The Clone Paradox (The Ark Project, Book I)

by J. W. Elliot

  “Rockets draw too much attention,” the woman on the right said, “and they can be shot down in the outer atmosphere by any anti-missile system. The spores would be destroyed before reaching the earth.” This must be the Security Mom.

  “Besides,” the one in the middle said. “Symbolism is important. The Tree of Life connects us back to our ancestors and grows into the future. If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it with a flare, don’t you think?” She was clearly the Scientist Mom.

  “Please don’t make me do this,” Kaiden begged.

  “Shoot us,” the one on the left shouted. “Do it now before it’s too late.” Kaiden stared. This was the Loving Mom, the one that had been helping them.

  The Scientist Mom in the middle raised her pistol and shot Kaiden. The bullet punched into his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He stumbled backward in shock and dismay. Willow screamed. His mother had actually shot him. Somewhere in the unconscious recesses of his soul, he had believed they would still love him—that he would be able to convince them of the madness of The Flood plan.

  Kaiden regained his balance and placed a hand to his chest, expecting to find a gaping hole. But the silver liquid that had spilled on him in the lab had absorbed the bullet and held it in a silver cocoon.

  “Cool,” Kaiden murmured.

  “Watch out!” Willow cried again. Kaiden glanced up. The Scientist Mom aimed her pistol at him again, a snarl twisting her face. Willow leaped in front of him just as the gun fired. Willow grunted and crumpled sideways. Kaiden caught her as she fell. Horror filled his chest and burned in his throat. It was hard to breathe.

  Jade aimed at the woman pointing the pistol at Kaiden. It was one of the clones of his mother. She had shot one in the Genesis Room, and Kaiden had finally killed her back on level nine at TAP. Now, there were three of them, and two of them were trying to kill Kaiden. He had insisted that he be the one to kill them, but Jade saw what that had done to him back at Ararat. If he shot these three, it would tear him apart. She had done worse in the service of TAP. She would scar her own soul to save his.

  Another pistol shot sounded. The Loving Mom, who had screamed at Kaiden to shoot them, tumbled backward onto a desk and slipped to the floor. The Security Mom loomed over her with a sneer.

  Jade squeezed the trigger twice, and the rifle recoiled for each shot. Wham! Wham! The two remaining Noahs toppled to the floor—exploding rounds punching through their foreheads. Even if they had INCR, they couldn’t survive a shot like that. Kaiden would not have to bear the pain of killing his mother again and again. Jade made sure of it.

  Kaiden snapped up his rifle, but Jade was already firing. The Scientist Mom staggered with the impact of exploding rounds and collapsed. Then the Security Mom fell. Kaiden dropped his rifle and bent over Willow, fumbling with her jacket to see the wound. He had to do something. Crimson blood pumped out the hole in her throat to stain her pale white skin. A sob escaped his throat as he clamped a hand over the gaping wound. This couldn’t be happening again.

  Jade lowered her rifle with a grim expression.

  “Birch,” Kaiden shouted. “Help me!”

  He used his hand to cover the hole in the other side of Willow’s neck and tried to squeeze off the flow of blood, shifting to ease the pain from the wound in his own leg. The blood from Willow’s neck seeped through his fingers, warm and slick.

  Willow blinked up at him. She grabbed his arm and squeezed. “I’m sorry,” she gurgled. “Kaiden, please forgive me.” Her grip loosened. “Kaiden. It’s Kaiden.”

  “Hang on,” Kaiden said. Tears dripped from his eyes. His chest was going to explode—first his mothers and now Willow. “Please,” he whispered.

  Birch and Jade knelt beside him. Jade gave him a pitying frown, and Birch reached around behind Willow with a bandage in her hand to stop the flow of blood out of the exit wound. But the look she gave Kaiden told him they had been through this before with Quill.

  “No,” Kaiden said. He grabbed another bandage Jade held out to him and stuffed it in the wound. Willow blinked at him. Her WT buzzed like it had just finished transmitting some message, and she lay still.

  The bottom fell out of Kaiden’s stomach. Tears dripped from his eyes. He lunged to his feet and strode to the center of the room where his mothers’ bodies lay. He was going to make certain they were finished this time for sure. But he found them all dead. Jade had shot to kill.

  “Why?” Kaiden screamed. “Why?” Hot tears burned his eyes.

  The blue screen above him flashed, and an old woman with white hair and bright red lipstick peered down at him from an inset box in the upper corner of the screen.

  “Mother?” he said. How many more were there?

  He wiped at his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things in his rage and horror. It was her. It was really her—not some clone. This was the mother who haunted his dreams. The one he had so longed to see. She must have been nearly eighty years old.

  “Mother?” he said again.

  “You’re too late,” she said. “The earthquake has already unleashed the virus in California. If The Flood is going to be effective, I can’t wait any longer.”

  That’s all she could say to him, after everything she had done to him? Not, How have you been? Not, I’m sorry. Not, I love you. Just, You’re too late.

  Her voice had grown harsh and gravely, devoid of emotion. She had become the heartless monster he had always thought her to be.

  Kaiden swallowed the knot that rose in his throat. Burning despair flooded his chest. He let his gaze drift to the thousands of flashing red Trees of Life on the screen. His mother reached for something in front of her.

  “I’ve sent the codes,” she said.

  Little trees flashed all over the world, one at a time at first and then in groups. Soon, all of the trees were pulsing red—a vibrant crimson flood sweeping the earth.

  “No,” Birch said.

  Clearly, the Loving Mom had been wrong. His real mother had made sure her clones couldn’t start The Flood individually, but she had always made sure she could. It was just like her. She had reveled in control.

  “It would be cruel,” his mother continued, “to condemn humanity to the slow death of a dying planet when they could all die in a matter of hours.”

  Kaiden stared in horror as the map of the world was lit with blinking red trees. His blood ran cold. They had failed. After everything they had sacrificed, it had been for nothing. His own mother had just unleashed the plague of the apocalypse on the world, and he had been powerless to stop her.

  Flint’s voice called from the doorway. “How do you know the virus won’t kill clones?”

  Noah stared down at them from the computer screen. “I tested the virus on myself.”

  Kaiden glanced down at the bodies of the clones of his mother. She had bred them and used them the same way she had used all of the clones. It was sickening. Revolting.

  “I’ve ordered a halt to all operations against you,” she said. “A new world is coming, and we need all clones to work together.”

  Fury surged up to strangle Kaiden. If he could have shot her at that moment, he would have done it. She was insane, a maniac, a mass murderer.

  “Where’s Rose?” Kaiden demanded.

  His mother hesitated, deliberating. She pointed to a side door. Kaiden limped into the little room and found three terrified children cowering in a corner. They were all identical, with the same long, curly hair and pink, frilly dresses. The confusing rush of emotions left Kaiden speechless.

  “Kaiden?” one of them whispered.

  A knot filled his throat. Birch and Jade pushed past him and gathered the girls into their arms.

  “We have to get them out of here,” Kaiden said in a husky voice as they led the children from the room, trying to shield them from the site of their mothers’ bodies.


  He glanced up at the screen. “You’re not my mother.”

  She cast him a grim smile with her unnaturally red lips. “I was weak,” she said. “I should have let you die hating me.”

  “The virus is going to kill you too, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but my work is done,” she said. “The Flood will cleanse the earth, and my clones will soon begin to repopulate the planet and even the stars. I have given humanity a second chance.”

  Kaiden leveled his rifle at the screen and emptied his clip into it. It exploded in a shower of blue and orange sparks. The three little girls screamed.

  “I wouldn’t do that around the kids,” Flint said.

  Kaiden ignored him, enjoying the sight of the smoking screen that sparked and hissed. He spun around to face the others.

  “We can’t leave Willow here,” Kaiden said. He slung his rifle around onto his back and bent to lift Willow into his arms. She was so light. He choked back the sob that tried to escape.

  “What about the others?” Jade asked.

  Kaiden glanced around. Short of forcing everyone to carry out a dead body, he didn’t know what to do.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can only carry one.”

  Jade and Birch collected their friends and laid them in a row with their rifles clasped in their lifeless hands. It was all they could do for them. Then Birch draped Flint’s arm over her shoulder while Jade led the three little girls. As Birch and Flint stumbled through the door, a single shot sounded. Flint cried out. Birch swung her rifle around and unleashed a burst of fire into the prostrate guard who had fired at them from the ground. Then, she grabbed Flint and helped him sit down.

  “Dang,” Flint said through gritted teeth, “that smarts.”

  The little girls started whimpering, but Jade knelt to soothe them.

  “You’ve got to quit catching every bullet they throw at you,” Birch said.

  “I’ll work on that,” Flint replied.

  Birch wrapped a quick bandage on the new wound in Flint’s thigh, and they were soon hobbling through the double doors into the empty corridor beyond. Kaiden glanced back at the smoking screen and the three crumpled forms beneath it. A deep bitterness filled his chest. It had all been for nothing. He hefted Willow in his arms and limped from the room.

  As they passed through the corridors, groups of clones gathered to watch them pass. Some wore blue and white lab coats—others in black security uniforms with their weapons dangling loosely in their hands. No one tried to stop them.

  Kaiden didn’t care anymore. He ignored the dull ache in his legs and back from the shrapnel and gun wounds. The INCR was already repairing them, though he would have to have the metal fragments removed eventually. That pain was nothing to the pain that pounded in his chest. Willow had thought she was saving his life. She hadn’t known about the strange silver liquid. She had died for no reason.

  The silent watching crowd marked their progress, parting for them. Some glared, and others cried. Wrist terminals broadcast the scale of the destruction sweeping the globe. Everyone knew TAP had irrevocably changed, that the world would never be the same.

  They found their gunship where they had left it. The control station still belched out black smoke, and the security encircling their gunship dispersed as they neared it. Kaiden laid Willow on the floor beside the gunship. Flint collapsed to sit with his back to the landing gear. Kaiden glanced at Birch.

  “You’ve got to get a message out to all clone stations and ships,” he said, “to get as many naturals as we can to the space elevators for immediate evacuation to the space stations.”

  Birch hesitated. “It’s too late.”

  “We have to save some of them.” Kaiden couldn’t keep the desperation out of his voice. “You and Jade take the T-60 and get as many as you can from Tallahassee.”

  “Kaiden—” Jade began.

  “No,” Kaiden said. “We can’t let her kill them all. Not after…” He bowed his head over Willow’s body.

  “I’ll send the message,” Flint said. “You two get going.”

  Kaiden didn’t raise his head to see the two women climb aboard the ship. He lifted Willow into his arms and carried her away from the ship and laid her on the ground before returning for Flint. The T-60 carrying Jade and Birch lifted into the air and shot out of the hangar with a roar of its engines. Would they be able to save anyone?

  Flint began working on his computer. He called up a newsfeed in one window while he clicked away in the other. Kaiden bent close. People staggered about and collapsed into piles of writhing bodies. Close-ups showed great, black lifeless eyes and black liquid leaking from ears and noses as they thrashed in agony. No broadcasters were speaking. Only the steady stream of live images from aerial-bots from around the world showing the same gruesome scene over and over again. Kaiden turned away. How many billions would be dead before the day was over?

  “I’ll be back,” he said to Flint.

  He had no idea what they would do now or where they would go, but if that silver liquid had saved his life so easily, they might as well take some with them. If nothing else, the project gave him something to do, so he didn’t have to think, so he didn’t have to feel.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Change of Plans

  Kaiden set Willow’s computer on the table and clicked it on. Her body lay on the cushioned seat under the window with a blanket pulled up to her chin to hide the vicious wound in her neck. Flint was flying the big T-60 Python to somewhere. Kaiden didn’t care where.

  They had waited in Tallahassee until Flint’s injuries were treated, and the INCR healed him sufficiently for him to get around. Jade and Birch had been gone for hours in their search for any surviving naturals, but the city had become a graveyard. Buildings were filled with the dead and dying. Corpses bobbed in the waters like some grotesque algae bloom. It appeared that no one was left, but the clones TAP had engineered.

  All of the clones who joined Kaiden had died, and he had been forced to leave their bodies behind—Aspen, Sierra, Blaze, Basil, Pearl, Stone—all of them. They, too, had died for nothing because they followed him.

  The image of Willow’s face twisted in pain, and the grasp of her hand on his arm as she begged him for forgiveness still haunted him. Forgive her for what? For all the times she had concealed information from him, for taking them to Oakley, for Oakley’s murder of the children? Or was she apologizing for dying without really explaining why she did what she did?

  Everything he tried had gone wrong. Restoring his memories hadn’t brought him any peace. He’d been forced to kill one of the clones of his mother. He failed to stop her from unleashing a horrible virus on humanity, and Willow died trying to save his life. Jade and Birch returned without finding a single natural they could evacuate to the station. After all that they had sacrificed and suffered, none of it mattered. Kaiden tried to ignore the hollow ache in his chest, but it wouldn’t go away. It gnawed at him. Accused him.

  For some reason, Willow’s computer was already on, and when he clicked into it, a message flashed and disappeared. It looked like it had said Sync Complete, but that couldn’t be possible. He flipped through the file folders on Willow’s computer. Most of her files were password protected, so he started typing in random words that came to mind.

  He tried every combination of “Oakley” and “Noah” he could think of, but they didn’t work. He scrolled through the files until he found one labeled “diary.” When he tried to open it, he found it was also password protected. He stared at the screen as the last words Willow said to him filtered through his mind. She had said his name twice.

  Kaiden straighted and keyed in his own name. It didn’t work. Then his gaze fell on the scar on his forearm where his clone number had been tattooed. He typed in “Kaiden B-22679.” The computer purred and the file opened. A quick scan showed that she h
ad kept this diary for forty years. How she had managed to do this while dying and being cloned, he couldn’t guess. But, if he had kept his memories from one body to the next like she had, he might have done the same thing, just in case something went wrong.

  The early pages of Willow’s diary were filled with pain and despair before they evolved into careful notations of TAP operations and programs. Willow had begun scheming early on about how to escape and to find her brother. Then, she tried to work out how to get a memory to them so they would know what had happened to her. Eventually, Kaiden came across his own name. But it was years before he had ever known her.

  “What’s this?” Kaiden sat up straighter.

  The entries were cryptic, but as Kaiden did a global search of the files for his name, his role in Willow’s plans became clearer.

  Was this why she begged for his forgiveness with her last breaths? Willow had identified him as the one to assist her to break free of TAP and, if necessary, bring it down two decades before he had even known her.

  Then, he came across the most damning reference of all.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kaiden whispered. He read the diary with a growing sense of invasion and horror. “What has she done?”

  Kaiden jumped to his feet to pace the room. How could she do that to him?

  She had started the whole thing. The rush of confused memories that had tormented him for so many weeks had all been Willow’s fault. She had uploaded the memories in those few minutes he had been unconscious after the explosion on the lunar transport. Oakley had warned her that Raven was going to attack the crew, and Willow had made sure that she was on that flight to protect Kaiden. She had risked her life to save him, and then she had ruthlessly exploited the moment to awaken him to his lost life by giving him fragmentary memories.

  Toward the end of her diary, Willow claimed that Noah’s programming had been too effective. Kaiden wouldn’t help her unless he had a good reason to question everything he knew about TAP. She had to reawaken the memory of what he had been before.