by J. W. Elliot
“Maybe he was doing more than that,” Willow said. “Maybe he was making sure this entrance was closed for good.”
“You think Noah put him up to it?” Birch said.
“Who else? Noah sees more than we know. I bet he knew the terrorists had a secret way in, and he used us to find it and seal it.” It did Willow good to think about something other than her legs that lay trapped beneath what could be thousands of pounds of stone.
“Maybe,” Birch said. “That might also explain why no one was chasing us. They expect us to come back to them.”
“I doubt that he expected the whole ceiling of the tunnel to collapse,” Willow said.
A circle of light bobbed on the slab of basalt, and Kaiden and Jade scrambled down to kneel beside them.
Jade was covered in dirt like the rest of them but otherwise looked unruffled. She always had that infuriatingly calm expression on her face no matter what happened.
“That’s all of us,” Kaiden said. “Now, let’s get you out.”
The three of them crawled behind her and began working around her legs.
“The slab isn’t resting directly on her leg,” Jade said. “It’s propped up here and here.” Willow couldn’t see what she pointed at.
“It’s a good thing,” Kaiden said, “or her legs would be crushed.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t talk like I wasn’t here,” Willow said. The thought of losing her legs sent a wild shiver through her. No INCR would heal that. She would be crippled.
“Sorry,” Kaiden said. “The floor is sand, so we can try to dig you out.”
Willow listened past the ringing in her ear and waited. They jostled her legs, and she still felt no pain, but there was pressure and a tingling sensation as if her legs had fallen asleep. Something grated, and the rock shifted.
“Watch out!” Jade yelled.
Willow covered her head as debris rained down on her.
“It’s all right,” Birch said. “Just a bit of shifting.”
After clawing at the sand and scooping it away with his arms, Kaiden said, “Try to move your legs.”
Willow pulled, and her leg budged a bit. Pain lanced up her thigh, and she bit off a cry. At least, the pain meant she wouldn’t be paralyzed.
“Now, try a bit more,” Birch said.
Willow kept tugging, and her legs came out an inch at a time as the others scooped and scraped the sand away. Finally, she dragged herself free and rolled to her back, panting and covered in a cold sweat. When she tried to sit up, Birch laid a hand on her arm.
“Not yet,” Birch said. “Let me look at it.”
Willow’s toes tingled and stung like someone had shoved needles under her toenail. Her right leg ached, but otherwise, she felt okay— especially considering what could have happened.
“You’re lucky,” Birch said. “That stone could have cut your legs off.”
“Yes, thank you, Birch,” Kaiden said with a note of irritation in his voice. Maybe he didn’t want Birch to frighten her. She was already frightened, so it didn’t matter.
Birch smirked at him. “Looks okay,” she said. “Just some scrapes. Can you wiggle your toes?”
Willow did and felt them move inside her boots. “Yes.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
“No, just some aching and tingling.”
“Give it a try.”
Willow sat up and flexed her legs. The relief flooded into her chest as they responded to her commands. She blinked back the tears. “All good,” she said.
Kaiden took a deep breath. The expression of relief on his face made Willow blink more rapidly. Maybe he could care for her, despite everything.
Willow glanced at Jade. “Did you shoot them?”
“No one else was handling the situation,” Jade said, “so I did.”
“Well, thanks,” Willow said, though the word burned in her throat. She didn’t like to admit Jade had done something right, but if Jade hadn’t shot Greyson and Iris, they might all be dead. “I thought they could be trusted.”
Kaiden narrowed his eyes. “There seems to be a lot of deceit going on around here these days.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the terrorists,” Willow said. “There wasn’t time. Things were moving too fast.”
“We appreciate your friendly apologies,” Jade said, “but what now? Unless you fancy sitting here until we either suffocate or die of thirst, we ought to see about getting out of here.”
Birch was already digging in her pack. “Now, we’ll see if Quill’s nano-bots can actually do something useful.”
She clipped on the wrist terminal, and two mosquito-sized drones rose into the air.
“I’m getting the hang of this,” Birch said as the mosquitoes disappeared in opposite directions. Birch slipped the screen from her backpack and clicked it on. Two images appeared side by side. The green light lit her dust-covered face, casting it in a sickly pallor.
“Wow,” Birch said. “That bomb really messed up this tunnel.” She gazed at the screen in disbelief.
The ceiling had collapsed along most of the tunnel, but some slabs propped up enough of the ceiling that the nano-bot was able to work its way to the back of the corridor and the crack they had crawled through. It zipped into the crevice.
“Looks like the way back is more or less clear,” Kaiden said.
“Do we really want to do that?” Jade asked.
Kaiden wiped at the dirt in his eyes but didn’t answer.
The other drone worked its way over the pile of rubble and then slipped into a tiny crevice. It passed out of the cave into a wide-open area bursting with sunlight. An old T-50 Cobra Gunship waited with its engines running in a valley of jumbled boulders. A crowd had gathered to peer into the rubble. Most of them wore simple jeans and T-shirts, and they were all armed to the teeth. Willow recognized one of them. A young man of Indian descent with thick, black hair framing an open face, now pinched with concern, peered up into the crevice from which a dust cloud was still rising.
“Flint?” Kaiden exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”
“I sent him,” Willow said.
Kaiden’s brow furrowed, and he glared at her. “What else have you done that is almost going to get us killed?”
Willow opened her mouth to protest, but Birch cut her off.
“Look,” she said.
A group of men wearing jeans and T-shirts like some kind of uniform hurried forward, struggling under the weight of a huge laser drill. “They’re going to dig us out.”
“Are these terrorists your friends?” Kaiden accused. All the tenderness and concern he had shown earlier were gone. His face was tight with anger.
“I never said they were my friends,” Willow said. “But they’re necessary if we want to get out of here alive.”
“That’s proving to be quite the challenge,” Kaiden said.
Birch tapped the screen.
“Hey, Flint,” she said. Flint jerked and glanced around. So did the others.
“I got eyes on you,” Birch said. “You mind giving us a hand? We’ve got a tiny little problem in here.”
Flint grinned. His hair fell into his eyes as his gaze focused on the nano-bot hovering before his face.
“We’ll have you out in a jiffy,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
To Be Human
Kaiden slumped with his face pressed against the observation window as the old T-50 Cobra gunship hurtled over the broken, barren landscape. It was a wider and faster gunship than the T-60, but it had fewer armaments. The jagged mountainside raced by, littered with the skeletons of long-dead trees. Nothing green grew there now—just like most of the western half of the continent.
They were flying low, very low. Kaiden knew the terrorists were trying to avoid TAP radar, but
he didn’t think they could do it. TAP had the most up-to-date technology, most of it designed by their own engineers and scientists, who were supposed to be the best in the world.
Kaiden let his head fall back against the headrest and tried to ignore the newsfeed that babbled in the background. How long would it be before TAP airships attacked them? He kept his rifle across his lap, which was still loaded with tranquilizer rounds. He had been prepared to resist should the terrorists try to disarm them, but no one had said anything. They had rushed to carry Iris away and to extract Hawk’s mangled body from the rubble. No one had been able to find anything of Greyson beyond the barrel of his rifle that lay crushed beneath a slab of basalt the size of an airship. It was too big to try moving.
Kaiden shifted his arm and tried to ignore the ache where the piece of metal had ripped his flesh. His throat was still raw from breathing in the dust from the cavern, and his mouth tasted of mold and earth. He glanced around at Birch, Jade, and Willow, who were all covered in the same gray dust.
Willow was curled up on the bench beside him, apparently asleep. Her brown hair draped over her neck. The white skin was so pale and smooth. Scratches on her face were transforming into thin, pink lines as the INCR did its work. Kaiden experienced a sudden surge of warmth for Willow. Even though he knew she had not trusted him enough to tell him about the terrorists, he had to admit he would have been dead already if she hadn’t been thinking ahead. For a lab tech, she had handled herself pretty well. He told his team to show initiative, and she had done that, though in the future he would need to make sure she remembered to include him decisions as important as joining forces with terrorists.
Birch fidgeted with her rifle in pensive silence. Jade kept her head bowed but cast him a furtive glance now and again. She seemed to be embarrassed about her show of affection in the cave, but Kaiden hadn’t thought it wrong. It had surprised him to find that Jade was vulnerable because she broadcast such a sense of calm self-control. Yet, her hug had been fierce, almost desperate. The memory of it warmed his chest and confused him at the same time. Could he feel affection for two women simultaneously? Should he? He had no experience in such things. It wasn’t a part of TAP training protocol. Maybe it was just these confusing bursts of memory that seemed to be wrenching him in two different directions.
It hadn’t taken the laser drill long to penetrate the rubble. Kaiden had carried Iris through and handed her to two men who rushed away with her. She had a hole in her chest that was bubbling blood. Kaiden didn’t know if the INCR could save her. It hadn’t saved Quill from a similar wound. But he needed her to explain why she and Greyson had betrayed them. And why she had kept mumbling something about Noah and promises.
“Okay,” Birch said. “I’m going to say what you’re all thinking. Greyson and Iris tried to kill us.”
Jade raised her eyebrows in agreement, but Kaiden shook his head.
“I don’t think that was the idea,” he said. When Birch smirked at him, he continued. “They could have just tranquilized us and killed us with ease.” He glanced at Jade. Her lips lifted in a smile. She had been the only one of them to have lethal rounds and had shot Iris and Greyson.
“I didn’t trust them from the beginning,” she said.
“Me neither,” Kaiden agreed. “But they thought we all had non-lethal rounds. Iris has the best kill record at TAP, and Greyson was an excellent shot. Together, they could have tranquilized us all in a second if they took us by surprise.”
“They blew the exit to close it for the terrorists,” Jade said.
“That’s what Willow thought,” Birch said.
Kaiden glanced at Willow. Curled up like she was, with the dirt still clinging to her face and hair, she seemed so vulnerable. He wanted to reach out and brush the hair from her cheek.
But if what she said about her memories was true, she knew far more than she had told them. She had five lifetimes of untampered memories of being inside TAP. He wanted to trust her because she had saved his life, not once but twice, and he knew he no longer had much choice. But she had delivered them into the hands of a bunch of religious fanatics—terrorists who believed that the existence of clones was a sin against God. He couldn’t see how this was going to turn out well.
“But who ordered them to do it?” Kaiden asked. “Was it Rio or Noah?” He needed to know who had corrupted members of his crew and how.
The music of the news stream played, and the words Breaking News flashed across the screen. Kaiden glanced up at it, half-expecting a news report on their escape from TAP.
“The Destroying Angels strike again,” the newscaster said. Kaiden exchanged glances with Jade and Birch as the image on the screen panned over the smoking remains of a mansion. Emergency hover-vehicles floated in the air with their red and blue lights flashing while fire drones poured fountains of water and foam onto the building. The camera zoomed in to show two charred bodies being laid on stretchers.
“Moments after the drone strike,” the announcer said, “the Destroying Angels posted the following message on their website. ‘You are God’s temple, and God’s Spirit dwells in you,’” it read. “‘If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. The holy Sons of God have stretched forth their hands to cleanse the earth of two perversions of God’s temple. Justice rained down from the sky on those who would take God’s power unto themselves. We have punished Senator Benton Newborn and his wife for using their political connections and vast wealth to create clones of their bodies. Praise be to God.’”
Willow sat up and rubbed at her eyes, smearing the dirt around her face.
“And these are the people you brought us to?” Kaiden asked without any preamble.
Willow glanced up at the screen where the terrorist’s message still played as the newscaster described the destruction in detail.
“They want all clones dead,” Kaiden said. “You get that, right?”
“The International Confederation of States,” the newscaster continued, “denies the existence of any government-funded cloning program and insists that cloning human bodies remains illegal under international law.”
“Since when has that stopped anybody?” Jade said.
“It’s more complicated than it appears,” Willow said.
“Of course it is,” Kaiden said. “But I think you owe us an explanation.”
Willow scowled. “I was going to tell you, but everything just happened so fast. I was afraid that if I told you once everything was in motion, you wouldn’t go, and we would have all been trapped.” She paused and licked her lips. “There’s something else I need to tell you before—”
The door swished open. Kaiden snapped up his rifle, but it was only Flint.
Flint beamed at the sight of them, and he pushed a shock of black hair from his dark face. Sometimes Flint reminded Kaiden so much of Quill. They both loved computers, though Kaiden didn’t much like Flint’s taste in music.
“Not a bad ship for a bunch of terrorists, eh?” Flint said. Wild punk music played from his wrist terminal. Kaiden would have preferred classical, but if it helped Flint focus, he wouldn’t say anything.
“Where have you been?” Kaiden said.
Flint grinned and turned off the music. “I’ve been playing with terrorist technology,” he said. He glanced at Birch and winked before he clicked something on his wrist terminal and scanned the corners of the room. Then he bent forward to whisper to them. “I managed to download most of their onboard database while I was uploading Quill’s cloaking software.”
“You gave them the software?” Kaiden demanded. “What if we need to hide from them?”
Flint didn’t stop smiling. “Shh,” he said. “I just disabled the mics and cameras they have in this room, but they could be listening at the door.” He glanced at it. “Don’t worry about the software. I didn’t give them the
latest version, and I installed a bug so I can disable it anytime I want.”
Kaiden shook his head. “You’ve got guts,” he said.
Flint grinned again. “Better turn things back on before they get suspicious.”
“So, how did you hook up with the terrorists?” Kaiden asked. Willow had never explained.
Flint glanced at Willow. “I took a hovercraft to the coordinates Willow gave me, and this old guy in a T-shirt was waiting for me.”
“That was risky,” Kaiden said to Willow. “They could have just shot him.”
“They wouldn’t,” Willow said, “because my—”
The door opened before she could finish, and Flint jumped as he clicked his wrist terminal again and spun.
Kaiden snapped his rifle up again and found himself staring at a tall, muscular man with white hair in his late-fifties. He wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt just like Hawk had worn. The man’s gaze swept over them before it came to rest on Willow. She backed up half a step as the man stepped into the room.
“Hello, Willow,” he said.
Kaiden glanced at her. Willow paled and pinched her lips tight. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“Who are you?” Kaiden demanded as he came to his feet.
The man never took his gaze from Willow’s face. Kaiden tried to read what was going through the man’s mind, but he couldn’t.
“It’s good to see you,” the man said.
Willow swallowed. “Hello, Oakley,” she said in a soft voice. Tears shimmered in her eyes.
Kaiden stared in confusion. How could a clone, who had been locked up in TAP for forty years, know a terrorist? That thought gave him pause. How had she been able to communicate with them from inside TAP? Willow hadn’t been lying about one thing at least—she was more than a lab tech.
“How long has it been?” Oakley asked. “Nearly forty years?” His gaze swept over her. “And you don’t look a day older.”
“I’m sorry,” Willow said. “It wasn’t what I wanted.”
