Before

1.

Wreckage hissed and clicked in a snow-speckled, wintery landscape.

A silver sedan, its front end wrapped around a pine, rested in a ditch by a mountain drive. Steam curled from its hood to mingle with the faint mist weaved through leafless trees, drawing a veil across the road, the house at the top of the hill and the car itself. A door squealed and a man in an unzipped parka staggered out.

He wheezed as he moved, fleece-lined boots crunching snow. A gloved hand ran through sparse, white hair and fingers trembled, a result of the crash, not the cold. His legs supported him and apart from a persistent buzzing in his head, all seemed fine.

Fine, except he couldn’t remember what happened.

Couldn’t remember anything, except…

“Bethany?”

Shaking his head, he dragged himself up onto the road and around to the passenger side. He blinked in the fading light of day, taking in his surroundings. Trees. Ice. Fog. House. Car. His house? His car? They must be. Because the woman in the passenger seat was his wife.

Of that he was sure.

"Bethany," he repeated, voice frail as he opened her door. "Are you okay?"

A moan from the silver-haired woman wrapped in a heavy, green blanket–no parka, no boots, sneakers and cardigan only–as she responded to his hand on her shoulder. Her head lolled to the side and he noticed the matted hair and trail of dried blood running down her face to her neck.

Her eyelids fluttered, looked at her companion with scarcely a flicker of recognition. Her mouth fell open, lips quivered.

“Oh! You’re hurt!”

He undid her belt and used the lever beneath her seat to slide it back. She moaned when he slipped an arm behind her to help her out.

“I’m sorry,” he said, which seemed appropriate. He was the one who’d been driving. “I don’t know what happened. My mind is a muddle, I don’t even know where we are.”

Bethany–her name was definitely Bethany–took his shoulders and fell against him. He craned his neck to see past her, studying the house at the top of the tree-lined driveway that led to it, the road they’d been travelling along when he somehow lost control and hit a tree. A quaint, two-storey building with gabled roof and lights on in some windows.

“Is that…home?”

The house didn’t look familiar but it had to be where they’d come from. And, now that he looked, he saw the door on the plant-lined veranda was standing open.

Bundled inside her blanket, Bethany stiffened, one hand leaving his shoulder to point as she muttered what he knew was his name.

“H-Harold…”

Turning in the direction of her gaze, he saw what she did: a person face down on the tarmac, another woman not dressed for the weather, in jeans and loose-fitting shirt, blonde hair splayed out around her head.

“Oh, no. Did… Did we hit her?”

Bethany couldn’t answer with words. She was wincing, hand moving to head to investigate the source of her pain. She squeezed his shoulder and pushed: Go! Check! Then she rested against the car, fir-tree motif blanket slipping open.

“I… I…” He squinted as he tried to remember. Surely this wasn’t his fault? He couldn’t have run someone down? But no clarity was forthcoming so he did as urged. “Hello? Are you okay?”

Boots crunched gravel. Heart thudded. The car issued a death rattle and lapsed into silence. Silence like that from the woman he crouched down beside.

“Hello?”

A gentle shake, a second hand to turn her. A girl, not woman. Late teens. Shirt torn at shoulder, skin white as snow. Her face was scraped, coated in frost. Her eyes were crusted shut, lips blue. When she came to rest on her back they parted, emitting a wisp of misty breath.

“She’s alive!”

He shouted, but didn’t have to: Bethany had followed and was behind him, holding her blanket, ungloved hands quaking. Why was she dressed like that? the thought struck him. Why didn’t she have gloves? Had they left the house in a hurry?

“Don’t…s-shout,” she groaned. “C-cold… H-house, Harold. Bring…her…house.”

Between them, the girl moaned.

Harold nodded, hunting for memories in the maze of broken mirrors in his mind. Jagged shards reflected images of Bethany in elegant attire, of himself in suits and uniforms, of places they’d been, homes, offices, labs.

Fragments of a life with no context.

“House,” he agreed. Bethany needed heat, this girl needed a doctor, and he needed answers. Maybe he could find everything there.

At home.

Carefully, he slipped both arms beneath the girl’s prone form, lifted her to his chest and began the ascent towards the house, Bethany with an arm around him for support as she hobbled along.

2.

Harold, struggling with his burden, faltered at the foot of the steps leading up to the veranda, eyeing the open door and foyer beyond. A prickle of suspicion slid from his mind-fog, chilling his bones worse than the snow, but Bethany shoved and his reluctance to proceed disappeared. Up the steps he lumbered, wheezing into the house with wife in tow.

Snow slid from his parka as soon as he entered. To the left, a well-furnished living room glowed in the light of a crackling fire. To the right, a paneled study shrouded in shadow. Before him, a staircase of dark oak climbed to a second floor and ahead, a panelled hallway stretched away. At the end of that hall, what looked like an empty cubby stood open, decorated with red wallpaper and crimson carpet.

“Is this our home?” he said, sounding foolish as he stumbled into the living room to deposit his cargo on a settee. “I can’t remember. Must have hit my head bad. Do you know where we...?”

Behind him a cry, and he spun to see Bethany had collapsed.

“Darling!” he gasped. Quickly to her, he tugged off his gloves and helped her into an armchair by the fire, one maybe he himself had set. Her blanket had slipped off, her face was ashen, and the wound on her head looked worse. Under the hairline at her left temple he noticed the beginnings of a graze and when he swept blood-stained strands of hair aside, his mouth fell open. “God. That looks like a…”

He stopped short of saying it. It couldn’t be. A deep groove carved into her scalp, congealed blood sealing it shut? No. It must have happened in the car.

“Harold…” she said, crossing her arms and rubbing her shoulders. “Blanket...”

“Of course,” he said, taking a fleece throw from the back of the chair and tucking it around her. “Sit. Get warm. I’ll call for help...”

He said this as he glanced around the room, unable to locate the thing he was seeking. No phones, old or new.

“I…don’t know,” Bethany said, while Harold’s roaming eyes paused at some photos on the mantel. “Can’t remember either.”

The photographs confirmed what Harold knew. This was their home. Pictures of the two of them, happy, laughing, loving. A large central portrait, several small ones alongside.

He turned to his wife when what she’d said registered.

“You can’t?”

She stared blankly, and he imagined if she hadn’t been shivering he’d have seen her head shake. “How can we both not…”

The girl on the sofa inhaled sharply and he spun to see her sit up, pale blue irises darting wildly.

“Before..!” she spat, colour seeping back into her lips.

“Steady,” Harold said, holding his hands out to convey he wasn’t a threat. “You’re okay. I’m going to call a doctor. When I find a phone. Do you know what happened? I’m so sorry, did we..?”

He stopped, afraid to admit anything. The pale-faced girl, shivering and crossing her arms like Bethany, was scanning the room, its navy wallpaper, bay window, mustard-coloured drapes, bronze-framed prints, expansive fireplace. Her eyes were wide, lips trembling.

“Before…” she said again, inspiring a sense of deja vu.

“Before what?” Harold asked, stepping closer. She seemed somehow familiar, this blonde girl. “I’m sorry…have we met before?”

Her eyes darted back to him and seemed to peer into his soul. What he interpreted as an accusatory glare made him look away, gaze diverted to a tallboy adorned with more photos, these displaying younger folk. A teenage boy and girl, and the girl…he squinted. Yes. It was her. Pretty, blonde, petite. Was she his daughter?

“Phone,” he said, suddenly reminded of the urgency. His confused wife had a head injury that needed attention, his equally bewildered looking maybe-daughter might be suffering internal bleeding and what about his –temporary?–amnesia. “Let me…find a phone…”

He didn’t look at her again, couldn’t, felt terrible shame. He left the living room, crossed to the door of the study, let his hand drift to the light switch he knew was inside, stopped before pressing it.

Someone was there.

When his eyes fell on the shape in the shadows of one corner, he yelped and jerked his fingers from the switch.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and a misshapen form lurched to life. Drawn curtains prevented him from making out detail and as he backed away from the room he thanked his stars. Whoever, whatever, that was, its limbs were longer than they should have been and its head-body proportions were wrong. It reminded him of a pumpkin-headed scarecrow with insufficient straw in shirt and trousers.

It also carried, he saw as it neared the field of light spilling in from the hall, a fireplace poker.

“Stay back!” he cautioned, though he didn’t expect it to listen, and before he could think to look for a weapon, a scream from behind made him turn.

It was the girl. On her feet. Pointing at the bay window. And the mutated thing outside sliding against it.

He knew what he saw, but he couldn’t understand it. Bipedal, stubby arms, more shapeless than the thing in the study. Its upper body and head was a wart-covered lump, its facial features like something by Salvador Dali.

“Bethany…” he hissed. She hadn’t seen it, was alternating her gaze between him and the girl, brow furrowed. Fresh blood leaked from the gash on her head.

Harold couldn’t comprehend what was happening but his first instinct was to get his companions to safety. His second instinct was to do it faster, when movement to his left made him turn to the open front door, where a house-of-mirrors replica of the girl from the road was peering in.

“Before?” she said, or asked, voice grating. Like the one in the study her arms dangled almost to the ground, body and legs gangly and stick-thin. No fireplace poker. This one held a bloody knife.

“Before!”

Like some kind of call and response, the girl in the living room was shouting, dragging Bethany from her chair, pulling her toward Harold.

Harold moved too, slamming the front door, turning to meet them as they entered the hall. He thought to check the progress of the thing in the study but his eyes went instead to the wart-head, stub-armed monster slithering on its belly down the stairs.

“Jesus..!” he cried, as the girl from the road who may or may not have been his daughter pushed him towards the cubby.

He hurried, Bethany beside him, arm around her, pulling her as Before bundled them into the tiny enclosure. What was she doing? Why were they coming here? There was nowhere to go and monsters were pursuing, one a disfigured male whose head almost scraped the ceiling, the other a wriggling torso with a bulbous head sporting clumps of stringy, blonde hair.

Bethany almost crumbled to the floor, staring at what approached, eyes wide, unable to speak. He held her up while Before–what else could he call her?–gestured wildly. At him. At the wall. At the smooth, rectangular panel on its surface.

He didn’t know how, he just knew.

He pressed his palm against it and the elevator doors slid shut.

3.

Five seconds later, a subterranean hallway–papered and carpeted like the elevator and lit by crystal chandeliers–opened before them.

“What’s happening?” Harold said as the three left the lift, Before in the lead, Bethany clinging to him weakly. “What are those things? Who are you, do you know what this is about?”

Before looked back, met his gaze, stared. As if she was searching for something. After a second, she shook her head and looked away. Had she lost her memory too?

Perhaps, but then, where was she going? Striding down the hall, as if with purpose, passing a pair of metal doors opposite each other, both ajar, each containing small barred windows and keypads in the wall alongside.

The buzzing in Harold’s head grew louder when he tried to peer into the darkness of what looked like cells. Bethany squeezed his arm, fingers pinching skin through thick parka. He drew her closer, saw her face was stricken with confusion, eyes fixed rigidly on him.

“Harold?” she hissed, voice breaking. “Is it you?”

“It’s me,” he said, patting her hand as a different kind of fear stabbed his heart. She needed a doctor. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

She didn’t stop staring. As if seeing him for the first time. It was unnerving and he felt inexplicable shame, like he had when the girl stared before. Before. Why before? He looked forward to see they’d arrived at the end of the hall and the girl was pushing open a door.

“Where are we going? What’s down here?”

Motion-activated fluorescent lightbulbs in the room beyond flickered to life. Before stood aside to let Harold guide Bethany through. And that’s when the flimsy firmament he’d been balancing on collapsed.

Bethany screamed. A blood curdling scream that shocked him more than the sight of the dead man on the concrete floor of what looked like a makeshift lab. Not just dead. Broken. Lying in a pool of fresh blood. Face pulverised, neck twisted, throat slit. One remaining eye open and staring.

He lay between two silver chairs, which were connected by a spaghetti-like mess of cables to a large console. His arms at awkward angles. His left hand clutching a gun.

Strength abandoned Harold and Bethany slipped away, dropping to her knees on the floor, hands carving trails into the gore surrounding the man, who Harold recognised from the tallboy photos.

He staggered backwards, bumped the wall next to the door, which Before now came through, stepping around Bethany to stand beside him.

And not just her.

Harold could only stare, speechless, as two more entered, a boy and girl, both blond, both teens, the image of Before and the one on the floor but for slightly crooked features.

He clutched his chest as his heart threatened to explode. Bethany sobbed over the body, shoulders shucking. He wanted to go to her but was frozen.

“You got them back,” slurred the male, swinging a hammer. “Great job.”

“Yeath,” lisped the girl, the twin of Before, snipping the surgical scissors she held. She looked at Harold and smirked. “You took the wrong one! Lucky 4 awoke and let usth know who she wasth before…”

She let her snipping scissors do the talking.

“Let’s get her in the chair,” said the male. “Then we can put this behind us.”

Harold stepped from the wall as the newcomers approached Bethany.

“Don’t…” he started, but Before stepped in front of him.

“It’s okay,” she said, grasping his shoulders. “You'll settle. When my form complements yours. The transfer failed, she panicked. So I’m still here. You couldn't know. And I’m happy you did what you did. This time it will work. She’s weak.”

“I…don’t understand…”

“It’s me, H.”

She tugged down the front of her shirt, revealing a tattoo on her breast.

B4.

The buzzing in his head became a scream. Memories assaulted him. Reality changed. And Bethany rose, holding the gun. The gun she’d accidentally been shot with. By him on the floor when he was attacked by the others. Him, her love. Him, before her husband moved him here.

“Bastards!” Bethany screamed. The gunshot reports in the tiny room were deafening. H4 clamped his hands to his ears, watching B3 and H3 fall. Third gen bodies containing the minds of the 1’s. Whose failed bodies were upstairs with the malformed 2’s, all of them with shuffled minds.

The gun swung his way. Tears streamed from Bethany’s eyes. “I remember!” she howled. “You let them out! Let them kill my Harold!”

She was Bethany, but not his, and he couldn’t argue.

He took a bullet to the head and fell as B4 screamed, knocked her creator flat, found H3’s hammer and started banging. Then he was horizontal, his remaining eye lined up with the unseeing eye of his original body.

Images from an eventful life flashed before him. Of a career in the military with Bethany; of cloning technology; of research into mind transference; of being retired when incidents occurred and laws were passed; of aging, illness, dying; of a replica lab in their basement and trying to recreate success; of four attempts at clones and exercises in mind-swaps.

They weren’t his memories. They were inherited. And separate from the residuals in Harold’s brain. Like the plan to destroy all clones when he and his wife took possession of his and B4’s bodies.

And the keypad combination to the cells.

His memories were fewer. Extracted from a cylinder with B4. Locked in a cell. Being transferred into the body of his maker. The memories of a puppet. Until his one decision, to rebel. To free himself and the others. To take his love from this place.

It nearly worked.

But he got the next best thing.

B4 would live.

Maybe she’d make herself another.

And though H5 would never be him.

He’d be close.