Blaze

by Mara, Alex

  In all that, I sifted the memories of yesterday's training in which 8017 had fallen—and thankfully survived—and in which 8024 had removed his shoes, socks, and activated his "long nails."

  I snorted. No clone had ever removed his (or her) footwear on the obstacle course, much less extended their claws. And yet it made startling, obvious sense to do so, and his finishing time had shown as much.

  But if 8024 were assigned to a mission and deviated from his directive—if he improvised, as it were—in ways we hadn't authorized or predicted, that made him dangerous to more than just our enemies.

  It made him dangerous to us.

  That was Ides's logic, at least. But if I'm being truthful, I thought as I the greenhouse bobbed up and down before me, the tomato plant leaves shuddering in the breeze, unexpected improvisation is the best weapon we could possibly have against them.

  Except I still didn't know about 8024. "I wouldn't betray you," he'd said with straight-faced surety, and yet...

  Why wouldn't he betray us, given the opportunity? He certainly had the self-awareness to understand his situation: we were his makers and his jailors. Everything he did, he did at our behest.

  It was no way for a clone—a human—to live. "What am I?" he'd asked, which could only lead to the far more treacherous questions: "Why am I here?" "Why are you making me—us—do this?"

  "To save us," I said out loud. My voice came out breathy and juddering on the treadmill.

  I glanced around, almost expecting him to appear behind me. What would his response be? "Save you from what?" he would ask.

  But that was another question I couldn't answer. Not until he reached the second week—if he reached the second week. In five years, only 3% of infiltrators had even gotten that far, and 1% of those had been sent to the surface.

  Of that 1%, none had returned. They had vanished like wraiths. At this point, the surface and Beacon had begun to feel as ethereal as my dreams, as the projections of thunderstorms on my cabin walls while I slept.

  And as fast as an arrow, a dreamlike thought: 8024 in my bed, his face half-lit in the darkness from where he would lay beside me, the join of his chest and shoulder a perfect place for my head. That smile would be on his face—the one I'd seen in the interrogation room—because he seemed to find many things funny.

  I ran too close to the treadmill's front, and the belt let a grating noise as I thud-thudded with two jarring steps. Sweat I didn't know I'd accumulated dripped from my hairline, and I corrected myself.

  Where the hell had that image come from? I was Doctor West before I was anyone, and I wasn't here to mess around. Getting physically—much less mentally—involved with any of the model I'd engineered would be the most useless diversion from what was important.

  Protecting her. Protecting them all.

  Clearly I wasn't pushing hard enough. I needed to wipe my mind.

  I amped the belt to 6.5—a full mile per hour faster—and pressed 8024 to the edges of my thoughts. I didn't normally run so fast, and I had to focus on that: on my feet rising and falling, the swing of my arms, my heart in my chest and the rushing pulse in my head.

  Ahead of me, the apple trees—still green with unripened fruit—held a secret. The great and terrible truth of this place, the room I hadn't dared enter in five years, sat right behind the dome where we grew our nutrients.

  Recycling. The place we sent everything—everyone who wasn't "human"—to be disposed, repurposed, reused. Ten thousand of them in just a few years. The awful, the unthinkable. And for what?

  For Zara.

  The only family I had left.

  Even she had begun to feel like a dream, and if her picture wasn't sitting in my cabin, I might have begun to wonder if I had conjured her in my subterranean delirium. And if she had died—No, don't think that—then what was the difference between her existing and being a dream, anyway?

  I pressed the treadmill to 7, which I didn't even know if I could handle. My throat had gone cottony, which meant I was reaching the end of my air. Outdoing myself.

  We had to find the right iteration. I had to keep waking them. Recycling was to a larger purpose.

  A tiny ringing penetrated the hum of the belt and my thudding feet and my heart in my ears. That wasn't coming from the machine or my mind, it was coming from...

  I depressed the treadmill's STOP button, and the ringing increased in volume as the belt slowed.

  It was coming from my wrist unit.

  I stepped onto the rails as the belt came to a stop, breathing hard and doubled. When I straightened, I lifted my wrist to my face, touched the pinhead at the side. "Darcy West."

  "Dr. West," came the male voice. One of the other two doctors in the facility—Mullins. My least favorite, and it had nothing to do with his milquetoast way of approaching everything. Okay, maybe it had a lot to do with that. "You're needed in the arbitration room."

  Arbitration? Those requests were rare, and they generally came with a few days' lead time. This sounded like an immediate need. "When?"

  "Noon," Mullins said.

  I pulled the wrist unit back to inspect the face; that was an hour from now. Pretty immediate. "What are we arbitrating?"

  "An infiltrator case—two of the more recent interations."

  The claws, was my first, throat-tightening thought. Someone let slip about the claws.

  I climbed off the treadmill. "I'm coming," I said, no longer out of breath because I'd been running at seven miles per hour on the treadmill.

  I was breathless at the thought of 8024 coming to harm.

  * * *

  The arbitration room. Small, airless, and right at the end of the longest hallway in the whole facility.

  When I stepped inside, breathing fast with stenopad to my chest like a favorite stuffed animal, my eyes went straight to the viewing window.

  Two infiltrators sat on the other side, both of them restrained at the wrists to their chairs. The one on the left looked like he was trying to say something to the other. And the other....he looked like he'd fallen from some twenty feet up.

  8018 and 8017.

  I let my first proper exhale since I'd gotten off the treadmill over an hour ago. I felt for them—I did—but some deep down part of me felt relief.

  It wasn't him in there.

  Why was I so concerned with that one?

  "Thanks for coming, Darcy," Dr. Mullins said, one mottled hand gesturing to my chair. Beside him sat Dr. Alman, and together they made up Team Milquetoast. Aging, fraying, and eminently boring. "This won't take long, I hope," he said.

  "You didn't have to restrain them," I said, dropping my stenopad onto the table and slipping into the chair.

  "They're completely aberrant," Alman said. "One of the guards had to restrain that one"—he pointed at 8018—"from coming into the medbay."

  Well, so much for milquetoast; evidently Mullins had had a talking-to from Ides to meet his monthly Weeding Out quota. The logic being: the more weeds we picked, the more the "real" infiltrators could take root.

  It was dumb logic.

  "He's 8018," I said.

  "And what he should be dubbed is 'recycled,'" said Mullins, lifting his stenopad and swiping across the surface in my direction. "I've just passed you the notes on those two. You'll see why this will be a quick arbitration."

  I sighed, lifted my stenopad as the text appeared.

  Case 805: Aberrant behavior (homosexuality)

  Issues: Two recent iterations have displayed unauthorized contact. Guards report illicit contact in training rooms, the capsule room and at mess, and uncommon physical proximity. Yesterday, 8018 was restrained by two guards from entering the medbay after 8017 became injured during a training.

  Recommendation: Immediate recycling

  Surprise, surprise.

  Alman was speaking. "How long have you been in charge of the infiltrator program, Dr. West?"

  I lowered my stenopad, lifted dull eyes to Alman. "Since I arrived five years ago." He knew da
mn well how long I'd been working with these models.

  "So you can confirm that these issues are unprecedented," Mullins said.

  "Yes," I said. I felt like someone else was speaking through me—someone professional, who always told the truth. "I can confirm that."

  "Mullins and I believe that this sort of bond between them—"

  "Love," I said.

  Alman paused. "Do you think it's love?"

  I gestured at them through the window. "Can't you see that?"

  Two pairs of eyes followed the direction of my hand. Mullins's index finger tapped the metal table. "How can that be?"

  "We wake them, we put them with each other all day and night. They have no one, really, who will talk to them or show them kindness except the other infiltrators. We've trained the Scarlets to be like abusive mothers. And while 99% of the infiltrators have been too aggressive—and heterosexual—for this to happen, they are human. When you create thousands of humans, a few will inevitably surprise you."

  My thoughts flitted to 8024, who'd brought surprise after surprise in just a couple days.

  "You engineered them, Dr. West. 'Surprise' shouldn't even be an option," said Alman, though I couldn't take my eyes off the wisps of his white hair gently blowing under the ventilation.

  On the other side of the glass, two anatomically perfect human beings. Young, strong, loving. Here in this room, me and a pair of men who had spent so long inside the facility—who had spent so long on Earth—that they would probably spend the rest of their lives down here.

  And they would never understand how fully their minds had corkscrewed into a strange, half-sanity.

  "The question," Alman was saying, "is not whether they pose a danger to us, but how imminently. We can't have two infiltrators with higher loyalties to each other running around. Not even for a day."

  And as I looked between Alman and Mullins, I understood. "What time did you two arrive?" I asked.

  Another pause. That said it all. "We got here a few minutes early to debrief ourselves on the issue," Mullins finally said. "It's not our area of focus, so—"

  "So you decided," I said. "You both decided before I arrived."

  "It's a pretty clear-cut case, Darcy," said Alman. "Both of them are compromised as agents. Frankly, we recycle so many, I don't see why we're even arbitrating this."

  I smacked the table, a thick sound followed by a stinging palm. I half-stood. "They're human. We're deciding on whether we should murder human beings. Why do you think arbitration exists anyway, Doctors?" I said, and I knew my canines flashed with every word, as they did when I was angry. I didn't care.

  Mullins's white hair fluffed up a little under the vent. He blinked. "Because we need to examine unprecedented behavior. These situations offer excellent documentation as we refine the—"

  "Hold up, Doctor," said Alman, setting one hand on Mullins's arm. "Dr. West is obviously agitated, and for good reason. Please sit down, Darcy."

  As if my audible breathing through both nostrils wasn't a clue. I resumed my seat.

  "You're right: they're human," Alman said, his eyes flicking from me through the window. 8017 appeared to be waking, or at least he'd moved his head, slumped it to one shoulder. His eyelids fluttered. "But we took an oath when we came down here. Do you remember? Do you remember why we do this?"

  The oath. I had forgotten about it, but now the memory returned. Twenty-two-year-old Darcy with an open palm by her shoulder. Darcy in a line of staff, reciting after Ides.

  "...to save the human race. To end the destruction."

  At the end, Ides had improvised. "Whatever it takes," he'd said, scanning the line of us. "Remember your people. Remember the ones still up there."

  And later, twenty-two-year-old Darcy sat at her new desk in her cabin and thought of Zara and said to herself, "Whatever it takes" in a near-fanatical whisper. Zara of the honeyed hair. Her sister.

  "I remember," I said, slouching back into my chair. "I remember."

  "Dr. West," Alman was saying, "do you believe these iterations pose an urgent threat to the facility?"

  "I defer to your judgment, doctors," I heard myself say.

  "Hey," came a muted voice through the small speaker. My eyes refocused, and all three of us turned to look through the window. 8018 was staring right back. "Hey! I know you're watching us in there."

  We sat silent.

  "You think we're anomalous," 8018 said, his hands lifting against the restraints. "Well, we're not. I'd kill him if you asked me to. I would do it."

  He meant 8017. And it was an obvious, desperate lie.

  "Case #805, presented for arbitration. Recycle iterations 8017 and 8018—yea or nay," said Mullins.

  "Yea," said Alman.

  "Yea," said Mullins.

  I swallowed. 8018 seemed to have spotted me through the glass, because his eyes seemed too focused, like he could root me to the spot with his gaze. "Nay," I said.

  "With three votes cast, the 'yeas' have it," said Mullins. He lifted his wrist to his mouth. "Guard, please remove infiltrators 8017 and 8018 from the arbitration room and escort to processing."

  Processing. Recycling. The end.

  I stood, excused myself. "Whatever it takes my ass," I breathed as I stepped out of the arbitration room.

  Six

  Monday, May 4, 2053

  4:38 p.m.

  Blaze

  8017 and 8018 had been recycled. I exhaled, depressed the trigger, and the pistol jerked in my hands.

  Across the room, a hole appeared in the paper—right where my opponent’s heart would be.

  I imagined Dr. Ides, the so-called head of the facility. I’d heard his name tossed around, but I hadn’t yet seen his face. Maybe I never would before they sent me out.

  So I imagined what he looked like. Massive, old, lecherous, half a head of white hair floating over his scalp.

  It sure did help my aim. A trio of holes appeared around the first one, each of them straight shots to the heart.

  Beside me, 8022 and 8023 fired off their own volleys. One put a hole in the right pectoralis minor, and the other grazed the left lung. Their shots often struck a few degrees off, which would make all the difference between living and dying.

  "Blaze," 8023 said from my left.

  My answer was to fire off another shot. And another.

  "Hey Blaze," he said, his head only half-turning toward me.

  I leveled my pistol as though inspecting the sight. "If you call me that again, I'll turn this muzzle on you. And you know it won't misfire." I let loose the rest of the clip into the next target.

  8023 had assaulted me at the urinals on my first day, after all. But I knew 8013 had put him up to it, and I didn't want to be hard with 8023. Except I had two things urging me in that direction:

  8013. Not just bad news, but bad news for me. I didn't want any of my model thinking I was soft—especially not him. That path only led to getting jumped during vulnerable moments.

  Darcy West's warning. "Your name's not Blaze," she'd said. And what was in her eyes wasn't hard-lined authoritarianism, but worry. She didn't want to see me interrogated or recycled.

  So I couldn't have anyone calling me that name anymore. Not when there was a chance we'd be overheard, and there never wasn't a chance of being overheard at this facility.

  A pause. "8024," he said finally.

  I didn't look over at him, but I ejected the clip and set a new one in. "What?"

  "How do you hit your target every time?"

  "Anger," I wanted to say. It would be half-true, after all.

  I exhaled. If I helped him, I'd be giving him an edge. And in a dog-eat-dog place like this, he wasn't a friend. 8017 and 8018 had defied that rule, and they'd died for it. They'd undergone interrogation, I'd heard, while strapped to one of those chairs with the arm-restraints. Then they’d been recycled.

  They had deserved better.

  But I owed nothing to 8023. And yet, glancing over at myself beside me, I saw that edge
of worry in his—my—face. Despite myself, I felt sorry for the rookie.

  "Activate the pads on your fingers when you're gripping," I murmured, pushing the clip into the pistol. "Steadies your aim."

  "Right," he said, his gaze falling to the gun gripped in his hands.

  From across the room, I sensed eyes on me. Down at the far end stood 8013, one eyebrow raised. When he caught my gaze, his head tilted by two degrees. Just enough to let me know he was watching.

  And I lifted my chin to expose my neck—the exact spot where I'd nicked him during our fight. My eyebrow rose a micrometer, and 8013's face darkened.

  Whether I wanted it or not—and though I ordinarily might want it, right now I really, really didn't want it with everything else bearing down on me—he and I would have it out if one of us didn't get recycled first.

  I wasn’t going to die. Not to 8013, and not like last night: with my capsule unsealed in the darkness, led from the room in silence.

  They hadn’t even gotten to go together—8017 had been woken first and taken out before they unsealed 8018's capsule. And I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d woken, who’d listened, who’d known what was happening.

  We all had. We were all waiting, expecting our capsule to unseal next. But because we were infiltrators, our heart rates remained consistent, our bodies still, and our breaths sure and slow.

  There was no benefit to a physiological reaction, after all, unless we needed the adrenaline.

  The worst part of it? 8017 and 8018 had thought they were in the clear. After their interrogation they'd been returned to the capsule room, allowed to dine in the mess and sleep in their own pods. Just not for the whole night.

  "Welcome back, troublemakers," I'd said during dinner, and 8017—despite his injuries from the fall—had smirked at me.

  This morning a rookie arrived, another one presumably woken by Darcy West. 8025 was led to the pod that 8017 had been sleeping in only the night before. And the pecking order refined itself again, our newbie at the bottom.