by Brian Parker
“So, Ladeaux’s company created cavemen?”
“Sort of,” Paladin agreed. “Once they get the memory implant, it overwrites everything they’ve learned here.”
“Too bad. That guy’s got a great technique,” I mumbled. “Alright, let’s go.”
The clones continued to call after us with hoots and clicks as we walked past the remaining cages that lined both sides of the hallway.
A technician appeared around a corner. “What’s got them so—”
“Hold it right there,” I hissed, raising the pulse rifle up to his midsection. “Come here.”
The clones in the last cage went crazy seeing him. Two of them threw themselves into the bars, bashing their faces into the metal as they reached through to grab him while a third ran to the far corner and hid her face.
“You’re certainly popular,” I remarked when he was two feet from me, just out of reach of the end of the barrel.
“I—”
“Shut up. Cuff him,” I directed the Paladin.
The technician complied, putting his hands behind his back while Kaine put a zip tie on his wrists.
“Besides the three playing cards, is there anyone else on this level?” I asked as I shoved him roughly from behind toward the incubation pods.
“N-n-no,” he stuttered.
His fear was palpable. Good, I’m glad he’s scared. The way the clones reacted to seeing him, I was positive that he’d abused them.
“Tell your friends to get away from the equipment,” I ordered, pressing the muzzle into the guy’s spine when we rounded the corner.
“Hey, uh, guys?” he said with a tremor in his voice. “You need to get away from the computers and come over here.”
They took one look at me and started scrambling for the elevator. Playing cards and poker chips flew in all directions from the little card table they’d sat around. I kicked the technician’s knee out to make him collapse and fired a shot from the pulse rifle into the computers behind them. Several computers burst into a shower of glass and plastic.
The card players stopped, raising their hands above their heads. They knew there was no surviving a shot from the rifle.
I kept it trained on their backs as the Paladin zip-tied them together like he’d done the two men from the roving patrol on the second floor. He jumped back from something that I couldn’t see from my vantage point.
Then the entire wall of monitors, computers, and medical equipment came crashing down on top of the subdued technicians.
The noise was horrendous. There was no way that the guys upstairs didn’t hear it.
Well, that will shut the production down for a while, I mused.
I dragged the remaining technician to an incubation pod and tried to tie him to it, but my burned hand refused to cooperate, so I bashed him in the back of the head. His body went limp and he fell onto his face beside the pod.
“You’re gonna need to tie him down for me, I can’t do it,” I yelled. “And then get ready; we’re about to have company!”
TWENTY-SEVEN: TUESDAY
We waited for a full five minutes with no response from the clones above. Either they were deaf, or, more likely, they were waiting for us to come to them.
“Goddammit,” I cursed. “What do you think?”
“I think they’ve got an ambush set up for us upstairs,” Kaine replied.
He was right.
“Do you still wanna go up there now that they know we’re coming?” I asked.
“To be honest with you, I don’t think it matters. Those guys up there would have been ready all night anyways.”
“Do you want to go together up the stairs or should we split up?” If I was asking him to put his life on the line, I needed to get his opinion instead of simply telling him what we were going to do like I’d been doing so far.
“I think it’d be better if we split up,” he said, surprising me.
I hadn’t expected him to say that we should split up.
He must have seen the surprise on my face. “As long as they don’t use pulse rifles or blasters, my armor can take a lot of punishment that will keep me safe. Thomas Ladeaux paid for it after all. It’s the best military-grade composite armor available right now.”
“Keep talking,” I said rolling my hand.
“I can go up the elevator, distract them, and you can come up the stairs. Hit ’em from behind.” He paused for a second before adding, “But you’re gonna need to kill them. None of that only knocking them out bullshit you’re doing tonight.”
“Agreed,” I replied. “I fought against these guys before—well, copies of them. They’re good.”
I hoped that they hadn’t alerted the mayor’s security staff after the noise the collapsing shelf made. I didn’t relish the idea of fighting my way down like I had to fight my way up.
“You ready?” I asked.
He nodded. “Let’s get this over with so we can start looking for evidence to implicate the mayor.”
Once again, we split up. Kaine lumbered toward the elevator and I went to the stairwell door. I peeked through the small glass square, making sure no one was inside, and then gave him a thumbs up. He pushed the button to call the elevator.
I heard the cables squealing in the elevator shaft all the way over by where I stood. The building was old and its owners hadn’t bothered upgrading the elevators to the standard maglift system in use across most of the city.
There was zero chance the clones weren’t on high alert now.
The elevator chimed when the car arrived and the doors slid open. I half-expected him to get shot the moment the doors parted. Miraculously, the car was empty.
He waved nonchalantly in my direction and stepped into the elevator.
My mind went into overdrive. He was awfully calm, was I being double-crossed once again? Was this all some elaborate way for the mayor to set me up so that there were legitimate charges against me? He’d already had at least one cop murdered and an unknown number of clones, what were a couple of security guards and medical technicians?
“Fuck it,” I told the door before I shoved it open and ran up the stairs.
I heard the commotion on the fourth floor when I was on the landing. The Paladin must have come out swinging. Even as I ran, I heard something large and heavy crash through glass.
I paused for a breath when I reached the upper door and then pulled it open. A fist came out of nowhere and clocked me in the side of the head.
“Ugh,” I groaned, my knee giving out on me.
It was a good thing that it happened since a foot swung right where my face would have been if I hadn’t collapsed.
The world swam in front of my eyes. In the distance, I could barely make out the Paladin fighting with two of the clones, and a third lay in a heap a few feet from them. A cloud of smoke swirled out of the elevator and light’s flickered wildly in all directions.
I struggled to my feet and got kicked in the stomach. The force of the blow knocked me backward and my arms flailed wildly. I grasped at the air, trying desperately to reach the railing. Momentum threatened to take me, but I thought I had it—until the asshole punched me in the face.
And then I fell down the stairs.
I don’t know how many times the back of my head hit the concrete steps as I tumbled feet over head. It was enough to make me black out temporarily on the way down.
My body crashed onto the landing’s flat surface, jolting me awake. I was dimly aware of someone rushing down the stairs toward me. I lifted the pulse rifle and fired a shot before my fractured mind had time to decide if it was Kaine or one of the clones. It didn’t matter.
“Aiyee!” someone screamed and crashed down on top of me, knocking the air from my lungs.
I fumbled at the clone’s throat until my hands wrapped around his windpipe and I squeezed. I gritted my teeth, willing my fingers to come together. My burned hand was little more than a club that blocked him from squirming away as my good hand strangled him. The
edges of my vision began to close in from the effort of trying to strangle him.
He punched me repeatedly in the ribs, each blow weaker than the last as the combination of blood loss from wherever I’d shot him and lack of oxygen overwhelmed him.
He stopped punching after a while. I didn’t stop squeezing.
“Die you fucker!” I wheezed, still not having caught my breath from when he landed on top of me.
The door clanged against the wall above me and a shadow worked its way down the stairs. I released the man’s throat and groped for my rifle; I was in no shape to handle another clone.
“Forrest! Forrest, are you okay?” Kaine’s synthesized voice echoed around me.
I turned my face to the side and vomited.
He lifted the body off me and blood poured from the stump where the clone’s leg had been. Kaine flung the body away like a rag doll.
I coughed and wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. “Are the others?”
“Dead,” he confirmed.
“You sure about that?”
“Very.” He knelt beside me and put a hand under my back to lift me up.
“Ugh. I feel like crap,” I said as a wave of nausea hit me and I closed my eyes.
“You look like it,” he responded.
I half-listened while he told me that three of the clones jumped him the moment he came off the elevator and the fourth stayed at the stairwell door. They’d been martial arts masters, but his armor was impenetrable and they hadn’t been able to do anything to him.
“Where do you want to start?” Kaine asked.
“Desk drawers? A safe?”
He helped me to my feet and I limped up the stairs beside him. My back was twisted and there was a fluid-filled bulge of skin on the top of my head where I’d hit it when I fell. I would need to be examined by a doctor soon. Brain injuries were about one of the only things modern medicine didn’t have a cure for. If there was swelling in my brain, and the pressure wasn’t relieved, I’d end up in a coma—or worse.
I had trouble focusing on the task at hand, but it didn’t take us long to find a sealed safe in Kelsey Bloomfield’s former office. They hadn’t even bothered to clean out the pictures of her with a dog and one of her and another woman at the Grand Canyon when they murdered her clone two days ago.
“I should be able to get it open,” Kaine stated.
“I doubt it. Those—”
Smoke rose from the hinges on the safe as he pointed his arm at them. Son of a bitch had a laser in the suit too.
The hinges were no match for the military-grade laser. He stepped back as the door fell to the floor. I shuffled around his bulk to look at what we’d uncovered.
“Jackpot.”
TWENTY-EIGHT: TWO WEEKS LATER
“Are you awake, Zach?”
“I am now,” I groaned.
“Good,” Andi stated. “There is a new vid message from Christopher Young that came in with the subject line, ‘You need to watch this.’ I previewed the file for you and I agree with the sender’s assessment that you need to watch the vid. There is also a video message from Chief Robert Brubaker received at 9:04 a.m.”
“Wait. What time is it?” I asked.
“It is 10:17 a.m. Ms. Thibodaux requested that I not wake you before 10:15 a.m. I complied with her request.”
“Good morning, Andi,” Teagan mumbled, snuggling her body close to my uninjured side. “I didn’t mean exactly at 10:15.”
“Good morning to you, also. The message from Mr. Young is important. I determined that I should wake you as soon as possible. Do you want me to make coffee?”
“Yes,” we replied in unison.
“It will be ready in four minutes.”
I rolled away from Teagan and limped to the bathroom to relieve the pressure in my bladder.
“Urine test complete. Zachary Forrest, in cross-checking the public health records, the blood in your urine has lessened significantly over the past week. This is…”
I smiled as the toilet computer droned on. Even though it was annoying, I was glad to be home instead of in the hospital where I’d been confined until last night. The Paladin dropped me off at the emergency room of University Medical Center the night we raided the clone factory, hitting every curb and trashcan from St. Rose to Tremé-Lafitte as he drove my Jeep. He called Teagan for me and then disappeared. Nobody had seen him since.
The doctors admitted me, forcing me to remain in inpatient care for two weeks. They wanted the skin around the composite alloy plate they’d placed over the hole in my skull to heal before they released me. My body had been so battered from the fall that it took longer to mend than usual. Hopefully, that was true instead of the more depressing option that I was just getting old.
The fourth day I was there, Teagan notified Chief Brubaker that I was in the hospital under an assumed name. He came alone, with an arrest warrant issued by Judge Hennessey. Apparently, Judge Carlson had died in a freak fishing accident the week before and the mayor had appointed Hennessey in his place. I was charged with murder of the two guards in Slidell, aggravated assault and unlawful detention of the factory workers, criminal trespassing, and destruction of property, namely Biologiqué’s mainframe computer, four clone guards and an unnamed female clone—which I knew to be the illegally grown clone of Senator McMahon.
I convinced Brubaker to look at the evidence that we’d uncovered at the Biologiqué International Headquarters which implicated Mayor Cantrell before he arrested me and broadcast it over the net that I was in the hospital. If any of the mayor’s people knew where I was, I’d be dead by morning.
I had documents showing the early contract between Ladeaux and Cantrell to clone a few prominent local figures—with their permission. Then, there were six pages of emails between Kelsey Bloomfield and Ladeaux outlining that she thought the mayor was trying to edge him out of the business and then another fourteen pages between her and the mayor, threatening to go public about his scheme to replace politicians with clones.
Included amongst the papers was a list of politicians, business owners and even a few local celebrities that had been cloned, some with their permission in the early days when they thought it was a way to preserve their health, others without. According to the document, all had been replaced and were dependent upon the mayor’s people to give them their injections, which ensured they would do whatever the mayor directed. The list stopped one week before I rescued her from the warehouse in Easytown so there was no telling how many more had been cloned and replaced in the time since.
Kelsey had even managed to get a picture of the mayor having sex with a television news anchor while he slit her throat. She’d put a handwritten note along with the picture stating she bribed one Joseph Kleer—the same thug that stole the clones and was later perforated with a few hundred rounds of 5.56 millimeter—into taking the picture, stating it was the real woman, not a clone.
The most damning evidence, and I assumed what ultimately got her cloned and replaced, was a series of messages to Mayor Cantrell stating that she knew he was involved in the torture and murder of multiple humans that he told investors were clones—which is why the ones I’d rescued had their memories wiped. They were the real people, replaced by clones, and they were sold into the torture tourism business for the entertainment of a twisted segment of our population.
Brubaker took the documents without serving the warrant and told me I had a week before he’d be back. Three days later, uniformed cops showed up and stood guard outside my hospital room door. Judge Hennessey had granted a petition for the removal of Mayor Cantrell signed by a majority of the city council and withdrew the warrant against me until an independent investigation was complete. The mayor disappeared ahead of the warrant, so someone on the court staff had tipped him off.
Then, surprisingly, Andi called me. Police officers who showed up to remove the crime scene tape from my apartment had plugged her back in and she was pissed at the mess. During the “investigatio
n” they’d torn my place apart, looking for any evidence that would have told them where I’d gone when I slipped their net. I had her document everything for an insurance claim and then hire a cleaning company to do what they could. I also required new furniture since they’d “searched” through my couch cushions and mattress with a knife.
Assholes.
Once my apartment was restored to a semi-normal state, Teagan moved out of the hotel in Slidell and into my place temporarily while they repaired her apartment. It was the least I could do since I’d dragged her into this mess.
Sadie visited me in the hospital as well and I told her about Kelsey’s involvement in the scheme. She took the news hard, questioning how the person she’d been could have done such things. Kelsey knew about the illegal cloning and tried to get a piece of the action, first by attempting to blackmail Tommy Voodoo, then the mayor. It didn’t work out for her. Instead, she got her memory wiped and now Sadie would have a lifetime of therapy for it—or a lengthy prison sentence.
I felt bad for her. The woman I’d rescued and gotten to know was not the woman who did those things. But, it a jury probably wouldn’t differentiate between Kelsey Bloomfield and Sadie. The public would demand justice for the crimes the other woman had helped to facilitate.
Now I was home, doing mundane things like ignoring my toilet computer and trying to avoid hitting my head on anything accidentally.
When I came out of the bathroom, Andi started immediately. “You really should view the video that Mr. Young sent right away, Zach.”
“Hold on, Andi. I want to get a cup of coffee first. Can I do that, please?”
“Of course, boss. I apologize for my exuberant behavior.”
“Eh,” I grunted. “Let’s remove exuberant from your vocabulary. Nobody uses that word.”
“Understood. Removing the word ‘exuberant’ from my speech patterns.”
“I like the word,” Teagan murmured from underneath the covers. She slid them down so just her face showed. “It’s a sophisticated word that should be brought back. It sounds so much more educated than excited or cheerful.”