Blaze

by Mara, Alex

  I didn't like his handsiness, yet I needed him to be touching me too much. So I reluctantly allowed him to help me remove the coat, which he hung on a hook by the door.

  One hand came into my field of vision, gesturing me through the study and toward another door—the second room of his cabin. "Please."

  That could only be his bedroom. He wanted me in his bedroom.

  I slid the pill into my pants' pocket, maneuvered around the desk toward the bedroom doorway, glancing over my shoulder. "The report, sir?"

  He followed at a short distance. "I'd prefer you deliver it to me in comfort, Darcy. Unless you would rather the folding metal chair." He indicated a folded silver chair set in a corner with a dismissive flick of the fingers.

  I shook my head, turned forward. "No, sir. The bedroom is fine."

  With another hiss, we came into a city's street square. A fat moon gilded the treetops, each of them short and evenly spaced along a manicured road.

  Buildings lined the street, a cafe's furled scaffolding hovering close to its doors, small iron-wrought tables and chairs stacked for the night. Somewhere, a nocturnal bird cooed.

  This was where Luther Ides slept. It was also...

  "Boston," I breathed, turning a slow circle. This wasn't a scene I had access to in the projection repository.

  "Well done, Doctor," Ides's voice intoned, though his shape was only looming blackness in the doorway.

  The souplike scent of him came over me. I'd caught it in whiffs before, but here in his lair, I scented full-on mustiness, and something fungal that made me want to breathe through my mouth.

  My lips parted. "Did you ever see Boston?"

  "Oh yes," he said, sweeping past me and toward a small wooden cabinet. In the moonlight, he swung open a door to an array of bottles. "Thirsty?"

  "Yes," I said with almost too much eagerness. I had been hoping this would happen—that we would have a drink together, which made for a much easier time of getting the bloom's powder into his system.

  Easier than some of the methods that had fluttered through my mind while I stood outside his cabin.

  "What kind of drinker are you, Darcy?" His fingertip slid over the bottles, surveying them. "I've always taken you for a bit of a straight gal. No mixers, right?"

  Actually, he was right. "I'll have whatever you're going to drink," I said. Pretty suave, Darcy, I thought. I hoped that would be enough encouragement.

  He paused, his finger tapping a long-necked bottle. "It's your first time in my cabin in five years. I've been negligent, haven't I? Let's make up for that with my favorite." Ides massaged the bottle out, held it up for me with one hand atop and one below.

  I squinted; the label read Jack Daniel's. "That's still around?"

  "Right here in this cabin it is." He retrieved a pair of shot-glasses with one hand and brought them around. He deposited one in my hand, uncorked the bottle and poured two fingers' worth for each of us.

  That would be more than enough. Now I just had to distract him from his favorite drink.

  I cupped the glass with both hands, forcing a smile up at Ides. I summoned every molecule of smoothness in my body—and frankly, there weren't many to summon—and took a sip. It burnt like fire. "What was Boston like?"

  "What you saw," he said, taking his own sip. He stared at me with those gunmetal eyes, and I had the thought they might have been part of a handsome face in his youth. Now they just hovered like strange gems above unshaven, sagging cheeks. "I'll tell you a secret, Doctor."

  When he stepped closer, I stepped back. "What is it?"

  "What you just saw"—his had gestured around the room, indicating the bare walls—"isn't from memory. That's how Boston is right now."

  I shook my head, my brow knitting. "What are you talking about?"

  "One of the infiltrators sent back visual data before disappearing. It's a living world, Darcy. Those things are living like we used to."

  "But they razed everything," I said. I raised the shotglass to my face, but it only hovered there. How was it possible cities still existed, still functioned?

  "Not everything. Some things," Ides said.

  Not Boston.

  "We're infiltrating a functioning city?" I breathed.

  "A functioning society. Why do you think the seduction module takes place on a street? In a hotel room?"

  He had stepped even closer to me as I stared at the scene surrounding me. One hand fell on my shoulder, and I flinched. I turned without thinking, searching out something else to distract me. And as I did so, I let a shriek.

  A pair of eyes stared back at me from the closet.

  "Oh," Ides said. He stepped past me, lifted a remote and clicked the projection off. At once, the scene melted away to something familiar: dull walls and a made-up double bed, fluorescent lighting, a sink and a vanity and a closed-off shower.

  And the open closet, where a sweetheart stood motionless in a bathrobe.

  * * *

  "What is she doing here?" I breathed.

  "She's been my assistant," Ides said shamelessly, stepping toward where she stood. "Not to worry—she's locked."

  Ides had particularly liked this early model: small, almost childlike in the facial features. This was supposed to be to her benefit; a model that could infiltrate without raising hackles, could kill in subtle, insidious ways.

  But of the few that had graduated from the facility, most had been taken advantage of in one way or another. Rendered unusable.

  In the end, we’d phased her out, shifted to the tougher, current model, one suited for physical altercations.

  Of course, Ides had insisted we preserve a few hundred of the older iterations—and he often took this early one out for research, or to act as his "assistant."

  In retrospect, I didn’t know how I’d allowed all of this to go on. Just the thought of what he could have—who was I kidding? Definitely had—done to the model made me feel like yakking.

  "What do you mean she's 'locked?'" I asked, stepping closer. The sweetheart's blue eyes didn't move from their spot on the far wall. In fact, not a single part of her moved. She looked like a doll—a killer doll.

  "One of the Scarlets trained her," Ides explained, dashing a hand in front of the sweetheart's face. "Extremely useful when I need to be alone.”

  "You mean the mind control training?" My eyes flashed on Ides. He'd used the Scarlet's conditioning word just because he wanted this sweetheart to remain idle. It was supposed to be reserved for emergencies and special missions. "Luther, you shouldn't have done that," I said.

  He lifted a finger. "Please, Darcy. I'm the one who pioneered the training, and I can assure you that this iteration is fine. Let's have another glass, and then you can tell me all about your pet infiltrator and how the formula is going."

  As Ides turned back to the cabinet, I scowled at his broad backside. Blaze was the furthest thing from my pet, especially given Luther had a woman standing in his closet.

  I glanced back at the sweetheart, almost expecting movement, but she remained as motionless as ever.

  When Ides filled my glass a second time, the clock on his wall read 10:45pm.

  Terrell would be waiting. I needed to get this over and done with.

  Ides took a quick sip. "All right, Darcy. Give me your report."

  I swallowed my nausea and stepped toward Ides, staring up at him from under my eyelashes. "First, a toast," I said, extending my glass toward his. "To getting the formula right."

  Ides's breath caught, and then his glass clinked mine. Silence fell between us as we stared at one another—if I had any attraction toward him, this would have been "a moment"—and I willed myself to smile.

  I took a sip of my drink as he took a sip of his, and my free hand came up like a foreign appendage. I watched as it rose, the fingers setting on Ides's forearm.

  His gray eyes took in my touch, returned to my face before I stepped left to set my glass on the end table as though I wanted both hands free. I slid the pill fr
om my pants' pocket with my left hand, and looked back at him, reaching out for his glass with my right.

  He allowed me to take it. All I needed to do was drop the pill in, and it would dissolve in ten seconds. Tasteless, odorless—he'd never know.

  But the moment I'd set Ides's glass down next to mine, I felt him at my back. His entire body pressed up against mine, his hands settling on my shoulders and roaming down my arms.

  A chill ran through me, but this one was very different than what I'd felt with Blaze.

  This was cold fear.

  He pressed himself harder against me, and my hands curled to fists as I was edged up against the table. "Please, sir," I said.

  "Darcy," he murmured, his breath on my ear, "you're far more attractive with your hair down."

  And one of his hands came to my bun, yanked the tie right out. My hair fell around my shoulders, and I gasped as he spun me around and urged me bodily to him.

  I'd lost my grip on the pill. I'd left it on the table next to the glasses.

  "Luther," I said, more forceful this time.

  "Don't pretend, Darcy," he said, backing toward his bed with both hands at my back. With our relative sizes, there was no resistance—I could only follow where he led me. "You knew what you were doing when you put your hand on me in the greenhouse dome. 'Oh sir, isn't there anything I can do?'"

  Just as fast, he turned me around so that my back was to the bed.

  "I meant more reportage," I said. I laughed a little, like this was all an absurd misunderstanding. "Doing a better job."

  Words were coming out of my mouth and I didn't even know who was speaking them. I only knew that I had gotten myself into a situation I couldn't get out of alone.

  I had screwed up.

  Ides backed me to the bed, my legs pressed against the side of it, and I knew from the look in those gray eyes that he wouldn't allow me to say no. He would only hear what he wanted.

  He leaned down, kissed me hard on the neck. His hands came up to my chest, pressing at my breasts with near painful savageness.

  And over his bent back, the floating white hair on his head, I saw her. The sweetheart.

  She walked out of the closet so lightly that I didn't even hear her bare feet on the cement; it was as if she walked on air.

  Her blue eyes met mine for a single flashbulb of a moment, and then she preceded to the end table where the glasses of Jack Daniel's still sat.

  Ides's hand had slipped under my shirt, his mouth progressing to collarbones, but my focus was fixed on the sweetheart. She stopped at the end table, and shifting her eyes to me, she lifted the pill and dropped it into the leftmost glass.

  Even that produced no sound over the wet noises of Ides's lips on my skin.

  I watched, agog, as the sweetheart returned to the closet, stepped up and resumed her original doll-like stance.

  And then I flew back into myself, into what was happening to my body. My hands lifted, pressed against his face to pull him away. He resisted, but he finally came up breathless, staring at me like a man who hadn't eaten in days.

  "I need the rest of that drink," I said, blinking fast at him. "I like to have something smooth in me."

  A hint of a smile flicked across his features as he allowed me to edge myself away from him. I ran a finger down his arm as I stepped over to the end table, retrieving the two glasses. The leftmost one was drugged. Leftmost. Leftmost.

  I turned, held that one out to him as I lifted my own to my lips.

  And like the buffoon he was, Ides accepted. Once, I'd overheard one of the Scarlets divulging the secrets of seduction to a fellow trainee during dinner. "A horny man will do anything you ask of him, as long as you promise the outcome he wants," she'd said.

  We both upturned our shot glasses, and I brought mine down with an audible exhale. Liquor had never burned so finely down my esophagus.

  Ides and I stared at one another, and I only had time to set my glass down and start unbuttoning the top three buttons of my shirt before he'd sat on the bed.

  Ten seconds later, as I finally came to where he sat, he fell onto his back and didn't sit back up again.

  It had worked. The drug’s effect was nearly instant.

  "Well," came a voice from behind me, "that was eventful."

  * * *

  The sweetheart stood close enough to me that I could see the gold flecks in her irises. "I thought you were locked," I breathed.

  A mischievous smile came to her perfect lips. "He wasn't very good at controlling me, but I let him think so. I expect the traditional mind control handlers are much better."

  Her eyes drifted over my face, and at once her hand came out to my forearm, stroked it with such lightness I gasped. "Hello, Dr. West," she said. "Do you remember me?"

  I swallowed, shook my head a little. "I'm sorry..."

  One eyebrow went up, and her blonde curls bobbed as she tilted her head. "Good—you're honest."

  As she looked at me, my eyes widened. I did remember her. "You were in Ides's office—"

  "—on Saturday, yes," she finished for me. "His plaything during a boring meeting with his best geneticist. Otherwise, you wouldn't remember me because you never woke me, Dr. West. You did, however, engineer me. I'm 54."

  I still didn't know whether she intended to kill me, and I stared at her as though by holding her gaze I could keep her from snapping my neck. "Iteration 54 of the sweetheart model?"

  She gave a curt, curl-bobbing nod. "Don't worry—I won't hurt you," she said, and then with heartbreaking innocence, she added: "You haven't done any harm to me. Not like him."

  "He's done things to you?"

  "Oh yes. I was woken only a week ago. The first two days he sent me through many of the basic training modules to make me more human, and the last three days he's kept me in that closet...except when he takes me out."

  My eyes flicked to the closet, and I shook my head, the nausea returning. "I'm so sorry."

  One small hand came to my shoulder. "You should be. You've been a part of this, you know."

  For some reason, I'd expected her to absolve me. To tell me I wasn't at fault, that I was forgiven. But instead she'd spoken the bare, hard truth. And if I didn't accept that truth now, I might never. "I know," I said.

  "So what changed?"

  "What do you mean?"

  She angled her face closer as though inspecting me. "You're leaving this place, aren't you?"

  "How do you know that?"

  "You've just drugged the head of the facility, and there are essential supplies in your backpack."

  What did I expect? The sweethearts had been our ready-out-of-the-box model. Even a partially trained sweetheart would pick up on subtleties like that. There was no point in lying to her.

  "Yes," I said, "I'm helping a male infiltrator escape."

  “8024,” she said.

  Of course, I thought. She witnessed my meeting with Ides. She knows about 8024.

  “We call him Blaze,” I said.

  In the silence that fell, a slow warmth came over her face. She seemed to be deliberating something, and then she gave a firm nod. "I'll help you," she said. "I'll do whatever you need to get one of us out of here. I just want to know what it's for."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Why that male? Why up there?"

  And just then, with her liquid blue eyes staring up at me wide and expectant, I saw Zara.

  My fingers folded tight, and I wanted to tell this girl everything. I wanted to give her anything she asked for. She had been brutalized by Ides, and despite that, she had saved me. She was going to help a human again.

  I was reminded that these clones were people first. And they really were incredible.

  "We think he's the key," I said.

  "The key to what?"

  "To keeping humans from going extinct," I said.

  "Your species may end?" the sweetheart asked.

  Your species. She thought of us differently than her. And we were different than her.r />
  "Yes," I said. "Very likely. That's why we've been down here. That's why this place exists."

  And then, as though she'd read my thoughts, her mouth opened and those words came out: "Why should you be saved? After everything."

  At once something shifted between us, this small infiltrator and me. I remembered, despite everything, she could kill me in an instant. She could end me with hardly any trouble at all.

  I stepped away from her, and she allowed me to do so. She and I stared at one another, and I said: "I've asked myself that question."

  She observed me like one observes a specimen, a new discovery. Not with any preconceived notions, but pure and intense interest. "And what was your conclusion?"

  "Why should we be saved? I don't know, 54. That was my conclusion: I don't know. Up there on the surface, we killed other species. Thousands of them. We killed our own species—billions. We pillaged the oceans and the ground. You have no idea."

  "So," she said, folding her thin arms against her body, Ides's bathrobe almost comical on her tiny frame.

  She didn't need to say anything else.

  "So," I said, "maybe we don't. But the male I'm breaking out of here tonight, he's one of you. And he deserves to survive. I have a sister whom I love—she deserves to survive. There is good and bad up there, 54, and to preserve the good, some of the bad will persist, too."

  "And you're good." I realized she was asking for confirmation.

  "I'm human," I said, spreading my hands. "I've done some bad—that's for damn sure. But right now, I promise you I'm trying to rectify that."

  "I need another promise," 54 said. "I'll do everything I can to help you, but I need something from you."

  "What?"

  "After you've gotten whatever it is you need from him"—she pointed to the unconscious Ides on the bed—“you help the others who are stuck down here. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but you have to promise me you’ll end what’s going on down here.”

  I swallowed. “I promise,” I said, and meant it.

  “Also, you give me one minute with Luther Ides. I won’t remove any body parts.”