Prodigy Returns (book 3)

Chapter Forty-Nine

The winding stairs were large to accommodate the previous occupants. Kyodin adjusted his gait and followed closely behind his father and Archimedes.

Maxim entered the subterranean basement with a cautious optimism. He fully trusted Archimedes, and if the former agent truly wanted to hurt them, he had plenty of opportunities to do so. Nevertheless, Maxim was with his only son and did not want to lead him into harm's way.

The room opened up to what looked like some kind of a high-tech laboratory. There were six coffin-sized glass cylinders in a row, each standing vertical along the far wall. Inside appeared to be human beings floating in a type of gelatinous liquid. They were completely naked other than masks affixed over their mouths with tubes connected to them.

"What the heck is this place?" Maxim asked, unable to look away at the floating bodies. The bodies were in some kind of suspended state and did not appear to be aware of the outside world. Maxim and Kyodin scanned the rest of the room and looked at all the equipment.

"This is the crew," Archimedes said. "What's left of it that is."

"I don't understand," Maxim said.

"They're clones," Archimedes explained, not wasting any words.

Maxim stepped forward to get a better look. Starting at one end, he walked passed each cylinder and looked upon the faces of his long-lost comrades — faces he hadn't set eyes on in a very long time. Maxim's heart skipped a beat when he reached the final cylinder. Floating in the last container was an exact copy of Jacey.

"What is this, Archimedes? What have you done?"

"I sense contempt in your tone."

"I'm not sure how I feel about this, but my visceral reaction is that what you're doing is wrong."

"I'm fulfilling the mission, sir," Archimedes responded. "We came here to explore new worlds, to colonize. For that, we need a crew."

"Why are they still in gestation?"

"As you know, this is not my area of expertise. When I left the ship, I managed to obtain the DNA sequencing codes of a select few as well as a small resource file. It has helped me tremendously, but it was not enough. I can get them to this stage, but I don't have the necessary data to bring them out of this state and make them conscious and fully autonomous beings. So it's been a trial and error process. I've tried before and each time I have failed. As it takes a lot of time to reach this stage and I'm getting older, I'm afraid this will be my last batch."

"Don't worry, Archimedes, we have everything we need to complete the process back at our compound. Come with us and we'll help you bring the crew back."