Exodus

by Farrell, Lisa

  She recognized the woman’s face from news feeds and advertisements, the perfectly symmetrical features and almond eyes, now closed. Her cosmetics, the style of her clothes, the color of her hair and skin all varied wildly, but even for Caprice, whom ads never targeted directly, the face was familiar. Miranda Rhapsody. She lay on her side, her bare arms stretching out over the thin sheet that covered her body. Her lilac eyelids shimmered brightly despite the dim light, her trademark heart beauty mark the same soft hue.

  […what’s he waiting for?]

  The actress feigned sleep, breathing deeply, remaining still. Her thoughts ran in a fast stream through her head. She had arrived with Ken Tenma—his face was clear in the forefront of the woman’s mind—but it made no sense. There were laws against cloning real people—Miranda could not be the clone the Tenma had stolen.

  […why’s he staring? Does he want me after all?]

  There were bruises above her cheekbone and along her jaw, dull purple patches marring her otherwise-perfect complexion. A faint shadow was visible under one closed eye, half hidden by long black lashes. Caprice paused, unsure how to announce herself.

  […should I surprise him?]

  Caprice felt her skin prickle with adrenaline and suddenly wanted to run. She raised her pistol. Her heart seemed to beat harder as well as faster; her temperature increased.

  Miranda rolled onto her back, revealing a red scratch on the other side of her face, just by her right eye: the nick left by a needle being rapidly withdrawn. Caprice could see the flurry of motion in her mind’s eye. She had been to the scene of that tiny wound. Ken Tenma’s residence.

  Miranda Rhapsody was the stolen clone, had to be, but her thoughts felt so human.

  Was this Toshiyuki’s secret, the reason he did not want the NAPD involved? It was too late for that now.

  “I am Detective Caprice Nisei, NAPD,” Caprice rattled off, her training and conditioning kicking in.

  The celebrity opened her eyes. Her pupils dilated in surprise, reducing violet irises to thin circles. Caprice felt the rush of Miranda’s thoughts as she took in Caprice’s pistol, her steady hand, her female face, the black coat. Her emotions swung from fear to hope. The perfect bow of Miranda’s lips curved in a smile, then parted.

  “Oh, thank goodness you found me,” she rejoiced, drawing the sheet around her as she rose from the bed. “The Tenma’s defective, a criminal. He’s keeping me captive. I’m the real Miranda Rhapsody. I’ve been kidnapped and replaced by a clone!” Her eyes filled with tears, then spilled over her bruised face.

  Caprice could not take her eyes off the tears, which shone silver in the dim light. The woman was lying, to Caprice and to herself, but the tears were real. Caprice had never seen a clone cry. It seemed to be a release for Miranda, who let emotion flood her and leak away.

  It was not something Caprice could ever do.

  “You have to help me,” Miranda pleaded. There was panic in her voice, but not in her mind. Miranda Rhapsody was relieved; she already saw her life falling back into place. She trusted the police to save her, assumed everything would work out. Caprice felt like a traitor.

  “Here,” Caprice said, offering her coat.

  Miranda pulled the coat around her and told more lies. Caprice watched her lips move, but barely heard the words. As the clone fabricated a story, Caprice saw the real events play out in her mind. Miranda knew what she was—Ken Tenma had convinced her—but she was ready to forget what she had learned and stumble back blindly into Jinteki’s clutches. It had made her that way. She wanted to give up her chance at freedom for the illusion of power and safety. Caprice felt her chest tighten, and it took her a moment to realize the sensation was her own, not Miranda’s. She wanted that chance for herself.

  A wave of unease exploded in her mind, and she knew something was wrong. There was trouble outside. She had to go. “Stay here,” Caprice instructed.

  “No, don’t leave me! Please.”

  Caprice hesitated, and then nodded. She drew her Synap, a non-lethal weapon she and other android cops were permitted to carry, and led Miranda out of the room and through the bar.

  “Keep everyone inside,” she said to the server.

  […whatever you say, freak…]

  Caprice stopped at the door and it slid open. She moved into the space, pressing Miranda behind her. Her partner and Ken Tenma were out there, but there was another, a presence so dark and turned inward she could not tell if it was human, clone, or something else.

  She caught sight of her partner with his gun on a captive Ken Tenma. “I got him,” said Bruce through her earpiece, and she watched him push the Tenma into their unmarked hopper.

  One of the parking lights flickered out. “Something’s coming.” Bruce turned, met her eyes, and fell. Her body juddered, and she felt the silent dart in his back, sharp cold metal blossoming into hot pain, and the sensation of falling made her lose her balance.

  “Detective, are you okay?” Miranda asked.

  “Stay here,” Caprice warned her, pushing her partner’s pain aside. “Close the door,” she added, and crept forward.

  Whoever was out there was good at keeping his thoughts to himself. She could sense him there, a feeling of foreboding, but she could not read him. Toshiyuki and others at Jinteki were careful not to project their thoughts, but this person seemed to turn his in on himself. Without close proximity, she wasn’t going to be able to get much from him. By that point, it might be too late.

  Caprice took a silent step into the open, aware that she was leaving Miranda vulnerable, but Bruce was still alive—he was human and therefore her priority. She was the reason he was here.

  The hopper opened suddenly, its doors rising like wings, and the Tenma stumbled out. There was a clunk as a projectile missed its target and ricocheted off transplas, and then a figure ran toward the hopper.

  Caprice raised her pistol. A flash of blue light reflected on metal. The two figures met, dodged, fell back. One was Ken Tenma. He couldn’t die; she still needed him. Miranda needed him. The thought wasn’t her own, but it was hard to resist.

  “NAPD!” she shouted, firing at the other figure, the one with murderous intent, the one who made her think of the dispassionate ronin Jinteki employed, the one whose mind was closed to her. She fired, and blue flashes blinded her as bolts of electricity arced between them. He writhed and withstood the charge meant to disrupt his synapses, his scream lost under the shrill shriek of the Synap.

  His weapon, a katana, fell, but he did not. She ran at him, to touch him, desperate to reveal him. Black cloth concealed his face. His eyes glowed red: lenses perhaps, or a trick of her mind. His gaze was on her. She stopped, still a few paces away. He reached over his shoulder and she heard a soft hiss as he pulled another blade from its sheath. Long blades, like those her murder victim had faced. His eyes grew brighter. She could not look away even as her heart hammered in her ears.

  If he struck off her head, it would be a quick, clean death. Her makers would reclaim her body, for disposal or recycling. One of her sisters would wake to take her place. The responsibility for the fate of the others would fall to a new sister, and Caprice could rest. All her thoughts and psi originated in her brain, or so Dr. Knox had explained, so when Caprice’s body ceased to function she would feel and know nothing. It would be a sort of freedom.

  The assassin’s thoughts struck her before his blade. His lust for blood, his desire to wound her—they were sickening. There was nothing clean in his thoughts, just a fierce determination to kill. She dove for the ground, tried to twist out of his way, wishing she had not already wasted valuable seconds.

  Her life was not his to end.

  Express could only watch as the assassin drew another katana in one fluid movement and swung it at the officer as he leapt forward. The blow should have taken her head clean off, but she seemed to anticipate it at the last second and threw herself aside. The assassin landed behind her.

  The weapon the male cop had lev
eled at him, a Gauss pistol, lay on the ground only a few feet away. Express rushed over and curled his fingers around the metal, testing the weight of it in his hands. He knew how it worked, knew what it could do. What would happen to him if he tried to use it, or if he succeeded? He knew what it would do to the assassin.

  Express raised the Gauss, and the assassin turned to face him.

  A veil of black cloth concealed the man’s features, leaving only his eyes visible. He looked like an avatar, like something unreal: an image not a person. The black-clad man held Express’s gaze, challenging him.

  Express’s thoughts ran in stereo, half telling him he had nothing to lose, the other half telling him he had no right, that he would be destroyed for this. The scenarios played in tandem in his mind. In one he overcame his programming and felled the assassin, saving Randi and himself. In the other, he tried to fire but his body rebelled, shut down, trapping him inside his mind while the assassin took out Randi and the cops dragged Express away to take the fall.

  The safety was off. It should have been easy. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

  He wasn’t trapped; that thought was illusory, one implanted by Jinteki. Express was in control.

  He hesitated, and the assassin turned his attention back to the cop, the Tenma clone not worth his notice.

  Express remembered the day he escaped Jinteki, the accident his makers thought he perished in. He’d become one less number in their databases. That day, it had taken all his strength to resist his programming and walk away. He couldn’t give that chance up now.

  Express pulled the trigger, and the projectile burst through the man’s body, blowing a hole in his chest big enough to put a fist through.

  Express dropped the weapon as though it had burned him, his hand shaking.

  He took the shot so cleanly, so calmly, one wrist resting on the other to steady the pistol, and the man crumpled, the shot tearing through his black-clad chest, sending his body sprawling backward. Miranda had seen scenes like that before, staged for the sensies. She had fired weapons herself enough times. So it was only when the gun fell from Express’s hand and he faced her, skin pale and eyes wide, that she realized what he’d really done. He had killed a man, a human man. Clones didn’t hurt people, let alone kill.

  There were no cameras. They weren’t acting: this was real. That man was dead. That man would have killed the cop and then come for her. They would have been the bodies on the ground.

  He had made it look so natural, but now Express was kneeling, his hands pressed firmly to the concrete, as though he were trying to stop the world moving. It had been an act after all, and now he was facing reality. She knew how hard that could be.

  Miranda rushed over to steady him by his shoulders. “Express, are you okay?”

  “Ken Tenma,” Caprice said, stepping toward them, Synap pistol raised. “Do not move.”

  Miranda let go of him and stepped in front of Express to face the cop, who looked strangely calm, her face impassive. Miranda held up her hands.

  “Detective, I was in shock, what I said,” she began, trying to remember exactly what she’d told the detective. It had been the truth, mostly, but…Express has been right. Her life was in danger, and he was her protector, not her captor. He had killed for her; she had inspired him to overcome his nature. She needed him, and right now he needed her.

  “Ms. Rhapsody, it is all right,” Caprice said. “Please step away. I need to take the Tenma back to New Angeles for questioning. You are free to go, as you have done nothing wrong.”

  “You don’t want to take me back to NA too?”

  “Is that really what you want?” Caprice asked, kneeling by the fallen cop.

  Where else would she go? She watched the detective, considering. She had thought Caprice would save her.

  There was something off about the detective in the way she rummaged through the pockets of her partner’s coat while he lay prone on the ground, and then she saw it: the code on the detective’s neck. Caprice stood back up with a zip-strip in hand.

  “You’re not human, are you?” Miranda asked, already knowing the answer.

  Caprice shook her head. “We’re not all what you think. You have to forget what you learned about clones in your old life, or you will never reconcile yourself with the truth. Start with yourself, with what you are. Nothing in you has changed, except the label you give yourself.”

  But Miranda changed all the time for her career. Someone had always told her who to be, but now…

  Express stumbled behind her, trying to rise. Miranda took hold of his arm to help him to his feet, but his gaze didn’t leave the body of the black-clad man.

  “Please step away from him,” Caprice said.

  “The NAPD can’t protect me from Jinteki,” Miranda realized.

  Caprice said nothing, but she did not deny it. The detective stepped closer and put her hand on Miranda’s shoulder. Miranda put one hand in the pocket of the coat she still wore and felt something brush her fingers.

  “Please, step aside,” the cop said gently.

  Miranda grabbed the zip-strip and snapped it over Caprice’s wrists before the detective could react. She pulled it tight with one hand and grabbed the Synap with the other.

  Caprice frowned in confusion, her eyes searching Miranda’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted, “and I am sorry, but I can’t go back, can I? They’ll just send someone else. I need him.”

  Miranda couldn’t decipher the expression on the detective’s face, but after a moment the woman finally spoke: “I need to get my partner to hospital.”

  “I think we can work something out,” Miranda said. “Express?”

  Express said nothing.

  Express sat in the bar with the cop beside him, one hand clamped tight on his stinging shoulder at Randi’s insistence, but the bleeding had already stopped. While Randi talked to the motel owner, the detective watched him with her big eyes, hands bound under the table. Her eyes seemed to accuse him, killer, but she stayed silent, as promised.

  Randi kept both cops’ guns in her pocket. She had promised to leave the weapons with the cops, but Express hoped she wouldn’t.

  “Your murder investigation,” Express said under his breath. “Do you have any suspects?”

  The detective didn’t respond. He wished she would stop staring at him like that, like she was interrogating him. He had known the cops were looking into Li11ith’s murder, but he’d assumed they’d never charge anyone. Then again, he hadn’t expected them to find him, either.

  “You wanted to question me, about Li11ith’s murder,” he said, “but I don’t know who killed her.”

  “Until today, I did not think a clone could commit murder.”

  “I didn’t kill Li11ith.”

  The cop said nothing more, but her gaze didn’t waver.

  Express lowered his eyes. They had to get away. They would be late for their rendezvous. Express was never late, but he had never killed before, either.

  Things had changed. Things his conditioning couldn’t account for.

  “Hey, Express.” Randi approached him. “Have you figured out who owns that ride you want?”

  He shook his head. He had found the ID of the owner on the Net, seen a still of his face. It could be bogus, though.

  “I haven’t seen him in here,” he said. “Could be he’s wearing one of the VR headsets.”

  “Then he’s not going to notice, right?” Randi suggested, her voice low. “Come on, let’s go.”

  She said the last to the cop, who rose and walked ahead of them. Randi took his free hand, led him out of the place like he’d seen parents leading a child. He had never been a child, and neither had the two clone women. It was like a game. Randi showed no fear, but she knew now—she knew capture meant death or worse. She was on his side, and right now he was glad of it.

  “Express, which one?”

  They stood outside, Randi waitin
g for him to move. He spotted the groundcar, the one that would do. Better than the truck, faster. He set to work. It didn’t take long. He’d feel better, on the road: moving toward a destination, moving toward completion. It wasn’t a skylane, but it would have to do. He climbed into the seat.

  “Wait for me,” Randi said, and took the cop back to her partner, released her hands. He watched their exchange. Randi was making a terrible mistake. She trusted the detective to head for the hospital rather than pursue them, but she’d learned all she knew about cops from her sensies. He said nothing as Randi rejoined him. At least she had done something. He had been ready to let the cop take him, for what he’d done. Maybe that was part of Jinteki’s design.

  Randi pulled the jumpsuit on under the coat, wriggling into it. He watched her, and though she seemed to ignore him, she had to be aware. He wondered how much of what he wanted was part of Jinteki’s design. He wondered if it mattered.

  “Come on,” Randi said, glancing back to where the cop had finished loading her prone partner into the hopper. “We’ve got to go.” She threw the pistols out across the concrete as he started the groundcar’s engine.

  The door to the motel slid open as they drove off, and someone shouted, but Express didn’t look back.

  Chapter 7

  She clung on for dear life as Express drove full tilt despite the lack of roof, the groundcar bouncing over the uneven ground. She tried opening her mouth to speak but nearly choked on dusty air, so kept her mouth shut, squinting into the wind.

  Express didn’t speak to her. The whole scenario reminded her of one of her early sensies, Broad Rage, when she’d played the jilted girlfriend of the head of a hopperbike gang, who went on the rampage for revenge. It hadn’t required a lot of acting, just a lot of racing around on hoppers and feeling the adrenaline rush. It must have been an older Miranda clone who’d starred in that one; she wasn’t sure she could play the role now. She felt nothing but a weary fear as exhaust vents alongside the road threatened to blow her out of the vehicle with blasts of hot, sour-smelling air.

  She looked across at Express, holding her hand up to keep the hair out of her face. He was just like the hopperbike gang leader, ignoring her, focusing on his task, eyes watching for obstacles, while data flickered on those lenses of his. She took her cues from him, letting him steer her into a role she knew how to play. She should be choosing her own role instead if she was going to begin a new life. She just wasn’t sure how.