by S J Taylor
“We can get out through the tunnels,” I told him, making up a plan as we went.
He shook his head. “If they followed standard Enforcer tactics there will be a contingent force at the other end, waiting for us. Possibly, they have even rigged explosives in the tunnel for anyone who tries to come out. That will not work. Besides. I have another idea.”
He seemed very pleased with himself. “Jadran. What did you do?”
We were at the entrance to the stasis pod chamber again, and as the two of us stumbled in, beaten and bruised, I could only stare.
“I found us some reinforcements," he told me.
Chapter 4 - Burn them all
I was everywhere.
Every functioning stasis pod had been opened, by the look of it. I saw a few that had vomited out puddles of genetic goo, like the one I’d first opened, but there were still more than a few of… me… clustered in the middle of the room. I did a quick head count. Forty-eight Era Raes, myself included.
Except I remembered what had happened the last time I encountered one of my clones. She’d nearly beaten me in a one-on-one fight. This was one against… all of them.
“What did you do?” I whispered to Jadran, unconsciously slinking closer to him, even though I was the one holding him up.
“I opened the pods,” he said, as if it couldn’t be more obvious.
“Jadran, the clones are… they aren’t exactly friendly. They’ve been force fed all the lies and propaganda the Restored Society wanted them to swallow. For years. They’re basically brainwashed.”
“I know. So, I decided to do some brainwashing of our own.”
Thankfully, none of the other Era Raes seemed to have noticed us yet. They were congregated around one spot in particular, a few rows over among the stasis pods.
Where the first clone had been shot dead by Avin Blake. They were gathered around her body. Grieving for a lost sister.
Oh, that could not be good.
“What are you talking about?” I asked Jadran, putting my hand around the stun pistol grip and wondering if we could back away without being seen. “Brainwashing? What do you mean?”
“All of the clones in the pods were still hooked into the neural links used by the Restored Society to, uh, educate them. For years all they have known is those lies. They needed to know the truth. They deserve to know what they are. Where they came from. They deserved to be set free. So, when I dragged myself out of here I went to the control room and switched the input going to their neural feed. Then I set their pods to open. All of them.”
He pointed up, to the bubble lenses of the cameras around the chamber walls. Jadran had let the clones see everything that happened in here. They saw it all. They heard everything Avin Blake had said.
They knew the truth.
I can’t tell you how impressed I was with this man.
“Jadran, I think I love you.”
“Era Rae,” he answered, “I know I love you.”
One of the clones turned her eyes our way, the expression on her face mimicking mine perfectly. Then others turned to see me and Jadran standing there. Then all of them were looking at us.
All of them me, and all of them not me.
I helped Jadran lean against the inside wall and stood in front of him, stun pistol charged and ready as the clones started to come closer.
“Era,” Jadran said, “they know the truth.”
But I shook my head. “Doesn’t mean they’re on our side.”
“It was the best I could do,” he whispered, his breathing labored.
I closed my eyes, and took a breath, and reached for the calm. It was still just beyond my mental grasp. It was there, but it wouldn’t let me touch it. “Hellfire,” I muttered. “I wanted to show the world what kind of monsters the Society was creating here. These clones aren’t monsters. They didn’t choose to be born. None of us did.”
When I opened my eyes, the clones had stopped advancing. They were standing there, lined up in a crowded semi-circle around me and Jadran, just watching. None of us had been asked to be born this way. I’d made my choice, though, and allowed myself to be free. To be who I wanted to be. The clones had never even known there was a choice to be made.
I wanted to show the world the monsters the Restored Society had created.
All I had to show them was multiple copies of me.
“What are we supposed to do now?” I said, looking at the clone standing in front of me, just a dozen steps away. I didn’t expect her to answer. I didn’t really expect Jadran to answer either, but he did.
Still holding his side, still struggling for each ragged breath, he pushed away from the wall to stand with me. “Show the world, is what we will do,” he told me. “We are already broadcasting. I set the recorders, and attached the feed directly to every Society subchannel. Video and audio, this is all going out to every corner of the globe. Whatever happens next, the world will be watching.”
The clones, some in black jumpsuits and some in white jumpsuits and otherwise identical to each other, all turned those same green eyes on Jadran as he spoke. He met them stare for stare. “So you tell us. What will happen next?”
The one standing closest to me took a step closer. I made myself stand my ground. I made myself believe it was okay that I was standing in a room full of other me’s This was my reality now. I couldn’t run from it.
But if I had to fight it…
“Who are we?” the clone asked me, in my voice. “If we aren’t Era Rae, then who are we?”
I let go of the breath I’d been holding, and with it a knot loosened deep inside of me. “You are…” Not me, was the end of that sentence, but that wasn’t what she was asking me. She didn’t need to know who she wasn’t. She needed to know who she was.
Just like I had.
The steel bonds that had gripped my heart finally let go. The hard edges of my emotions smoothed away as I realized I wouldn’t have to fight my way through a few dozen replicas of myself. These girls were just lost. They needed someone to tell them their place in the universe.
Guess I was elected.
“You are unique,” I told them. “You will be whoever you decide to be.”
My clone shook her head, a single tear running down her face. “I don’t know who I am.’
I surprised myself by reaching out to her, putting my hand on her shoulder, letting her know she wasn’t alone with that simple act of human contact. “You’ll figure it out.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked.
“Because. I did.”
She laughed. That same short, sardonic laugh that I used all the time. It made a shiver run up my spine to hear it coming from someone else.
Then, in the next breath, I was laughing with her.
“Listen,” I said to all of them, raising my voice. “The Enforcers are coming in here. Soon. They’re coming for all of… us. They want to run experiments on us, alter our DNA, change us into something else. Into someone else. I don’t want that to happen. Not to me, and not to you.”
I meant it. Every word. I might never be able to get over what the Restored Society had done to me, but I couldn’t hold it against these girls here. All of them were victims of crazy people doing crazy things in the name of their beliefs. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t my fault, either.
It wasn’t my fault. I lost my train of thought for a moment, tripping over those words. None of this was my fault. All the death that had fallen on the people around me… it hadn’t been caused by me. The Freemen at New Merica. The people in Jadran’s village. Laria.
Saskia.
It wasn’t my fault. With a final deep breath I found forgiveness for myself. The blame wasn’t mine.
The blame went to the Restored Society.
And just like that, the calm flooded through me. Not like before, when it would rush over me violently and take control. Not like when I had to struggle to maintain my grip on it. Now, it was like the breath in my lungs, or the blood circu
lating through my veins. The calm was now a part of me.
I felt… whole.
“Era?” the girl in front of me asked.
“I’m fine,” I told her, allowing myself to believe it. “Listen, I don’t know who you’ll be when we leave here. If you want, I’ll help you figure it out. For right now, we need to get ready. When the Enforcers come in, they won’t wait to talk. They won’t discuss what’s right or wrong about any of this. They’ll just take control of you and put you back in the pods. If you’re lucky.”
She nodded. “We heard what happened. We saw them kill our sister. We heard the things he showed us.”
With a tip of her head she indicated Jadran. Her eyes flicked over to him and then back to me, and I saw the flush that tinged her cheeks with red. None of these girls had seen a man before. Not in real life. Uh, well. That was something we could sort out later.
For now we had to use the time we had.
From another part of the facility, an alarm sounded briefly before being cut off. The Enforcers had already found a way through the barrier field. They were in the facility.
Maybe there was no time at all.
“Look,” I said quickly, “I don’t have time to explain everything to you. I wish to God I did, but right now all we can do is—”
She put her hand over mine. “We get it. They killed one of us. We can’t trust them. But we trust you, Era. You were the first of us.” She swallowed, and then wiped at her unshed tears with the back of her wrist. The motion was so familiar, it hurt. “I don’t like knowing that I’m just a copy, but there it is.”
“You’re not just a copy,” I said to her, taking her hand. “You’re a person. Just as much as I am.”
After a moment, she shrugged and stood up straighter. “Whatever. Time to figure out the universe later. Right now, we need to stay alive.”
“You’ll fight with us?” Jadran asked her.
She nodded.
So did all the others.
All of them, plus me, and Jadran. That was practically our own little army.
The Enforcers were maybe a hundred strong at this point, after me and the Freemen at New Merica had cut their numbers some. Forty-eight of us here—forty-nine, counting Jadran—and a hundred of them. Two to one odds. We were armed with just a few weapons and our charm and our good looks and our genetically enhanced fighting skills. They would be armed to the teeth with MARs and things even more deadly.
Seemed like a fair fight to me.
“Era?” the clone asked me. “Can you do something for me?”
“You mean before we go fight for our lives?”
We smiled at each other. This was weird. So weird.
“Can you…” She hesitated, and it was scary to see that I could look so unsure of myself. “Can you call me Rae? I think… I think I’d like to be called Rae.”
I squeezed her hand in mine. “That’s a good start. Now. Here’s what I think we should do.”
The Enforcers stormed into the chamber two at a time, spreading out in a typical approach pattern, which in this case meant dividing themselves between the rows and columns of stasis pods.
Typical, and stupid.
While this pattern allowed for maximum presence in the shortest amount of time, it also separated their forces. The pods acted as artificial barriers, cutting off each segment of the Enforcer troopers from the others. In short order they were all in place, aiming MARs and shoulder-mounted Ballistic Photon cannons at…
Nothing.
The chamber was empty, except for the pods that quietly hummed in place, protecting their contents.
With the neural halo in place around my head, I could see everything that the vid feeds picked up. They showed me the room, showed me the Enforcers in their gray battlesuits and their tactical helmets. Most of them began lowering their weapons when it became obvious there was no target to shoot.
I watched it all from the safety of my stasis pod. The clones were doing the same from inside their own. I’d changed into one of the white stretchable fabric suits, more to get into a fresh set of clothes than anything else, and now I was just one more Era Rae among the rest. We were hiding in plain sight.
Jadran was monitoring us from the control room. Our army was in place. Everyone was waiting for my signal.
Not yet.
I could see all around me, in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree radius. It was a trick of the mental feed coming directly from the cameras. I couldn’t see everything, but what I did see was making me second guess my brilliant plan. There were so many soldiers out there. They couldn’t get any of the heavy weaponry in here, thank God, but even without their cannons and siege tanks, that was a lot of firepower out there.
Into the chamber strode a tall man in a black version of the Enforcer battlesuit. It marked him as a leader of a column. A Flag Corporal, the lowest position of rank the Enforcers had. I guess after we’d killed the Third Marshalls and the Master Field Sergeant—and First Marshall Avin Blake—this was the guy who was left in charge.
He didn’t have his helmet on, and near as I could see the only weapon he had was a stun stick strapped to his hip. One of those leaders who depended on his men to protect him, and to do the fighting, while he stood back and watched. He had a young face, unscarred and unconcerned. This guy was a newfer. If he’d been with the Enforcers more than two years I’d be shocked.
The microphones in the stasis pod chamber picked up his conversation as he was met by one of the other Enforcers who made a sharp salute to his Corporal. The neural halo relayed every word of it to me.
“Nothing to report, Corporal. All stasis pods in place. It appears more than half are still functional.”
The Corporal sneered. “More than half? Every pod here was set to maintain one of the clones indefinitely. What happened?”
“Sir?” The line trooper’s confusion was easy to read even with his voice distorted through his helmet’s speakers.
‘Never mind,” the Corporal said dismissively. “We’ll let the medical support staff decide which ones can be saved.”
He walked up the row, closer to where my pod stood.
“For now,” the Corporal continued, “we need to find the traitor Era Rae.”
Closer.
“Make no mistake, any of you. She is in this facility, and I will find her.”
Closer…
“I will report her capture, and she will be used for the glory of the Restored Society.”
That’s it, you blistering stupehead… just a few more steps…
“Organize a search of the building, top to bottom.” Step, step. “I want the tunnels searched as well.” Step. “I’ll need two of you to take First Marshall Blake’s body,” step, “and the Master Field Marshall, as well…”
Step.
There. Right there. Keeping my voice at an unnecessary whisper, I spoke to Jadran through the internal comm in the pod. “Now.”
The doors on my pod popped outward, and split into their two halves, and swung aside. I took the neural halo off and before the smoky mist created from the equalizing purge could clear I had jumped out to the chamber floor.
The Corporal had been almost right in front of my pod. He’d stood watching the doors open, uncertain what was happening, hesitating just a moment too long before my arm wrapped around his neck and I spun him around into a chokehold. My other arm locked one of his up over his head. He was caught fast.
Leaning forward I put just a little pressure into squeezing his windpipe, demonstrating how easy it would be to kill him where he stood.
At the same time, all the other pods in the chamber had opened. Jadran was more skilled with computer tech than I gave him credit for. A split second after I emerged, dozens of my duplicates did the same. The Enforcers didn’t attack, of course. The clones were supposed to be on their side.
And maybe they would have been, if Avin Blake hadn’t killed one of their own.
Skirmishes broke out across the room. My new friend
s had the advantage at first, and strangled cries of surprise echoed around the room as Enforcers fell dead or unconscious, or broken.
Then, in the next eyeblink, weapons fire filled the air. Shouted orders and cries for help covered each other until no one could tell what anyone else was saying. Whether the clones were property of the Restored Society or not, the Enforcers knew they were under attack. They were fighting back.
“Tell them to put their weapons down,” I growled in the Corporal’s ear, the calm there and ready at my call. “Tell them to stand down or so help me God I’ll break your neck.”
“You…” he gagged, “you’re not a clone. You’re her. You’re… Era Rae.”
Yes. Yes, I am.
“Tell them,” I repeated, squeezing my arm in just a little tighter. “Do it now, or you die.”
He laughed. It was a strangled sort of chuckle and definitely not something I expected from a man who was just a hair’s breadth away from being dead. “You don’t… understand anything,” he wheezed at me, “about the Restored Society. We hold the… future in our hands… we strive… against the darkness. We…”
“Save it,” I told him, panic rising in me now as I saw two versions of myself nearly torn in two by MAR fire. “I’ve heard those three sentences before.”
“Then maybe…” He gasped in a deep breath and I felt his body shift like he was preparing to do something really stupid. “Then maybe… you do…understand…”
With a little jump he pushed his feet up off the floor and then dropped all of his weight down on the arm around his neck. I felt the cartilage tearing. I heard the bones at the top of his spine crack with a morbid kind of squish. I let go as quickly as I could but it was already too late. The Corporal had killed himself, rather than let himself be a hostage that could be used against the Restored Society.
I let him drop to the floor. Then I kicked him in the ribs. Because I felt like it.