test subject 32

a girl finds out she is a clone and is about to be killed.

It felt like I was looking into a mirror. I reached out and touched myself. She looked just like me, or more like, I look like her, since I am her clone, not the other way round. I now know why I have spent my whole life locked in a cage in a science lab being tested and probed, it’s because I am not really my own person, I am her.

It’s been 4 weeks since I found out I’m an exact copy of a girl named Doris Slater. I never had a name. I was always called ‘test subject 32’, how many people have been locked in cages like I have? How many others are in this Russian science lab? When I found this new knowledge, I decided I would change my life forever, and those of the people stuck here with me. As I am trying to get to sleep, my mind spinning with plans, my cell door opens and a man gags me and ties me up tightly so I can’t move. He drags me out of the room painfully, bumping me into every wall and corner, and I see scientists staring out of windows, as if they know what’s going to happen. I have never been so frightened in my whole life. It took 10minutes before we reached our destination. He tosses me into a room filled with surgeons and doctors, and I see a boy, about my age, strapped to a metal table. I look around the room and I can see blood all over the floor, I follow the trail until I spot a dead body in the corner of the room, mutilated and sliced down the middle. The boy on the table must be next, and I have to watch. Wait, I am after him! OH MY GIDDY AUNT! I wriggle as discreetly as I can until the ropes come loose. I reach up and ungag myself, and the surgeons haven’t noticed because they are too busy washing off the old blood from themselves and putting on new scrubs. I leap from the floor and unstrap the boy from the table and we run.

The strange 16 year old boy is speedy for someone who has been locked in a cage for his whole life. There is no time to talk, we just push people aside and try to find the exit in this labyrinth of a science lab. There is deafening screaming and yelling, there is a crowd following us, trying to catch up, but I mustn’t have been the only one prepping to escape, because he is able to leap over each obstacle as easy as I can. I follow him as he seems to know where he is going and I have no clue. BANG, CRASH, BOOM, AND CLICK. Doors are being slammed open, and guns being loaded. My heart pounds in my chest, I feel like there is a drum in my chest and I am the drummer. The adrenaline in my body stops me from being afraid of the TATATATATATA of rifles and machine guns. I can see the door, but a green sphere flies past my head. The boy shouts ‘GRENADE! JUMP!’ and we leap through the door, slamming it behind us as an explosion sends ringing into my ears. When we have recovered the boy reaches out his hand and says ‘hi, I am test subject 31, but I like to go by Jack’ I reply with ‘hey, I’m number 32, and I think I will go by, Sarah.’ we shake hands and start running again.