“Exactly. I doubt they’ll ever acknowledge McCuller’s betrayal publicly, but we have a better shot of getting them on our side to eliminate those camps and anyone else in on McCuller’s scheming if we talk to them first.”
“That sounds like a better option to me,” Twelve said.
“Okay.” Nick sighed. “I’m with Twelve.”
Trees stood sentinel along the remainder of their trip back to Crownsville, and the stars glowed overhead as Sara sent an encrypted message to Lauren Corello in the Bioweapons unit. She included the holofootage that Kelsey had obtained with her AR lenses during the incident at Twelve’s house along with the data and files that she had obtained and saved from her investigations with Palmer.
“It’s done.” Sara closed her eyes and let out a slow exhale. “Autumn, can you take me to my place?”
Autumn nodded.
“If you all want to hide out somewhere, leave me to meet Corello on my own, go for it,” Sara said. “I understand if you don’t trust her and you don’t trust my judgment. After everything you’ve all been through, I wouldn’t fault you for running away until this thing clears over.” She waited a beat. “If it ever does.”
“If she wanted, couldn’t Corello just track down my Chip?” Kelsey asked. “I suppose I could rip it out like you have, but I might as well corroborate your story for your boss. Twelve and Nick can get the hell out of here until we’re sure that it’s safe.”
Nick grabbed Kelsey’s hand. “I’m not abandoning you. If Corello takes you, she can take me too.”
“I’m tired of running and hiding,” Twelve said.
Sara could not help the glimmer of relief she felt that the others had chosen to stay with her. Though a hint of guilt nagged at her, she no longer had to carry these secrets and burdens alone.
The car rolled to a stop outside Sara’s rented cottage on the edge of Crownsville.
“Do you need me to stay too?” Autumn asked with a hint of reservation.
“No, no, go home, see your parents or something.” She leaned across and hugged Autumn. “Be safe.”
Sara’s comm card buzzed as she watched the car drive away. A short message from Corello read, “I’ll be there soon.”
She started to unlock the door but stopped and faced the others. “This is your last chance.”
“We’re staying,” Nick said.
Sara ushered them into her cramped living space. The kitchen, barely more than a counter with a sink, oven, and refrigerator in the corner of the room, had a single table with four chairs. They each took a seat as they waited. Twelve stared vacantly at his clasped hands resting on the table’s surface. Kelsey and Nick interlaced fingers.
Sara used the moment of silence to reflect on Palmer and his fate. She hoped Corello would be able to reverse whatever charges and allegations McCuller had thrown at him. A curt knock pulled her from her thoughts. She peeled back a curtain, heart racing, expecting to see an armored convoy, ready to take them into custody.
But only a single car idled, lights cutting through the fog.
Checking the peephole, she saw Corello standing outside, her hands deep in her pockets. She opened the door, and the Bioweapons science director walked in without a greeting.
“These are serious allegations. If you’re wasting my time, I will bring you in.” She lifted her shirt enough to display the handle of a holstered pistol. “The agency wants you for treason right now.”
“I know,” Sara said. “Did you have a chance to look at any of the personnel files along the way?”
“I did.” Corello stepped around Sara and stared at the other three seated around the table. Her mouth fell open slightly, but she quickly recomposed her stolid expression. “You’re the clones.”
“I’m not.” Nick stood and took a step toward her, his hand outstretched to shake hers. “I’m Nicholas Corrigan. A so-called Original.”
Kelsey joined him. “If you pull anything on us, I’ll release all the information I recorded.”
“Officially, I have to tell you that it would not be in the best interest of our agency or potentially, our nation’s security for you to do so,” Corello said. “But I can understand your distrust. If everything Monahan here sent me is true, you have every right to be cynical, and so I would understand if you chose to reveal this information you’ve uncovered, if it makes you feel you can more safely cooperate with us. But to be honest, if our agency wanted to run a Net campaign to smear your claims about Mr. Corrigan and Isis, we could do that. With our technical agents—and you know how talented they are, Monahan—you can be sure that we would have no problem quarantining the spread of anything we might deem dangerous or misleading.”
Corello sighed. “I’m not trying to scare you, but I am trying to convey that I didn’t even have to come here tonight. I could order the entire situation virtually erased and spread enough propaganda to clean up McCuller’s alleged mess.” Her expression softened. “I don’t intend to do that, though, and I want to make this right. McCuller was correct: if he hadn’t kept this from me, if I had found out about these cloning activities first, I would not have stood by. I’m not sure who else knows or condones this type of work, but I want to help if you’ll cooperate.”
“That’s exactly what we want,” Sara said.
“Great. So, Mr. Corrigan, why don’t you tell me how it is that you think you became cloned?”
Nick relayed to her his personal journey starting from Estonia. He explained the drugging, the medical analysis, landing in an unknown jungle, waking up from an induced coma, and his subsequent escape with James.
“Tell me more about the camps,” Corello said.
“I wasn’t conscious long in those facilities, but maybe Twelve can help.”
Twelve offered his personal experience, documenting the abuse from the soldiers, the medical experimentation, the failed rebellion that had led to his escape, and the mass killing of most of his brethren.
Corello leaned forward, her eyebrows scrunched, as Twelve finished telling his struggles for survival. “And you’re certain that Isis is behind all of this?”
“Yes.” Sara described the company’s strategies to recruit and abduct veterans of elite military units. The scientific director of the Bioweapons unit nodded along.
“I know it’s not much, but I saw Isis logos on boxes being delivered to one of the compounds,” Nick said.
Corello shrugged. “Could’ve just been medical supplies. One more thing. If Twelve isn’t the clone you escaped with, where’s the other?”
“I don’t know.” Nick looked at his feet. “He took off after killing McCuller.”
Sara studied Corello for any sign of emotion, anything that gave an indication as to whether or not their case was swaying her.
Orange waves of sunlight bled through the windows as Corello ceased her questioning. Silence pervaded the small cottage. The woman seemed lost in thought.
She closed her eyes. “It pains me to consider that what you’re telling me is all true. And if so, I’m ashamed of McCuller’s actions and the agency’s responsibility in these matters.” She set her jaw. “I promise that I will personally oversee the internal investigation to validate these claims. In the meantime, if you really think that these camps are camouflaged to air drones, I’ll see what I can do about sending a couple of ground units to investigate.” For the first time, a slight curl in the corner of her lips formed as she glanced at Nick. “If we have to send the Exo-Specialists, do you want to go in there with them?”
Nick considered her proposition with an arched brow. “I’m not a soldier anymore.” He grabbed Kelsey’s hand. “But I do want to be there after you find these camps. When these people are freed, I want to see their faces, I want to see the camps shut down with my own eyes.”
“I can agree to that,” Corello said. “In the meantime, I’d prefer if you kept that footage of McCuller to yourselves. Lay low for a while and I’ll let you know what to do and when you no longer have to hide.
”
“And Palmer too?” Sara asked.
“Palmer too.”
A grin spread across Sara’s face. She couldn’t help it. The thought of seeing Palmer again, of returning to a semi-normal life, of no longer fearing that someone might abduct her and throw her into some underground government prison for life was too much for her to restrain her flagrant display of emotion.
She rubbed a hand over her bald head, still shaved clean to aid in her altered identity. She could grow her hair back too. And she could get a new Chip.
But the more she looked around at the others as they talked about what would happen next and where they would go, the less desirable the Chip seemed to be. The reason she’d been able to help Twelve and Nick rested on the fact that she had torn that virtual chain to the CIA and anyone else who cared to look for her from her skin. She had survived without those tethers and created for herself an identity that didn’t rely on who that Chip said she was.
“We’ll finally be able to get married,” Nick said with a smile. Kelsey beamed, and Sara brightened at his words, happy to see that the two would finally be able to take the plunge after everything they’d been through.
They deserved it.
When she had fled from Palmer’s apartment and torn that device from her skin, she hadn’t just run for her own life. Her actions had led to this moment and, she imagined, others like it, when lab-born humans who had known nothing but imprisonment and servitude might finally be free. No longer under the control of a paramilitary corporation, they’d live their own lives and forge their own futures.
Epilogue
A flock of birds burst from the canopy of verdant trees below the hoverplane. Nick surveyed the serene forest. Its beauty was deceiving. He’d experienced the hell the lush leaves and branches hid. Vivid memories of his escape between those same trees with James flooded his memory, and he clenched his eyelids shut. Kelsey gripped his wrist before pulling him into an embrace.
His thoughts whirled toward James. He wished the man had left some way for Nick to know he was safe, that he was alive and well. Maybe, despite all odds, he’d even found peace and learned happiness.
He doubted it.
“I just received confirmation that all known rogue clandestine agents have been identified and secured,” Lauren Corello said, seeming to stare in the distance as she appeared to read messages sent through her AR lenses. On their way to Costa Rica, she had told Nick and Kelsey that a network of agents had been working around the globe under McCuller’s direction to assist Isis in their operations. In addition, she’d uncovered that two members of DARPA, an agency responsible for the research and pursuit of advanced military technologies, had been found to be involved in McCuller’s pursuit of Isis’s cloning technologies in the hopes of engineering a more predatory soldier. Other purposes for the human trafficking of clones remained unmentioned in McCuller’s reports. “I think we’re inches from calling this a closed case.”
Nick doubted that any of the clones or Originals imprisoned and abused by Isis’s operatives would ever consider the case closed.
“I’m just glad—” Kelsey frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the right word, but I’m thankful, maybe, that you’re taking us with you. Without the footage and eyewitness evidence of this catastrophe, I’m not sure if anyone would believe it.”
Nodding in agreement, Nick said nothing. He stole a glance at the small cadre of journalists Corello had also invited along. She had promised to allow a live holofeed of what they uncovered back to the States to ensure that this massive human rights violation did not go unnoticed.
As Nick had suggested, the cloning facilities had utilized cloaking technologies similar to the army’s Exo-Specialists, making searches via airborne drones almost impossible. Covert ground units had been deployed to identify the camps.
The hoverplane circled above a meadow near one facility.
“I’m glad we’re killing this cancer before it spreads further,” Corello said. “New intel reports that Isis planned to branch out from identical clones to blended clones. They were exploring completely bioengineered humans by using genetic components from multiple sources. This super-soldier was supposed to fetch higher prices on the black market.” Her brow furrowed. “I doubt money was their only reason for this research. It seems like they were exhibiting some sort of Frankenstein complex.”
After what Nick had witnessed, he had no problem believing that the company’s scientists and those involved in the cloning camps suffered from a severe case of hubris. He found himself slightly regretting the decision not to personally join the precision strike forces that had simultaneously been ordered at each of the sites found in Costa Rica and a number of other countries to catch the cloning operations off guard.
The hoverplane rocked gently as it descended into the clearing.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Nick said. “Why did they bother keeping me and the other Originals alive? Why not just freeze down a batch of our cells and tissues to use later? Or clone our clones?”
“Apparently, the telomerase reverse transcriptase enzymes they’d developed to preserve cellular DNA over time functioned well with primary source cells—the cells that they directly took from your body—but not as well on the cells that had been processed through their cloning and enhancement procedures. They were in the middle of figuring out why that was when we culled that data from them.” Corello pursed her lips and shrugged. “Biology can be funny at times.”
“But did they need to keep my entire body alive and in suspension?”
“No,” she said. “They didn’t. I wish I could give you a concrete answer for why they did, but honestly it appears they kept you and the others around to use as a measuring stick. They wanted to gauge how well their cloning processes worked and to see if they could not only replicate you gene for gene but make a better, enhanced version. You served as their standard, an experimental control in their scientific method.”
They landed in the small clearing. Corello led them through a path cut through the dense foliage. A chain-link fence rose before them, and they stepped through a massive hole torn by one of the earlier Exo-Specialist raids. Even without the aid of the electronic camouflage, the netting strung above the camp had obscured the medical tents and barracks that they saw now.
His hand clasped in Kelsey’s, Nick stepped into the familiar camp he had spent almost four years in, only two days of which he’d actually been awake. His heart pounded, and his breathing slowed. Anxiety gripped him as they plunged further between the drab clone housing units. He couldn’t move forward. Not back into this prison.
Kelsey squeezed his hand, and his pulse returned to normal. Her smile assuaged the pain from his dark memories.
She held up her comm card to record the United Nations aid workers setting up impromptu medical exam stations. A few UN representatives ushered a group of children from one of the barracks. The young clones wore the same looks of wonder and curiosity Nick had seen when he had plunged through their tent during his escape.
“I told you I’d come back,” he whispered to himself. He regretted that James couldn’t be here to see this and wondered where the man was now. The clone might not even be alive, might have been driven to the edge of civilization by his unbreakable cynicism. But Nick didn’t blame the clone.
James hadn’t been the only replicate to fear a normal life.
Nick had tried to help Twelve, who’d chosen the name Caleb, to readjust with his own, fresh identity. With Corello’s help, they’d found several employers willing to hire Caleb around the DC area.
But he had refused to move, clinging to his Brunswick home and telling Nick he preferred living there to living in the city.
Caleb had emphasized that he was “less uncomfortable;” he explained that he had never accepted the new life given to him in the States and feared that the instincts bred into him were too strong. He couldn’t trust other humans.
And he had also
stated he couldn’t trust himself. An intense, inexplicable anxiety haunted him, evoking violent impulses when he was under stress.
Nick had joined Caleb to hunt for deer or wild turkey, an act that only partially satisfied the clone’s predatory itch. Something burned in him that Nick would never be able to fully understand.
A cacophony of voices broke through Nick’s reflections.
From the concrete bunkers, aid workers helped gaggles of confused individuals, freshly woken from their comas. Some cried or yelled, while others silently trudged around the clearing. Nick understood their state of mind. Each thought they had fallen asleep for a night and had no idea that they had woken up into a world that had drastically changed since they succumbed to the nightmares of the cloning facility.
“Are you okay?” Kelsey asked.
He brushed a hand through her hair, tracing her shoulder, her arm, then her hand. He ran his finger over her engagement ring. She had taken it from her drawer and put it on the night he’d come back, the night she’d realized he had actually returned home. “I’ll be fine.” He watched the freshly liberated clones and Originals soaking in their first few moments of freedom. Where would they all go? There were tens of thousands of freed individuals who needed lives, jobs, homes. Safety. And though they might be free from their captors, they were also free to make their own choices. He thought back to James, his friend, a man who had practically become his brother.
“I’ll be fine,” Nick repeated. “But I don’t know about them.”
Thank you for reading
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