Blaze

by Mara, Alex

  "I need his fingerprint," I said, lifting my left thumb, where Terrell had attached the second skin. I just needed to flip it over and press it to Ides's thumb to copy his print, and we would have access to every room in the facility. "Then you can have your minute."

  The sweetheart nodded at me. "Agreed." She raised two fingers, pinched the lapel of Ides's bathrobe. "And one last thing: I want real clothes."

  Seventeen

  Thursday, May 7, 2053

  11:49pm

  Blaze

  It began with pain.

  Pain in my fingers, in my toes. It burned right through my hands, through my feet, on up my legs and my arms until it settled at a join right at the center of me and my heart offered up one tremendous thump and the world came to be.

  Again. The world came to be again.

  I gasped impossibly cold air, a different, stark pain straight into my lungs. I heard my breathing—a hoarse, ragged line—in and out, in and out, but it was never enough air.

  Where was the world? Where was here? Who was I, and the burning, the burning. It seared those questions right out of me, made me a primal creature of sensation. Touch, taste—burning, burning.

  "Blaze," a voice said, "it's me."

  I knew that voice. Sweet, soft. The first voice I'd ever heard.

  My eyelids pressed to open, but they wouldn't. They were stuck, and the world remained a black void. None of me could move to touch my face; my hands were useless, my muscles refusing to contract.

  "Don't open your eyes yet," the voice said. "You have to acclimate."

  And my heart offered another overlarge thump. The burning subsided beneath the thought: Darcy West had brought me to life again. She'd come back for me.

  "Aren't you supposed to say 'don't be afraid'?" I said, but my vocal cords didn't catch. The words came out vague and airy.

  I heard something between a laugh and a cry. "I don't have to tell you that," she said. One impossibly warm hand touched my forehead. I wanted that hand never to leave my skin. But then something better happened: even warmer lips touched mine. "I know you aren't afraid."

  "Get him up, Darcy," came a second voice. Deeper, afraid. "We've got three minutes."

  "I can't get him up in three minutes," she said. "He's just been deep-frozen, for God's sake. It's a miracle he's already talking."

  "I wouldn't call that talking."

  "He's still under the effects of the cryoprotectant. He's not going to be able to walk—"

  "I can help with that," came a third voice. Young, girlish.

  "How can you possibly?" said the second voice.

  "We may be a small model, Michael Terrell, but we're no less capable than the others. Isn't that right, Dr. West?"

  And before Dr. West could respond, I felt warm—so warm!—small hands grasping my wrists, sending a white hot surge of pins and needles all through my arms. A narrow body slid next to mine as she pulled my arm around her shoulder. "Come on, Blaze," the girlish voice said. "I've got you."

  She wanted me to move under my own power. I tried to protest, but that slurred swirl of air was all that came out of my mouth, and so I had no choice.

  I willed my left leg to move. At first it responded not at all, but after a time the quadricep offered a twitch. And another in the calf. And all at once my toes were in motion and I stepped forward.

  That first step was straight into lava.

  "Careful, 54!" Darcy said. Her voice approached as she came to my other side, lifting my right arm to hang around her shoulder. The pins and needles stabbed wherever she touched, except they felt more like knives and blades. "His blood still hasn't been circulating long enough. Walking is agony for him right now."

  The doctor knows, I thought, swaying between the two small frames now at left and right of me. They helped me to take a step on my left foot, and I groaned.

  "Stop with the manly grunts." Unfamiliar, male-scented hands covered my mouth. "Shit, the Gales probably heard that."

  "If any come, I'll deal with them," the one called 54 said.

  "Try another step, Blaze," Darcy said. "We're getting out of here, okay? We need to hurry."

  I gritted my teeth, lifted my right foot. When it came down on the cold floor, more lava. But I could hear the urgency in Darcy's voice, and lava or no, I had to move.

  So I did. I walked like I'd just acquired legs, like someone had just stuck them to my legless torso and asked me to walk.

  "You're doing good," Darcy said.

  One of my eyes was coming unstuck, and through the crack offered by my eyelid I spotted three pairs of feet and the sullen gray floor of the cryostasis room.

  And here I was hoping I'd woken in a forest, or a meadow.

  "I'm surprised my feet haven't melted away," I whispered.

  "Your vocal cords are coming back to life. That's good," Darcy said. "And don't worry—your feet are intact."

  I looked down at her blonde head and one corner of my mouth rose. Her face turned up toward me, and through my half-open eyelid I spotted the prettiest face I'd ever seen.

  She looked sallow with fear.

  "Gale," Terrell said, his voice gone deeper and authoritative, "return to your post."

  "Sir," came a new voice. Not one I recognized. "This is my post. Have you just removed 8024 from cryostasis?"

  "We had Ides's authorization," Darcy said. Even with my body barely functioning, I felt the tremor run through her. None of what had happened since Darcy had opened the capsule suggested an easy escape.

  But then, nothing had come easy in this place. Except my feelings for her.

  I lifted my face, spotted one of the Gales standing in the doorway of the cryostasis room. He was clad in the security uniform, a semiautomatic lifted and pointing directly at my chest. I hadn't met this particular iteration.

  I raised my left hand, the arm of which was still slung around 54's shoulder. "Not to worry—"

  But before I could finish, 54 slipped from under me and moved toward him. She moved fast.

  * * *

  I had never seen her model before, much less how they fought. Small, lithe, quick as a jackrabbit. She launched herself from a standstill, pouring feet over head through the air so her fingers barely touched the ground before the soles of her boots made contact with his waiting, unaware jaw.

  The Gale's head clanged against the opposite side of the doorway with a thud so sickening Darcy flinched under my arm, and then he dropped, concussed and unconscious.

  But not before his finger pressed the trigger, and a volley of shots rang straight into the floor right at our feet.

  Terrell shrieked, dancing back with his hands at his cheeks. A second later, as the shots' echo drained away, he turned to 54. "Good job. Now we have to run the other direction."

  And before Darcy or I could respond, 54 had returned to my side and grabbed my arm over her shoulder. The three of us followed Terrell into the sea of frozen clones, walk-jogging as fast as my legs would allow.

  My left eye had come partly unstuck—maybe the heat offered by the women beside me, maybe my own adrenaline—and as we swept into the aisle of bodies, I saw them all.

  Some fetal. Some splayed like starfish. Some hanging suspended as if they'd been noosed. How had they chosen those positions? Had they moved after the freezing into the familiar, unconscious shape they'd taken in their artificial wombs?

  I registered a chill across my skin as we moved farther into the refrigerator, though it seemed colder than even what my body told me—probably a psychological effect of being surrounded by deep-frozen people.

  "Tell me there's a way out back here, Mike," Darcy said, and I heard the falter in her voice.

  "There's a way out back here," Terrell said.

  "But?" Darcy said.

  "It's through the cryo-processing room and the aviary."

  She didn't respond to that, but I felt her breath catch under my hand. We kept moving, and I could only see the tip of her nose from my angle. She remained conspicuo
usly silent, which told me these weren't places we wanted to be.

  But it was our only choice. Behind us, the door slid half open, caught on the Gale's unconscious body. And then I heard a low voice, one probably only 54 and I could make out with our acute hearing.

  I knew that voice.

  "No facility alert yet," he said. "I can subdue this."

  8013. He was here.

  And I realized with a tightening of my jaw he'd always been here, waiting for me, as though the trajectory of my life had been pre-designed to sieve through this testing point. It could have been cryostasis, or the obstacle course, or in the sleeping room or the mess.

  It could have been anywhere, but we still would have arrived here.

  I stopped. "Wait."

  Darcy nearly tripped before she looked up at me. "What?"

  "Whatever you two have to say to each other, I assure you it can wait," Terrell said. "Right now we need to be doing a lot more walkie-walkie and a lot less talkie-talkie."

  "It's 8013," I said. I knew he could hear my voice because I had heard his, and I knew we had about sixty seconds before he would be on us.

  "Oh no, don't tell me this is one of those clone-on-clone vendettas," Terrell said. "Listen, Blaze, you aren't too familiar with books and old films. That's understandable, especially since films aren't really a thing anymore. So I'll tell you now: if you turn around to have your standoff with your nemesis, things will go catastrophically worse than if we just keep moving."

  The three of us—54, Darcy, and me—stared at Terrell for a beat.

  "He's here for me," I said.

  Terrell approached me, palms waving in front of his chest. "No no, that's what I'm talking about." He reached up, patted my face with his hand. "Listen, you terrific wall of muscle, I know you think you have to turn around in your terribly weakened state and fight him alone so that you can prove your very obvious worth and win the girl. But you don't. There's a much better option."

  "Which is?" 54 said.

  "We run. We just run as fast as we—"

  "Blaze is right," Darcy said to Terrell. She looked up at me. "8013 is here for you, and he’ll chase you to the ends of the earth just to settle his score with you. This had to end now if we’re going to escape.”

  "Oh, not you too, West." Terrell threw up his hands. "54, you and me and Darcy are waiting this out next to Mr. Happy Dreamer here." He pointed at one of the frozen male infiltrators curled with his knees nearly to his chest, his hands pillowing his head.

  54 shook her head. "No." She had turned, was staring up at one of the sleeves holding an iteration of her model. Her frozen doppelgänger slept with her head turned aside, blonde curls dashed partly over the passive face. 54's hand reached out, the first two fingers barely touching the sleeve where the girl's inanimate leg hung. "I said I'd do what it took to get Blaze out of here."

  She turned the way we'd come, slipping something small and black from the belt at her waist. "And I'm an infiltrator, too."

  I squeezed Darcy's shoulder, turned her fully toward me. "I have to deal with him. There's no other way."

  The lines between her eyebrows appeared so suddenly and fully that I almost reached out to smudge them away before she took my face between her hands.

  She rose to her toes and kissed me hard, desperately, more emotion than lips. "We need you. Don't die."

  "Not before I get you safely out of here," I whispered. And I urged her toward Terrell, who took her hand and slipped the two of them out of sight in amongst the sleeves of frozen infiltrators.

  My limbs still burned as I turned toward 8013. But this time the burning compelled me, infused me, brought my fingers to fists and jutting knuckles.

  Right now I had a single, encompassing vocation: protect her. Keep her safe. Nothing else mattered.

  54 and I met eyes, and the two of us started toward 8013.

  * * *

  8013 stood just past the doorway with his semiautomatic casually slung, the muzzle pointed at the ground. He had stepped expertly around the fallen Gale, his eyes flicking between me and 54.

  "8024 and..."—he paused —"a sweetheart. I thought your model had been shelved.”

  "They bring us out when the current model gets out of line," she said, evaluating 8013 from his boots on up to his shaved head.

  "I heard they brought you out when Luther Ides was feeling the urge for something passive and fragile," 8013 said, not missing a beat. "I've also heard you do some cute stuff when you're not trying to fight."

  "Tell me your number," 54 said.

  One eyebrow went up, a quirk of the mouth. "8013." He was indulging her.

  "Hello, 8013," 54 said, and I caught the faintest metallic click as she stepped toward him. "I'm iteration 54."

  "I'm not here for you." 8013's hand edged toward the strap of his semiautomatic. Instead of gripping it, he pushed it further aside. It was a taunt: he didn't consider her or I threatening enough to even bother with his gun. "But if you move, sweetheart, I will end you."

  54 must have recognized the taunt, because she let a sharp, amused exhale. She didn't stop, and I started forward as well. "Seeing as you're so new to the world, 8013," she said. "I'd like to welcome you with a pinch of advice."

  She hadn't taken two steps before 8013 poured toward her so fast the air visibly displaced. He had gotten faster since I'd last seen him. Maybe it was his Gale status, or some new bit of engineering, but 8013 had never moved that fast in training.

  Which meant I wouldn't make it to him before his two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle crashed right into her.

  I pushing my protesting feet into a hard run. I had maybe a quarter-second's time to pile in from the right and get him in a blood choke before he overwhelmed 54.

  In my periphery, 54's agile frame angled forward as she darted forward and left herself, the black cylinder flashing from behind her back as it slotted to a baton.

  She had a weapon I'd seen on the training racks, but never witnessed in use. It hadn't ever seemed as useful as the blades or the guns.

  8013 had seen it, too. I heard the clean sweep of his tanto as it slid from the sheath at his waist.

  In a baton-tanto fight, I knew who would win. Even a two-foot length of cylindrical metal wasn't effective against a knife's edge. Not with 8013 holding at the other end of it.

  I swept in with what strength I had, my left arm rising to enfold his neck in the crook of it. He ducked down, the edge of his blade swinging at my shin. It made a shallow slice, and slowed me just enough that I felt stubble on his face as he slipped beneath my arm.

  I was slower than normal. Painfully so.

  He pushed through the roll with the tanto arcing toward 54, and her baton came around just in time to catch the blade before it tore into her shoulder. "They don't call us sweethearts because we're easy," she said.

  The two pieces of metal met with a clang, and just as fast, 54 slipped the baton up along the blade, curving the end of it back toward 8013.

  She popped her free hand up under the baton's end and ticked it toward him, the tanto's deadly end pressing into the meat of his arm and emerging tipped in red.

  8013's full-throated response wasn't pain—it was anger. His left elbow came up, clocked her cheekbone so hard I heard the clack of her teeth slamming together. Her head jerked and her small frame followed, and 8013 went bodily after her.

  The tanto swept through the air as he fell on her, and it came down on the splayed fingers of her left hand. Those fingers were already slender and small, and the blade sliced through her pinkie and third finger with a single stroke.

  54's eyes went wide through the veil of hair over her face, and the scream that came out of her funneled up right from the bottom of her lungs.

  8013 had no mercy; he'd already raised the tanto to swipe across the full of her throat. He'd kill her in an instant. But he didn't get that instant.

  I lunged, my bent arm finding its mark right around his throat. I compressed, squeezing him hard
even as the tanto swept up and toward my forearm. Even as it sank between the tendons.

  That burned, too. But I held hard.

  He pulled back for a second stab, but 54's baton came down on his fingers with such force I was surprised the knuckles didn't invert. As it was, he lost his grip on the tanto.

  Through it all, I squeezed, pulling him back toward me so our bodies were flush, my chest to his back. I didn't plan to stop squeezing.

  In my periphery, I caught the flash of a black boot stepping through the doorway. Heeled and deadly. My mouth opened to direct 54, but I didn't get the first word out.

  My Scarlet did.

  "Goodwill."

  I finally understood: she’d been conditioning me the whole time. Every day she’d used that word as part of her commands, slowly training me for this moment.

  And it had worked.

  My body stopped obeying me. Just like that, my arm fell away from 8013's throat as though I had been frozen all over again.

  Eighteen

  Friday, May 8, 2053

  12:08 a.m.

  Darcy

  The fight didn't last much more than forty-five seconds. It ended with a single word.

  Terrell and I watched from deep in the maze of frozen clones as the three of them fought: Blaze, 54, and 8013. They'd moved so fast their bodies had shifted to watercolor—even Blaze's, weakened as he was by the freezing.

  I knew how they could move—I'd engineered them. But seeing them in training and then seeing them really, truly fighting for their lives were different things entirely.

  Here, they didn't hold back, didn't pace themselves, didn't hesitate. When 8013's boot made contact with Blaze's bare shin, I'd felt the pain of it like a chord through my body.

  Real fighting was an awful, primal thing.

  The whole time, my hands clenched so hard they hurt. It was only when Blaze had gotten 8013 in a chokehold I'd started to breathe, to unclench, but then—

  The Scarlet said something so quietly it might have been a post-coital whisper, and I recognized immediately what she'd done.