Two Beating Hearts
Two Beating Hearts
JAMIE CAMPBELL
Copyright © 2016 Jamie Campbell
Smashwords Edition
Jamie Campbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
Section 297(c)(iv) If a clone’s creation results in a defect*, their Maker is forbidden from creating any further clones for the term of their natural life. The genes are not permitted to be replicated again in order to minimize unwanted gene reproduction.
Excerpt from Clone Legislation, 2056 Edition
Chapter 1: Wren
“Run! Run!”
My eyes snapped open from the fitful sleep I had been in. It took a few moments for the words to sink in and be processed through my sleep-addled brain.
“Run!”
The shrieks repeated as if they were stuck in a loop. Over and over again I was screamed at to run. It was so dark in the cold room that I could barely make out which way was up and which way was down.
“Run!”
I needed to run.
There were no such things as false alarms around here.
Pulling myself to my feet, I felt around in the dark until I could pull open a door. It groaned with my efforts, inching open just far enough so I could see through the slit.
Straight beams from flashlights ran over the warehouse walls, illuminating everything in their wake, even the corners of the large area. They matched the rhythm of the security troopers’ boots.
Thud thud thud.
I wasn’t sure if the beat belonged to them or my own heart.
“Clone! Make yourself known and nobody has to get hurt.” A male voice, yelling louder than all the others.
One of the president’s security troopers.
“I know you’re in here. There is no place to hide.”
He was right, there was no place to hide. I needed to get the hell out of there before they found me. Because they lied, everybody would get hurt with them there. They wouldn’t spare anyone – especially me.
I had to make it out.
Doing a quick sweep of all the shadows in the room, there had to be at least a dozen troopers in sight. Twelve of them against one of me.
I didn’t like those odds.
They were never in my favor.
“Come out come out wherever you are.”
The door creaked no matter how slowly I moved it. But there was no way out of the room besides through that door so it had to be done. I pulled it back until I could squeeze through.
Immediately, I crouched to the ground, telling myself I was invisible the entire way. It was beyond difficult walking like that with my foot. When I walked normally it was little more than a limp. But when I had to be quiet and small it slowed me down and dragged like it was a completely useless appendage.
Which it pretty much was.
I didn’t have too far to creep, if I could make it to the next room over, there was a window. All I needed to do was find it in the darkness and somehow crawl through it.
Then I might have a shot of making it out alive.
Providing the troops didn’t think to cover the outside area too. They probably didn’t think I was intelligent enough to escape, that I would hide until they found me and haul me off to my certain death.
I was much smarter than they gave me credit for.
I’d survived this long. Eighteen years was nothing to be ashamed of. Some might call it miraculous. I certainly did.
“Step out where we can see you and put your hands on your head.”
I froze.
They had found me. Every nerve in my body stood at full attention and waited for the flashlight beam to wash over me. The troopers wouldn’t shoot me when they saw me, they wouldn’t kill me yet, but they weren’t afraid to beat me into submission. Anything that didn’t injure my organs was fair game.
“Get out here!”
The order made me jump but I could not move any muscles to comply with the order. Not when every instinct I owned screamed at me to run.
Footsteps pounded as someone else stepped out of the shadows. “Hands up! Get down on the ground. Now now now!”
It wasn’t me they had spotted. Temporary relief flooded through my veins, quickly followed by guilt over someone else being caught. Their blood was going to be on my hands.
But I couldn’t think of that right now. I had to keep moving or I would be the next one they found. My feet shuffled along as quietly as they could possibly move.
“Clone, where are you? We’re going to find you so you may as well show yourself now.”
Where was the door?
I had spent so many hours studying every inch of the abandoned warehouse I thought I had it memorized. I knew one day my survival would depend on it and now my memory was failing.
One step after the other, that’s all I needed to do. One barely functioning foot after the perfectly good one.
Step step step.
“This is your final warning.”
I ran into something hard. The door. I almost fell to the floor in a puddle of relief.
My hand ventured over the smooth cold steel until I found the knob. Praying it wouldn’t squeak like the last one, I pushed on it. Inch by inch it moved.
I slipped inside.
The moonlight was shining on the window like a beacon of hope. I made a direct line for it, willing myself to go faster. I could almost feel the freedom offered by the outside. It would be a small drop to the ground but then I could run. I could find a new place to hide, somewhere the security troopers would never find me.
“Stop!” The voice was too close.
No no no.
The flashlight caught me in its spotlight, the center focused right on me and only me.
I slowly turned around, my hands up in surrender while I figured out a way to get away from him.
He was tall, at least six foot. He wore the troopers’ uniform like it was made just for him, perfectly sculptured to his body and showing off the hard muscles underneath.
In one hand he held a flashlight, in the other a gun. They were both pointed directly at me with hands so steady they could perform microsurgery.
Any words I might have used to plead for my freedom were caught in my throat. I was too scared to move, pinned in place by the trooper’s green eyes.
He stared at me, our eyes momentarily locking together as everything unspoken passed between us. In about two seconds he would throw me on the ground and secure my hands with cuffs. He would take me back to the rest of his troop and they would parade me to the president’s house like I was a prized cow.
Then I would die.
The entire scene played out in the blink of an eye as I stood there. These were going to be the last moments of my life. I could probably count them down.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
He wasn’t even blinking. He stood there, unwavering as he stared at me. Was he waiting for backup? Prolonging my agony? Deciding exactly how to punish me for escaping this long?
Seven.
Six.
Five.
He finally tore his gaze away from my eyes and looked at something behind me. Was someone else hiding in the room and I hadn’t noticed them? Was it another
trooper?
Four.
Three.
Two.
He looked behind me again, this time gesturing with his gun. I risked looking around, seeing nothing but the window in the room. Was he hoping for me to run so it would make my capture that much sweeter? So more violence could be justified?
One.
He held up a finger to his lips, shushing me as if I might be able to speak. Or scream. I could do neither as I watched him approach. This was normally when they made a fist and bashed it against my frail body over and over again.
I was planted in place, unable to move. As he drew nearer – so close I could smell the sweat – my heartbeat went off the charts. I mentally prepared myself for the beating, remembering that it would be nothing compared to my death.
I wondered if this guy would be like the last one who had caught me. Would he try to twist my arms around so tightly they wanted to snap off? Or would he prefer a simple throw down so he could kick me repeatedly?
Would he find something even worse to torture me with?
The trooper stepped around me and reached up to open the window. A gust of frigid night air rushed through and swirled around me. My skin prickled with goosebumps.
“You’d better hurry,” he whispered right by my ear. I hadn’t realized he was so close. I jumped from the feel of his breath on my neck.
He strode back to the door, glancing at me once more before looking at the window. Was he telling me to run? Surely I had to be mistaken.
The trooper stepped outside. Just as he closed the door, I heard him say, “She’s not in here, this room’s clear.”
My limbs unfroze.
I scrambled up the wall and through that window faster than I ever thought possible. The drop to the ground wasn’t even felt on my sore body.
I ran and ran and ran.
The whole time, I reminded myself that I wasn’t only what they thought I was. My name was Wren. I was the Defective Clone of the most powerful woman in the country.
I was being hunted.
And I would not let them catch me.
Chapter 2: Wren
My lungs burned and my feet hurt – even my good one. Running was never an easy option for me but it was the only thing keeping me alive.
The night was too dark, even the moon was now hiding behind clouds like it knew there was danger lurking around every corner. The moon was smart. Far smarter than I had been.
The warehouse was supposed to be safe. Sunny said the troopers hadn’t been there in years, they didn’t even care about it anymore. So why would they suddenly show up on the one night I had been hiding there?
It didn’t take a genius to work out someone had tipped them off. It wasn’t like I could hide my face and pretend nobody recognized me. Everybody in the country knew who I was.
President Portia Stone’s Defective Clone.
The one who had been thrown out when she was just a baby, straight from the laboratory and onto the street. Like I was nothing but trash.
I was the clone who had prevented the president from making any other replicas. Even she couldn’t bypass the laws. Legislation was clear, once a Defective Clone was made, that individual was banned from making any more. Something about bad genes and the risk of another defect being too high.
I didn’t need to understand the science to know President Stone wanted me found and killed. Her desperation was growing, meaning she was stepping up her search for me.
Every day it seemed there were more of her troopers and guards stalking the streets and buildings. They never publicly declared they were searching for me, but I knew. Word on the street was she would pay anyone a hefty sum for my capture and return.
Like I was a possession.
Something she owned.
I would take my last breath never giving her that satisfaction. It was bad enough I looked more and more like her every day as I grew older. She would not get her hands on me too.
My feet skidded on the dirt track, making me lose my balance. I went down, saved only by my hands as they stopped me just inches from the ground. The wind was completely knocked from my lungs.
Staying down was not an option. I pushed myself up and kept moving – a little slower this time. The area was familiar to me now, even in the dark.
I had grown up in the shanty town on the edge of the city, living off the kindness of the other Defectives. They didn’t know who my Maker was back then, couldn’t see the resemblance in my baby features.
It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t heard any footsteps of the troopers behind me for some time. Come to think of it, they hadn’t followed me since I left the warehouse.
Stopping in the middle of the track, I strained to hear for any signs that I wasn’t alone out there. No footsteps. No rapid breathing. No clink of guns.
They hadn’t followed me.
Walking now, I found an abandoned shack and curled up in the little building made out of scrap metal and wood. It didn’t have a door and only half a roof but it would still somewhat hide me. If the troops hadn’t chased after me, then they wouldn’t be able to find me there.
I pulled my legs up and cradled them under my arms until I was little more than a ball in the corner, a shadow and nothing else. My mind kept replaying everything that had happened in the warehouse. How close I had come to being caught.
How others had suffered because of me.
The guilt was the worst. I was a liability to all of the Defectives but none of them ever turned me in. They protected me because I was one of their own and for nothing more. One day the guilt would eat away at me until I was left with nothing.
The face of the guard that had let me go was seared into my memory. He had stared at me like he wasn’t seeing a Defective, like perhaps he saw an actual human standing in front of him – a girl that was terrified and running for her life.
He had opened the window for me, told me to use it to get away from them. He lied about my whereabouts. Troopers were unflinchingly horrible, serving the president and carrying out her orders.
They didn’t let a wanted Defective go.
They rounded them up and carried them off to suffer the fate they were created for.
To Serve Their Purpose.
So why had he let me escape? He had me cornered, he had the gun, it would have taken exactly one second for him to secure me with ties and carry me back to his comrades.
He would have been a hero.
The president would have given him a promotion, showered him with compliments and riches. But he had let me go instead, given me the means to escape.
Why?
No matter how many times I asked myself the question, I never found an answer in the dark recesses of my mind. All I could do was be grateful that I had made it out alive and survived to live another day.
I drifted off to sleep, the three little letters still fixing themselves into my vision. They were written on all the walls of the shack, on the floor and ceiling, and finally on the back of my eyelids.
Why?
In the middle of my dreams, someone was touching me. It took a moment for me to realize it wasn’t just in the dream.
Someone was really touching me.
I was back at the warehouse and they had found me. Escaping, running, the trooper letting me go, it was all a dream. They had found me and I was going to be taken to the president who would order my swift death.
My eyes jerked open, ready to fight back as my heartbeat raced into overdrive.
“Shh, hey, it’s just me.” A male voice. One I recognized. It wasn’t a trooper.
A rush of relief flooded through my veins as my eyes focused on Rocky. He was nothing to be afraid of, nothing to fear. “You scared me half to death.”
“I could say the same to you. I heard there was a raid on the warehouse last night and I couldn’t find you.” He sat down on the ground beside me, pulling me closer until my head rested on his chest.
His heartbeat was echoing mine.
“I got out,” I replied. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to tell him the truth of how I had managed to escape. For some reason I wanted to hold that secret to myself, clutching it to my chest so nobody could take it away.
“I’ve been looking for you since sunup.”
“I’m sorry. I had to hide and didn’t want to lead them back to you.”
“You shouldn’t have been alone.” His voice was a soothing symphony, calming my nerves with the stroke of a bow along strings.
Rocky always wanted to protect me. No matter what we did or how far we travelled, it was just the two of us – for as long as I could remember.
His good arm was around my shoulder so I cradled the stump of his deformed arm to let him know that I was there for him too. I had run away and spent the night alone to protect him, just like he would have done for me.
“It’s getting worse,” I whispered, facing the harsh truth of reality. “There are more troopers than ever before and they are out all the time, searching.”
“I know. There’s word around the village that Stone is considering issuing an order to round us all up.”
I pushed back so I could search Rocky’s chocolate-brown eyes and find the lie, the teasing there. I didn’t want his words to be true because then it would be all over.
Defectives could barely scrape out an existence as it was. We stole the food they threw out, we made our homes where they didn’t want to live, we survived in the shadows on little more than air and persistence.
But rounding us all up?
That would be the end of the Defectives.
Rocky wore every one of his emotions in his eyes and I could see nothing but sadness and despair there now. He wasn’t lying or joking or teasing or mocking. He was just as scared as I was at the gossip he had heard.
“Who said that?” I demanded. There were always terrifying rumors circulating around the camp, like the Defectives’ version of ghost stories.
Except most of ours turned out to be true.
“Sunny,” Rocky replied, removing all doubts of it being merely idle gossip. Sunny was one of the matriarchs of our camp, the informal leader that we all turned to when we needed comfort. Even with one arm she could hug with the warmest embrace.
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