Different Paths, Part 2

"Kill them?" shrieked Thirteen. Everyone looked at her, and she paused a moment, shrinking back a little. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and stood up tall again. "But they're the ones responsible for us being alive at all! Without them, we wouldn't exist. You can't just kill them!"

"What is the point of life without power?" questioned Seven, sounding completely sure of the fact that the only thing that mattered was control.

Amy 13 looked around at everyone, trying to find compassionate eyes, ones that would understand her. All of them were cold, hard. All of them looked as if they agreed with Amy 7.

"Look, Thirteen," said one of the clones. With a quick glance at her necklace, Number Thirteen saw that it was Eight. "You won't have to kill any of them, okay? We'll let some of the others kill them. All you have to do is sit tight and be quiet."

Amy Number Thirteen closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. She felt like all of the energy had been taken out of her as she slumped like a deflated balloon. Her mind was whirling, trying to figure out what to do. This was like her worst nightmare, though Number 13 was sure that she was awake. How could this be happening? she asked herself. How did this all blow up in my face?

"Are you agreeing then, Thirteen?" Amy 9 asked arrogantly, sure everyone would be supporting this decision.

Amy 13's eyes snapped opened. "No!" she cried. She gasped for breath, feeling as if she was being suffocated, with a pillow over her face. The air thick, as if it were water, and she gulped it in desperately. "I won't let them be killed…they're the nicest doctors. Especially Dr. Candler!"

Two of the Amys exchanged a significant glance. Thirteen tried to figure out what it was when suddenly a thought--a very unwelcome thought--hit her, like a bucket of cold water being dumped over her head. "You'd kill me!"

Number Four looked hesitant, but opened her mouth to speak. "Not unless there was no other solution. We wouldn't be so casual about killing one of our own as we are about killing a few doctors. However, if you left us no choice at all, and it was either you or us…"

Amy Number Thirteen looked at the ground. "Well…" she said slowly, thinking hard. "Give me a minute okay?" the clone asked desperately, trying to grasp a few extra seconds, hoping that somehow she'd be able to make everything right, change this around…

The other clone nodded, with an understanding look on her face. "Sure, maybe it would be better if you thought about it, got used to the idea."

Thirteen kicked one foot against the ground nervously, trying to clear her head and approach the situation in the most clear-minded direction possible, doing her best to sort everything out in her head. All of the Amys agreed with Four; that much was obvious. So the question came down to this: either her own life, or the doctors'.

No, no. That wasn't right. Amy Thirteen was very strong, obviously, but twelve other Amys could, and would if necessary, easily kill her. Her dying wouldn't save the doctor's lives, because they'd simply kill her then go onto the doctors. Number Thirteen couldn't think of any way to save those doctors, in fact. Everything seemed so hopeless; to think that a few hours ago, everything seemed almost perfect! There seemed only one solution, though…no need to die with no reason at all.

"Fine," mumbled Thirteen, looking down at the ground. Her mind was buzzing, trying to figure out some sort of plan. There would be no chance to warn the doctors… That was it! The doctors would be seeing them individually, so Thirteen could warn the doctors about what the other Amys were planning! Amy Number 13 relaxed a little, knowing that she'd be able to prevent what was going on without actively going against the other Amys right now.

Thirteen sighed, making her face look defeated. "I guess I'll go along with you guys then. But I'm not killing anyone!" If Amy 13 looked very nervous saying this, everyone just assumed that she was uncomfortable about agreeing to something so scary-seeming, especially for the one of them who had always been on the outside.

Some of the Amys nodded, but Thirteen wandered off as they discussed how they'd be killing the scientists. She knew that she ought to listen, so that she could tell the scientists to save them, but it all made her very sick. She was probably going to throw up if she listened to the other clones plan the deaths of Number 13's favorite scientists. They wouldn't move soon, anyway, so if she simply informed the doctors of the other Amys' plans to kill them, it should work out fine.

Yeah, Amy, she said to herself, You just keep on thinking that. The feeling of dread was overwhelming, and "what ifs" kept going over and over in Thirteen's head. What if the doctors didn't believe her? What if the Amys found out and killed her? What if their plan was sooner than Number 13 thought, and she would be too late to do anything? What if? What if? What if? The thoughts went over her head, over and over, without end. She had no escape from her thoughts.

*******

In fact, right across the room Thirteen's fears were becoming reality. The other Amys were discussing their plans, and in fact they didn't seem to be the procrastinating type. It was a very bad move of Amy 13's to not stay and listen to the plans, no matter how disconcerting they were to her.

At the very moment, the other Amys were taking a break in discussing their plan to take a brief look at Thirteen.

"She seems nervous," said Four, looking over at Thirteen.

"Well, of course she is," smirked Seven, "she's used to being an outsider, so her only friends were the doctors. Don't worry, soon enough she'll be more like us. If she intended on trying to stop us, then she'd stick around to listen to our plans, right?" The Amy shrugged, looking anxious to plan the murder of the scientists in her way.

"Yeah, she's smart enough to do that," agreed Nine. Smart as they were, none of the Amys seemed to remember that at one point, the doctors were the only friends that Thirteen had; this discussion was to Thirteen as the discussion of killing an Amy would be to any of the first twelve clones. Seeing the look on Amy Seven's face, Number Nine straightened, bringing her mind back to the business at hand. "However, we need to plan this out. Who is going to kill who?"

"Well, since One, Two, and Three are already gone," Twelve seemed to be thinking, "how many of the doctors have to be killed?"

"Four of them," supplied Ten, "so therefore four, five, six, and seven kill the doctors. Four, you kill Jaleski, Five, Gerard, Six, you kill Dr. Hopkins. Seven?"

Seven nodded. She'd always liked Dr. Candler, the doctor was nice. She had seemed to like Amy 7 more than most of the others, in fact, and the clone would be sad to see the doctor go. However, Seven was, like most of the other clones, ruthless. This was for power, and she'd do whatever had to be done to achieve that. "Yeah, I'll kill Candler. I have this," she pulled a knife out of her boot.

"What?" screeched one of the Amys.

"How did you get that?" whispered another excitedly

At the exclamations of all the other clones, Amy Seven grinned. "I got it from the operating table when I went into the back rooms. I thought it might come in handy." She threw it into the air, and it did a few cartwheel flips before Number 7 caught it again by the handle, and slipped it back into her boots. Her brown hair fell over into her eyes, and she brushed it back impatiently. "But what will the others use?"

Four smiled. "Our strength? We have enough of it to kill them, don't worry about that. It'll get done."

"Yeah…" Number Seven was always practical, thinking everything out. "Well, the alarms will be put off when they find one of the doctors dead. They'll stop and know that it was whichever Amy was in there…even if they don't, they'll suspect it."

"No," spoke up Eight, "they won’t know that the doctor is dead. They don't look in, remember? We don't tell them that the doctors are dead, and they won't know until the end, when they go in for the report, so until Thirteen is out, they won't find out. The rest of you just have to go around with the nurses."

Amy Seven nodded slowly, remembering the face. "In that case, I can easily kill all of them. I have the knife, after all," she pointed out. The clone, despite volunteering for the job, looked slightly queasy at the thought of killing four people in a row.

"No, no," Number 9 shook her head, noticing the look on Amy Seven's face, "we're not going to make anyone kill more than once, okay? This is a joint effort."

Seven nodded. "Yeah…is everyone for it?" She looked around at the other Amys, and saw the approval on their faces. A few of them looked a bit squeamish, but none of them were contesting the idea at all.

Just then, a nurse came in. "Amy, Number Four?" she called from the doorway.

Number Four stood up and yelled "Coming!" over towards the nurse. She turned towards the other Amys. "Okay, this is it. When I come back in, Jaleski will be dead." She looked a bit nervous, but quickly covered up the look with a sniff as she stuck her nose in the air. With that, she walked over to the nurse and followed her out of the recreation area to the first office, preparing for her first kill.

The other Amys watched her go. "Maybe someone should clue Thirteen in?" Twelve suggested hesitantly. "After all, she's going to go through the tests, and she might be pretty scared if she goes in to find one of them dead."

All of the Amys kind of looked down. "Well…" started Six hesitantly, then stopped a moment. "How about we do that later? After all, we can't be sure that she's not a traitor."

"I don't like us thinking of each other as traitors!" exclaimed Twelve.

"Well, seriously, we don't know Thirteen very well. We can't be sure. How about, someone tells her right before she has to leave? That way she won't scream or anything, but she won't be able to prevent it, either."

Twelve looked, uncomfortable, but nodded. Thirteen was sitting across the room, looking at the ground and appearing to be deep in thought. She didn't move for a long time, even when Five and Six were called out. Twelve tried to figure out what Thirteen was thinking about, but couldn't really think of anything that could occupy someone for so long.

However, the subject of Thirteen's worry wasn't anything complicated; was just yelling at herself. She'd run away when she should have stayed. I didn't even use my hearing to find out what they were doing! She screamed at herself. They could be plotting exactly what they're going to do, and I could have found out how to stop it, but no, I had to be a coward and leave because I was afraid of the topic. For all I know, my squeamishness could be the cause of the deaths. Stupid, stupid, STUPID!

"Amy, Number Seven?" called the nurse from the doorway. The clone stood up, nodding at the nurse to show that she'd heard. She turned to the remaining clones, a nervous look on her face.

"Okay, now," whispered Nine, "Go for it, Seven. You can do it."

Seven nodded, smiling at Nine and relaxing a little. She kept inside how worried she really feeling. Much as she hated to admit it, she did like Dr. Candler, a lot, and didn't want to kill her. Come on, Amy, she thought, you have to do this. You are going to do this, so don't try to duck out of it. Amy 7 walked over to the nurse, and followed her out into the hall. They walked through the gray metal hallways. Nothing is ever colorful around here, Seven realized. She shrugged, and put that insignificant thought at the back of her mind, preparing for the coming ordeal.

The nurse stopped in front of the door. As Eight had predicted, the nurse didn't come in, just stood there waiting for Amy to enter the room. She did so. The waiting room was right before the office, but Seven walked right through that and went into the office without bothering to knock. She slipped in and sat down on the table. Her eyes were cold, though the sides of her mouth curved into a friendly smile as she greeted Dr. Candler.

"Hello, doctor," she said in a voice that seemed friendly and relaxed, "How are you?"

Dr. Candler smiled back at Number Seven. "I'm fine, Amy, how about you?"

"Oh, everything's great with me," responded Seven, sweetly, but careful not to make her voice too sweet. She grinned at the doctor, as if she liked her a lot and was glad to be there. In reality, the clone was really worried about the upcoming ordeal, and realized that she was also a bit disgusted at Dr. Candler's inferiority. I never really felt like that, she realized, a feeling that she couldn't place welling up in her stomach. However, none of this showed on her face. The only thing that appeared on Amy 7's face was what she wanted to appear there.

"Alright, then, we'll be testing you now," she said. "If you would please put those earphones over your ears? All right, now you know the drill, right? Raise the hand that you hear the sound in."

Amy Seven nodded, sitting down in the chair carefully. This was routine, they'd had this test every year. She put on the headphones, looking at the doctor. She was looking at some sort of graph…then the doctor looked up and smiled at Amy, walking over towards the chair. "Alright, then, we'll start," she said. She walked over to the machine just a few feet from Seven's chair, and turned her back, looking at it.

Perfect, thought Number Seven evilly. She kicked her legs up, and pushed them forward with as much strength as she could. They connected with Dr. Candler's back with a sickening crunch sound, and the doctor fell to the floor. The crunching sound made Amy's stomach jump uncomfortably, but she pushed the feeling down and tried to ignore it.

Seven jumped up, standing over the doctor. She felt Candler's back; it was broken. "Well, you're paralyzed," said Amy Number Seven slowly, "But that won't be enough."

"W--what?" asked Dr. Candler fearfully, looking up at the girl, the girl who looked so innocent.

"Well, you're against using us Amys as a ruling class, remember?" Number 7 smiled down at the older woman. "Well, we want to be a ruling race." She took out the knife out of her boot, lifting it up.

"Why are you doing this?" sobbed Dr. Candler. "I loved you Amys, loved you as if you were my own daughters. I…I thought that you loved me too." She shook her head, as if she was trying to figure it all out.

Amy 7 smirked, trying to hide the sadness from her eyes. "Yes," she said. "You were useful, so we took advantage of that." She knelt down next to the body. "But you have outlived your usefulness, dear doctor," Seven whispered. "We won't let you be a hindrance to our success." With that, she took the knife and plunged it through Dr. Candler's ear, through her brain. The woman was dead within seconds; the last thing she saw was the evil smirk on the face of her murderer, the girl that she loved.

Amy Number Seven stood up, and walked towards the door. She cast one glance back at the corpse, and something came over her face. The look almost seemed akin to regret. However, she shook her head and any traces of humanity left her as she walked out of the room.

Anything for success, she reminded herself. No matter what.

Amy sat down in the waiting room. The nurse would still be outside the door, and Number 7 knew that it would look suspicious if she came out of the room too fast. However, Amy Seven was not going to sit in the room with the corpse of the woman that she'd killed.

It was probably a good thing for Seven, that she had time to sit down and calm herself, slow down her racing heart and force the feelings off of her face. Suddenly the clone realized that someone might want to look in the office, and it would be better if they didn't find the doctor than if they found her dead body. Feeling disgusted and scared, Amy went back into the office.

She flinched on seeing the body. Dr. Candler's lips were already turning blue, and most of the coloring was gone from the woman, a tinge of purple starting soil the woman's peach complexion that she'd had when she was still alive. The clone sucked in a deep breath and walked forward shakily. When she reached down to touch the body, a shudder passed through the girl's body. Come on, you have to do this, she told herself, and grabbed the cold wrists of the doctor, feeling nausea well up in her stomach. I never felt sick before, thought Amy, but I guess I'm not immune to this.

The flesh was still warm, though it was colder than flesh normally was. The limpness, though, the absence of any kind of strength, that was the worst part. Even when someone was sleeping, picking up a limb of that person was nothing like the limp, dead feeling of the corpse. That feeling gave nightmares to Seven for weeks to come; it was so lifeless, so soft and yet so hard.

Grabbing both of those awful wrists, Number 7 dragged the corpse to the door of the closet. She pulled open the door, and thrust the corpse it, trying to get rid of that awful feeling that touching the dead body brought on. Her wrists still tingled, remembering how it had felt to lift up those arms.

Number 7 quickly walked out of the office, trying to get that awful feeling away. This time, she needed a considerably longer period of relaxation to calm herself down. She didn't completely succeed; any observant person would be able to see the haunted look in her eyes.

Thankfully for Seven, the nurse outside wasn't observant. The woman didn't notice anything odd about the clone at all, simply motioned for Number Seven to follow her. Amy did so, and gave a mental sigh of relief. She would have let out all the breath that she was holding, but she was worried that if she actually made a noticeable gesture of relief then the nurse would realize that the Amy had been worried about something.

Walking into the next office and finding the next doctor dead did nothing for Amy Seven's rattled nerves. Even though she should have been prepared for it, seeing the body lying there was just more than the girl could take. The body was there, the entire body limp and the head hanging sickly at an impossible angle.

Amy Seven sank to the floor, feeling almost dead herself. The girl just sat there limply a few minutes, too numb to do anything. Finally she started breathing again, though for a while it was in desperate gasps. Shakily, Amy got up again and shuddered at the thought of touching another corpse. She looked desperately around and grabbed one of the crutches that were propped up against the wall.

Even from the end of the crutch, the dead feeling was still there. Maybe it was just Number 7's imagination, but that soft, hard feeling was still there. The clone had to work hard to stop her entire body from going into spasms.

Stop being so weak, Seven thought to herself angrily, but somehow it didn't help her situation. As pushing the body around with the stick wasn't helping, Amy opened the closet door and threw the dead body into the space, shutting the door again quickly. Picking up the entire body was awful, not any easier than it had been to feel the dead body the first time, but at least now she hadn't had to hold it for long.

Thankfully, the Amys that killed the other two doctors had hid the body somewhere, and Number Seven didn't have to go through any more experiences like that. The next office that she'd gone into had nobody there, and Amy 7 did certainly not go looking for the body. She'd just sat in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes, trying to sort things out in her head a little bit at least.

"Amy, is something wrong?" asked Dr. Kelley hesitantly, looking down at the girl. "You don’t look so great."

"Gee, thanks," said Seven wryly, trying to hide the hurt in her voice. Of course Kelley would realize that something was wrong; she always saw that sort of look in peoples' eyes. Not that she was sentimental, nobody would call her that, but she did seem to understand the Amys.

"Seriously, you look upset," the doctor pressed on.

"I'm fine," insisted Amy Number 7.

"Alright, then, care to begin the test?"

Seven nodded, and they went on to the test. Thankfully for Amy it was an eye test, which didn't really require much thinking or concentration. If she'd had to take a math test or another sort of mind vexing test, the scores would not have been as high as they could have been, and then the doctor would really know that something was wrong.

The test took longer than Amy Seven had waited in the other rooms, which made her a little nervous, worrying that the Nurse would realize something. However, she didn't have to worry; the nurse didn't notice anything, or didn't say anything if she did.

Everyone else being stupid compared to you really is an asset! Seven tried grin to herself as she was led back to the recreation area. It wasn't quite working very well--no matter how much she tried to be happy right now, she couldn't get the looks of the dead out of their eyes. It was for power, Amy Seven tried to remind herself, but somehow the words seemed to sit dead in her mind.

The only person who hadn't been taken yet who was still there was Thirteen, who was moping around over by the window, looking out. Number Seven walked up to the girl, putting on a mask of happiness.

"Hey," she said amiably, casually leaning against the wall near Amy 13. "What's up?"

Number Thirteen shrugged. "Just worried, I guess," she said, then to Seven's surprise she looked panicked a moment after saying that. Amy Thirteen seemed to take a deep breath and after a few moments during which a look of fright had entered the girl's eyes, she quickly added: "You know, these tests might say that I'm not as good as you guys, and all. I've had to live with being worse my whole life, and after a few weeks of me being like you guys…that could be taken away, and all." The girl seemed to lose the panic in her eyes as she said that, and Seven guessed that what Thirteen had just said hadn't been what was on her mind. However, she didn't mention it, and just nodded.

"Well, actually, you don't have to worry," said Seven, knowing that the other clone probably didn't know exactly what had just happened in the testing rooms. Amy 7 really didn't want to talk about what happened, but as far as she could tell nobody had gotten up the courage yet to tell the last clone what was going on, and somebody had to tell her before she was called. "You see--"

"Amy, Number Thirteen?" called the nurse who was standing at the door. "It's your turn."

Thirteen nodded. "I'll talk to you after I'm tested, okay?" she said to Amy Seven as she jogged over to the nurse. Thirteen didn't want to waste any time getting to the doctors and telling them of the danger present.

All of the Amys worriedly looked after Thirteen, worrying about what the girl would do when she found the body. Would she give them away, about the fact that the Amys were responsible for the murder of the scientists?

Would the Amys have to kill Number Thirteen?

A/N: Eek! Did I write that? *shudder* I didn't know I've been that depressed lately!
I know that it was dark, sickening, and probably way too gross. I'm sorry! *hides head in hands* I don't know what got into me! I understand if you don't like this section, since it was so gross…but I couldn't just skimp over it, saying "the Amys killed the doctors" or something without letting you know the emotions of one of the murderers.
Okay, now WHY am I trying to justify what I write to my readers? *is disappointed in herself for doing that* Anyway, I'm sure you didn't like it, but please, review? Pretty please? Thanks.