by J. W. Elliot
The security personnel rushed past them, oblivious to their presence.
“The way is clear,” Birch said as the last guard rounded the corner. “The nano-bots are at the elevator.”
They raced the last couple hundred yards to the elevator and crowded inside.
“Level nine,” Willow said.
Flint, who stood beside the controls, glanced at Kaiden.
“That’s where she’ll be,” Kaiden said.
When the doors opened on the ninth level, they found everything in darkness. Only the blood-red emergency lights pulsed in the corridor.
“Left,” Flint said.
They pelted down the corridor, desperate to reach Noah. Kaiden knew that his mothers would know that they had come and would have guessed their purpose. But he was surprised at the lack of opposition. He had expected the elevator to freeze halfway down and trap them inside. It was too easy. If the other clones of his mother were suspicious, they wouldn’t have let them come so far unless…
The nano-bots slipped ahead of them to scout the way.
“There’s a squad down there,” Birch shouted. But it was too late.
They skidded to a stop as bullets zipped and slapped the metal walls and floor among them. Sierra and Blaze fell. Kaiden dropped to his belly and squeezed off several bursts into the guards. Then, he rolled behind the corner and scrambled to his feet.
“I thought we were invisible,” Willow said.
“They’re shooting at sounds,” Kaiden said.
“We can’t go that way,” Birch said. “The bot shows another squad on its way.”
“There’s another way,” Flint said. “All these corridors converge on a central space that is blank on the map.”
“That’s where she will be,” Kaiden said. “Go. I’ll give you a few seconds.”
The fuzzy reflection of the advancing squad shone on the polished wall. Kaiden knew the same reflection would give him away as soon as Birch was down the corridor and out of range of the software linked to the chips in his clothing. The cloaking software would no longer work. He glanced at the clones that had been shot. Sierra was dead, but Blaze was watching him with wide, pain-filled eyes. Blaze had taken at least three bullets that Kaiden could see. He wasn’t going to last long.
“You and me,” Kaiden said. Blaze nodded and raised his rifle.
As Birch and the others raced down the corridor, Kaiden’s reflection appeared in the polished metal once he was out of range of the cloaking software. A cry rang out, and bullets slapped into the steel walls. Blaze starting firing, and Kaiden reached around the corner and fired.
Amid the deafening clamor, Kaiden heard the distant metallic bang of a grenade bouncing off the wall. It rolled past Kaiden down the corridor. Kaiden dropped to the ground and covered his head as the grenade exploded. Fragments of metal bit into his legs and back. He grimaced at the pain, but he couldn’t worry about them. He had to rely on the INCR to keep him alive.
Kaiden raised his rifle. But before he could shoot, bullets zipped overhead and slammed into the guards that barreled around the corner. Kaiden glanced back but couldn’t see the others who were still within the range of the cloaking software. They must still be giving him cover.
The other guards stopped and tried to poke their rifles around to get at him. Kaiden tossed his own grenade around the corner and scrambled to his feet. One glance at Blaze told Kaiden that he was dead. A large piece of metal protruded from Blaze’s neck. Kaiden raced after his companions as his grenade exploded behind him, but he skidded to a stop.
The first grenade had blown a hole in the floor. He didn’t have time to figure out how to get over the jagged gash in the floor. He yanked open the nearest unmarked door, glanced at his two dead companions again, and slipped inside.
He closed the door quietly, pressed what he thought was a lock, and strode into the dark room lit only with red, flashing emergency lights. Gunshots echoed in the corridor, and he figured Jade, Birch, and Willow were covering him while Flint figured out where to go.
The room was a large storage space. Row after row of shelves with boxes and equipment lined the room. A door with an exit sign flashing above it stood on the far side of the room. He broke into a run but had sped only half a dozen paces when a man stepped in front of him—a stocky, black man about seventeen years old with short-cropped curly hair and black skin—a man wearing a black security uniform carrying the same weapons Kaiden carried.
Kaiden slid to a stop. For a moment, he thought he was peering into a mirror or a highly polished wall. His senses seemed to have betrayed him. He looked on in confusion, wondering if the explosions had rattled his brain, like the one on the lunar transport.
The clone sneered. “You won’t be killing our mother again,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Termination
“Let’s go,” Flint called.
Willow hesitated. Kaiden was still back there, somewhere. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. What if he died before she could explain everything to him?
She started back down the corridor when Birch grabbed her wrist.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Kaiden,” Willow gasped.
Jade grabbed her and spun her around. “You can’t do him any good standing here while they shoot you,” she said. She pushed Willow toward where Flint was beckoning to them.
Flint led them through a series of labs and storage rooms until they came out in another corridor. They pelted through the eerie, red lights and wailing sirens to a set of large, double doors at the end of the corridor.
To Willow’s surprise, the doors weren’t locked.
“It’s a trap,” Birch said.
“Probably,” Flint said.
“Do we have a choice?” Jade said.
“What about Kaiden?” Willow asked.
They all stared at her.
“He’ll make it when he can,” Birch said as she pushed past them and slipped inside.
Willow was the last through the door. She pulled the rifle to her shoulder even though she wasn’t a good shot. The room was darker than the corridors had been. No emergency lights flashed in here, but the blue glow of dozens of holographic screens pierced the darkness. A large circular column that appeared to be another room filled the center of the space.
“Good grief,” Birch whispered. “What is this?”
Machine guns exploded—little bursts of lights flashed in the darkness. The bullets zipped past, pinging and ricocheting off the walls. Flint grunted and toppled over. Pearl fell against the wall and slid to the floor, leaving a dark stain. The bullet had gone through her head. Willow’s stomach lurched. They were going to die before even finding Kaiden’s mother.
“So, you already know that we’re clones,” Kaiden said to the sneering young man who looked just like himself.
The clone raised his rifle. Kaiden tossed one of Jade’s grenades and dove behind a shelf filled with boxes that bore the Tree of Life symbol. Bullets slammed into the box before the grenade exploded with a deafening roar. Kaiden waited, expecting to see some tiny nano-tubes spill from the boxes, but a thin, silver liquid dribbled to the floor.
Kaiden tried to avoid touching it as he worked his way around to get behind the clone. For all he knew, that silver liquid was part of The Flood—maybe some acid that would eat him alive. The clone anticipated his every move as they engaged in a weird cat-and-mouse game in the eerie shadows of the storage room.
Kaiden cursed. How does a person outsmart himself? They exchanged several bursts of gunfire before the idea came to him. If this Kaiden already knew that Noah was their mother, then maybe he had bits and pieces of the other memories. Maybe Kaiden could distract him long enough to shift things in his favor.
“How much has she told you?” Kaiden called.
“
Unlike you,” the clone said, “I remember my family.”
“Do you remember how we died?” Kaiden shouted.
“I know how you’re going to die,” his clone replied.
“You know then,” Kaiden said, “that she planned to let us die so she could clone us, don’t you? Even though she knew we would rather remain dead than be cloned?” The thought hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but it made sense with everything else he had learned. Maybe he could have reconciled himself to having a new chance at life if he hadn’t also known that he would be slaughtered at age twenty and reborn again. Not much of an existence.
His clone didn’t say anything.
“Ah, so you do remember. You remember why we were opposed to cloning?” Silence. “No? Well, let me help you.” Kaiden crawled to the end of the aisle and slipped into the next, trying to angle toward the door he had seen in the far wall. “The cloning program stole resources away from curing diseases,” he continued, “from developing new food supplies and improving the lives of natural humans. We used to be idealistic and committed to goodness and justice. And that’s why we hated her. Because she stood for selfishness, pessimism, and waste.”
A bullet zipped past Kaiden’s head so close that he felt the breeze against his sweating skin. He slipped a box from a shelf and crawled through to the next aisle. He needed to get to the door.
“Did you know that she cloned Rose, too?” he called. “That beautiful little girl who used to climb on our knees and squeeze our face between her chubby hands?”
Silence followed.
“Remember how much we hated her for not saving Rose? It turns out that she let Rose die too so she could test her new synaptic download and cloning process.”
“Keep talking, moron,” his clone said.
“And she’s been using us as guinea pigs, too,” Kaiden continued. The door was getting closer. “You know she’s gone through several models trying to create a Kaiden just like you. One who is so devoted to TAP that he won’t ask the questions every other clone has asked. She bred us to be stupid and easily controlled. I beat her at it. But you are apparently her star product—produced in a test tube to become her lap dog. To do her bidding even when it means denying your own identity.”
A grenade rolled across the floor, and Kaiden dove behind another shelf of boxes as a spray of bullets ripped into the floor behind him. The grenade exploded. Boxes lifted off the shelf and scattered around him. The silver liquid spilled over his clothes, soaking into his uniform. It was warm and slick, but it didn’t feel wet. Terror gripped his throat. He tried to scramble away from it, afraid that it might be dangerous, that it might simply consume him like acid. But when no pain followed, he focused on the real danger to hand.
He used the cover of the smoke and the noise of the explosion to circle back. There had to be some way to outthink his clone. There was no way he was going to escape alive, and if he did, his clone would simply follow him. This had to end now. He didn’t want to kill his clone. In a strange way, it felt like suicide. But this version of himself had been too well-programmed. His mother had finally created the perfect child he’d never been able to be. Kaiden leveled his rifle at the back of the clone’s head and placed his finger on the trigger. One shot with an exploding round would end this. He had to reach his mother before it was too late. But could he kill himself like this? Did he really want the added guilt of killing a clone of himself to that of having shot his own mother? He was justified, of course. It would be self-defense. Kaiden straightened and lowered the rifle. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t.
The clone spun and raised his own rifle to shoot Kaiden through the cloud of drifting smoke. Kaiden stood there. Would his clone kill him? Would he do what Kaiden could not?
Just as Kaiden’s clone slammed his rifle into his shoulder and sighted down the barrel, he stiffened and cried out in sudden agony. He squeezed the trigger, and a burst of exploding shells raked across the stacks of boxes and into the ceiling as he crumpled to the floor, writhing in anguish.
Kaiden couldn’t help but experience sympathetic discomfort. After all, he knew what was going through the clone’s head. But this discipline episode didn’t end. It kept going and going. Kaiden’s stomach tightened. It was a disturbing, dreamlike experience to see himself struggling in such agony and to know that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
His wrist terminal buzzed, and he glanced down. “I’ve terminated him,” his mother said. “Come.”
A sick knot twisted Kaiden’s stomach. To his mother, he would always be expendable. He approached the still-twitching body and knelt beside him. The clone’s face, his face, was contorted in the most awful expression of torment. His body was bathed in sweat. Trickles of blood dribbled from his ears and nose.
Kaiden tried to find a pulse, but there was none. Pity and horror filled his heart. What a waste. But he had no time to ponder it. He rushed toward the door. He had to end this.
Even the Noah, who was helping him, was capable of murdering her own son. That was the true essence of his mother. Once she had determined on a course of action, nothing would stop her. She had no scruples when she pursued an agenda she thought was right. To her, the ends justified the means.
The door he had locked behind him when he entered blew open with a spray of hot metal. Kaiden spun and fired into the doorway, tossed a grenade toward it, and leaped for the exit. He raced into the corridor beyond and veered to the right. He knew from Flint’s schematics that all the corridors on this level converged on a central chamber. His mother was supposed to be down there somewhere.
The emergency sirens continued to blare, and the security lights flashed. Gunfire and explosions echoed down the corridor. The guards would be following him. He passed through another room to the next corridor and knelt to balance a grenade against the door so that it wouldn’t go off until someone opened the door. Then he sprinted down the corridor, ignoring the stabbing pain in his legs from the shrapnel of the first grenade, desperate to reach his friends. The INCR would have to work while he ran.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mothers
The sounds of battle rebounded down the hallway as Kaiden pelted through the darkness, lit only by the crimson emergency lights. He threw open the door and found himself in a dark room filled with blue holographic images and desks. The air tasted of gunpowder. To his dismay, he found his friends pinned against the wall to his right. Why didn’t they have their cloaking software on?
In front of them, a squad of at least fifteen security guards fanned out in a semi-circle to protect the doorway to a large circular column that filled the center of the room. Basil’s body draped over the desk. Terror for the rest of his friends burned in his chest.
A few of the security squad closest to him swung to face him, and Kaiden raised his rifle and fired directly into the flank of the semi-circle. He advanced as he fired. Guards dropped and stumbled about, apparently confused by the new assault. Half of them crumpled to the ground before the rest scattered for cover amid the maze of desks and chairs.
Jade’s crouching form circled the other way around the central room. Kaiden could always count on her to see the bigger picture. Willow and Birch were firing from behind a desk. Kaiden couldn’t see Flint, but Stone lay sprawled on the floor.
Caught between a three-way crossfire, the last of the guards were down within a few minutes. Jade was already at the doors to the central chamber by the time Kaiden reached her. She gave him a relieved smile and yanked on the door handles. But they were locked. So, she set charges on the door.
“Where’s Flint?” Kaiden said.
“Kaiden,” Willow called. Birch half-carried a stumbling Flint toward them. Even in the dim light, Kaiden could see the wet stain on his jacket. Kaiden raced to help them.
Flint tried to smile at him. “I’m trying to let those little INCR buddies do their job.”
>
“Where are Aspen and Pearl?” Kaiden asked. They were the last of the clones that came with him from Ararat.
“Dead,” Birch said. She held up her WT to show it had been hit and crushed. That would explain why they weren’t using the cloaking software.
Flint scowled at Kaiden’s jacket. “What have you been rolling in?”
Kaiden glanced at the silver liquid that had soaked his jacket. It was starting to lose its color, assuming the same color as his jacket. “No idea,” he said.
“Get back!” Jade shouted.
They dove behind the desks as the charges blew the doors from their hinges. Jade and Birch rushed into the haze. Kaiden left Flint leaning on Willow and followed.
He found himself in a round room with a high ceiling. On the wall in front of them, a huge screen was a map of the world dotted with thousands upon thousands of symbols of the Tree of Life. All the trees in California and the surrounding area were blinking red.
Before the screen stood three women. The one in the center was shouting at the other two.
“Mother!” Kaiden yelled. “Stop.”
All three women spun as one. They were identical, though apparently different ages. Even the clothes they wore were the same. And they all wore that bright red lipstick that he found so disturbing. As they faced him, Kaiden realized that all three of them held pistols in their hands. He leveled his rifle at them.
“Please don’t do this,” he said. The thought of killing his mother again turned his stomach sour. Even though he now knew that they were clones, they were still human. He didn’t think he could do it again.
“You’re too late,” the one in the middle said.
Kaiden hesitated. He knew what he had to do.
“Why trees?” Jade shouted.
The three women stared at her.
“I mean, why not rockets? Wouldn’t that be more effective?”
