Gretchen started to choke up a little, “I’ve never said any of this out loud before, but I’m not who I say I am. I’m not Kronos. I’m nobody. I’m just a clone who remembers being someone else … and since the real Gretchen Brooks signed away her DNA, I’m just another piece of Rik Kronos’ property! Oh, God! What would Josh think? I’m barely human, and I was born living a lie!” By now she had given up on fighting back the tears and brought in her arms, covering her chest. She hid her face in her hands.
Nick didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but he knew he had to say something. He spoke from his heart and hoped for the best. “Listen to me, Gretchen. I don’t know what you have going on with Josh, but I know he likes you. We both do. Everyone does. You are flesh and blood and you’re a good person. You’re not living a lie. You are working with what you were born with, just like the rest of us. You know who you are.
“I know Josh likes you. You obviously think a lot of him and his opinion, so if you can’t trust yourself right now, trust in him. Believe that he is right about you. Believe that you are worthy of his love and respect.
“You may not be Gretchen Brooks, but you have a chance to live the life she was tricked into giving up, to fight true tyranny and make a difference in a way she could never have dreamt of. I know you are smart and capable, and not afraid to find the truth and say it.
“Right now this whole island needs you to help them open their eyes and break their chains.”
Gretchen wiped away her tears, and gave a faint smile; she sniffled one last time before pulling herself together.
“Thank you, Nick. Josh is lucky to have such a good friend.”
Now Nick was feeling a little embarrassed, but was mostly glad he could make Gretchen feel better and, to a slightly lesser extent, that they could get on with the job at hand. He liked his work, but valued the few friendships he had in his life more.
Nick cleared his throat awkwardly, and smiled sheepishly before getting back to business.
“So, as clones, everyone here is merely seen as products of the source DNA in the eyes of the law. They are the legal property of Kronos.”
“That’s right, and we all know it. Because we all have Kronos’ memories, we are all aware of the plan and quickly become aware of our respective roles in it, after the initial shock of waking up thinking we are Rik Kronos, but then realizing we are only clones who remember being Rik Kronos, and alternately our original donors. Finally and ultimately, we realize we are just his worker bees, his slaves, his property: We really are all Kronos.”
“Okay, we should get out of here,” Nick warned.
Once they made it back out into the front office and media center, Gretchen continued, “I have none of my own memories—only those of others. At first I just thought I was crazy, but after a few days I decided to deny as much of him as I could and concentrate on getting as close as I can to being like the original Gretchen. You know, as if nothing had happened. It was the only way to keep my sanity. I may be a clone overloaded with Kronos’ memories, but I’m in here too. It’s inescapable. I have a name on my badge, and I see myself when I look in the mirror. I’m obviously not Rik Kronos. I’ve been sold out by the original Gretchen Brooks, who surely didn’t know I’d be all that’s left of her when she signed away the very essence of her being, and bought by the mighty KronosKorp.
“Maybe he thought our identities would be buried by his memories, but I bet there are others on this island—maybe everyone—who feel the same way I do. He owns us. At this point it’s not enough to escape. He has the legal right to hunt us down, capture us, torture us, or kill us. In order to be free, we’re going to have to kill him. He made slaves of us all, and of himself, probably thousands of times, and he will stop at nothing to keep us under his control.
“Except for you, Josh, and Mr. Kronos, everyone on the island was born here. And everyone who has come to the island, except for the three of you …”
“Has died on it.” Gretchen’s blood went cold upon hearing Kronos unexpectedly join the conversation as he stood in the doorway with four of the hardened security guards from the hospital.
“Tristan, I’m sorry.” Wolfe said softly to himself, upon realizing his mission was over before it began.
Kronos wanted to get things over with quickly, but for the moment relished the ability to rub salt in the wound, “I’m going to need you to come with me.”
Chapter 13
Kronos ordered his security guards-turned-henchmen to subdue the two. The first one swung at Wolfe with a right hook, and was blocked easily by Nick’s right arm. Wolfe then delivered three sharp elbows to the guard’s head while his left arm held his opponent’s arm in place. One blow landed right on his ear, taking him off balance. The second guard couldn’t wait to join the battle. He jumped over his prone partner and was flipped onto the floor. Once the guard left his feet, Nick was able to use his own momentum against him. Another man came in toward Gretchen, but Nick cut him off and punched him in the throat.
Nick and Gretchen broke for a smaller office to make their stand. After 30 minutes, Kronos’ goons still didn’t have their man. Rik Kronos realized the opening of the door was too small for more than one or two men to get through at a time, and Nick was taking them as they came in. Kronos called for more men. Minutes later 10 men came streaming into the room. Wolfe got a few shots in on one of them, but the guards were too many and too large. While three of them held Wolfe, the first one, sporting a broken nose, produced a hypodermic needle and relished jabbing it into Wolfe’s thigh.
***
Wolfe woke up back in the secret lab strapped to an operating table. For a split second he wondered if he would be someone else when he looked in the mirror, but then realized he couldn’t be since he was still thinking as Wolfe, not as Kronos … and he was still clothed.
He turned his head to the right, and saw that Gretchen was strapped to another table, still unconscious. To the left he saw a blastocyst-like clone in one of the glass containers, suspended in pink fluid. It was a male, still being formed. The body lacked a man’s muscular definition; it was chubby, not unlike a baby. The muscle tone would take shape in the last phase of the formation, but he recognized the clone’s facial features and his widow’s peak hairline. It was a clone of Wolfe.
“I suppose you need no explanation of my plans for you, Mr. Wolfe.”
“No, it seems pretty straightforward. You kill me and replace us with a couple of loyal Kronos Clone-bots with your flash-baked memories. Maybe you let one or both of them leave to go back to the mainland and see if you can gather info on or possibly assassinate a rival. Maybe take over the world.”
“You’re right on both counts. ‘You’ are going to kill Tristan Evans; then I will fill the vacuum of power and brainpower left in his absence.”
“What about Gretchen?”
“I’ll have her replaced, but first I want to run some tests on her to find out why she isn’t on the same page as the rest of the clones. She has many of my memories, but yet she rejected them completely in favor of her own personality.”
“It surprises you that she didn’t want to have the thoughts of a middle-aged man? She could only remember being you, but was reminded in every way that she is not you, and that after having access to your thoughts and your plans, she knew there was no future for her or anyone else on the island.”
Wolfe was on a roll and continued, “You really thought your plan and your genius were enough that people would be content to get on the team, despite knowing you couldn’t care less about them, didn’t you? You don’t have to run tests on Gretchen. You should run them on yourself. Everyone here probably feels the same way. You had true, blind loyalty from the original people who came here, and you killed them. Why would their clones think they would be treated any better, especially since they remember being you and coming up with the plan that ended with them becoming your property, like a slave or a pet?”
Kronos blurted out, “But none of them
had my genius!”
“Do you have to be a genius to explore space, dig for precious metals on another planet, or to be a doctor? You really should have trusted them more. Any of them would have done whatever you wanted of them!”
Kronos was starting to sweat and get agitated. Despite finding out Nick Wolfe was an ex-mercenary in the last few hours, he enjoyed the time they spent together as he displayed his intelligence and creativity to someone he saw as an eager reporter and admirer. Now the same man tore him and his plans down in his own lab, in front of his own people.
The plan was already showing signs of failure, but he still felt the need to defend himself in moral terms, “I gave these people my mind. With my memories and my knowledge I saved them so much time and effort. Memories are time in another form, especially if one can learn from them. People exchange time for memories as a natural part of life, and they exchange time for money when they work. For a while, I sold memories in order that people’s time wouldn’t be ‘lost’ due to a disease like Alzheimer’s. With the knowledge in my memory chips, time that would have been used in experimentation, research, and development is saved. Yes, I took some of their memories, but I gave them mine. They are all so much more than they would have been without it.”
“You didn’t just take their memories; you took their lives,” said Wolfe. “And as for the clones, what’s the good of being a genius, even one with experience, if you’re relegated to farming or mining, to not being the one in charge? As far as you’re concerned, what’s the good of being a genius if you’re insane? These people would also have been content to be your workers. They shared your vision more than any of their clones.”
“We’ll see,” sneered Kronos, “Well, I will. You won’t be around to see anything.”
He motioned to his guards to remove him from the table. He was still restrained when the guard with the broken nose decided to get up close and personal, saying softly, “I’m gonna pay you back for this.”
Nick squinted and leaned in as if trying to hear him better, “What?”
The guard leaned in a little more, “I said, …”
Wolfe head-butted the guard in the nose, sending him reeling. Then he looked at Kronos with a smirk. The blood from the guard was dripping down Wolfe’s leering grin, giving him an added air of malevolence that sent a slight chill down Kronos’ spine. The silent taunt was more than Rik Kronos was used to dealing with and he snapped.
“Take him apart! I want his last moments to be excruciating!”
Nick was on his feet and kicked another guard in the knee, but with his hands still tied, two more guards to contend with were simply too much. A nightstick came out of nowhere and hit Wolfe in the forehead, dazing him and sending him down. A torrent of kicks followed as the guards got their shots in.
***
Though Kronos designed the island and knew there were multiple ways to get down into the lab, he didn’t think anyone else would ever be able to find these alternate entries. His uploaded memories were created before the construction of the island, but the ideas were all there at one level or another, and with that it didn’t take long to find another way.
Once they located the alternate elevator, Josh was able to pick the lock leading to the lab with an invention from BioMek Horizons commonly known among the agents who used it as a KIC, or “Key In a Can”: a straw was inserted into the keyhole and experimental putty was sprayed into the lock. The putty expanded quickly, hardened within seconds, and then could be turned by rotating the can, which was still attached to the straw. After 40 minutes, the hardened putty would quickly dissolve from the opening of the keyhole receding as more of the putty’s surface made contact with the outside air. Josh had budgeted about 20 minutes to snoop around in the lab with his new friends before he heard the voices and sounds of Nick Wolfe being beaten up.
***
By now, Wolfe was barely conscious, and only vaguely aware of Gretchen screaming for him to get up, look out, some kind of urgent warning. Upon regaining his senses, he was face to face with Rik Kronos, who looked angry and was saying something to him about not being able to understand genius. This made him smile. He was probably going to die in this underground lab, but there was no reason to give the evil scientist the satisfaction of seeing him upset.
“Great. I’m about to be killed by an evil scientist,” chuckled Nick, and the more he thought about it, the funnier the idea became. “Do evil scientists dream of being evil scientists when they’re little kids, or do they just go bad as adults?”
“You just have to see the big picture, Mr. Wolfe. By the time this is over I will have helped mankind more than you ever will. I’ll bring precious metals and technologies to Earth. I own this island and everything … and everyone on it! I have created my own army!”
“So if you have a lofty goal, it’s okay to kill people and make slaves of their clones,” Nick deadpanned.
“A necessary evil, Mr. Wolfe.”
“If you say so.”
“Enough of this talk. It’s no use to stall for time. No one knows or cares you’re down here. You’re about to die and be replaced by a clone who’s ready to do what I say. Maybe I’ll have you kill your friend Josh Taylor. Maybe I’ll use you to send my regards to Tristan Evans.”
The thought of Evans being that chummy with Wolfe made him smile. “I think you’re overestimating my people skills,” he told Kronos.
“That’s putting it mildly,” chimed in Josh Taylor, who showed up from out of the darkness with a small army of his new friends from the cafeteria.
So now Taylor was here, partially from blind luck. Bad luck in the eyes of Kronos, who was only now realizing Wolfe and Gretchen were right about the clones not being satisfied to remember being Rik Kronos while growing crops in a tunnel, trying fruitlessly to remember who they used to be, or at least who their gene donors were. Many of those donor memories were simply not there. The intense hatred in Surfer Boy’s eyes made his feelings on the matter heard loud and clear.
The security guards turned on Kronos. Theirs were positions of prestige in Kronos’ inner circle, but being the heads of Kronos’ goon squad paled in comparison to the prospect of freedom. They overpowered their master easily and Taylor did the talking as Wolfe and Gretchen recovered. Nick didn’t feel much like talking anyway. It looked like Taylor had come up with a plan.
“We need to destroy those records if we can,” Taylor said. Wolfe and Gretchen agreed.
While Taylor’s mind was reeling, Wolfe’s was racing. In many ways the clones were the hive mind Kronos had hoped for, but even as a group they came to conclusions and strategies that no one had counted on. In other ways they were less like clones than their original DNA donors. They thought together, but did not conform to each other’s or to Kronos’ plans. Identity seemed so much like a denied necessity, that they were determined to be as individual as possible.
One of the clones spoke up, “Yes, as long as those records exist, there will always be a chance that someone can buy them and claim us as property.”
Kronos interrupted the group with shouting, “I will not have you talking and planning as if I’m not in the room. You are thinking with the brains I gave you, with the knowledge I alone have amassed. Everything you are, you owe to me. I am your creator and master.”
Surfer Boy responded, “We are not your property, Kronos!”
“In the eyes of the law, you are exactly that. I own you all!”
Rik Kronos’ security detail had been beaten up badly, had their worst fears confirmed about their identities, and were now being told by their boss and leader that they were not free men. This would no longer stand. They all turned their gaze toward him. One said what the rest were thinking: “You won’t own anything once you’re dead.”
With that, the guards clubbed their creator to death, avenging the donors tricked into being killed, and freeing the clones who, until that point, were born to be nothing but Kronos’ slaves.
Chapter 14
/> The group, still 45 strong, marched to the hospital to find and destroy the records that made them property of KronosKorp, since the donors of the DNA that spawned them gave the rights of the DNA to the company. Of course, they had no idea it would be used to make clones of them once they were murdered, and then to keep those slaves in perpetuity. Granted, this was a scenario they could not have imagined, especially given how they viewed Rik Kronos as their savior. Even so, the clones voiced incredulity among themselves that their original DNA donors, by now simply and somewhat euphemistically called “donors,” could have been so blind.
Because there were now members of the group who worked in the lab, there was no need for a KIC, passwords, or getting past security. In addition to the members of this small mob, many of the thousands who lived on the island were buzzing about the death of Rik Kronos, the subsequent death of his clone, who murdered him, and about how their donors had essentially sold them into slavery. Many who still hoped to train and go into space as KronosKorp employees knew the plan had fallen apart, and were choosing sides. Most were willing to help get their records, earn their freedom, and live the lives thrown away by their donors. Others were ready to fight for the life and career they trained for. A group of 50 or so had assembled at the hospital, even as Wolfe and Taylor’s team were in the records room on the fifth floor, wiping the servers and shredding the paperwork.
Slaves of Pangaea: The Second Nick Wolfe Sci Fi Adventure (Nick Wolfe Adventure Series Book 2) Page 5