Alone

ALONE
By Liz Campbell

Buster had just finished delivering food to the cloned subjects when he heard whimpering in the south corner of the room. He wandered over to investigate and found Alfie--or actually, Alfie's clone--whimpering in the corner of his cage. Buster sighed.
"Oh, Alfie III...," he offered a sympathetic hand through the bars of the cage, "I know this place is awful..." Alfie III took it and teared up. Buster felt his heart tear in two.
For a ten year old, Buster had endured more cruel sights and sounds than any adult would have endured in their entire life. Cairo, being the mad scientist figure, adopted little Buster as his assistant. Buster used to just be your ordinary little boy; he loved candy and pranks as much as the next kid, but this bright-haired baby was wiser and more compassionate than his age led on. He doesn't agree with what Cairo does, but he stays because he knows why Cairo does it.
"Buster, come here please?" Cairo called from the main lab. Buster cringed slightly and took another look at Alfie III, giving him a reassuring look before turning away.
Cairo was a spoiled child. Both him and his brother, Kaden, were spoiled rotten. Cairo, however, turned out a bit different from his brother. Cairo was one of those kids who played innocent but was really quite the brat underneath; two faced, you could say. Later on, Cairo began to resent his father, Taku, for ... reasons unknown actually. He started developing ways to make his father's life as miserable as possible, but nothing seemed really worth doing. Then, being the little genius he is, he realized the one important thing to his father was his mother, Alfie.
I know what you're thinking - both boys?! What?! Calm down. See, the technology available was beyond that of humans. Let's not get into the technicalities of conception, but Alfie got pregnant. He was able to be changed into a female for the birth and back to male again. Yes, demons have the life, don't they?
Well, obviously if he was going to destroy Taku, he had to take away Alfie. That's easier said than done. He devised this master plan - he started proclaiming this undying love for Alfie and making advances onto him. This made Taku go out of his mind--just what Cairo wanted. But it wasn't enough. He had to take it a step farther. Cairo was brilliant with science, and he decided that if he could create a clone that would act the way he decided it would act, he'd eventually drive Taku insane and his "mission" would be complete. And that's how he ended up here. He never stopped with just Alfie... he began developing cures for diseases--Tourette's, certain cancers, and he even came up with a vaccine for the common cold. He works behind the government's  back with stem-cells of, essentially aborted, babies. However, he was feeling rather... lonely.
Buster shuffled into the main lab to find Cairo facing a large screen.
"Buster, fetch me the vial "G2A4" please?" Cairo ordered. The most recent breakthrough was his vaccine for the common cold, although the sideaffects were still unpleasant.
"Here," he handed over the vial to Cairo. Buster's job wasn't exactly easy; he knew more about science than a graduate fresh out of college.
"Excellent," Cairo remarked, placing the blastocyst into a pitri dish. He added some sort of liquid and placed the dish into a slot in a machine. "Input code 32B3J." Buster wandered over to the big screen and started inputting a series of formulas and codes. Having done this time and time again, everything came naturally to him. Some would say he was lucky to have such knowledge, but he still thinks it's a curse. The machine began its process. It wasn't unusual that he wanted to escape. He missed his mother and his 19 brothers and sisters. He missed being in the fifth grade with the other kids and getting into mischief. All of that seemed a distant memory now. He wanted desperately to get Cairo out of this rut for both their sakes. But he was ten; what could a ten year old say to convince someone the grass is greener on the other side? "Cheer up! Do you need a hug?" That was the best he could come up with.
As Buster turned the corner into the clone room, he heard a shuffling on the floor above. No way, he thought. Nobody's been here in ages.
The last time people set foot into Cairo's house, they were on a rescue mission to save Alfie... or so they thought. See, to their knowledge, they rescued Alfie from the maniacle grip of Cairo. What they didn't expect was that Cairo had anticipated it. They all left with a clone of Alfie--Alfie II. They weren't supposed to figure it out. Cairo's clones looked, and for the most part, acted like the originals. What Cairo didn't predict was that Alfie II would get knocked up. Cairo can program his clones to act a certain way, but it's hard for him to imagine how someone acts toward something if he's never seen it-- IE: Alfie's parenting behaviors. He ignored it though.
But somehow they figured it out, and now they were back. Buster ran towards a corner to hide behind one of the cages. He wasn't worried about Cairo; he had superb hearing for a wolf demon and already heard the intruders.
Two figures came into view... dressed in black. Were they being robbed or what? A third figure came into view and Buster immediately recognized it as Taku. This could only leave the other two figures to be his idiot mother, Liss, and that idiot Sporke. Buster sighed silently. Cairo planned this out too.

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Liss looked around, then looked at Sporke, then at Taku. "It's ninja time," she whispered as she dropped to the floor on her back and crawled around. Sporke, however, was not so "ninja".
"NIIIIINNNJJJAAAAA~~~!" she screamed, hopping around.
"Ninja's don't scream," Taku retorted. He wasn't pleased, but all he cared about was getting his Alfie back.
"Oh, right..." Sporke dropped to her back and crawled around.
"On a rescue mission. With idiots." Taku sighed.
"We're much more genius than you give us credit for~" Liss challenged as she crawled under a table. "See? Look! A floor plan!" Sporke followed her under the table.
"Well, this seems to be a floor plan of the White House." Sporke observed.
"EXACTLY!" Liss stood up, looking accomplished. "Now then!" She peered around the corner into the clone room and her smug look immediately vanished. "Oh my God."
"What? What?!" Sporke asked crawling in. "... Woah. What in the..."
"What?" Taku asked, walking in also, "do you see him?"
"No, but there seems to be more victims..." Liss added. Taku really didn't care.
"Hey!" Sporke wandered over to the back of the room. "I found Alfie!" Before she even finished her sentence, Taku was there. But Alfie wasn't. Instead, there was an empty shell of a boy left soulless in the corner of a damp cage.
"Alfie!" Taku tore off the door---being a demon had its perks. Alfie III didn't respond. "Alfie?" Taku said again, worried this time. The clone looked up at him with fear almost radiating from his eyes. Taku felt the anger building up; as if he'd let that little bastard, Cairo, get away with this. He reached out a gentle hand to the  clone, but Alfie III backed farther into the corner of the cage. Taku felt his heart shatter. "A-Alfie...?"

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I watched the scene from my little corner. Incredible, I thought. They thought the clone was actually Alfie. Cairo really planned this one out, didn't he? Then again, it's extremely easy to fool desperate people. ... Especially my mother... I felt bad for Taku though. I don't know why Cairo hates him; I'm not sure he knows either. This had gone on for too long though.
I stood up and wandered over to them. Taku's face was full of hurt and my mother was all...shattered inside, I guess. Sporke seemed to just marvel at the amazing creations of Cairo.
"BUSTER!" My mother scooped me up and clung to me until I couldn't breathe. It was rather ridiculous...
"Mom..." I sighed. Taku glanced over for a split second, then right back to Alfie III.
"Alfie... I'm taking you home now," he held out his hand, but Alfie III backed away. I stepped over to them and looked Alfie III in the eye.
"Alfredo, you will exit the facility with your chaperone, Takeru, as directed. Please leave." My voice indicated authority, but my face was only sympathetic. Alfie III promptly rose and exited his cage, standing in front of Taku. He could only stare and feel his heart break for his broken lover stranding before him.
"Unfortunately, that's how you have to talk to him... he won't listen any other way." I looked away, and Taku only took Alfie's hand and disappeared with him.
"Buster~ You're coming too~" my mother sung as she scooped me up into her arms.
"Mom, I----"
"I'll have none of it! Let's go~" And we disappeared.

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I woke up this morning ot the same place I've been for months. I'm not completely sure where I am... my only theory is that it's some alternate dimension. It's eternally dark, but not black. It's like different shades and hues of "dark". Cairo's kept me here for... I'm not even sure. I don't know what time it is or even what day it is. It feels like it's been years, although, I'm pretty sure it's only been months.
I don't even know why I'm here. I'm sure it has something to do with torturing Taku, but there has to be something more. I miss everybody. I miss my family, my kids, Taku, hell, I miss the mayhem. There's no escape from here though. There's only a door open-able from Cairo's lab. You know, it's true when they say solitary confinement is the worst punishment psychologically. I mostly sit playing with my... hair. The hair that hasn't been washed in months and neither have I for that matter. I feel awful in ways unimaginable. I do have some form of a lavatory though; Cairo's not completely cruel. As for food, Buster brings me meals regularly. That poor kid... I used to say he was unlucky to be Liss' kid. Now I pity him for being Cairo's slave.
The door to this "dimension" opened, and I huddled into a little ball to shield myself from the light. Imagine waking up in a room with a thousand lights... and multiply that feeling by a hundred.
"Alfie?" Cairo called. It'd been months since I've seen him.
"Mom," I corrected.
"Nn... Mom." He wandered over to me with super-strength sunglasses. He knew the effects of solitary confinement on the eyes. He knew a lot, actually. He wasa genius in his own way, I guess. I took the sunglasses and slipped them on. With the light, I could clearly see his face. It was worn from God knows what. His eyes still clearly showed his true age---that happens when you unnaturally age somebody. His eyes were glowing with youth, truly only a year old. Although his eyes radiated with youth, his gaze held torment and age. I didn't feel like his parent; I felt like his child.
"Cairo, why?" I pleaded.
"I'm... I'm sorry for all of this," he answered, sincere as anything. The only time I'd ever seen him shed tears at all was when he'd fallen into a thorn bush when he was four. I never even saw it happen, but when he aged to 16, I remembered the time I supposedly would have spent with him in between. Cairo was a silent child. He always kept to himself, even with Kaden. I'm not sure when things changed---memories are foggy because they're not set in stone.
"Cairo..." I took his hand and stared deep into his eyes until I was sure I saw his heart, "...why?"
"B-Because..." he broke my gaze, "I-I'm not even sure." His tears flowed freely now. "It was supposed to go on for this long! I just.. was playing a joke on daddy. I wasn't sure what to think..."
"So this is all... a joke?"
"P-Please, don't hate me... this just... went way too far." I really, honestly, almost couldn't believe it. It was like watching a grown man cry for killing his best friend or something.
"So you really don't hte daddy?" Cairo shook his head.
"In truth, I miss everybody and how things used to be. Someone at school told me I could be his friend if I proved myself to him." And suddenly, everything just clicked. Everything finally made some sort of weird sense.
Cairo was a bookworm. He didn't have friends, and it didn't help that he was the son of a Hokusai. Everybody was scared, especially after Kaden's reign of terror. In order for them to torture Cairo, they had to eliminate the threat of his Hokusai bodyguards. They set him up---told him to rebel against his parent, like the perfect prank. Then he'd just apologize, but the piont was that we wouldn't forgive him. If he came crying to us, we'd just ignore him. This must have happened already since Cairo dropped out and moved away. Knowing he couldn't come clean and expect forgiveness, he'd just keep the pank going...
"And he was meanto you because he knew nobody would cover you..." Cairo nodded, burying his face into his hands. Unbelievable. The child I'd come to know as sneaky and coniving as well as possibly psychotic and maniacle... was breaking down. It was all a facade--a joke. I wasn't quite sure what to think... or how Taku would react. At least the nightmare was over...
"I forgive you, Cairo." I hugged him tightly. People just hate us, I guess...

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In the end, Buster really didn't know.