by J. W. Elliot
A male clone in a white lab coat glared at Willow as she passed. What had her memory done? She had sent them two memories. One of her waking up inside the head of a thirteen-year-old child with all the pain and agony of that experience. She had also sent the memory when she had first understood that she had been cloned. But memories were tricky things. She knew that trying to upload a full memory scan into a brain that was not structured like the original brain could result in paralysis and death. She had no idea what two short memories would do in a completely different brain, or if they would even take hold.
Willow approached the body of a clone in a red jacket that was not stirring. She paused and knelt beside the young woman. The woman wasn’t breathing. Willow swallowed. The reset must have killed her. She would never know if it was the discipline or the memories that had done it. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Willow rose and continued.
Most of the clones were awake now. Some were still vomiting. Others were staring around at each other, dazed and disoriented. Some of the security personnel picked up their rifles and glared around at the other clones. Willow knew she needed to hurry to catch up with Kaiden, but she had to know what was going on in the minds of these clones. What had her memories done to them?
She stopped a clone in a blue engineering jacket who had a surly expression on his face.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
He glanced at her lab coat and glared at her. “Did you do this to me?”
“What?” Willow said. She tried to control the trembling in her voice. She hadn’t been trained in security. If this man decided to take out his frustration on her, she didn’t stand a chance.
“Are we all clones?” he asked her. Others stopped to listen. Some drew near.
Willow glanced around at them and steeled herself for their reaction.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re all clones.”
“Not me,” someone shouted.
Willow spun to find a female security officer striding toward them through the growing crowd of people.
“We’re all clones,” someone echoed Willow.
“It’s a lie,” the security officer yelled. “Someone’s hacked the system, and you’re all confused. You just need to stay calm.”
A massive detonation rumbled through the compound, knocking Willow to her knees. The lights flickered. Someone screamed.
“It’s the terrorists,” the security officer called. “Stay calm.”
“You’re the terrorist,” someone shouted.
Others took up the cry, and the security officer backed away.
“Remain calm,” she said. She lowered her rifle. “Let’s everyone just relax.”
Then, they were on her. She fired, and three clones fell before she collapsed under their combined assault.
“No!” Willow screamed as she scrambled back to her feet. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They weren’t supposed to attack each other. Clearly, the memories didn’t upload the same way in all of the clones, and some of them took the memories badly. It had made them hysterical and vicious. What had she done? How could she stop this?
She tried to drag the attackers away from the officer, but she got punched in the face for her efforts and was shoved away. She tasted the blood in her mouth. The despair and desperation drove her down the corridor. She had to get to Kaiden. She had to find a way to end this madness.
Kaiden paused by the narrow outlines of the door. The lines were barely visible in the pale blue glow of the emergency lights. There was a keypad, and he didn’t have Flint or Willow to hack the system for him. He pulled out the stackable explosive charges Jade had given him, set them stacked three deep, and dashed back down the hallway.
The door blasted inward with a roar and shower of metal and smoke. Kaiden rushed into the smoke and leaped through the door. He paused to take his bearings and froze.
There she was, picking herself up from the ground amid the wreckage of the door. A battery of computer monitors flickered above her. Some showed the pandemonium raging in the corridors of TAP. Clones were attacking clones. Terrorists in T-shirts were spreading down the corridors, shooting as they advanced.
The room’s quiet elegance contrasted with the chaos and horror displayed on the flashing screens. It appeared to be a sitting room or living room. Plush furniture, now covered in a fine layer of dust from the blasted doorway, and paintings of floods and a huge tree had been artfully placed. A table with a plate of sandwiches on top stood off to the side.
The woman righted herself and studied him as he entered as if the blast had meant nothing to her. Behind her, two more women peered at him from computer monitors for an instant before the monitors went blank. Kaiden’s mind reeled. How could this be?
The woman had dark skin, straight black hair, and bright red lipstick.
“Mother?” he gasped.
The woman smiled. The sight of that beautiful smile he had so longed to see sent wild shivers coursing through him. A lump rose in his throat, and his eyes stung. He stepped toward her. All the longing and heartache that had been stirring inside him since the blast on the lunar transport boiled to the surface. Here she was. The mother he loved. The mother he hated. The mother he had lost.
“Hello, son,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
For God So Loved The World
Willow rounded the corner near the stairwell and skidded to a stop. She needed to catch her breath and figure out where she was. What was the fastest way to reach Kaiden? The emergency lights illuminated the hallways in a pale blue glow where a gigantic hole had been ripped in the corridor. She gazed up at the dangling wires and the jagged rent with sky-blue paint that curled and cracked on the bent metal. The explosion had torn through several floors and collapsed a huge portion of the Genesis Room. The chatter of machine-gun fire echoed through the hallways. Clear liquid spreading over the floor and dripping through the rent brought her heart into her mouth.
“No,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t.”
She stepped up to the hole and peered through. The Genesis Room had been destroyed. The glass artificial wombs had been shattered, and the corpses of innocent babies lay strewn over what remained of the floor. No motherless wombs remained intact. They were dead—all of them. Bile rose in Willow’s throat. The horror gripped her stomach. She struggled to keep from throwing up.
How could they do this? How could anyone do this? Oakley had known all along they would never let him and his terrorists roam free in Ararat and had planned for his rescue. He let them overwhelm the security system from within while his men waited outside to rush in once the base was defenseless.
The rattle of gunfire galvanized her into action. She wiped savagely at the tears that dripped down her cheeks and sprang down the corridor to the last door, yanked it open, and sprinted through the lab. She rushed down the next corridor as the gunfire grew louder.
“Please, no,” Willow whispered.
She panted as she slid to a stop in front of the glass window overlooking the nursery where she had stood with Kaiden a few weeks before. Oakley and a group of terrorists were systematically working their way from room to room, leaving a trail of bodies behind them and pools of blood that spread out on the white tile floor. He must have raced directly here after escaping from Rio’s office.
Willow pounded on the glass. “No!” she shouted. “You promised.” One of the terrorists loosed a burst of gunfire at her. She ducked as the bullets smashed through the window, showering her with glass.
When she looked up again, Oakley was striding for the door to the stairway that led up to the observation window and waving the terrorists on. Willow rushed to meet him. She had never felt so betrayed in all her life—not even when she discovered what TAP had done to her. No crime TAP had committed could justify what he was doing to innocent children. What had happened to the sensitive boy s
he remembered who had liked love songs and toy trucks? The boy who had cried after biting a playmate in the nursery because he felt bad for hurting him?
Oakley stepped through the door and waited for her to approach. The rifle dangled from a strap around his neck. He rested one hand on it as if he wanted to be sure it was there. Willow raced up to him and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Stop it! Stop it now!”
Oakley grabbed her fists and held her.
“I saw you fall from the hovercraft,” he said. His voice was calm.
Willow gaped at him. “So, that justifies killing innocent children?”
“They aren’t children,” Oakley said. “They’re freaks.”
“You promised!” Willow said. She jerked her hands away from Oakley’s grasp.
Oakley sneered. “A promise to a monster doesn’t have to be honored.”
Willow gaped at him. She wanted to slap him across the face again. “We aren’t the enemy,” Willow said. “It’s not our fault they did this to us.”
“It’s a perversion,” Oakley said. His lips lifted in a sneer.
“Would you kill a deformed natural human child?” Willow demanded.
“It’s not the same thing.” Oakley wiped a drop of blood from his eyebrow.
“We are just as innocent as natural children,” Willow insisted.
Oakley shook his head. “You have no idea what they have planned, do you?”
Willow threw up her hands in frustration. “I’ve heard of The Flood if that’s what you mean.”
“Then, you understand why you all have to die?” Oakley said.
Willow backed away from him. Oakley had become just like their father—driven by hatred and the lust for power. Their father had gone to Africa to engineer coups so he could rise to power on a fountain of blood. He had never cared who he killed or how many. Now, here was Oakley, his white T-shirt spattered with the blood of innocent children, sneering at her the way her father used to do.
“I’m your sister,” Willow said.
Oakley laughed bitterly. “My sister is dead,” he said. “You’re a freak. A dangerous lab experiment.”
The tears welled up to blur Willow’s vision. Her heart ached for the life that TAP had stolen from her. It ached for the little boy who had become so vicious and filled with rage. It ached for the children Oakley had murdered, for his betrayal. It ached for what she had sent Kaiden to do. Willow swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Why?” she said. “Why do you hate us so much? You don’t really believe all the lies you tell.”
“Look at you,” Oakley said. He gestured to her with his rifle. “You’re sixty years old, and you still think you’re nineteen. You clones all think you can cheat death and live like gods.”
“You’re crazy!” Willow yelled. Her hands balled into fists. “We. Didn’t. Choose. This!” She enunciated every word.
Then, in a sudden moment of clarity, she understood. “Ah,” she said as she backed away from him. “You’re jealous. Is that why you killed Iris? Did she know what you had planned?”
Oakley sneered. “Iris knew who tried to kill Kaiden. I couldn’t let her tell him.”
“It was you?” Willow said in disbelief. “You were working for Noah?”
“Only when it suited my purpose,” he said. “How do you think I had such good access to the base and to TAP equipment?”
Confusion boiled in Willow’s chest. Why would Noah work against himself? Then it dawned on her. Noah needed the Sons of God to precipitate a crisis. A crisis he could use to justify unleashing The Flood, whatever that was.
“You’re a filthy hypocrite,” Willow shouted, “just like our father.”
Oakley’s face twisted in a snarl as he snapped his rifle up. Willow’s blood ran cold. He was going to kill her. She didn’t want to die. Not like this. Not now. Kaiden still needed her.
“You want to be immortal,” she said. “You don’t want to destroy TAP’s files and technology. You want to take them for yourself. You want to make a clone of yourself.”
Oakley smiled a cold, bitter smile that sent shivers through Willow’s body. He held up a computer chip. “I have everything I need here,” he said. “TAP did all the work for me. Now, I’m going to watch you die a second time.”
A shot exploded in the corridor behind her. Willow flinched, but Oakley jerked, and his eyes opened wide. A red stain spread on his chest. Another shot rang out as Willow lunged to the side. Oakley stumbled into the wall of the corridor, spitting blood. Another shot barked. Oakley slid to his knees and collapsed to the floor. He stared up at her as the blood pumped from the holes in his chest.
Willow jerked her head around, trying to decide which way to run when Jade and Birch stepped out into the corridor. A little curl of smoke trailed from Jade’s rifle. Willow glanced at Oakley’s body.
A red pool expanded grotesquely on the floor as he twitched and reached a hand toward Willow. She blinked at the tears that slipped down her cheeks. Her little brother was dying, the one who had risked his life to save her from being harvested forty years ago, but she had to let him die.
She stepped away from him and peered up at Jade and Birch. “Thanks,” she whispered.
But Jade was staring at the ruined door of the Genesis Room. She raced to it and let out a cry of dismay. Birch joined her.
“No,” Jade sobbed. “They murdered the babies. Why did they kill the babies?”
Birch draped an arm around her shoulder.
“He’s dead,” Jade sobbed.
“Who?” Birch asked.
Jade didn’t answer. She jerked her head around to glare at Willow. “Where’s Kaiden?” she demanded. Tears still streamed down her face.
Birch stepped over and kicked Oakley onto his back. The surprise had frozen onto his face—his blood-soaked T-shirt bright red contrasting against the white tile floor.
“Where is he?” Jade demanded again.
Birch offered Willow a hand. “Come on.”
Willow wiped at the tears. “Level nine. That’s where Noah will be.”
Jade whirled and sprinted down the hallway. Birch followed. Willow hesitated as she stole one last glance at the brother she had loved. The brother who had murdered innocent children and who had intended to murder her in cold blood. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was no longer her brother. Maybe clones had no family. She bent and snatched the computer chip from Oakley’s lifeless hand before racing after Jade and Birch.
Jade raced down the corridor as the tears streamed down her face. Even she had never suspected that Oakley would murder helpless babies. The little Indian boy would be lying on the floor in a puddle of embryonic fluid like the rest of them—cut off from life before he even had a chance to taste the air, to feel the warmth of another human body, or the touch of a loving hand. A burning ached filled her chest. Stopping TAP was supposed to protect him and all those like him. But they had let the wolf in, and he had slaughtered the lambs.
What if Kaiden had also died without her being there to protect him? Then where would she go? What would she do?
“I am strong,” she mumbled and renewed her speed. She had to reach him in time.
“I don’t understand,” Kaiden mumbled as he searched the room through the smoky haze for the old man he had seen on the video. Noah was supposed to be here. He had a job to do. There was no time.
But there was only the woman. His mother. He wanted to rush into her arms, to have her kiss him and hold him the way she used to do when he was small. But the sad look on her face and his own confusion at finding her here stopped him.
“No, you don’t understand,” his mother said. “You never would. That’s why I had to put you in security. I couldn’t have you in the science lab where you’d be exposed to sensitive information.”
The harsh tone in her voice startled Kaiden. She wasn’t pleased to see him. Somewhere in his fragmented imagination, he had assumed she would embrace him and weep on his neck, telling him how much she had missed him, how much she loved him. And why wasn’t she surprised that he hadn’t aged at all since she last saw him? She just stood there in her white lab coat, glaring at him. Her lips, painted red as blood, lifted in a sneer.
“What are you talking about?” Kaiden demanded. He was torn between his desire to be with his mother, the woman who had occupied his dreams for weeks, and his need to find Noah. He had so little time. He had to find Noah. The others were counting on him.
His mother considered him as her sneer shifted to a bitter smile. “Will you believe what I say?” she asked. “Or do you still hate me?”
“I...” Kaiden didn’t know how he felt. He loved her, and yet, he hated her. But how could he feel that way about the same woman?
“I am Noah,” she said. “I am the leader of TAP.”
Kaiden stared. “I thought...You can’t be.” Kaiden had seen Noah. He was a wrinkly old man. He remembered the odd quality of the voice and the flickering screen.
“Sit down and let me explain,” she said.
Kaiden shifted and glanced around but did not sit. Willow had warned him of a trap. She had told him he wouldn’t like what he found, tried to convince him to let someone else do this. Willow had known.
His mother strolled to the red velvet couch and settled into it.
