Chapter 17

"Ok now what the fuck is this?" Said Camus as he walked into the cosy home of Leon Silverburg.

"My wife's out so we can talk for a bit longer than I anticipated. She wanted a quiet night in but the office called her over." Said Leon, without even looking at Camus, just leading him into a cavernous sitting room, the furniture was old but incredibly comfortable and well made, the walls were a dark polished wood and against the wall was a huge flat screen TV. "She thinks I don't work you know." He said, grinning and pouring himself some brandy, he tilted the bottle towards Camus in offering, the young policeman opted to instead repeat.

"What the fuck is this?" Leon laughed

"Dear God boy, I credited you with at least some intelligence."

"What's the supposed to mean?" Camus asked angrily

"It means, Bobby, that I thought you of all people would have been able to figure out what was going on here."

"Wha…? I feel you may be overestimating me a bit." Scoffed the young man, slightly taken aback by being called Bobby, it wasn't a normal occurrence.

"Well I don't think I am." Leon said, sipping his brandy "Man, this stuff tastes like moose piss."

"Well buy some good stuff, you do live in a fucking mansion." Said Camus, silently surprised that he wasn't smacking some skulls.

Camus wasn't a violent man, but he didn't like being shunted around without being told what was going on.

"Well my wife wants to save up for a Caribbean cruise, and we need spending money, I'm thinking of buying a house over there." Said the middle aged man

"Yeah, its really nice over there during Winter, great way to get away from the- hey wait a minute! Stop distracting me! Why am I here!?"

"Have a seat Bobby."

"Its Camus."

"Oh, so you actually prefer being addressed by your second name?" He said, slightly puzzled

"That's odd." Camus didn't answer, but just sat down in one of the old but comfortable chairs. Leon obviously saw this as an indication to begin.

He sat down also, his brandy discarded on the table next to his couch.

"Well, it all started with Luca Blight's father."

"What started? What are you actually explaining to me?" Asked Camus

"Shu didn't tell you?" Leon said, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"No he didn't, enlighten me." Camus replied, more than a little dangerously. Unperturbed, Leon leaned back and said.

"I'm explaining to you why the Highland Mafia and you could never gain the upper hand over each other, why you could not wipe them out and they couldn't wipe you out. Why they had to in the end, corrupt Gorudo in order to get you on the run."

Camus had thought about this himself, it was like something out of a cop movie, two opposing sides with equal power. It just wasn't realistic, things like that didn't happen in real life, either he would have been dead long ago or Luca would have been killed. In real life something like this just wouldn't be cut so fine.

He shook himself from his thoughts and looked up.

"Ok then, explain."

"Well." Leon grinned "This is more like it. Anyway, it all started with Luca Blight's father, Agares Blight. We met in Vietnam and became good friends quickly, my natural skill in strategy and his ruthless lust for power made us an excellent team both on and off the battlefield. We came back home heroes. But Agares wanted more he didn't just want to be a war hero, a 'drone', he wanted to be somebody.

It was then that we began to construct weapons. At first was just souped up handguns and such but soon a weapons company saw out designs and models and decided to take us on board."

He said, leaning over afterwards and picking his brandy glass up from the table by the couch, taking a sip he looked at Camus and without another word continued.

"Well anyway, after a few years working for this company it was obvious that we were their best employee's and they soon promoted us to joint vice-president of the company, the president being a man named Barbarrossa."

Camus gasped

"Barbarrossa Rugner? The Mafia crime boss in Gregminister three years ago?" He stared in disbelief, could this be coincidence? He thought to himself.

"The very same." Leon continued grimly "Well anyway, he was arrested after he was caught and me and Agares were automatically promoted to joint president of the company. We renamed it Blight Arms and I took up job as Agares' financial advisor so I would have more time for my family.

The company was a roaring success and our weaponry and technology helped win a lot of wars. Helped kill, a lot of people." He added, with more than a little bitterness in his gruff voice. Camus sat in silence, waiting.

Leon took a swig of brandy this time and almost drained the glass.

"Anyway, we were big. The biggest arms company in this state. But Agares wanted more, he had always been idealistic, but his ideals were… Disturbing to say the least."

Camus thought he might be cottoning on.

"So you began to hire thugs to take out the opposition." Camus grinned, he knew the game, Miklotov's dad had to deal with it a lot when the two were children. He would come in exhausted complaining about having to bust yet another corrupt politician or company president-turned drug lord.

"He did! I was against the whole fucking idea, know that." Leon said angrily, which took Camus completely off guard.

"Just, just get on with the story." Camus said, still a little surprised at Leon's outburst. Did he really feel that much remorse about this?

"Ok, well yes, Agares thought it might be a good idea to take out the opposition. But it didn't stop there. After five years he had created America's finest and most ruthless Mafia. And soon Blight Arms practically owned America, for all the obvious reasons. Well it was around this time that we came across the technology to clone. To, in essence, create the perfect human."

Camus' eyes widened at this, was it possible? Leon continued.

"So Agares is now feeling mortal, he's older and realises that he could die soon, ridiculous really as he was only in his early thirties but the war had unbalanced him somewhat. Anyway, on his command we began work on cloning. Cloning a successor."

Camus couldn't help himself

"Luca! Luca's a fucking clone of Agares isn't he!?" Leon gave a grim smile

"Yep, however he was a failure, he was 'born' with horrible mental trauma which made him incredibly violent, like an exaggerated version of his father really. Paranoid, unstable and power hungry, Luca was, in Agares' eyes the perfect successor. He adopted the clone and raised him to become as evil and ruthless as he was. But there were three others, three other clones that we never did use."

"So what did you do with them? Did you kill them?" Camus asked

"Far from it." Leon said, darkly "The first one was not really a clone as such, it was an already born child with the enhanced genes injected into it. It died, it grew up as normal and the drugs had no effect on it, I was relieved to say the least but Agares was furious. The next was grown, not from Agares' genes as Luca was, but grown from only natural resources. The child was normal, but suffered disturbing mood swings, and could become violent at times. And the third, in my eyes was the success, we took some of my own genes. But he showed no signs of the madness and furious nature that Agares felt was needed to become the next leader of the Blight clan."

"So what did you do with the failure's?" Camus asked, enthralled. Leon was silent for a few moments,

"The first one, the already born subject went back to his parents, who had been taken forcefully from them by Agares. The second is now dead, he died in the attack and the third… Is sitting right in front of me."

Camus ran, he ran as fast as he could in no particular direction, leaping over a taxi and landing on the bonnet, he slid down and kept running, through the midnight traffic, none hit him. He ran faster, his vision blurred by tears of confusion and dispair. He was a lie, a creature bred to kill, like Luca, as was Miklotov and Seed.

He didn't know what he was going to do, but he had to get away and sort his brain out.

Shu took a drag from his cigarette and put his foot on the accelerator, his blue Cadillac tearing up the road and out of Greenhill close, he was following the figure, running at inhuman speed. So Leon had told him, Shu didn't know how he would take it if he was told he was born a clone of another. It was freaky to say the least but he had to catch up to Camus and tell him the rest of the story. Then he had to tell that idiot Miklotov, though, Shu thought, it would probably be less painful for him. At least he had parents, at least he was born before the experiments were done on him. Camus was injected with the enhancement serum when he was still in the womb.

Shu drove as fast as he could but Camus was soon lost in the woods that surrounded the city. He had lost him.