A/N: Hey guys so sorry that it has taken awhile to update. I have been focusing on school work so haven't had much time to continue my work.
Aliya and Helena looked at each other equally confused. As far as either of them were concerned, Aliya had no living blood relatives. Her mother and father were both dead and those were the only relatives any of them had been aware of.
"My…uncle?" Aliya asks, getting up from where she was sitting on the cold cement floor.
"Where are my manners, I'm Matthew and I'm also Natalia's brother." The man explains, flashing her a kind smile.
"Natalia, my mother?" she asks, looking him up and down. The man was the spitting image of her mother. Matthew had graying black hair and fair skin, his pale blue eyes staring into her burgundy ones.
"That's right now why don't you come with me? I'd like for us to get to know each other."
Aliya took a step forward, only for Helena to grab her arm and shove her behind her.
"She's not going anywhere with you."
Matthew looked at Helena, not much taller than her but still having to look down at the woman. Helena just glared at him, Aliya grabbing her hand tightly. Aliya would like to get to know him if he really was her family, but she didn't know him, nor had she ever heard of him.
"Ah yes, you must be her caretaker," he asks coolly, finally speaking after several seconds of tense silence.
"Yes. I'm the mother that's been raising her for the last three years. If you want her, you have to go through me."
Matthew narrowed his eyes at her before he smiled, "so be it. I'll be back to collect you two for more tests."
Helena watched as Matthew turned and left the room with the two guards, the heavy door slamming shut and locking behind him.
"Okay, we need to find a way out of here," Helena says, beginning to look around the room. Helena tried her hardest to keep her cool for Aliya's sake, but inside she was panicking. Aliya had been in a trance almost, wondering if she missed her chance to get to know what could be her only living relative but finally snapped out of it. Her gaze landed on a gap behind the wardrobe on the far side of the small room.
"Hey Helena, help me move this," she says, Helena coming up next to her and the two pushed it out of the way to discover a vent that they could crawl through. Helena lifted the grate off the vent and let Aliya crawl through first and then followed suit.
"Alright just keep going straight," she tells the teen, glancing behind her to make sure that they weren't being followed.
"Hey, I know that we aren't out of this yet but thanks for being the mom that I never had growing up," Aliya says as she crawled through the dark, cobweb infested ducts.
"Don't mention it, kid. We're your family now, it's what we're here for."
Aliya didn't say anything as they continued crawling, eventually coming to an opening and the two of them jumping down, their bare feet touching cold tile; looking around to discover that they had ended up in some kind of underground facility.
Helena opened the heavy cell door, making sure that the coast was clear before stepping into the hall with the teen.
"How are we going to get out of here? What do we do, Helena?" she asks, frantically clinging to Helena's arm.
"Hold on, give me a_" Helena starts, cutting herself off when she started coughing up blood.
"Are you okay?"
Helena nodded, "yeah I'll be fine."
Aliya nodded as Helena stood up straight and continued down the halls. Helena knew that there had to be an exit around here somewhere, they just had to find it. Aliya looked into the opening of another steel door, only to squeal and run to catch up with Helena when some kind of monster tried to grab her through the opening.
"Are we going to turn into…things?" Aliya asks softly, panic creeping into her voice.
"We can't think about that right now. The good news is that because of the other viruses in you, you will probably be fine."
"Yeah, I guess that's true. What about you, though?"
"I'll be fine. I'm not going down without a fight."
Aliya nodded as Helena pushed open another heavy steel door, stumbling into a dimly lit room. The room had various exam tables and medical equipment, shelves lining the walls with various medical books and filing cabinets with what could be assumed were medical files. Helena shivered at the sudden change in temperature, wanting to get out of the horrid gown she was wearing and into real clothes.
Helena went over to the computer in the far corner of the room to read some emails.
Matthew,
The child's blood has proven to be a great add on to the M virus. Her blood has been able to strengthen and when combined has created a monster we never thought possible. There are various symptoms before the transformation is complete:
Stage 1: After initial infection, test subject will first experience a fever.
Stage 2: Coughing up blood.
Stage 3: Debilitating abdominal pain.
Stage 4: Test subject becomes increasingly hostile and violent.
Stage 5: Complete infection takes over.
Now with the girl in our possession, we must continue taking blood to strengthen the virus even more.
Outgoing message:
Lida,
That is great to hear. I'm sure with more tests we can make this virus one to be feared. My goal is for this virus to make the test subjects easy to control so we have a lot of work to do in order to achieve that goal.
Helena felt her blood boil as she read the email. Aliya spent twelve years being experimented on by her own mother. She never got to see the outside world, she never got to attend school or celebrate her birthday, she couldn't even make any friends. Now Aliya was right back in the same boat, being used for tests by her own uncle. Helena was lost in her own thoughts, not noticing that Aliya had picked up a file that could only be Helena's.
"Helena…you're pregnant?"
Helena turned to look at her, seeing Aliya looking through the file with the info that had been collected on the agent.
"Upon further tests, the fetus has shown great resilience to the virus. There are more tests to be done because we won't truly know how fetus and host are affected until the birth." Aliya read from the file, making Helena's blood boil even more at the fact that these people saw her as nothing more than an incubator for another test subject. Helena only nodded at Aliya.
"How far along are you? Wait…why are you here if you're pregnant? Does Leon know?"
Helena sighed, "I really don't know. Based off the math, I'd say that I'm roughly eight weeks and I came on this assignment so that I'm not at home being useless and no, Leon doesn't know yet."
"Then let's get out of here!" She says, grabbing Helena's arm and the two went to leave, only for Helena to stop them when she saw a display with various vials filled with what can be assumed was the virus. Helena took one so that HQ could run tests on it once they returned.
This proved to be a mistake because when they stepped back into the halls, alarms started blaring, red lights flashing throughout the facility and the other cell doors opening and releasing the other test subjects. The two looked at the test subjects that started advancing on them, the subjects having clammy, gray skin, sharp teeth and long, talon like fingernails. The two ducked as one of the subjects shot a green liquid at them, hitting the wall behind them, sizzling and leaving a hole in the wall.
The two ran, Helena pushing Aliya ahead of her and wanting to put as much distance between them as possible.
"Helena, look!" Aliya yells after running through the winding halls for what seemed like forever, pointing to a ladder that led to the surface.
"Go!" Helena yelled, ushering Aliya forward and up the ladder, quickly following suit. Aliya moved a thick board out of the way as she reached the top and climbed through. Helena climbed up after her, pushing the thick piece of wood covered in leaves back over the hole so none of the BOW's could escape. Helena collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily as she fought the dizziness, she felt from overexerting herself. Helena looked over at Aliya, finding that she was curled up in pain and clutching her stomach.
"Aliya!" Helena says, heading over and helping her up, "come on talk to me, what's wrong?"
"I'm fine," she says, wincing, "my stomach just hurts."
"Let's go find somewhere to lay low and rest and we can figure out what to do next," Helena says, helping the teen walk across the field they had ended up in.
Matthew and the two guards from earlier walked into the room that they had originally held Helena and Aliya in, only to find the room empty. Matthew walked around the empty room, his hands clasped behind his back and noticing the wardrobe pushed to the side and the vent completely exposed. Matthew scowled, kicking a bucket across the room in anger.
"Find them!" He growled, "Now!"