by Sean Platt
And then, impossibly, Altruance stopped running. He sat on a large aluminum duct protruding from a metal hatch on the ground, propping one arm up on the first in a row of six air conditioner condensers. He tightened his grip on Ephraim’s arm, keeping him from running, too.
“It’s cool. I got all the time in the world.”
Ephraim blubbered, but Altruance just raised his eyebrows.
“Eden is …”
But he couldn’t say it. It already felt like science fiction. How many times could he cry wolf to Altruance Brown? So far, his two closest friends on the island had stuck with him on faith, but faith only stretched so far. As far as Sophie and Altruance were concerned, Ephraim could be imagining all of it. Even Altruance didn’t look entirely convinced that the incident with the mower and ghost hadn’t been part of a bad trip on Lucky Scream.
“Eden is what?” Sophie said.
Across the open utility area, a door clanged open. A large black man was standing in the doorframe, his eyes hard and menacing — staring hard at Ephraim, Altruance, and Sophie as they scrambled to their feet.
The man watching them was another Altruance Brown.
CHAPTER 63
IN HIDING
“Jesus Christ.”
Ephraim could see that Sophie knew. She understood without understanding at all.
“Come on,” Ephraim said, tugging at them. They had a head start and could run in the other direction — never mind that only dead ends waited the other way.
“Is that your brother?” Altruance squinted. “Hang on. He looks like …”
Another Altruance appeared in the doorway. And another. And another. Even from a distance, Ephraim could tell they were just one step up from the vacant clones he’d seen in his brother’s lab.
Maybe Altruance’s memory theft had been underway when Ephraim had roused him and broken the connection. The clones across the open area looked mean and cunning. They were somewhere in between blank-minded drones and fully realized duplicates. Not fully Altruance Brown, but not dull-eyed zombies, either.
Altruance realized. Now he knew, too.
“Shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit …”
“We have to go. We have to haul ass!”
“Ephraim? What is this? What’s going on?” Altruance licked his lips, staring hard as more Browns filled the apron. “I know it’s fucked-up to say, but those beautiful chocolate popsicles over there sure look a lot like—”
Ephraim grabbed Altruance by his robe and pulled him to standing. Once upright, Altruance towered above him. He had to be double Ephraim’s weight — big, strong, all muscle. But Ephraim dragged him across the gravel footing anyway. Altruance was suddenly inert. Shocked into passivity.
He pulled Altruance’s face down until it was inches from his own.
“Run!”
Sophie already was. Altruance finally broke his paralysis and followed, stumbling on long legs before finding his rhythm. Ephraim — already exhausted, older, and a fair sight shorter — was immediately left behind.
The pursuers came. He rounded a corner. The Altruance clones disappeared, but Ephraim could hear them coming hard. Their giant feet crunched gravel only a hundred yards back, counterpointing the tympani of heartbeats in Ephraim’s ear.
Altruance slowed when he passed Sophie, allowing Ephraim — in as much of a sprint as he could manage, head swimming and gut threatening upheaval — to catch up. They made it around another out-jut of an anonymous building and saw an opening in the perimeter fence. The building wasn’t surrounded; it didn’t require airtight security because the islet itself was supposed to be secure. Ephraim could even see a parking lot beyond, filled with golf carts.
He made for it like a desert refugee running for a waterhole. But something stopped him violently, his shoulders catching, feet coming out from under him as he slapped the gravel. He got his hands out to break his fall. But only barely.
He was swimming backward, clawing at the gravel, leaving ruts, oasis departing like an outbound train as some traitorous ass dragged him away.
He tried to stand, but Sophie held him down. She must have fallen into this little dark place, too, because she was on her hands and knees. She held him by crawling on top of him, using her slight weight to push him flat.
Ephraim glared up at Altruance, but he was peeking up, over the lip of something. The big man had dragged them all into a small alcove; stairs descending from surface-level to his right, granting access to a basement door in the building’s side. The door had no handle. Probably an emergency exit.
“What the fuck do you think you’re—!”
Altruance spun in his squat, jabbing a finger over his lips and staring at Ephraim. Shh!
They waited. Sophie shifted but didn’t move off of Ephraim. Her body was a warm, soft weight. Her light brown hair was a mess on his face. After a few seconds, stomping feet thundered past, near the lip of the sunken concrete stairwell. The sounds of rushing receded into the distance.
The air had gone still. The braying alarm had died. The appropriate forces had apparently been notified of an intruder, and there was no more need for the racket.
“They’re gone,” Sophie finally said.
She moved away. Ephraim sat up. They both stared down at him.
Altruance’s eyes darkened. “Maybe now is a good time to start talking.”
CHAPTER 64
PROOF
They had time to kill anyway. Altruance had dragged them all into the stairwell the minute he’d seen the way out of the complex yawning ahead, figuring exit was their most obvious move — and hence something to avoid until their pursuers were gone. It would be better to hide now, then sneak out once the danger had dimmed.
“I’m fast,” he said, “but I can’t outrun ten of young me.”
The story unfolded, though Ephraim skipped sections. The need to convince Altruance and Sophie had been rendered irrelevant. Altruance could, if he chose, believe that all of Eden’s Altruance Brown line might be sold as manual laborers, a flash to the pre-Civil-War past. But Sophie couldn’t believe the same. In her prime, every so-inclined person with a pulse had wanted to sleep with Sophie Norris. Now a handful of rich men — and probably some women — would be able to do exactly that.
Had humanity ever seen a deeper violation? The clones would be more than sisters. According to Jonathan, they’d essentially be Sophie after her memories were implanted — after each of the copies became just one more iteration of the famous woman adored by the world.
“But they’re just bodies, right?” Altruance said. “You saw how hard they came at us. I wouldn’t run at someone like that unless they were holding a cheesecake.”
“I think so. I think they took early samples of your DNA from testing you did when you applied to come here, then cloned that. The ones I saw were practically blanks. Not the real thing.”
Sophie and Altruance both seemed heartened, but deep down Ephraim wasn’t sure he’d told them the full truth. He hadn’t said that he’d spent most of a day with each of their clones back on the Retreat island. The clones had felt strange to him, but he’d written it off as discomfort with their youth. They hadn’t been so strange as to cause any real notice. In time, they would have convinced him, just as Jonathan almost had.
Maybe the two on the Retreat had been an exception.
Or maybe the mental transfer was a lot faster than Jonathan said, and they’d had full copies of Sophie’s and Altruance’s minds inside a day. Maybe the clones weren’t incomplete after all. Maybe the ones that had just run past had been intentionally made dumb and aggressive.
Jonathan’s voice inside his head: You’d be surprised what a clone can be conditioned to do. We can make them obey. Love. Hate. To feel fear or lust or obsession. Even kill.
Why were there Altruance and Sophie clones in place on Retreat? What did it mean? Were they placeholders, deposited now to be pulled back later, once the real Sophie and Altruance were done with their treatments and finally lo
oked as young as the clones already were?
“It’s all about money.” Sophie shook her head, looking down. “This makes me sick.”
Ephraim said nothing. He’d be embarrassing himself by claiming to understand.
“You said there were boats.” Altruance nodded toward the water. “Do you think we can just head off into the ocean?”
Ephraim nodded. “I’m sure they’d be able to track us, but if we’re lucky, maybe the boats here don’t have remote override like Sophie’s did.”
“Where we gonna go? There’s nowhere.”
“We could head to that island. Agaléga. They’d know where we went, but once inside another country’s borders …”
There was a moment. Then Altruance asked, “How far is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie looked up. “Agaléga is a Mauritius island. I remember Elle or Nolon saying something about how Evermore bought a hunk of Mauritius’s ocean property. But if Evermore gave Mauritius money, I don’t know that I’d trust them. We might show up to find Connolly waiting.”
“Wallace Connolly is dead.”
“You know what I mean.”
“The problem is that we don’t know who’s running Eden. Maybe it’s the AI. Connolly could be running his empire from beyond the grave for all we know. Does an AI get angry? Does it have ambition? Hell, maybe it will decide just to let us go.”
“I don’t think so,” Altruance said.
“Can we go to Madagascar?” Sophie asked.
“I have no idea how far that is. But I don’t think it’s close. I suppose it depends on the boat. And how much fuel it has. And the weather. The chance of storms.”
Altruance shivered, but said nothing.
“Maybe we should talk to him,” Sophie said.
“Who?”
“Your brother.”
Ephraim looked at Sophie. He hadn’t had the guts to admit this part of the story. For all Sophie knew, Jonathan was alive and well, this whole thing a misunderstanding between siblings.
“Were you listening to the story? Did you see the Altruance Browns who chased us here?”
“He’s your brother. A clone of Jonathan, maybe, but—”
“He’s not my brother.”
“But he has your brother’s memories. Wouldn’t you think that’d make him willing to listen to—”
“He’s dead.”
Sophie’s mouth stopped mid-word. It sagged, unsure.
“You said he was—”
“He was.”
“But you said you talked to him and—”
“I did.”
“When did he die?”
Ephraim looked at the dirt.
“Ephraim?” Altruance looked at Ephraim’s outfit as if for the first time. Maybe noticing the dark stains on his shoes. Or what peeked out from beneath the rubber apron. All that blood, all over the place. “How did he die?”
Ephraim shook his head, looking away. “He wasn’t my brother.”
Altruance turned to Sophie. “I never thought I’d say this, but we need to get our asses onto a boat.”
Sophie nodded. Then swallowed.
Altruance took over. It was clear that Ephraim had been temporarily silenced.
“If we can’t hit friendly land, we’ll head for the shipping lanes and wait for a freighter. We flag them down, and when we get to wherever they’re going, we tell our story. With three of us saying the same thing, someone has to believe us. Hell, the rumor machine alone will do it. Social media does the rest, and then Eden is toast. We’ll end this thing, once and for all.”
But Sophie didn’t look convinced.
“They’re too strong. Evermore is everywhere, and people love them. You said your MyLife had been tampered with, Ephraim. Now I think mine has, too.”
She blinked as if trying to slap the recorder in her eye back to life. She nodded with irritation, then went on.
“It won’t even spool up. I bet it’s the same for yours, Altruance. Dead and wiped of anything you shouldn’t have seen.” She shook her head, sighing. “They had access to all of us. Evermore could have done whatever they wanted when we went under for the procedure. It’ll look like we saw things we never saw. I’m sure that when it comes to anything remotely helpful, between the three of us we’ll have nothing but our word.”
“Right,” Altruance said. “Our word. The word of all three of us.”
“Against Evermore? Against the promise of staying young forever?” Sophie chuckled. “Come on, Altruance.”
Altruance didn’t reply. The stairwell was silent. It was easy to believe that nobody was after them and they could fester in the dim forever.
“There is proof,” Ephraim said.
Altruance and Sophie turned to Ephraim. He’d been quiet through the whole argument. Both looked like they’d forgotten he was even there.
He reached into the lab coat’s pocket and withdrew two pieces of electronics joined by a short wire. The entire works were slick with blood, clotted with dripping red gore.
“I removed Jonathan’s MyLife implant,” Ephraim said, “and I’m willing to bet that nobody censored his.”
CHAPTER 65
EEZ
They crossed the lawn without incident. Ephraim looked around the entire time, searching for cameras. He saw only two, both making wide, slow pans of the grounds. They waited for the cameras to reach their maximum angles on one side, then ran as fast as possible in the opposite direction. Once fully clear of the facility, they collapsed to the ground in a tiny grove of brush to catch their breath.
The islet lived up to its name. It wasn’t a full-fledged island; it was barely there. The only things on it, as far as they could tell, were the research facility and a small marina filled with some disproportionately large boats.
Ephraim stopped them at the marina, but Altruance wanted to circumnavigate the islet, tiny as it was, just to ensure they weren’t missing anything useful. Wasn’t there supposed to be a broadcast facility somewhere? If they could find it, maybe they could upload visuals from Jonathan Todd’s scooped-out MyLife and send them to the world.
But to Ephraim, the idea felt like a dead-end distraction. He didn’t know how to use broadcast equipment — nor, for that matter, how to get images from a MyLife recorder once it had been removed from eye and brain. Besides, they needed to escape, and they’d already arrived at the marina.
It appeared unguarded, a tiny outpost even the islet had forgotten. The boats (there were six) were dingy — nowhere near as posh or slick as the vessels offered to Eden’s VIP guests. Seeing them gave Ephraim hope. Anything this dirty wasn’t part of the official plan. These were service vehicles. They wouldn’t have remote control capability. They’d be lucky if the boats even ran.
There was a small office on the dock, empty with the door unlocked. Inside was virtually nothing except for a small strip of wood lined with pegs, a key with a yellow floatation bobber on each one. Ephraim compared numbers on the bobbers with slip numbers visible through the office’s cracked window. He chose lucky number 13, a hardy looking vessel with a miniature crane that looked like it might be used for commercial deep-sea fishing.
“Why aren’t they watching this place?” Sophie asked.
“Maybe they forgot about it,” Ephraim answered.
“Maybe they’ve wired all the boats with explosives,” Altruance said, “and they’re waiting for us to board before blowing our boat from the water.”
Ephraim and Sophie both looked at him.
“Just trying to consider all the possibilities,” he said.
Ephraim held up the keys. “Let’s just make it quick. I don’t care how we get out of here or how we manage to do it as long as it happens. Come on.”
“Wait.”
Ephraim turned. Altruance was looking at a large nautical map tacked to the office wall.
“Altruance. Let’s go.”
Altruance put a finger on the map. “We’re here. This is Eden. The actual isla
nds aren’t showing so I guess this is an old map. But this is the plateau underwater, and this is the reef. Here, with all the pinholes. You agree?”
“Sure. But we—”
“Agaléga is here.” He tapped an island a small distance to the right. “What do you think this faint line is between them?”
Ephraim and Sophie leaned closer. Altruance was pointing at a hand drawn, curved red line. On both ends, the outward-bulging red line touched a dashed purple one. The purple line between the ends of the bell shape of the red one had been scribbled out. It looked like the red line was someone’s correction of the purple one.
Sophie squinted at small text on the map’s faded surface.
“‘EEZ,’” she read from beside the purple line.
“What’s ‘EEZ’?”
“‘Something Economic Zone.’ ‘Exclusive,’ I think. I remember them talking about it on our first day tour. It’s the part of the ocean that each country ‘owns’ around its borders.”
“Why has this part of the line been scratched out?” Altruance rubbed at the red scribble as if it were chalk and might go away. “Looks like someone changed the EEZ line here.”
Sophie nodded. “For Eden. This is what I was talking about. A small part of Eden was in Mauritius’s Zone before they built it, so Evermore paid them off. They bought some of their ocean real estate so that all of Eden could be in international waters.”
“We knew that already,” Ephraim said. “Let’s go.”
“But look at where the line is,” Altruance said, not moving. He turned to another map pinned beside it, a blow-out of the smaller area. The same amateur cartographer had changed the EEZ line there as well. “Look at this, Sophie. Tell me I’m reading this right.”
Sophie looked for a long moment, then straightened.
“What?” Ephraim asked.
“It’s right there,” Sophie said.
“What’s right there?”
“Do you think this is accurate? Or do you think it’s a guesstimate?”
