Chapter 26 - Blood Flows Thicker Than Water

Now she really was a murderer, a woman on the run, bloodstains on her hands. No need to frame her anymore, she'd done it for real. She couldn't quite pin down what was going through her head; a steady dose of adrenaline and dopamine mixed in with mortification and sheer horror, all because of one single action, the wilful taking of another person's life. Who was she now? Was she still the grieving widow who struck out in frustration or was she now a cold-blooded, vicious killer? She really didn't know but it was eating her up inside. She couldn't break free from the thought she had killed herself along with the young girl in the supply room.

She'd lost herself in the maze of ventilation shafts. She'd found several shafts that led up and down but she figured that the answers would be kept near the Hand of Kronos bigwigs, which meant up, up and away through the station. She estimated that she was up somewhere near deck 72, only another twenty-seven decks to climb up. Gee, time flies when you're having fun...

Time passed as it inevitably does, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour as Debbie Howards slowly made her way through the cold ventilation shafts, her clammy skin clinging to the metal encasing her, sweat gushing out of every single pore on her body. Finally, something told her that she had reached her destination. Turning in the cramped space, she hunted out the nearest grill that would give her access to whatever deck she was on. Finding one, she stopped before kicking it open, instead staring at the eerie green light that came through it. Listening intently, she could hear a strange noise, one she recognised but couldn't put a finger on. Positioning herself opposite the vent, she smashed her foot into it but it didn't budge. Again and again she kicked it until it finally fell off, clattering on the floor below.

Turning herself over, she gently eased herself over the edge, dangling into the unknown as she dropped down, her legs buckling underneath her as she hit the floor hard. As she heard a crunch, she knew she was in trouble. Pain shot up her leg, rushing through her nerves, electrical impulses exploding throughout her brain. Tenderly feeling it, she knew it was broken but there wasn't a single thing she could do about it. Desperately searching around for something to splint her leg with, she saw what she had come for: the answers to why Burt Howards had been murdered. The reason that she had been framed for murder. The reason a young woman had been beaten to death for in a shabby supply room.

Cocoons, thousands of them, all metal and glass encasings with a... a thing inside of them, rows upon rows of them stretched out before her eyes. Slowly, painfully she got to her feet and limped down one of the aisles before her, a jolt of pain shooting up her leg with each step she took. She basked in the green glow of the light filtered through the water in each chamber. Inside each one was... something attached to several pipes and tubes, or was it the other way round? She couldn't tell but she felt she knew what was happening here. The fleshy, putrid masses inside each tank slowly moved of their own accord, half-formed limbs slowly drifting through the liquid surrounding them, hearts beating inside incomplete chests. But not all of them were incomplete. As she got further and further down the aisle, she saw whole... humans trapped inside of the tanks. She even recognised some of them, the cute guy she'd eyed up a few times at the gym, the flower delivery man who turned up every now and then when Burt felt he'd somehow upset his wife, and then she stopped, shocked to the core.

Before her, encased in another cocoon, just like all the others, floated a naked female form she recognised. Corporal Sascha Vicks, intact and in one piece. The woman she'd beaten to a bloody pulp with a metal bar floated before her as if nothing had happened.

A thought ran through her mind and she hobbled as fast as she could, checking every cocoon in hope of finding the one person she needed. Desperately she searched, but what she found was a lot worse. She found herself, or rather, a carbon copy of herself, floating in another tank, see-through pipes and tubes coming in out, all over her body. And then, its eyes opened and saw itself staring back at it, sheer horror painted across her face. Slowly, it reached out a hand, pressing it flat against the glass in an effort to touch its doppelganger, to know that it wasn't just dreaming. As if compelled by a force beyond her comprehension, Debbie did the same, placing her hand on the glass. A tear rolled from an eye as she now understood what she had to do. Reaching to the back of her trousers, she pulled out a handgun, one she had taken from the still warm corpse of one Corporal Sascha Vicks. The doppelganger looked at the gun and nodded its consent, closing its eyes for its last moments of life, ready to enter the eternal sleep. Levelling it at the glass casing, she aimed it in-between the eyes and slowly squeezed the trigger, one bullet flying forward, piercing the glass casing and shooting into the doppelgangers brain. The head lolled sideways, resting against the cocoon wall as the glass casing started to shatter under the strain, cracks running up and down it, all coming from that one bullet hole. In a rush, the glass exploded outwards, gallons of water right behind, all rushing towards Debbie. Shards tore apart her flesh as she was flung backwards into another cocoon, slamming hard against it, knocking her unconscious as the rushing water beat her head against the glass. She never even felt that one final shard of glass come flying forward, piercing her throat, rending it apart, her lifeblood staining the brine a dark shade of red. She never felt the second corpse be washed up atop her lap in some sick parody of a lone person seeking refuge in the care of a loved one, not that it mattered at all.

Debbie Howards died knowing she had done a good deed; she had ended a false life, that of Debbie Howards.