by J. W. Elliot
A knock sounded on his door.
“Come,” he said.
He straightened and laid a hand on his pistol. But when the door opened, Jade stood there with the light from the corridor framing her slender figure against the darkness of his room. Jade had bathed, and her still-damp, black hair clung to her neck. She brushed it away and smiled at him as she stepped through the door. She had changed out of her soiled uniform into a T-shirt and jeans. Kaiden cringed at the thought of her being dressed like a terrorist.
“Do you usually sit around in the dark, listening to classical music?” Jade asked.
“Only when it’s necessary,” Kaiden said.
The door closed, and Jade flipped on the light. Kaiden blinked up at her until his eyes adjusted.
“I thought you might like some company,” she said.
Kaiden gestured for her to sit down. She leaned against the wall and slid down beside him. “You know what those chairs are for, don’t you?” she said.
Kaiden sniffed. “They aren’t as comfortable.”
Jade pulled her knees up and hugged them. “Your room looks about like mine.”
“Yeah,” Kaiden sighed. “What do you think we should do?”
“Do we have a choice?”
Kaiden considered her. She had never said exactly why she joined them except that she didn’t want to be alone, and she had argued forcefully in favor of cloning.
“Beyond self-preservation, why are you so willing to accept clones?”
Jade smiled, and two dimples formed just beneath her high cheekbones. “You’ve been dying to ask me that, haven’t you?”
“Just trying to understand.”
Jade’s smile faded. “I keep having these dreams. My grandfather comes to me and tells me that my people have finally lost all of our homelands. Our once beautiful mountains have become wastelands. Now, we must seek a new home in the stars. We must travel up the way our ancestors did into a new land.”
“Then why join us?”
Jade sniffed. “I’ve been sent on many so-called ‘extractions’ of political figures. But they weren’t extractions. They were political assassinations. Why are we acting like terrorists and lying about what we’re doing? Why not tell people the truth that we can clone humans better adapted to survival in space? We’ve ruined this planet, and I don’t know if it can be saved. We might have to find another one. I don’t like lies or the murder of innocent children to do it. I have long had a feeling that TAP is up to something bigger, more frightening.”
“You argued pretty forcefully in favor of cloning with Oakley.”
Jade blew out her breath. “He’s a hypocrite, and he knows it. Murdering suspected clones to stop TAP from harvesting? He’s no better than they are. He just likes to hide behind his religious platitudes.”
“So religion is irrelevant?”
“I didn’t say that,” Jade said. “Religion is important to me and to a lot of people, but it shouldn’t be used to persuade people to engage in acts of evil. It should be about nurturing and brotherhood. It should help us learn to live together peacefully.”
Kaiden considered Jade with renewed respect. She thought deeply about things, and she had a profoundly moral stance. He liked that. He found that he felt comfortable talking to her, more comfortable even than Birch or Willow.
“So, should we help the terrorists destroy TAP?” Kaiden asked.
Jade bowed her head. “I don’t know. It seems like such a waste, but if they really intend to murder billions of innocent people, we might have to.”
“If we don’t,” Kaiden said, “then TAP will eventually kill us—again.”
“What if the terrorists decide to kill us all anyway?” Jade asked.
“That’s a risk,” Kaiden agreed. “But if we don’t help them, we’re still going to die. Either they’ll overwhelm us, or TAP will find us.”
“We might be able to survive.”
“How?”
Jade stared at the wall and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Then she turned to look at him. “I think we need each other.”
“She’s dead,” Willow said without any preamble.
Kaiden glanced up at her. Like the rest of the team, she had changed into jeans and a T-shirt. They drew less attention that way, though he had noted the sullen glares and hostile whispering among the terrorists. He and Jade had just sat down to breakfast at a table in the cafeteria of the old hospital.
The small room with a low ceiling was filled with round tables and a self-serve line. Low-hanging lights lit the area with a dull, yellow glow. The fluorescent light fixtures looked like they were leftovers from the last century. They sat alone, but dozens of terrorists filled the chairs at the other tables, casting them sideways glances and whispering in close huddles.
Kaiden bowed his head. He wasn’t surprised that Iris was dead. The INCR hadn’t been able to save Quill or Burl. Why should it save Iris?
“No great loss,” Jade said. She shoved a spoonful of artificial eggs into her mouth and grimaced.
“Maybe not,” Willow said. “But now, we’ll never know what she and Greyson were up to.”
“You think she would have told us?” Kaiden asked.
“I don’t know,” Willow said, “but you mentioned that she was mumbling the name Noah. The order must have come from the top. Maybe Noah realized we had a way out, and he wanted it sealed. After they blew it up, Greyson and Iris were going to arrest us and take us back.”
“Like that would have worked,” Jade mumbled from around a mouth full of scrambled eggs. “These eggs taste terrible.”
Birch joined them and sat beside Jade. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “Did any of you have hot water in your rooms?” she asked. “And they could use some sanitation-bots.” When no one spoke, she glanced around at them. “What?” she said.
“Iris didn’t make it,” Kaiden said.
Birch considered. “Good rider,” she said. “She was always thorny.”
Kaiden raised his eyebrows at her odd wording.
Jade shook her head. “You mean good riddance,” she said. “And I believe the other word you wanted was prickly.”
Birch grunted over her mouthful of toast and shrugged away Jade’s corrections.
Kaiden wondered if the speech center of Birch’s brain had been damaged when they uploaded her memories. Willow smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He still hadn’t unraveled his confused feelings about her. He was drawn to her in a way he had never been drawn to another woman, except maybe Jade, and yet he was afraid to trust her fully.
“Anyway,” Willow said, “we still have to decide if we’re going to accept Oakley’s offer.”
“Do we have a choice?” Jade said. She glanced at Kaiden.
Kaiden stuffed something that resembled a sausage into his mouth to avoid answering the question. The sausage had a sharp, unpleasant flavor. He wondered what was in it.
“I don’t think we do,” Birch said.
Kaiden swallowed and nodded. “I’m getting the switch removed first.”
The others stopped eating.
“I’m not letting any of you do it, until I make sure it’s safe,” Kaiden said. “I got us into this mess. If anyone is going to die with the experimental operation, it’s going to me.”
“Kaiden,” Willow began to protest, but a large man with short-cropped hair strode past their table and bumped Kaiden’s arm.
When Kaiden glanced up at him, he found the man scowling down at him. Kaiden tried to ignore him, but soon several men and women in white T-shirts had gathered. Kaiden rose to face the man. Jade and Birch followed his example.
Kaiden studied his opponent. He didn’t need any trouble at the moment, not with a room full of clone-hating terrorists.
The man glanced down at Kaiden’s f
orearm, and Kaiden realized that the TAP tattoo had attracted their attention. The man sneered.
“You don’t belong here, freak.”
Kaiden said nothing, but he noted the way the rest of the group spread out, preparing for a fight. He thought of drawing his sidearm but decided that killing terrorists in their own base wouldn’t be a good idea.
He glanced at Jade and Birch. They were ready. The burly man reached out to shove Kaiden, but Kaiden intercepted the man’s fingers, bent them back and down, and held him there. The man tried to twist away from the pain, but Kaiden swung his leg over the man’s head, kicked him in the face with his heel, and sat on his arm. The man cried out as he slammed into the chair with a clatter and then onto the floor.
Jade and Birch jumped to cover him with kitchen knives in hand as the others surged forward. The crowd paused.
“That’s enough,” a voice rang out in the cafeteria. Oakley strode up to them.
“Let him up,” he said to Kaiden.
Kaiden considered breaking the man’s arm but decided against it. He rose and stepped out of the man’s reach.
“Get up, Klinton,” Oakley ordered.
The man rose to his feet with a surly expression. Blood dripped from his nose. He glared at Kaiden.
“Get out of here,” Oakley said.
“They’re clones,” Klinton grumbled. He pointed to the tattoo on Kaiden’s arm.
“That’s none of your concern,” Oakley said. “Get out before I change my mind.”
Klinton grunted and pushed his way through the crowd. Oakley waited until the crowd dispersed.
“I’ll ask you not to rough up my fighters,” Oakley said to Kaiden.
“Then you had better keep a tighter leash on them,” Kaiden said.
Oakley scowled. “Do you have an answer for me?” he said.
“Yes,” Kaiden said. “I’ll go first.”
Chapter Twenty
Triggers and Switches
“You need to understand the risks,” Oakley said.
Kaiden stretched himself out on the cold, aluminum table in the medical lab. The walls were bright white. The hum of medical equipment filled the air, which smelled of plastic and antiseptic. Willow hovered over him protectively, while Oakley loomed behind her. A physician and several white-gowned assistants busied themselves by hooking Kaiden up to monitors and strapping him to the table. The rest of his team had gathered on the other side of the observation window to watch the procedure. Kaiden noticed that Jade and Birch both carried their rifles as if they expected trouble. A surgical-bot hummed overhead.
“The nano-imager,” Oakley explained, “shows several chips attached to the tattoo on your arm.” Oakley pointed to a screen where the tiny structures below Kaiden’s skin could be seen. “We’ve seen this in all the clones we’ve examined, and we think it’s the trigger to the discipline episodes. If we can cut it out, we should be able to stop them.”
“Risks?” Kaiden asked.
Oakley raised a bushy eyebrow. “Coma, paralysis, death.”
“Very nice,” Kaiden said.
Willow patted his arm. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” She smiled at him.
Kaiden grabbed her hand and drew her close. “If anything happens to me,” he whispered, “don’t trust Oakley, and, please, save my team.”
Willow’s brow wrinkled, and she glanced at Oakley. She squeezed Kaiden’s hand. “I will.”
Kaiden released her and turned to Oakley. “You’ve given me your oath that all you want is to kill Noah and destroy the TAP operating software.”
“You have my word.”
“You promise that you won’t go in there and start killing every clone you see?”
“My word.”
Kaiden locked his gaze with Oakley’s as the surgical-bot maneuvered and descended toward Kaiden’s arm. He knew he was taking a risk, but he couldn’t allow TAP to keep this nano-leash on him, or he would never be able to discover who he was. He would never be free. But he wasn’t going to trust Oakley—ever.
“Hold still,” the physician said. Kaiden felt the stab of pain as he injected Kaiden with a local anesthetic at the site of the tattoo. “That should dull most of the pain,” the physician said and nodded to his assistant.
The surgical-bot hummed as a blue light throbbed inside it. The blue laser flashed. It felt like ice and fire stabbing into Kaiden’s arm. He tried not to flinch.
“The switch is located in the dermis,” the doctor said, “so we’re going to cut just beneath it and remove the dermis intact.”
“Do it,” Kaiden said.
“Here goes,” Willow said.
The robot hummed again and then sizzled in a flash of blinding blue light. Pain surged up Kaiden’s arm through the back of his neck and exploded into his brain. Terror constricted his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move as the discipline pierced his brain.
A monster spider landed on his chest and sank its fangs into his throat. The brightly lit surgical room blinked and plunged into darkness. Kaiden floated in a weightless nothingness. He opened his eyes, and everything was blue and wet. He tried to breathe but fluid-filled his lungs. He coughed and flailed about. His head emerged into a brilliant yellow light. Someone squealed with laughter, and he spun around, treading water to find a beautiful black girl clapping her hands. A large black man picked her up. “Catch,” he said. And he launched her toward Kaiden. The girl squealed in delight as she flew through the air and plunged into the water, and Kaiden submerged to catch her and drag her to the surface. The girl clung to his neck, coughed, and then giggled.
“Do it again,” she said. “Again.”
Kaiden groaned. The vivid memory, with its powerful emotions, faded. His head ached. A finger caressed his cheek, and he blinked at the light. He was still in the operating room with its white walls and antiseptic smell.
“That didn’t work,” Willow said as she peered down at him. “Apparently, the switch can protect itself.”
“What happened?”
“Well,” she said, “the trigger has an old cloaking software that interrupted the nano-imager the first time we used it. Flint disabled it, and we found that the tattoos on your arm and on your neck are connected under the skin by nano-hairs that tie into your central nervous system and your brain. The tattoos on your neck are connected to nano-chips that attach to your spinal cord with nano-wires, and a thicker cord penetrates the left side of your brain, which must be where the discipline switch is. We were lucky to save you.”
She laid a hand on his arm. Her hand was cool and smooth. He read the concern and tenderness in her gaze. It touched him. She had been worried about him.
“So, the tattoos have a kill switch?” Kaiden asked.
“Looks like it.”
“So, what now?”
“I’ve been thinking about that while you slept,” Willow said. “We could try to temporarily disable the two switches with a focused electromagnetic pulse. Then, if we set up two surgical-bots to remove both switches simultaneously, it could work.”
“Let’s do it,” Kaiden said. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. His head felt like it would explode.
“This could kill you,” Willow said.
“Do it anyway,” Kaiden murmured without opening his eyes. When she didn’t say anything, he glanced at her.
Willow leaned back in her chair and gaped at him. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I want my freedom,” Kaiden said. “Then, I want to get my memories back from TAP.”
Willow shifted and glanced at the door.
“What?” Kaiden asked.
Willow avoided his gaze. “I actually have them,” she said.
“What?” Kaiden tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea and stabbing pain in his head made him lie back down.
Willow pla
ced a cool hand on his bare chest and smiled. “I found and pulled your memories from TAP’s files just before we left,” she said. “I didn’t think we would be able to go back, and you were so driven to get your memories, I…”
Kaiden grabbed her hand. “Do you know how to upload them?” The excitement of knowing that he might be able to untangle this confusion of fragmented memories surged through him.
Willow shrugged, but left her hand in his. “I designed the procedure,” she said, “but what do you think this is going to get you?”
“My memories. My identity.” Kaiden couldn’t see why this was so hard for her to understand.
Willow withdrew her hand. “That body is dead, Kaiden. The body those memories belonged to doesn’t exist anymore.”
Kaiden grabbed his aching head with his hands. “I want to know who I am,” he moaned.
“Who you are?” Willow lunged to her feet. The sound of the chair scooting backward echoed off the sterile white walls. “You’re a clone,” she insisted. “You’re a clone who works for TAP, which has been using you as a scientific experiment. That’s who you are.”
Kaiden jerked his hands away from his face. “No,” he said. “I was born with a family. I had a mother. I had a father. I had a sister. I want to know who they are.”
Willow threw up her hands. “They’re dead, too!” she yelled.
Kaiden glared at her. “You remember,” he accused.
“Yes, I do,” Willow said. “And I wish I didn’t.”
Kaiden snorted. “Easy to say when you don’t have to wonder who and what you were.”
Willow shook her head. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like.”
“I could say the same thing to you,” Kaiden said.
Willow paced. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said, “because we don’t have the equipment here. We would have to get back into TAP and…”
“No, you don’t.” Oakley’s voice came from the doorway.
Kaiden jerked his head around as Willow spun.
Oakley leaned against the doorway with his arms folded. “We have the technology here,” he said. “It’s an older version of what TAP uses now, but it works.”
