Rebound by Joseph Veramu Page A

get it, Mason. This has nothing to do with me. It is about you. If you don’t have confidence, we won’t succeed!”
    It was then that he saw BC’s security squad led by the dreaded Karabos. She was a lean and athletic looking woman in a business suit. She had blond hair and unnatural green eyes that looked cadaverous in the fading light. Her minions were in black suits and dark glasses holding on to what looked like electric cattle prods.
    “I can’t help you now but I’ll be back,” she said as she disappeared with some of the black suits pursuing her. The goons pointed their energy prods but she had some kind of shield that reversed the energy. They reeled from the reverse force.
    The black suits with Karabos pointed their prods at him. The energy force sent him sprawling. He tried to get up but this dark force sent him reeling again with a power that seemed to come from fast moving rotor blasts. Every time he tried to get up, the rotor blasts sent him sprawling helplessly.
    “Going somewhere Mr Anderson?” she asked in a cold emotionless voice
    He was too nervous to speak.
    “They don’t care for you, Mr Anderson. They just use you and move on. That is the nature of clones. We will get her back. We always do. But you’ve been left on your own.”
    He saw the white solar GM Super Cruise coming out of the bend and breathed a sigh of relief. He would make a run for it. However, as he made a dash and looked fleetingly at the driver, he knew instantly that he was also part of the security team. He was trying to run him down. He desperately tried to dive away but the speeding vehicle confronted him.
    In the instant before he went blank, he realized that they had planned all this. His only consolation was that in the moment before darkness, he had seen Emily smiling. He assumed wistfully that if he died he might be able to meet her again.
    They had planned to silence him as naturally as possible in a hit and run accident.

Chapter 2: Monitored
    “Mr Anderson, you’re lucky that we still want to give you a chance,” Karabos said without emotion as he lay on the hospital bed.
    At this close range, he noticed that she looked rather like a robotic clone with her perfectly chiseled face and body.
    She tried to look friendly but like cold inanimate emeralds, her green eyes had a hard edge that gave her an enigmatic machine like demeanor. He remembered the time when Emily had been sick. Karabos had returned to say that they were so sorry to break the news that she had expired. She had caught a deadly virus in the lab and had to be kept in cold storage. Babylon Corp sympathized and hoped he would meet someone in due time. Her apology had sounded insincere. Emily had worked in the Robotics Lab and he was mystified she would catch a virus there. In any case, Babylon Corp had the cure for almost all known diseases. He had felt disillusioned realizing that it was corrupt. There were also whispers in his lab that Emily had stumbled onto something insidious. It was after her ‘death’ that he began to plot about freeing the clones and exposing Babylon Corp.
    “You mean I’ll still be allowed to work for BC?”
    “You have talent. But we have to take precautions.”
    He was not sure whether to make a sigh of relief or of resignation.
    “She’s still out there enjoying her very short vacation. But we’ll get her!” There was a pregnant pause. “Mr Anderson, what do you know about Ryan Clay or Beckett Miles?”
    “They are sleeper clones.”
    “We all know that,” she said impatiently. “She was planning to take you to meet them.”
    “I wasn’t aware of that.”
    “There is a connection and we will fit the puzzle soon.”
    “But I was only contacted to meet her.”
    “You have something they want Mr Anderson. We will entice them. “Don’t get bloated with pride. The only reason they chose you was because they surmised that you are emotionally weak. They don’t care for you. Once you serve their purpose, they