The Human Forged

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The Human Forged Page 19

by Anthony J Melchiorri


  Army-crawling along, Nick positioned himself far enough away from the diner to watch the police cars squeal to a halt, their sirens blaring and lights flashing. Two officers dashed into the silver building. As customers pointed and yelled, their voices silenced by the distance and sheer glass windows, the officers scanned the holoscreen at the table where Nick had paid with his forged comm card. They sprinted out of the diner and jumped back into their cars. Relief filling his chest, he watched as the police vehicles sped south down the highway, following the signal from his comm card stowed away in Terrence’s truck.

  As the diners gathered in the parking lot, talking in excited voices about how they had spotted the terrorist and helped the police, Nick snuck into the rear of the kitschy souvenir shop attached to the diner. The shop’s attendant had left her post and chatted outside with the older woman who had first approached him. He grabbed one of the souvenir shirts and a disposable razor. He would take that shave now. Stubble, the hair on his head, it all needed to go. If that wasn’t enough, he figured a fugitive terrorist wouldn’t be quite as suspicious running around with a shirt bearing the infamous slogan, “Virginia is for lovers.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Nick trekked from Blacksburg to Roanoke, where he hitched a ride on an autodrive bus to DC. When he finally arrived in the city late at night, he shuffled off the bus, hiding his face from the other passengers.

  He’d thought he would become inured to his own stench by now, but each foul whiff still made him cringe.

  He scanned the street. A woman walked a jumpy Yorkshire terrier; otherwise, no pedestrians meandered in front of the row houses. No one appeared to be staking out the area in any of the cars. Of course, he considered the possibility of remote surveillance, but he would risk it.

  He stole into an alley. Skirting amid the shadows, he climbed over a chain-link fence that reached his hips. He almost laughed, reminded of the time he had been caged inside a fence that loomed as high as the row houses around him. Why had anyone ever bothered to install a fence this height? Barely a hurdle, it was not as if it could keep anyone out.

  Light glowed from the second floor window. He couldn’t make out any moving shapes or shadows but he tiptoed up the brick pathway that led to the winding metal stairs. With his fingers trembling and heart pounding, he climbed each step, wondering if it was all a mistake. He chewed his bottom lip and stopped at the top of the stairs on a small wooden deck attached to the house. Each deliberate, slow step he took toward the door filled him with anxiety. He did not want to have come all this way just to be disappointed or shunned. She must still be here. He believed it.

  With trepidation, he knocked on the door. Once. Twice. A slow shuffling sounded from inside. He could sense eyes on him from the window as they peeked out from the corner to see who had snuck up to the back deck. The door swung open. Yellow light flooded out. She looked like a seraph. Her wavy hair and pale skin glowed, lit up from behind. She froze in front of him, her mouth open, and his heart stopped. Everything around him dissipated as a shiver crawled down his back and spread through his limbs. A wet sheen formed over his eyes, his vision blurring and hands reaching out, quivering.

  “Kelsey.” Her name escaped his lips, sounding sad, forlorn, weak. He could barely force it out of his mouth.

  She stood, unmoving, and folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward enough for him to smell her favorite perfume, the scent of citrus and magnolias mixing with his own odors. “Nick.” Unlike his, her voice came out curt and unimpressed. She sounded almost disdainful. “You smell like shit and you look terrible bald.”

  He wanted to laugh, to think it was a joke, to wrap his arms around her anyway, but she backed away.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I came back for you,” he said, taking a step forward.

  “Back for me? Are you kidding? Haven’t I done enough for you, you asshole? What else do you want?”

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could see a tear roll out of the corner of her eyes, catching the light filtering from the bedroom. Her brow creased and her lips puckered.

  Holding his shaking hands out, he felt ready to collapse, his heart sinking. “I’m sorry. I can explain everything. I never meant to hurt you; I never wanted you to think I ran away. I was kidnapped, Kelsey. I swear.” The words tumbled and flowed, jumbling into the air.

  “Wait? What did you say?” Her stern expression faded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no. Do you remember now?” She reached out an arm and he grasped her open palm. “You remember what happened to you?”

  “Of course I do. I could never forget.”

  Kelsey fell apart, shattering in front of him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Is it really you again? You’re back?”

  He squeezed her, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead. “It’s me. I’m here, Kelsey. I love you.”

  She tried to speak, tried to say something. Unable to verbalize her response, she held onto him tighter before pulling away slightly. “I never thought you’d remember. All the doctors, all the neurorestoration therapies, nanotreatments...none of it worked. What made you remember?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I never forgot anything.”

  “Is this a joke?” Kelsey backed away, slapping his chest.

  “No, Kelsey, it’s not. It’s me.”

  She appeared skeptical.

  He reached out with one hand, imploring her to come back. “Do you remember that time we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival? We were disgusting and sweaty and flocks of tourists bumbled around everywhere. I thought for sure you would hate it, that you’d want to go home. But do you remember what you said to me?”

  She gave him no hint of recognition.

  “You told me that you didn’t care because you were with me. That’s all that mattered to you.”

  Her stolidity broke and she clasped her hand in his. “I’m not sure I understand...but come in. Tell me everything—just take a shower, though.”

  He stepped into the bedroom he had shared with her. The subtle hint of coconuts wafted through the room. It was as he had remembered: mint-green comforter atop a queen bed, holodisplay resting on the antique dresser passed down by Kelsey’s mother, a collection of animal statuettes adorning it. The only thing missing were the holoimages of him and Kelsey. She had taken down the holo of them atop Old Rag Mountain in Virginia and the picture of her kissing his cheek on a winding brick street in Annapolis.

  She noticed him looking around for the pictures. “I couldn’t bear to be reminded anymore.”

  “God, I missed you,” he said, kissing her again.

  They talked in the steam-filled bathroom as he showered. She only left him once, to find some of his old clothes, which he put on after he cleaned himself up. She told him how the Feds thought Nick had returned. Somehow, he had been found trying to cross the border from Mexico, alone, dehydrated and delirious, his Chip missing from his arm. She had rushed to the hospital as soon as this person appearing to be him had been transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Kelsey said. “When you disappeared, I tried to track you down, to figure out what happened, but kept coming up with dead ends. I posted across the Net until someone else urged me to continue my investigations, telling me my story had touched them. Then, more people came out of the woodwork, a few saying they had loved ones that had gone missing overseas, abruptly going off-grid. I gained a pretty large following and people started demanding answers to why all this was happening. Then, when I thought you showed up, I thought I’d be able provide all the answers. Instead, you told me you didn’t know me, you didn’t remember me.” She paused for a moment.

  “None of that’s true,” he said. “None of it’s true and that wasn’t me.” He kneeled by her side, holding her hand. “And I do have all your answers. I think I know what’s going on, as unbelieva
ble as it seems. Do you think all those people on the Net would be willing to listen?”

  Kelsey nodded. “God, yes. I think they’d be willing to believe anything. But I want to know something first. Who was that man that looked like you, whose cells contained the same DNA, the one that the Feds told me was you—the one who doesn’t know me?”

  Licking his lip, he stood. “I think I know who he is—what he is. And I can prove everything.” He pulled her close. The warm steam that still pervaded the bathroom rolled over them. “We need to get out of here, though. I promised someone I would meet him in Crownsville.”

  Kelsey frowned. “Where all the Naturals are?”

  “Right. I’ll explain everything on the way. And if he’s there, that’ll be my proof.”

  “You want to leave? Right now?”

  “As long as you’ll come with me.”

  Thirty-Nine

  “I’m a clone.”

  Sara frowned, her mouth falling open. She tried to say something but couldn’t find the words.

  Twelve grabbed her wrist, his eyes wide and pleading. “I know it probably doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what I am. I’m not Nicholas Corrigan, and I’ve never met the man. I’m not crazy, either.”

  Standing on the gravel road, she shook her head slowly. “Cloning?”

  “You told me you risked everything by visiting me. You gave up your position with the CIA.” He let go of her wrist and sighed. “I’m risking my life by telling you this. Every day I sit in that damned house is another day that more clones are grown and harvested like human crops.” He kicked the gravel. “I barely made it out alive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Twelve told her how his fellow clones had been discontented with their life and talked about change. After learning of this, the keepers who ran the facilities had prepared to “discard the whole batch.”

  “They wanted to kill us all, blaming our rebelliousness on our genes.” He spat in the dirt. “It wasn’t the genes, though. It was the education. They allowed us to learn what they thought was just enough about life outside their fences and the cloning camps to make us more useful and adaptable. But they were too ignorant or naïve, maybe too cocky. Those lessons didn’t prepare us for servitude.” He shook his head. “No, we realized we needed to be free.”

  Her mouth hung open, her eyes wide as Twelve hung his head low.

  “When we ran, I don’t think many others, if any of them, made it out alive. I traveled alone, north. From what little I learned, human cloning was illegal in the United States. Security here seemed stronger. I thought I would be safe.”

  “That’s right,” she said to herself more than him. “Human cloning is illegal here. But not in Denmark. Not where Isis is based out of.” She grinned for a moment as the pieces clicked together in her mind before remembering who stood before her and what he claimed to have gone through. “If what you’re telling me is true, Denmark is one of the few developed countries never to have adopted the international ban on human cloning; instead, they’ve actively pursued the practice.” She clicked her fingers together. “I remember Isis even developed a synthetic telomerase reverse transcriptase enzyme to aid in the cloning of adult stem cells, improving their long-term viability for the organs and tissues they grew for customers. It’s crazy, but it makes sense.”

  Twelve’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure where you’re going with all this.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “They figured out how to clone human adult cells without reducing the lifespan of the cells or any tissues made from those cells.” She scanned Twelve up and down. “For that matter, they theoretically eliminated the limits on lifespan for organisms based on those cells. Do you know what they planned to do with you?”

  “Of course,” he said. “They trained us to fight. They meant for us to become soldiers.”

  In her mind’s eye, she pictured Steinweg’s face towering over Fulton in the last recorded feed from the lieutenant’s Chip. McCuller had been right: Steinweg had been genetically enhanced. Or at least, his cloned cells had been, resulting in a more powerful soldier, a more perfect warrior. Her pulse quickened as she snapped her fingers. “All those soldiers. Isis didn’t want to waste its time developing new lines of genes to see which ones would produce a strong clone, did they?”

  Twelve frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “They wanted to get a head start by picking out soldiers who had already shown a physical predisposition for strength and endurance.” She pulled a hand over her shaved head. “The Marines, the SEALs, the Exo-Specialists...they all require intense trials demanding exceptional physical and mental aptitude. Not just any soldier can qualify for those groups. It would be far easier to start with a genetic source that they knew had the potential for strength, endurance, and mental fortitude than randomly clone humans and find out by trial and error. This is all so unbelievable.”

  Twelve cocked his head. “You think I’m lying?”

  “No, no.” She dismissed his worry with a wave. “Not at all. I just mean it all seems so unreal. But everything fits...Almost everything. Why is that you think someone bugged your house?”

  “I think they might suspect something.”

  “Who?” She asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  He shrugged. “When I first arrived in the States and was genetically identified as Nicholas Corrigan by customs agents, a woman named Kelsey Byrd met me. She claimed to know me, to be my fiancée. She even posted the story of my return, of Nick Corrigan’s supposed return, to the Net.

  “I tried to live with her but she constantly interrogated me. She insisted I’d remember our relationship and everything that had happened before I’d allegedly disappeared. I even went along with memory restoration treatments. I was never going to remember anything, but I couldn’t tell her that.” He sighed. “Eventually, the stress of living with her and pretending I might recover was too much. Besides, I couldn’t bear to be cramped up in the middle of a city. Paranoia kept me up at night, and I was constantly looking over my shoulder at everyone who walked by, waiting for one of them to be an operative or someone sent to kill me or take me back.

  “Worse, I was afraid I’d lash out. Violence, aggression...it was part of our training and our breeding. So when I set out to move, Advantum, the company I supposedly worked at, came sweeping in, saying they’d pay for everything. I refused.”

  A hawk circled high above, soaring on an unseen updraft. With a cool breeze rolling over the road and in between the trees, Sara shivered and raised an eyebrow. “Why did you refuse?”

  “I feared they’d find out who I was and where I came from. I’m living off their handouts and they’d already interrogated me before setting up my stipend. I didn’t want to go through that again.” His lower lip quivered. “I didn’t want to go back to the jungles so I needed to stay far away from Advantum and anyone else who might discover I was a fraud. If I answered more questions, I might say the wrong thing or do something that would make them realize I’m an imposter. It had been hard enough to pull that off with Kelsey.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Twelve continued. “They wouldn’t accept a ‘no’ from me. They paid for my move and even sent a company representative to make sure everything went okay. I hardly had anything to transport, so of course it was fine. But I got the feeling that something wasn’t right. The rep insisted on checking the syncing of my Chip to the house itself, telling me he wasn’t sure if I’d forgotten how all that worked because of my supposed amnesia. I can’t explain it...but it seemed like he was hiding something.”

  The clouds above glowed with hints of orange and red as the sun sank beyond the horizon and Sara caught herself biting her thumb nail. “So, you think they might have bugged your place because they suspect who you are.”

  “I think so,” Twelve said. “One night I got depressed thinking about the camp and the other clones. I queued up a search using the h
olocomputer at home and scanned satellite maps of where I thought the facility was. Of course, I only have a vague idea of where that might be and I didn’t find anything.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What’s important about that?”

  “The next day, I got a call from one of the neurospecialists I saw at the VA. He asked me how everything was going. He asked if I had remembered anything yet. Just kind of threw it into the conversation. But it stuck out to me.”

  “I take it you didn’t think it was a coincidence.”

  Twelve shook his head. “No. Do you?”

  She recalled the list of missing soldiers, all the companies that led to Isis, and Isis’s breakthrough cell-cloning technologies. “No. I don’t think any of it is a coincidence.”

  Forty

  Sara could not sleep. After everything Twelve had told her, she could barely eat or drink. Instead, she sat with her thoughts at the Haunted Hound bar. It was one of the few establishments still open after 9 p.m. in the small town, and other Naturals flocked to the site. Their raucous conversations filled the bar as the sounds of pool balls clattering against each other broke out intermittently. She found it all hard to believe, though it fit into the data she had mapped out with Palmer.

  She chugged her beer. This is a whole other level of human trafficking. She’d thought slavery and indentured servitude existed as a horrifying scar of humanity’s past, not a phenomena revitalized by advanced biotechnology.

  “What’s up with you?” Autumn took a seat, her dreadlocks bouncing over her shoulders. Her dark eye shadow accentuated her bloodshot eyes. “You bummed about that boy you went to visit today?”

  “Kind of.” Sara sipped from her beer.

  “So, what happened when you got to his place?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She knew it was a mistake to have even told Autumn that she had traveled to Brunswick to visit anyone, but she had been caught off guard and had had to conjure up a lie on the spot, so she’d made up an old boyfriend she had lost touch with over time. Autumn didn’t know that Sara had never had time for a long-term romantic partner, but that didn’t much matter.

 

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