Macready goes first, followed by the Russian, always well guarded by the two soldiers.
“Stay sharp!”, the words of the leader as he unlocks the gate that allows access to the second basement floor.
The sliding wall reveals the corridor of the private rooms area. A little further from their position, on their left, they can see the door of Macready’s room.
The group moves cautiously, focused on the breach in the wall near the door of the room of Redmond’s, a few meters ahead. Macready leads the team with flicks of the hand, getting closer to the opening. The corridor seems fine, apparently intact. At a nod of the Major, Howe moves on, walking for about fifteen meters, then he stops to place a second explosive charge. The man works quickly to set the timer synchronized with the bomb left upstairs.
Macready waits for the soldier to come back and rejoin the group, then he uses his special badge on the lock control, unlocking the door to his room.
The four men step inside the room. The Major’s face hardens in an upset grimace at the sight of the devastation in his room. Someone, indeed probably something, was here looking for him. Or for something in his possession as well.
Perhaps my badge…
Or rather my eyes…
At that thought he experiences the uneasy feeling that something is twisting his guts.
A movement on the right, down the room, where it’s less lit, alerts the men. Three light beams point in the same direction.
A human figure is lying squatting on the ground, curled up in a corner, with her hands up.
The spotlights shine right into the face of Emily Moore. The woman looks back at them with a face of despair. Her wide open mouth doesn’t let out a single moan.
“Hold your fire! Don’t shoot!”, Macready shouts, while the soldiers move to the room, to better illuminate the scene. “Major, her hand!”, one of the soldiers moves his spotlight on the upper limbs of the woman, raised in surrender. Her left hand is swollen and deformed, the fingers twisted and bent in unnatural angles.
Macready steps in, moving his light up to the woman’s hands and seeing the vial in her right hand.
He moves slowly his rifle, pointing it at the woman’s head.
“Major, please…”, it’s all she can say, her voice broken by sobs.
“Kill it! Look at her hand, she’s one of those creatures!”
Hearing the voice of the Russian, the woman’s eyes open wide in terror. She withdraws instinctively. Then she seems to find a glimmer of lucidity. “I’ve seen him dying… The creature got him… He couldn’t have survived!”
Moore turns to Macready. “You must believe me, Major! Ivanov saved my life, I ran away when that being grabbed him.”
Hearing these words the soldiers step slightly away from Ivanov.
“The creature lies”, he exclaims, strangely calm. “To deceive humans is what it does best. Look at her hand, it has not yet completed the cloning process.”
“No!”, the desperate cry of the woman. “This isn’t true. I fell when I fled. I got several fractures to the bones of the hand. I am not one of those creatures, Major, you must believe me!”
Macready alternates quick glances between the woman and the Russian, looking for details that may betray the creature.
The tension creates an oppressive atmosphere.
Both apparently human, both so real, and yet one of them might not be what they say.
The skin of the woman’s hand is swollen, covered in blood, glossy, deformed…
The Major takes a step back, moving slowly away from the woman and raising again his assault rifle to take aim at her.
He made his decision.
Her heart seems to stop to the awareness of imminent death.
No, this can’t be true…
She closes her eyes awaiting for this nightmare to come to an end.
The seconds seem like hours…
“майор, нет!”
Three rays of light move in unison to the breach in the wall, which opens on Redmond’s room. The voice that comes from the opening immediately reveals the identity of the one who spoke.
From the shadow of the opening emerges a perfect copy of Alexander Ivanov.
Moore lets out a cry of terror seeing the Russian, which enters the room with slow and calculated movements. He stands straight with his hands up.
“Major, don’t do that!”, the newcomer hastens to reiterate, this time using a language understood by all the soldiers.
The atmosphere is very tense, the soldiers move slowly while the beams of the spotlights bounce between the two Ivanov and Moore, who looks at the scene astonished. A few minutes ago they could still have some doubts, but now they are aware that here with them, in the room, there is a creature that has perfectly replicated a human being in every detail.
“Don’t move, keep your hands in plain sight!”, Macready shouts aiming from one to the other of the two Russian scientists.
It can’t be…
There must be some difference, a detail that can betray it…
They are stalled.
“Fifteen minutes, sir.”
Howe’s voice urging to move.
It’s the woman speaking, addressing to Macready, but without taking her eyes off the first Ivanov, the one that came with the group of soldiers. Her voice is shaky and uncertain.
“During the first attack, the lights went out, we ran away in the dark. Ivanov has saved my life, and as we ran he wounded his hand with a sharp glass. The cut can’t have healed already, this should prove that it’s human, but I myself have seen him grabbed by one of the creatures who attacked us after a while!”
Macready’s spotlight lights up the hands up of the second Ivanov, the one just arrived. On the palm of one of them a dark cut is clearly visible. The man looks at Macready, but he speaks to the woman.
“The creature grabbed me, it’s true… but even if its touch burned the skin on my neck, it could not assimilate me, because of the poison of which I spoke. The explosion that broke the glass and which enabled you to escape caused it to lose its grip on me. Then I ran after you, but I could only see you plunge into the elevator. I had to use the explosives I had left to block the passage to the creature. Then I hid, waiting, until the cabin came back to the floor. Perhaps the mechanism has failed, or perhaps something has taken control of it. The elevator brought me to the third level, where I discovered that the way was blocked by rubble. I could see through a small breach a team of men in bio-hazard suits, like the one we met on the first floor. They were fighting against one of the creatures. Only two of them were still alive. I could not do anything, I was stuck. I stood in the elevator cabin until it moved up, allowing me to reach the second floor. Those beings are everywhere now, and…”, he nods at the other Ivanov, “…this is one of them.”
He catches his breath after speaking in a rush, telling his latest adventures, and meanwhile he shows the military his wounded palm. A dark cut, crescent-shaped, is clearly visible.
Macready turns the spotlight on the first Ivanov, the one they found on the top floor. “Put your hands in plain view, I want to see.”
The man obeys, and a moan escapes Moore’s throat when the light shine on the palms showing intact hands.
“The creatures communicate telepathically with each other”, the first Ivanov bursts nervously. “They can weave the stories they want, supporting each other in order to appear more convincing. Don’t be fooled, Major, destroy them both before they jump on us.”
Macready turns to him, the eyes of the scientist lit by the spotlights under the soldiers’ rifles. He is strangely calm, his face shows no trace of the despair shown when they found him, only a few minutes before.
“If I was one of those things, why would I have showed up to keep you from shooting at her?”. The second Ivanov speaks, nodding to the woman. “I would’ve remained in the shadows, waiting for the best time to kill you one by one”.