I shove open the door and walk inside before I can change my mind.
Hurtt stands beside a ring of white polyplastic about two meters in diameter, held upright on a wide base. Hand- and footholds rest inside the circle and the outer surface is wrapped in steel arms, like an autosurgeon. Beside the ring is a coffin-sized pod of glass and steel. Pink liquid sloshes inside it, swimming with whorls of purple-protein-rich simbryonic fluid.
“Good morning, Mars.”
I ignore Raf’s greeting. “You want me to get into that?”
“It’s not as scary as it looks,” he says. “It’s state-of-the-art, and entirely safe—the only self-contained adult cloning system of its kind.”
“Why do you even have this?”
“I’m the wealthiest individual in the galaxy, and a lot of people would like to see me dead. It pays to have a decoy.”
“Then you’ve used it.”
“Once or twice,” he says, faux-innocent look on his face. “The machine will take your sample and scan your features to ensure the clone resembles you. Your feet are secured for support, and your hands are encased so the machine can capture all the fine details there in prime definition.”
“It’s just going to end up mangled.”
“Imperial forensics will pore over the corpse. It needs to look good enough to fool them.”
He’s got a point.
“Just tell me I don’t need to be naked.”
“Underwear is fine.”
Ocho purrs loudly underfoot, hoping for attention, but I’m too distracted by the machine. I almost step on her when I yank my leg free of my tight jumpsuit, and she scurries away to glower accusingly.
“You’re the one who sat there in the first place.” I pick her up and set her down on my jumpsuit and cloak, neatly folded on the floor.
“Are we ready?” Raf asks.
“Yeah, but I want to get back to Pale as soon as we’re done.”
“Of course.”
Raf offers me a hand for support and I climb the small steps at the base of the machine. The footholds close automatically when I slip my feet inside—the polyrubber molding itself to my skin, even pressure on every surface. I grab the grips inside the handholds and the pods squeeze shut around my hands. I feel precarious, and self-conscious. At least my underwear is clean.
“Last chance to change your mind,” Raf says.
Before I can respond the door swings open with a creak and Mallory rushes into the room.
“I wish you’d told me you were about to begin,” she says breathless, like she ran here as soon as she heard.
“After your protests yesterday, I assumed you wouldn’t want to be here.”
Mallory takes a moment, and stands straighter. “If you’re going ahead with the procedure anyway, I’d rather watch and ensure your safety.” With this last comment she looks at me.
“Very well,” Raf says. “Alright, Mars: shall we start?”
“Sure, sooner we get this finished, the sooner I can get down,” I say, as beads of sweat gather under my arms and streak slowly down my flank.
“First, the machine is going to take a bone marrow sample. You’ll need to be conscious.”
“That’s okay,” I say; “just means one less needle.”
He smiles kindly. “I’m afraid it’s going to hurt rather a lot.”
The machine whines as an arm pulls away from the circle and extends down to stop level with my chest. A large needle protrudes from the apparatus with a click and my breathing stops. It’s every needle that’s ever pierced my skin, hollow silver daggers that replace blood with poison. I squirm against the restraints, struggling to pull away.
“Mars, you need to stay still,” Hurtt says gently.
My breath rasps loud in my ears, vision vibrating with the thud rattle beat of my heart.
High-pitched whir as the needle shunts closer, aimed at the center of my chest. It snaps out, piercing skin and bone. Breath catches in my throat. The needle retracts, tinted red. The pain is deep, like it was my heart stung by the steel, not my sternum.
The arm disappears from view and Raf steps forward. “That was the worst part, Mars, I promise.” His words sound whispered compared to my sharp panting.
Another whine of machinery, then the fluid inside the clone pod glugs loudly. Accelerated cell growth procedure bubbling through primordial ooze.
Four limbs advance from the machine and my arm shakes against the restraint as I try to yank a hand free, expecting scalpels or more needles. I know it’s safe—Raf says it’s safe, do I trust Raf?—but I squirm and grit my teeth, tamping down the psychic rage waiting to be released. Lines of green light dance over my flesh and the machine lays me horizontal while the arms orbit my body, scanning me from every angle. Blinding lights cross my face, afterimage shimmers and blurs. I blink. Arms, legs, and stomach muscles ache from holding myself straight and rigid, sternum wound thrums with pain like I’ve never felt.
I hear the sharp clack of Mallory’s boots on the tile floor, but I can’t see her.
“What are you doing, Mallory?” Hurtt asks, something like irritation or impatience resting beneath the words. Or maybe I’m projecting, desperate to get down from the machine.
“Just double-checking the settings,” she says. “We can’t afford to waste all this money on a subpar clone.”
Hurtt chuckles, but it sounds forced. “Maybe you should be my accountant.”
The surgical arms continue their dizzying dance, until finally the machine lifts me upright, eyes dazzled, light-headed from the sudden shift.
“That should be fin—” Hurtt stops when two arms unfurl toward me from the outer edge of the ring—just flashes of steel through the bright spots in my vision. I hear each one click, but I don’t see the needles. I feel them plunge into my skin, followed by the subtle burn of injection.
It’s like a dam bursting. I break the hand pods with my mind and pull my arms free. Metal and polyplastic showers the floor as Hurtt and Mallory step back—Raf wide-eyed, Mallory calm as ever.
“What’s happening?” Hurtt says.
I reach for Mallory, hand moving but mind refusing to act. My blood is lava, seeping through my veins thick and hot. My heart thumps hard inside the cage of my ribs, sternum aches with each beat. Stops.
Another beat and I gasp, vision fading in and out at interval. I sway forward, almost fall, held upright by the pods gripping tight to my feet. I reach out again, thoughts scattering on the wind like jacaranda blossoms.
Words burble through my sensorium, incomprehensible at first, gaining meaning full seconds after I hear them.
“What have you done?” Raf asks, incredulous.
“You should have let me have the program, Raf. With her DNA and my training we could have raised a private army to rival the imperial military. You have one planet now, but we could have controlled entire systems.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Hurtt says, writing his own death warrant in arrogant tones.
Heart slow, thoughts slow. Hands reaching out slow, too slow. A moment—infinity crushed into perception—is all it takes for the laspistol to appear in Mallory’s hand.
“For someone so brilliant, you were never any good at seeing the big picture.”
Raf’s mouth opens in retort but stays frozen in place—Mallory puts the gun against his chest and the weapon squeals. He stumbles, falls to his knees.
“I didn’t want to do this, Raf,” she says, squeezing the trigger again, the force of the second blast knocking him flat. “You only have yourself to blame.”
I finally chose to trust this man, and now he’s dead. And I thought anything could change. I blink slow and the gun is gone, replaced by a surgical implement glinting in Mallory’s hand. She slides the instrument in behind Raf’s eyeball. Another blink and his eye dangles against his cheek at the end of the optic nerve, Hurtt Corp insignia visible on the rear of the artificial organ.
Mallory snakes a cable from her datastack to the
back of the ocular implant and sits quietly beside the corpse. “Orbital defenses disabled,” she says. There’s a pause. “Not yet, but she will be by the time you get down here.”
There’s more, but the words don’t register, deflected by the tranqs in my mind.
Mallory steps closer and I see a person-shaped smudge in front of me, eye to eye even when I’m so high off the ground. “Relax, Mars; it’ll all be over soon.”
Spark of fresh pain when she presses the hot barrel of her pistol against my punctured sternum. My thoughts turn to fire. She stands so close, too close to miss. I don’t need to reach, just push. I scream in her face, focusing every part of my drug-fucked brain. Mallory flies back and slams into the wall, denting the metal panel. Wide-eyed look of shock and fear—the first time I’ve seen her perturbed. I laugh and try to speak, garbled noises emerging from my slack mouth. Mallory scrambles to grab her pistol, but I scream again and the weapon shatters into a hundred glinting shards of debris. And I’d been aiming for her. She rushes for the door without looking back.
I blink and black seeps into my mind. It takes hold. I disappear.
* * *
It starts as a long, low yaow, impossibly remote. The noise builds exponential, becomes a hiss right next to my ear.
My eyes shoot open, cheek hot, skin burning, blood leaking warm from the wound.
Ocho yaows again and the sound echoes through my head. I try to speak, but no words come out, just a hoarse croak.
Okay, little one, okay. I’m awake.
My feet are still caught in the machine’s footholds, body curled in on itself, drool turned cold on my chin. How long was I out? Could be minutes or hours.
I break the footholds open and fall forward, thoughts too sluggish to stop myself from hitting the ground face-first. Ocho lands gently on the floor beside me, briefly licks her glide membranes clean before they fold away. I struggle into my jumpsuit and cloak while Ocho walks figure-eights around my legs, purring loudly. I put her on my shoulder and let her climb into the hood on her own, so she can pretend it was her choice.
The clone pod continues bubbling, a head-sized lump of undifferentiated tissue bobbing within, visibly gaining mass with each passing second. I check Hurtt’s pulse, just in case, then look up as boots clomp and squeal from the hallway.
Five people from Hurtt’s security team burst into the room to find me crouched over their dead boss. No time to explain. I toss the guards back before they can bring their guns to bear, and tear the ballistic carbines from their hands in midair. I crush the weapons—mangled steel clatters to the floor in time with the thud of the guards.
It would be so easy to kill them, but they’re just doing their job. I leave them behind and stumble out into the empty corridor.
“Waren?” I say, voice weak.
“Mediag showed you unconscious; what’s going on?”
“Mallory tried to kill me. She killed Hurtt. Emperor’s Guard are coming down.”
“You need to reach Pale.”
Fuck. I lean against the wall while my head spins, vision swinging like a pendulum. “Can you lead the way?”
“Done.”
Waren draws a dark red navline across the HUD of my ocular implant, blood-vivid against the white tiles.
“Get in his augs and tell me what’s happening,” I say, doing my best impression of running, feet slapping distant and clumsy beneath me.
“I can’t see anything,” Waren says.
I keep running, lungs tight, blood slow, muscles oxygen starved. I can’t stop. Waren’s navline terminates outside a locked operating room. I close my eyes, gather my thoughts, and break the door off its hinges, hands held out in front of me, ready to fight.
Pale lies unconscious on a steel table with Dr. Modern looming over his prone form, surgical limbs extended like steel wings.
“Get away from him!”
I grab Modern by the throat and lift him into the air. A scalpel flashes from his arm and arcs toward my throat. I tear it free with my mind and hold it to Modern’s temple, blood seeping from the incision.
“Are you going to behave, or do I need to cut your fucking face off?”
His eyes flicker to the side and I follow them, see him reaching for an emergency response button with a pair of forceps emerging from his elbow. Anger flashes through my mind, quiet tink as I tear the steel appendage from his augmented arm and drop it to the floor. I drag the scalpel down to his jawline while Modern screams.
“What were you doing to him,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I was told to harvest the boy’s organs,” he stammers, and I lower him to the ground, watching the disparate surgical tools fold back into his steel limbs.
“On whose orders?”
“Mallory’s.”
I press the scalpel at his throat a little harder. “You’re going to give him something to bring him up, now. Try anything else and I’ll tear your arm off and gut you with it.”
Modern gulps and nods rapidly, then searches through a cupboard lined with vials of clear liquid.
I keep an eye on the doctor and open a comm-link with Waren. “I’ve got Pale; he’s safe. What’s happening out there?”
“Emperor’s Guard have dropped into the atmosphere and are rallying over Hurtt’s compound.”
Fuck. I need more time.
“Where are the uppers?” I spit at Modern.
He finishes drawing liquid into a small syringe and goes back to the cupboard, selecting a plastic bottle filled with small white pills: metamethamphetamine—just what I need to cut through the tranquilizer fog.
I chew three tablets while Modern slides the needle into Pale’s arm; chemical bitterness seeps over my tongue and leaks down my throat.
“It might take a few minutes for the medication to work,” Dr. Modern says, watching over Pale.
I shove him aside and lift Pale off the table. It feels like he weighs double what he did the first time I picked him up, but it’s still not enough.
I leave Modern to collect his broken appendages and head for the elevator, drugs quickening my step.
“Waren, I need you to get into the compound’s systems and trigger an evacuation.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the roof,” I say. “I’m going to make the Guard sue for peace.”
* * *
Inertia shifts my weight as the elevator comes to a stop. Nose runny, mouth dry, heart racing, teeth clenched. I could take on the whole fucking galaxy.
The doors open and I rush out onto the rooftop where the Rua and Antler sit parked between antenna arrays. Sirens wail in the distance and a small fleet of vehicles heads east—employees fleeing the compound.
I lower Pale gently to the ground. Black clouds approach from the west, but the sky over the compound is filled with imperial craft. A heavy carrier hangs high in the stratosphere, barely visible, frigates descending to land in the wide field beyond the compound, and shuttles dropping onto the other rooftops, spilling troops from the Emperor’s Guard.
I reach out with both hands, low hum building in the back of my throat as my thoughts strike out. Frigates crumple into shapeless masses of steel and I toss them into the forest where they bounce and roll, knocking down trees while shattered reactors spark blazes. Ocho climbs from my hood onto my shoulder and hisses at the sky.
Screaming, I sweep the other rooftops with my mind. Soldiers flail, thrown clear of the buildings, their cries fading to silence as they plummet to the ground. Shuttles crash into the compound—glass and debris rain down with the wrecked ships and explosions boom in chorus far below.
I yell as I grab hold of the carrier. Thoughts turn to the last time I held my hands up to the sky and screamed: Seward. This will be the last time. It has to be. They have to think I’m dead, and I’d never die without a fight. I pull at the massive vessel, feel its superstructure shudder in my grip as I drag it down, fists clenched, fingernails biting into flesh. I hear the far away rumble
as its engines struggle and glow bright-hot.
“Waren,” I scream. “Hail that ship, patch me through.”
Static shifts across the comm-link, then Waren says, “Connected.”
I let go of the carrier and double over, not from the strain on my mind, but my body—surgical sedatives and metameth battling over my nervous system. I rest my hands on my knees and focus on my breath, try to slow my thundering heart and ignore the bone-deep ache in my chest. “Carrier of the Emperor’s Guard, this is Mariam Xi.”
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Natera. In the name of their Imperial Highness, you are to be put to death.”
“Yeah, no,” I say. “I need you to reconsider.”
I reach up again and cry out, drag the carrier further down, two hands out, fingers blurry in the foreground while I focus on the ship. My throat aches from the shriek as I yank the carrier and drop it into the forest. Sharp crack of trees snapping beneath its weight, then a resounding dhoom as the capital ship crashes into the ground. The building shakes beneath my feet, vibrations humming through my body from the soles of my feet.
The carrier’s engines fall silent. Birds flee the impact site in flocks, squawking as they take flight. High-pitched screams below as the last of Hurtt’s employees evacuate, panicked and disorganized compared to the birds.
“Natera, you still there?” I wait a few seconds, then hear the man groan over comms while alarms squeal in the background. “You’ve got two options: I crush that ship and everyone in it, or we strike a deal.”
“What deal?” he says, tone vicious.
I look down at Pale. He’s awake but confused, slowly taking in the pillars of smoke filling the air, the fires burning deep in the forest, and all the wrecks of the Guard’s fleet.
“I want a fair trial,” I say. “I don’t expect to win, but I deserve a chance at justice. Promise me that, and safe passage for the kid I’ve got with me, and I’ll come along quietly.”
Pale shakes his bandaged head. “Don’t do it, Mars.”
“Why should I trust you?” Natera asks.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.” I make a show of sighing loudly, and it’s only partly an act. “I’m not just going to lie down and die, but I know I killed a lot of people—I know I deserve judgment. I can’t keep running.
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