Clone Legacy: Book 3 in the Clone Crisis Trilogy

by Melissa Faye

  There weren’t any technicians working in the station Anika pointed to, but it was covered in tools, screens, circuit boards, and scrap metal. Someone must have been playing with TekCast technology. I picked up a piece of one that sat on one end of the table and turned it over in my hands.

  “Yes, that’s what I wanted you to see,” Anika said encouragingly. Gianna picked up a different TekCast piece. “Most of the technology used in the TekCast is far more developed than it needs to be for its task.”

  She pulled out her own to show us. “The messaging system is basic. Find a friend’s name, send them a message. A central network transmits the information, partnering your message with your face and ID number. But the system could do a lot more than that.”

  Gianna leaned over Anika’s open TekCast and swiped through the screens. It looked like any other messaging program.

  “What you can’t see,” Anika said with a grin,”is everything going on inside the program. It can transmit a message, an image, or a video. It can transmit documents. But every message is also encoded with the sender’s location. With a little fiddling, we can turn a TekCast into a tracking device.”

  “That’s only good until my TekCast is lost or confiscated,” I said, folding my arms.

  “That’s true. Unless we make a few more updates.”

  Anika pulled a small cabinet towards us and opened one of the drawers. Inside was what looked like a pill capsule holding something even smaller within.

  “It’s a tracker,” Anika said. “It was easy to make given what the TekCast already contains. See how small it is? That can easily be inserted under the skin and we can find where a person is within 100 feet from hundreds of miles away.”

  Gianna took the capsule in her hand and held it up to the light to examine it.

  “I like that,” she said, handing the capsule back to Anika. “We can join the Gray Suits, but you can keep an eye on us.”

  “What if we need to get information from you? Or to you?” I asked. The tracker was good but didn’t mean much of HQ didn’t know we were in trouble.

  Anika smirked. She was thrilled to have people to share this with.

  “Exactly,” Anika said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Here is Part 2.” She gently slid the tracker out of its capsule so it lay on the table in front of us. It was half an inch long and as thin as a toothpick. Anika paused while Gianna and I stared at the little device. I half expected it to turn and run across the lab like the strange robot we saw.

  Anika chuckled to herself and swung over to a nearby tablet. She flicked it on, and a program I’d never seen came up. It featured two empty white boxes in the middle of the screen, a keypad like I was used to, and two additional buttons. One had a long line on it. The other just had a dot.

  “What are those two for?” Gianna asked.

  Anika hit the two buttons back and forth for a moment and lines and dots appeared on the left side of the screen. Letters on the right side of the screen began to spell out, “ITS MORSE CODE.”

  “Have you heard of Morse code?” Anika asked. We shook our heads. “It was used years ago as a way to transmit messages over long distances. It simplifies communication so anything can be communicated with just two signs. A dash and a dot, like on these buttons.”

  Anika pulled up another screen. It was a code, and like Anika said, each letter was represented by a few dashes and dots. “Morse code wasn’t used with a computer screen, though. People communicated through tapping. A short tap is a dot. A longer tap is a dash.”

  She used tweezers to carefully move the tracker over to me.

  “Have a go!” she said. “Tap on the tracker. Short tap is dot, long tap is dot. Spell something out.”

  I shrugged. I referenced the code on the screen and started tapping on the tracker. I was hesitant at first, then got my bearings. I could tap hard on the tracker without it slipping away or breaking.

  “KJFT TAKES TOOL ONG” the screen read. There was no code for a space or punctuation, so the computer appeared to be guessing where to enter spaces.

  “It doesn’t take that long at all once you know the code,” Anika said. “Not at all. We’ll set you both up with code sheets and practice trackers for tapping. I also want you to learn how to feel and translate code when we send it your way.”

  Gianna grinned at me. Just like that, the plan was coming together. We couldn’t wait to get out there and finally find out more about what the Chancellor was working on.

  Chapter 8 – Charlie

  With Mallory on my side, The Hideaway felt a little more bearable. Of course, it was easy to forget where we were when there was a party every night and multiple scheduled social events every day. The NBs were barely noticeable when I was surrounded by so many people, and my eyes got used to looking past the silver droplet pins some people wore.

  Mallory and I went to events together at least once every day or two, and seeing her kept me grounded to the reality of the situation. We weren’t sure how to approach the NBs. They were always underfoot, but always disappeared quickly when I walked in their direction.

  Not long after our arrival, Zheng dragged me to a paper airplane folding competition. It didn’t strike me as particularly romantic until we got there. The men seemed to be enjoying themselves, wrapping their arms around their dates’ hips and using their other arm to guide the women’s throws. Zheng made an airplane and tried to drag me into a similar position around her, but I declined.

  I lingered near the back of the park where drinks and snacks were set up. Groups of breeders sat together on picnic blankets. I had never seen anything like it. The groups merged and divided as people got up to join others. Everyone seemed focused on finding a partner, and the popular strategy was to laugh and flirt with as many people as possible. I accidentally made eye contact with a guy sitting with a small group to the side of the drink table, and he called me over.

  “You’re new, right?” he asked. “I’m Bruce. This here is Sathya, that’s Caroline, and that guy who’s watching the girl in the blue sweater is Kent.”

  I sat down next to Bruce. “Charlie,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You must be thrilled to be here, right?” asked Caroline. She must have been ten or more years older than me, but her giddiness reminded me of the girls in high class. She scooted towards me on the blanket. “It’s daunting at first, but it’s the best place you could be right now.” Her hand lingered on my arm as she spoke. She pulled back when she saw me looking.

  “I was abducted from my house, thrown in a truck, and brought here in handcuffs,” I said. “Daunting isn’t the right word.”

  Caroline frowned. “I guess not. I came here after everyone in my town was tested. But this place is nicer, the food is free, and the company is good.” She winked at Bruce.

  “Some harvesters found you then?” Kent said as he turned towards us. “I heard about those guys. Paid off to go after breeders. Does that mean you were in a non-sanctioned community?”

  Non-sanctioned. That was a sterile word for a community that had overthrown its dictator.

  “I was helping a community rebuild itself after the people took over,” I said. I could feel my anger rising. “Yes, it was a harvester. No, I’m not thrilled to be here. The work I was doing at the non-sanctioned community, as you say, was more important than paper airplanes.”

  “We all get that this is strange,” Bruce said quickly. “But if you’re going to be an ant in a farm, this is the nicest one there is.”

  “I don’t want to be an ant,” I said. I stood and brushed off my jeans. “It was nice to meet you all.”

  I left them where they sat and didn’t bother looking back at their faces. I had never seen myself as a negative person or an angry person, but I couldn’t fake cheerfulness here.

  It happened at most of the social events. Someone would invite me over, or I’d join a group willingly. I would think to myself, this time I’m going to do a better job pretending.

  I did best
in larger groups when I wasn’t expected to talk as much. I went to a dinner party in one of the rec rooms – everyone was randomly assigned a location – and sat in the middle of a long table where conversations could pass over me in either direction. The woman I sat next to was mildly amused by everything, though I thought I could detect a sadness in her eyes.

  “This isn’t your thing either, is it?” she whispered to me.

  “Not really,” I said. I played with my fork, scraping it along the plate where earlier an NB had served us our entrees.

  “Did you leave someone behind?” she asked bluntly.

  I shrugged. “Kind of. I think I did. She left me behind. It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here for now.”

  The woman looked at me quietly, bracing herself. Then the words spilled out.

  “I’m married. I don’t know where my husband is now. He could be one of these NBs. He could be dead. Or in the army. Or anywhere. But I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.” She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t really matter. This is where they want me to be, so here I am.”

  I didn’t respond. I had only heard a few people’s stories, and they were usually similar. People left behind. Not wanting to have children. Not wanting to be away from their community. Their families, they would say. This woman was resolute. She was realistic. Anything could have happened to her husband, and she would probably never find out.

  “Can I give you some advice?” the woman said. I shrugged again. “You can get yourself in trouble walking around moping all the time, snapping at people and avoiding making friends.” I glared at her. It didn’t seem like it was any of her business.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked. My tone kept getting harsher. I was channeling Yami.

  “Yeah,” she said. She stared at me. She wasn’t put off by my demeanor. “Fake it. Smile at people. This isn’t forever. Nothing ever is.”

  “You think this is changing anytime soon?” I asked.

  “I guess I just mean...don’t rock the boat. Not now, when they’re just figuring out the system. Who knows what they’ll do if you don’t cooperate, but I know they’ve had ‘talks’ with people about participation. Wait until they figure out how all this works before you make too much of a scene.”

  “What if I want to make a scene?” I hissed. “What if someone needs to make a scene, and I’m the only person willing to do it?”

  The woman backed her chair out from under the table. She waved at someone across the room.

  “You’re not the only one,” she whispered as she leaned over to push her chair back in. “But until we know more about what’s going on, don’t get yourself arrested. Or turned into an NB. Or worse.”

  She walked away and called towards the woman she had waved to. I leaned back in my chair and watched. She easily slid from quiet and calculating to cheerful and breezy. I knew I could do better. Cheerful and breezy was what I used to be.

  I WAS MILLING ABOUT the mansion’s lawn before Movie Night the next evening, watching a few NBs getting the space set up. Days had gone by and I had no luck figuring them out. Mallory had only done a little better. An NB spoke with her briefly. But he just said everything was fine and Mallory didn’t need to worry.

  I wasn’t looking his way when a familiar looking man approached me. I flipped through the faces I’d seen in the Breeding Camp so far and found what I was looking for. He was the man I saw on my first day, preaching to the others with the silver teardrop pins.

  “Hello,” he said formally, reaching for my hand. I took it without thinking and was greeted with a firm grip and one too many shakes. “I haven’t seen you here, have I? You must be new. I try to greet all the new breeders at The Hideaway. My name is Jacob.”

  “Charlie,” I said. I eyed my surroundings, looking for someone else to join the conversation and take this man’s attention away from me.

  “Charlie, how do you like it here so far?” Jacob’s voice was pleasant though overly formal. I remembered the way he spoke when I last saw him. Like he was reading from an ancient religious text.

  The voice and the handshake fit. He was average in height and build, and wore a suit and tie even though we were about to sit on the grass to watch a romantic comedy. He wore a silver teardrop like the others, though his was better quality and slightly smaller. It looked like the insignias we used to wear before the communities were disbanded.

  “It’s fine,” I said nonchalantly. My eyes kept landing on that silver pin. “Everyone’s...nice.”

  “Aren’t they?” he said. “You know, I’m part of a group who believes that that’s not a coincidence. Do you know what I mean? Everyone here is thoughtful. Caring. It’s not just fertility that brought us all here, is it?”

  “I don’t follow,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. If I was going to be part of this conversation, I wasn’t going to make it easy for this man to string me along.

  “Well, what is it that made you and I fertile, but not our neighbors? What is it that makes all the people here fertile?” He looked around with a calculated bit of drama, sweeping his hands out around himself. “Look at all of us. We’re the parents of a new, biological generation. And our descendants will repopulate the earth after the cloning ends. I know it’s a mutation, don’t get me wrong. I understand the science.” He waved his hands to ward off any arguments to that point. “Don’t you ever feel like there’s something else out there? Some greater power that decided that you, and me, and all these other people, that we would be Adams and Eves to the new world?”

  I racked my brain for the reference. Adam and Eve. Something religious. The first man and woman.

  “I’m sorry, I still don’t follow,” I said. I couldn’t help smirking; I was enjoying being difficult. “Mutations occur randomly, don’t they? I was in medicine, so I have a decent understanding of genetics...”

  “Of course, Charlie!” said Jacob. “Mutations do occur randomly. But this mutation? Something about this is very different. This mutation dictates whose gene pool continues and whose comes to an end. Do you remember the story of Noah?”

  I squinted. “Something about a boat? A flood?”

  “That’s right, Charlie.” Every time he said my name I imagined he was trying to sell me something. I supposed he was; he was trying to sell me on his strange, disgusting cult. The cult that was getting in the way of the more important work I’d like to be doing.

  “God told Noah to build a boat. He collected his descendants and got on his ark while God created a flood that washed away the rest of mankind. Only Noah and his descendents were left.”

  Jacob waited for me to respond, but I stared forward blankly.

  “The gods have given us a boat, Charlie. The Hideaway. This is our boat, and the gods have judged us all. We are the chosen few who will survive this flood and when the world starts anew, we will be the ones left standing.”

  “Is that so?” I asked. “So the rest of the people out there? The NBs? Those who are in hiding? They’re going to be washed away, and you think they deserve it?”

  Jacob was thrown off guard, and I reveled in it. “I wouldn’t deign to try to understand what the gods have decided,” he said, stumbling through his rhetoric. “All I know is that you and me? The two of us, Charlie and Jacob standing right here? That isn’t random. That’s fate.”

  “Is that why you wear those pins? Do they indicate that we’re chosen, like you said?”

  “My fellow breeders have come to use this as a symbol for our beliefs, Charlie. I’d love for you to join us at an upcoming meeting. We meet most days –“ He reached into the front inner pocket in his suit jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “We’re trying to get our meetings into the community calendar, but for now, this tells you what you need to know. Come to our meeting tomorrow. Bring some friends. I’d love to hear what you think afterwards.”

  I looked over the paper and ignored Jacob. I couldn’t help grinning while he walked away. Being a jerk was fun. I could see why Yami did it. It was th
e most fun I’d had all day.

  Rather than joining a larger group for the movie, I sat on my own blanket towards the back of the lawn. I read and reread Jacob’s document. It repeated all of what Jacob had said about Adam and Eve and about Noah. It showed and explained the silver teardrop symbol. Like I suspected, it was our blood. The breeders’ blood was deified, according to Jacob and his group. They called themselves The Chosen.

  The back of the document listed statistics, as if the numbers painted a larger picture of the gods’ decision. The number of regions in the country, the number of communities, and the current fertility rates. There were estimates of the final rates we’d arrive at after the entire country was tested: very similar to the current ones. They broke down the population of The Hideaway by gender and age. They estimated how many people in the country were fertile, and how the population would change over the next two hundred years as clones died out and bio kids were born.

  I didn’t notice when Zheng came to sit next to me on my blanket. I did notice, however, when she put her arm through mine, linking us at the elbow, and rested her head on my shoulder. Her affection was getting on my nerves more and more each day. I wasn’t interested in finding a partner. The flirtation felt fake. I couldn’t find love under the government’s watchful eye, and I still refused to imagine myself with anyone besides Yami.

  “You told me about those people, right?” Zheng whispered as the movie began. “’The Chosen’ they call themselves. I’ve seen some of them with those ugly pins.”

  “The founder came to talk to me just now,” I whispered. “He wants me to come to their next meeting.”

  Zheng cocked her head to the side. “It can’t hurt, can it? Meeting more people. Seeing what those weirdos are up to –“

  Suddenly, Zheng sat straight up and gripped my arm. “Look!” She pointed to the far side of the park where a group of men in dark suits stood together, watching us and talking. I didn’t need to get any closer to see who it was.

  A group of Chancellor Lorenzo clones were deep in conversation. They ranged in age, but they were just about the exact same heights. With their identical suits and haircuts, they were identical except for signs of age. One of the Chancellors was younger than the others. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen. He was quiet, listening to the others without adding anything. Sometimes one of the Chancellors would point something out to him.