Chapter 6

Sometimes You Lose

Sorry this one has taken so long but I'm currently writing these in hospital after tearing a muscle skiing in Scotland during the half term. Thank God for the National Health Service and painkillers. I'm heading home on the 25th hopefully so things should be back to normal soon enough. Hope you like this one.

Angela shut the door behind her, shutting out the noise of The Flock running up the steps and into the main camp. The room Angela had entered was lit brightly but smelt heavily of sweat and blood. A curtain was drawn across one side and the form of a bed shone through the curtains. Heavy breathing filled the confined space. Angela pulled back the curtain and stood beside the bed. A lump rose in her throat as she looked down at the limp form on the bed. The clone had been made to look exactly like Max, same face, same personality, same everything. So watching Max's mirror image laying dead and empty of life between the covers she couldn't help seeing the original Max in her minds eye. The clones body was twisted and her belly was distended at an imposable size. Angela placed a cover over the clones face and whispered a prayer for forgiveness.
She left the bed side and looked round for the child, dust falling from the ceiling as muffled explosions filtered down through from the complex above. A incubation chamber was set in against the side wall, Angela slowly approached the plastic cover and looked inside. The clean sheets hadn't been disturbed. Angela's breath caught for a moment, then she realised her breath wasn't the only one in the room.
"Roland." Angela stepped back from the incubator and felt the muzzle of a pistol in her back. "You don't need to do this."
"What elze iz zer for me eh?" ter Bortch's shattered nose hadn't improved his speech and his entire face had suffered from the bruises. "I has notzing."
"You don't have to turn the child over Roland, we can help." She turned round to face the bruised and battered Dr ter Borcht and held her hands by her side. A small wrapped bundle was held in Roland's left arm, a pistol in the other hand. "Itex isn't the winning team any more Roland, give me the baby. You can come with us."
"And get thrown in jail?" He rocked the small bundle in his arms. "Iz zon't think so." He raised the pistol up. Angela knew she had only a fraction of a second before the German's podgy finger closed on the trigger and the room would home two bodies. She twisted her hand up and smashed into ter Borcht's, the round discharging with explosive force into the air above her head, deafening her briefly but Borcht hadn't been expecting the sudden movement and he had been knocked back by the strike. Angela ducked under his outstretched arm and grabbed the wrapped bundle from his arms, racing for the open door. Her foot crossed the threshold and a second shot rang out just as the steel door slammed closed. Angela hit the ground and yelled out as her left arm span round from her and a constellation of blood formed on the opposite wall.
She rolled onto her side and groaned before checking the white bundle in her arms. It took a moment to realise the bundle was moving and Angela's ears didn't register the quiet thumping of fists on the sealed steel door or the crying babe resting on her chest until her ears recovered from their deafness.
"Let me out!" She looked back at the door, the keypad was in tatters and the bolts had been lowered into place. The room was totally sealed off. She stood up and cradled her injured arm to her chest as the bullet hole in her shoulder throbbed with pain but adrenaline was masking the worst of it. She looked down at the child in her arms. He looked back. The baby boy looked remarkably like Max, but the ice blue eyes were undoubtedly Aires. The child was unnaturally quiet and Angela thought for a moment that it wasn't only a child's intelligence watching her but something like a alert bird of prey, watching every move.
She took one last look at the door, trying to rationalise leaving Borcht to die in his coffin, then turning up the steps she left the doomed man to his deserved fate.

"About time!" Hawk 1 yelled as Mum appeared from the rubble and sprinted toward us. There weren't many guards left and many had fled into the woods but M had said there was a helicopter headed for us over the radio. We were holed up in the main storage hangar of the camp, hiding behind canisters of various gases and plastic boxes. I threw open the side door of the building as she ran inside, bullets catching at her heels despite the covering fire from the from where most of the team were holding the few remaining guards. Her left arm was limp at her side and blood was seeping into her shirt. I tore a bandage from my belt and rolled up her sleeve.
"It only grazed you." I bound the wound tight and tied it off. She nodded her thanks before holding out a small bundle to me. It was a tiny baby, only a few hours old but looking up at me with hard eyes like he was examining me and trying to decide an opinion of me.
"Give me your rifle, look after him." I wordlessly handed over my weapon and cradled the child. We looked at each other for a long time, something ticking over in the back of my mind but not quite...
"Aires!" I looked up. Max was looking franticly at me. "We need to move!" I ran doubled over as stray bullets raced over my head and headed after Max. We went to the back of the hangar where a truck stood, Nudge sitting in the drivers seat, wires out in her lap as she tried to start the engine.
"Sometime today missy!" The Scottish SAS man lent on the bonnet and fired off some rounds toward the front of the hangar as the team abandoned their positions and headed for the truck.
"Yes!" Nudge punched the air as the engine purred into life. I clambered into the back with the rest of the Flock and held the baby to my chest tightly. The SAS team, The Flock and my mother were a tight squeeze in the back of the truck but we managed to fit even if the doors didn't fully shut.
"What now?!" Hawk 1 yelled at Nudge over the din of bullets hitting the side of the truck. "We can't drive out the front!" Nudge gunned the throttle and pulled hard on the wheel, knocking over canisters and boxes.
"Who ever said about the front?" Nudge lined up with the side of the hangar, the flimsy aluminium looking even more feeble in the face of the seven ton truck. The corrugated metal crumpled like it had been made out of brown paper, the truck passing straight through and out before turning toward the barricaded exit. Slabs of concrete had been lined up so the truck had to take a snaking path to exit the compound but Nudge drove right on through, a massive grin on her face as the grill broke the wooden bar that blocked the road and marked their freedom.
"Choppers!" Fang yelled. We looked out and over the tree line, came the buzz on an engine and a helicopter raced toward us. It wasn't any model I recognised with short stubby wings and cannons slung under each of them it looked far to small to be a real chopper. When I saw it didn't have a glass cockpit it hit me.
"It's a UAV!" I yelled just as the robotic craft let fly with its cannons, the armour piercing rounds skimming the ground ahead of us, a sound like hail raining down on the roof.
"Then why isn't it shooting us?!" Gazzy yelled. I looked up at the UAV as we bounced along the road, its black wings holding it at speed with us.
"He's right, why is it missing?"
"It didn't." Mum yelled, pointing into the driving compartment. The bullets had torn through the top of the compartment and into the truck. Blood was splattered up the windscreen.
"NUDGE!"
Everything flew forward as the truck hit one of the trees that doted the roadside. The front compartment of the truck crumpled like an accordion, windscreen punched in and the steering column shot out like a cannon ball. I was sent flying through the back and pain erupted in my shoulder. Carnage reigned for a matter of seconds but the damage was absolute. Finally there was silence.
I rose out of my dazed state to the sound of crying and moans of pain. The little bundle in my arms was wriggling and making a lot of noise but he was alive. I looked over at my shoulder and groaned. A foot long steel bar had been punched through my arm and I couldn't move, pinned in place. I couldn't heal the hole with the bar in it so I was royally screwed until someone lifted me off. My left foot also looked like it was pointing the wrong way.
"Max?" I looked around the wreckage of the truck, lumpy forms the only indication anyone had been there.
"Max?" Fang. One of the shapes detached itself from the carnage of the crushed truck and crawled over to one of the other forms.
"I'm all right." Max's strained voice come from my left and something moved.
"Me too." Gazzy checked in along with Iggy, Angel and Total.
"Nudge?" There wasn't a reply. "Fang get Nudge." Someone clambered past me and into the driving compartment. "Someone find a light, now!"
"She's not breathing!" A light clicked on and the back of the truck was lit up in pale yellow light. I looked to my left and quickly looked away. Hawk 1 hadn't been so lucky to avoid the bar that had only hit my shoulder, it extended out of his left eye socket. I couldn't see much from where I was pinned down but I could see my mother slowly rising out her daze, a small cut above her eye. I looked back round just as they dragged Nudge out of the crushed driving compartment and laid her down on the floor. I couldn't see her face but blood trickled down her arm in some kind of morbid river.
"No pulse." Max muttered and began giving CPR. "Come on baby, breath! Seven, Eight, Nine..." The mangled wreck of the truck was totally silent, apart from the tiny sobs and gasps as Max fought over Nudge.
"Max..." Fang's soft voice came out of the blackness. "Max she's gone." He tried to put an arm around her but she slapped him away and kept compressing Nudge's chest. The Flock sat around Nudge, tears streaming down every cheek but no one spoke.
"You've never shut up in all your life, don't start now." Max pleaded and breathed two more breaths into Nudge's body. "Fight dammit! Just wake up!" She screamed at the tiny body. "Please Nudge. Fight!" I shut my eye's.
Nudge had gone.
"Max, its Ok." Fang wrapped his arm round her shoulders and held her tight, not taking his eyes off Nudge's body. "We need to go." Max nodded. I felt like the bottom of my world had just opened up. Somehow it felt like the entire world had lost its colour and life, all that was left was this ruined metal coffin and the tear soaked faces before me.
"Hawk 1, this is Seaking, we're heading for your location, is anyone hurt?" Mum reached over and took the radio from the dead SAS man's belt.
"We hear you." Mum sighed into the radio. Outside I could hear the thud of a Chinook rotor blades. "We were ambushed by a UAV, most of the SAS team are dead, the rest are injured." She glanced at Max as she howled like an animal loosing her young and the crying faces around her.

"And Nudge is dead."