by S J Taylor
The promotion was new. So was the limp on his left side.
So were the marks across his square jawed face. A face that was still devastatingly handsome even under the puckered lines of the scars that ran up into his hairline.
Avin Blake. A dead man had just walked into my nightmare.
Walking up the row between the pods, he was trailed by two Enforcers in full battlesuits complete with mirrored helmet visors and heavy Magnetic Acoustic Resonator rifles. They didn’t raise the guns. They didn’t have to. We were already unarmed.
Then one more person came around the edge of a stasis pod and into view. Another someone to make me sick to my stomach. A woman with severely short auburn hair. A dark beauty, with cold eyes and a permanent smirk. Her uniform was different than Avin Blake’s in cut and function but not in color. Her insignia was a lower rank, too.
The Master Field Sergeant who killed Saskia. I never did learn her name. I didn’t care to ask now.
Avin came to a shuffling stop, favoring that left leg, and then turned a wicked smile on me that tugged at his scars. “Like the new me, Era? Your friend Saskia nearly ended me. The medical personnel gave me up for dead. Twice. Days in Quarantine. Surgery after surgery. If I was anyone else they would have discarded me to the incinerators straight away. Thankfully,” he said, arching his head proudly, “I am First Marshall Blake. I am the Restored Society.”
“You’re a monster,” I spat at him, my hands shaking. “You’re a butcher. You’re a murdering liar!”
My emotions were swirling. The calm that had sheltered me before had broken into pieces at the first sight of Avin and there wasn’t going to be any recovering it now. Especially when he arched his one, still-perfect eyebrow on the right side of his face.
“Oh come now, Era. Calling me a monster is a bit harsh, don’t you think? I only have the best interest of the human race in mind.”
“Tell that to Saskia!” I shouted at him, making sure to spare a glare for the Master Field Sergeant, too. “Explain it to her!”
My finger jabbed at my clone, still sitting on her ass on the floor, looking up at everyone, obviously lost and out of place. Whatever the cerebral brain processing had taught her while she was in stasis, it obviously didn’t cover anything like this.
Avin looked down at the clone, and then back up to me, holding that smile in place. With one smooth motion he pulled out a modified stun pistol from a holster at his hip and shot a burning hole through the clone’s chest. Her upper body slammed backward like she’d been struck with a sledgehammer, already dead.
Then he turned the gun on Jadran.
“No!” I shouted, leaping forward.
I was too late.
Jadran fell behind a nearby stasis pod, his chest smoking from where he’d been shot.
Part II
Chapter 3 - Who’s the Fairest
When I tried to get to Jadran’s body, laying half hidden behind the bulky corner of the stasis pod where I couldn’t even see if he was dead or alive, I was caught and held back by the two Enforcer soldiers. They each took an arm.
It didn’t save their lives.
The calm descended over me again, flooded over me, coursing through my veins, burning away every emotion and every feeling and leaving behind nothing but the cold, calculating willpower that was so terrifying… and yet so starkly beautiful.
Lifting my right foot, I kicked at the knee of the Enforcer on that side, cracking the joint sideways. Knees weren’t meant to bend that way. The woman behind the helmet screamed and let go of me to drop and hug her wounded leg to herself. I didn’t blame her. I’ve heard that’s just about as painful as it gets.
When my right hand was free I drove it across my body, fingers bladed out to jab in between two of the ballistic panels of the other Enforcer’s protective vest. I’ve worn those suits before. I know where the chinks are. My fingers met one of his ribs. Bone cracked.
This soldier grunted and jerked his body in response but didn’t let go of me. He was more experienced than his partner, maybe, or maybe he just had a higher tolerance for pain. I tried for his knee, too, but he dodged my strike and tried to sweep my feet out from under me and I ankle-blocked him. For a moment it looked just like we were dancing.
As he concentrated on our footwork I pulled the vibroblade from the side of his utility belt. A flick of the switch activated the internal circuits and when I drove it up through the soft palate of his chin, behind the visor screen of his helmet, the tip of it sliced up high enough to find his brain and zap several thousand volts through his gray matter. His body jerked in uncontrollable spasms until I withdrew the knife and he slumped into a heap at my feet.
Without looking I threw the vibroblade down at the woman whose knee I’d broken. I heard it sink in. I heard her stop moving. I didn’t look down on my handiwork. Dead was dead. It didn’t make me proud.
In the cold and logical grip of my calm, all that mattered was I had two more targets to eliminate.
I unstrapped a MAR from the chest of the male Enforcer, and rounded on First Marshall Avin Blake.
The Master Field Sergeant was there instead, relieving me of the weapon with a tactical baton strike to the inside of my arm. The metal weapon hit with enough force that my right arm went numb from elbow to hand. With my arm limp and useless, the MAR slipped from my grasp and clattered onto the floor between us.
The baton swung at my neck, a move meant to impact the vagus nerve cluster there, which would essentially paralyze me. Her smile was the same one she wore when she killed Saskia. I remember that smug little smile. I remember how she jettisoned an escape pod on that HoverHawk to slip away from me. She avoided my vengeance then.
She wouldn’t get away from me now.
Liquid fire burned me from the inside as hate and anger rose up into the calm. I spun inside of her baton strike, twirling like a top, putting myself right up against her chest, and then throwing my elbow into her neck.
I heard the cartilage crackle. I heard her take a gasping, sucking breath as she stumbled back from me, and then another, and then another, as she tried and failed to get in a breath of air. The tactical baton fell beside my dropped MAR. I ignored them both. Killing her with my bare hands would be so much more satisfying.
Saskia, this is for you.
“Enough,” Avin Blake said in an unhurried voice. The Master Field Sergeant had the good sense to drop out of the way before Blake shot me with his stun pistol. Thankfully, it was on low yield. Apparently he didn’t want me dead. Yet.
I fell to my knees hard enough that a clang resonated out from the metal decking plates of the floor. The calm splintered apart, prickling at my skin as it left me. I blinked, trying to get my vision to clear, trying to remember how my arms worked, trying to remember how to put two thoughts together, as the dispersed electrical charge from the pistol was absorbed by my flesh.
“There. That’s better,” Avin said, giving the Master Field Sergeant a hard glare. She swallowed over and over with a hand to her injured neck, trying to say something that only came out as a throaty squeak. If there was a God in Heaven and justice in the world, she would never get her voice back.
Avin stooped to watch me until he could see reason returning behind my eyes. “That was a low setting, as you know. Don’t make me use a higher one. I’d prefer you alive, but I don’t need you to live to reach my goal.”
Goal? I blinked again as I knelt there, hands in my lap. Now I wasn’t sure if the effects of the stun pistol had worn off yet or not. I didn’t understand what he was saying. What goal? The Enforcers had been hot to get me back ever since I escaped from Colony 41, but I thought that was just to have me stand trial so they could make an example out of me… What goal was Blake talking about?
“How did you get in here?” I asked meekly. Not the first question on my mind, sure, but it was the first one my frazzled brain could put a voice to.
He stood up straight again, rolling a hand on his wrist. “We’re not stupid, E
ra. I know all about this genetics research facility. I’ve been here several times. The entrance through the tunnels isn’t my first choice, but it has its uses. Who do you think stationed Callesco down there with his horde of bastard inbreds in the first place? Saw your handiwork, by the way.” He clucked his tongue as he shook his head. “Poor Callesco. I’m afraid there wasn’t much left of him after his cannibals were through with him.”
“And those… poor cannibals?” I rasped, my tongue still thick from the stun pistol’s shock.
Avin shrugged. “Dead. Mostly. Come on now, Era, do I really have to explain these things to you?”
Once upon a time I had believed this man, with his perfect green eyes and his daring wit and that roll-over-now face, was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Now all I could work up for him was contempt.
“We needed some way to sneak in here undetected by you and your… boyfriend,” Avin sneered. “The Enforcers up top will get through the barrier field soon enough. They’re just here to secure the base, however. I needed you secured first.”
“You didn’t need to bring three columns of Enforcers to secure this facility.” I knew they were marching for some big purpose, but even this didn’t seem big enough to require that many soldiers! Three columns of Enforcers, forty soldiers to a column. Plus, soldiers to man the heavy weaponry and the machines… “You certainly didn’t need that many soldiers to protect yourself from me.”
“As I recall,” he said, running a hand idly up the side of a stasis pod, “you declared war on us.”
My stunned silence was the best I could muster.
“My people in the field keep me very well informed,” he said. “I’ve been fully briefed on your activities ever since I was discharged from the medical facility. The village where we first found you out here in the Outlands. Then the Freemen camp, where you single-handedly killed dozens of my men. I admit we lost track of you when you went underground into Callesco’s tunnels, but now here you are again. You’re alone now, Era. Everyone who was with you is dead and gone. It’s just you and me. Like I wanted it to be in the first place.”
“But… but…” I hated sounding so uncertain in front of him. I bit down on my lip to make myself stop, but Avin saw the questions in my eyes.
“Oh!” he crowed, leaning down toward me again. “You thought we were here for something else? To destroy our base, perhaps? Cover up any evidence of what we’ve been doing here? No. Oh, dear God, no. Of course not. We’re proud of the work we’re doing here. We need that work to continue. That’s where you come in. The soldiers are here for you, Era.”
I noticed that even though he put his body within easy reach of my hands, he kept a tight grip on that stun pistol and the business end of it was still pointed squarely at me.
“I don’t understand,” I had to admit. “Why do you need me?”
He cocked that one eyebrow again, then nodded with his head at the stasis pods around me. I looked at them, too, and that horrible suspicion I’d had earlier sank to the bottom of my stomach again. “You have others,” I said, not so much a question. “You have other… me’s.”
The dead clone was still right there, laying on her side, staring up at the ceiling with my face. My eyes. Maybe even my soul, and blistering hellfire… now I was sure of one thing.
There were others, waiting in those pods.
“Of course we have other yous, Era Rae.” Avin’s smile was even wickeder with those scars stretching it out. “Did you honestly think you were one of a kind?”
My mind somehow came unhooked from everything around me. The silent hum of the machinery all around me was a pressure against my ears. My breathing was an effort. All I could do was let what Avin had just said sink into my mind. The fact of it, the truth, consumed me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t resist any more. All I could do, was try to exist as I had always done.
Of course we have other yous.
Of course.
Other yous.
Did you honestly think you were one of a kind?
Then why… why did they need me?
After an eternity of time that stretched out over a few brief seconds, Avin Blake sneered and limped away. “This is growing tiresome, and we have much to do. Bring her,” he ordered the Master Field Sergeant.
“Where to?” I heard the woman ask him. Her voice was raw, but she’d finally gotten it back.
“Straight to Examination Room one. We need to begin.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Slowly I came back to myself. Mostly. With a shake of my head I got up, pushing away from the floor, standing on my own two feet.
Just as the Sergeant reached for me.
“If she touches me again,” I warned Avin, “I will kill her.”
The Sergeant’s hand hesitated in mid-air. Uncertainty bled its way through her eyes before she turned to Avin, silently asking for his direction.
He stared at me, weighing my words until he came to a decision. “Very well. Understand me, Era. You have no choice in this matter. Not anymore. I tried to get you to cooperate with us by being a productive member of the Restored Society back at Colony 41. You chose to buck against us. You resisted. You became infected with curiosity. You chose to work against us. No matter. You’re back with us now, and the Restored Society has plans for you.”
I reached for the calm. I begged it to take me and give me the courage and the clarity to kill both of these monsters standing before me. Nothing came. It was just me. The altered part of my DNA—the part that I had finally learned to accept—had deserted me completely. I was still too much in shock, maybe. I was still recovering from everything that had just happened and all that I had just learned. It was too much.
I’d come looking for monsters inside this place. I should have realized the truth of it instead.
The monsters were already among us.
“Fine,” Avin Blake said. “If you’re going to come along willingly, Era, then let’s go. Just don’t try anything stupid. I don’t need you alive, but I’d like to keep our original specimen intact to show off to the world. You would be a testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Society.”
He held the stun pistol up, very purposefully rotating the barrel to the highest yield. A kill setting. “Just understand me. I want you alive, but I don’t need you alive. I won’t hesitate to kill you if it means saving my life. Again.”
I knew I was pushing my luck, but something he’d said… “Original specimen? Me, you mean. I’m the original?”
He snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. All that means is that you were the start of the experiment. A pure genetic creation. Pure from the start. Nothing imprinted on your DNA except for what we gave you. Every thought, every action, every inclination in that pretty head of yours was supposed to be one that we gave you. Only something went… wrong.”
Deeper and deeper down the swirling vortex of chaos, my thoughts spun away. I was created. From scratch, if I understood Avin correctly. I hadn’t been born, and then changed after. I hadn’t even been tampered with in my mother’s womb.
For me, there hadn’t been a womb.
The room seemed to tilt around me and I fell sideways into the sharp edges of a stasis pod. I looked down at my hand there. This was where I was born. In a pod, just like this one.
Avin came closer. I could see on his face that he knew the effect his words were having on me. With a wicked delight, he pressed salt into the wounds he’d opened up in my heart. “You were our test subject. The first of your batch to be released. We needed to see how the clones would react in a real-life setting. You were the culmination of our theories, put into practice. It should have been perfect.”
I made a fist, but instead of smashing it into Avin’s face, the best I could do was slam it against the side of the pod. The edges cut into the meat of my palm and smeared my blood along the metal. “You wanted a society full of mindless slaves!”
Instead of rising to my anger, he just stood there, running a
finger along the crisscrossing lines of the scars on his face. “Something like that. I suppose it’s a matter of viewpoint. I just don’t have time to get into it with you. There’s an army up there, expecting results. There’s a world out there that still has evil, wicked people in it. The Earth needs to be scoured clean and remade. We have to finish what we started.”
“With me?” I asked, unshed tears making my vision swim.
“It started with you. We raised you on that farm, with some of our own people, to see what would happen. Then after the Event we brought you to Colony 41 where your unique DNA skillset would be best trained. You would have been the best Enforcer to ever live. A shining example of what was to come. And then, when the time was right, we would have revealed what you were to the entire world. The entire Restored Society would have cheered your homecoming.”
“Sorry to wreck all your best laid plans,” I snarled.
“Well. I wouldn’t say you wrecked them. Science is about trial and error, after all. We ran the experiment. You showed us that we still have some tinkering to do. Something went wrong in your DNA.” His hand reached out and stroked my cheek in an intimately familiar way that made me cringe. “Something in here isn’t right. You’ve been a very rebellious child. Even killed members of our Society.”
“Not enough of you.”
His smile slipped. I think. It was hard to tell with the scars. But feeling sorry for him, for what he had suffered, just wasn’t going to happen for me. When I looked at his face I remembered Saskia, and how they had turned my beautiful friend into a freakshow. I remembered her scars, and only wished that the ones Avin was wearing could have been put there by my own hand.
“Don’t worry, Era,” he told me. “We’re going to make you better. Well, maybe not you, personally, but all the other yous. Them we’ll make perfect. That’s why we needed you back, you understand. We need to scan into that pretty head of yours, Era, and find out what’s gone wrong. That way we can fix it with the rest of your clones here, and the ones across the globe, and then we can finally raise a generation of good girls and boys who will make the world a better place.”