Blaze

by Mara, Alex

  When he hit the ground I was already atop him, my tanto set to his carotid.

  “Well done, 8024. Show him goodwill,” came our Scarlet's voice.

  She wanted me to stop, but I wasn’t done.

  The tip of my blade made a tiny nick a millimeter from his artery, and a small bead of blood rose there. Even with his face to the mat, he understood.

  I had won—at least this time. The nickname would stay.

  When I allowed him to roll over, he screwed his lips up and spat. I didn’t flinch when his spit—my spit, really—hit my cheek, ran down warm and wet. I stood, swicked his blood from the blade onto my shorts.

  Our kind always required a pecking order, and my victory here was a challenge to 8013; he would try me again and again until there was no question as to where we stood.

  Which meant this thing between us was far from done.

  Three

  Friday, May 1, 2053

  6:00 p.m.

  Darcy

  8024’s first mess. I sat in the viewing room, my stenopad before me with a two-item list:

  OBSERVE 8017 & 8018. Friendship, or more?

  8024 DOMINANCE TEST. Pass/fail?

  The first item on my list was of mild interest to me, and based on my suspicion from the martial training 8024 and I had witnessed in the morning. I had suspected but hadn't found the time to investigate whether something beyond friendship existed between 8017 and 8018. And if it did, I knew what Luther Ides would say.

  "Anomalous. Recycle them."

  If what I suspected was true, this would be the first time two same-gender infiltrators had fallen in love—or at least in lust.

  And the truth was, if they were in love, it was the least of our worries. We needed less precision with a knife, and more morality among the men and women we were creating.

  We needed heart, ethics, and the ability to navigate a situation with care and consideration.

  But Dr. Ides wasn't big on logic and negotiation. He was more the ask-forgiveness, not-permission type, except he didn't ask for permission or forgiveness.

  Ides just did as he pleased.

  What I was really keen to see was 8024’s handling of the dominance display.

  The display was routine—even if they didn’t know it—among men and clones alike. Humans liked to parse out, sooner rather than later, who stood where. It was hardwired, and for a group of assassins, it was more or less as crucial as air.

  Not a single iteration of the infiltrator model had gotten through his first mess without learning his place in the pecking order. Sometimes it came to blows, and sometimes—when two of them were particularly aggressive—it came to forcible restraint by the Gales.

  We'd started positioning a Gale at the door after a hyper-aggressive new infiltrator had pinned another rookie to the floor, punched him and punched him until his opponent didn't—wouldn't ever—get back up.

  Of course, we'd lost the hyper-aggressive one, too, to recycling. The whole way around, it was sub-optimal.

  I didn't like losing any of them, especially not to each other.

  Through the one-sided glass, I could see the Gale at his post. I didn't remember his number, but the only ones promoted were our most loyal male infiltrators—they were the only ones we could trust with submachine guns at their hips.

  The whole thing made me a little wary, but regular humans weren't powerful enough to defeat infiltrators in case of an attempted escape.

  Only another infiltrator could take on one of his own.

  The first of the veteran infiltrators—8013, the alpha—entered the mess. He'd been around just under two weeks, and his Scarlet had consistently reported him walking the line between hyper-aggression and the level of aggression we were looking for. Hot, but not too hot.

  And as often happened with the aggressive ones, things had quickly shaken out with him at the top of the pack.

  He was loyal; he might even get promoted to guard status. I didn't like the hot ones as guards, but security wasn't my purview.

  8014 and 8015 followed 8013 in, so that three of the twenty stood in the mess hall line. They received their trays from the slot without incident, sat at the leftmost table—the unspoken “veterans'” spot.

  Over the years, it had ironed out so that those who had passed a week of trainings—those bearing some bruises and rough spots—sat left.

  Most respected were those infiltrators who had completed the seduction scenario, had fully unlocked their human abilities.

  Of course, that left a whole other set of non-human abilities to train. We were still struggling to get many past seduction.

  The others flowed in now, sent from the capsule room in groups. They didn’t really talk, but they did tend to stand closer by order of creation: 8017 and 8018, as expected, hung together, despite the bandaged shoulder from the wound 8017 had inflicted. 8013, 8014, and 8015 had become a trio.

  They lined up, prepared to receive their trays, all the way on up to—

  Ah, there he was. 8024 came in last, folded his arms, stood alone at the end. Even surrounded by doppelgängers, there was something I couldn’t put my finger on that distinguished him.

  I could have picked him out of a hundred of his kind, and—my eyes on his square jaw, the flex of his arms under his black shirt, the bulge of his thighs against his pants—my body could too, it seemed. I crossed my legs uncomfortably.

  I sighed, set my glasses on my face. This was the desired effect, of course, of an infiltrator on a woman. But it was still embarrassing, baffling, not least because I considered myself more a doctor than a woman.

  I hadn’t even touched myself in, God, I couldn’t remember how long. How long had it been? When was the last time I'd even wanted a man? It must have been before the facility, back when I still lived in Beacon.

  That felt like another lifetime, another world. In some ways, it was: I'd been so young, and above ground... Well, there was real light up there.

  The sun. How I longed for the day I'd never have to take another vitamin D supplement. How I wished there were any attractive men down here in this facility of pasty scientists and doctors.

  I clicked my pen’s nib out, focused on the scene before me. Doctor before woman, I reminded myself.

  8024 had neared the front of the line now. With each tray handed out, 8024 was stepping closer to the gambit, the trick.

  When it came his turn, 8023 would take two trays—his and 8024's, swiping one that wasn’t his.

  The test was all in how the newbie reacted. How would 8024 behave with the gauntlet laid down, this little injustice done to him? If he was aggressive—dominant—he might react with anger, confronting 8023, maybe even grab the tray back. But if he was submissive, he'd let the incident go.

  Except 8024 was subverting the whole experiment.

  He'd started talking to 8023 before they had even been served. I wrote this down, noting their body language. Though they were physically identical, 8024 was smiling—a sign of aggression among lesser creatures. And yet he seemed congenial about it, even set a momentary hand on 8023’s back.

  And then, another unprecedented thing: 8024 laughed. It wasn’t a belly laugh, no, but it was definitely more than a chuckle. And 8023’s eyes crinkled in response. Amusement. 8024 had made a joke, and the other had responded.

  From the table, those seated watched in their own way, their heads half-turned, acute peripheral vision set on the two outliers.

  8023 and 8024 were next in line. 8023 was receiving his tray. Here was the moment he would lay the trap, congeniality be damned. And, as predicted, he took 8024’s tray along with his own.

  I watched, pressing my glasses up my nose, my face close to the window. 8023 had already been through his first round of hand-to-hand training, could probably overpower 8024. The thought came to me: Don’t lose. Don’t let him have that tray.

  I held my breath.

  They exchanged a long look. 8024 bared his teeth again—that smile, that dominance. It was both
. I couldn’t tell if I was biased, but 8024's presence seemed to overpower 8023, as though the sun would cast a longer shadow for him. His hand went out, waiting for the tray.

  A beat. The others watched. 8023 handed it over, just gave the tray right to him like he’d picked it up as a favor. And then the two of them walked to the leftmost table, where the older models made room, though 8013 stared at him for a perilously long time before doing so.

  I dropped my pen, my mouth open. This was another thing that had never happened. He hadn’t just survived, clung to the lowest rung with the tips of his fingers.

  Just like that, 8024 sat among the vets.

  * * *

  Saturday, May 2, 2053

  9:14 a.m.

  Saturday mornings always dropped like an anvil. Today I had to see Luther Ides.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, flicked off the thunderstorm I'd set to project onto my walls through the night. I'd always liked rain, even as a girl—maybe because, above ground, rain meant life. It signaled growth, a world that would continue despite everything.

  Around me, the swollen clouds siphoned away to reveal the familiar, dull metal of my cabin. A bolt of lightning struck, and I flinched as the projection shut down.

  I hadn’t slept well. Anxiety still gripped me, held my heart in tight check from a dream I couldn’t catch the threads of. They frayed, slipped from me as I tried to grasp them. Some dreams were as elusive as stars when looked at straight on.

  And I tended to have a lot of those kinds of dreams. The elusive ones—the ones that made me anxious.

  I pulled on my robe, ran my hands over my goose-pimpled arms. It wasn't cold in my cabin, and yet I was always cold. Maybe I had circulation issues, or maybe it was just the constant anxiety of being underground, surrounded by the constant influx and destruction of assassins.

  Of people, I thought suddenly. They were infiltrators and assassins, yes, but they were still people.

  It had been a long time since I'd reminded myself of that.

  I washed my face, stood in front of the little bathroom mirror whose light grayed my blond hair to a strange pallor.

  I wondered what my parents would have thought of my life now, whether they would be thrilled or dismayed by my choices. I had given up everything else—my life aboveground, my sister, my old fiancé—for this.

  I turned, setting my fingers on the bathroom sink. On my desk, beside the old photo of my sister, lay the folder with my notes on 8024.

  Sometimes I felt hopeful. Sometimes I thought we were getting somewhere in this place.

  8024 had begun martial training, and would graduate to seduction near the end of the week. I hadn't observed him during that first training, but according to the report I'd received he hadn’t shown any other behavior that struck me as abnormal.

  I wondered if that was unconscious, or because he was aware of my wariness, somehow cognizant of the predicament he had placed me in.

  "What am I?" he'd asked as simply as if he were saying "Hello."

  I'd spent the rest of the day in a daze, wondering how to answer that question. How to deal with the fallout of it.

  He's certainly fast, I thought, reviewing his chart on my way to Ides’s office. He’d mastered bladed weapons on Friday, seemed unflagging in his discipline. Now he was onto shooting.

  I had no doubt he would know his way around a handgun by noon.

  Of course, none of that meant anything to Ides. He just wanted to hear that I’d hatched “the one,” as though if I cracked enough eggs, our perfect assassin would come tumbling out.

  Luther was a real bastard. And that wasn’t because he’d directed the recycling of over 10,000 clones since the facility had come under his purview five years ago.

  No—it was because he’d toyed with at least half of them before he did so.

  * * *

  10:30 a.m.

  I sat across from Ides, the desk between us a flat plane covered with his detritus: piles of books, chewed pens, empty nutrition bar wrappers he couldn’t be bothered to trash.

  And at his side, one of the prototype female infiltrators, her cleavage pressed into the bandage wrappings she’d been given months ago, her body like a second skin against his chair.

  A sweetheart. Small, doll-like blond curls. Lethal.

  This was one of the models I'd developed five years ago when I first arrived at the facility. I'd been fresh-faced, nervous with the possibilities of genetic engineering and my own responsibility as a scientist and doctor.

  Back then, Ides had been an idiosyncratic genius, charged by what was left of the government to create "the one."

  A human that could save the rest of us.

  He'd been heavy-handed and imperious, but nothing like he was now. The man seated across from me, eyes traveling idly over the stenopad in his hand, had probably done awful things to the female infiltrator by his side.

  I knew why this model looked anything but fresh-faced, why her dark eyes focused on Ides with a dull vacancy. She blinked slow and I wondered what was passing through her head. She pretended I wasn’t there, her long fingers stroking through the wisps of Ides’s white hair.

  “Report on…” he trailed off, his graveled voice slowing to a rumble, his fingers searching the air. “What number are you on now, West?”

  “8,024,” I said, my thumbs pressing heat signatures into the metal of my stenopad.

  “Right, the model that never ends. Go ahead,” he said, his head tilting into the crook of the prototype’s waist.

  At some point during his long tenure underground, Ides had stopped caring whether we judged him for his predilections. Even during meetings with his staff. And somehow I had accepted that.

  But right now, it felt wrong to deliver my prognosis with one of the models standing there, listening. She didn't look at me, but I knew she heard everything. She processed everything.

  And I believed she felt everything. She was a human, after all.

  “Sir,” I started, my voice catching. I stared down at what I had typed based on my own observations. #8024 IS OPERATING OUTSIDE PROGRAMMING. SLATE FOR TERMINATION. 8024's green irises came to me, unblinking in my mind’s eye.

  How incongruent, how unfeeling the writing seemed now. I took the middle road. “Sir, 8024 has shown some unusual behavior.”

  “More hyper-violence?” he said, the tiniest spark of interest lighting his eyes. He was fond of hearing the details of the aggressive ones.

  “The opposite, actually. He’s asking questions. He seemed to be self-aware as soon as I unzipped him.”

  Ides lifted his head, brown eyes now focused on me. “That’s not in the programming, West.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s unprecedented,” I said, and I felt a strange awe, a smallness in the face of what the universe was capable of, despite our finagling. “His martial training is also moving along in the top 5% of the model."

  Ides shook his head, jarring the loose skin at his chin. “Even worse. We don’t want a potential defector to be one of our best fighters.”

  “We can’t predict that he’ll defect, sir,” I said, leaning forward, my fingers touching the metal edge of his desk. “If we train him properly, his mental acuity might increase his loyalty to us.”

  "What does the Scarlet report?"

  "She hasn't reported on him yet, sir—he's only been awake for a day."

  "A day too long, sounds like." Ides waved his hand in dismissal. “Recycle it.”

  As soon as he’d said it, my eyes flicked to the sweetheart at his side. If she was bothered by this, she didn’t show it: her eyes were fixed on Ides with doting reverence. Of course, if she were compelled to, she could snap his neck into two pieces.

  “Give me a week,” I said. “Just let me study him.”

  Ides rapped his knuckles on the desk with a hollow echo. I hated that tic. “It’s dangerous, West.”

  “I'll tell his Scarlet to keep an eye on him,” I said. “His behavior may help me to refine the model for the
future—to perfect it.” I cringed as I said this, like I was crossbreeding flowers instead of making humans. But it was exactly what Ides relished hearing.

  His hand reached out to the clone’s knee, sliding up the thigh with a possessive grip.

  “Sir,” I said.

  When he remembered my presence, Ides made a face. “Five days,” he said. “If it rips your head from your shoulders, don’t come spraying blood to me.”

  I nodded. Five days.

  Four

  Saturday, May 2, 2053

  10:15 a.m.

  Blaze

  Five days.

  If we couldn't climb the wall within five days of being woken, we were out.

  And "out," I'd heard, meant exactly one thing.

  "It's called recycling," 8017 announced as he dipped his hands in the chalk, clapped them together with a white puff. "Don't worry," he told me. He and 8018, it turned out, were the most amenable of the group—probably because they had each other. "You've got this."

  Which was easy to say, considering he was on day four in the facility and had scaled the wall twice. He was the equivalent of 200% safe.

  My gaze shifted from 8017 to the obstacle course in front of us. We started on a platform some fifteen feet up, from which we leapt to a bar and monkey-swing our way down a line of twelve equidistant bars until we reached a rope. We'd grab the rope and climb it to the ceiling—an ascent of thirty feet.

  It was a good thing a fear of heights had been engineered out of my model; if we fell trying to climb the rope, the only thing below to catch us was tile flooring.

  From the ceiling, we'd leap from the rope to a netting, scramble down that to a second platform. At the second platform, we had to walk a plank three inches wide and twenty feet long.