by MJ Blehart
“All of this,” Onima concluded, “has led us to Emerson City—and the wellness center.”
“The center itself, or Director Nazari?” asked Hailey.
“Both,” said Onima, not wishing to get more specific.
The clones exchanged looks before Hailey spoke again. “What is it you hope we can tell you?”
“We want more details about what they do at the center,” said Onima.
“More details?” inquired Ay-Nine.
Kara spoke up. “While we know the official line and have visited their infoverse site, one of our suspicions is that they do some...unofficial medical procedures.”
“Like what?” asked Cee-six.
“Genetic manipulation,” Onima said frankly. “Bio-organic body modifications beyond implants and similar tech. DNA re-sequencing.”
“And brain scans and programming,” added Jace.
Onima hadn’t actually considered that, but was glad Jace had.
Again, the clones looked at one another, before Hailey said, “We would rather not jeopardize our relationship with the wellness center. How come you don’t just get a warrant?”
Onima glanced at Kara, but before either could speak, Jace said, “This is a very complicated investigation. Marshal Gwok’s directive is broad, but this conspiracy potentially reaches into her chain of command. As such, certain aspects of the investigation have required us to take unusual steps. Such as me serving as a special consultant.”
“I’ve never heard of the CBI employing a clone before,” said Hamlet.
“He’s armed,” said Jane.
“For real?” asked Ay-Nine.
“His pistol looked real to me,” Jane replied.
Jace drew his plasma laser pistol. He withdrew the power cartridge, proving it was fully functional.
The standard-issue CBI sidearm had variable settings, allowing for more or less power per shot fired. If you wanted to disable someone rather than kill them, you could. What was more, repeated high-powered shots could eventually overwhelm armored shells.
As he put the pistol back in its holster, Onima said, “Jace speaks the truth. And we don’t expect you to take this risk and give up information without being compensated. We will pay for your services, as previously agreed upon with Cee-six.”
The four clones looked to Cee-six, who nodded.
“Question,” Dee said tentatively. “How come you don’t want our designations? What’s that about?”
Onima grinned. “Are they the names you call yourselves? Working with Jace, I’ve learned a lot about the lives of clones now, post-war. You may be clones, but you are people—and your names are your names.”
Dee nodded, either surprised or discomfited by Onima’s answer.
“Very well,” Hailey said, making it clear she was the de facto leader of the quartet. “We’ll do what we can to get you details about the wellness center. You want a thorough diagram of the place too?”
“Yes, please,” Onima said.
Hailey nodded and went back to her meal.
There was silence for a time.
Jane broke it. “Marshal Gwok, you mentioned a virus that is affecting clones. Is that what has been killing so many?”
“Most likely, yes,” said Onima. “How many have you lost?”
“It started a little over two years ago,” said Cee-six. “Someone would come back from a workday looking beat, and then over the span of twenty-four to ninety-six hours, they became despondent, lost motor function, died, and liquified. A third of our total number have died that way.”
Onima looked at Jace and Kara. Kara had not seen it, but Onima had been with Jace when Zee Alpha Three had died and liquified before their eyes.
“That’s what I saw when my roommate died,” Jace told Cee-six. “We learned that it was this manufactured virus that killed him.”
“Were these clones working in the wellness center?” asked Kara.
“No,” said Cee-six. “One in three of them worked in a warehouse that has since closed, before anyone made that connection. Nobody who worked at the wellness center got sick.”
“Where is this warehouse?” asked Onima. “I think we might need to pay it a visit.”
8
The rest of the night passed uneventfully. Jace felt almost at home; being among clones again had an aspect of familiarity to it.
But it also felt very different, in many respects.
In Copy Slum, they didn’t have a collective of any sort. The clones worked separately and independently of one another. While they might on rare occasion lend each other a hand, for the most part, they kept to themselves.
In the months since Jace had witnessed the execution of Palmer Cadoret, his life had changed drastically. Not only was he serving as a consultant to the CBI, but for the first time in his life, he had the respect of non-clones. Even before they had transferred from the Aquila to the Daedalus, Jace had felt included.
What was more, while in Copy Slum, the closest thing to friends Jace had had were John Doe and Zee Alpha Three. But they were not close friendships, despite the trio having been roommates for years. Now, however, Jace felt he’d developed real friendships with Onima, Kara, Yael, and, before his betrayal, Feroz.
It had all been so unexpected. Most barely considered clones people. It was not unusual for a clone to be beaten in the open and for nobody to come to his or her aid. Even the night of the murder, Jace had been accosted and had randomly had something thrown at him.
Ten years ago, the war between the NEEA and NECC had been almost entirely fought by clones. While there were non-clone officers in command, the fighting was done by the clones. The various clone types each had a job to do for the war effort.
Jace was infantry. All the NEEA’s Rojas and Dahl clones were. And on the other side of the war, the same roles were carried out by the Tushabe and Wang clones in the NECC.
And so Jace spent a night in a tenement comprised entirely of clones that had once been the enemy. But with the war over, they had all been forgotten—whether created for the Coalition or the Alliance—and lost their purpose all the same.
The AECC—the government that had evolved from the three before and during the war—moved on without regard for the clones who had fought and died for nearly two decades.
Jace had never considered any other clone he had met since the war an enemy. No matter their allegiance during the war, now they were the same. Yellow-eyed freaks with a barcode tattoo embedded below their right eyes and ambitions artificially limited to keep them from rebelling. Outside of the armored shells and uniforms of the opposition, clones were all second-class semi-humans in the eyes of most of the human race.
Jace’s lot was unique in many ways. He knew it was only by good fortune that Onima had been the marshal assigned the case, and he could never have predicted anything that had followed since.
After Onima and Kara got ration bars to break their fast, the trio got into the van and made their way to the warehouse Cee-six and company had told them about the night before.
“I have an odd question for you,” Kara asked Jace.
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I thought that clones were incapable of procreating, and that among their inhibitions was that they have no inherent desire for sex,” Kara began, “yet I am pretty sure I heard a couple having sex last night.”
“It’s not like we lack the ability,” Jace said. “Just...I, for one, have never had an interest.”
“You don’t feel attraction?” asked Kara.
Jace pondered his answer a moment. “It’s hard to explain. But while I can identify male, female, and nonbinary, I have no real sense of attraction. I couldn’t tell you if someone is beautiful or ugly. Beyond the physical, since most of the connections I have made were seldom more than acquaintances, overall, it’s never come up. I mean, I care about the welfare of you, Onima, Yael, and others because we have developed a familiarity and, dare I say, friendships. But I wouldn’t have the slightest idea
of what ‘attraction’ beyond that might be.”
“I think you can safely call us friends,” Onima said from the driver’s seat.
Jace did appreciate hearing that.
“But you could be attracted to someone and act on that, if you so desired?” Kara pressed.
“I’m human,” Jace replied. “And subject to pain, pleasure, and emotions. Mine are just different in that I am programmed, we now know, to lack a certain degree of ambition. Along with that, they also lessened our ability to feel sexual attraction to avoid distraction, obviously. I’ve read enough to see what passion and attraction can turn into, and how that sometimes goes rather poorly.
“Anyway, after the war, like enjoying food, some clones have chosen to experiment with sex and enjoy the sensation that comes from it. But it’s wholly a choice, not instinctual, as in normal human beings.”
“But you have no curiosity about that yourself?” asked Kara.
“No,” Jace replied. “It seems pretty complicated, frankly. And watching what Dr. Patel is going through following Feroz’s betrayal makes it even less appealing.”
“Love is a complicated emotion,” said Onima. “Intimate relationships are even more complicated.”
“Well, yeah,” said Kara, “but I find it so odd that anyone can just have no curiosity or desire.”
“I think that’s what it comes down to,” said Jace. “Remember, we were reprogrammed from our original templates prior to the brain scan embed. Removing more complicated emotional bonding but leaving emotions largely intact was some of the appeal of clones over automatons as soldiers.”
“But it seems like your emotions, though they exist, have been stunted,” Kara said. “Maybe you know what the emotion is, but it’s like you can only partially feel it.”
Jace shrugged. “I’ve no idea what I am missing out on, so I can’t really offer a better explanation.”
“Not long after I became a marshal,” Onima said, “a mob boss I helped take down had a whole business of selling sexual encounters with clone males to women. It would seem that sex with a clone is something of a kink.”
“ESCA is ESCA,” remarked Jace. “It can be hard to come by. Doesn’t surprise me some clones would go in for that sort of thing.”
“Do you know if there were Rojas clones among them?” asked Kara.
“I seem to recall so,” said Onima.
“What do you think of that, Jace?” asked Kara.
“It’s not much of a surprise to me,” said Jace. “Besides, we’re clones. The original Rojas was well endowed, and so are—”
“We’re here,” Onima announced, overly loud. Jace chuckled to himself as they parked in front of a large, clearly abandoned warehouse.
As they got out of the hovervan, it was clear none of the other buildings in the complex were in use. Yet it lacked the decay of a long-time abandoned space.
Jace, Onima, and Kara walked around until they reached the entrance. Although it was sealed, a digital lock was still engaged.
“I know we got new hacks from Teru,” Onima said, “but, Kara, what have you got?”
Kara grinned and stepped up to the lock. She waved her forearm over the lock mechanism, and a small holographic screen popped up in front of her. She tapped at the screen a couple of times, but Jace couldn’t tell what she was seeing.
The door clicked and opened.
“That’s odd,” Kara said. “It was an encrypted code. Heavily encrypted.”
“Far more than you would expect from an abandoned warehouse?” asked Onima.
“Yes.”
Without a word, all three drew their pistols and cautiously entered the facility.
The entryway was a separate space, a waiting room or lobby area of some sort. Moving through, they passed several offices. Beyond those was a door into the warehouse proper.
Checking to make sure the offices were all clear, the trio made their way into the warehouse.
Inside were numerous completely empty workbenches, all metal, row upon row. But toward the far right corner of the room, a clear plastic airlock remained.
Jace made his way toward the former cleanroom space, checking from time to time that nobody was hiding behind the workbenches. Kara and Onima had swung outwards, doing the same.
The trio converged on the section of workbenches that would have been within the cleanroom space. Kara and Onima holstered their pistols, and while Kara ran a sweep via her implants, Onima had withdrawn her datacard and placed the monocle wearable over her ear to run a sweep. Jace kept hold of his pistol, observing the room around them so nobody might sneak up on them.
“Apart from the workbenches and this plastic sheeting, they cleaned this place out,” Kara remarked.
“They didn’t exactly perform a cleanroom scouring,” Onima concurred, “but whomever was here left nothing behind.”
“Does this look familiar to you, Onima?” Jace asked.
“Very,” Onima agreed. “Just like what we found at Olympian in Goddardopolis.”
“What was that about?” asked Kara.
“Before you joined us, Jace and I each found our way into a lab that belonged to a company tied to Gray and Chuang. Some of the data we have on the case came from there.”
“The facilities were identical to this”—Jace gestured—“but active. And there was a cleanroom space setup that looked a lot like this.”
“You think they’re connected?” asked Kara.
“Yes,” Jace replied. “When too many puzzle pieces look alike, they are usually part of the same damned puzzle.”
They looked around, but the warehouse was well and truly abandoned.
“Do you think they exposed some of the clones to the virus here?” asked Kara.
“It seems that way to me,” Onima said. “But a third of the local clones die, and they don’t think to tie it to working here?”
“Why would they?” asked Jace. “Remember, we don’t get sick like none-clones do. And it’s not like a sick clone can go to a doctor or medical facility for treatment. They’d be turned away, and if they were taken in, it’s likely they’d still disappear.”
“What about the clone medics?” asked Kara. “Both the NEEA and NECC had clone medics, right?”
Jace chuckled, “How many clone types did you observe in the tenement?”
“I dunno. Four or five?” Kara looked at Onima.
“Seems right,” she agreed.
“Most of the clones were infantry,” Jace remarked. “Wangs and Tushabes. While I’m no expert on NECC clones, the only medic I’ve seen in person was the dead Siddique on Raven. I saw none of them there. And that’s one of the odder parts of how we clones are treated.”
“Explain,” asked Onima.
“Both sides, as you know, had a dozen or so templates,” Jace said. “The NEEA, for example, had two template donors each for infantry, heavy infantry, cavalry, support, medics, mechanics, and pilots. However, because infantry require the least amount of training and equipment and can be quickly armed and sent out to fight, we were the majority. Despite fourteen clone types in the NEEA, the ratio of infantry to all others was four or five to one. Possibly higher.”
“So?” said Kara.
“Heavy infantry and cavalry, then pilots and mechanics, were the next greatest numbers,” Jace continued. “Support and medics were in far fewer numbers, like one for every ten or so—not that I ever saw a report. Just overheard conversations.
“The point is, there were not nearly as many medics as other clone types. And, for the most part, they could do field work to keep us on our feet and fighting, but little else.”
“You’d think the people who went to the trouble of creating clones for war would want to preserve them better,” Kara commented.
“Not when the whole point was to use clones as cannon fodder,” Jace said. “Particularly infantry. And though all of us were abandoned after the war, the specialized clones tend to have jobs and stay separated from the rest of us.”
“Like the pilots on Aarde,” said Onima.
“Exactly.”
“So,” Onima concluded, “pilots, mechanics, and medics remained more useful to non-clones after the war and are treated less like pariahs than the infantry.”