by Magus Tor
Elza stood and opened the door, and Jonathon rushed in. He took one look at Nicholas on the floor, Aurelia on the couch and the device in Elza's hand, and stopped. He looked around cautiously, and the door slid shut.
“Aurelia, are you alright?”
She nodded, dumbly. He crossed to her and gently pressed her back to the couch.
“Elza, what's going on here?”
“She's a traitor, Jonathon. We made a mistake. I heard them.” She nodded towards Nicholas on the floor. “He was your assassin.”
“I can explain everything,” Aurelia cut in. “But you have to listen to me, please.”
Elza began to speak again, and Jonathon held a hand up to her. “Let her speak,” he said. “If she's going to be accused of something, she should be allowed to defend herself.”
Aurelia suddenly felt very, very tired. She craved the stimulant patches that Elza had given her on the night of the accident. Her whole body felt weighed down. And now she had to find the words to rescue not only herself but Nicholas too. She laid her head back on the couch and closed her eyes.
“Let's start with the truth,” she said after a few moments. “Nicholas was sent to kill you.”
She heard Jonathon draw in a breath, but he said nothing. She opened her eyes and looked at him.
“But he didn't. He saved you. It was Nicholas who pulled you into the stairwell on the shuttle, thinking that it was the safest place for you to be. The plan was that you would either be killed in the attack or he would kill you in the chaos of the aftermath. But instead he saved you.”
She thought about telling them why, but the story was too long and complicated. She had to find a way to simplify things. As briefly as she could, she explained that Nicholas had asked for her help, asked that she communicate a message to Jonathon. All that had happened this afternoon was Nicholas checking on the status of the message. She also admitted to telling him about the Resistance.
“But you never told me not to,” she pointed out. “I trust him as much as I do you, and I decided to help him for much the same reasons that I decided to help you.”
Elza gave her frozen laugh. “An excellent story, but it doesn't hold up, does it? How are we supposed to know that you and the Clone weren't in it together?” She spat out the word Clone.
“Why would he save him, then?” Aurelia said, her anger rising. “That makes no sense.”
“Maybe he didn't; maybe things went wrong and he couldn't kill Jonathon when he needed to. Gods know, maybe you were going to blackmail Jonathon for something. There are a million reasons that Jonathon could have got off that ship alive.”
Okay, the story was weak. But it was the truth, and the truth was so often less satisfactory than a lie. Sometimes that was what told you something was the truth, Aurelia thought.
“I don't know how to prove myself,” she said, quietly. “It's the truth, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do to convince you.”
Jonathon had been silent. Aurelia sensed that he was turning matters over in his head.
“Elza is right,” he said, finally. He looked at Aurelia, and she saw pain in his eyes. “I want to believe you, Aurelia - I do, but I can't take chances. Not now. Not when I'm so close to getting where I need to be.” His voice sounded miserable.
“So what?” Aurelia demanded. “So you're going to kill me here and now? Inject me? Turn me over to the authorities? What?”
Jonathon tapped his fingers on his leg, thinking. “There is one thing we could do,” he said.
“Anything,” Aurelia said, rubbing her tired eyes. “Just tell me what it is.”
“It's not nice.” Jonathon sat back on the couch. “But, technically, we could get inside your head. See if you're telling the truth.”
“That's against the Convention,” Elza said.
Jonathon shrugged. “So? If Aurelia gives her consent, then I think we're okay. What do you think, Aurelia?”
The thought of Jonathon’s being inside her head made her anxious; the thought of Elza’s being there terrified her at the moment. She had little choice, though. She nodded. “I'll do it.”
Jonathon was all business now. “Elza, go and get what we need from the main hospital, please.”
She looked far from pleased about this development, but she did as she was told, leaving the room with a backward glance at Nicholas, who was still lying on the floor.
“Jonathon, I had nothing to do with any of this, I promise you.”
He gave her a small smile. “My heart believes you, Aurelia, but my head says that I have to be careful. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
They sat apart on the couch until Elza returned with the device that was needed. Aurelia sat quietly through the exam; there was no feeling involved, and she didn't have a sense of anything changing inside her mind. Elza and Jonathon asked her questions, and she responded with one-word answers. That was all.
“She's clean,” Jonathon said finally, standing up.
“Fine,” said Elza. “But the Clone isn't.”
“Agreed.”
“Wait!” Aurelia said. “He is - I told you he is.”
They weren't prepared to stake anything on the life of a mere Clone, however. The decision was made to take Nicholas out of the hospital.
“We'll interrogate him, find out what he knows,” Jonathon explained.
The only concession that Aurelia could get was that she was allowed to go with them.
No one noticed the three of them carrying Nicholas through the corridors, or if they did, they said nothing. An unconscious body in a hospital was nothing to be remarked upon, anyway. Jonathon's personal transport pod was waiting at the gates, and they laid Nicholas in the back. Aurelia buckled her seatbelt and sat back.
“We should blind her,” Elza said.
Jonathon shook his head. “No, Elza. She's trustworthy. You have the proof now. She can see where we're going.”
Elza kept silent after that.
Aurelia watched Nicholas with one eye and the landscape with the other. Nicholas seemed to be fine; his breathing and colour were both good. She thought she saw his eyelids flicker a time or two but couldn't be sure. The landscape was odd, different. The pod had turned away from the centre of Lunar and was making its way through narrower streets than Aurelia had seen before. There were no neon lights here, and the buildings, whilst still tall, had a decrepit look about them.
“Worker housing,” said Jonathon, noticing her watching.
Towards the outskirts of the city, the pod began to drop down as the dome over the city grew lower. It took a good twenty minutes to reach where Jonathon had planned on taking them. A large, square black building approached. Shit. She knew what that was. Just as she thought they were going to swing past it, the pod turned slightly and brought them around to the back of the building.
Getting out of the pod, Aurelia held her breath. Then she berated herself for being childish. Once she was breathing normally again, she noticed that there was not even a hint of smell from the Crematorium. With Elza and Jonathon carrying Nicholas, all she had to do was follow. They went through a small black door and down an ill-lit corridor. The place was institutional; it smelled of the same bleach soap used to clean schools and hospitals, a smell that was familiar and comforting for Aurelia, who had spent most of her life in these places.
When Jonathon used a key from his pocket to open another door, Aurelia could see a golden shaft of light pierce the corridor. The room inside was large and beautifully furnished. It was also square, the clean-angled corners seeming odd to Aurelia; she was used to rounded rooms, or at least the curved corners of hospital pods. Nicholas was laid on a couch, and Jonathon relocked the door.
“What is this place?” was Aurelia's first question.
“We've been using it for a while now,” Jonathon said, opening a cabinet in the wall and pulling out a bottle of water. “It's the perfect location. The Crematorium is no longer in use.” He looked over at Aure
lia. “We send all bodies down to Earth now; didn't want to pollute our own air. Anyway, no one wants to come near the place, which means it's a great place to hide away for a while when necessary.”
Elza was bending over Nicholas, pulling his eyelids down and taking his pulse. “He'll come around in a few minutes,” she said, brusquely.
“Jonathon, I don't want you to hurt him.” Aurelia didn't want to plead, but she would if she had to. “He's my friend. I think he can explain things better than I can, but please, please don't hurt him.”
Jonathon was about to answer her when Elza gave a bark of laughter. “You understand so little, but you'll learn. Sometimes this is the way we have to do things.”
She wasn't exactly being rude; her voice was kinder towards Aurelia now, but she wasn't being her familiar self either. Aurelia guessed that the woman wasn't going to forgive her quite so easily. At the moment, though, she didn't really care.
“Jonathon, please, don't hurt him. He'll tell you what you need to know.”
Jonathon sighed. “I'll do my best, Aurelia, but things aren't always that simple. I need the information that he might have, and sometimes the best way to get people to remember things is with pain. I don't like it, but that's the way it is.”
Aurelia gritted her teeth. “That's not the way things should be, then,” she said, her voice trembling. “Nicholas saved your life; just remember that. Whatever it is that you believe, whatever he says, just remember that if it weren't for him you wouldn't be here.”
“And he was sent to kill me,” interjected Jonathon. He'd poured glasses of water for all of them and handed one to Aurelia. “I understand what you're saying, and I'll tell you again, I will do my best. But, Aurelia, he is a Clone; please remember that.”
She was boiling with anger now and could feel even her skin throbbing with emotion. The intimation was that because he was only a Clone, he wasn't worth worrying over. There was no doubt that she loved Jonathon, and even now she could feel that, but looking at his high, patrician nose and the expensive clothes he was draped in, it was hard to divorce his intentions from the fact that he was Elite. Whatever he might say or want, there would always be a piece of Ruling Class in him, and that included the way he saw Clones.
“He's waking up,” Elza said.
Nicholas was stirring, his eyes fluttering open.
“Where am I?”
His mouth was dry - Aurelia could tell from how he sounded. She went to him and, lifting his head slightly, offered him her glass of water.
“Just tell them the truth. About everything,” she whispered.
He creased his brow.
“Everything,” she repeated.
“Everything,” he said.
Jonathon came from behind and touched her elbow. “Aurelia, I think you should wait next-door; I don't think you should see anything that happens in here.”
“No. I'm staying.” She wasn't going to leave Nicholas alone here. She thought she could trust Jonathon to restrain his emotions, but she wasn't so sure about Elza.
Nicholas was quickly coming to his senses and, looking around, realised exactly what was going on. “No, Aurelia, you should leave,” he said.
Jonathon looked startled at this, but he nodded in agreement. “It's for the best.”
“And that way, my story can't be compromised; no one can say that you gave me signals or anything,” Nicholas added. “It's better, Aurelia.”
Reluctantly, she straightened up. “If that's what you both think.”
Jonathon took her arm and led her to a door different than the one she had entered by. “Wait in here,” he said. “It's comfortable.”
The small chamber had a bed and a chair, as well as an old fashioned looking cabinet which contained a decanter of water and some glasses. Everything both in here and in the room next door had looked old, antique, a reminder of Earth days long past. She contemplated lying on the bed. Her whole body was aching, but she knew if she did, she might not be able to get up fast enough if she heard sounds from the next room. Instead, she pulled the chair as close to the door as she could and sat.
She heard nothing other than the murmur of voices. No shouting, no screams.
Her life had changed incredibly fast. She had so little to cling to. But the more she thought about things, the more she came to three indisputable conclusions. First, she missed her parents - but that had always been the case, was expected and something that she could deal with. The second was that she loved Jonathon. That had come as a surprise, but it was absolutely true. There might be things he did or said that she didn't agree with, but she had no control over the chemicals and hormones in her body, and they had chosen that she be with him. Oddly, she felt comfortable with this. The feelings had overtaken her quickly but seemed natural, as if they had always been lying there latent, just waiting for a catalyst. The third thing was that joining the Resistance was the right thing to do.
She leaned her head on the back of the chair and wished that she'd got herself a glass of water before she sat down. Now her legs seemed too heavy to get up again. The Resistance. She believed everything she had been told. It wasn't a question of naivety, or simply because she loved Jonathon. It was because the more she heard, the more things made sense. It was like she'd seen flashes of pieces of a picture all her life, but it was only now that she was being given the opportunity to see all the pieces together.
And that meant that the life she had known, the Earth she had known, was all based on a lie. The ideals of sacrifice, giving yourself to help society rather than to help yourself, educating yourself to help all people, were all wrong. Or at least misguided. From what she could see, it boiled down to the fact that she, as all other Workers, had been moulded into exactly what it was the Empire needed so that the rich could go on being rich. The reason her parents would never have the other children they had so desperately wanted, the reason the Fails were taken from their schools and families and eventually euthanised, the reason that she herself had injected a woman whose name she didn't even know, all those reasons were the same. Greed. Not on her part, or even that of anyone she knew, but on the part of a small group of people who wanted to live lives of luxury.
Her head was beginning to ache. She persuaded herself to get up out of her chair and pour a glass of water, which she drank straight down. She had always had a sense of fairness, and that sense had always seemed satisfied by the way she’d lived. Now, though, she was ready to change things. Do what needed to be done. She wanted no one else to have to live the kind of life that she had had, though it hadn't been a terrible life by any means. Finding that everything you had lived so far had been a lie, though…that was like having the ground ripped out from under your feet.
She placed the glass back on the cabinet. And then there was Nicholas. As far as she could tell, all these issues were very much interconnected. She could see no reason why the Clones and Resistance wouldn't join forces; they wanted more or less the same thing, though for different groups of people. The only thing standing in their way was a prejudice that had been deliberately created to keep the Clones separate.
There was a bang from the next room, followed by a scream and then thudding. She froze for a brief second and then jerked herself into action. Aurelia moved so quickly she knocked over the glass, which shattered. She threw open the door. Jonathon was clutching his arm. Nicholas was jumping to his feet. Elza was lying on the ground. Her eyes were closed.
Chapter Twelve
Aurelia stood in the doorway, her mouth open and her mind spinning. She didn't know which of the three to go to first, so her body solved the problem by not moving at all. Nicholas was the first to speak, his voice groggy.
“It's fine, Aurelia.”
He took Jonathon by the shoulder and gently steered him towards the couch. Aurelia ran to his side.
“Are you hurt?”
His face was pale. “A little. Nothing too bad.”
Springing into business mode, she unbuttoned his
shirt and palpitated his arm, eliciting a groan. Then, sliding his shirt back over him, she sat back. “It's a sprain, nothing worse. And you?” She looked at Nicholas.
“Fine.” He sank into a chair.
“And are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Nicholas saved me,” Jonathon said, his colour starting to return.
“I know that.”
“No, I mean just now.”
Aurelia got up from the couch and bent over Elza. The silver stunning device was in her hand, and she was unconscious. Being as gentle as possible, Aurelia felt around the woman's head, finding a growing lump. Eyes were fine, breathing stable.
“Elza jumped me, and Nicholas intervened,” Jonathon said.
She looked to Nicholas for confirmation of this, and he nodded.
“But...” The question didn't even need to be said.
“I don't know,” Jonathon answered. “I've had a feeling for a while that something has been off, but I didn't know what. We started the interrogation, and everything was going fine. But as soon as it became clear that I was coming around to Nicholas's explanation of things, Elza changed. Then she waited until I turned my back and came after me.”
“I pushed her away,” Nicholas added. “She hit her head on the edge of the desk there.”
Jonathon sat up, his injured arm folded against his chest. “Move her head again, to the right.”
Aurelia did as she was told, and Elza's hair lifted, revealing the white patch on her neck.
“That explains a lot,” said Jonathon.
Aurelia shrugged. “It's a stimulation patch, to keep you awake while you're working. Everyone wears them.”
Nicholas leant towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. “No they don't, Aurelia,” he said quietly.
She returned to the couch, and the three of them tried to piece the puzzle together. The patches that Elza habitually wore were a drug, a stimulating drug to be sure, but also a highly addictive one.
