THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 7: THE SON

The room was tiled completely and was incredibly clean.

The four walls were covered with broad off-white tiles, and the floor had brownish tiles. The ceiling was an array of beautifully-designed interlaced wood that kept out dust.

There was no window here, but there was a door at the far back that led to a bathroom. An air-conditioner kept the temperature just right. There was no furniture in the clean room except clean cabinets in the corner containing medicine.

In the centre of the room was a curious structure made up of five cylindrical glass globules standing on the floor. Four were filled with coloured solutions that were bubbling gently. The colours were lime green, pale amber, sky-blue and light orange.

The cylindrical globule in the middle was broader and taller than the rest, about eight feet tall. It contained a clear liquid. The cylinders with the coloured solutions were connected to each other by thin glass tubes, but they were attached to the middle one by clean rubber tubes fixed to the top of the cylinder.

Behind the centre cylinder were metallic stands with intravenous packets hanging from it and connected to the central cylinder by dispensing tubing.

The coloured liquids were dripping into the middle cylinder slowly, a drop at a time. They coloured the point where they dropped briefly before diffusing into the clear liquid.

And there was something inside the middle chamber.

It was a nine-month-old baby boy!

The baby was suspended in the cylinder in an upright position. His eyes were closed, and his umbilical cord was attached to a strange pouch-like object beneath him. He was a handsome baby, and everything about him was incredibly enhanced and making him seem surreal, almost like a carefully-sculptured piece of art. He was slightly bigger than a normal baby would have been, and if it had been inside the queen, she would have required surgery to give birth.

The baby bore a close resemblance to the king, and he also had a deeper, beautiful aura, something obviously inherited from his mother's exotic and sleek beauty lines and enhanced by whatever modification he was going through inside that cylinder.

The baby looked strong, healthy and so perfect that Sali's purple eyes narrowed as he growled deep in his throat, suddenly filled with an insane hatred for that baby, knowing this was the heir Eli Kem had wished for.

There was a bank of instruments to the left of the five cylinders, fixed on a slightly-raised flat table that had knobs and switches on it. Sali noted that most of the push-knobs were set at their lowest levels, and he deduced that those knobs were what controlled the coloured solutions dripping into the baby's chamber.

Above the flat control board, arranged in a semi-circle, were monitors and screens showing vital information about the baby. The monitors were pulsing and beeping rhythmically, an indication that the baby in the cylinder was doing great.

Sali Kem looked at the wiry, shifty doctor in the room, and the truth finally dawned on him.

"Ah, of course, it all makes sense now!" he said coldly. "You're Doctor Victor Biko, aren't you? The renowned reproductive endocrinologist – the famous fertility doctor! They call you the magician, don't they?"

The doctor licked his dry lips and looked stubbornly at Sali without speaking.

"Ah, I see it all now," Sali said and looked grimly at his brother who was sitting on the floor and holding his terrified wife. "Anya could not give you an heir to the throne, right? She could not get pregnant naturally, and she was also not growing any younger. Her hormonal loads were getting lower and f****d up for sure, so you finally contacted the famous Doctor Biko to fix you up with a fake baby!"

"He's our son!" Anya cried bitterly, stung by Sali's contemptuous voice. "Oh, you're so wrong, Sali Kem! I have been pregnant countless times, but I have a problem with the lining of my womb, so the foetuses couldn't attach well, and I always miscarried! But Doctor Biko here… he took my egg and my darling's sperm and fertilized them! So, the baby you see now is not a fake boy! He's our beloved son!"

"He's an abomination," Sali said, and his voice had frosted over considerably more. "Real babies from God are kept inside the womb, not inside some damn artificial caskets like these. You should be ashamed of yourself, Eli Kem."

"You have no moral fibres to condemn anybody, Sali," Eli said coldly. "That is our son, the Heir Apparent of the kingdom."

"So, you let your wife wear fake bulges to deceive the people that she's pregnant whilst the baby grows inside this thing. You're cold and callous, a real piece of s**t, little brother! This is a perversity that should not be allowed to see the dawn of day!"

"Noo!" Anya cried and fell on her face in front of the killer. "Please, I'm begging of you, don't kill my baby, please!"

"Do not describe this beautiful boy as a perversity!" Doctor Victor Biko said in a voice that was bristling with disgust. "This is the future, sir! What you're seeing now has been attempted by many, and they all failed. This is a fertilized egg that grew outside his mother's womb for the duration of the pregnancy, nurtured by a special blend of nutrients, energetics, and my special formula of amniotic fluids to carve out an amazing human being! This is the knowledge that can eliminate many birth defects that have plagued humankind for centuries. You're looking at a pure human, one crafted to show the utmost qualities of our species, sir! And I detest it when you address it as a perversity! Such knowledge could not have been granted me without the will of the God I serve!"

Sali Kem looked at the doctor with his purple eyes and an expression of rage on his face.

"Yes, I can see the biggest atrocity in this room is you, Doctor Biko. What you have done here is unacceptable!"

"You're the unacceptable one, sir!" Doctor Biko screamed, his renowned streak of fury getting the better of him. "Look at you! Hairless, lights for eyes! Look at your damn hands and feet! You're not human, sir! You're a monstrosity!"

"You're right, doctor," Sali Kem said with a dark smile. "You're so right. Now, enough of this crap. Anya, I wanna be sure you're not really pregnant. What have you got under your dress to deceive the good people of Eden that you're pregnant? Take it out!"

"Sali!" King Eli said menacingly.

"You question me again and she dies!" Sali said coldly. "Get it out! Now!"

Eli tried to get to his feet but his wife held him and shook her head.

"Eli, it is okay, please," she whispered tremulously.

She shielded herself behind the body of the king and reached under her dress. She tugged and pulled and eventually dragged out the rounded fake pregnancy fibre bulge Doctor Biko had carefully constructed for her.

She had a secret closet for the fibres, known only to her, her husband and the doctor. He had crafted and graded them for each week of her pregnancy. That was what she had been wearing for the nine months span of her pregnancy, and it had convinced the people of Eden that the queen was pregnant. It had stopped the power struggle that would have rocked their cherished kingdom.

Everything had been so perfect since Doctor Biko came in to help them!

They had turned this secret room into the lab for the growth of their baby. Their joys had known no bounds as they watched their son growing from a fertilized egg to the bouncy, beautiful, nine-month-old boy that he was now. His skin was pure, his face an amazing effusion of handsomeness and perfection!

Oh, how they had longed to hold him in their arms, to adore and cherish him! Their beautiful son would have been out in a couple of days!

And now Sali Kem had to come around!

Anya's lips trembled when she dropped the fibre on the floor and noticed how Sali's lips curled with disgust.

"Liars!" Sali grated out. "Greedy royal pair! What stopped you from adopting a son? You had to stoop to this savagery! But, enough of that! Now, we're going to have a civilized conversation, Eli, no? As I said, you owed me big time for stealing my kingdom and secondly for stealing twenty years of my life. See, I don't mean you harm. Just pay me for what you stole from me, and I'll call it even, my little brother!"

And Sali Kem smiled.

It was an evil smile.