"They can't be," said Crypto. "That doesn't make any sense."

"They look like me," I said.

"Bullshit," said Crypto. "The face on two of them is pretty near gone. It could be anyone in there."

I stepped away from the canisters. The rest of the lab was in disrepair with rust and water stains running down the walls from a burst pipe in the ceiling. Dark crimson blood stains pooled on counters and were splattered across a set of vials and instruments. The only computer in the room has been spared the worst of the damage thanks to a mold eaten lab coat that had been thrown over top of it and bore the brunt of the moisture damage.

I tossed the lab coat aside and it practically disintegrated when it hit the floor. "There must be a log or a report somewhere."

The terminals power supply was shot so I levered open an access panel on the underside of my left forearm and hotwired it to the bio-reactor that powered my implants. My left arm went numb and the display lens over my left eye died and slipped limply back into the slot on my cheekbone. That was okay. I was still running half an augmetic system. With my working arm, I plugged a data cable from the rusted PC and clipped it into the expansion port behind my ear. Data streamed into my mind and sent me drifting into the past through a series of database queries and video recordings from lifetimes long past.

Static crackled in my ears and a low bitrate image flickered across my working eye before slowly resolving into a scene from the same lab I was standing in. A woman in a white lab coat stepped into frame and a man in black combat armour followed her. The man was Paul, back when he was normal, before the Zone had twisted him into the monster he was now, and the woman looked a hell of a lot like Crypto. It couldn't be her, though. The time stamp was from five hundred years ago.

"Paul," said Crypto. "Don't tell me you're here to pitch yourself for entry into the program again."

"I don't understand why I can't go," said Paul.

Crypto waved towards the tanks on the far wall. "Technically none of us are going. They're using the clones."

"And I'm not good enough to be cloned?"

"No." Crypto pushed past Paul and checked an access panel built into the side of one of the cloning tanks. "we're having a hard enough time keeping these ones stable. We're not introducing more variables at this stage."

Paul folded his arms across his chest. "And I'm sure this has nothing to do with my position. You don't think we haven't noticed that all the clones are members of the board?"

"All of the clones have been selected for intelligence and stable genomes. They're the ones we can replicate. I'm sorry you washed out of the program, but the science doesn't lie, there's no telling what would happen if we started growing more Pauls."

"Well maybe I'll have to have a talk with the director then. Convince her to go back to a real boots on the ground approach."

Crypto rolled her eyes. "Because that worked so well for Teams Six and Seven."

"Team Six made it all the way to the wreck. You wouldn't have half the shit in this complex if it weren't for them."

"We also wouldn't have a barrier field that turned Team Eight into steaming piles of chunky salsa when they touched it."

"No one could have known about the defenses."

Crypto shrugged. "A smarter team might have been more careful. And now the whole operation is screwed because of them. The field is biometrically keyed to the alien tech. Clones from their vats are the only things making it through now."

"We'll see." Paul turned and stalked out of the lab.

"Idiot," Crypto muttered before switching off the camera.

I disconnected the data cables. "Did you get any of that?" I asked present day Crypto.

She tapped the computer screen. "Picture wasn't great but I could hear most of it. I … don't know what to make of any of that." She walked back to the cloning tanks and laid a hand on the glass. "If the barrier is keyed to alien genetics you think that means we could walk out?"

"I'm sure Curi would be happy to hear that," I said.

“I’d be happy about what?” asked Curi. She struggled under the weight of a pair of short barrelled rifles, a bulky machine gun and enough ammunition to supply an entire platoon.

I played her the video while she loaded the weapons and passed a rifle to Crypto and I.
“Great,” said Curi. “Then we can rush the barrier right now and get the hell out of here?”

“In theory, sure,” I said. “There’s one problem though. Do you remember what direction it is?”

Curi slipped a linked belt of brass shells into the yawning breach of the machine gun and racked the bolt. “Can’t be that hard to figure out. Can it?”

“I feel like it is,” said Crypto. “According to all the clocks here, we’ve been wandering for five centuries without finding the center or an exit.” She shrugged. “Seems pretty hard to find to me.”

Curi slung her weapon over her shoulder and pulled a handful of memory sticks from her pocket. “I found these next to the guns. Might be something useful there.”

I slid one of the sticks into the port behind my ear and time ran backwards away from me until I was watching a locker room full of discarded weapons and sweat soaked combat armour. The shot was low, most likely a helmet mounted camera sitting on a bench.

Curi's voice echoed through the room, coming from one row of lockers away from the camera. "I can't believe this shit. If we have to do one more drill, I think I'm going to puke."

Paul's legs stepped in front of the camera. "I know. What's even the point of all of this, anyway? It's not like a dozen vat grown nerds can cause much trouble. They go down easy."

"Tell me about it," said Curi. "A copy of the head of Cryptozoology slipped out of her test tube yesterday. You should have seen that thing. Nothing but crawling meat and aftermarket implants. Probably would have died within the hour if I hadn't put a .45 through its forehead."

"Right," said Paul. "I hear they're rolling back all the augmented clones."

"Most of them. The Technician models seem promising. But what we really need is some damned combat models. Something with subdermal plating and synapse boosters. I hear Team Nine got torn up pretty bad by some kind of fuckin' mushroom with teeth."

Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of dark red liquid. "I say we change that. I've been collecting from the security team and I think it's time we add a little muscle into the mix, don't you?"

"Hell yes," said Curi.

The recording ended, dropping me back into the present and into the center of an argument.

"See?" said current Curi. "This is what I was telling you about. Glitches. Malfunctions. We can't have her slowing us down if we're going to get out."

"I'm fine," I said through gritted teeth. "Christ, I stop for five minutes and you're ready to leave me behind."

"Damn straight," said Curi. "Look, I am sick to death of wandering this place. I'm getting out. And I'm not letting any of you stop me."

A subtle pulse of static rolled over the Zone, setting my implants flickering and the mold on the walls pulsing along with the signal. "I don’t think I want to leave.”

Crypto shuffled a few steps closer to me. “I don’t want to go either. This … this place is all I know. Studying the Zone is the only thing I’m good for. I’m not going.”

Curi rolled her eyes. “You’re pathetic. To hell with both of you.”

She turned to leave, but I caught her arm before she could make it through the door. “Wait. We can at least help you find the barrier. We owe you that much.”