Clone Crisis: Book 1 in the Clone Crisis Trilogy

by Melissa Faye

  The next weekend, he told me about the Underground. “The group has grown since you left. People have responded to their activities. They haven’t bombed any buildings since the last time I messaged you, but they’re doing more recruiting. There are about fifty of us now.”

  The next day he told me about Vonna. “She’s a big part of the Underground. I’m worried about her. She’s enthusiastic, but she’s too much of an idealist. She wants us to do everything as soon as possible. She needs to calm down. I wish you would talk to her.”

  The rehab program became more intense. I was forced to watch the same videos over and over again. They didn’t just extol the virtues of Lorenzo and the council anymore. There were graphic videos of the bombings showing close-ups of injured people and dead bodies. The faces were recognizable. I could see one man I had known from a mentoring event several years ago. I saw one of the interns who used to work with Breck. I was haunted by the images, and couldn’t sleep anymore.

  I realized one night that the program was starting to get to me. I was tired every day. My face always looked ashen. I was losing weight. This is it, I thought. I’m breaking.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The videos and lectures were starting to blend together in my head. There was one about the Chancellor that I could repeat word for word. I knew I needed fresh air, but leaving the building was becoming more challenging. Most evenings, I went straight from rehab to my bed. A Saturday arrived without warning, and I forced myself to get out. I took my TekCast and headed to the community center.

  Charlie was waiting for me near the door, but this time he had a plan. He grabbed my arm before I went inside and spun me around to face him. “Come with me right –“ He looked at my face. I could barely look up at him. Instead of dragging me off, he enveloped me in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, Yami,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

  We went into the community room together and sat on the couch in the back that I had started seeing as my own. No one ever sat there, as if they knew it was mine as well. Charlie gently took my TekCast out of my hand and gripped my hands tightly in his. We sat in silence for a few minutes.

  I looked Charlie over carefully. His scruffy hair was longer than usual. His eyes were a bright blue that couldn’t be dimmed by his darker face. He smiled at me, but it wasn’t his usual big grin. It was more serious, and maybe a bit more mature. The events of the last few months had taken their toll on all of us.

  Charlie stroked my hand with his thumbs. We sat together for a long time, not speaking. I didn’t know why, but every moment I spent sitting next to Charlie was giving me more strength. My head was clearer than it had been for weeks.

  Charlie finally spoke. “Your friends need you, Yami. I haven’t been able to talk to Omer recently. Or Vonna. I’m worried about what the Underground is planning. It might have to do with Etta or Breck, or it might be another bombing. People could die, and Etta and Breck are still locked away.”

  I leaned forward and rested my forehead on my palms. I had been avoiding thinking about this. I was getting along fine without engaging with other people. Why stop now?

  “You can’t hide from this anymore,” Charlie said. “I need your help. You need to get involved.”

  I turned to him. “Why me? Why can’t it be you? Or Omer? Or anyone else?”

  “What are you so afraid of, Yami?” Charlie asked, furrowing his brow. “I’ve never known you to be scared of anyone or anything. Everyone knows that about you.”

  “I’ve always been afraid. I thought you knew that, Charlie.” I didn’t look directly at him. If I did, I knew I would start to cry. “Of course I’m scared,” I said. “I’m scared something will happen to you. Or Vonna. Or whoever. If I get involved, more people will get hurt. I have to back off.”

  “You’re one of the smartest people I know, but that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Charlie said, pointing his finger at my chest. “People are going to get hurt whether you’re a part of this or not. But you’re a leader, and people listen when you talk. And those are you friends trapped in that building. You’ve gotten them so far and kept them safe much longer than anyone else could have. They still need you!”

  I couldn’t listen to it anymore, but couldn’t walk away. I knew Charlie was right. All the walls I had built around myself since Alexis disappeared were starting to crumble, whether I liked it or not.

  “If you’re right, and they need me, what do I do?” I said. “Really. What can I do to help? What can I do that the other members of the Underground can’t?”

  “You know the Med better than any of them,” Charlie said. “You’re good at planning. You’re tough in a fight. And you have a strong enough moral compass to make a plan that won’t let anyone get hurt. Things with the Underground are getting too intense. More people could die if you don’t step in and show them a better way.”

  I didn’t know what he meant when he said the Underground was getting “too intense,” but it was troubling. Vonna was there. What were her next steps? What was she going to be a part of? I remembered the faces of the people who died in the bombing. It wasn’t only about Vonna. This affected all of us. I remembered the assassination attempt in Sven’s community that killed his wife. Was that coming next for us?

  And I suddenly remembered one other conversation with Alexis. It was when we were talking about the problems she had with the community, a little before she disappeared. She said she wasn’t doing anything with the Underground anymore, and I begged her to keep at it. She said I could help when I was older, but I told her it couldn’t wait. How was it that I had known so much more then than I knew right now?

  “I’ll do it,” I said. Charlie grinned, but quickly pulled his face back to neutral. I laughed for the first time in a month. I really did scare him a little. “We need to get Etta and Breck out of there, and we need to guarantee people won’t come after us anymore. And we need to make sure no one gets hurt.”

  “That’s a lot,” Charlie said with a laugh. “Where do we start?”

  Charlie and I spent the next hour talking through Part 1: getting Etta and Breck out without anyone else getting hurt. We kept getting stuck. We couldn’t use our last plan, distracting the security guards overnight, since security was now much heavier. Charlie said only three doctors and the Chancellor had access to the locked floor where they were staying. There were also guards in the lobby and each floor.

  As for Part 2, I was adamant that we take Etta back to the ACer camp where we had stayed before. They had all the medical supplies I stole, and Matana was the only person I trusted to help deliver the baby. The problem was that we had been found there once before. Plus, the last time I saw Matana I had blamed her for what happened to my friends. I needed to repair that relationship before I could ask her for any more help.

  Charlie messaged Omer to see if he could meet with us. Charlie explained the most important caveat – no one could get hurt – and Omer agreed. We decided to meet him the next day after rehab in a new space. There was a quieter community space on the other side of Young Woods where we could hopefully talk more privately. With Charlie and Omer, I could avoid using my TekCast and having our plans be read by someone tracking my messages. I suddenly felt like things were falling into place.

  REHAB THE NEXT MORNING felt different. I was watching another video from the bombing – children running away from a rec center – but it wasn’t affecting me like it might have in the past. I had a new goal now, and could see clearly through the Chancellor’s plan. The bombing was wrong, that much I knew. But it was an act of desperation from a group of people who wanted change. They wanted a say in what was going on around them. They had made mistakes, and now I would help the group correct them. Chancellor Lorenzo couldn’t touch me.

  Once I could block the pain of the images from my mind, I could spend more time thinking through the plan. I made sketches of the Med on scraps of paper, then quickly disguised them as scribbles and notes. I knew Omer could help u
s get supplies if we needed them, and the Underground, which apparently was much larger now, would be behind us. If what Charlie said was right, the whole community was starting to sway in our direction. They wanted to know what was going on. Maybe they could help. But how?

  I met Charlie and Omer after lunch. They had been at work all morning. Charlie was going over the Med schematics with Omer. Omer was taking notes on a sheet of paper – we had decided most of our plans needed to be analog to prevent detection.

  “We’ve been looking for vents or air ducts that give us access to the top floor,” Charlie explained. “But there’s nothing big enough for someone to get in, let alone someone to get back out with a pregnant woman. The only access point is through the stairs.”

  “And the only way I can think of infiltrating the building and rescuing your friends through the stairs and hallway is to use every man we have and overwhelm security with a mass of people,” Omer said. He pointed to a few spots on the map of the building. “If we bring enough people into the building through the lobby and through this back area, security won’t be able to hold all of us back. Most people will be able to get to the stairs and go up to the top floor.”

  “What if they’re all detained and banished?” Charlie asked. “Are they willing to take that risk?”

  Omer was about to answer, but I interrupted. “The Chancellor won’t do it,” I said. “When people are banished, their clones are retired. No more clones are made with their genetic material. If that happened to fifty of us? It would reflect very poorly on him to have the community population drop so low so quickly.” Omer and Charlie looked disgusted, but we moved along.

  “What’s the security on the top floor?” Omer asked.

  “The lock is solid steel. I don’t think we can break it without an explosive, and that’s too risky for all the people who will be there.” Charlie looked at the drawing of the building and made two big X’s where the doors to the top floor were.

  “Who has a key?” I asked. “You said there were three doctors with keys.”

  “The Chief of Medicine, Soo Yen, and a scientist from the F-Lab named Lucas. Lucas did a voluntary internship in medicine after his internship in fertility, so he’s regarded as the best expert they have.”

  “I don’t think Pablo would risk helping us. He’s too high level. Soo Yen has shown empathy in the past, but she’s still way too by-the-book. Can we get through to Lucas?” I asked.

  “I can try,” Charlie said. “I don’t have a lot of access to him. If he’s in the building, he’s almost always upstairs.”

  Omer. “Ok, let’s say we get the key. We get enough people upstairs and it’ll be easy to take care of the guards –“ I glared at Omer “- without violence, of course, Yami. We can rush them out of there with a mass of people. What about the key to the medical rooms?”

  “If we can get one of the three doctors to help us, they can also help with those rooms,” said Charlie. “I’ll work on it this week.”

  We reviewed the schematics. As long as we had enough people, and Omer said he could guarantee at least fifty, his idea would work. The group could help us escort Etta and Breck out of town.

  “How are you going to get to the ACer camp?” Charlie asked.

  “I can get a truck,” Omer said. “I’ll work on that too.”

  I felt hopeful for the first time in months. We had bits and pieces of the plan, and I could tell things would fall into place.

  “The only other part left is how we guarantee Chancellor Lorenzo doesn’t let anyone come after us,” I said. “We need to make sure that if he were to send people to attack the camp again, it’ll ruin him. I see him regularly. I can try to think of something.”

  Charlie was acting more and more like his old self. He stood up and paced back and forth in front of us, bouncing on his toes. “This is going to work!” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “We’ll see,” Omer said cautiously. “We’ll meet back here on Saturday to review what we found out and analyze the plan.”

  “Let’s meet sooner” I said. “Every day that passes, Etta gets closer to labor. I want her out of there before then.”

  Charlie and Omer agreed. We would meet on Wednesday evening in the same location. With luck, our plan would be almost solidified by then.

  I PAID CAREFUL ATTENTION to the council members I met over the next few days. They rarely mentioned Chancellor Lorenzo, and I wanted more intel. I knew from the first time I went to an Underground meeting that not all the council members supported him, even though his election was unanimous. Gianna had found out from snooping in the Records Room. For the first time, I tried speaking with my “teacher.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of videos about the bombings, but not as much about the work the Chancellor does to support the community,” I said. “What exactly does he do? I never totally understood.” The councilman I was sitting with, Marcus, looked shocked that I was speaking to him. “It’s something I should know, I think. I’d love to share it with others. You know, to demonstrate how hard he works to protect Young Woods.”

  Marcus considered me for a moment. I was dressed the same. I was still too thin and pale. But now that I was talking, I was sure I seemed like a new person.

  “Chancellor Lorenzo is very busy with his work...”

  “Yes, but what is his work?” I asked innocently. I considered attempting a friendly smile, but compromised with a half of a smirk.

  “He oversees each department in the community and the work of the council,” Marcus said. “He makes high-level decisions that impact community members. Last week he approved an adjustment in the cloning lab that impacts the way we handle materials and manage genetic exchanges.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work,” I said. “How was Chancellor Lorenzo selected? How did you know he was the right man for the job? You were there when he was elected, right?”

  “I was,” Marcus said. I watched him shift uncomfortably in his seat. “Let’s move on to the next video.”

  “Well, how are any Chancellors elected?” I pushed forward. “It’s an anonymous vote of the twelve council members, right?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see how that information is relevant here –“

  “I’d love to be able to share the story of his election process with my friends and coworkers,” I said. “He’s doing such a good job, right? Everyone here seems to think so. How did council members know he was right for the job? Was the vote unanimous, based on his skillset?”

  “The votes are...never...unanimous,” Marcus said. His eyes narrowed to crinkled slits. “There is always a heated debate. It’s expected. Without rigorous debates, we could never arrive at the best solution. Loyalties change, votes change, and we can be sure we’ve elected the best possible outcome.”

  I felt a little thrill when Marcus paused on the word ‘never.’ He was uncomfortable that the vote hadn’t contested. Maybe he was one of the councilmen who needed an extra push to vote for Lorenzo.

  I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the day while I turned this issue over in my head. I felt certain Marcus had told me that Lorenzo’s election was rigged. But how? I saw the way councilors looked away when Lorenzo entered a room. They weren’t deferring to him out of respect. They were scared of him. Lorenzo must have managed some sort of political sabotage that got him his job. Maybe blackmail. Maybe personal threats.

  Back in my room after rehab, I messaged Omer. “Want to catch up with Gianna” I said. Omer responded ten minutes later.

  “Yes. See you at 8.”

  GIANNA WAS WAITING for me in the rec room where I had last met with Charlie and Omer. I was elated to see her.

  “What’s up?” she said as we sat down at a round table together. “Omer told me a little bit about what you’re working on. Can I help?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out a way to make sure that when I escape with my friends, the Chancellor doesn’t send people looking for us. I spoke with a councilman to
day, who unknowingly told me that he was unhappy with Lorenzo’s unanimous election. He made it seem like that never happens. What do you know about his and other elections?”

  “Since I met you, I’ve only found out a little bit more,” Gianna said apologetically. “The council does vote, and they do usually elect other council members. The strange thing, like I told the Underground, is that Chancellor Lorenzo was doing scut work as an assistant to a councilor. He actually worked in records, gathering information as needed and reporting back.”

  “Ok, so what changed?”

  “I found a few examples from meetings with the council of Lorenzo embarrassing or harassing council members,” said Gianna. “The council members are afraid of him. Lorenzo has something on them. I know it. If it’s blackmail, and he has information on the councilors, he either keeps in the information on his TekCast, so we can try to hack in, or he keeps it in his personal quarters, which we could try to get into. It’s dangerous either way. But he’s not keeping it in the Records Room, or any councilman could get to it.”

  “Yeah...” I thought about the set up of the Chancellor’s building. I had never seen where he lived or worked. If I tried to sneak in, I’d be operating blindly. Maybe Charlie could find the building’s floor plans. Then I realized – I had been in the Chancellor’s office. I had wondered why the Chancellor needed a locked safe.

  I excused myself and messaged Charlie. I asked him to send another message out and meet me at his place.