by Sean Platt
“Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot! Don’t lie to me! You think you can try and mind fuck me? Bring in an army of Ephraims; I don’t care! You think that’s all it’ll take to knock me down, after all I’ve been through?” He remembered something Neven had said earlier and sharpened his point, “After all you’ve put me through?”
“Calm down, Ephraim. I just needed you to see.” His eyes darted toward the door. “You can go. You should go. I’ll handle him.”
Ephraim had Neven by the collar. He shook him like a disobedient child. “You’ll handle me?”
And the other Ephraim said to Neven, “So now I’m your errand boy? ‘Bring the bitch in, drop her off, then go?’ Listen, Neven. My brother does more to run this place than you could ever do alone. And if Wallace had an ounce of sense when he died, he would’ve left Eden to—”
Ephraim tightened his grip, then turned to his twin and stopped him midsentence with four measured words. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
Time seemed to stop.
He should break Neven’s neck and get out of here. Once he and Sophie were free, he could send word to whatever pirate nations were out there with stockpiled napalm. Promise them acres of Fiona’s money to carpet-bomb Connolly’s archipelago to dust. Burn the buildings, sink the whole damn plateau. Eden needed to be erased like a bad stain, punished enough never to recover.
To the other Ephraim, Neven said, “Get out, Ephraim. He’s not recalibrating. He’s going to—”
“I’m right here!” Ephraim shouted, shaking Neven harder. “If you want to talk to me, look at me, not him! I’m right fucking here!”
Neven’s eyes obediently shifted back to Ephraim’s. His breath more erratic, he said, “Try to breathe. I told you this would be difficult.”
Behind them, the man beside Sophie said, “Seeing as I’m your errand boy now, I suppose you want me to call someone to deal with him after I leave you two lovebirds alone?”
Not looking away, Neven said, “No. Just go.”
But the other Ephraim didn’t know when to stop. He was winding up rather than backing down. Neven’s face tightened.
“Just so you know,” said the other Ephraim to Neven, “our guy inside GEM says your pet here didn’t do as you promised. Fiona Roberson? He didn’t kill her. But he did kill one of her men. Then he stole the Sophie, hijacked Riverbed’s jet, and somewhere along the line did something that seriously pissed off Hershel Wood — though nobody knows what that was. Only that Wood is on one hell of a rampage, pulling every string he has. All of them, Neven. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“Ephraim …” Neven warned.
But the other Ephraim went on undaunted.
“Do you know what this means, Neven? Your little ‘project’ somehow managed to get Riverbed and GEM on the same side. We used to at least be able to play one off of the other, but now they’re united. Now, they’re going to come straight fucking for us. You can only cry ‘international waters’ for so long; eventually, the boat rocks enough and Interpol and the motherfucking UN and whoever else start to get interested. And don’t tell me again about bureaucracy and red tape. Maybe it’ll take forever for the official authorities to come after us, but that shit cuts both ways. The wrong people can come here in force, too, and the same red tape means it’d take forever to kick them out whether they’re ‘officially’ allowed on our soil or not — especially if Agaléga stops letting us use its ports. Hell, Neven, GEM can show up any time it wants the second our ‘friends’ can be bribed to start looking the other way!”
“GEM doesn’t have official authority out here.”
But Neven could only speak the single line because Ephraim, now holding his collar even tighter, was ready to snap. Neven had to see it on his face, feel it in the tension of his fists. He shut up immediately, the fear obvious in his eyes.
“Fuck their ‘official authority’!” the other Ephraim spat. “The way I hear it, Wood has something far up enough his ass to taste it. He’s going to charter a goddamn plane to Eden himself if he has to, and he’ll bring half of GEM with him. Doesn’t matter that they’re not ‘allowed’ to do anything to us! They’ll come anyway. Lock us down. Occupy the whole damn place! Then what are we going to do, Neven? Are we going to march up to them and say, ‘Um, yes, excuse me, but can you show me a warrant?’ By the time it’s all straightened out, GEM will know everything and so will Riverbed. We’ve nothing left after building this fucking place twice. The bank account is dry. Without new clients, it’s over. JUST LIKE I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR WEEKS!”
“Calm down,” Neven said, avoiding his captor’s eyes, trying in vain to face the other man.
But the other Ephraim wasn’t calming down.
“Tell you the truth, Neven,” his voice dropped. “The way I figure it, you’re reaping what you sowed. If we’re all going to Hell, maybe I should let it ‘reap’ all the way. Maybe I’m not inclined to help you — by interfering or leaving the room. Maybe I like that this whole thing is getting away from you.”
“Ephraim!”
“And maybe I should let him kill you like Jonathan said he would.”
The word clanged in Ephraim’s chaotic mind. Jonathan? But he was already too far gone. A disembodied thought, one too many in a brewing stew.
“Ephraim,” Neven managed to croak, “Please.”
Behind Ephraim, the other man gave a heavy sigh. And reluctantly he said, “Okay, Fido. Let him go.”
His hand settled on Ephraim’s shoulder.
And that was the final straw.
Something bloomed from Ephraim’s core like an iron fist.
He dropped Neven and swung around, his fear and anger and rancor and confusion and strength finding substance in one hard thrust of bone and flesh.
He hit his double so hard that it seemed to shatter not just his fingers and wrist, but his arm and shoulder bones as well.
But none of that mattered. Right now, Ephraim felt ready to hurt himself. Eager, even. Pain was easier to cope with than whatever monstrosity this moment had become.
The punch knocked the second Ephraim off his feet. He fell backward, staggering just enough to avoid a hard crash, then rammed another small table and broke it, too. He collapsed on the floor, a mess of limbs.
Then Second Ephraim rolled. He looked up from the floor with venom, his nose gushing and his lips split sideways, smile bitter and laced with red.
I guess you don’t look so much like me anymore, Ephraim thought, standing above him.
The other man sat up on his elbows. His shirt was already painted red, the flow from his nose like a faucet.
Ephraim couldn’t feel his hand or arm, sure his injuries would cripple him once the adrenaline left his body. But he could hit this fake, secondary Ephraim again before that happened.
And again. And again, mashing broken bones like chopsticks.
Second Ephraim got to his knees. He looked to Neven. Through sliced gums and a broken nose, he said, “Tell me this fucking thing has a self-destruct button.”
Second Ephraim stood to face Ephraim, Neven discarded to one side. And now there were two Ephraims, head to head.
Ephraim’s head turned toward Neven, and then he saw movement from the corner of his eye. Too late, he looked back and saw that Second Ephraim was in full lunge, hurtling forward to grab him around the waist.
They went down, grappling, in a field of splinters and broken glass.
They rolled, and Ephraim’s double got the upper hand.
Second Ephraim ended up on top; Ephraim was on the bottom.
Looking up to see someone who looked just like him snarling down was beyond surreal. Like fighting a bloody reflection.
“Ephraim!” Neven shouted, charging forward and trying to pull the topmost Ephraim — the double — away. “Walk out! Get off him and get the hell out of here before—!”
But Second Ephraim was stronger. He cuffed Neven away and resumed looking down, dripping blood on Ephraim’s face, his dark eyes
angry. And to Ephraim, he purred, “Someone’s gotten a little too big for my fucking britches.”
“Ephraim!”
But Neven may as well have said nothing. Second Ephraim thrust down at him, hard and fast.
Ephraim didn’t see it coming and couldn’t, even in recoil, see what exactly he’d been hit with. An elbow, probably.
Sophie, somewhere, was screaming.
“Let him go!” Neven yelled.
“Why?” Second Ephraim growled, staring Ephraim in the eyes. “He didn’t do what you wanted him to. He failed. You failed. This whole project was a clusterfuck. Maybe he did get the shit you wanted from Wood; who knows? But what the hell does it matter if GEM starts working with Fiona?”
Neven was above them both, trying to pull Ephraim’s assailant away. But the other man resisted easily and kicked hard at Ephraim, re-establishing his dominance.
His hands went to Ephraim’s neck and squeezed. At that moment, Ephraim realized that this other Ephraim Todd didn’t plan to beat him in a fight. He planned to kill him dead.
“When a dog bites its owner, you put it down,” said Second Ephraim, squeezing harder.
But then Neven was back, grabbing the topmost Ephraim and wrestling him away. Neven was a bit bigger and a lot less bloody.
As the body above left him and pressure ceased on his throat, Ephraim sat up, finally free. Neven threw Second Ephraim from a standing bear hug and sent him staggering. For a moment, it looked like Second Ephraim might rush forward to fight again, but his nose was broken, his breath was heavy, and it was clear the fatigue had hit him. So instead of rushing Ephraim or Neven again, he gave a final stare, walked through the door, and was gone.
Neven knelt beside Ephraim. Sophie, visible now at the fight’s periphery, ran to his side. She ran her hands all over him, cooing with concern.
Ephraim wanted to strike at Neven as he came close, but the adrenaline was leaving. The pain came like a wave. He looked at the bearded man and said, “Just because you made a clone of me doesn’t mean you own me.”
But he knew. Deep down, now that fight or flight had run out of fuel, strands of logic that had been inside Ephraim for months were assembling an obvious puzzle.
The fake memories.
The way he couldn’t remember his past.
His hacked MyLife — something that was impossible except in clones.
He’d been so suggestible.
So conditioned.
Ephraim sat up on the floor. Then he sagged back against the front of the big chair.
“This is it, isn’t it?” he said, looking up at Neven.
He wanted to be furious, but right now Neven was the only person in the universe who might understand him, who might have at least a few unpleasant answers.
“Please tell me it is. Please tell me that at least it can be over. That you can put me down like he said.” Then Ephraim managed a tiny laugh, remembering it was the original Ephraim Todd who’d made that comment. And bitterly he added, “Like I said.”
Neven nodded almost sadly. Then he reached down and took Sophie’s hand, standing her up beside him. Ephraim looked up at them both.
“Almost,” Neven said.
CHAPTER 54
THE HUMANE THING TO DO
Ephraim pulled himself back into a chair while Neven busied himself making two new drinks; one for himself and another for Sophie. Hers was an Old Fashioned, the drink Ephraim knew the real Sophie favored. Proof of concept, as it were; evidence that a clone could be the real thing. Or that the real thing could turn out to be a clone.
Neven settled Sophie in a chair across the room, his body language gentle. Ephraim couldn’t tell what Neven was saying to her, but whatever it was seemed to pacify and calm her.
She took the drink and sipped. He handed her a tablet, possibly to read or otherwise entertain herself while the others talked. Then he took the other tablet — the one he’d been using earlier — and circled Sophie without raising an eyebrow. He looked like a man checking stats, maybe running a diagnostic on a machine. Checking her vitals remotely. Or sending calming thoughts through her MyLife, the way he’d sent so many disturbing ones through Ephraim’s.
Watching Neven and Sophie, Ephraim had a rare peaceful thought. This was the end of the line, and it was fine. He was a clone; he could understand and believe it even if he might never truly be able to accept it. And just as Ephraim decided that whatever was happening might mean his death, that was fine, too. Good, actually. He couldn’t live life as an echo. Couldn’t go on with his mind fracturing like crystal crashing to the floor, his reality bent, all he’d ever known revealed to be an abject lie.
“It’s okay, you know,” Neven said.
Ephraim’s mind had been wandering; he hadn’t seen Neven approach. But the other man was above him now, looking down like a father to a child.
“How is it okay?” He felt bruised and beaten. He was a mess. The elbow blow (or whatever it had been) had broken something. The Ephraims’ faces were both busted and bleeding. Twins to the end.
“It’s okay because you proved my point.” Neven nodded and sat within a few feet of Ephraim, conversational as if this were all perfectly normal. “You proved that a clone could surpass the original.”
Ephraim coughed. It was half laugh.
“That’s what my father wanted. That was his vision. Clones are only redundant if you consider the donor to be superior by default — if you decide in advance that their ‘originality’ matters somehow. But it doesn’t. ‘Original’ just means something came first. It doesn’t mean better.”
“Better,” Ephraim said.
Neven jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The original Ephraim Todd? He’s intolerable. He’s what you could have become if you’d lived his life. But you aren’t him, so you turned out better.”
“Doesn’t exactly feel that way.”
“It’s true, though. We gave you some of the original Ephraim’s most important memories, but we intentionally left plenty of blanks in his record and filled some of those with what we needed you to believe.”
“Only some of them? What about the other blanks?”
“Those were for you to fill. Chances for you to become yourself, rather than him.” Neven sighed, head slowly bobbing. “You were my experiment, Ephraim. And Jonathan always—”
“Jonathan? He’s alive?” He should be more excited, but he was too tired. And besides, he’d found out Jonathan was alive once before, and look how that had turned out.
“You knew he was. Everything that drove you came from a belief that he was here. At least, that’s how things worked at first. By the end, your pursuit of justice was just a habit.”
Neven stood.
“The mind is a funny thing. It doesn’t accept what it sees. It believes what it needs to, regardless of what’s objectively there. You may think you remember far-off bits of your life, but only your recent memories happened. But in the end, does it make a difference?”
Ephraim closed his eyes. The old memories were there like concrete.
“But I remember it. I remember it all.”
“It may take you time to come to grips with, but in time you’ll see that you don’t remember. In a way, your past is the greatest gift we could have given you. Most people are forced to live their lives. But you?” He pointed at Ephraim. “You created yours.”
“How long has it been? How long have I …?”
It was a sentence he couldn’t bring himself to finish.
“We began dripping Ephraim’s memories soon after he and Jonathan came here. Less than a year later, we’d made you.”
“Nine years.”
Ephraim could feel somewhere inside that Neven wasn’t lying, but the knowledge felt strange. Up until fifteen minutes ago, he’d believed he was forty years old. Strictly speaking, he’d been on the planet for a child’s lifetime. Both ages were accurate, in different ways.
Neven nodded.
“Why did you create me? Why not just sen
d the real Ephraim to do your dirty work?”
“Officially speaking, Eden’s answer is that the original would have given himself away. He’s not a good enough actor to convince Fiona, and GEM if necessary, that he wasn’t our spy. We needed someone inside Riverbed who believed what we needed him to believe. We had the technology. The solution, if unconventional, seemed obvious.”
“Is there an unofficial answer?”
“Yes. He’d never have done it,” Neven answered. “The original Ephraim Todd doesn’t have your fiber. He’s too selfish. He isn’t a strong enough person to have a ‘mission’ or a ‘purpose.’”
That felt like a compliment to Ephraim, but what good did it do?
Neven sipped his drink. “My father believed that clones were upgrades, not copies. They didn’t recapitulate what God had done; they improved it. My father died with conflicting beliefs that he would have actualized if a friend of his hadn’t knocked him from his path. I was able to bring his beliefs to life once Eden was mine. And that was my goal with you, Ephraim. To create something better. Something that was more than the sum of its original parts; something — someone — who self-actualized beyond his genetics and conditioning. And you nearly succeeded, through methods we didn’t always see coming.”
Nearly succeeded? According to the other Ephraim, it was more than near.
“Will GEM come and occupy Eden?” he asked. “Are Hershel Wood and Fiona working together to—?”
“Let me worry about that,” Neven said.
But it was true; Ephraim could see it on his face. He had won. Somehow, he’d beaten Neven at his own game.
“What was it like?” Neven asked. “The first Ephraim never would have done what you did. But you? You hijacked a plane. You killed two men.”
“It was the only way.”
Neven raised a hand, wordlessly dismissing his experiment’s sins. “Death is the way of evolution. Progress often has bloody hands. Kingdoms rise and fall through revolt and upheaval, and as the saying goes, ‘Only the strong survive.’ My father always said that life needed to end for it to matter. That’s why he died, why he never tried to fix what nature had broken inside him. His death, in his mind, at least, wasn’t a tragedy. For him, it was an honor. His next step. That’s why he believed so deeply in his work; he said that clones were a way to take those last steps without truly dying. Individuals passed, but the line endured. And each time through the process, the genetic starting point could advance, become better.”