The Nemesis Cell

Chapter Two

Chapter TwoThe woman gazed down at the two toddlers happily playing on the floor in front of her. The two boys were perfect, almost too perfect, she thought. It was so hard to distinguish them from one another. Never had there been such twins, she thought to herself, and she had carried them within her body, had given birth to them, and now she was responsible for every minute of their daily lives. They loved her, they depended on her, they interacted with her in a way she would never have thought possible at one time in her life. They had begun to talk a few months ago, and both had the ability to walk unaided for quite a number of steps. She was proud of their progress. They had lively, active minds, as she'd always known they would have. After all, one need look no further than the man who sat in the office on the other side of the playroom wall, the man who had been by her side through the whole process, who had held her hand as she gave birth to the boys, and whose blood and genetic makeup flowed in the veins of the two boys upon whom so many futures now depended. His mind had been a part of the blueprint that had made them.

The door to the playroom opened, and the white-coated man entered and walked across, then positioned himself on the sofa next to her.

“They look well,” he said, with a knowing smile on his face.

“Of course they're well, they're always well, aren't you, boys?” she replied, voicing the purely rhetorical question in the direction of the two playing children who patently were not about to provide an answer.

“Is everything going according to your childrearing programme?” asked the man.

“You make it sound so clinical,” she responded.

“Isn't that what you are, a clinician, and one of the best in your field, I might add?”

“Yes, of course. It's just that they have no real conception of how important they are to me, or to you.”

“One day they will know, and they will be proud of their heritage, their upbringing, their lineage.”

The woman appeared to lapse into deep thought for a minute or so, and then she rose from the sofa and beckoned the man to follow her. As they retreated to the far side of the room, the twins rose in perfect unison, steadied themselves on their young legs, and began to walk slowly but surely, with an assurance rare for such youngsters, towards the couple. As they neared the smiling couple, the boys reached out with their hands. First the man, and then the woman responded in kind. The two boys took the hands of the adults, who led them into another child-oriented, cheerfully decorated room where the boys were soon sleeping peacefully under the warm coverings of their purpose-built beds, which were fitted with an array of monitoring equipment. It was time for their afternoon nap.

After ensuring that the boys were safely asleep and that the cameras that recorded their every movement were switched on and operating correctly, the man and woman left the room, retraced their steps across the pastel blue carpet of the playroom, and made their way into the office which lay on the other side of the wall.

The man stood for a long time gazing out of the office window, as the woman sat making notes at the desk. He watched a family of blackbirds as they fed upon the lawn, mother, father and two fledglings hunting for juicy worms. Next came a squirrel as it ran down the trunk of the tall tree in middle of the lawn, anxious to find a new source of food and return to its secret hideaway.

The man was lucky to enjoy such sights, for the office window was perfectly positioned to observe the small wonders of nature that were regularly taking place in the expansive garden outside. In sharp contrast to his panoramic view, in the beautifully decorated, centrally heated bedroom to which the twins had just been led, and in the superbly equipped and well-lit playroom he and the woman had just left, there were no windows at all.