The tire tracks filled with water and became muddy pools. With each step, the mud clung to their boots. Nick feared that they might lose the truck’s path and they would be left to wander the rainforest. Rain pattered on the leaves. All the animals and insects had grown quiet, taking shelter beneath the jungle canopy. His short-lived infatuation with the rain had expired and painful blisters had formed along the arches of his feet.
Soon, the rain lightened. He shivered as the passing storm left only the chilling night air and puddles of water in its wake. The persistent clamor of the pounding rain had given way to the softer drips of water as it trickled down from the treetops and landed on leaves in its descent to the sodden ground.
“We should call it a night. Find a place to rest,” James said. He wrung out his shirt. Stopping at the side of the road, he gestured toward the dense trees.
“No, we can’t. The tracks are already half-washed away with the rain. If we risk another storm or rainfall, we might lose them.”
James neither nodded nor verbalized his assent. He fell in line behind Nick once again. Sure enough, another rainstorm roiled overhead. This time, no crack of lightning or rumble of thunder warned them of the oncoming shower. The ominous splatter of water smacking against the tree canopy roared over them.
Nick continued onward under the edge of the forest near the road as it snaked through the trees. The tracks dissolved as they trudged along, and the already muddy road softened into a mottled path of deep puddles. He prayed they closed in on wherever the truck had traveled before they lost it.
James spoke up over the rain. “What do you think those children were for at the camp? They aren’t being trained for fighting.”
“I don’t know.” In DC, Nick had witnessed years of protests decrying and publicizing international human trafficking. He feared the answers that percolated through his mind and did not verbalize them to James. “What do you think?”
“From my understanding, not every human is capable of producing their own offspring.”
“That’s true,” Nick said. “And I suppose even all the therapies we’ve developed don’t work for everyone.” He thought back to an argument with his parents when he was a teenager. He’d wanted genetic enhancements, something to improve his athletic prowess. Neither of his parents had consented despite his argument that many of his classmates had been enhanced either in utero or later in their lives. His mother and father had told him they didn’t want a child designed by anyone or anything other than their own genes and parenting. Once he’d joined the army, he had received enhancements anyway. “And I suppose some people aren’t satisfied with the children they’d naturally produce.”
“I suppose,” James said, though skepticism etched his face. “If a family lost a child, wouldn’t they want that child back?”
“You think a family might pay to have a child cloned?” He paused. “You’re probably right, but how would that work?”
“What do you mean?” The rain had slowed enough that they didn’t have to yell over the din.
“The child’s memories. They’d be different. They’d know they were a clone.”
“Not necessarily,” James said. “From what I know, it’s difficult to simulate a lifetime of new memories but it’s not hard to selectively wipe them, right?”
Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. They probably do that to all the clones before selling them off to protect their operations. Do you think they intended to erase us?” He may never have seen Kelsey if his sale with the clones had gone through as planned. He might not have remembered she existed.
“Maybe. Allow us our training, but take everything else?”
They trudged on for a while before he spoke out again. “Of course, the cloning wouldn’t be for the child’s sake, either.”
“Back to that again?” James brushed his hands through his wet hair.
“The parents would order the cloning, risking who knows what kind of prison sentence so they could fill the hole in their lives. So they’d be satisfied with a new son or daughter that seemed like the one they lost. Maybe they wouldn’t be so worried about the child’s memories.” Nick recalled the clone’s words from earlier, when he had asked how the man knew his blood type. “Like you said though, the child wouldn’t be the same person.”
A muffled yell echoed in the distance through the pounding rain. Nick wrapped his fingers tight around his rifle and gave James a wide-eyed look. They picked up their pace. With each lunging hobble, he ignored the shudders that jolted from his bullet wound. They were too close to people, to potential civilization, to other Americans, for them to give up now.
The road spread wider until they reached a slight clearing. Past the open grass, a heavy concrete wall surrounded a complex covered by camouflage netting.
“Are they Americans?” James paused at the crest of the hill. Water streamed down his face and dripped off the end of his nose.
“I don’t know. We’re too far away for me to tell.”
They clung to the trees and bushes as they descended the hill and made their way toward the complex. Crawling through the underbrush, they snuck to the edge of the clearing. The M2040 truck idled beyond the chain-link gate. Past it, he could make out a series of concrete bunkers. Light spilled out of one of these bunkers and across the facility as distant shapes unloaded the truck and carried boxes down into the structure.
“Can you tell now?” James asked. “Americans?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just too far and dark for me. I have no idea.”
James nodded. “I understand. You stay here. I’ll see if I can get a better look with my AR lenses.
“Okay.” Nick settled against a tree trunk and cradled his assault rifle. The people shuttling goods from the truck appeared to be working quickly as they passed the cargo boxes between each other. One individual in the human chain dropped a box and it crashed, kicking up splatters of mud. It spilled out smaller white containers with splotches of color. Nick couldn’t quite discern the packaging from his vantage point with the meager light illuminating the area. Voices cried out and the unloading ceased as the workers recovered the contents of the broken box.
He opened his mouth, ready to ask James what he had seen and what these people were unloading. The words stopped on his tongue as two men with guns approached James.
Twenty-Five
Sara pressed her hands over her ears and grimaced at the screeching vocals of Palmer Stoudt’s music in his tight office. Rotating holoimages of fire-breathing dragons filled the space left unoccupied by his desk and the single empty chair he kept near the door. She suspected the chair remained empty more often than not.
She could deal with Palmer outside of work, and despite the man’s misleading pale complexion, he enjoyed running outside almost as much as she did. He often made a decent running partner, too. He kept to himself when they ran, which she appreciated. They didn’t need to make small talk between gasping breaths. Instead, they pushed each other and ensured neither lagged behind.
“What’s going on?” Palmer said.
“Can you please turn down the music?”
He shrugged. With a quick wave, the volume greatly decreased.
Still, the shrill pitch of the vocals grated against her ears. “By turn it down, I mean turn it off.”
He rolled his eyes. “Next time, you could be more precise.”
She definitely preferred him as a silent running partner. “I need your help.”
“Oh, do you now?” A wide grin cracked across Palmer’s face. “What do I get in return?”
“We’ll figure something out. Listen, can we talk outside? I could use a run.”
“Talk while we run? I thought you were opposed to that.”
She widened her eyes, imploring Palmer. “No, I’m not. Come on. I need to get out of here. It’s too oppressing to think and talk in this building.”
Palmer’s mouth opened wide and he gave her a slow, deliberate nod. “Oh, oh, okay. Let’s go for a
run.”
Several minutes later, they met behind the stone-gray CIA building. She stretched out, pulling up a leg behind her.
“You do realize most static stretches actually don’t help at all with running,” Palmer said. “There’s no scientific evidence that pre-stretching improves your run any more than going for a short walk. In fact, static stretching has long been shown to make a person run slower.”
She scowled. “I didn’t ask you out here for your running advice.”
With a smile, he patted her back. “I know you didn’t, but I want my running partner to keep up with me.”
With a glare, Sara bounded off through the woods. A few scraggly wildflowers poked up from the edges of the path where, between the shadows of trees, they could steal enough sunlight to survive. Palmer huffed along behind her. His footsteps fell heavier than hers. She followed a fork in the path that led to a tunnel under the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The underpass spit them out next to the Potomac River. Across the water, brilliant white flowers bloomed on a smattering of pear trees. A couple of gulls cried out overhead and the cool spring breeze kissed her skin. Once her shoes slapped against the asphalt path beside the river, she slowed to allow Palmer to catch up.
“Looks like stretching didn’t hurt me, huh?”
His chest rose and fell in deep wheezing breaths. “You know spring is awful for me.” He sucked in a breath of air. “Allergies, you know?”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. I don’t buy that for a second. You trying to tell me you don’t bother with any enhancements or even medicine for your allergies?”
“Au naturel, baby. I like my tech just as much as the next guy, but I’m not interested in becoming a cyborg. So, what gives?” He gasped between words. “What did you want to talk about?”
Breaking into a light jog, she stared straight ahead. She had known Palmer since they’d both started at the agency as interns. Together, that first spring, they had explored all the typical tourist sights, from tours of the monuments to visiting historic Ford’s Theater and the nightly holoprojection show outside the Hirshorn Museum on the National Mall. It hadn’t taken them long before they’d settled into a semi-weekly routine of attending musical performances at the PM Club. Those traditions had faded as work swallowed them. Now, their tenuous friendship existed in these runs or the times they grabbed lunch. Reflecting on weekends spent analyzing weaponized biologics rather than brunching at Eastern Market or grabbing drinks around Dupont Circle with friends, she found she missed the companionship. Maybe she should drop this side project of hers. It wasn’t in her job description and neither McCuller nor Corello wanted her to waste her time pursuing her whims and distractions.
Jogging beside her, Palmer gave her a dubious look. “Is it safe to assume you aren’t about to ask me to help you move?”
Her head bobbed as she pumped her arms. “That would be a safe assumption. Also, if you could just keep this between me and you, it would probably be for the best.”
“You aren’t about to go rogue are you?” Palmer forced an unconvincing laugh.
Her lips remained straight, her expression serious. “No, not quite. I need your help tracking down service member personnel files and histories.” One more attempt, she thought. If she found enough evidence to disprove her suspicions or tell her that this Steinweg case was exactly what McCuller had dismissed it as, she would stop this nonsense. She would be done with delving into matters beyond her directives.
She told Palmer about the recent Fulton case, how she had discovered Steinweg’s strange disappearance, and how it had sparked more questions. After telling him about the cases McCuller had sent her, she told him about the ones she had uncovered on her own. She explained the strange finding that a couple of those reports of purported mercenaries included dates of death that had been revised multiple times. “I want to see if you can help me find others. My access is limited to only cases with potential biological weapon components and I want a more global idea of what’s going on.”
Palmer stopped running. He stood in the middle of the asphalt path, his arms spread wide. “You want me to abuse my security access to dig up a whole bunch of closed cases because you have a hunch that something fishy might be taking place?”
She shrugged. “You pretty much summed it up.”
“Dammit, Sara. Are you insane?”
“Probably.”
Shaking his head, Palmer starting running again. “I hate it that I actually want to see if you might be right.” He spoke between breaths. “You do know we could both be fired.”
Striding beside him, she let out a short laugh. “Or, if I’m wrong, we could end up in federal prison.”
“Christ, Sara. Why are you still my friend?”
She grinned. “I ask that same question about you every day.”
“I’d be lucky if you even thought of me every day.” She knew it was more than a joke. “Let me think about it.”
***
By the end of the day, Palmer dropped by Sara’s office to tell her he was in. They had decided to meet at his basement apartment in Arlington. Palmer’s own specialty included accessing data that shouldn’t be accessed. It also gave him an idea of how to protect his own Net activities and prevent his Chip from transmitting any breadcrumbs that might lead back to him.
He cracked open a DC Brau pale ale and handed it to her. “If we’re going to do something highly unscrupulous, we may as well do it right.” He uncapped another for himself and flopped down on the gray couch in his living room.
Sara smiled. “It is Friday night, so we might as well pretend like we have lives.”
Palmer winked. “You’ve got that right.” Gesturing over the holoscreen on the low coffee table between them, he called up a data file. “Let’s get moving.”
For a while, she watched him manipulate the data. His eyebrows moved up and down, his nose scrunched and relaxed, and he licked his lips as he gestured and typed commands. She chewed on her thumbnail as his eyes twitched across the display.
“I’ve got all the personnel files I could find that involved deactivated Chips. What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with something easy. Can you map out where their Chips were deactivated?”
A wide smile spread across his face. “That’s easy. No problem.”
After a couple of gestures and swipes, Palmer projected a global map of all the deactivations. He clapped his hands together and rolled back on the couch, shaking his hands.
She could not believe the strange connections that had appeared.
“Holy shit,” Palmer said. “What the hell does that mean?”
Twenty-Six
One of the soldiers grabbed James’s shoulder and yanked the assault rifle from his hands. Through the noise of rain on leaves, Nick heard enough of their words to tell they weren’t speaking English. The cadence and intonation of their language reminded him of the guards back at camp.
The second soldier appeared angered by something that James said and drew his gun up to the clone’s face. Even in the darkness, Nick could see that the weapon did not appear to be a standard-issue American rifle. The glimmer of hope that they had stumbled on an American base dissipated, washed away like mud in the rainforest’s downpour.
He drew up into a crouch and shouldered his rifle. Closing his left eye, he peered down the iron sights. James’s life depended on his accuracy. These were not fake holosoldiers, harmlessly flitting through the foliage in a simulation. In his mind’s eye, Nick pictured the missed mark in front of the truck during their escape. If he squandered his chance now, James would be dead.
Nick sucked in his breath and squeezed the trigger. A blast emitted from the muzzle. The soldier pointing his rifle at James fell and disappeared in the undergrowth. As the other soldier stepped away from his dead comrade, Nick took another shot. The crack of the rifle echoed in the night air as the second man dropped. In response, a loud howling picked up around Nick.
At first, he ducked, keeping his rifle pressed to his shoulder, fearful of the creatures that those loud voices belonged to. He saw nothing between the trees, nothing winding between the roots or pushing through the vegetation on the ground. Then he realized where the howling came from. In the canopy, a multitude of eyes and bouncing shapes stared down with mouths wide open.
They were harmless. He almost laughed, recognizing the creatures at once. Howler monkeys.
He had first seen the creatures when he and Kelsey had hiked between the steaming mud baths and strangler figs wrapped around the trunks of the ceiba trees in Rincón de la Vieja National Park. After delving further along the hiking routes past where other tourists stopped to admire the waterfalls, Kelsey had cooed and pointed up at a tree full of furry black monkeys. He’d waved and shouted a greeting up at the monkeys and they had answered by breaking out into howls. As Kelsey had laughed, he’d yelled louder and the animals had responded with an increasing cacophony of hoots and cries.
He had been too stubborn, trying to fit the plants, the sounds, the smells into the Congo. That hadn’t been right. Now, the pieces seemed to fit together in his head: Costa Rica.
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here.” James tore through the underbrush and stood next to him. He pointed down to the facilities below.
The people below them had stopped unloading the truck and groups of soldiers amassed just beyond the gate, weapons in tow.
They sprinted through the rainforest, dodging between trees and lunged over spindly roots. Pain coursed up Nick’s leg as he willed the adrenaline to work harder, faster. He felt warm blood start to soak out of the wound. His loping sprint devolved into a limping jog.
“Come on, Nick. We aren’t giving up now. Not now. We can’t.”
James pulled him forward, guiding him through the shadows as they pressed on until the rain ceased. Even James could carry on no further. He dragged Nick down into an alcove formed through the erosion of soil underneath a tree’s roots. They huddled there, surrounded by mud and plants.
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