Clone Secrets_Book 2 of the Clone Crisis Trilogy

by Melissa Faye

  “What about the Gray Suits?” asked Charlie. I looked around. I hadn’t realized they had disappeared.

  “Most of them were subdued. A lot of them are confused. I talked to a few. They thought they were protecting the kids, but now they’re not so sure. It’s going to be difficult to help them figure things out.”

  “There are probably a thousand more of them,” I said. “Who’s going to reach out to them?”

  Alexis thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. It will depend on which communities can successfully overthrow their governments. And how much more footage we can share with the population.”

  “And whether they find the footage convincing,” I said. “It’s hard to know what to believe right now, isn’t it?” I closed my eyes. I still couldn’t get the picture of the Chancellor, laughing at me from his jail cell, out of my mind.

  “Any word from Ann about uprisings?” Charlie asked. He still had an arm around me, and I could feel his energy growing. “The faster the Underground works, the harder it will be for the Chancellor to recruit.”

  Alexis flipped open her TekCast and frowned. She typed out a few messages.

  “Not sure,” she said. “Let’s see if we can get on one of the trucks heading back soon. You need to rest, Yami. And then we can see what Ann’s planning.”

  Charlie helped me stand up again, then almost dropped me.

  “Wait!” he said. “They’ve been doing something with the kids. Integration, whatever that means. Someone should find out what that is so we can help the kids who’ve gone through it.”

  Alexis nodded and went off to talk to someone about it. Charlie and I found a truck that was planning to leave in an hour and set ourselves up in the back.

  “YOU SMELL TERRIBLE,” I told Charlie. I was lying in the back of the truck with my head in his lap while he played with my hair. He was amused by the curls. He would pull one out then let it spring back into shape exactly how it was.

  “Thank you,” said Charlie. “I was locked in a cage for a few days. That will happen.”

  “You probably broke your nose again,” I scolded him.

  “I know,” he said. He leaned over and kissed my nose. I couldn’t help but smile.

  Chapter 24 – Charlie

  I woke Yami when we arrived back at Gentle Acres. I was hoping for a few hours to ourselves to catch up on rest, but Yami wouldn’t let us. Instead, she led us to the Med to check on Matana.

  “Your friend is doing just fine, Yami,” one of the doctors told us as soon as she saw us enter. “Well – better than fine. You know which room she’s in?”

  Yami’s eyes grew wide. “Matana?” she asked, running right up to the doctor so fast that the doctor backed away in fear. “You mean Matana is awake?”

  “Yes!” the doctor said. She looked back and forth between us, alarmed at our surprise. “I thought someone would have told you –“ We were already off.

  We took the elevator up to Matana’s floor and Yami all but sprinted to her room. We entered to see Matana sitting up in the Care Unit, slowly sipping from a cup of water. Her head was bandaged, and she was thin and pale, but she was awake. She wore a different hospital gown and an oversized robe.

  Yami greeted her with a long hug. When she pulled back, I saw they both had tears in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Matana,” Yami said. “It was my fault. First I ruined the plan to take over the camp by sharing it with the Chancellor. Then I got a Gray Suit’s attention when I fell over and he shot Sven –“

  “That’s enough, Yami,” Matana said. Her eyes were wet, but she had a familiar stern look on her face. “Etta told me what happened. It would be childish to blame yourself for Sven’s death. The Gray Suit who killed him wasn’t acting on your command.”

  Yami drew in her lips tightly and I held her hand. She blinked back more tears.

  “He mentioned you,” I said. “He didn’t say why. He just said your name. I think he wanted us to thank you for everything you did. For him, for the camp...”

  Matana nodded slowly.

  “We’ll hold a service for him later today,” Matana said. “I’ll be in the Med for at least a few more days, but I’ll be able to attend his memorial.”

  “That’s good,” said Yami. She smiled through her tears. “That’s really good.”

  WE BARELY TOOK A STEP out of the Med before a small blur of blond hair and long limbs nearly tackled me to the ground. Teo’s arms engulfed me, throwing Yami over to the side. I looked up to see Etta 2 standing a few feet away with a big grin on her face and a cane in her hand. Her leg was healed enough for her to walk, though I suspected she still had a long way to go for it to heal completely.

  “He only got here a few hours ago,” she said. “I didn’t get here much faster. But he’s been desperate to see you. We just came from seeing Etta and Hope. They’re at one of your friend’s houses.”

  “Teo, how are you?” I knelt down to ask. He smiled at me, but there was a heaviness in his expression. He was stuck in that detention center for too long. They were trying to use some sort of integration process on him, and I couldn’t guess how that impacted him.

  “I’m ok,” he said. He let go of me and backed up to stand near Etta 2.

  “He hasn’t told me anything yet,” Etta 2 explained. “I heard a little bit about it but...”

  “That’s ok,” I told Teo. “You take your time. I’m just glad you’re back.” I gave him a wink and he smiled shyly.

  I MUST HAVE FALLEN asleep on Alexis’s couch, because I woke to a buzzing on my chest. My TekCast was vibrating as message after message came in. I sprang up and nearly dropped my TekCast trying to open it. Yami came out of the kitchen when she heard the noise and sat next to me to look. It was a series of messages from Omer.

  “We took Young Woods. Chancellor in custody.”

  “Councilman pulled a gun on us. He was killed. No other deaths.”

  “Trying to calm people. Trying to get information out about what happened and what comes next.”

  “Group of Grays looted Gold commune rec room. Almost led to riot. Settled down after Underground members got involved.”

  “Panic across town. Will keep you posted.”

  “Need more help. Will have Gianna message you.”

  Yami and I sat together in shock. I tried to picture Young Woods full of people screaming and running around, terrified for their lives. While Omer had been able to recruit many citizens to the Underground – if he hadn’t, there would have been no takeover – it still wasn’t everyone. What would I do as a community member if I saw this happening?

  “I’m glad,” Yami said as if she was speaking to herself. “Young Woods can have what they have here at Gentle Acres. It’ll take time but...I’m glad.”

  “At least no one else was hurt,” I said. I typed away on the holoscreen, forwarding the messages to Javi, Ann, and Breck. “If this happened at Young Woods, maybe it’s happening all over.”

  Yami grabbed my arm and stared straight at me, her eyes wide. “Tell Omer about the Chancellor,” she said. “He has to know there are others. Who knows if they’re in contact with the one at Young Woods, or if they’ll try to take the community back.”

  I typed faster. The Underground had it right this whole time. We needed to get all of this information out there as fast as we could. Yami curled up next to me, watching me type.

  MATANA JOINED US FOR Sven’s memorial service. Yami told me about the larger one for the victims of the Chancellor’s attack, but we wanted something more intimate for our friend and leader. Breck had sent out a community message to invite any interested parties to join us; it was the least we could do given how much they had helped us.

  We met together in a small park right off the main street. I was surprised to see that dozens of community members were already there – the space was almost too small. Matana looked around questionably. She’d barely been a part of Gentle Acres, having arrived in a coma, and wasn’t used to seeing such kindn
ess in a community. People swarmed to us when we arrived. Someone led Matana to a bench where she could sit, and we formed a circle around the center of the park.

  I looked around. Ann was there, but it wasn’t her service to organize or lead. Yami stepped forward to speak first.

  “I didn’t know Sven for very long,” she said. “He was strong and serious, but he could be kind when we needed it. He told me about his life in his community, about the wife he lost, and about his passion for finding and sharing the truth. I admired his dedication to this cause. And I don’t know how we will recover from this loss except by living our lives the way he did. Taking back our communities and our country for the people. That’s what he would be working on right now if he was here.”

  I blinked rapidly. My face was still black and blue from Sven’s fake attack, and I smiled through my tears. He would enjoy me being in this condition at his own funeral.

  “I met Sven a long time ago,” Matana said. All eyes turned to her sitting on the bench. “He was the only person I knew who truly understood the errors of our ways as a society, and could communicate it to our camp. He went to great measures to save my life, and lost his own life trying to save children he didn’t know from an enemy we didn’t understand. I stand by you, Yami,” their eyes met as Matana spoke directly to her, “and I hope everyone here will too. Sven represented the best among us, and now we must try to live up to his example, both to honor his memory and to continue his work.”

  People stood with us for a long time. After a few minutes of silence, smaller conversations broke out. About Sven, about the Chancellor, about the work ahead of us. Someone invited us to join them for dinner in one of the cafeterias. He didn’t refer to the cafeteria by color; he just mentioned the intersection. It was progress.

  Chapter 25 – Yami

  Sven’s funeral washed away my guilt and fear. He wouldn’t want me to sit around feeling sorry for myself about my mistakes. He’d want us all to work together to find a greater solution. That’s how he led the camp. It wasn’t about who got what job or where someone got to sleep. It was about making things work for all of us. And that was what we were going to do.

  I threw myself into Ann’s leadership team meetings. I wouldn’t be stopped. Charlie, Breck, and Etta often joined me, though Breck and Etta were back to their sleepless baby-tending routine.

  “We need a place to be the Underground’s headquarters,” I announced a few days after the funeral. Ann raised her eyebrows, but didn’t try to stop me from taking charge anymore. The others followed suit. “What community or camp can we use?”

  We were in the formal dining room, though some of the projects the team worked on had spread into other rooms in the mansion. I organized daily meetings to review everyone’s progress. I’d been thinking about how to expand our work beyond the walls of the mansion, beyond the walls of Gentle Acres, and beyond the region, and now I needed the team’s help to make that happen.

  “Why not use Gentle Acres?” one of the councilors proposed. “We’ve already done so much.”

  “We don’t know what else is going on around the country,” Ann said. “Perhaps a leadership center has already been set up. We need to increase our work on communications before setting up additional infrastructure or pushing to solve a problem that’s already been solved.”

  The programmers, Meg and Savinay, were in another room working on Charlie’s messaging program. They were expanding it into a sort of message network where people could send one message out to the entire group without detection. It would help find the bio kids’ parents. Ann called them in to talk about expanding the scope of their work to also locate other Underground leaders.

  Everything was going too slow. We couldn’t create a national Underground headquarter without better understanding what was already happening. We couldn’t find out what was happening before drastically increasing our communications around the country. And increasing communications took longer than we all wanted. The maps of the regions and communities filled up with more information, but just like the gossip about pregnancies and children being kidnapped, everything we knew was suspect.

  Meanwhile, I pestered Meg to help me find Vonna. I knew it wasn’t fair. Finding bio kids’ parents was a priority, along with talking to communities on the other side of the nation. But it was a simple ask and shouldn’t take too much away from our goal of learning who was where.

  “I swear, I will update you when I find her, Yami,” Meg said. She was running a team of programmers now and had started a training program so more people could help. She ran around with a clipboard, her TekCast, and small printouts of lists and maps. Charlie followed me around, pulling me out of her way and reminding me to let people do their work. I didn’t mind letting them do their work; I just wanted them to do it faster.

  Meanwhile, Breck worked with the F-Lab researchers to study the samples we now had from the bio kids. Since they knew what they were looking for, finding the mutations was straightforward. One of the other tech people, Savinay, helped create a program for one of their machines to find mutations. It didn’t work perfectly, but it helped the team hone in on potential spots. They found a new mutation, and celebrated with the entire community. Then another. Then another.

  With all the progress surrounding them, the community members found solutions for issues within the community itself. Someone outside of the leadership team worked on a system for dispersing finances more equitably across the townspeople, at least for the time being. A few citizens joined him and adjusted the system over the next few weeks until they had the basis of something people supported.

  One of the former Bronze construction workers formed two groups. One to restore the F-Lab and the buildings around it that were impacted by the bombing. The other to make updates to Gray and Bronze housing to ensure citizens could live there comfortably.

  I couldn’t help it. I was a part of everything. I spent all day running between different teams, helping Ann manage the work and ensure people had what they needed while completing projects. I was dead on my feet every evening.

  “You know who you’re becoming, right?” Charlie asked one night while he gave me a foot massage.

  “Who?”

  “You’re Sven,” he said with a smile. “You’re just like him. You’re tough, and you’re determined, and you won’t let go of your goals. Have you talked to Matana lately? She would be proud of you.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. I thought about Sven every day. I wouldn’t let myself feel guilty, but I knew the only way to get past what happened was to do what was right. It felt right being involved in all of the work and working so closely with Ann. It felt right helping people solve problems they didn’t realize existed. I could see myself doing this for as long as it took for us to reclaim our country.

  ETTA AND I FINALLY found time to eat dinner together one night between my work day and her overnight shift with Hope. She was as happy as I could remember seeing her since Hope was born and she spent those blissful weeks fawning over her newborn.

  “Everyone knows what you’re doing, Yami,” she said. We ate on the grass outside Alexis’s house. It was cold and wet against my legs, and felt good after another busy day on my feet. Crickets chirped in the summer air, and I watched a ladybug scurry through the grass near my knee.

  “It’s not enough,” I said with a sigh. I ran my fingers through the grass, pulling up a few blades. “There’s so much to do and there’s no time. Every night I think about what the Chancellor – what the Chancellors, I should say – are doing while we just try to figure out who’s in the game or not. He’s always a step ahead. Or a hundred steps ahead.”

  “I don’t think you’re really that pessimistic,” Etta said. “I know you spent a long time scared about what happened with Alexis. And helping me and Breck must have made that even worse. But I don’t think you’d be doing what you’re doing if you didn’t think it would lead to anything.”

  I lay down on the grass. A few
people had cooked enough pasta for a hundred, and after two servings I couldn’t eat any more. I looked up at the sky. I couldn’t see the stars because of all the community lights, but the moon was bright and full. It made me tense up. The world was too big, and we were too small.

  “I do think we can win this fight,” I said slowly. “I can see that end goal. But I can’t see the steps that take us there.” I rolled over onto my side so I could look at Etta. Her eyes were as wide and gray as always. She looked more mature, like Matana pointed out so many weeks ago. She spent most of her time helping the F-Lab researchers; her cloning research experience helped. She was just as capable as I was of leading this work. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t.

  “Maybe you don’t need to see all the steps as long as you can see where the staircase leads,” Etta said. She lay down next to me, staring up at that moon. “We haven’t told anyone yet, but we’re making a lot of progress identifying mutations. Soon we’ll have a test for fertility. That could be incredible. But it’s also dangerous.”

  I sat up quickly. “How many mutations have you found?”

  Etta bit her lip. “Twelve so far. We haven’t tested more than half the samples we have on hand. And more samples are coming in from the bio parents we’ve found so far.”

  “Why is that dangerous, Etta?”

  “Because if we know something, we have to assume the – Chancellors – know it too. If he has a list of mutations to test for, he’ll start testing. And he won’t handle fertility the way you and I would.”

  I didn’t answer. A few months ago, I was more quiet and closed off. I was trying to be more open, and Charlie helped a lot. My work helped a lot. Finding Alexis helped a lot. But was I prepared to fight for my friends’ lives again? What sort of danger would Etta and Breck find themselves in just because they were fertile? What about my friends who were still infertile?