Another shot at life.
Cloning had come out of love.
And fear.
And then turned into something evil.
I hugged the file to my chest, the contents somehow made me feel so much better. Stone had been a normal human being once. She had fallen in love, gotten married, had a family. She had everything I wanted for the future.
But the death of her family had changed her. It was the catalyst for the person she was today. Portia Stone hadn’t been born that way, she had twisted into the figure we now knew. It wasn’t her genes that had caused her to be like she was, it was the traumatic events of her life.
I could live with that.
It meant I still had a good chance of not turning out like her.
She was more human to me now than she had ever been before.
I gathered all the files into a neat pile and checked the rest of the room. Just as I suspected, I couldn’t find anything else that would constitute a secret. But what I had found was big enough.
It took the team all morning to go through Stone’s mansion and unravel the tightly-wound woman. I was glad to get back to the warehouse. Being in the mansion, surrounded by everything Stone was, gave me the creeps.
Reece was busy with his own mission when I’d finished my report to Joseph. I still had the box of medication and I didn’t want to just leave it for someone else to take care of.
I took the box into the prison area, going straight to the cell and looking at the broken woman inside. Her meal was going to waste on the floor, she hadn’t touched a thing.
“You’re sick,” I stated.
“Save it for someone who cares,” she replied, waving me away.
I pulled out one of her medication bottles. “No, you’re really sick. What are all these pills for?”
She stole a glance at the bottle in my hand before looking away again. But not before I saw the look of panic cross her face.
“Is it cancer?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I rattled the pill bottle. “If you want your medicine, you’re going to have to answer my questions. It’s why you’re not eating, right? You’re not protesting, it’s not a hunger strike, you’re just really not hungry.”
She shrugged nonchalantly. It was easier having a conversation with a door than with her. At least I knew a door wouldn’t answer, Stone on the other hand…
“Which of my organs do you need? I’m guessing a kidney or two? Or is it my heart? Or my lungs?” I started yelling. “Which one is it? What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s my heart, okay? My heart is giving out on me and it’s not going to last much longer. I need yours,” Stone said, spitting the words out like they cost her something. “I hope you’re happy now.”
My hand went to my chest, feeling my strong heartbeat as it thudded in my chest. Images of lying in the laboratory with my heart torn from my chest flashed into my mind. That would have been my fate if it wasn’t for my escape.
“How much longer do you have?” I asked.
“Months, days, I don’t know. Dr. Wagstaff said I had less than a year without the transplant.”
I placed the box of pills on the floor so she could reach them. “Take what you need. I can ask the doctor to visit you if you tell me where I can find him.”
“He’s in jail.”
A lump of guilt clogged my throat. Dr. Wagstaff had helped me and he was paying the price. “I’ll get him out. In the meantime you need to eat something.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
I pulled over the chair leaning against the wall so I could sit closer to the cell. “I found your files from your closet. I read through them all.”
Her eyes widened in surprise before they settled back into her usual scowl. “You shouldn’t be going through my belongings. When I get out of here you are going to pay for being so nosy.”
“I know about Mabel.”
It was like I had lit a fuse and thrown a bomb at her. Stone blinked, just once, before she tightly contained her real emotions. She was barely keeping herself together. “Don’t you ever say her name.”
“It must have been difficult losing your husband and daughter on the same day.”
Her hands were bunched into fists, her skin as pale as I’d ever seen. “You. Do. Not. Get to talk about them.” The last words were shouted at me.
I wasn’t the kind to torture someone and now Stone knew I knew her biggest secrets, I didn’t want to dwell on them. The knowledge that I held details of her life was enough for now. She could stew on that in her cell for a while longer.
Silence lingered while I waited for her to compose herself. Then it was time to get some real answers.
“Why did you do it? Why replace your parliament with clones?” I said calmly.
She seemed relieved for the subject change. “Because they wouldn’t listen to me. Do you know how hard it is getting legislation passed when nobody can see your vision? They were all short-sighted idiots, too soft for politics.”
“So why replace them with clones?”
“They were pliable, I could tell them what to do and they would do it. All I had to do was threaten to send them back to the lab and they would comply.” Stone was boasting now, proud of her genius plan. She didn’t want to confess, she wanted to gloat.
“How were they so old?” Surely she couldn’t have set that plan in motion when she was a baby. It was impossible.
“I had the scientists work on a project for me, one that would speed up the aging process. They’d already learned how to slow it down, all I needed them to do was switch it around. Those clones are all only a couple of years old.”
It sickened me. Thinking about those poor clones who were only alive for a couple of years and they spent the whole time being brainwashed by Stone. Aging so quickly would have placed a lot of stress on their bodies. I was surprised they survived at all.
“Are they still aging?” I asked. Already I was thinking of how to help them. They were currently all being held under guard at the parliament building.
Stone smirked, her lips twisting up into a cruel smile. “I can’t give away all my secrets. Maybe you should get them checked out by the scientists.”
She slumped back on her bench and stared at the opposite wall. She was shutting down, not prepared to say anything else. She didn’t really need to, I’d heard enough of her horrible deeds for one day.
For a lifetime.
I stood and returned the chair to the wall. “Eat something,” I said before I left. Leaving the cell area was like taking a breath for the first time in days. I shook off her smug brand of evil and tried to remember that there were nice people in the world too.
Like Reece.
And Rocky.
And Sunny.
And Autumn.
And Joseph.
And Samson.
For every bad person there were two good ones, we would win in the end. The Stones of the world would always get what they deserved.
I spoke with Samson and asked him to free Dr. Wagstaff from the city prison. He said he would do what he could and bring him back to the warehouse.
One wrong would be set right.
Joseph found me before I could do anything else. Reece was with him. “Wren, I’m glad I found you. I need you and Reece to get to the Laboratory Charlie. George has alerted us to something happening there. Please hurry.”
Reece and I exchanged a glance before we started moving. We snaked through the people, the number seemingly growing every time I visited the warehouse. Citizens kept dropping by, asking if they could help in any way. We were slowly winning over the masses.
We jumped in an idle vehicle and headed over to Laboratory Charlie. The checkpoints were still standing but they were now manned by members of the Resistance. We were in caretaking mode there, making sure nobody went crazy and did something stupid.
Our vehicle was waved throug
h security the moment they recognized Reece. With each one he gave them a wave of thanks and moved on.
Old fears of the place still put me on edge. My brain said it was safe now but a part of me still expected to be stopped and locked up. I imagined those feelings would be there for quite a lot more time yet.
Scars took a long time to fade.
“Are you okay?” Reece asked as we passed through the front door of Charlie.
“Yeah. It’s just weird, you know? Being here and all that.”
He took my hand and squeezed it, reassuring me he was there and everything would be okay. “Nobody’s going to hurt you again. I won’t let them.”
I returned his smile with one of my own, wishing it would always be that simple. Now the clones of Aria were liberated we could be together, but still the old prejudices would remain in the people for a while longer. Nobody was comfortable seeing a human so openly affectionate with a clone. Especially not a Defective.
George was behind the security booth in the reception area of the laboratory. His face was red and distressed. Instantly I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” he said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “You are not going to believe what we have found here. It’s… you’re going to have to see it for yourselves.”
We followed George as he scuttled down the long corridors. It was nice to see so many rooms empty now and know the scientists weren’t killing clones anymore. Under Joseph’s rule, it was illegal to kill anyone, including clones.
All the scientists were locked out of the laboratories. They were given the option of leaving peacefully or being hauled off to jail. When faced with the image of being a prisoner, most of them agreed to leave.
Only a handful went to jail.
They thought Stone would get them out.
Fools.
George took us through winding corridors and down long hallways that seemed to go on forever. He set a fast pace, eager for us to see or to get it over with. I couldn’t be sure which one yet.
We passed windows and doors that led into laboratories with more equipment than I had ever seen in my life. Stone had made sure her laboratories were equipped with everything they needed to carry out her horrible deeds. There had to be millions of dollars tied up in the buildings.
George stopped in front of a room and opened the door, standing next to it so we could go in first. I entered warily, my eyes flicking everywhere to see what had spooked him so much.
When I saw it, I wanted to vomit.
We were surrounded by bodies – all dead. They each had massive deformities and injuries. One body had two heads, another had stumps for legs. There was a skinless corpse, one with a huge hole in his stomach, another with legs for arms, the list of their problems went on and on, each one nastier than the last.
“What happened to them?” I asked, holding my hand over my mouth and nose so I could filter out the stench of their rotting bodies.
George went to a table by the wall and pulled out a book from a drawer. He waved it around. “They were doing experiments on people and clones. They detailed all their research, listing every horrible thing they did to these poor people.”
“The scientists did this?” I asked for clarification. Surely people dedicated to improving and extending life couldn’t have carried out such atrocities to real living, breathing people?
“A bunch of them,” George confirmed. “There are at least three scientists in here reporting on their findings. This room is only the tip of the iceberg. There are rooms like this all over the building.”
I couldn’t speak.
All I wanted to do was run out of the room and vomit.
“Were they alive when they were experimented on?” Reece was having the same reaction as me. All we could do was stare at the bodies in shock and disbelief.
“Unfortunately, yes. Their notes are quite… graphic and succinct.”
Those poor, poor people.
The horrors of the room only reiterated my belief that we’d done the right thing in the Resistance. We had put a stop to all the hidden experiments and horrible crimes against humanity and the clones.
Stone’s scientists were nothing but murderers disguised as doctors. They had no right to take the lives they did and I didn’t know how they could do it, either. Surely at some point they would have questioned whether what they were doing was right or not?
They were monsters.
Living, breathing monsters.
Stone was wrong, they weren’t all outside the wall. They were living inside it.
And they had been for some time.
Reece guided me gently to the door. “I don’t know about you but I need to get out of here.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
We stepped back into the corridor and George secured the door behind us. Someone was going to have to clean up these rooms and bury the bodies. I hoped Joseph didn’t assign me to that team. It was selfish of me but I couldn’t look at them a moment longer.
“Joseph wanted you to see the damage before we started clearing them out,” George said. “He couldn’t believe it when I told him. I guess Stone made sure nobody knew about the experiments.”
I nodded. “She also had them rapidly aging clones. That’s how she replaced her parliament. Those clones we discovered were only a couple of years old.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past the bitch,” George grumbled. “There’s got to be something wrong with a person that could do this.”
I couldn’t disagree.
I only hoped it wasn’t genetic.
“There are a bunch of clones in the basement that need transporting back to the warehouse. Can you take them with you?”
“We came in a van, we’ll take as many as we can fit,” Reece replied.
As our members were making their way through all the laboratories in the city, they were rounding up all the captive clones and the women pregnant with more. We were looking after them at the warehouse, giving them any assistance they needed and tending to any injuries.
It was the same process with every group. We spoke to them and explained our revolution. It always took some convincing to get them to go outside where they could be free. I understood their trepidation and the fear of harboring false hope.
Freedom was a foreign concept to clones.
It wasn’t something we were trained to have.
From the minute we were born we were brainwashed into believing we had to Fulfil Our Purpose of being sacrificed for our Maker. Now they were going to have to think for themselves, build a life they never knew they’d get.
It was scary and exciting all at once.
There were twenty-nine clones in the basement of Laboratory Charlie. They each wore the same dazed and confused look of those we’d found before them.
“It’s okay now,” I assured them. “You’re going to be taken to the rest of the Resistance and Aria’s new temporary leader. You’ll be taken care of there and you’ll be free to do whatever you want.”
They didn’t speak, they didn’t blink. All they did was stare vacantly at us. My heart bled for each of them. They were probably only days from being killed and their organs stolen. Now we were talking about freeing them? They had a right to be confused.
George helped us get eight of them into the van with reassurances to the remaining clones that they would be transported too. The moment we returned to the warehouse we would send another van to help out.
“There’s sixteen expectant mothers upstairs too,” George said, pointing toward the ceiling. “Send a car for them, okay? They shouldn’t be in a rickety van in their condition.”
As soon as we were full we headed back to the warehouse and took the newest clones to where all the others were being housed in a part of the large space. The clones tended not to talk to each other much but at least all together they could be taken care of easily.
Seeing a
ll the clones free and closing down the laboratories made my chest swell with pride. We had done the impossible and we didn’t have to live in fear anymore.
I wished Rocky was there to see it all. He would have been so happy to be a part of such change. The relief of never having to run again was enough to make it all worthwhile.
Wherever he was, I hoped he was okay and happy.
I kept a little piece of my heart just for him.
Chapter 22: Reece
When Joseph said he had an urgent mission for me, I wasn’t expecting this. People were everywhere in the streets, fighting each other and trashing the place.
It seemed the richest members of Aria weren’t too happy that they now held equal rights with the poor and the clones. The riot had started at the supermarket and spilled out onto the streets. Everyone was eager for a fight, tensions were palpable.
I jumped out of the van and went the remaining distance on foot. It took concentration to duck through the crowd without copping a fist to the head or an elbow to the ribs.
It was a madhouse.
I pulled a fully grown woman off a girl of no more than ten. The differences in their social status was immediately apparent. The woman dripped with diamonds around her neck while the little girl was wearing barely more than dirty rags.
“It’s mine. I paid for it,” the little girl screamed. Her hands were clasped around a banana which the woman was trying to snatch from her fingers.
“You don’t deserve bananas. Give it to me.” The woman spoke through gritted teeth as she lunged for the piece of fruit. I stepped in, grabbing the woman around her middle and pulling her away from the girl.
She huffed and struggled against me, doing everything she could to kick me with her designer heels. “No more fighting. Leave the kid alone,” I said calmly, trying to influence her to do the same thing.
The woman let out a guttural growl as she fought against me. I dragged her away and deposited her on the edge of the fray, giving the girl enough time to escape with her food.
One Spark of Hope Page 20
