Fear of God (Trials of Strength Book 1) (14 page)

*

‘
Lucas,’ a
hushed voice spoke urgently. ‘Lucas! Wake up!’

My eyes snapped open, and
in front of me Anna looked terrified. She was sweating and panting,
her arm on my shoulder. I went to ask her what was wrong, but she
brought a finger to her lips and shook her head. Instead she pulled
out the picture of my father and pointed to it.

‘
I know where
he is,’ she mouthed.

I bolted upright,
shocked. What? She knew where he was? Everything fled from my mind,
and when she started running down one of the tunnels, I followed
without hesitation. Had she found him? I never asked, keeping my
mouth shut as we headed deeper into the tunnels. The corners became
sharper, and the dark felt denser and more prominent. We sprinted,
Anna turned faster than I could catch up with her, and she started
calling my name to relay where she was.

Finally I caught up. I
had entered a high ceilinged room with the same sandy walls and
weak yellow light as the rest of the tunnels, but the pipes wrapped
around the walls till they reached the one in front of me. That
wall was different. Sitting almost ten feet up was what looked like
a sideways glass dome, jutting out into the room like a balcony. It
was dark, and I looked around wildly for Anna.

Apart from the
entranceway I’d come through, there was another wide doorway on the
left side of the room, and Anna stood in the threshold. She looked
stricken and as white as a sheet. I was about to call her when iron
bars dropped down in front of her. From behind me, I heard the way
I’d come in also be barred off and I was trapped.

Bright light filled the
room in a flash, as the glass shrouded balcony lit up in a blinding
white. I couldn’t see much, but a man with grey hair and green eyes
stepped into view. He looked old, the lines on his face like
craters. I looked quickly at Anna who backed away.

‘
I’m sorry,’
she whispered, and disappeared into the darkness.

I heard a crackle, like
static from a set of speakers, but I couldn’t see them through the
black. I looked back to the man and almost collapsed.

‘
Welcome,’ a
voice I knew better than my own greeted me, ‘Subject
17.’

My father was alive and
well.

The
Enemy

‘
Dad?’ I
whispered, dumbstruck.

The man above me just
continued to smile sickeningly. It was almost as if he had no idea
who I was, like he stared into a cage at a pet. It was him though,
with his almost white-grey hair and dark green eyes that glinted.
The lines on his face were as dark and ominous as the wide smile
plastered on his lips. I continued to stare, and the silence was
broken by a rattle of clinking metal.

I dove backwards just in
time.

A screaming figure came
barrelling out of the darkness cast by the glass balcony. I watched
from the floor as my mother came to a halt, held back by the chains
that wrapped around her wrists and ankles, trailing back into the
darkness.

‘
Mum?’ I
gasped.

Seeing her like this
reminded me of what I had lost. The creature looked similar, with
dark brown hair and hazel eyes, but the warmth those eyes held was
gone. My heart pounded in my chest and I heard my father speaking
to someone. I was grabbed by two men in complete black, their faces
hidden under balaclavas. They dragged me from the floor and bound
my wrists behind my back with cuffs before I could blink. They
pulled the gun from where it was still tucked in my trousers, and I
cursed myself for not even thinking to grab it.

‘
Bring him
here,’ my father said coldly.

I looked back at Richard
Bishop, and a sick feeling settled in my stomach. What the hell was
going on? Part of me already knew.

The bars that had dropped
in the doorway Anna vanished through had been raised, and a short
staircase lay to the right. I was pulled up, pushed round my father
and bolted with another set of cuffs to a chair. I sat dazed. The
lights hurt my eyes, the brightness a startling contrast to the
soft yellow ones that illuminated the tunnels. The room was also
clean, tiled, and organised. I faced my father, behind him sat the
door I’d come through, with a desk and chair to the right. A
computer sat atop the desk, and bookshelves lined the wall to my
right. To my left was all glass, staring down to where my mother
rattled furiously against her chains.

My eyes drifted back to
Richard, and his smile had never left its place. The two men
positioned themselves behind me.

‘
Hello, son,’
my father said. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘
What… What
the hell is going on?’ I asked bewildered.

‘
I think
you’ve already guessed that, Lucas,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘Come
on now. Say it.’

I shook my head. I knew,
I did, but the words refused to come.

‘
Say it!’ he
shouted, and I jumped.

‘
You, you’re
the enemy,’ I whispered. ‘You did this. You work for
them.’

‘
Come now,
son,’ he laughed, the angry burst gone. ‘I not only work for them,
I lead them.’

It was as if the words
shattered the air. My lungs gasped for it, but each breath felt
like shards of glass tore my throat.

‘
No,’ I
whispered. ‘No.’

‘
Yes,’ Richard
enunciated. ‘Don’t fight it, Lucas, son. You can’t.’

‘
Why?’ I
cried.

‘
It’s what
I’ve done all my life,’ he said as he paced left and right. ‘I have
worked so hard for this. I want to see it grow.’

‘
What?’ I
asked.

Richard sighed and shook
his head, as if the answer was obvious.

‘
Let me tell
you a story, son,’ he said brightly, and leaned against his desk.
‘A little over twenty years ago, when I was around your age, I was
placed as the head of a new group, a top secret science division
for the government. Of course, we operated on the fringe of
science, trying things that, well, civilisation would
abhor.’

‘
But you’re a
surgeon,’ I gasped stupidly.

‘
No,’ he
laughed. ‘I was never a surgeon, that’s why I told your mother
never to bring you to visit me, see?’

‘
Mum!’ I
gasped. ‘You did this to her! You turned her into a monster, you
son of a bitch!!’

I struggled against the
chair, but once the words escaped my mouth, my father crossed over
and brought his hand painfully across my jaw. It stung, and I
glared up into his eyes.

‘
Your mother
was weak,’ he spat. ‘She knew, oh yes, she
knew
what I had in store, what I
needed to do. But when it finally came she panicked and tried to
stop it. A heart attack? Please.’

‘
What did you
do?’ I growled.

‘
Once we
intercepted the call your mother made to the college, I removed
her,’ he said casually. ‘Unfortunately it was too late, and you
walked right through the door. To stop any further calls, we
blocked all outgoing ones and took control.’

I made some sort of
choking sound and he stared at me, without warmth or
care.

‘
Luckily your
mother is far more useful like this than she was before,’ he
said.

‘
You bastard!’
I screamed. ‘She loved you! How could you do this!?
Why!?’

Richard’s eyes
flashed but I met his gaze. My anger was back, and this
man
, had destroyed lives,
and for what?

‘
As I was
saying,’ he continued, ‘our practices were frowned upon. Even our
superiors became concerned after a while. They shut us
down.’

His voice held cold fury,
and I almost laughed.

‘
So, Daddy got
fired?’ I said.

That time his fist
brought blood from my mouth.

‘
Watch your
tongue, boy,’ he snarled. ‘It was no matter. Around the time this
town was built, a century ago, the government built these tunnels
first and used them for their dodgy experiments, hidden, with a
town as camouflage. The perfect place to be ground zero, just block
the exits and voila.’

‘
This was a
few months ago right?’ I asked. ‘That’s when you came to
town.’

‘
Yes and no,’
he smiled. ‘I’ve been here for twenty years, readying for this
experiment in secret. But when the government decided we were too
much of a risk and wanted us dissolved, I called in a chunk of my
forces. The town welcomed us warmly, well, in saying that, they
never bothered their backsides with us. It was perfect.’

I grimaced. We were our
own worst enemies.

‘
I know what
you’re thinking, son. If only you had seen the signs,’ Richard
chuckled. ‘Well, it’s what humans do best, no? You’ve seen it for
yourself.’

He was right. I
remembered back to how the group of survivors had acted in the
beginning. Vacant, easily manipulated and desperate to deny the new
world they faced. It wasn’t so hard to believe they had already
done the same by ignoring the newcomers.

‘
Wait,’ I
said, ‘we’ve lived here all my life, how…’

‘
How did I
know I would need this place when those idiots in power shut us
down?’ he laughed. ‘Always have a backup, son. I have this place,
and the government can’t touch us. Not without admitting we were
theirs in the first place anyway,
lots
of skeletons in this closet. So
I made sure we stayed close to this base, just in case.’

‘
What have you
done to the town?’ I asked.

‘
Now that
would be telling now wouldn’t it,’ he smiled. ‘All in good time,
son, you’re almost ready.’

Before I could ask what
he meant, he nodded to the guard on my right, and a door opened
then closed.

‘
You see,’ my
father said, ‘you’re the reason I’m doing this. This is all for
you, your future. I’m giving you a gift.’

‘
A gift?’ I
scoffed. ‘Don’t trouble yourself,
Dad
.’

‘
I’ve told you
to watch that tongue,’ he whispered. ‘Now watch it. Lose that
anger, it does nothing.’

‘
Why did your
bosses ditch you?’ I asked.

‘
My project,
eh, led to a few mistakes,’ he winced. ‘I believe you’ve met a few
of them.’

‘
The people
topside,’ I said, he nodded. ‘But how? Why are the rest of the
people down here and I not like them?’

Richard laughed as if I’d
told him a great joke.

‘
I thought
that would be obvious,’ he said. ‘Each of you has a part to play. I
thought Chris would have figured that out by now. Oh, I loved it,
he thought bringing everyone down here was the safest and under our
noses place.’

‘
You wanted
him to think that,’ I said.

Richard Bishop nodded,
and the guard who had left returned. He handed my father a syringe,
returned behind me and two sets of arms pinned me to the
chair.

‘
You’ve done
this to me before,’ I gasped. My nightmare flashed through my
mind.

It was like a
window had been opened and I no longer saw it as a nightmare, but
as a series of events that
had
happened. The man in my dreams cleared. I knew
when Chris, Anna and I had entered that place what it meant, but I
could never have imagined it was my father that had done it. He
advanced with the menacing glint back in his eyes and a smile on
his lips.

‘
Yes, my son,’
he chuckled. ‘The first time I had to watch you like a hawk
afterwards, we drugged you, but I had to make sure that you had
indeed buried it in your subconscious, blocked it out like I hoped
you would. Predictability, that’s your weakness, son.’

‘
Please,’ I
whispered and struggled. ‘Dad, don’t!’

He ignored me. Plunging
the syringe into my neck and I flinched. I waited for the moment I
burst into flames, but it never came.

‘
There’s no
fire,’ I gasped.

‘
What are you
doing?’ my father said. ‘You look like you’re trying to shit
yourself.’

I blinked,
surprised.

‘
In my
nightmare, I burst into flames after cutting my wrists trying to
escape,’ I said.

I hadn’t realised that
either, in my dream my wrists always bled and there we pools of
blood on the ground. Pools that weren’t, in reality,
there.

‘
Dreams, my
boy,’ Richard laughed. ‘Filled with artistic flair.’

‘
What is
that!?’ I screamed. ‘What are you doing to me?’

‘
All in good
time,’ he repeated as he turned to the guards. ‘Go get
her.’

The same guard as before
disappeared, and we stayed in silence. I wanted to ask more
questions, but my father’s face said it would be useless. The guard
returned, and another set of footsteps had joined him. The woman
was tall and her smile wide. Her hair was violet and her lips
matched. Her eyes must have been contacts because those too were
the same.