They went down one level and landed in an underground medical area. Like the clinic at Crimson or the hospital I’d woken in after my coma.
The sound happened again, a woman’s moan, and I followed it down a sterile white hall to a room at the end.
The door was all glass, the walls were clear, and inside there was a domed structure with machines and medical equipment of all kinds surrounding it.
It was much like an operating theatre, only in the middle of the dome was a single bed next to a machine much like the one that was used to give me my treatments.
Alexander was just inside, standing strangely still. As if he was frozen to the spot. He was staring down at the bed in front of him.
I approached him from behind and walked through the double doors he’d left open into the dome. I was focused on him, worried that he was injured or something was wrong.
“Babe?” I asked, and he whirled around, a look of sheer horror on his face. “What is it?”
“Don’t come in here, Willow!” he exclaimed, and behind him on the bed, the woman moaned again.
This time I heard a single word.
“Alexander,” she said.
But something about her voice sent chills down my spine and coiled around my stomach. I felt as if I would have thrown up if I’d eaten anything recently. I felt sick because there was something so fucking familiar about that voice.
It was mine.
“What’s going on?” I asked and made to step around him. “Alexander?”
“What the fuck is this place?” Rome asked behind me.
“What Upper bullshit is this?” Luke scoffed next to him. “You guys are so fucked up.”
“Alexander?” I asked, focused on his face and the fear I saw there. “Let me see.”
“You shouldn’t look,” he said, and his voice pleaded with me. “Please turn around. Let me deal with this with my father.”
“Did you know this was down here, dude?” Rome asked.
“No,” Alexander said. “Not this place and not her.”
“Who is it?” I demanded and pushed against him.
He gave way and finally let me pass.
I took two steps towards her and stopped, frozen in the same way that he’d been moments before.
My brain couldn’t fathom what I was seeing. My head couldn’t comprehend how this was possible. My skin felt hot, and the air felt electric, like just before a lightning storm.
“Alexander?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl on the bed. Half her face was ruined, a labyrinth of scars and mottled patches of flesh. I think she was missing an eye.
But the other half. The hair. The way she held her hands on her stomach. I couldn’t handle seeing it, and it felt as if my brain was going to melt down just seeing her in front of me.
“Alexander,” the girl on the bed moaned, and her head turned towards us. Her one eye fluttered open, and her face twisted even more as shock flooded her features. “You,” she hissed. “How…”
“What’s going on?” Luke asked, joining me at last. Rome reached us, took and both of them froze and went silent, all of us carrying the same horrifying fear.
“Alexander?” I asked again and felt his hand on my shoulder from behind. And finally, I got the rest of my horrified question past my lips. “Why does she look like me? Why is she me?”
He didn’t respond because, at that moment, alarms began to go off all around us, and the electric scent of ozone filled my nostrils. Gorge rose in my throat, and the girl’s good eye spun wildly in its socket as she fell into a seizure.
She was strapped to the bed, and she strained against her bonds as her body shook uncontrollably.