Hope unlocked the door, went inside, and locked herself in.
She took a deep breath, hoping it had been enough.
The small pouch attached at her waist carried supplies one might expect for one out for a lengthy jog: a spare pair of socks, a bottle of water, and packets of a powder she could mix with the water to help replace nutrients lost during her workout. It was the contents in the secret compartment of the pouch she needed now, though.
The materials were straight from a crime scene investigators kit, and within moments Hope had removed the faint traces of Mark’s skin and blood from the point of the key. She’d sent a tiny blast of Energy at the key before reaching for it, ensuring that there were no other skin cells lining the device, and she’d “caught” the key with a small Energy field before it hit the ground. She hoped it was enough to ensure a pure sample. The small vial, now holding Mark’s tissue sample, was returned to her pouch, stopper firmly in place, before Hope washed her hands and walked back to the station door to return the key.
Mark opened the door, flexing the injured hand. He gave a weak smile and held out his uninjured hand. Hope dropped the key into his palm, but pushed her way into the station before he could shut the door.
“Where’s the first aid kit?”
“Really, Mrs. Stark, I’m fine. There’s no need to—”
“We’re not taking chances, Mark, and that gash is my fault. Where’s the first aid kit?”
With a sigh, he pointed. Hope retrieved the kit, pulled out the supplies she needed, and motioned him into a chair. “Sit.”
He saluted with his uninjured hand. “Yes, ma’am. People don’t tell you no often, do they, Mrs. Stark?”
“You got that from my husband, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “Possibly.”
Mark hissed as she flushed out the wound, and then watched with obvious admiration as she expertly affixed the large bandage with medical tape. Mark flexed his hand experimentally and nodded. “Very professional. Thank you.”
“I have some experience in helping injured people,” Hope told him. And she did. Centuries of experience, in fact.
“Ah, yes, with your charitable work,” Mark said, nodding. “That makes sense.”
Hope noticed the picture of the young woman on his desk. She had shoulder-length hair, jet black, and dazzling green eyes highlighting a face that seemed capable of lighting up a room. “Friend of yours?” Hope asked, nodding at the picture.
“My girlfriend,” Mark said, and the grin that formed on his face was that of a young man very much in love. “Gena and I have been together for about six months now.”
“She’s beautiful,” Hope said. She frowned at the picture. “She looks very familiar, but I can’t place her.”
“Her mother owned a catering business for years before her health deteriorated. She worked at your wedding, and Gena helped. She thought you were a princess out of a storybook.”
Hope smiled as the memory of the event returned. “I remember her now. You’ve chosen well, Mark.” After a moment, she frowned again. “Is her mother ill? You mentioned deteriorating health.”
“Dead, unfortunately,” Mark said, and his expression clouded. “It was very traumatic for her. Gena never knew her birth parents, and had the great fortune to be placed with the Adamses. It was a horrible experience, losing her mother like that.”
“What happened to her father?”
“Cancer. They say some of the new treatments coming out now probably would have saved him.”
Hope patted his arm. “I’m so sorry. Give Gena my best.”
“I will, Mrs. Stark, and thank you.”
Hope stood. “I should probably get back to my jog before I accidentally stab you again.”
Mark laughed. “It would take a bigger blade than that key to scare me.”
Hope left the station, pulling the door shut behind her, and set off at a jog toward Peter and Judith’s home. Once she was out of sight of the guard tower, she increased her pace to a sprint, moving at a speed that was impossible for humans. In mere seconds, she’d reached Judith’s home, just as the owner opened the door.
Judith had aged well in her human guise, but still looked like a woman in her seventies. “Come in, Hope.”
Hope moved by in a blur before slowing to a stop inside and taking a deep breath. Judith shut the door behind her, and then took the time to change her appearance from the elderly matron the human world knew, to the ageless early-thirties appearance that Hope had known for centuries.
As Judith completed the transformation, Hope finished catching her breath, then dug into her pouch to produce the vial. “I got the sample. Is the machine ready?”
Judith nodded, and led the way to the basement. “Aaron stopped by yesterday. He and Peter upgraded the power in the house so that the machine can operate at maximum capacity. They’re hoping we’re at six hours now.”
Hope grimaced. “That’s better than before, but we need to get under four hours. There’s too much uncertainty in the timeline to trust a six hour cloning cycle.”
Judith nodded. “I know. But you know those two; they’ll tinker with that machine as long as they can, and they’ll get it to work. And Archie will help as well. And then they’ll need to test it all again once the second machine is installed.”
They reached the bottom of the steps of the finished lower level, and Judith led the way toward a floor-to-ceiling painting of her and Peter. The faces of the couple in the painting could only be described as smug. “I hate that painting,” Judith muttered, glaring at her elderly image. She glanced at Hope. “Phase out.”
Both women used Energy to turn their bodies permeable, and in that phased-out state they walked through the wall supporting the painting. Hope found herself in a small room with nothing but a stairwell. The women phase back to corporeality and descended the stairs. “We liked the bunker idea, so Peter insisted that we build the cloning machine inside our own secret lair.” She chuckled. “The man’s three centuries old and is playing the part of a mad scientist. Do you suppose he’ll grow up one day?”
“Not a chance,” Hope replied, and the women laughed.
A horizontal platform roughly four feet off the ground was covered by a sealed glass top pumped full of highly oxygenated air, providing the growing clone with an optimal environment for development. The computer system responsible for turning raw cellular material into a fully functioning clone of a living human being was housed beneath the platform. Testing showed that clones had an expected lifespan of between a half million and a million heartbeats, a matter of days, before their hearts and vital organs would shut down. Until that time, they had the same cognitive and physical abilities, and the same memories, as their sources. Clones could safely be released into the public within that short window of time without concern of exposure; they just needed to be retrieved before they ran the risk of dropping dead in public.
On January 7th, 2030, they would collect tissue samples from the two on-duty guards after Will Stark and Myra VanderPoole left for the day. They needed the clones’ memories to be as current as possible, but couldn’t risk being seen abducting the men off the street or out of their homes over the weekend. Each guard would receive a high speed education about the Aliomenti, the Alliance, and the fact that they’d be brutally murdered within hours. They would be told that their murders were an act the Alliance would not prevent, as it would disrupt history in an unpredictable manner, possibly resulting in the deaths of millions, including the men and their loved ones. Each man would be given the option of having a clone sent back to face the Assassin’s wrath, an option they fully expected both men to accept. If they declined the cloning offer, their memories of the encounter, and knowledge of what was to come, would be erased.
Given the lack of time available that day to perform cloning efforts, they’d elected to clone only the two guards. After the nature of Will’s escape, the Hunters would suspect an Alliance trap and leave town quickly to regroup,
unlikely to stay in Pleasanton long enough to execute family members and loved ones of the two guards in an effort to close any possible loose ends. The greatest risk to the success of the plan was that they’d be unable to clone the guards in time to get them back in their places before the Hunters and Assassin arrived.
Today’s cloning test would illustrate how far they needed to progress in the next fourteen months. Four hours, from insertion of genetic material to completion of the clone, would provide them the flexibility they needed to execute the plan. Each additional minute or hour put the plan at risk.
Peter lifted his head up, and he grinned as Hope walked in. “Welcome to my secret mad scientist lair, Mrs. Stark,” he said, offering a maniacal laugh to complete the greeting. Peter looked the part of the mad scientist. His face was covered with smudges of grease, and his hair was frizzed as if he’d had a losing encounter with an electrical outlet. “Have you brought your offering to sacrifice on the altar of science?”
Hope rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help laughing. “I have.”
Peter rubbed his hands together with glee and walked over to her, and as he approached his demeanor turned serious. “What steps did you take to ensure the sample is free of impurities and other human DNA?”
“I blasted the, ah, extraction tool with Energy to clear it of any contamination immediately before impact. I also used Energy to prevent touching the tool until I was able to collect the sample and put it into the vial.”
Peter nodded in appreciation. “That should be sufficient. I’ll run a DNA check first, though, just to be certain.” He deposited the entire vial into a slot in the cloning machine. “It’s wonderful that they’ve been able to engineer vials out of those nanoparticles, like they did with the nanoparticle plates and such back in the Cavern years ago. The transport device—the vial—dissolves and we’re left with nothing but the full sample.” He tapped several buttons, read the readouts that appeared over the next few minutes, and then nodded. “Good. There’s a single unique DNA strand here, which means we can proceed.”
He moved to a second set of controls, and his face morphed into one of absolute concentration as he activated the cloning machine with the parameters needed to create a full clone. He scowled at the readouts. “It’s still estimating just over five hours until completion.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll have to touch base with Archie and Aaron to see what else we can do to reduce the time. That’s still too long.”
Judith patted him on the arm. “You still have time, you know.”
“Not really,” Peter admitted. “We have just over a year to go.” He grimaced. “Do you ever think about what life will be like when we aren’t focused on this? What will life be like after January 7th, 2030?”
Hope scowled. “Well, in my case, I’ll be a widow with a son and a baby girl on the way, forced to move far away from home with a new identity.” She trembled, fighting back the tears that strained to explode from her eyes, but even with her effort a fine mist began to cover her cheeks.
Judith gave her a hug. “He didn’t really mean it that way, Hope. None of us will abandon you. That’s the advantage of our human personas nearing the end of their natural lives; we can all ‘die’ and do something new, which in my case will be focusing on you and the children.” She smiled. “It will be wonderful to watch them grow up.”
Hope wiped her cheeks dry with her sleeve. “Thanks, Judith. I know I won’t be abandoned; we’re a big family now, right? But it’s tough to think that that day will be the last time I know I’ll see Will.” Her eyes widened as she spoke the words, and then she dissolved into tears.
Judith held her for several moments, and Peter watched, shifting his weight uncomfortably, before he walked over and patted Hope on the head. “Don’t worry, Hope. I’m sure that the old Will is out there somewhere. You’ll see him at some point, right?”
Hope looked up, and again wiped away the tears on her face. “You believe that, Peter?”
Peter nodded. “There’s no chance those nimrods actually killed Will Stark. He’s out there, like some guardian angel, watching out for all of us, but mostly for you and for Josh. You may not see him, but he’ll be there when you need him.”
Hope’s eyes brightened as they hadn’t in ages. She reached up and grasped Peter’s hand, squeezing. “Thank you.” And then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
Peter blinked. “What did I say?”
Judith laughed. “You’re right, Hope. He’ll never grow up.” She motioned with her hand. “Shall we head upstairs while we wait for the results?”
They teleported to the living room directly above, and Hope left for a few moments to take an Energy “shower,” blasting away the perspiration from her body and clothing. When she finished, there was no way to tell she’d just been out for a two mile jog and sprint. She joined Judith and Peter on the sofa, and Peter offered her a glass of lemonade.
“How is the estate plan coming along?” Judith asked, sipping on her own drink.
“We finally signed it last week,” Hope replied, enjoying a sip of the sweet beverage. “It’s a rather intricate document, because we had to provide a mechanism that will allow Adam to appear anonymously. He’ll be able to do that, in a role we defined, and get the account numbers for all of our money so he can steal it and give it back to us in our apparent afterlife.” She giggled at the statement, surprising herself. “See, we have to make it look like all the money was stolen, or the Aliomenti will think any person or group we specifically gave it to will be Alliance and they’ll hunt them down. And if we just leave the money, they’ll probably use their banking connections to take the money for their own purposes, which is the last thing we want. We made a map for the lawyer to the safe house property you bought, and Will bought him a car to drive there because…”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Peter said with a sigh. “Nobody likes hearing complicated stuff like that.”
Hope chuckled. “Sorry about that. Although I must say that Adam did a fine job manipulating young Will into providing the Alliance motto to our identified human Trustee. In Latin, no less. Now Adam can recite that phrase so the human man recognizes Adam as someone we trust. That was a rather clever move on Adam’s part.”
Peter looked intrigued, opened his mouth to ask a question, and then threw up his hands. “No, no, I don’t want to know about all of that. I’ll leave it to Adam.”
The alarm in Hope’s running pouch beeped. “Will’s at the entrance gate,” she told her hosts and she stood. “Let me know how it goes with the cloning. At the moment, though, I have to go repress my son’s childhood to prevent his father from hearing the child speak.” She gave a fake smile, and then vanished from their sight.
Josh glanced up as Hope appeared in the living room of the house, a baseball in his hand. “Hi, Mommy! Smokey won’t catch the ball in her mouth.” He frowned, and tossed the ball in the air, watching as his beloved furry friend skittered out of the way, letting the ball bounce twice before she snatched it out of the air.
“She’d lose her teeth if she tried to catch it, sweetie. The ball is very hard. Roll it for her, or bounce it, and she’ll have much more fun.”
Josh considered this, and then nodded. “Okay.”
Hope sat on the sofa, picked up a children’s picture book, and patted her lap. “It’s story time. And… Daddy’s coming home.”
Josh’s face clouded. “I don’t like doing this. Do we have to do this? Why can’t we just let Daddy hear me talk?”
Hope sighed. “We need to help Daddy prepare for what he needs to do, and the greatest motivation he’ll have, for a very long time, is hearing your voice. I don’t like it either, sweetie. But sometimes, we have to do our part, no matter how painful it is, or how sad it makes us.”
Josh’s look told her that it was difficult for a young child to understand the concepts of duty and personal sacrifice. But he handed Hope the slobbery baseball, climbed into her lap, and leaned back against her. “Can
you tell me the stories about Daddy again? I like those stories.”
Hope smiled. “Of course I will, sweetie.” The Energy shield surrounded her son and condensed inside him, and she watched as her son’s ice blue eyes, so full of fire and Energy, faded into dullness. She took a deep breath to hold back the tears, opened the story book, but said nothing aloud until she heard the front door open.
Until then, she met her son’s request. She told him of Will’s heroism in saving her from all the people who tried to hurt her over the years, showed him her memories of his protectiveness in ensuring those people didn’t know she still existed, his willingness to sacrifice everything to protect the people he loved. And none of those people were his son, Josh. Imagine the sacrifices he’d be willing to make for you. He loves you more than anything.
I know, Mommy. I can hear it in his thoughts. I wish I could tell him the same thing.
I’ll tell him for you.
When the door opened, Hope automatically began reading the children’s book in front of her, the story of a small blue train climbing a hill. Will walked in and saw her there, and smiled as he recognized the story she read aloud. “I love that story,” he said.
Hope smiled, rolling the baseball along the floor for Smokey. The dog retrieved the ball and dropped it in Josh’s lap, thumping her tail expectantly. Will’s face twitched, and he watched, hoping his beloved son would pick up the ball, would notice the furry friend waiting near him.
But Josh didn’t move.
“I love this story, too,” Hope replied. “One day, Will, our son will climb his own hill. And it won’t be a hill. It will be a mountain. And he’ll climb it to honor the father he loves.”
Will sighed, forcing a brave smile. “I hope I’m there to see it.”
Hope smiled. “You will be. Trust me.”
XV
Farewell
January 4, 2030
“Three more days,” Hope said, smiling. “How does it feel to be an old man?”
Preserving Will Page 21
