by M. D. Waters
I run to the next body and find the previous body’s identical twin: pale skinned to the point of being see-through, hairless, and soft. The pale magenta of the eyelids and blue system of veins give the only color. It is curled in on itself like a fetus in a womb.
The sacks are wombs.
A large piece of machinery hovers over the water like a giant claw that can swivel all around the pool. I do not have to see it in action. It can pick up the sack and lay it down on one of two steel tables to my left. Hospital equipment sits against a wall near them. Lamps on swinging arms jut out from the head of each table.
I recall my first memory. The white light in my eyes. Travista shoving the light aside to look down at me. I think we have finally done it, he’d said.
“Oh my God,” I say on a slip of breath. This thing in the pool, this featureless body, used to be me. I came from this place. My stomach lurches and I cover my mouth.
Foster lays a hand on my shoulder and peers over me. “Ready-made bodies. That’s how he made Lydia Farris so fast.”
I turn around and see a screen lit up with medical data for each clone, ten in all. Another screen lists them as numbers one through ten. Next to each one is a list: full neuron transfer, DNA absorption, cellular and skeletal growth, and skin formation. All say zero percent complete.
“Let’s get started,” Foster says and hands me an explosive. “We don’t have much time.”
He jumps into the pool and attaches a charge to the large white pole protruding from the center. I look around until I find what looks like the computer’s main server. It is much larger than the hard drive in Declan’s office—by at least five times. Hundreds of red lights blink sporadically at me as I attach the charge.
We place the last two and are heading for the stairs when the two doors in the room slide open. Red coats. Guns raised. Nobody is firing, though, and I know it has nothing to do with the fact that Foster and I are spinning back to back with our own guns trained on them. We are completely outnumbered.
“Put down the weapon,” a deep-voiced man calls.
I hold up the detonator to the bombs but never let my gun leave the man I have it pointed at. Boy, actually. He could not have been older than twenty and would probably die here with the rest of us today.
A few of the men recognize the detonator and exchange glances, but their guns never waver. Foster and I move toward the stairs, and the men edge closer. I glance behind me and find the stairs filling up with men there, too. I follow the line of security up to the railing and find the guest of honor, gripping the edge, knuckles white, expression tight.
“Don’t shoot,” Declan tells his men. “I’d like a word with my wife.”
CHAPTER 42
I am not your wife,” I say.
“Yes, you are. The day you turned eighteen—”
“The record of your so-called marriage to Emma Wade was deleted a long time ago.” I feel a little smug being able to tell him this. I cannot believe he did not already know. “You and I were never married.”
Declan pushes off the railing with an audible gust of breath and disappears in the crowd. He reappears near the bottom of the stairs. He has removed his tie and jacket and is unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt with sharp twists and jerks. His gaze burns into mine and I swallow hard over a lump in my throat.
I back away automatically and run into Foster’s back. We glance at each other for a quick moment. His gaze is steady, ready for anything despite the fact that we are about to die. He puts too much faith in me.
“How much do you know?” Declan asks.
“Enough.”
“Doubtful.”
“How much do you know?” I ask, my throat tightening. “Do you know she is still alive? That she was pregnant when you left her to die?”
Declan jerks to a stop. “That’s impossible.”
“I met her today. Saw her with my own two cloned eyes.”
“Then you saw an empty shell,” Dr. Travista says. He steps around a group of security to my right. “Because one soul can’t inhabit two places at once.”
Foster stiffens behind me. “Did he just use the word we threw around as a joke?”
“Yes,” I say, a little breathless. “He did.”
Travista shakes his head and frowns at me. “You, Emma, are Emma Wade, new body or old.”
I recall the words on the medical screen: “full neuron transfer.” Scientific jargon I will never understand, but I know neurons pass information between cells. If Travista passed all of Emma’s neurons to me, what did that mean? Emma is brain-dead, and I have Her memories. Is it possible . . . ?
I shake my head to clear it. “Talk to me like a two-year-old, Travista, because it sounds like you are saying I am still me.”
He chuckles and exchanges a look with Declan, who is frowning.
“You are,” he says. “I say ‘soul’ because that’s the only word anyone seems to understand, but really, I created a synaptic connection between the host’s brain and the clone’s, transferring the neuron data. What gave Emma Wade her identity is all in you. A layman might say I cut out her soul and pasted it in you.” He looks distant as he says, “It’s taken me more than twenty years to perfect it.”
I have seen this look in his eye before, and have ever since Jodi died. “You tried cloning Jodi. But why?”
Declan looks surprised I know the name, but Dr. Travista does not. He has been on to me for a lot longer than I give him credit for.
“Jodi and I could not marry while she remained barren,” he tells me. “She was my first attempt, and we both felt it an acceptable risk.”
The heat of anger curls in my chest. Jodi was given a choice. “Maybe I was not okay with the risk; did that ever occur to you?” I shoot my gaze to Declan. “Or you?”
Declan squares his shoulders. “It worked. That’s all that matters now. You have a chance at a fresh, new life.”
Do I? My situation suddenly glares me right in the face. I am about to die, because there is no way Foster and I are getting out of this alive. I just martyred myself thinking I was a fake, a copy, that if I could not have the life I remembered with the man I love, I did not want a life at all.
But I came here to punish Declan and I mean to do it. He cannot get away with what he has done.
“Why did you have to do this at all?” I ask Declan. “Why go through the motions of cloning and leaving her for dead the way you did?”
Declan takes a moment to scan the room. “Let’s go somewhere private and I’ll explain everything.”
“No! You have gotten all the private moments you are going to get out of me, you son of a bitch.” Tears threaten my eyes and I blink them back. I feel sick to my stomach thinking of his hands on me, making me warm inside. How I loved him more with each and every private moment we shared. “You have screwed with my head enough, and now I want answers.”
He holds up his hands as if to calm me. “Your people never would have stopped looking for you had I kept you. And I wanted you. I never lied about that. I wanted to prove to you that you couldn’t run from me forever; I always get what I pay for. And taking away one of the best resistance fighters they’ve got in the process? I couldn’t pass that up.”
Declan takes a step closer and lowers his voice. “I gave you a new body without scars, a life without war. I gave you love and a future you never could have dreamed of.” He looks so earnest when he adds, “And I truly love you, Emma. That isn’t a lie. We can still have that future. All you have to do is put the weapons down.”
But I do not care about this scar-free body. Noah still longs for the woman who has the scars. I fear he always will, no matter what Travista says.
I take my trained gun off the security officer and swing it forward. It centers on Declan’s forehead and it takes everything I have to ignore the widening of his eyes. The hurt on his face.
I shove aside every kind, loving, reasonable emotion I have and say, “There was a time when I let your lies g
o because I loved you. I warned you I would not make that mistake again, and I will not.”
Declan shoots a glare at Travista that is hot enough to melt gold. “You son of a bitch. I thought you knew what the hell you were doing.”
Travista seems unconcerned by Declan’s anger, his focus solely on me. “You say the host is still alive?”
“You will never find her,” I say quickly. “She is safe from all of you.”
He holds up his hands. “I don’t need her any more than I need any of the other hosts. What I’m asking is if she’s truly being kept alive.”
Foster chimes in here. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”
Travista nods as if this answers his question and looks at Declan. “I believe Emma may still be connected to the host body. That’s why she’s proven difficult to erase. I discovered a connection between Ruby and her host initially, but it ended the moment I terminated the original.”
All I hear is that he murdered Ruby and I wish I had a second gun.
“I assumed Emma’s host was already dead,” Travista says. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘the tie that binds’?”
Declan shakes his head. “What the hell are you saying?”
“The phrase comes from an old Christian hymn written by a man named John Fawcett. ‘Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.’ One verse says: ‘When we asunder part, It gives us inward pain; But we shall still be joined in heart, And hope to meet again.’
“So I’m saying,” Travista continues, “the host and the clone are connected. In this case, using the word ‘soul’ would be more accurate. It’s still tied to the original body. We can’t actually fix Emma until the host dies. Only then will it be permanent.”
Declan looks more confused than ever, but it all makes perfect sense to me. But Travista is missing one important element. I am not only connected but have been returning for eight months. And the second She dies, the tie will be severed and Travista will have full control of my mind. If he can get his hands on me again.
I waggle the bomb’s detonator in my hand. “You will never get the chance to ‘fix’ me. This is over.”
“You’re outnumbered, Emma,” Declan says calmly. “You’ll lose that arm before you have the chance to push the trigger.” Several security officers take that as a command and aim their weapons at my arm.
I laugh, though I swear I can feel the phantom burn of plasma fire in my arm. “And you will cart me around proudly when I am short an arm?”
He nods to the pool of water behind me. “I’ll just remake you. The transfer is quick. We’ll start over, and by the time I have you back, your host and this body will be dead. No more complications.”
Blood drains from my face. He would do it. He would maim me six ways from Sunday, let these men fire on me, and he will win. I would rather be dead.
Sonya’s voice suddenly fills my mind. All I know is that Travista knows the human brain better than any scientist I’ve ever come across. . . . He managed to access Emma’s entire archetype, her past, everything, then pick and choose which parts to bring to life.
I shift the focus of my weapon from Declan’s head to mine, determined to end this the only way I know how. No brain. No Emma. “Clone this.”
CHAPTER 43
Declan is on me before I can squeeze the trigger, sending my plasma fire into a security officer. The accidental fire zips through his neck and he goes down with a thump.
Declan pins me down by the wrists and slams my detonator hand into the ground. The black box, and my only way of detonating the bombs, goes skittering across the floor. My knuckles and wrist throb with searing-hot pain when he repeats the process on my right hand to free my gun.
Behind me, Foster fires on the crowd and, despite his bum knee, maneuvers well around their return fire. He disappears from my peripheral and a splash tells me he is in the pool.
I squeeze off as many shots as I can before Declan forces the gun from my hand. There is a brilliant bolt of pain in my middle knuckle and I know that it is fractured.
“Shoot me!” I scream into the room. “Foster! Kill me!”
Declan rolls us to the side just as a shot bounces off the floor where I had lain. A smoky black mark is all that remains. I am both relieved and disappointed. Lord knows I do not want to die like this, but I cannot survive if it means letting Declan control my life.
I piston my head forward and connect. Sort of. I had aimed for Declan’s nose, but he moved in time and I smacked his chin. His teeth clack together and he grunts. It is enough that he loosens his grip on me. White spots swim in my vision, but I ignore them and yank my right arm free. I slam my elbow into his face, knocking him sideways.
I twist out from under him and run for the pool. I pick up my gun on the way. Rapid blue plasma bursts zip by me. I duck through the heavy concentration. One hand on the pool’s ledge, I swing my feet over, my hip skidding the ledge, and drop inside. The warm water is shallow enough that, when I kneel, it laps up only to my waist. The wall ends just above my head. On either side of me, the sacks billow like clouds in the moving water.
Foster kneels to my right, lifting his gun up and blindly shooting into the room.
“No wonder you missed me,” I say, hissing the words through clenched teeth. “You could not take a second to aim?”
He rolls his eyes. “I did. For Burke.”
I gape. “I told you to—”
“I’m not killing you,” he says sternly. “Noah would skin me alive for killing his wife.”
His wife. I like the sound of that. But . . . “We are not getting out of here alive. You know that, right?”
“Says who?” He lifts his arm again and fires. “I have a savory roast in the oven calling my name right now.”
I chuckle. “You do not.”
He sucks in a deep breath, his expression turning serious. “On three?”
I nod. “One. Two.”
We stand and fire into the sea of red. I have only a moment to discover how well Foster had already cleaned up before the room disappears.
• • •
A bubble sneaks past my face and pops at the water line over my head. The familiar hum of my tank and hospital surroundings tell me my consciousness has shifted bodies again. It could not have happened at a worse moment.
Noah sits in a metal folding chair facing me with bloodshot eyes. The skin under them is dark and a stark contrast to the pallor of the rest of his face.
An auburn-haired man races into the room, out of breath, and thrusts a computer tablet into Noah’s hand. “You have to see this. I only just found out. Fucking Birmingham took the clone—”
Noah stands so fast the chair clatters to the ground, folding in on itself. “What are they doing? Where are they?”
“Burke Laboratories. They managed to get a feed started before all hell broke loose. Richardson’s been helping them from the command center.”
“Get a team assembled ten minutes ago.” Noah squints at the screen. “Is Emma hurt?”
The man peers closely at the screen. “There’s no blood in the water.”
“Something’s happened,” Noah says. “Shit. Just go. Get there. Now.”
The man runs from the room and Noah watches the screen as if he wants to jump through it. His knuckles go white clutching the tablet.
Pain radiates through my midsection, and for the first time, my body moves. Jerks. Spasms. I lift a hand and brace against the glass, but I can do no more than press lightly with my weakened muscles.
An alarm sounds and Sonya bursts into the room, eyes alert and on the monitor. “Shit!” She runs to the desk and slams a fist down on something that sends another alarm shrieking into the room.
Noah does not see any of this. He is looking up at me with wide eyes. “Emma?”
I lift my other hand and press it to the glass. Nod once.
“The baby’s coming,” Sonya says, but she sounds upset.
Noah blinks rapidly as if waking. “What?” He sounds almost ha
ppy.
I want to be happy, too, but the pain ringing around my core makes me wonder if I’m being sawed in half.
Men run into the room and Sonya spouts off orders: “Stop the blood thinner, get the patient out, and prep for an emergency C-section. And somebody cut the goddamn alarms.”
The tablet Noah is holding clatters to the floor. “No. No C-section. Emma’s awake. She can deliver on her own.” He points up at me. “Look.”
Sonya does a double take as I curl my fingers into fists, my nails scraping the glass, and lamely bang them on the tube. She looks at the monitor and shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. The baby’s in distress. We have to get her out. Now.”
Noah takes her by the shoulder and jerks her around to face him. “But you said—” He stops and swallows. Glances my way. “The blood thinners. She’ll bleed out if you have to do the C-section. There’s been no time to take her off.”
All of this is news to me, and while I do not understand what the problem is, Noah certainly does.
“Hopefully,” Sonya says, “we can clot her blood in time.”
The water drains around me and more pain rips through my stomach.
• • •
I roll to my side and cough. Water erupts from my lungs and coats the hardwood floor under me. Slats of pale, medium, and dark wood. This flooring startles me, and while I cough, I glance around.
Stairs leading into a sunken living room. The fireplace and its scent coating the air with the sweet smell of burned wood. The smell I associate with home.
I push shakily to my knees and Declan takes me by the arms. He cups my face. “Are you okay? Jesus, I thought you were dead.” His eyebrows tilt and pinch together; his sea-green gaze darts over my face, searching for who knows what.
I force his arms aside. “Do not touch me. How did I get here?”
He rocks back on his heels and stands. “Your friend threw you out of the pool.”