We climbed into the black SUV and headed off the base. The vehicle was luxurious compared to the troopers’ transport modules. Nothing rattled, it was air conditioned, and the seats still had their upholstery. If it wasn’t for the thick, bulletproof glass I might have been able to forget what I was doing and enjoy the ride.
The driver took us to Parliament and waited while we were let out before tearing down the road and onto his next assignment. The four of us walked in single file into the building.
Our mission was to guard the perimeter and keep the general public out of the official government grounds.
It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering work.
We took it in turns to do laps of the fence, working in pairs. There was no discussion while we worked, our faces were hidden by the black helmets and made any conversation all but impossible.
They didn’t issue me with a gun. While the other three toted their weapons like badges of honor, my hands were empty. Apparently I had to work up to having the privilege of being armed.
I wouldn’t have given myself a gun either if I knew what was on my mind.
While my feet marched and my empty hands swung at my sides, I went over my plans. On the top of my list was finding Wren and getting her away from the labs. Only if she was safe would I be able to focus on anything else.
Once Wren was taken care of, I needed to work with the Resistance to stop the whole clone scam. It was a commitment I wasn’t going to shirk just because they were watching me.
They could watch.
Watch me come for them.
Take them down.
Stop Stone and her whole regiment.
It would happen. There were too many of us hidden in the shadows and working together to bring her down. They weren’t going to know what happened to them when we hit. They would be surprised by our numbers.
After our break for lunch, our group was called to the vehicle bay and given a new assignment. President Stone was heading out and she needed guards to escort her.
I would rather have marched my legs down to bleeding stumps than protect her but the change of scenery was welcome. Plus, it wasn’t like I had a choice.
We headed out in the armored vehicle, Stone in the middle of us as she talked on her cell phone. She was either speaking another language or in code, I couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying down the line.
Laboratory Delta came into view, instantly piquing my interest. We weren’t told where Stone was going, only that we needed to go with her.
Lab Delta was where I had last seen Wren. If they hadn’t killed her yet she would be locked up in one of their cells and awaiting her fate.
Now was my chance to save her.
We moved in formation around Stone as she exited the vehicle and strode into the lab like she owned the place. We walked with her all the way to the offices where we were dismissed. Whatever she was there to discuss wasn’t a concern of ours.
She had to be there about Wren. Which meant she had to still be alive. Stone could have discussed her organs over the phone, she didn’t need to visit in person for any other reason than to discuss her live clone.
The group returned to the security guard station at the front of the building. The same place I had been detained just under a week ago. The same faces that had grilled me, greeted me as one of them. It was amazing what difference a few days could make.
“Hey! I guess you were just working for Stone after all,” Harmon joked, clapping my back. He had been one of my interrogators. He also had questioned me like a criminal when I told them I was only delivering Wren on the president’s orders.
They hadn’t really believed me because it was a lie. But they didn’t know that.
I took off my helmet and cradled it under my arm. “Yeah, I told you I was. Maybe next time you should listen. Not everyone is lying.”
He held his hand out for me to shake. “We were both just doing our jobs. Square?”
I shook it. “Square.”
The rest of my group grabbed coffees and made themselves at home in the station as we waited for our call to get back to Stone. She would summon us when she was ready to leave, until then we just had to wait.
Which could work in my favor.
I mirrored Harmon’s body language and leaned against the wall casually. “So what happened to the girl? The one I brought in?”
“The Def?” he asked as I nodded. “She’s long gone, mate.”
Dread washed through me.
I was too late.
My heartbeat rushed through my ears, way too noisy in the quiet guard station. I tried to push away my grief so I could get answers. I couldn’t let them see how much the news affected me.
“Yeah? They put her in a jar, hey?” I said, the words tasting like sawdust on my tongue. How could I be talking about Wren like that? Like she was nothing? She was gone and they had killed her, stored her organs so Stone could use them if she needed them.
I wanted to vomit.
Bile rose in my throat as I tried to swallow it down.
Harmon shrugged. “Nah, not yet. Stone took her. I guess she wanted a pet before she cut her up.”
“She took her? So she’s still alive then?”
“As far as I know. Don’t see why, though. If you ask me, the sooner they’re in the deep freeze, the better. Sure saves us a lot of trouble and hassle rounding them up.”
He stalked off to take a phone call while I tried to put the pieces of myself back together again. I had to rebuild myself brick by brick, fit it all together so I resembled a normal human being again.
Stone had Wren. But she was alive and that’s more than I expected. While Wren’s heart beat somewhere in Aria, I had a shot at finding her.
Although… how much time I had was impossible to tell. Stone wasn’t exactly the friendly type, she wouldn’t be sitting around with Wren braiding her hair and sharing gossip. She most likely had her imprisoned somewhere, making sure she wouldn’t be able to escape again.
With Harmon gone, his computer was left unattended. Looking left and right, everyone else seemed focused on their tasks. I slipped behind the desk and the screen came to life.
It was password protected.
Trying to guess Harmon’s password was like trying to guess a random word from the dictionary. I started typing words, starting with his name.
Nothing worked.
No matter how much I tried.
“Hey, what are you doing, man?” Harmon asked as he appeared behind the computer screen.
“Sorry, just thought I’d check my email.” I stood, offering a polite smile. “Didn’t get far, though. Don’t worry, I didn’t see your porn collection.”
“Whatever, dude. This place is safer than the bank vault. You had no chance.” He slapped me on the back jovially, buying my explanation.
Another question popped into my head, something else I thought he might be able to help me with. It was worth a shot. “Do you know of a Defective Clone known as Rocky? He was brought in about two weeks ago?”
Harmon’s eyes narrowed. “You ask a lot of questions about Defs.”
“Curious, I guess. I was there when he was taken,” I lied, at least partly – I was curious. “Figured he might have been a big deal with so many guys bringing him in.”
The security guard sidled over to me, looking me square in the eyes. “Take my advice, forget about him. Pretend like you’ve never seen or heard of the Def. It will save you a lot of trouble.”
“Why? What’s so special about him?”
He shook his head, biting his tongue. He wasn’t going to give me anything. “You don’t want to know. I told you, forget the whole thing.”
“Thompson, we’re up,” one of my group called out, ending the conversation.
I hurried to join my group, Harmon’s warning ringing in my ears. Wren said her friend was a regular Defective Clone, she didn’t say anything about him being special. She didn’t know who his Maker was, perhaps it was time I fou
nd out.
Chapter 5: Wren
It had to be a trap.
Or a nightmare.
President Stone was not this nice and certainly not to me. She smiled, the expression looking odd on her face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her smile before.
“Come, take a seat,” she said sweetly, gesturing toward the chair across the table from her.
Sunbeams filtered through the curtained windows, creating a lacy artwork across the tablecloth. It was set for two with delicate teacups and a pot of tea neatly arranged.
“Do you drink tea?” Stone asked as she held the teapot. It was probably filled with poison.
But, no, she wouldn’t poison me.
That could potentially harm my organs.
Her organs.
I sat tentatively, my legs ready to bolt for the door at a moment’s notice. There was no way I could be at ease in her presence. Even out of my cell I knew she controlled everything I did.
She poured the dark liquid into my cup without an answer, letting two sugar cubes fall in afterwards. They splashed into the water, leaving droplets on the pristine white tablecloth.
I pinched my leg, making sure I was actually awake. It certainly felt like I was but everything seemed too surreal. I didn’t share tea with the president. She wasn’t nice to me. I had officially entered the twilight zone.
“You know,” she started, still using that sweet voice she had no right using. “Some Makers are friends with their clones. They share many good times with them before they Serve Their Purpose. What do you call yourself?”
“Clone one-fifteen,” I replied. There was no way she was getting my name. It was mine and the only thing I truly owned. I wouldn’t give it away for free. Especially not to her.
“That’s it? I thought you things gave each other names?” I shook my head, biting my lips together. “Well, anyway, drink your tea while it’s hot. Nobody wants cold tea.”
She delicately drank from her own fine porcelain cup, bringing it to her lips like it was something she’d done thousands of times before.
I stared at the liquid. It swirled dark brown, it didn’t look appetizing. Stone was watching my every move. “Doctor Wagstaff said your stomach will be able to handle tea. It’s not poisoned, drink it.”
With her hawked gaze, I had no choice. I tried to mimic her and sip gently but the hot liquid burned my tongue. I choked on the small sip, my hand shaking and spilling some before I could place it back on the table.
Brown splotches littered the white tablecloth. I got the feeling this was going to be our one and only meeting.
“There, now was that so bad?” she asked. “The guards said you were taken into Laboratory Delta. That’s where you were created, did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“That trooper who brought you there, did you know him?”
Any mention of Reece made my stomach churn. I so desperately needed to know what they’d done with him. “No, I didn’t.”
“So he found and then delivered you? That was the extent of his involvement?”
I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the sole reason she was having tea with me. It was far more convenient for her to interrogate me in the tea room rather than in my horrible cell with its musty, damp smell.
“Yes,” I lied. “I told him to let me go but he wouldn’t listen. He said he had to deliver me there for you. He said you wanted me in custody very much.”
She considered my answer for a moment too long. It suddenly occurred to me that she had no idea if I was lying or not. She couldn’t work me out.
Which made sense.
She was the best liar in the world.
Finally something we had in common apart from our genetic code.
“Tell me about your life,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. “Did you grow up in the Defectives’ village?”
“Mostly.”
“Have you kept up with politics?”
“I sometimes read the newspaper,” I conceded.
Her eyebrows arched skyward. “So you can read?”
“Yes.”
“That’s more than I expected,” Stone admitted. There was something satisfying in surprising her. She thought I was a brainless clone. But she forgot I was her. Would she have accepted not reading her entire life?
No.
Of course not.
She continued throwing questions at me. “Do you know who I am?”
“President Portia Stone.”
A smile graced her lips, a genuine one. She liked the fact I knew who she was. As if I could not know. Her face was plastered around the city on propaganda for her party. Nobody ever dared run against her in an election.
“Very good,” she said. “If you know who I am, you must also know how powerful I am. I had the whole city looking for you, did you really think you’d be able to hide forever?”
“Why let me go then? When I was a baby? Why not lock me up until you wanted to use me?” The questions tumbled from my mouth before I had a chance of stopping them. It was dangerous to engage in conversation with her but I had lived my life knowing nothing and now I had a chance of changing that. Even if it cost me my last breaths, I had to know.
I just had to.
Stone laughed. “What would I do with a baby? I wasn’t going to raise you, do you know how much that would have cost? Not to mention all the hassle. Far better to let you go to the village where they could deal with the problem. Now, if you were a Valid Clone, and not Defective, that would have been a different story.”
“So you would have made me your friend then? If I wasn’t a Defective?”
Her lips pursed together before she shrugged. “Perhaps. If you weren’t Defective, I could have had as many clones as I wanted. There would have been a dozen of you sitting in this room with me. But you stopped all that, you ruined it for me. You’re to blame for everything.”
It wasn’t me that prevented Stone from making more clones, it was the law. A law she had enacted and agreed to. I guess that was before she had a Defective Clone of her own, she probably never imagined her genes could have a fault in them.
To blame me for her lack of Valid Clones was low, even for her. I never asked to be made, I never asked to be defective. It was all her and her genetic markers.
She had no-one to blame except for herself.
But that would never happen.
Not in a million years.
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I mumbled.
A storm waged its way over Stone’s face. “You ruined everything, you idiot. I should have killed you at birth, covered it up so nobody ever knew what you were.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Her mouth went to speak but she stopped herself. Whatever Stone’s reasons were, she wasn’t going to share them with me. Like I cared anyway. It didn’t matter why she didn’t kill me the moment I took my first breath. She would do it eventually, eighteen years later. Either way, I was dead.
She composed herself and the mask slipped back on her face. “That would have been illegal and I would not do any such thing. Those stupid laws were supposed to stop others reproducing defective genes. If I thought they would stop me one day I never would have created the damn rules.”
I snorted, I couldn’t help myself. I had to take a sip of the tea to cover my skepticism. If she wanted to think I believed her, then so be it. I wasn’t going to shatter her delusions.
“You’re very sullen for someone that has had eighteen years given to her when she didn’t deserve any,” Stone said, delicately sipping from her tea cup like we were discussing ponies and rainbows.
“You’re going to kill me soon. I’m sorry, should I be happy about that?”
“You should be grateful to be alive at all.”
“How? My whole life I’ve known I have to die when you decide to kill me. And why? Just so you can use my body parts to extend your own life.”
“My dear, that’s the natural order of things. How can that ma
ke you so… angry?” She looked at me with no hint of emotion on her face. Was this what I would be like in another thirty years? Would I turn into her just because our genetic code was the same?
God, I hoped not.
Maybe dying now was a blessing. If I turned into her, it would be the worst punishment in the world. Far worse than death. Not valuing a life should have been the biggest sin of all.
Yet she said it was natural?
There was nothing natural about taking someone else’s life. No matter how you looked at it.
“How can it make me so angry?” I repeated, throwing her words back at her. “Because I have a life of my own. I have people that I love, people that care about me. I have a favorite color, a favorite place. I have friends, a home. I have everything that makes a life worthwhile.”
“But you aren’t entitled to any of those things. You are a clone, a spare that I created. You were made for my use and my use only. All that other stuff is superfluous.”
There was no point in arguing with her.
Humans never understood.
My gaze was torn from her back to the table, I hoped I looked sullen enough for her again. She could take my life but that didn’t mean I had to engage her in conversation. I still had no idea what I was doing there and not sequestered away in my cell.
The cookie I ate tasted like dust in my mouth. I had to force it down with tea that had turned sour. I couldn’t enjoy anything with her scrutinizing eyes watching me like a hawk.
There was only one thing I still held in my arsenal and now was as good a time to use it as any. “I know clones are born, like humans. We aren’t created in a laboratory like you tell everyone.”
Stone assessed me for exactly four seconds.
Before she burst into laughter.
Her hand waved away my comment like it was nothing, worthless, as light as a feather. “You have been misinformed, you idiot girl. You truly are as daft as I thought.”
“I saw the pregnant women, they were in Laboratory Delta. I spoke with them.” Just remembering their swollen bellies and the look of pure love as they cradled their stomachs was enough to spur me on.
I knew what I had seen.
Hundred Stolen Breaths Page 5