Chapter 4 – Beryllium (Be)

I stood there, dumbfounded. Kyungsoo was sitting next to Sehun. Sipping on coffee, Sehun looked relatively relaxed about the whole ordeal that was occurring right in front of my eyes. But then again, most of the time he didn’t really show much emotion; I guess that’s just another way he deals with things.

Jongin was pacing the room, going back and forth, back and forth, obviously in deep thought. Kyungsoo had been crying, his face swollen being the evidence.

“I’m so sorry researcher Lee, I’ll go empty out my locker now,” he bowed, standing up to leave the room.

“No, don’t. Stay,” Jongin quickly responded.

The unknown man kept quiet and still in his seat. His eyes were wide, but that could just be the normal size of them. The warm colour of the iris was almost inviting, asking to be seen, asking to be the gate way into his soul.

“Seyeon wouldn’t fire you, she isn’t that bad,” Sehun remarked, taking another big sip of coffee.

“Give me this,” I said taking the coffee from Sehun before taking a drink out of it. Somehow, I still hadn’t gotten my coffee yet.

“Start talking, I need answers. Who is this guy,” I ask nodding my hair towards the brown haired stranger.

“A clone,” Jongin finally said after a few minutes of silence. No one wanted to answer or speak.

“His DNA is all mixed from various samples, we can’t identify him,” Sehun added, the picture beginning to paint itself now.

“I accidentally programmed the machine for the wrong DNA and now we have a clone,” Kyungsoo said, looking down in shame. He hadn’t meant to do that, he just had too much going on. Now a heart takes around a few days to clone and become functional for use but an entire person? That would have taken a month or so.

“When did it happen?”

“A month and a half ago. My wife had just told me she was pregnant, I freaked out. By the time I realised what had happened, it was too late. His heart had already been developed; I just couldn’t cancel it anymore. I didn’t want to take away his life. “

That had always been a controversial topic in terms of cloning. Was a clone considered a living person? What had defined a person? Was it just that they have a beating heart and breathing lungs? But what about the people who needed machines to help them with their heart and their lungs? Did it really matter that they weren’t born like we were? That perhaps their DNA was a copy of someone else’s, they weren’t considered a human being?

Generally speaking, the public had not welcomed clones into society. And because of that, after any experiment we run on the clones, we are forced to put them through euthanasia. Society won’t accept and we don’t have the facility to keep them.

But this one, the DNA is mixed up, I can’t even tell what my tests are targeting or having an effect on. I don’t even have a use for him now.

“And how is your wife doing?” I asked to be polite. I knew from the chatter at lunch that Kyungsoo’s wife was facing some difficulties.

“She is doing much better now thank you,” he replied, nodding his head once.

“Seyeon, what are we going to do?” Sehun asked, looking intently at the clone, attempting to figure out what exactly was in his mind.

“We can just send him with the others,” Jongin suggested. Sending him with the others implies that we are just going to kill him off with the other clones and at this moment, we only have one clone in the lab.

“No, we can’t. It would be too obvious,” I said shaking my head.

“Take him back to mine, we’ll sort things out there.”