The Fall of the Society

Chapter 61: Secret Revealed

Rose did not know how long she had been asleep but awoke feeling rested. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, attempting to remove the sleep that had accumulated there. Sid was sitting nearby, smiling at her.

"Welcome back, I hope you slept well," he told her happily.

"What happened?" she asked sleepily. Then it all came rushing back to her and she remembered what he had told her before she had fallen asleep. "Did you give me your blood? I thought you said that was dangerous!"

Sid sighed, "It is very dangerous, but I did not have a lot of options. There was no time to try and create an antidote to the poison they had in the stairwell, and you would have had much worse consequences if you had been exposed to it for any longer. Besides, you are technically of my blood, so there was a chance you would not experience the negative side effects."

Rose narrowed her eyes at him, "That's a fairly large guess. What if you had been wrong?"

"That is unimportant, because I was right." She looked at him even more exasperatedly. "I know it is result oriented thinking, but we do not have time to argue just now. We need to find the area that they are using to manufacture the replicants," he told her. "You will forgive me soon enough," he finished with his signature smile. "I do not believe the area we are looking for is down this hallway, we will have to go back the way from which I came. Let's move before more replicants come after us."

The two hurried into the hallway and back the way they had come, slightly surprised that they had yet to see anyone else. Sid found this fact very odd. Scion had always used others to fight his battles, yet he was not sending wave after wave of drones in to battle to try and stop them. The corridor they turned down was also quiet, other than a low humming noise that continuously went up and down in volume. This noise was the reason Sid had chosen this path. The door at the end of the passage was heavily fortified, but Rose easily cut her way through to allow them inside.

A vast and open room lay ahead of them. There was a huge machine with a horizontal glass cylinder in the center of it. Sid quickly moved across the room and began punching in a series of commands into the computer interface. The Society must have never expected anyone to make it this far into their facility because they had not set a password. Once in, he quickly searched for a very old file.

"This whole program was created when Tripp joined the Society," he told Rose as he could feel her watching him. "Scion was incredibly keen to figure out what had caused him develop multiple abilities, especially at the strength in which he developed them. He is still the only person to ever have more than one power naturally. By now I am sure that Scion has figured out a way to bestow powers onto someone, so he likely has more abilities than he had in the past." He returned to searching the computer and found what he was hoping to find. "Yes! Here it is!" he said excitedly. A window that had opened in the wall emitted a quiet whirring sound. Sid strode across the room and examined the wall around the newly discovered window. He soon found a small hidden keyboard and began typing in a series of numbers and the box behind the window spun out of view. A moment later it reappeared with a small vial inside. Sid slid the window open and removed to vial and moved back across the room to the control panel on the massive machine sitting in the middle of the room. He pressed the enter key and a slot opened to the right of it.

"What is that?" Rose asked inquisitively.

Sid held out the vial for her to hold. "This is the DNA they collected from Tripp when he joined the Society all those years ago. This machine is what they used to create the replicants."

Rose's eyes flashed with realization. "Are you planning to clone Tripp?" she asked, her voice shaking with anger.

"Not exactly, we do not need to clone him, we just need to create a new body for him," Sid told her in a matter-of-fact tone. "This is why your presence here is so important, why you were so important to this mission. Your anger now is also why I did not tell you what I was planning. I am not sure how it has happened, but Tripp is still with us, he is within your powers. He is not technically alive, but he is also not dead."

"How do you know that?" Rose asked as a tear ran down her smooth and flawless cheek.

Sid's smile faded. "I was there that night when you infiltrated the Society. In a way, I used your destruction as a cover to make my way inside and steal a load of information that I used to form a lot of my plans since then. It is also how I found out about the facility they held you at when they captured you. I am sorry if you feel that I used you in order to gain access, but I was going in one way or another, and you were as well." Rose glared at him but remained silent to allow him to continue. "This process is going to be very complicated and we only have once chance at making it work. You will have to focus very hard on summoning him here to be with us once we start the experiment. If we fail, he will remain within you, but we will have created something insanely dangerous."

"It will not be a clone of him though?" Rose asked quietly.

Sid shook his head, "He will be returned, he will retain all of his memories and all of the memories he has made since joining with you. All that will change is that he will be in a new and unaged body. There is a possibility that he will develop a new power, because of the process in which I am going to ensure his survival once he reinhabits a human form." Rose stared at him inquisitively. "Hold the vial up and hold it steady."

Rose held the vial out in front of her. Sid removed a dagger from the waist of his pants and grasped the blade inside of his right hand. He closed his eyes and began to focus; a golden glow began to emanate from his closed hand and a stream of blood flowed into the top of the open container. His blood remained golden as it spun upon contact with the liquid inside the vial. Opening his eyes, he released his hold on the blade and placed it back into his waistband. He retrieved the vial from Rose and turned back to the small slot that had opened and placed the vial within. Returning to the console, he entered a new series of numbers. The slot closed and the machined began to whir as a light flashed into being inside the glass cylinder in the center of the machine.

"I will need you to go to that end of the incubation chamber," Sid said, pointing to his left. "When I open it, I will need you to pour as much power as you need to inside in order to summon Tripp to that point. Between my contribution and your powers, the process will be much quicker than normal, but it may still take a while before he is ready to exit the chamber."

Rose nodded and moved to the end of the machine, where she began to focus, and a smile crossed her face. She could not believe what they were about to do, and she was preparing herself to destroy whatever they created if it did not retain Tripp within. If their creation ended up looking like Tripp without being him, she would do whatever it took to end the clone. A panel in the side of the machine slid to the side and exposed a hole into the incubation chamber. Rose placed her hand inside and was surprised when the opening closed around her arm. She looked quickly at Sid, who held his hand up for her to remain calm.

"The chamber needs to be sealed when the process begins. When your portion is done it will release you," he told her without looking up from the control panel. A loud grinding sound began within the machine and the room began to shake slightly. "Go!" Sid shouted.

With all the power she could muster, Rose screamed, and the inside of the chamber turned red as her fire blossomed inside. She continued to push with all her might, focusing on Tripp and what he meant to her. As her power flowed from her, his fiery form appeared inside the glass and glanced around before her fire turned white and the light from it flashed all over the room. The machine shook violently and there was a loud bang as Rose was blasted out of the machine and she slammed into the wall, where she slid to the floor, exhausted.