Prince stood and dug the barrel of his pistol into the top of Merrick’s head like a spear. “YOU WHAT?”
Merrick winced. “We used your genetics… to enhance…”
Now Prince couldn’t help looking back at Penny. He needed to know she was still recording. Just a quick glance before turning back to the old bastard. He almost waved her closer. “My what?”
“You should take it as a compliment,” Merrick said. “You excelled in everything. Marksmanship. Tactics. Problem solving. Everything. We took the best of you.”
Pressing the barrel harder, Prince leaned down to Merrick’s face. “Please. Explain.”
The old bastard’s face lost all color. He was dying.
“In the genome. In the DNA. We learned how to extract exactly what traits of yours we wanted… and use them in the bodies we cloned. We mapped you in your sleep, every time you came back here… to Fort Walters.” Merrick struggled to keep his eyes open. “And we used your skills… and training… in them. In our new army. Perfectly trained… out of the box.”
Prince grit his teeth and pressed into Merrick even harder, almost pulling the trigger. “Fuck you.”
Eyes closed, Merrick strained. “Some of your quirks, they rolled over into the clones.” His body bent and the grunted. “You’ve seen it. They fucking act like you.”
Thinking back to the countless Gray Altar soldiers he had met. Young, eager men. Yes. Merrick was right. Sometimes, in agreement, their eyes would close slightly, lip barely curled, head slowly nodding. A quirky gesture Prince himself had always done and assumed, because of his stature and title, that these men subconsciously mimicked him out of admiration. They even laughed like him. Quick chuckles. Something a younger sibling might pick up from an older brother after years of exposure though few of these men had even minutes with him. Now it was obvious. The clones—nuances of him had seeped into their personalities. It was a byproduct of a much larger scheme. The men didn’t have to learn perfect marksmanship or how to solve problems creatively because they were using his talents without even knowing it.
This meant, in essence, that he wasn’t unique at all. Gray Altar had branded and reproduced his individuality. He was worse than a clone or a Set. He was a product. A commodity to be copied.
“You stole my skills?” Prince said.
“You fucking arrogant shit. Stole?” Merrick laughed and quickly grimaced in pain. “You honed your skills… on Gray Altar time. We were paying you. Like any other asset, those skills belong to us. Hell, they used parts of my DNA too. Those men… they’re our sons.”
Like pirated software, Prince thought, like my life’s work is a program for them to download and profit from.
“Think of it as your legacy, Emmett.” Merrick looked at him with desperate passion. “You’re not just one man. You’re part of every piece of Gray Altar. Every mind. Everyone.”
Prince pulled the slide of this pistol back to make sure a round was chambered. Turning his head slowly, he looked to Penny again—the trembling girl who had made it so far. She stood there like a kid holding a cellphone, looking like so many of the viewers on the other side of the streaming video.
Barrel still pressed to Merrick’s head, Prince shrugged and addressed her and the camera. Sadness swallowed him. Shame and embarrassment amplified for millions of online eyes. Here was a man whose life had been dedicated to preserving an America that no longer existed. A man that didn’t only perpetuate and promote corporate corruption, but was a living victim of its limitless abuses. He was a fraud. A tool. And he wanted to end it forever.
It took all of Penny’s courage to keep the camera steady. Prince’s eyes were glossy as if he might tear up at any moment.
“What do I do?” he asked her.
Penny wasn’t prepared for this murderer to speak directly to her and she snapped her open claw, pointed at his chest.
Prince made the faintest frown. “If I kill him, they’ll just make another, right?”
Penny said nothing as her claws bent like sharp talons.
“They won’t,” the commander said. “Not this time. Please. I’m going to bleed out if you don’t get me a medic.”
From within the base, Penny heard movement. Shouting men. Approaching machines. Prince’s voice and movements sped up to normal. “I used to think, you know. I used to think that killing one twin of a Set didn’t matter. Like it wasn’t really murder.”
Penny pointed the camera right at him.
“That’s what I was trained to think. What good are two identical people? Getting rid of one, I was doing the world a favor. That’s how fucked up I was. How fucked up Gray Altar is.” And without warning, while still staring into the camera, Prince squeezed the trigger of his machine pistol and held it down, thumping a stream of silenced shots into the commander’s head and shoulders and chest. Blood sprayed up like smashed fruit. Penny winced and looked away, making the camera dip.
The commander’s body laid ruined.
Prince’s arm and side was painted with splatter.
“Killing a clone,” he said, “means even less.”
He dropped his empty pistol into the mess that was his dead superior. The splash made Penny cringe. Prince wiped his brow while using his other hand to unclasp his StiffArm until that fell to the floor too. Shaking, Penny aimed the camera at him as if it were the only thing preventing him from killing her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said so low that she barely heard him. Two more clasps undone and his backpack slid off and onto the tile. Grenades dropped. Even the knife holstered in his boot.
Penny had seconds to react.
Now that Prince was fully disarmed, she set the camera down and, in the same moment, shot her wrecking ball at him. The force pushed her arm back like a cannon. The ball smashed into Prince’s stomach and ribs, crushing his plate armor and throwing him back, one leg dragging through the commander’s guts. He slipped and fell to his side, breathless. “Ahh!”
Penny rushed to him and palmed his head with her claw and dragged him away from any weapon he had dropped.
“Yes!” he screamed—muffled by her tight grip. “End… it!”
Penny reached behind her knowing the camera could see the pistol tucked in her waistband. She grabbed the pistol and aimed it at Prince, but his face was covered by her claw. With the barrel to his neck, she pressed it hard enough to indent a deep circle.
“End it!” he grunted again.
Panting, Penny wrenched the handle of the pistol until it shook. She screamed and dug the barrel into him and felt her claw closing tighter. She wanted this worse than anything in the world. She wanted to be the two that silenced this man forever. Her palm was so sweaty, the pistol slipped in her grip. Penny screamed again and, whipping her right arm back, she threw the pistol across the room. It clanged against a glass cylinder. Hunched over Prince, eyes shut, she started closing her claw on his head.
“End… it…,” he muttered. “I’m sorry…”
I’m sorry.
It echoed in her head.
“End it,” Prince cried.
The man was crying.
Penny opened her eyes. Her claw slowly released. Prince’s head and body collapsed to the floor. Penny screamed and stomped on his neck and clamped her claw onto his shoulder and twisted. The power of her arm tore it off like cooked meat.
Prince shrieked and writhed, loud enough to scare her. Penny’s claw cranked with the force of a power tool.
Tendons and ligaments snapped as Penny pulled his arm free. She didn’t look at it as she threw it over her shoulder, assuming the camera caught the gore.
She stumbled backward, holding her claw to her chest. Her wrecking ball rolled to her foot like an obedient pet. Staring at Prince, she lowered her arm and opened her claw to pop the ball back into place with a loud clang.
Prince ground the side of his head into the floor and grunted through his nose as he held his horrible wound. His blood mixed with his commander’s. Pale
and dying, Prince looked up and panted through the pain. “You….” His teeth chattered and dotted blood onto the tile. “You tell… your sister…”
Backing further, Penny picked up the body camera and clipped it onto her chest. The little light indicated it was still recording. She wasn’t sure how much the world had seen through the lens, but this little camera was her only assurance that she wasn’t alone.
Prince shuttered and inched across the floor like a worm. “…she’s… a great shot.” He managed to smile before sagging next to his commander. Prince’s hair matted in the mingling puddle. His eyes fluttered. Closed. Fluttered again. Penny made sure to catch this on camera. His death—one of countless deaths of Emmett Prince—and maybe not the last. She wondered if Gray Altar would resurrect him simply to punish the man who exposed their secret war. Would they wake him up inside a tiny black cell? Maybe now that the public knew about Gray Altar’s cloning, they wouldn’t allow it. Maybe Prince would get the peace he was seeking.
“Ppp…,” Prince muttered. “Penny…”
She was terrified he might have some hidden bomb on him. Her claw raised and opened.
“Back through…,” Prince lifted his remaining arms and pointed at the door he had destroyed. “Go… quick.” He pointed to the left, but that was all he could muster. The last remaining drone made her flinch as it appeared. It was as if it knew who she was. Prince’s little propeller-driven minion hovered a few feet from her and bowed.
“It’ll… guide you.” Prince’s eyes fluttered again. He gasped, teeth scrapping the tile. Then he was still.
Penny trembled and listened. Voices echoed from the depths of the halls. Prince was right. Gray Altar operatives were swarming on the facility. Now that it was quiet, Penny could hear the roaring of protesters outside the fort. Thousands.
Another look at Prince and she was sure he was dead.
Around her, inanimate clones hung suspended, spiritless and vacant.
The drone flew back the way they had come and waited for her. Penny checked the camera again to make sure it was on and rushed to the blasted door. From her waistband, she unclipped the grenade Prince had gifted her and she strained to pull the pin. With the camera watching, she rolled it across the floor where it bobbled against Prince’s lifeless body.
The only thing she could do was run, turning left through a corridor as the drone led her onward. Louder voices filled the hallway. The boom of the grenade made her skip a step and almost trip, but she kept up her speed. Shattering glass proved the concussion had destroyed many, if not all of the clone-filled vats. The drone guided her right and down a flight of stairs where it remotely unlocked a heavy door. Penny hunched through it and ran past dumpsters and a loading dock. Smells of oil and solvents. She rushed through an oily puddle, not looking back. From a row of hooks, she grabbed a hooded windbreaker with a Gray Altar insignia and slipped it on. The drone beeped, unlocking another door and the night’s air rushed in. Humid with shouting. Penny looked up at the buzzing machine and thanked it with a wave.
She held the door’s handle with her natural hand. There was an impulse to pause. To feel something. Something for herself, but also for the man she had just killed in front of millions of people. Looking down at the body camera, she imagined the world waiting and wondering—who was this one girl that witnessed the death of an empire—who would she become now that she was free?
Outside, the crowds roared.
Penny leaned on the door, overcome with emotion.
Who was this one girl.
Tears filled her eyes and she heaved, but tensed to suffocate the sobs. Literally telling herself not to shut that part of her down.
She slid outside, into an alley, into the raging night. There was no sign of Gray Altar soldiers or police. Pops of what she thought was gun fire snapped in the distance. Running, Penny made sure nobody saw her. At a fence, she used her claw to cut a hole and peel the chainlink away, a barb snagging her hair. Voices grew. She felt no safer on the other side. The big hood covered her entire head. She held her metal arm and unclasped it at the shoulder. People were only a few dozen yards away. Crowds marched in the streets, yelling, fists raised. “One Na-tion! One Na-tion!”
Sirens screamed over the chanting. Police and ambulance and fire truck wailing. Bottle rockets zipped from a nearby roof. Hordes of people clogged the streets. Sparklers brightened their sweaty faces. Penny had never seen so much panicked energy frenzied into celebration. Her first impulse was to join them, but that part of her had to be shut down too.
She leaned her back against the wall and detached her arm. Down the alley, she found a discarded plastic bag and folded the arm into it and held it to her chest to cover the camera. The audience saw nothing but black.
Head down, she exited the alley and joined the rush of bodies. Police cruiser lights flashed down the block and she turned away from the riot helmets and clanging polymer shields. So many people. Dreads and dogs and languages she’s never heard in person. It wasn’t difficult to get lost in the crowd. Shoulders bumping shoulders. So many people looked down at their phones, foreheads and cheeks alight. She heard one person say, “She’s out of the building.”
“Where?” another person yelled.
“I dunno!”
“One Na-tion! One Na-tion! One Na-tion!”
“We need to find her! And help!”
Every other person had their phone out and people without phones leaned in to view their friend’s screen and the footage she was streaming.
“It’s all black now!”
“Is she okay?”
Penny dodged each protester’s eyes and held her bagged arm tight. She pushed past tattered punks with patches and first aid kits, men on revving dirt bikes, students and older people who were born long before the Set Mutation. Sets stood arm-in-arm with fists raised at the smoldering fort. Gray and black smoke churned in the wind. The white facade of the fort was charred from the crashed helicopter where firetruck hosed the steaming wreckage.
“One Na-tion! One Na-tion! One Na-tion!”
“Two Girls! One Nation. Our Cure! Two Girls! One Nation. Our Cure!”
It was this chant that made Penny slow. Behind the cover of a lamppost, she listened and watched so many people looking at their phones wondering why the streaming picture had gone black. She pressed her bag to her chest to make sure no image could be recorded.
“One Na-tion! One Na-tion!”
Penny knew that she would be celebrated as a hero if she revealed herself. She was surrounded by supporters and militants, people who had supported the demise of Gray Altar for decades. They had all seen what she did, just now, knowing that the end took place only a few hundred feet from them inside the old art museum. Everytwo wanted to be close. To feel what was happening. News drones swooped in quick arcs. Some hovered so low that people could jump and almost touch them.
Crowds of the angry and curious marched in from every direction.
The urge to reveal herself was almost overwhelming.
Head down, weaving through bodies, she turned away from more police. Ducked out of sight of another spying drone. Here, she was more alone than ever. A fugitive among friends—among admirers and even devotees.
“You see anything on your phone?” sometwo yelled, looking up from their screen. People were so riveted by her live-stream that they neglected to notice her.
“No!”
They weren’t the only people looking for her. The entire world was.
“Is she dead?” a woman yelled. “No!”
Let them think that, Penny thought.
Without a doubt, there would be One Nation operatives searching for her in the crowd. They had facial recognition scanners and would be looking for her arm. She couldn’t face them either. The men and women she had run from more than once. The friends of people she felt responsible for having killed in the battle. If she could vanish, right there, she would. Off the face of the Earth forever.
Now she cried.
Clutched her prosthetic arm inside the bag.
Through a narrow alley clogged with trash and an overturned hotdog cart.
Still hiding her face, Penny turned and walked west, knowing now that she was the most famous person in the world—that she had done this by herself—that Prince, the last person she every expected, had given her that gift. A gift she never wanted in the first place.
CHAPTER 13
WEEKS AND WEEKS FROM NOW
One by one, the emails had come in. Then two by two by hundreds. Now that One Nation was recognized as a legitimate organization and no longer a terrorist threat, normal people were allowed to email Sam. With a One Nation communications analyst acting as a firewall, of course.
She would be embarrassed to admit how much she loved the attention, but there was only one person she wanted to hear from.
Without fail, once a day, one of those emails was from Penny.
A sentence here. A few more the next day. Just checking in.
Her sister needed space. That was fine. Penny hadn’t come back since she followed and killed Emmett Prince. Sam missed her more than she ever thought she would. They had never been apart before. The first few days were weird and fun, but as the first week ended, Sam felt incomplete. There was no two to balance her mood or keep her in check. And the weeks that followed required a self-reliance that confused and exhausted her as well as the people she loved. There was a fight with her mom about nothing that resulted in not speaking for days. She found herself sitting in her room for hours, not really doing anything but going through old pictures and drawings.
Now, in the fifth week, she was finally comfortable, not just with herself but with the fact that she could allow herself to miss Penny—a lot.
Sam sat, with her laptop, in the same field that Gray Altar had come and slaughtered most of their guards. The downed gunship had been hauled away. WarWalkers and mangled drones gone too. With her laptop open and legs crossed, she let the midsummer sun warm her face and shoulders and back while Mason and Dixon played catch.
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