by Lucas Flint
“Yeah,” I said. I glanced at her heart monitor and saw that all her vitals were healthier than ever, just like Healing Touch told me. “I walked into Healing Touch on my way here and he told me all about how you got healed. How do you feel?”
“Tired,” said Blizzard, leaning back against her pillows and closing her eyes. “And weak. I feel like I just got over a really bad cold. Probably going to stay in the hospital for a few more days just to make sure I’m really healed and that this isn’t some kind of weird anomaly or whatever.”
“Yeah, good idea,” I said, nodding eagerly. “Do you have any idea what happened or—?”
Blizzard shook her head, still not opening her eyes. “No, I don’t. All I know is that I felt like I was going to die yesterday, but when I woke up this morning, I felt much better. Healing Touch called it a miracle, which I think is a pretty accurate word to describe what happened to me.”
“Are you sure about that?” I said. “You have no idea what happened at all?”
Blizzard opened her eyes and frowned. “Now that you mention it, I had a weird dream last night where this pale-faced girl came into my room and gave me something purple to drink. I didn’t want to drink it, but she forced me to take it. Tasted kind of like watered down blueberries. It seemed really real at first, but when I woke up this morning, I realized it had just been a dream, that’s all.”
My heart caught in my throat. Pale-faced girl giving Blizzard something blue to drink … that sounded an awful lot like Shade giving Blizzard a bottle of Miracle to drink. With her shadow travel powers, Shade could have easily done it.
But why? I had failed to retrieve the weapon. According to the terms of our deal, that meant the G-Men weren’t obligated to give me anything. Had Shade decided to be nice and give it to Blizzard anyway? Maybe Fingerprints convinced her to do it. He was a lot nicer than most G-Men agents so I could see him doing something like that.
Despite how happy I felt, I wondered if that meant I was on the hook. Would the G-Men treat this as a favor I needed to return at some point? I dreaded the idea of having to do another mission like the one I did last night again, although it would fit right with Cadmus Smith’s MO to make me owe his team something for their help. If Cadmus wasn’t in the government, he would probably make a good mob boss.
But I pushed such thoughts out of my mind for now to focus on Blizzard. Whatever Shade’s reasons for helping me, I wasn’t going to let it diminish the happiness of this moment.
Blizzard was alive. She was not going to die. Her future—no, our future together—looked brighter than ever.
There was no reason to be unhappy about that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Anna Hogarth tapped her chin with the end of her pen, feeling her brain slowly numb from boredom. She wondered if it was possible to get brain damage from sheer boredom. It didn’t sound particularly scientific to her, but she bet some scientific journal out there had studied the question and published the results of that experiment. If not, then maybe she should do it herself.
At least I’m well paid, Anna thought. Bored and well-paid. Almost like being bored and rich, except I’m not rich.
Sighing, Anna looked around at the massive cloning facility in which she sat. She sat on a comfy office chair on a metal platform overlooking dozens of large cloning tubes. Their glass shells were opaque, making it impossible to see just what was inside, but Anna didn’t care. She knew what half-formed clones looked like. They looked kind of like fetuses, except distinctly unnatural. Having been pregnant before, Anna was well aware of the pregnancy process, and so she often compared the pregnancy and cloning processes in her own mind.
If Seth wasn’t paying me so much, I wouldn’t even be here, Anna thought. Too creepy.
But Anna needed the money. As a single mother of two, she had applied to every job that her biologist degree qualified her for. Her application had been almost immediately accepted by a company called Doppelganger, which, according to its website, was a cutting-edge startup devoted to studying and perfecting the cloning process. From what she understood, Doppelganger’s goal was to make cloning so affordable that even a middle-class person could do it. She didn’t quite understand all the business aspects behind it—she was a scientist, not a businesswoman—but she did understand that Doppelganger hoped to sell clones to middle-class people as a sort of way to immortality, transferring an individual’s consciousness after death to their newer, younger clone body so they could continue to live the life they had led before their death.
It seemed creepy to her, but Anna had been on the verge of being evicted from her apartment before Doppelganger hired her, so she kept her opinions to herself. The CEO of Doppelganger, Seth Richards, wasn’t the kind of boss who seemed to care much for the opinions of his employees anyway. She did wish, though, that she didn’t have to live inside the cloning facility all day every day, located underground somewhere in rural Montana away from all civilization, but she supposed it was similar to how oil workers needed to spend months at a time on oil rigs.
At least I only have to spend a month here at a time, Anna thought, her eyes falling on the desk calendar next to her computer monitor. One week left and I can go back home and see my girls and not have to worry about this creepy place for a whole month.
A sudden beeping sound from her computer startled her. She looked at her computer monitor and noticed that activity for one of the cloning tubes—Clone #13, according to the computer—had suddenly increased. All of its vitals were shooting up like crazy, looking more like the vitals of a person who just woke up from a nap than a clone in suspended animation.
Anna wasn’t quite sure what to do. This looked like what happened when a client’s clone was activated, but they hadn’t activated any clones in a while. It didn’t help that Anna didn’t really know who owned Clone #13. Its owner’s name was listed as ‘PRIVATE’ on her computer and when she tried to access that information, she got a big ‘ACCESS DENIED’ for her trouble.
That meant the only way to find out what was going on with Clone #13 was to go down there and check it out for herself.
Taking a deep breath, Anna grabbed a baseball bat she kept for self-defense and made her way down the stairs from her platform to the cloning tubes below. Though Anna doubted she would need to fight, she had been warned that clones sometimes suffered from ‘cloning insanity,’ where the trauma of coming to life caused them to lose their minds and randomly attack anyone who got too close to them. Anna had yet to see that phenomenon for herself, but her supervisor had warned her about it during her job interview, so she assumed it must have happened at some point and so didn’t plan to take any chances with this unexplained event.
Moving among the silent cloning tubes, Anna found Clone #13’s tube easily. It was located closer to the back of the facility and had a big red ‘#13’ painted on it. The normally dark glass was glowing green, a sign that a new clone was about to be born.
Who could it possibly be? Anna thought, holding the aluminum baseball bat carefully by her side. I guess I’m about to find out.
And sooner than she expected, because in the next second, the glass lid popped open and slowly rose. Dark mist poured out of the tube as Anna stepped back, squinting her eyes to try to make out the form of whoever was in there. She didn’t see anything at first until a silhouette stood up.
The silhouette resembled a strong, healthy young man, with well-defined muscles. He was completely naked from what she could tell, his skin glistening with moisture, which was pretty normal for clones because they were always born without clothes. Just like normal babies, except they weren’t nearly as cute as babies.
“Hello, Anna,” said the young man. His voice was fresh and masculine, but at the same time, it was eerily familiar as well. “Good to see you are here. When I woke up, I thought I might be on my own. Your presence here will save me a lot of time.”
Anna eyed the young man carefully. “How do you know my name, Clone Thirteen? We�
�ve never met before and I am pretty sure that clones are not programmed to know who we are.”
The young man chuckled. “Ah, you don’t recognize me. Not a problem. Let me step into the light. Perhaps you will recognize me then.”
The young man stepped closer, allowing the fluorescent lights to fall upon his face. Anna’s jaw dropped when she saw him.
“No way …” she muttered. “Mr. Richards?”
It was him, all right. Although the man standing in the tube before her was about 30 years younger than the Seth Richards she knew, this one looked almost exactly like him. Same general face shape, same hairstyle, same nose, and mouth … he just looked younger, that was all. His gray hair was a solid brown and slightly damp from the fluids which kept clones in suspended animation until it was time for them to be ‘born.’ He also appeared a good deal more muscular than the Seth Richards she knew. It made her feel like she was looking at a picture of Seth Richards in his prime from thirty or so years ago, rather than a real person.
The young man—she couldn’t bear to think of him as Seth Richards—climbed out of the tube somewhat awkwardly, perhaps not used to movement yet. He then carefully walked up to her, his movements slow and even a little clumsy, like a toddler walking for the first time. The contrast between the masculine, sexy-looking young man and his rather childish movements made it hard for Anna to know what to feel, and the fact that he was also the clone of her boss just confused her even more.
“I knew you would recognize me, Anna,” said Seth. He nearly tripped and leaned on a nearby cloning tube for support. “Unfortunately, this is my least favorite part of the cloning process, where I have to get used to walking around in my new body. It’s somewhat like putting on a new pair of shoes, but it does get easier and easier each time.”
“Wait, you’ve done this before?” said Anna, staring at Seth in amazement. “And you don’t sound like a clone. You sound like the real Seth Richards.”
Seth grunted. “My last body was a clone body, too. None of them are ‘real,’ at least not in the sense of being my original body, which passed away some time ago.”
Anna’s mind raced with this information. “But the age discrepancy. How—?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about at the moment,” said Seth. He let go of the tube and took a couple of steps forward. When he didn’t trip, he smiled and looked at Anna again. “All you need to know is that I recently died, though not before sending the latest version of my mind back here to be uploaded into this new body.”
Anna’s eyes widened. A million questions popped into her head all at once, but she couldn’t decide which one to ask first.
Evidently, however, Seth wasn’t going to let her ask them, because he said, “What matters is that I am back. And I have a few things for you to do.”
“M-Me?” Anna gulped. “What do you need me to, um, do for you, sir?”
Seth rubbed his chest as if he wasn’t quite sure it was real. “First, I need Janet cloned. She also died. Sadly, she didn’t get a chance to upload the latest version of her mind so we will have to use whatever the latest backup we have. I suppose I will have to bring her up to speed myself.”
There was no mistaking it now. This was definitely the polite, calm, professional businessman known as Seth Richards who Anna worked for, even if his request sounded like something straight out of a science fiction novel.
“Okay,” said Anna, which sounded lame even to her, but she was still processing this revelation. “I’ll, um, do that. What else do you need me to do?”
“Clothes,” said Seth, gesturing at his naked body, which gave Anna an excuse to stare at his rather large muscles. “I will need a business suit, same size I always wear. I believe there are some jumpsuits for newly born clones to raise here so I will wear that until I can get back to my house where my clothes are.”
“Do you want me to arrange transportation back to your house or—”
“Yes, I would appreciate that,” said Seth. He scratched his chin. “And lastly, I need you to activate Protocol Omega.”
“Protocol Omega?” Anna repeated. She gasped. “But isn’t that only for emergencies?”
Seth looked at Anna wryly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I just came back to life. This is an emergency.”
Anna nodded. She knew about Protocol Omega, but she hadn’t expected Seth would ever ask her to activate it. “Yes, sir. Is that all?”
“That is all,” said Seth. He rubbed his back and stretched his limbs. “You should go and get started right away because time is of the essence.”
“Yes, sir,” said Anna. “What about you? Do you need help walking or—”
Seth shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Anna. I have some things of my own to do, a few favors to call in. My death was a temporary setback, but this just confirms that I am on the right path. I simply need to be a little smarter about the moves I make next time. That’s all.”
With that, Seth turned and began walking down the aisle between the cloning tubes toward the back of the room, where the jumpsuits for newborn clones hung on a rack. Anna watched him go, biting her lower lip and wondering just what the hell she had gotten herself into.
Maybe I should have accepted that job at McDonald’s after all, Anna thought, because I have a feeling I just walked into something I won’t be allowed to walk away from.
-
Read on for more titles by Lucas Flint and a preview chapter of The Superhero’s Strike, the next book in the series!
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The Superhero's Strike
Chapter One
I flew as fast as I could through the air, pushing my body to its absolute limit to keep up with the roaring airplane beside me. Between the howling wind all around me and the loud airplane engines, I could barely hear myself think, but I could still see the smoke rising out of one of the engines quite clearly as the plane struggled to remain in the air. The pilot must have been really good, because so far he had managed to keep it in the air against all odds, but sooner or later the engine would burn out and the entire thing would go crashing down.
Unless, that is, I could stop it. Which was looking increasingly unlikely with every passing second.
I looked ahead. Through an opening in the clouds, I saw the Showdown City Airport stretched out before us. Showdown itself stood a little farther off, but not too far away. Assuming the plane made it to the landing stripe, I could easily see it crash into the airport’s main terminal, which would not only kill most of the passengers, but a good chunk of the airport workers and people waiting for their flights. That just made it all the more imperative I stop the plane.
I tried to get under one of the wings to keep it in the air, but with nothing to grab, I just slid off, forcing me to use a combination of my super speed and flight powers to catch up. I caught glimpses of terrified passengers through the windows on the Alpha Airlines plane, but at the moment there was nothing I could do to assure them that everything was going to be okay.
“Bolt!” said Valerie in my ear, her volume turned up unusually high so I could hear her above the roaring of the plane’s engines and the whipping wind all around me. “What is the status of Alpha Airlines Flight Two Seven Four?”
“Not good,” I said. “Smoke from the engine is getting worse and the pilot is barely keeping the thing airborne. Looks like it’s going to fall out of the sky any second. Tell Brains and Vanish to evacuate the airport. It’s gonna be ugly.”
“Affirmative,” said Valerie.
My earcoms clicked off, but hearing Valerie’s voice reminded me of I got into this situation in the first place.
Less than an hour ago, the pilot of Alpha Airlines Flight 274—inbound from Chicago—had reported that one of the
plane’s engines had failed for reasons unknown when they were about an hour out from the Showdown City Airport. He estimated that the plane would be unable to land safely and that they needed help to make sure it didn’t crash.
That was where I came in. When we got a message from the police informing us of this, Brains sent me to intercept the plane and do what I could to help it. My superpowers were well-suited for this sort of thing and I even had experience intercepting giant objects falling from the sky. It had seemed easy, so, of course, I didn’t hesitate to head out from the Braindome to catch up with the plane, which I found easily enough with Valerie’s help.
The problem was that I had underestimated just how big, fast, and loud airplanes could be. This wasn’t a tiny two-person plane that a hobbyist might fly for fun. This was a full-sized commercial airline plane run by Alpha Airlines, one of the biggest airplane companies in the world. This particular model was the biggest they had, capable of holding over 850 passengers at once. According to the pilot, they didn’t have quite that many passengers on board, but it was pretty darn full and that meant it was even heavier than it normally was.
And worse, it got faster and faster the closer it got to the airport. If I didn’t do something quick—
Suddenly, the smoking engine exploded. Shrapnel and smoke flew back toward me, which I barely managed to avoid, forcing myself to fly up through the clouds to avoid getting hit.
That was when I noticed the plane was falling now, the nose dipping toward the ground. At that angle, it wouldn’t even reach the airport. It would just crash straight to the ground and kill every single passenger on board.
No time to think. Just act.
I activated my super speed and rushed toward the plane, going underneath it. Activating my super strength, I grabbed the underside of the airplane Atlas-style and pushed up.
It was heavy. I had lifted plenty of heavy things throughout my superhero career and, thanks to my super strength, most of it was easy. But I’d never tried to lift an entire airplane full of nearly a thousand people, plus their luggage and anything else on board. Every muscle in my body screamed in protest as I pushed the airplane up, but I ignored that and focused entirely on keeping this thing airborne.
