The Tomorrow Clone (The Tomorrow Gene Book 3)

by Sean Platt

  Mercer dodged. Evaded. Went around one float and then the other, searching the crowd for a way out. The streets had become chaos.

  Mercer was looking for an exit so hard, in fact, that when his head was turned he ran smack a woman he hadn’t seen, behind him. A woman who turned out to be Sophie Norris.

  ... who was with the two Ephraims. In the middle of the street, the four people still in their standoff.

  And Freddy, Fiona’s second man, was still pointing a gun at her.

  A gun that was now pointed at Mercer, who’d put himself accidentally in the way – between Sophie and the gunman.

  Mercer prepared again to die, but Freddy wasn’t interested in Mercer this time. He wanted Sophie, and was glaring at Mercer like a dumbass who didn’t know better than to stay out of the way.

  “Get the fuck out of ...!” Freddy growled, raising an arm to shove Mercer aside so he could aim again at Sophie. But Sophie was already moving, already using Mercer’s distraction to skitter away, through the chaotic crowd.

  Mercer and Freddy traded stares, contemplating this absurd series of events. Then Freddy’s gun went back up, and again Mercer was forced to consider mortality.

  Until the next big object careened from the crowd, out of control, and took them down to the ground.

  Chapter 46

  The Most Important Thing in the World

  It was another parade float, this one ironically promoting nonviolence.

  Clone Ephraim lurched forward as the runaway float struck him from behind at low speed, shoving him into Mercer Fox and Freddy. All three toppled and Freddy’s gun spun away. Ephraim wrenched himself from the two other men he’d entangled with and pinned it, but it was only temporary. The weapon skittered beneath Freddy’s shoulder blade as the pile came to rest in a stack: Ephraim, Mercer, then Freddy on the bottom.

  “Run!” Ephraim shouted at Sophie, who was now free to run, entirely unguarded.

  But Sophie hadn’t run. She wouldn’t, because Ephraim was still in danger.

  Her eyes were on the bottom of the pile. On the gun.

  “Get out of here!”

  But again, nothing. There was a piece of concrete near her left foot, something one of the chaotic parade floats had broken off when striking the curb.

  She picked the thing up with both hands, then came to stand above the pile, too close for Ephraim’s comfort.

  Activity thrummed in both corners of Ephraim’s vision; Mercer and the gunman, beneath and squirming. Original Ephraim a few steps up as if preparing to run, a problem for later.

  Sophie seemed about to clock Freddy with the rock when a cool voice said, “Ma’am? Drop it, please.”

  A policeman’s level tone. And with the voice, Ephraim became aware of more bodies arriving, some stooping to the man who’d been shot in the street. Guns were drawn. Two or three newcomers — Ephraim couldn’t tell.

  “Ma’am?”

  They were caught. He and Sophie had come to the city to catch the for Original Ephraim, but now they’d gotten captured themselves.

  Sophie lowered the rock. She seemed about to raise her hands in surrender when there was a lunge from beneath Ephraim: not the bottom man, but Mercer in the middle. Their rolling huddle broke, and Mercer reached for Sophie’s dropped stone.

  Despite the guns on that turned toward Mercer, he brought the rock down hard on Freddy’s head, knocking him out.

  “Fucker!” he yelled.

  The cops shouted, “Hands up!”

  Mercer had clearly had enough. His face was a raging thermometer. He practically strutted into place, shoulders back, uncaring, wearing a You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me expression.

  “You want to hassle someone?” Mercer shouted at the cops, his feet straddling the snoozing bodyguard. “Don’t hassle me! Hassle these fuckers!” Pointing at the pair of Ephraims. “Hassle her!”

  Then Mercer turned to point at the van Freddy had come from, but the van had vanished.

  “MotherFUCKER!” Mercer railed.

  Clone Ephraim turned his attention from Mercer to Original Ephraim. Original Ephraim had come here alone, perhaps to break into Riverbed as Papa predicted or perhaps not. Either way, Clone Ephraim could tell there was something strange in the air. Something that hadn’t unfolded quite right.

  The Ephraims met each other’s eyes. What came next happened too fast.

  As the group had shifted and terrified Jubilee-goers had continued to run between them, Mercer and Clone Ephraim had ended up side-by-side. Now Original Ephraim was nearer to the sidewalk, where the cops or whoever-they-were had come from, now within spitting distance of Sophie.

  Original Ephraim reached. And grabbed. His other hand went to his waistband, emerging with a silencer-equipped handgun. He jammed it into Sophie’s ribs. He held Sophie close, his hand white-flesh tight on her arm, enough to bruise it. He looked the breed of determined you should never test if you wish to see your hostage alive.

  The look of a man who’d seen all the lies collapse around him — a man with little left to live for.

  “Ephraim …” Mercer looked at the Original, saying his name as a plea.

  “Were you in on this?” Original Ephraim demanded, poking Sophie with the gun.

  “No,” Mercer said.

  “You were with Fiona. You were with her people, just now.”

  “She kidnapped me, man. Calm down.”

  “You don’t look kidnapped,” Real Ephraim snarled.

  “Her people just tried to kill me!” He gestured toward a second body in the alley by a Dumpster. “Twice!”

  “I’m not talking about just now. You were working with her all along. Why would she kidnap you if not to get something, Mercer?” He shook Sophie enough to make her yelp. “I know Eden is missing things. Things you shouldn’t know even exist. You know what betas are, don’t you? And there’s a hormone that’s missing, and you know about that, too. You stole them, didn’t you, Mercer?”

  Clone Ephraim looked from Mercer to Original Ephraim, then finally to Sophie. Her eyes were locked on his, now more terrified than determined. But Clone Ephraim could see Mercer’s eyes as well.

  “I know it had to be you, Mercer,” said Original Ephraim, now taunting. “And do you know what? Fiona told me all about it. You can’t trust her. She’s a snake and will always turn on you.”

  “No shit I can’t trust her! Listen to me, Ephraim!”

  But Ephraim was backing away, Sophie squirming against the gun in her side. Backing toward the single operable vehicle on the street that wasn’t a float: an electric truck that had escorted one of the balloons, now sheared away and flying God knew where above the city.

  His intentions were clear just from watching. He was going to get in and drive. The truck was idling. It had crashed during the mess, but the driver had fled without killing the engine. How far that truck would get and who might be able to track it, Clone Ephraim had no idea, but there were no other vehicles on the block fit to chase it. Traffic had been cleared for this joyous day. He’d get far enough, perhaps.

  “I’m through listening,” said Original Ephraim. “Through with Fiona’s shit, through with GEM’s shit, through with your shit, Mercer, before you say another word.”

  “Let Sophie go,” said Clone Ephraim.

  “And through with my own shit!” Original Ephraim blurted, meaning the clone’s.

  He shoved Sophie toward the vehicle, using her as a shield.

  “We can’t let you go, Mr. Todd,” said one of the cops.

  Ephraim raised the gun. Pressed it against Sophie’s temple, his body mostly behind hers. An action heroine would have knocked the gun aside, but Sophie didn’t flinch. Neither did Clone Ephraim or the others. There was what movies made possible, such as a fighting escape. And then there was reality, and what tended to happen when guns were this close, held by people who had already stopped caring.

  “You can see what happens if you try to stop me, or you can give me your handcuffs and keys.”
Ephraim’s hard eyes looked from man to man. “Both of you.”

  The police seemed indecisive — each wondering, perhaps, if they could shoot without hitting Sophie or leaving Ephraim enough strength or life to return fire. Clone Ephraim, despite dreams of a marksman ending, hoped the cops wouldn’t dare. Original Ephraim looked dazed. Desperate. Beyond empathy for anyone else … especially himself.

  Go ahead and kill us both, his eyes seemed to say. See if I care.

  The first cop reached for his cuffs, then tossed them. The second followed. Original Ephraim scooped up both pairs and their keys with his Sophie hand, letting go of her for only an instant. He dropped the little keys into his pocket.

  He circled to the truck’s passenger side to get out of the line of fire, stuffing Sophie into the seat and cuffing her hands to the inside of the door handle. Then he climbed over Sophie from the far side, settling in the driver’s seat with his weapon trained on her, his gaze hard and long past caring.

  He took the gearshift in hand. Ratcheted it back. Brake lights came on. The cops wouldn’t stop him now, or even dare to try. They still had an Ephraim Todd in front of them, and just the one should be plenty.

  “Where are you going to take her?” Clone Ephraim asked.

  “Away,” said the other.

  “You don’t think you’ll be easy to follow? Easy to find?”

  “Find me, and she’s dead.”

  Clone Ephraim crept forward. He had to. He didn’t particularly care if he got shot, arrested, beaten to death, or anything else. Sophie was in the cab. And so was Original Ephraim. The engine was running, and the streets, thanks to the panic, were clear.

  “Let her go. Please.”

  Clone Ephraim expected him to drive away at the plea, or snarl something nasty. He didn’t expect a quiet response, delivered with eyes that bordered sad.

  “This is all I have left,” said Original Ephraim. Then, more cryptically, “You understand.”

  Stress on you. As if by being a clone, Clone Ephraim would know his double’s thoughts. But in a way, he did understand. To the Ephraim inside the truck, Sophie was the final bargaining chip. To the Ephraim outside it, she was a missing piece of himself. To both of them, at this moment, she was the most important thing in the world.

  “They’ll let you go if you set her free,” Clone Ephraim said, eyeing the two cops.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Then drive up the block and let her out, after you’re far enough away. Please, Ephraim. If you have any of me in you …”

  Original Ephraim laughed, but it was bitter and rancid, as hateful of himself as it was of the clone. “I don’t have any of you in me. You’re my skin flakes. You’re my blood, shed for science.” He looked straight forward, his jaw set. “If nobody cared about the first Ephraim Todd, then why would they care about the copy?”

  His self-pity was sickening. Even his arrogant, righteous manner from before was better than this.

  “Ephraim,” Clone Ephraim begged.

  “Echo,” Original Ephraim answered.

  The truck peeled away, Sophie shouting from the passenger seat. Ephraim, running, screamed after it. The officers’ paralysis broke and they sprinted to follow, leaving Mercer alone as new agents in suits arrived from the rear.

  The truck gained distance, dodging Jubilee rubble, nearly plowing through a group of stubborn revelers ahead.

  Ephraim’s breath turned acid. He wasn’t going to catch it. His legs became heavy. He couldn’t move on. Could barely breathe. Could only stand with his hands on his knees, bent over, panting, unable to see.

  Any moment, the police would catch him. Arrest again. This time for terrorism.

  But they didn’t arrive. Ephraim, dizzy, couldn’t quite straighten up to look, but he heard only the wheels of a new vehicle, closing in from behind.

  They went back to get a squad car. They sent a GEM vehicle to grab me.

  A long black sedan stopped in front of him, practically silent, a wood-inlay running board between polished wheels. The door opened.

  And a familiar voice said, “Get in.”

  Chapter 47

  A Long Time Coming

  Neven’s Doodad trilled. The number wasn’t familiar. But Neven answered anyway, trusting the Domain’s selective jammers to protect him.

  “Who is this?”

  A deep, atonal voice answered. “Merry Christmas.”

  Hershel Wood.

  “Did you hear me?” Wood asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Is the connection made?”

  “The backdoor is installed. Getting in was easier than I thought. I moved the shifts so that my nosiest guy was out on the field tonight and my two biggest slackers were manning the Crypt. Even so, I had a story. If they saw me trying to get in, I was going to say that I wanted to verify the Titus Washington leak you pulled from Eden. It’s not legal to access non-aggregate gene records without the subject’s permission, whatever, but I just needed to verify so we’d know if it was worth continuing the investigation.”

  Wood drew a breath and kept going. “It’d fly. GEM is sick of playing cops and robbers. Anything to move this thing along, especially with Mauritius finally about to let us ashore. But I didn’t need it. I walked right in. They were drinking in the break room with the door open. They’re probably sitting on the scanner with lampshades on their heads, photocopying their asses by now.”

  Wood wasn’t what Neven had expected from his first true Tomorrow Clone, and their last encounter had left him cold. Something wasn’t adding up. New Hershel’s genetics were the same as Old Hershel’s. Same for their minds. He should be the same as Old Wood, just rolled back to the point in time when Ephraim used the Quarry to make the copy.

  But he wasn’t.

  “Are you there?” Wood asked.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? That the Gene Crypt is yours? That you have access to every single recorded genome in the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  Neven stalled, wondering how to say this. “I didn’t think you’d do it. I’d almost given up on you installing the backdoor.”

  “Why? It’s my mission, same as yours.”

  “You went dark. Wouldn’t answer my calls. Wouldn’t check in. And you seemed different.”

  “Just because your change in priority was asinine didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do the thing we both should have been focusing on all along.”

  Ah, yes. The change in priority. The last-minute switch that Neven assumed had broken something inside New Wood and turned him erratic.

  But that wasn’t what had done it.

  Neven reached for his tablet. Tapped the screen until he found what he was looking for. And yes; Wood was telling the truth. The Domain’s connection to the Gene Crypt seemed to be working just fine. He wouldn’t have to release the unproven clones after all, as he’d so recently been planning to do.

  He tapped, starting the process. Inside each of the Domain’s 243 cubes, a sync with the database would begin. It would take 20 minutes or so. Then it would be a very merry holiday indeed.

  “What about Ephraim Todd?”

  “What about him?”

  “Was he captured?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s important, Hershel.”

  It only took Wood a second to reply, but in that long second, Neven had a curious realization: he’d just called the clone ‘Hershel.’ Not for conditioning purposes, but because that was his name. The clone was Hershel Wood. And Neven, without thinking, had unnecessarily added the name to the end of his sentence.

  Proof that these clones were different.

  Or that Neven was kidding himself, and the delusion had now gone to the marrow.

  There’s something wrong with Wood, and there will be something wrong with all 243 of the others.

  But Neven shoved the idea down. The clo
nes were exact in body and mind. Wood was an anomaly for unknown reasons, and it was Neven’s last-minute need to shift his focus (from the mission to Ephraim) that had spoiled him. The process was perfect.

  … or is it simply too late for you to believe anything else, with the countdown already running?

  “It’s not as important as you seem to think it is.”

  “If he says the wrong thing …” Neven trailed off, his voice warning.

  “It won’t matter when the boats reach shore. The cat, as they say, will be out of the bag.”

  “Listen to me. Now that the connection has been made, I need you to—”

  “I’m through listening to you, Neven.”

  And then there was nothing. Wood hadn’t hung up. But the line was silent.

  Neven jumped when it buzzed, indicating an incoming call from Mercer. Two vanished people calling back-to-back.

  “We’ll talk later,” Neven said.

  Wood hung up without a goodbye.

  Fighting more of that strange, clinging sensation, Neven accepted Mercer’s call.

  He sounded out of breath. It took him a second to speak. “Neven.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Fiona. Grabbed me when I got off the dock.” Big breath. “She’s had me for three days. Just got away. She wants the Quarry. She’ll come after you, Neven. I didn’t tell her anything, but she’ll figure it out. If she gets to the Domain—”

  “I don’t need the Quarry anymore. I reverse-engineered everything in it months ago. A 10X version runs every one of the cubes. She can have it. Take it to the city next time you go. Wrap a bow around it. Tell Fiona you found it in a pawn shop for all I care.”

  “GEM’s going to know about it soon if they don’t already, Neven.” He took a few breaths. “They’re going to be all up Riverbed’s ass after this shit at Jubilee. Her files are going to be—”

  “I’ve been following the news. Did you see Ephraim?”

  “Did you hear what I said, about GEM knowing the tech behind the Quarry?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you, GEM discovering our secrets?”