Chapter 12

Chapter 12

      For the most part they had their plan set. They had a few loose ends to tie but there was something on Claire’s mind that was keeping her wanting to progress. Claire couldn’t stop thinking about what Dr. Crane had said about her when they saw him in California. He had said that he had had his fun with Aaron but he never got to have fun with Claire. Was cutting off pieces of his own kind fun for him? What if he had killed the others? What if his fun was taking out everyone with a documented case of Carnivisouritis haemoglobis? What if he was trying to exterminate the rest of his kind to be the only one left? But why would he want to do that? Dr. Crane had made his life’s work by running tests on his kind; testing their limits, and making them cry out in pain. What was the purpose of all of it? If there was a purpose, why would he say he was having fun with Aaron?

“We have to go back.” Claire said aloud.

“Back where? To California? Do you think he’s there?” Aaron was still trying to figure out the rest of their plan.

“No, we need to go back to Minnesota. We have to get the tapes.”

Aaron had a look of confusion, “What do you mean? We have a whole plan Claire! We can’t just go back!”

“We have to! Aaron, don’t you get it? He was having fun with you! You weren’t part of any test, and neither was I. He already knew how to kill our kind; he was having fun with us. He must have recorded his real experiments. You saw that room that cell, it was filled with cameras. We have to go back to Mayo and get those tapes. That is the only way that we’ll be able to figure out his weakness. That will be the only way that we can know for sure that what we do works. If we go back and watch those tapes we could get answers, solid answers.”

“You can’t be serious?” He was getting angry with her, she knew he would, but she knew she was right.

“You have to think about it, I just ran this whole thing through my head. If he was testing the limits of his kind on others why would he say he was having fun with you? Why would he say he didn’t get to have his fun with me? He already did his barbaric testing; he knows the limits of our kind! He wanted us to think that he didn’t know so that it made sense to us why he was cutting us apart. Aaron, he is just being destructive, maybe he wants to be the only left, I don’t know that part, but I do know that he finished his experiments. He finished them a while ago too, he knows the limits of our kind and it’s on those tapes. We have to go back.”

Aaron was considering all of this information and Claire could tell he was struggling, for more than one reason.

“I know you don’t want to go back to that room, I don’t want to either, but we have to if we want to know the truth. If we want to put an end to this monster, we have to go back.” She didn’t know if that would help him, but she had to try to persuade him.

Aaron was silent for a couple minutes. Claire didn’t want to push him anymore; she wanted him to be sure about his decision. She knew that he knew that if they failed, there would be no going back.

“Okay, you’re right. We need to go back. But we need to have a plan. We can’t just waltz into the Mayo Clinic and expect to walk away with the tapes. We need a plan.”

He was right, she knew that, “I know, we should color our hair or something, get hats, and try to cover up our faces as much as possible. As far was how to get to the…cell, I don’t know how we’re going to get in there. I don’t know where the tapes are either but I know they’re there.”

“Okay well let’s start driving back. Do we have enough money for this?”

That was something Claire had forgotten about, “I…I don’t know.” She started to rummage through her purse and found a 50 dollar bill and a crumpled up 20 dollar bill. She pulled it out and showed it to Aaron. “Well this should be enough for the hair color and clothes, and about a gallon or two of gas. Do you have any?”
Aaron searched his pockets and thankfully he had a 20 dollar bill and a 10. “That might be just enough.”

“Well, I guess we’re going back to Minnesota,” Claire had said with a devilish smile. They knew that if this plan worked they would have all the information they needed about Dr. Crane to take him out.

      They were packing up everything to prepare for their trip. They had their guns, ammo, clothes, and cash. All they needed to do was stop at a convenience store and pick up some hair dye and some different clothes and maybe some hats to hide their faces. After that they would just need to get some gas and they would be on their way. They decided to dye their hair before they left and they would change into their new clothes in the car. Claire was going to do Aaron’s he was going to attempt to do hers. She wanted to make them unrecognizable. They were about to leave to get the hair dye when Aaron grabbed her arm and pulled Claire into a long embrace. They must have been like that for 10 minutes. He didn’t want to let her go. He held her close to him while rubbing her back and stroking her hair. When he finally pulled away she looked up at him and saw there were tears in his eyes. She reached up and kissed him on the lips and they fell into the bed.

 

      They had just gotten back from the drug store and they were about to start coloring their hair when Aaron said, “You know, this could all blow up in our faces, really easily.”

“I know, but…I need to know what he knows, don’t you?”

“I guess, but I don’t want to risk losing you, and I think if we do this I will. We need to be smart about this Claire. This isn’t something that we can just plan in less than a day. Our plan to kill the b*****d took weeks and we didn’t even finish it! I know that we need to do this I just wish we knew sooner. I feel like we’re going into this too quickly.”

“You’re probably right, but if we want to get this done we need to get it done now. We’re running out of time! If he hasn’t figured out where we are by now he will soon. We can’t linger here much longer and we need to be sure that when we finally catch him, that we kill him. We need to be sure that he’s dead. We can’t just try five different things on him and hope one of them works. Not when we know he knows how to kill our kind. We have to put an end to this for good.” She was tired of running, and she knew Aaron was too.

“I know…I just don’t want to screw this up. This will be our only chance to take him down.”

“I know. We’ll have to come up with a plan to get the tapes on the way there. That is the best we can do right now.”

“Alright well let’s get this over with so we can head out.”

      Claire had decided that blonde would be a good change from Aaron’s dark brown hair. She was in the process of coloring it when she looked at him. He wasn’t watching her but there about a thousand thoughts running through her head. She didn’t want to lose him either. Camouflaged or not they were taking a huge risk going back to Minnesota. But they needed to. She couldn’t think of a way to avoid this. Sure they could try those five ideas they came up with, but there was no guarantee that any of them would work. If they got those tapes they would have proof. She was worried about what they would find on those tapes. What if was something worse than just cutting off the head? What if they didn’t have the stomach to do it? What if this was all for nothing?

      She hadn’t realized that she stopped until she looked at Aaron again and saw that he was staring at her now too. She looked at him and smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. She didn’t say anything. She handed him the boxes to color her hair. Since her hair was black she had to get creative. It would be hard to go from black to anything lighter than that. So she decided to go with a blue. It was lighter than she needed but she knew it would be darker when mixed with her black hair. Claire had picked out the colors for both of them. She knew that if they got something too bright they would stand out too much, and they would probably get recognized. The blonde Claire picked out for Aaron was more of a dirty blond, so it would be a change from his dark hair but not too drastic. Same with the color that Claire picked for herself. She knew the black wasn’t that noticeable, especially compared to her natural red hair, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

      They finally finished coloring their hair and they were packing up their things. They didn’t have much to pack except for the few clothes they had and the guns and ammo left over. So they packed everything up and left for Minnesota. There were a lot of things they needed to discuss on the ride back but neither of them had anything to say. Claire couldn’t think; she just had Dr. Crane on her mind. She was worried about Aaron, and all the horrible things that could go wrong. But she was mostly scared of what they would find on those tapes. Finally Claire couldn’t take the silence anymore.

“What do you think is going to be on those tapes?”

Aaron must have been lost in his thoughts too because he shook his head after she spoke and asked her to repeat herself. When she did he paused, “I have no clue. I am not sure if I’ll be able to watch either. What if he just ripped them in half? Or cut their heads off and cut their heads into tiny pieces? What if he just ate them? There are too many possibilities to even think about it, but it’s all I can think about.”

“I can’t seem to take my mind off of it either. What if…” Claire couldn’t bring herself to say it; she had been thinking about it since she dyed his hair. “What if I lose you? I don’t know what I would do…you are the first person I have been able to be myself around. I can’t imagine living any other way. Is this too much of a risk? I mean what if we go into the Mayo Clinic, balls blazing, but they’re waiting for us and we get shot down? Or they take you from me? I can’t think about anything else except for the ‘what if’s’.”

Finally it poured out of her; she had been holding it all in since before they went back on the road. 

“You don’t think I’ve thought of those things too, Claire? I was the one who was debating with you about changing the plan. But you were right, as always. We have to go back. We have no choice. If we don’t do this, if we don’t figure this out, he’ll kill us, and everyone like us. We can’t let that happen. I refuse to go into this thinking that I am going to lose you, or that I’m going to die. That is not the way I want to do this. We are going to find those tapes, figure out how to kill the b*****d, and we are going to leave that place and start a life together. I…I love you, Claire, and I am not going to let anything happen to you.”

“I love you too. And you’re right, we can’t just back down now. We have gotten this far and I don’t want to stop now. Let’s figure out how to cut the head off of this damn snake.”

      Claire had butterflies in her stomach. Never had she been loved before, sure her parents had some affection towards her, but all of that changed when they found about her. She never had any friends and never had a boyfriend before this. Now, she has someone who she can consider a life partner, someone who she can spend her life with. She never thought it would be possible and yet it was. The fear she had was gone and replaced with determination. Now she truly had something to fight for, as corny as it sounded, it was love. Claire refused to lose this feeling, she wanted her and Aaron to have a life together but she knew she wouldn’t have that unless they took out Dr. Crane. He was a monster who was relentless and determined to find and kill them both. She wasn’t afraid anymore, she was ready.