Scions of Sacrifice

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  With a flourish of his arms, he brought a huge leather covered book into existence. It was as thick as his head, with gold edging on the pages. He opened it. A musty smell wafted up, something that never happened in the world of flesh and blood.

  “Cincinnati, Charleston, Chicago! Here we go.” Putting on a ridiculous voice that over-enunciated every syllable, Socrates read, “Good morning, Chicagoland. Today we expect scattered showers, a high of 20, winds ten to twelve 12 km/h out of the northwest. Current temperature is 18 under partly cloudy skies.”

  “Thank you, Socrates.” It worked. She had accessed the data flow through an intermediary simulation.

  Knowledge of Vaughan’s opinion about what she was doing occurred to her. He considered it clever, which made her chest warm and happy.

  She allowed the sensation to linger, reveled in it. But merely accessing the data flow in this oblique way wasn’t her goal. She wanted to end the Scions’ various problems. The same thing Jacey wanted. The same thing Humphrey wanted. The same thing Vaughan wanted. It struck her that it was the first time their objectives had all been aligned.

  She knew Vaughan was spending all of his efforts trying to find out what Humphrey and the others would encounter when they arrived at Dr. Carlhagen’s hideout, the strange island called St. Lazarus. Belle couldn’t contribute anything to that effort. That left only one thing for her to do.

  “I can’t believe it, Socrates,” she said, exasperated. “Of all of the people in the world, why am I the one who has to track down Jacey?”

  Socrates threw the weather book over his head. It vanished in smoke before it struck the table behind him. He toyed with his nose ring and frowned in thought. “You don’t have to do it. No one gave you this assignment.”

  That was true. But Belle remembered how useless she’d felt when Wanda had asked what she was doing to help find Dr. Carlhagen’s island. And Belle did care about Jacey, in a way. Not because Belle liked her or anything as ridiculous as that. But Jacey was important to the other Scions. Especially to Vaughan. So once Jacey’s crisis was over, Vaughan could finally just be Vaughan.

  The warmth she’d felt before drained away. Vaughan was never going to just be Vaughan. Already, he was becoming something she didn’t recognize.

  She turned her thoughts away from that whirlpool of darkness. Find Jacey, worry about everything else later.

  She rubbed her palms together. Time to get down to business. “Jacey left St. Vitus in search of Dr. Carlhagen’s Island,” she said, thinking aloud. “Why? Because she wanted to rescue Livy. We have seen Jacey on video streams, and she’s gotten herself into deep trouble. Which anyone with half a brain could have predicted.”

  “That is uncharitable of you,” Socrates said.

  She ignored him. “With your help accessing the data flow, I plan to find her, and if I can, help her.”

  Socrates smiled and held his hand arms apart. “You have a clearly defined objective. That’s an excellent first step.”

  “So where do we start?” she asked her teacher.

  He stroked his beard and put on a sage expression. “If I were actually Socrates, I might have some idea. But since I was manifested by you, and created by the simulation in which you live, I am essentially an aspect of your own psyche. Therefore I only have the ideas that you have, though I may have some insights into your subconscious. Which is a long way to say that I haven’t the foggiest idea where to begin.”

  It was Belle’s turn to put on the thoughtful look. She tapped her fingernails on the glass desktop. “Jacey was searching for Dr. Carlhagen. She believed that Elizabeth would know where to find him. She got swept up in Elizabeth’s fiasco of a party. There, she met the Progenitors who had overwritten Ping and Dante. She also got entangled with that weird-looking celebrity Meow Meow. During the course of events, Ping got shot. Jacey, Dante, and Meow Meow fled the scene, making them all look quite guilty.”

  Socrates nodded. “That is the story thus far, as you know it.”

  But would Jacey actually murder Ping?

  It didn’t make sense. Jacey would never kill a Scion’s body, overwritten or not. In fact, back when they’d had Dr. Carlhagen in custody, Jacey had continually harangued Vaughan to return to his flesh-and-blood body. She had wanted the same thing for Belle. Vaughan had refused, saying that his physical body couldn’t contain his mind, as it had changed in this world. Belle knew this to be true. And wherever Vaughan was, that’s where Belle would stay.

  Jacey didn’t care what they wanted, though. She had planned to restore Vaughan from the backup that had been made when Dr. Carlhagen had transferred into him. That would restore an earlier version of Vaughan, just like when they had overwritten Mr. Justin, returning a backup of Leslie to her body. Poor, stupid Leslie had been flailing to catch up with events ever since.

  Given Jacey’s incessant nagging on the subject, Belle knew she would never kill Ping’s body. She wouldn’t kill Vin’s body. She wouldn’t kill Dante’s body. Because Jacey—being the ridiculous idealist she was—harbored a fantasy of restoring all of them.

  “Maybe this will be of interest,” Socrates said.

  “What?”

  Instead of answering, Socrates opened a video window over his shoulder. It showed Jacey and Meow Meow walking through a crowded atrium, faces down. But then Dante came running up behind, shouting for them to run. Onlookers all turned. Some pointed, faces alight with recognition. Small insect-like objects floated up from among the crowd to follow after the three fugitives.

  The image switched to the outside of the building. Jacey and the others emerged from a weird revolving door. They dashed across the roadway, cars screeching just short of squashing them. Dante made a rude gesture at one of them. They continued to the far side. Meow Meow looked up and down the sidewalk, as if searching for something. The image cut to a close-up of Jacey’s face. Belle had never seen the girl so haggard, so tired. And she was dressed strangely, in a black tank top and some weird bluish pants.

  The image cut again, this time showing a shaky close-up of Meow Meow’s face. The light of dawning realization came over her features. Excitedly, she pointed. And then ran. Jacey and Dante trailed after her as she disappeared into an alley.

  The video stopped.

  “Socrates, show me a map of that area of Chicago.”

  In place of the video rectangle, a map appeared. A flashing blue dot marked the spot Jacey had last been seen.

  “Take me there.”

  The classroom swirled around her, blurring and then instantly resolving. She now stood in the middle of the city, tall buildings stretching high overhead. A pale blue sky beyond.

  Beneath Belle’s feet was the concrete sidewalk Jacey and her companions had been standing on in the video. She gazed across the roadway, to the other sidewalk, to the weird revolving doorway of the hotel. This wasn’t the actual place. This was a simulation, so she knew it wasn’t exactly accurate. But it would do.

  An eerie quiet hung over the city, the air so still that Belle felt like an intruding ghost. There were no cars. No people. With a thought, she produced a slight easterly breeze and prompted some clouds to pop into existence. It did little to ease the unreality of the city.

  She crossed the street toward the hotel, using short teleportation hops. Each time she reappeared, she paused, got her bearings, absorbed the environment. She went through the revolving door and into the hotel lobby. She recognized the tile pattern on the floor. This was where Jacey and her companions had first appeared in the video.

  There was no way to backtrack Jacey’s movements any farther. The simulation wouldn’t know which room Jacey had been in, or anything relevant about what had been in those rooms.

  Belle zapped herself back to the sidewalk and spotted the alley into which Jacey and her companions had fled.

  She walked to the opening, peered down the shadowy narrow stretch of pavement leading between two tall buildings. A slender rectangle of light at the far end hinted at an ope
ning onto a street beyond.

  “I have another hit,” Socrates said. His voice seemed to be coming from Belle’s trousers pocket.

  She discovered a tablet device in it, similar to a reader but smaller. Socrates’s face took up a corner of it. The rest was filled with a local map.

  Thousands of tiny yellow dots appeared on the map. Socrates said, “The city is full of surveillance cameras. One cam spotted Jacey and her companions as they emerged onto that street.” He highlighted a spot on the map. A red line showed the path Jacey had taken. Belle teleported to Jacey’s last known location.

  “I found another one,” Socrates said. Knowing Belle’s will, he teleported her to the new location.

  He showed her a ten second snatch of video. The three fugitives emerged from another alley, looked furtively up and down the street, then slipped into a glass doorway. Belle spotted it just to her left. A sign above the door read: WENDY’S WINDY CITY’S WHISKEY (AND WINE).

  “Say that three times fast,” Socrates said.

  Belle was going to ask why she should bother when Socrates interrupted. “Another cam caught them.”

  Belle found herself seven blocks further west, according to the map. She stood at the mouth of yet another alleyway. This one was narrower and darker than the others, and at the end lay more darkness.

  She looked over her shoulder. The street behind her was lined with restaurants and storefronts. If Jacey had gone that way, the surveillance cameras would have picked her up again. That meant she’d gone into the alley.

  Belle walked down it, slowly, trying to imagine what it was like for Jacey.

  She failed. Belle had never understood Jacey. The girl was too full of herself, too much of a narcissist, for Belle to figure out.

  She passed a small restaurant, an odd little hole in the side of a brick building. The entrance was a glass door set between two windows. On one, crude vinyl letters spelled out BEIJING PALACE. Belle couldn’t think of a name less appropriate for such a dingy place.

  She continued down the alley to the intersection. Another alley led left and right here. In both directions it opened onto streets. But Jacey had not been picked up there by surveillance cameras.

  Socrates’s voice blared from the tablet. “Beijing Palace.”

  Belle was skeptical, but she reminded herself that Socrates was an aspect of her own mind. And as she approached the doorway, a feeling of certainty came over her. Jacey had gone inside.

  It was a narrow place with a dirty black and white tiled floor. Red vinyl seats hugged booth tables with chipped laminate tops. A counter at the rear held up a peculiar porcelain cat, one paw up. Beyond that was an empty kitchen. A short corridor on the right side led to another door.

  Belle glanced at the map, zoomed out to see Jacey’s path. It zigzagged a lot, but there was an obvious purpose to that. They had only emerged near a camera where absolutely required. This restaurant had been the destination all along.

  “Do you have plans for this building?” she asked Socrates.

  Instantly, a floor plan of the restaurant and the adjoining buildings popped up on the screen. Socrates marked the exits. Two led onto major streets, so those were out. Another let out onto the roof. Jacey wouldn’t go there; that would trap her.

  The final exit also led onto the street, but it required them to first to descend to a sub-basement. Belle teleported there. It was a cavern-like space, all concrete, with thick round pillars holding up a low ceiling.

  “This parking garage exits onto the street,” Socrates said. “So . . .”

  “She got into a vehicle,” Belle said. “That would allow her to travel while staying out of direct view of the camera network. Clever.”

  “But if we can figure that out, so can her pursuers.”

  Socrates was right.

  “Who is after Jacey?” she said, going back the basic facts.

  “Well, you are,” Socrates said. “And the International Police Agency is after her for questioning in Ping’s murder. Based upon the data flow I’ve analyzed—which includes net chatter of billions of people—there are many ‘carbo hunters’ also interested in capturing her. Many desire to kill her.”

  “Kill her?” Belle said, shocked. “Why would anyone want to kill her?”

  Her tablet vibrated drawing her attention to the screen. A stream of text was flowing from the top to the bottom, much faster than she could read. Socrates’s voice came over the speaker. “‘Carbo’ is a slang term for ‘clone.’ Cloning is illegal. It is government policy to destroy clones. Carbo hunters, recognizing that clones are non-people, hunt them for rewards, for the fun of it, or to capture and resell them.”

  “But I’m a clone.”

  “No. You are an AI.”

  It was so easy to forget sometimes.

  “So the IPA wants Jacey. Carbo hunters want Jacey. And . . .”

  The one item she had missed popped into her brain. “Dr. Carlhagen also wants Jacey.”

  “Ah! I think you’re onto something,” Socrates said.

  Belle tapped her fist onto her temple, simultaneously trying to jog loose the complete thought and punish herself for missing something so obvious.

  And then she had it. “Dr. Carlhagen has seen the exact same news reports we have. He knows Jacey was at Vin’s coming out. He knows Jacey is wanted for questioning about Ping’s death. He knows that she was in Chicago. But he is obsessed with her. And that means he’s dispatched Captain Wilcox to find her before anyone else does. He’ll be on Jacey’s trail.”

  And that was the key. “But no one’s looking for Captain Wilcox. He has no reason to hide from the surveillance cameras. So while he’s tracking her in the flesh, we can track him.”

  Socrates’s face filled the tablet screen. He had transformed himself, removing the beard, and now wore a peculiar hat with earflaps tied up with laces atop his head. The fabric was a strange pattern. He popped a big tobacco pipe in his mouth and puffed, sending out smoke rings. “Let me see . . .” he said around the pipe stem.

  Belle ignored his eccentric costume.

  “I’ve got him,” Socrates said. “Oh boy, do I have him!”

  Belle grinned back at him. “Show me.”

  21

  Lazarus Watches

  Chillers offline.

  Body temperature: 30°C

  Skin Temperature: 28°C

  Blood viscosity: 4.13x10-3 Pa-s

  Blood pressure: 134/97

  Heart rate: 19 BPM

  The ventilator fan in the cryopod spins up to 4500 rpm, adding its hum to the pump. Air from the cryo-ward is drawn in to gradually warm the interior of the coffin-like compartment.

  37 more needles retract. Blood wells from the insertion points.

  A band of LED lights over the subject’s face illuminates, casting a gentle golden glow over the closed eyes.

  Lazarus watches its future body.

  Slowly, slowly. If brought out of suffusion too swiftly, the subject’s heart might fail.

  A dangerous phase, like a spacecraft’s reentry into the atmosphere.

  Glowing bursts of blue and red and purple flow across the awareness of a disconnected mind as a burst of dimethyltryptamine releases from the pineal gland.

  There is no Livy yet. Fluttering black wings split the glow.

  22

  Do. Not. Move. The. Van

  Jacey awoke to the scent of fresh air and the sounds of quiet, furtive voices outside the van. She rolled onto her side and looked to the front of the vehicle. Lily wasn’t there. Dante and Meow Meow were gone, too. The van was not moving.

  A male’s voice, low and commanding, rumbled from a few feet away. Jacey’s skin thrilled with recognition.

  Captain Wilcox.

  With slow and silent movements, she crawled forward. The driver’s side window was open. A breeze, dry and crisp, ruffled Jacey’s hair.

  Meow Meow: “She won’t like it.”

  Wilcox: “I don’t care. Dr. Carlhagen doesn’t care. What choi
ce does she have?”

  Dante: “The girl he took. Can you guarantee her safety?”

  Wilcox: “Livy is a Scion. She’ll be safe until she’s overwritten.”

  Jacey’s nostrils flared with rage. How could that man say that with such matter-of-fact disinterest?

  Meow Meow: “That’s not good enough.”

  Lily: “All I agreed to do was drive you here. Get her out of my van.”

  Meow Meow: “Well I didn’t agree to anything. Listen, Dante, what about our other plan?”

  Dante: “Oh, come on. We were never going to get through the fences. You know that was just a fantasy. Might as well end it here without more suffering.”

  Meow Meow: “You’re a jerk.”

  Lily: “You go on fighting about it. I’m leaving. I have muumuus to sew. Get Little Jackie out of my van.”

  Jacey retreated to the rear doors. Biting her lip, she pulled the latch. The door swung open. She stepped out and crouched. Pressing the door shut, she slipped to the opposite side of the van from the others. The van was idling on the side of a road. Flat, empty land lay on either side. Behind her, a string of trees ran through a farm field. If she sprinted, she might get there before the others realized she was gone.

  Meow Meow: “If we can get her through . . .”

  Dante: “And risk the sickness? Why would I even try such a thing?”

  Meow Meow: “Because you’re in love with her.”

  Dante: “That is not entirely accurate.”

  Jacey made a face and shook her head. Meow Meow had lost her mind if she truly thought there was anything between her and Dante.

  Wilcox: “I will not allow her to escape again.”

  Meow Meow: “If you even touch her, I’m gonna have a few bullets touch your brain.”

  Bullets?

  Siggy’s gun! Jacey grinned. At least Meow Meow hadn’t sold her out.

  But who had? It wasn’t coincidence they’d run into Captain Wilcox out here in the middle of nowhere.