Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1)

by Jay J. Falconer

  “Look, my old friend, everything I told you is true. Just take a minute and run it through that analytical mind of yours. Weigh the facts and let them align themselves until the answer runs clear.”

  “And if I don’t agree?”

  “Then by all means, shoot us all.”

  “What?” Mary asked Kleezebee in Bruno’s voice. “Don’t plant ideas—”

  “Just give him a minute. Trust me on this. L will come around.”

  Lucas ran it through in his head, sifting through all the bizarre and curious facts he’d accumulated while being part of the project, not only recently but over the entire time he’d been working for the professor. He wanted to prove Kleezebee wrong, but he couldn’t. Everything seemed to line up perfectly to support the professor’s claims. He stared at Mary, or Bruno, or whatever name he should call the person in the dress.

  She smiled and winked. “It’s all true, Dr. Lucas. All I need is a supply of sugar for the energy to complete the transformation.”

  Lucas nodded. Slowly at first, but with more vigor as time passed. It was all starting to come together. Lucas understood why Bruno was addicted to all things chocolate. The security officer consumed mounds of donuts and candy for the sugar rush, then used the energy to transform and assume different identities. Lucas was astonished when he thought about how human Bruno had acted for the past eighteen months. He never would’ve guessed the fat man wasn’t human.

  “How many infiltrator units are there?” Lucas asked, watching Bruno change back into his regular self. He knew he’d never look at Bruno the same way, at least not without thinking about Bruno’s alter ego, who was no longer standing there in a short skirt and heels.

  “Bruno’s not the only one. However, the exact number is classified, and on a strict need-to-know basis.”

  When Lucas thought about Bruno and Mary being the same person, he discovered a discrepancy in Kleezebee’s story. “Wait a minute. Something’s not right here.”

  “What’s that?” Kleezebee asked.

  “A few days ago, when we were escorted to NASA’s facility, Bruno was up on the surface and Mary was waiting for us down on sublevel twenty. How could he, or she, be in two places at once?”

  “Let me show you,” Kleezebee said, calling forward one of his video technicians to stand next to Bruno. Lucas hadn’t realized it earlier, but all the video techs looked like brothers and were wearing the same oversized, pentagon-shaped watch as Bruno.

  Bruno extended his left arm and the tech his right. Their index fingers touched in the middle as if they were plugging into each other’s bodies. Their fingertips fused together into one scarlet-colored mass, which resembled the semi-liquid substance found inside a lava lamp. The blob shimmered as it slithered across the connection, slowly encasing the tech’s arm, then spread to his torso. Eventually, the goop smothered his entire body.

  For the next fifteen seconds, the tech’s body fluctuated under the gelatinous layer like a waterbed mattress swaying in an earthquake. When the spasms subsided, random sections of the gooey substance disappeared, revealing more and more of Bruno’s appearance from underneath. When all of the scarlet material had dissipated, the tech was gone, having been replaced by an exact replica of Bruno, clothes and all. The only things missing were the duty belt and sidearm.

  Both copies spoke to Lucas in perfect unison, using Bruno’s deep, raspy voice. “We are one. We are many. We are whoever we need to be. Hopefully, now you understand.”

  It took Lucas a few seconds to process what he’d just seen and heard. “So you can make copies of copies, like a Xerox.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Kleezebee answered.

  “Okay, I get that. I don’t believe it, but I get it. Regardless, it still doesn’t explain what happened in the desert with Drew.”

  The red-haired imposter wearing his freckled face stepped forward. He pointed at both Bruno copies and said, “Jesus Christ. Don’t you get it yet? You’re one of them. You’re a copy. So was the Drew that Alvarez shot.”

  Lucas didn’t say anything. He needed a moment to think.

  “Trust me, you two are replicas and were sent there to die,” the imposter added. “So the real me and him could live,” he said, pointing at Drew in his chair.

  Lucas rolled his eyes, then turned to the professor. “Okay, let’s assume for a moment I believe you, which I don’t. How did you know Alvarez was going to kidnap us?”

  “We have a spy inside the general’s unit. He tipped us off when Alvarez was coming after you. Remember my note to Trevor outside the conference room? I had him go make contact with our operative,” Kleezebee said. “That night in the hospital, Trevor replicated both of you while you two were asleep. We knew Alvarez was gunning for you, but we didn’t know when or where he’d strike. It was the only way to protect your Authentics. Alvarez had to think Lucas and Drew were dead; otherwise, he’d never stop looking for them. That meant we had to let him kill you. Since we needed you and D to act like your Authentics, we couldn’t let you know you were copies.”

  Lucas remembered the sticky stuff on his hand when he woke up in the chair in Drew’s hospital room. His mind flashed to a vision of the gooey material he stepped in when he was washing his hands in the bathroom sink. And his sore neck and back when he woke up in the red chair. Then he remembered seeing Trevor’s big orange suitcase and wondering what was inside it. If his lab assistant hadn’t brought a change of clothes for him and Drew, why take a suitcase to a hospital?

  Even though the facts were compelling, he still didn’t believe he was the copy. Or maybe he didn’t want to believe it. His body felt real. His thoughts felt real. His emotions felt real. He’d watched his brother get shot in the head, for fuck’s sake, and had his guts ripped out over it.

  He’d felt anger, sadness, rage—the whole gamut. Plus he’d almost killed a man, and almost carved his brother’s initials in the asshole’s forehead, but compassion rose up inside him and he stopped himself, like a righteous human being would do. How could a copy go through all that? How could a bio-morph, as Kleezebee called them, feel and experience everything that he had recently?

  A copy couldn’t, he decided. Kleezebee must’ve had the two of them confused. “No, I don’t buy it. I’m not the copy. I’m the real Lucas.” He pointed at the imposter grinning back at him. “He’s the fake, not me.”

  “Maybe you need to show him the Med-Lab, boss,” Bruno said to Kleezebee.

  Kleezebee did not respond. Instead, he walked to the front left corner of the room and stood near an eight-foot wide section of empty wall space. In front of him was a red, wall-mounted fire extinguisher. Kleezebee opened a sliding compartment hidden underneath the extinguisher’s nameplate. Inside was a digital security keypad and biometric scanner. He entered a numerical security code and pressed his left thumbprint against the scanner.

  The empty wall segment slid up and disappeared into the ceiling. Lucas realized the hidden segment was actually a thick, reinforced metallic door covered in fabric that matched the wall, creating a perfect camouflage. Beyond the door was a room roughly the size of Lucas’s E-121 project lab.

  “Welcome to our Med-Lab,” Kleezebee said.

  Two seven-foot long stainless-steel surgical tables stood in the center of the med-lab. Their smooth, polished surfaces reflected light shining from directional units beaming down from the ceiling above. Their edges were raised like coroner’s tables, with depressed sections spaced evenly across their surface.

  Runoffs for blood, Lucas decided.

  Above each table, robot-like medical equipment hung down from the ceiling. A well-stocked mobile surgical cart sat between the two tables, adorned with instruments and supplies. Scalpels, scissors, forceps and hemostats shared space with gauze bandages, plastic tubes, and syringes still in their wrappers.

  What Kleezebee called a Med-Lab was looking more and more like a torture chamber.

  Metal shelves lined three walls of the room, packed with clear glass containers
. Each container was about the size of a janitor’s mop bucket and was two-thirds full of a scarlet-colored liquid. The ceiling carried a supply of two-inch diameter tubes, which connected the containers to a furnace-sized machine along the back wall. An enormous, blond-haired technician was standing in a lab coat in front of the machine with his back to the entrance.

  Lucas walked into the lab and pointed the gun at the male technician. “Turn around and let me see your hands.”

  The tech turned around and smiled. It was Trevor, their Swedish lab assistant.

  “Seriously? So what, everyone knows about this except me?” Lucas asked.

  “We know this might not be easy to accept,” Kleezebee said. “Let us show you. Then you’ll come to understand.”

  Trevor fetched a glass container from the shelf closest to him and poured the red substance into one of the surgical table’s depressed areas. It oozed out of the container like semi-frozen red pudding.

  Kleezebee called in one of his operation techs from the video room and had the man roll up his sleeve. Kleezebee submerged the tech’s hand into the scarlet material and held it there for a good twenty seconds.

  “We call this substance BioTex. It’s synthetically engineered living latex,” Kleezebee explained. “Once his hand is submerged, the BioTex processes his DNA and begins the replication process. It requires at least fifteen seconds of contact in order to create a genetic map of the donor’s body. Plus, it downloads the donor’s memory engrams at the same time.”

  “Living latex?” Lucas asked.

  Kleezebee withdrew the tech’s hand from the BioTex. “We prefer to call it BioTex, which is short for Bio-mimetic Latex.”

  Lucas stood there, watching the BioTex coagulate and thicken as it spread itself across the length of the table. It rose up from the table like bread dough and progressively assumed the shape of a featureless human body.

  Soon after, a facial structure began to materialize and show through the scarlet substance, like a person’s face pushing up through a silk sheet. Mouth, eyes, and nose formed first, then hair sprouted and grew to full length. Eventually, the entire body, including genitalia, took shape.

  The final step was the appearance of a lab coat and clothing. When the transmutation was complete, an exact copy of the male technician lay before Kleezebee on the table.

  Lucas shook his head. “If the replica is a perfect copy, right down to its DNA, how do you tell the copy from the original?” he asked, thinking about himself. He wondered if he could somehow switch places with the imposter without anyone knowing, or vice versa.

  Kleezebee picked up a handheld electronic device the size of a paperback book. “This is a BioTex scanner. We use it to check the validity of any subject. When it senses the bimolecular resonance of BioTex, it lights up red. When it senses an authentic human, it lights up green.” Kleezebee aimed the device at Bruno's chest. After three seconds, the unit lit up red. “Red means he's a replica.” He pointed the unit at the imposter. “Green means he's an Authentic. If I pointed it at you right now, it would light up red.”

  Lucas took a sharp step back to avoid the scan. He already knew the answer and didn’t need a piece of unfamiliar equipment telling him who or what he was. He was the authentic, not the imposter. He was sure of it, and he wasn’t going to let a piece of machinery he’d never seen before try to convince him of anything different.

  Kleezebee held up the scanner. “May I scan you to demonstrate? It’ll only take a few seconds, L.”

  Lucas pointed the gun at Kleezebee. “I told you to stop calling me that. It’s not my name. How many times are you going to make me say it?”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll call you Lucas if you prefer,” Kleezebee said. “Just relax. We’re all on the same side here. Everything we’ve done is for your benefit and your brother’s. If you’ll let us prove it, you’ll see we’ve been trying to protect you.”

  “By calling me ‘L’?”

  “That’s simply the naming convention we use for replicas. We call them by the first letter of their donor’s name. Is it okay if I approach? It’s the only way to resolve this situation and bring you into the fold.”

  Lucas paused, then finally agreed. He lowered the gun but kept his finger on the trigger, pointing the weapon at the professor’s kneecap.

  Kleezebee aimed the scanner at Lucas’ chest and activated the device. It lit up red, just as the professor said it would.

  Shit. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m not me.

  Lucas took his finger off the trigger and lowered his hand, aiming the gun’s barrel at the floor.

  A second later, Bruno tackled Lucas from the side, pinning him spread-eagled to the floor. Then Trevor jumped on a half a second later and inserted a four-pronged electronic device into Lucas’ neck.

  Lucas screamed in pain, feeling an electric discharge coursing through his body right before his hands, legs, and arms went limp.

  “Get off me,” Lucas gasped with his face and chest pressed hard against the floor. The combined weight of the two men on his back was making it tough to breathe. He watched his fingers slowly melt away, turning into the runny scarlet substance.

  It was true—he was the replica.

  He craned his neck to look down along the side of his torso and then he saw it happen. His body began to lose cohesion as it dissolved into a runny blob of BioTex. Moments later, his mind went blank and his vision went dark.

  EIGHTEEN

  The authentic Lucas looked at the puddle of BioTex lying underneath Bruno and Trevor on the floor. “I sure am glad that’s over with. I never realized what a stubborn son of a bitch I can be.” He turned to Drew. “I’m sorry for being a life-long pain in the ass.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Drew said, laughing. “Besides, if you weren’t a total pain in my butt, I’d think you’d been abducted by aliens and replaced with a normal guy.”

  “You mean a boring guy, right?”

  “Sure, that’s one way to look at it. One thing’s for certain, life just wouldn’t be the same around here without my high-speed, low-drag brother watching my back, even if he gets a little edgy at times.”

  “Edgy?” Kleezebee asked. “That’s the term you chose?”

  Drew shrugged. “I was trying to be nice.”

  “You guys don’t have to tip-toe around me and sugarcoat everything. I know perfectly well who and what I am. So don’t sweat it. It’s all good. No worries,” Lucas added, hoping to sound like the jab Drew just took at him didn’t hurt. It did sting a little, but he pushed past it. He knew Drew didn’t mean anything by it. His little brother didn’t have a mean bone in his body. That was Lucas’ job, as well as a few others in his diminishing circle of trust.

  Bruno rolled out of the BioTex sludge. “Well, that was interesting. For a moment there, I thought your copy was going to shoot us all.”

  “He sure was one mixed-up dude,” Lucas said with a half-smile.

  “Wouldn’t you have been, given the circumstances?” Drew asked.

  “Not a chance. If I was starting at two of you, I’d know the real Drew.”

  “I doubt that, considering replicas are perfect copies, right down to their synthetic DNA.”

  “Trust me, I could tell. No problem.”

  “Guys, now that L’s been handled, we need to get back to business,” Kleezebee said.

  “Sure, Professor, sorry,” Lucas said.

  “So then. Before we were so rudely interrupted by L, you said you still had some questions?”

  Lucas had to think for a minute. With everything that just happened, his memory needed a wake-up call. “Oh yeah, now I remember. Does it always take ten minutes to replicate someone? Or can you speed up the process, if needed?”

  “Yes, ten minutes, but only the first time a synthetic duplicates someone new. After that, as long as the replica maintains its sugar supply, its bio-mimetic programming remains intact. It only takes a few seconds to resume any of its previously copied identities, switching from one
to another, almost at will.”

  “Even clothes? How?”

  “From the Authentic's memory. The BioTex scans the subject’s mind and determines what the donor was wearing at the time of replication. It then synthesizes the clothes just like the rest of the body.”

  “What about memories and emotions? Are they replicated, too?”

  Kleezebee nodded, changing to his methodical professorial voice like he was about to start an hour-long lecture. “Since memories and emotions stem from physical structures in the brain that register levels of certain chemicals being manufactured by the body in response to stimuli, they are copied as well. These structures are all part of the whole. A bio-morph is a perfect replica of the original, right down to the cellular level, including every cell and neuron in the brain, which include memories and emotions. Blood, bodily fluids, voice, brain patterns, and memory are mimicked perfectly. Even a human DNA analysis wouldn't be able to detect the difference. Only a bimolecular resonance scanner like ours can distinguish the replica from the original.”

  Lucas thought about his brother's disability and wondered about a cure. “What about genetic defects, and things like injuries and diseases?”

  “We can program the BioTex to repair any physical defects during the replication process. However, we usually leave the imperfections in place to help make the impersonation more believable. Diseases are irrelevant and don't affect the replica, since it's not a real human being.”

  “Can your bio-morphs impersonate anyone? Like the President?”

  “Well, yes, they can. But there are issues when replicating a high-profile individual. First, we need prolonged contact with the donor to process its genetic makeup and download its mind. With someone as well-protected as the President, that wouldn't be possible. Then you have the issue of what to do with the original. We wouldn't want to have two of them running around the White House. Obviously, that would cause problems.”

  “Yeah, no doubt.”

  “If you remember, I told you Bruno needs an ongoing supply of sugar in order to transform and maintain his identity. The same would be true with a copy of the President. The replica would need to consume significant amounts of sugar to maintain its form and not revert to pure BioTex. Someone would certainly notice the sudden change in the President's eating habits if he became a sugar junkie overnight.”