Then something happened that forced everyone in the room to shiver with fear, including the two children above the room.
Christine started laughing, her voice echoing throughout the room. Walter backed away and turned to face Randy who had turned to watch Christine also.
For a moment the two brothers stared at each other.
"What you did to those kids is unforgivable. You helped create this girl," Walter said to Randy.
Randy started to back away from Walter, shaking his head in denial. Behind him the agents lowered their guns and Dr. Granin turned around.
"Everyone out, now," Dr. Granin ordered. His face was slack, as if someone was controlling him. The agents took on the same look.
The agents left the room; Dr. Granin followed, the steel doors closing as he left. Above the two brothers, the two children watched silently as Randy and Walter faced each other.
"It was Christine, she did that to them, she made them leave," Randy said. "Neither of us is leaving this room," he said with a smile. "It has to be this way."
Walter returned the smile and replied, "Yeah, brother, I see that now. We were never meant to leave this room." He pointed behind him at Christine. "And neither was she."
Walter turned back around to look at Christine who floated in her gla.s.s prison. She was still laughing.
"Help me with this," Walter asked Randy. "We"ll push her over and end this once and for all."
Randy moved up next to his brother and the two stared into each other"s eyes, knowing this was the only way.
Together they ran at the large gla.s.s cylinder and placed their hands on the sides. The brothers rocked the tube back and forth and it began to wobble.
With the sound of breaking supports connecting it to the floor, the gla.s.s tube fell over, the gla.s.s breaking as the liquid splashed across the floor in a small wave.
Walter walked around until he was standing in shattered gla.s.s pieces that were the cylinder and the small form of Christine which was now on the cement floor.
She"d stopped laughing and was now coughing up a thick, brown mucus. She gazed up at Walter and shook her head no. Perhaps now that her death was imminent she was having second thoughts, but she was too weak to get into Walter"s mind and stop him from his next action.
She was completely helpless.
Randy watched as Walter brought his foot up above Christine"s head and brought it down with a sickening thunk. Her head was crushed beneath his boot and Walter turned his foot several times in the muck as though he were squishing a bug beneath his foot. He looked up at the two children who seemed to be in some sort of daze.
"Now what?" Randy asked.
"Now it"s time to end this for good," Walter replied.
Walter stepped across Christine"s corpse towards Randy and the two grappled, punching each other. Walter punched Randy in the face who in turn punched Walter in the face. Walter reached down as Randy punched him in the stomach and his free hand grabbed a piece of gla.s.s from the shattered tube off of the floor. He didn"t notice that Randy had done the same. Walter brought up the shard of gla.s.s like a dagger and jabbed into Randy"s genitals. Randy cried out as he was cut open.
Randy brought his own shard of gla.s.s down into Walter"s neck and cut downwards, making a jagged slice through his throat. Blood ran down Walter"s throat as the two fell to their knees. The brothers put their heads together as the blood pooled around their legs. Walter took the gla.s.s out of Randy"s genitals and raised it to Randy"s throat. He cut into the meat of his neck and blood poured out of the gash. Randy gasped for air as his body went limp and fell to the side.
Walter looked down at the body of his now deceased brother as he struggled for air. He put his hand to his throat and felt the warmth of blood cover his hand. The piece of gla.s.s was still in there. He grasped the shard which cut into his fingers, and with a sharp thrust, he forced the gla.s.s the rest of the way through his throat, nearly severing his head from his shoulders.
Walter"s lifeless body fell to the cement floor next to his brother and the little red haired girl. Above them, Adam and Eve had come out of their daze and were now smiling to each other.
Dr. Granin reentered the room and walked over to the three lifeless bodies followed closely by the agents.
He looked down and grinned. "Clean up this mess," he said to the agents before he turned and left the room. He stopped to look up at the two children, who smiled down at him. He flashed them a thumbs up and left the room.
As he left the room, he turned to see that one of the agents had followed him out the door.
"What do you want?" Dr. Granin asked the agent once they were in the hallway. "I told you to clean that mess up."
The agent looked at Dr. Granin and took off his gla.s.ses. "I just wanted to ensure that the project was a success, sir."
Dr. Granin smiled and replied, "Yes, of course it was."
"Then the girl...Christine...she told you the location of the doorway?"
Dr. Granin shook his head no and said, "Not me. She told Eve. She trusted Eve for some reason. Said she reminded her of her sister."
"I don"t understand, sir. I thought we needed the girl alive?"
"No, never. We only needed her to trust us, so she would tell us the location of the doorway."
"And the brothers? Why did we need them?"
"We needed them to find the doorway so they would inadvertently release her. Out of their own hatreds we knew that one of them would find her. She was drawn to their violence, their aura of hate."
"So the project? Is it still in effect?"
"Yes, so far the project is working out better than we ever antic.i.p.ated. Soon we"ll have control over not just our own world but others as well. Christine"s death will bring others like her here. And when they open the doorway again, we"ll be ready."
The agent put his gla.s.ses back on and asked, "Where is the doorway exactly, sir?"
Dr. Granin smiled and answered, "Birmington. The entire town is the doorway. That"s why we allowed it to burn." Dr. Granin put a rea.s.suring hand on the agent"s shoulder and continued, "I want you to burn the bodies of all three of them. Leave no evidence. Find anyone left in Birmington and bring them here to be executed. No one must know the truth. When the doorway opens again we must be ready and there can be no witnesses but us."
"This is what Adam and Eve want?" the agent asked.
Dr. Granin looked at the agent with such a hard glare that the man took a step back.
"This is what I want. Adam and Eve are nothing but p.a.w.ns in a much bigger game. The game board is mine now. Now go do what I say."
The agent looked frightened but straightened up and went back into the room. Dr. Granin smiled to himself and went into another doorway to the left side of the hall. The door had been hidden and it looked as if it was just a part of the wall. He pressed a hidden keypad and the door slid open.
Inside the doorway were a flight of stairs that lead upwards. Dr. Granin walked up the stairs and into another control room. Monitors showed the faces and bodies of Adam and Eve. Or rather what was once Adam and Eve. Now they were nothing but mere puppets. His puppets.
Dr. Granin smiled to himself as the two lifeless children looked downwards to the floor below as they watched the agents dispose of the three bodies. He stepped through a door to his right, walked down a hallway until he came to the two cylinders containing Adam and Eve. He stared at the floating bodies for just a minute and then he disconnected one of the tubes that came out of Eve"s head and inserted the tube into his arm.
Immediately the dark liquid flowed out of her head and into his body. He relished the power that he felt come from her, from both of them.
In his mind"s eye he could now see throughout the world. From this room he controlled every person on Earth and did with them as he wanted.
Dr. Granin found pleasure in the fact that n.o.body would ever know the truth of the world. It existed as he wanted it to. The true face of control was his own. In all reality, Dr. Granin was a G.o.d. He was the only G.o.d.
Control. Every man, woman and child, happy in the blissful ignorance of their own misguided lives. All controlled by one man who wanted to be G.o.d, no, waitawho was G.o.d.
Perhaps there is no such thing as a happy ending.
end.