In 2002, I joined an organization called "Oria Tech". Most people are not aware of this company, and that is for good reason, which I will get to later. This company was basically me and a small group of other scientists testing on chromosomes in children. We were funded by the CIA, and were told by them not to tell anyone about our tests in our labs. This testing was technically illegal, but it was a very well-paying job, so I didn't question it.
We were testing on mostly children, with the parent's consent of course. At least that's what they told us. They wanted us to attempt to "clone" these children, because it had been done before on other children in underground studies. Although there is one exception. The one exception being that they wanted us to tamper with their chromosomes, trying to make the baby "hyper intelligent". We didn't challenge this, and I was pretty sure most of us just liked getting paid, myself included. They told us that we had several months to set up the plans and then we had to get started.
The job started out simple enough, and actually quite easy, surprisingly. Just go into the lab, work on the procedures we were going to do, step by step, and go home. Once the months were up though, I started to have a little uneasiness when I had to leave for work. When we started to set up the machinery for this device, I could always swear I could see the reflection of a face in the glass in of the cloning machine. But when I looked behind me, nothing was there. Just my fellow scientists doing other things. I really wanted to ask one of them about it, but it never came to mind in any of our conversations.
I also started to have nightmares, which I could never quite remember, but just remembering the feeling of fear and imminent danger in them. I also got these feelings at work, but could never put my finger on why this was.
We finally started the cloning, a little behind schedule. The CIA didn't like this and told us to get back on schedule or there would be consequences. We all had to pull a few all-nighters at the lab to do this. The first child was to be cloned was a 2-year-old girl by the name of Anita Banks and everything went perfectly. Anita came out fine, and what we called Clone 01, came out just as expected.
After this point, we didn't know what to figure, because there were no previous tests on the things we were doing. Right after the cloning, Clone 01 was acting just like Anita, just as we expected. We continued doing tests on her, and we started to notice something. Her vocabulary seemed to get larger and larger as we waited longer. After a month, Clone 01 had the vocabulary of a grown man, using words as advanced as "foresee" and even things like "bequeathed" in just a matter of weeks. This was very surprising to us, because we didn't expect for the effect to be so drastic.
We then gave her an IQ test, and she scored 137, well above the average for a normal grown human. We were very pleased with this test and decided to create more of these "hyper intelligent" beings.
We started with clones 02 03 and 04, and eventually went all the way up to clone 13 and 14. We continued to work on these 14 clones for another 6 years, living comfortable lives, and being well paid. But as the years went along, the clones didn't age as a normal human would age. It was almost as if they were slowly evolving. We all took note of every change we saw, and this "evolution" began around their first birthday. They started to outgrow most children very much, but their intelligence seemed to stop growing after about the first few months, almost as if it "maxed out". But the evolution started becoming very noticeable and disturbing at 2 years old. Their ears started to drip very low, their backs misshapen and curved at odd angles, and their gums and jagged teeth jutting out of their mouth. They needed very little nutrition as well, being able to go weeks without food or water.
Many people in the group wanted out, but the CIA wouldn't let them. They said that if we tried leaving, they wouldn't hesitate to track us down and kill us. We reluctantly continued the tests. At age five, they were standing at about 6 feet tall and spoke in a deep raspy tone. One of the people in our group killed themselves in their home, leaving us with four members left myself included. We were all sleep deprived due to all the nightmares we had. All of us were on edge, as we snapped and yelled at one another for nearly no reason. Having no other choice, we stayed like that for another three years.
Once those "things" were 9 years old, they were about 8 feet tall, their completely black eyes nearly on the sides of their heads, and their voices sounding downright demonic. There were just holes where their noses should be. Another one of us, the only girl in the group killed herself at this point, leaving just me and two other guys left. Even though the glass that separated us and the clones was about an inch and a half thick, I still felt very unsafe. They talked to us very rarely, but when they did, they told us very cryptic and creepy things, while smacking on the glass.
One day, one of my colleagues was facing away from the glass right next to it, and one of the clones smashed through the glass with their fist, leaving a giant jagged hole with cobweb like cracks all around it. The clone pulled him into the chamber. I panicked and took one of the large computers and shoved it in front of the hole with the help of the other scientist. We watched in horror and dismay as the monsters tore all the clothes off the scientist as he was screaming and crying in terror. My last co-worker left turned around threw up. I kept watching as they tore all the clothes off him. Once he was stripped naked, all but one of them backed up. The one still next to him grew closer to him and bit his neck. He seemed to have died instantly.
I didn't get any sleep that night. In the morning I hesitantly put on my clothes, with my stomach bloated with gas from stress. I knew that if I didn't go, the CIA would kill me. My last partner didn't show up that day, and I knew that he killed himself. Sure enough he did. I was the last one left.
Once I got the courage to enter the building, I was horrified from what I saw. There was no more body on the other side of the glass. I counted the number of the clones, and the number I got chilled me to the bone. I got fifteen. Hoping I had miscounted, I counted them again, and again. But there were fifteen of them. They all stared at me, and smiled, and on the wall, written in his blood, were the words "join us".