The Hunters and Assassin won battles, but the Alliance was winning the war. Will had vowed he’d prevent others from suffering at the hands of the Hunters after being saved from their attack in the year 2030. He'd failed.
Clint’s words from several years ago echoed in his mind once more. Why couldn’t they launch a full-scale assault on the Aliomenti Headquarters? Outside his concerns of altering the future he knew must come to pass, he was gravely concerned about the potential for such an attack to cause harm to innocents. The Headquarters building and surrounding island were heavily populated with humans who handled the daily tasks involved in a major international banking enterprise. They were brainwashed to ensure they didn’t recognize the impossible acts often performed around them. The humans worked aboveground. The Aliomenti lived and worked primarily underground. Attacks would inevitably lead to heavy damage to the building and injury to the humans working there before they’d be able to get to the levels below.
Will scowled. Knowing Arthur, those risks were the reason humans were so prominently employed within the building. He knew Will would never condone or allow a physical assault if innocent human lives might be put at risk.
Guilty as charged.
“Where is Jordan now?” Will asked.
“She’s still at South Beach,” Hope replied. “She’s well enough to travel back here, but refuses to leave until all of the kids are judged healthy enough to travel. She feels horrible about having to evacuate them, but the reports are that the Assassin has been staying in the area of assigned kills when the Defense Squad drives him off before he finishes. He’ll wait as long as necessary to finish the job. Those kids would never have a moment’s peace if she’d left them behind.”
“I know,” Will said.
But even as he spoke, his mind began to spin. Could they use their technology, and the Assassin’s obsession, to their advantage?
Hope, still watching him, recognized the look. “What’s going in your head, Will Stark? I know that look. Should I take a look inside?” By mutual agreement, members of the Alliance never probed the thoughts of others as a sign of respect and as a means of preserving privacy. They could do so only in cases of consent or where it was reasonably determined that such an intrusion was a matter of life or death.
“We need to create an illusion.”
Hope’s face showed her confusion. “Come again?”
“For the humans. We need to create an illusion to confuse the Assassin.”
Eva walked toward them. “I recognize that face, Will. What are you imagining now?”
“Something about illusions and humans,” Hope volunteered.
“He is putting on a magic show? He will need very little sleight of hand to succeed.”
Hope snorted.
“Ha. Ha.” Will smiled. “We—the members of the Alliance—we choose to risk our freedom to the Hunters. Humans don’t. The challenge is that the punishment of the Assassin is irreversible, and he won’t stop until he finishes carrying out that punishment. That’s where the illusion comes into play. How can we make the Assassin think he’s killed someone—so that he stops his pursuit—when he actually hasn’t?”
“I can’t believe he’d be easily fooled, though,” Hope replied. “What can we do? Create blood bags that rupture when contacted by the Assassin’s sword, and instruct the humans to pretend to be dead?”
“Once that sword splitter is working?” Will cocked his head, thinking. “Possibly. But I’m thinking of something else in this case.” He turned his gaze to Eva. “Judith.”
Eva blinked. “What about Judith? She is Outside at the moment.”
“Remember what happened to her about a decade ago?”
“Of course. She lost her arm. And then…” Eva’s face grew thoughtful. “And then that arm was regrown.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” Hope said. “Didn’t you ask Aaron if he’d be able to clone an entire person, not just regrow limbs and organs?”
“I did, as I recall,” Will said. “I don’t remember what prompted me to ask him at the time; perhaps it was something like this. But now…” He took a deep breath. “What if we clone the humans under assault, hide the… originals, and then let the Assassin kill the copy?”
Hope winced. “That sounds… cold.”
Will nodded. “I know it does. I can’t say I like the idea. But I like the idea of the Assassin truly eliminating a human being forever even less.”
Eva turned. “We should talk to Aaron, then. Cloning was his project, was it not?”
The trio headed toward the research complex at the “southern” end of the Cavern. When they arrived, they entered the building through sliding doors that whisked open in near silence. The interior of the building was kept much cooler than the rest of the Cavern, as a means of protecting the extensive electrical equipment stored inside. Will could hear the hum of the machines around them, could smell the refrigerant in the air. He shivered involuntarily.
They asked the people inside for directions to Aaron’s research room. When they arrived, Will knocked on the door, and Aaron opened it just a crack, his face registering surprise. “Will? Eva? Shadow? What… what brings the three of you here?”
“Hello, Aaron. How goes the cloning experiment?” Will asked.
“Cloning?” Aaron’s face fell. “Oh. Well… we’ve repaired quite a few damaged body parts, and have regrown some limbs that have been lost in fights with the Hunters' swords, that sort of thing.”
Will shook his head. “Not that, Aaron. I’m curious about any ongoing efforts in more… thorough clonings.” Will arched an eyebrow. “Have you attempted to take the technology further?”
“Well…” Aaron’s eyes shifted around. “Yes, but… it doesn’t seem to work very well.”
“May we come in?” Hope asked. “We think cloning may help us in our efforts to protect humans against the Assassin. Whatever progress you’ve made can help in that effort and save lives.”
Aaron hesitated again, and then opened the door slightly, allowing them to squeeze through into the room. Will wondered why Aaron was behaving in such a skittish fashion, but had his answer when Aaron shut the door.
A perfect replica of Aaron sat in a chair pushed up against the wall, hidden by the opening door. The clone wore a vacant expression. Will wondered if the man was tired.
“So… yes, I’ve experimented, as you can see.” Aaron nodded at his clone. “But it’s not working well. The clones can talk, but they have no depth of mind for intense conversation. They can follow precise directions, but struggle to follow subjective instruction or understand figures of speech.” He shrugged, glancing at his mirror image. “He’s pretty much useless.”
“But he’s… alive, right?” Hope asked.
Aaron shrugged. “Sure. He breathes, sleeps, and eats. No real control of bodily functions. He’s like an infant without a mind, and without the inherent cuteness babies bring. I don’t know why it happens like that. I can only speculate that the cloning function doesn’t work well on the brain.” He shrugged again. “Maybe we’ll figure out a way to improve things at some point.”
Will approached the clone, whose vacant expression showed no recognition of the fact that another person approached. “Hello, Aaron.”
The clone stirred slightly and blinked. “Hi.”
“What do you think of the weather today?”
“Good.”
“Are you afraid of dragons?”
“Good.”
“Do you agree with the basic tenets of Keynesian economics?”
“Good.”
Hope arched an eyebrow. “Well, if the Assassin decides to hold a deep conversation with a clone, the conversation might actually kill him. This could be interesting.”
Will thought for a moment before turning back to the original Aaron. “What else have you noticed about the clones?”
Aaron considered. “The key thing is that they don’t live very long. I don’t know if th
e apparently limited cognition has anything to do with it, but the clones I’ve created all die of seemingly natural causes inside a week of… birth.”
Will glanced at Hope. “I find our latest concept much less troubling now.”
Aaron looked at both of them. “What idea?”
“The Assassin doesn’t stop pursing his kill targets until those targets are dead,” Eva explained. “We’re trying to figure out how to convince him he’s killed his target—usually human—so that he moves on. Will’s wondering if we can swap out an original human for their clone and let the Assassin execute the clone.”
Aaron’s eyes widened. “I… I can see where that would be ethically troubling. And…” His eyes narrowed, his face adopting a thoughtful expression. “I can see where the issues I’ve described make the prospect of using clones much more attractive.”
Eva nodded. “Those issues make the clones seem more like machines than people, and the cruel reality that we are treating them as disposable seems less repugnant when seen that way. However, the question we must ask is this: are the clones sufficiently realistic to make the Assassin believe that he has killed his target?”
“There’s only one way to know for certain,” Will replied, his voice grave. He turned to Aaron. “What type of cells do you need to complete a clone? How long does it take to create each copy?”
Aaron shivered, as if the realization that they were seriously considering this approach had just hit him. “At the moment, the systems need hair, saliva, and a cell from the skin,” Aaron replied. “It takes about twenty-four hours to create a clone. And, before you ask, the clones have always lived at least three days from final completion, and last as long as seven days. If you’re using them as bait for the Assassin, that doesn’t matter. He’ll kill them within a couple of days anyway.”
“If we do this…” Hope paused. “If we do this, we’ll still need to worry about the timing. If we position them too quickly, it’s possible that the clones will die before the Assassin arrives.”
“It is critical then that the Alliance member being targeted by a Hunt become aware that they have been identified for a Hunt as quickly as possible,” Eva replied. “That has not been a problem in most cases. They will still need to contact the Defense Squad, but now, instead of trying to time their arrival to coincide with the arrival of the Hunters, the Squad will need to arrive almost immediately, hide the original human or humans, create their clones, and plant the clones to be found. Once the Assassin finishes, they will need to sweep in quickly, clean up the evidence, and bring the original humans back out of hiding, with no memory of the events.”
“There’s a transport issue we must consider in that example,” Will replied. “And we must overcome that transport issue. The only cloning station we have right now is here in the Cavern. If the clone is needed in the northern hemisphere, we’d have to capture and isolate the target, transport the cells here, create the clone, and then get the clone back before the Assassin comes calling. Even if transport only takes one day each way, we’re still looking at a minimum of three days from our first contact with the human target before the clone would be in place. That’s not fast enough. Generally, Energy events result in the Hunters and Assassin being onsite and acting within a day or two.” He shook his head. “We need to figure out how to get the clone in place within a day at most. That means that we need to make cloning systems portable, and we need to speed up the process of cloning.”
Aaron sighed. “I’m not sure how to speed things up or make the process more portable. The device consumes huge amounts of power, for example. So—”
“We do have a large number of safe houses scattered around the world,” Hope pointed out. “They would have plenty of power available for a cloning station.”
“But there’s still the time issue,” Aaron noted. “Even if we have dozens of cloning machines throughout the world, we still haven’t fixed the problem of time. We need to reduce the time required to make the clones.”
“Aaron, any ideas on what might be keeping the timeline at the durations we’re seeing? Lack of computing power? Lack of energy to create the copied cells more quickly? Something else?”
“I suspect it’s a bit of each,” Aaron replied. “Is there any way to requisition more power and additional computing capacity?”
“We’ll need to ask the other research projects if they can give up computing cycles to test the theory,” Will replied. “The generators are being replaced with newer models which are projected to produce an additional twenty or thirty percent beyond what we have today. That’s a good thing, because we’ve been near our maximum capacity all hours of the day and night for the past twenty or thirty years. Computing power has been similarly maxed out. We need to upgrade everything.”
“That will benefit everyone,” Hope said. “I’ve heard that there are other teams of engineers here who have ideas to triple our computing power. We can stop by and ask them if that’s true.”
“I've mentioned that my research needs more electrical power on a few occasions to a few of my friends who are experimenting with different approaches to increase our capacity,” Aaron said. “One of them has developed a small device that’s supposed to be able to multiply electrical power, increasing it about fifteen percent, just by attaching it at the source. He said it’s basically an amplifier, and it can be installed anywhere from the source of the power to the destination.”
Will was intrigued. “So you’re saying that you could plug this amplifier into a wall outlet in a house, plug the cloning machine into the amplifier, and it increases the power available to the machine?”
Aaron nodded. “They said the device reduces the voltage for each watt delivered, so you’re drawing additional amps without actually increasing the number of watts produced or delivered to a location.” Aaron shrugged. “I don’t know what that means or if I’ve relayed their comments correctly, but if a boost in power to a cloning machine reduces the time required to produce a clone, then anything we’re able to do brings us closer to our goal.”
“There is an additional benefit,” Eva noted. “You mentioned Judith’s accident earlier, Will. Consider the distance we had to teleport her to receive the care she needed. If our safe houses have adequate power, they may be equipped with medical equipment and their own cloning machines. An injury such as Judith’s may be treatable at a nearby safe house, or at a minimum, stabilizing treatment may be rendered prior to transport to a port or the Cavern.”
Will nodded. “Agreed.” He glanced at Aaron, and at the man’s clone, staring vacantly at the ceiling behind his original. “Aaron, I’ll talk to everyone I can to get you more computing and electrical power while we wait for the upgrades we’ve discussed to be implemented.”
“I still can’t say I’m comfortable with the approach,” Hope mused. “But I’d like to avoid any more situations like Jordan’s. Perhaps, while we’re working on all of this, we’ll find another means to achieve our ends.”
“We may, or we may not,” Eva replied. “Understand that the Defense Squads will continue to seek approaches to protect humans in the long-term. Perhaps we can use empathy pushes to accomplish our goal. If something like that works, we may yet see unexpected benefits to these technologies. Cut the time to regrow a severed arm from hours to minutes is of unquestioned value.”
“Indeed,” Will said, quietly, glancing at the floor. “Unexpected benefits are often the best kind.” He looked up. “Here’s hoping our efforts to mislead the Assassin have the intended outcome, regardless of the form they eventually take.”
They left Aaron’s room.
Will remained in silent contemplation the entire walk home.
XXV
Bait
1994 A.D.
Today was the day Will had long feared.
He would perform his duty in spite of that fear.
The chosen site was a resort casino the Aliomenti had opened on one of their many private islands. Humans traveled to t
he island accessible only via private charter planes made available by the Aliomenti. Arthur didn’t like too much money remaining in the hands of humans, and though the casino resort provided significant opulence to its guests, the business made huge profits for the Aliomenti.
Will was truly exposed for the first time in centuries. His clothing was created without scutarium, and he intentionally kept his Shield down, letting his Energy leak out. If any Aliomenti were within a hundred yards of him, they’d know a powerful Energy user was nearby. If Porthos was within a hundred miles, he’d definitively know within moments where Will Stark was standing. Porthos would alert his fellow Hunters, and they’d drop whatever else they might be doing to descend upon the casino. The opportunity to capture Will Stark didn’t come around too often.
They’d had many encounters in the past, most recently at Pearl Harbor a half century earlier, where Will had eluded capture by teleporting the trio to the middle of the Pacific Ocean before watching the elder Adam die. Will’s secret to success was that he avoided human crowds out of habit, ensuring that when the Hunters approached, he’d be able to rely on his own Energy to escape the Hunters without any risk of human observation. In crowds of humans, the Hunters had the advantage. They knew Will wouldn’t expose his Energy skills to humans unaware that such abilities existed, even if it meant he’d be captured. The Hunters’ abilities were far more subtle and more usable in human crowds. Aramis could render most Energy users helpless with nothing more than a simple handshake. Will glanced up and admired the clear blue skies and enjoyed the gentle ocean breezes brushing against him. It was ironic that those clear skies would make one of his escape options—flight—impossible to utilize.
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