the bullet had taken home but felt nothing, just her hand stained with blood.

The clone was about to shoot again when there was a commotion coming from the tunnel. As he turned to check what was happening, Jane put Harry’s face on her chest and stabbed the clone on the neck with a broken glass that she had gotten earlier.

He fell to the floor and held his now bleeding neck as officers on uniform came in through the tunnel. Damien sighed in relief as one of the officers started to untie them. Damien although exhausted ran to Lauren.

Her eyes were fluttering close as he untied her and yelled for them to call an ambulance. An officer took her from Damien’s wailing figure and through the tunnel. Nathan was the next to go, his body already giving up on him from lack of use.

Damien turned then to a tear-stricken Jane and Harry. He knew that he owed Jane an apology and an explanation, but this was not the time for that. He carried Harry and urged Jane to go into the tunnel first.

The officers struggled with the clone and just as they were about to cuff him, he took the gun from one of their holsters and shot it. Damien was just entering the tunnel when the bullet hit him and he fell, Harry falling with him but Jane was fast enough to take Harry from him before he fell to the ground.

The officers finally cuffed the clone, tasing him in the process, which resulted in him losing consciousness.

Jane watched Damien fall to the floor but made a point to hide Harry’s eyes from seeing it all. She did not want the scene before to be the lasting memory he would have of his dad. She crawled into the tunnel and soon she was standing outside. Loads of police cars were parked as they investigated the entire house.

A nurse walked up to her immediately and tried to take Harry away from her but she held onto him tighter. The kid was the only one she would have of Damien if anything happened to him and she would do anything to keep him.

She sat close to one of the ambulances as they checked her and Harry to make sure they were okay and didn’t sustain any injuries.

Jane saw when they put Damien on a stretcher, his torso bleeding as wheeled him into the ambulance and she climbed in with them. She had to make sure that he was okay. She watched them start cleaning up the wound and he winced.

Damien turned to look at Harry in Jane’s arms. His son was safe and that was all that mattered to him.

“I need you to take care of him in case anything happens to me,” Damien said as blood pooled around his mouth.

Jane held his hand to her chest as she cried “You’ll be fine, you need to stay alive to take care of your kid, you hear me?” She was trying to be strong for both of them. It wasn’t until his hand went completely limp in her hand that she started crying hysterically.

She cried all the way to the hospital and watched as they wheeled him into the emergency room. She sat outside the room with Harry crying in her hands, it was like they both understood the pain that they were feeling.

Jane remembered the first time she saw Damien. It was at a club, he was drunk, way past his limit as he told her how his childhood love had broken up with him.

She had shared more drinks with him, absorbing his pain over plenty of bottles of alcohol. That they had ended up in his house after she called an uber as they were both unable to drive which was a big understatement.

After fumbling with their clothes and barely being able to remove them, they ended up in his bathroom where they puked their throats out before passing out on the cold floor.

They started hanging out after that before Damien proposed to her. she always felt like a rebound to him but she didn’t mind, she was the one getting married to him and not whoever his ex was.

Everything was perfect until her last visit when she’d been abducted by unknown men and woken up in the lab. To this day she couldn’t tell why or how they’d found her.

The door opened and Jane was on her feet immediately.

“We performed the surgery successfully and he’s in a steady condition, let’s home he stays that way. He’ll be transferred to another room, please come fill out his form at the desk. She nodded.

She turned when she heard the door beside them and she turned to see a tired-looking Nathan. His eyes were sunken and he looked like he needed food and sleep.

He walked up to her, his steps slow and uneven. He stopped in front of her and asked, “How is he doing?”

“The doctor said he’s in a stable condition, so everything is alright, he’ll be awake soon,” she answered, the last part more for her assurance more than his.

“We should come back or them tomorrow,” he said.

Jane nodded in affirmation.

“Come, there’s a police car waiting to take us to Damien’s parents. We’ll be staying there for a while as they conduct a proper investigation and also to be close to them,” he said, gesturing towards the door at the end.

“How is she?” Jane asked.

He merely nodded but there was no hope in his eyes, “She’s stable.”