Chapter 10: Inhuman-10

Suddenly, Gen Zero lunged at the younger clone's throat.

The pressure around his throat was unbearable.

The younger clone clawed at Gen-Zero's hands, his fingers slipping against the older clone's sweat-slick skin. His vision darkened at the edges as his air supply was cut off, his body thrashing instinctively against the overwhelming force pressing against his windpipe.

He couldn't breathe.

His lungs burned, his muscles screamed for oxygen, but Gen-Zero held firm, his fingers like steel clamps around his neck. The grip was mechanical, practiced, yet filled with something deeply personal. A desperate, almost primal intent behind the violence.

Then came the sound.

A horrible, inhuman wail filled the room.

Both of them were screaming.

The agony synchronized, their voices twisting together into an unnatural chorus of suffering. His mind reeled as the sensation doubled, folding into itself like an echo trapped within an enclosed space.

It was their shared consciousness.

It made everything worse.

The younger clone could feel Gen-Zero's pain just as vividly as his own. His ribs ached from blows not yet landed, his knuckles throbbed as though he had thrown punches, he did not remember throwing. Every bruise, every laceration....they both felt them, their nervous systems woven together in a cruel, twisted experiment.

His mind screamed for survival.

His hands flailed, desperate, clawing blindly at Gen-Zero's face. His fingers found the older clone's jaw, pushing, shoving, anything to break free. But Gen-Zero was relentless.

His eyes burned with something unreadable, determination, fear, regret.

Or perhaps, acceptance.

As if he had always known this moment would come.

Then, a sharp crack.

A metallic whistle, fast and precise.

Gen-Zero's grip loosened.

The younger clone barely had time to register the shift before he saw it.

A bullet tore through Gen-Zero's skull.

An explosion of red mist splattered across the cold, sterile floor. The older clone convulsed violently, his eyes rolling back, his entire body shuddering as if trying to process what had just happened.

Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, Gen-Zero collapsed.

For a moment, the room was silent.

The younger clone gasped, coughing violently as air rushed back into his lungs. His throat throbbed, bruised and raw, but the relief of oxygen was short-lived.

Because the moment he looked at the body on the floor, he realized something horrifying.

He had just witnessed himself die.

Gen-Zero lay motionless, blood pooling beneath his head, the bullet wound gaping like a hollow abyss.

And yet, he still felt him.

Even in death, the connection lingered.

There was a presence, faint but undeniable....an echo of thought, emotion, consciousness, still tethered to him. It was a terrible, unnatural sensation. Like being torn apart while still tethered to the severed piece.

Then came the whirring.

A mechanical hum filled the air.

The younger clone turned his head sluggishly, his vision swimming. A sleek, insect-like drone hovered above them, it's cold, unfeeling eye scanning the scene.

A grappling hook descended.

He tried to move, tried to crawl away, but his body refused to obey. He was too weak. Too drained.

The hook latched onto him with a sudden jolt.

Another clamped onto Gen-Zero's corpse.

And without warning, they were lifted off the ground.

The world blurred around him as the drone carried them toward their destination.

Artificial lights-streaked past in flashes of white and gray, flickering as though viewed through waterlogged vision.

His body dangled, limp, his head lolling forward as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

Then, suddenly, the movement stopped.

He felt the cold before he saw anything.

The metallic floor beneath him was sterile, smooth. His wrists were bound, the restraints digging into his skin.

Somewhere in the haze, he became aware of another presence.

Gen-Zero's corpse lay beside him.

Blood dried against his skin; the bullet wound now just a darkened hole where his consciousness had been forcefully ejected.

And yet, he was still here.

The younger clone squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel Gen-Zero's presence, faint but persistent, like the remnants of a dream refusing to fade. It was almost like...

Like he hadn't just killed him.

Like he had absorbed him.

Had the consciousness transfer completed? Was he still himself?

Or was he becoming something else?

His fingers twitched against the restraints, but he had no strength to fight.

A hiss of decompressing air broke the silence.

The younger clone's heart pounded as a doorway slid open.

Two figures stepped inside.

They were clad in sleek black armor, their faces obscured by reflective visors. Their movements were smooth, efficient, almost robotic in nature.

One of them approached, scanning him with a glowing blue device.

"Subject retrieval complete," a distorted voice reported.

The other knelt beside Gen-Zero's corpse, pressing a gloved hand to his forehead.

"The entanglement persisted longer than expected," they muttered. "Even post-mortem, residual consciousness lingers."

Residual consciousness.

They knew.

They knew what had happened.

The younger clone wanted to speak. Wanted to demand answers. Wanted to understand.

But his throat was too raw. His body too weak.

He could only watch, helpless, as they continued their assessment...treating him not as a person, but as an experiment.

"What do we do with him?" the first figure asked.

A pause. Then, the second stood.

"Take him to Processing. We need to see how much of the memory transfer was completed."

Memory transfer.

It all made sense now.

They were never separate. Never individuals.

They were pieces of the same existence, split apart, tested, studied.

And now, with Gen-Zero dead, the process had reached its final stage.

They were going to take what was left of him.

He struggled. His body screamed in protest, but the armored figure simply pressed a cold metallic device to the side of his neck.

A sharp sting.

Then, darkness.

He did not dream.

Or perhaps, he did, but the dreams weren't his.

Flashes. Fragments. Pieces of something else.

Gen-Zero's thoughts. His memories. His fears.

Folding into his own.

By the time he regained consciousness, he wasn't sure if he was still himself.

The room was white.

Blindingly white.

A single chair. A single table.

And across from him, a screen flickered to life.

A voice, cold and analytical, spoke from unseen speakers.

"Tell us. Which one are you?"

The younger clone swallowed hard.

He wanted to say his name. But he didn't have one. He never did.

He wanted to say he was the survivor. But was he?

Or was he Gen-Zero now?

Had he ever been anyone else?

Because the more he sat there, the more he realized...

He wasn't just himself.

He was both of them.

And maybe, just maybe…

He had been all along.

A pause. Then, the mechanical voice returned.

"Memory swipe completed. Subject does not remember any past occurrence."

Another pause.

"Subject is ready to receive new memories."

Extra:(in addition to this chapter, just thought of writing this to further add depth to the story)

The air inside the facility was sterile, almost artificial, as though it had been stripped of any trace of life. The younger clone had no memory of how long he had been here, only that the walls, the ceilings, even the floors, all were the same blinding shade of white.

It was a place built without identity, without individuality. A machine disguised as a building, designed for a single purpose: experimentation.

The hallways stretched endlessly, illuminated by recessed panels of cold, fluorescent light. There were no visible doors, only seamless sections of the wall that would slide open noiselessly when required. The silence was oppressive. The only sounds were the occasional hum of ventilation systems and the rhythmic clank of approaching security patrols, faceless enforcers clad in black armor, their footsteps eerily synchronized.

The entire facility had been built underground. There were no windows, no sense of time. The only way to track the passing hours was through the subtle shifts in lighting, slightly dimmer during designated "rest" cycles, though sleep was never truly restful here.

Somewhere deeper within the complex, the walls changed. Instead of seamless white, they turned to smooth, metallic gray, research wings where scientists and engineers worked in dimly lit laboratories. Large, reinforced observation windows lined these corridors, revealing glimpses of cold examination rooms, where figures in medical coats hovered over restrained subjects, other clones, other test subjects, all in various stages of their own experimentation.

Inside one room, a clone sat rigidly in a chair, electrodes attached to his shaved scalp, his eyes distant as streams of data projected onto a screen. His memories, thoughts, emotions, fears, were being extracted, studied, repurposed.

Another chamber held something more horrific....a surgical bay where a disassembled body lay on an operating table. No blood, no signs of traditional dissection, just an open skull, the brain suspended in a translucent containment pod, preserved and connected to an array of machines.

At the heart of the facility was Processing, a cavernous hall where newly retrieved subjects were assessed, cataloged, and "adjusted." This was where the younger clone found himself, sitting in a stark interrogation room, its walls as featureless as the rest of the facility.

A single table. A single chair.

And a voice, disembodied, questioning him.

They had taken him here for one reason.

To wipe away what little remained of his identity and reshape him into something else.

This place was not just a laboratory.

It was a factory.

And he was its product.