by Mara, Alex
"What the hell—" Terrell began.
"It's his word," I murmured. "She used his word."
"What word?"
"They all have different words," I said, standing. "It's how the Scarlets control them."
When she'd said the word, the Scarlet had already been behind 54; she'd only had to set one of the electric prods to her neck to drop her like a sack. Just like that, two infiltrators leveled. One with a prod, and one with a single word.
Now the Scarlet surveyed the scene with something like humor. She dropped to a knee, set the prod at 54's side once more. To her left, Blaze had settled into an impassive slouch on his knees.
And 8013 had rolled onto his stomach, breathing hard and hoarse.
"Did you know there would be two?" the Scarlet asked. I remembered her, just like I remembered all the ones I'd brought to life: she was 7150, uncommonly demure to start. She'd come a long way from where she started.
8013 took a moment, rubbing life back into his neck. He climbed to his hands and knees, dripping blood from his stab wound onto the cement. When he stood, he shook his head. "I didn't expect a sweetheart."
"They're quick—not very durable, though," the Scarlet said, tucking the toe of her boot under 54's side to half-lift her. The girl let a breathy groan, and the Scarlet reactivated the prod, delivered another crackling shot of electricity to her shoulder. "Just takes a couple blows to keep them down."
54's shriek was muffled by her gritted teeth, her compressed lips. She'd been trained, after all, to endure pain.
When the Scarlet stepped to Blaze, she threaded her fingers into the forelock of his hair, yanked his head up so his neck came exposed. He accepted this without protest, without a sound.
"It appears 8024 has escaped his cryostasis capsule," she said, her eyes flicking up and toward us—resting for a moment on the spot where Terrell and I were, and then scanning the aisles.
She had seen me. She knew we were here.
"That's quite a thing,” she continued. “Impossible, really, without Luther Ides waking him. And to think, all that superhuman effort only to be undone by your own brain's wiring."
And instead of doing what she should have done—properly subduing and securing him—she nodded toward 8013. "Hyper-aggression?"
"Both of them," he said, retrieving his semiautomatic. Blood dripped from the spot in his chest where 54 had stabbed him, but he ignored it as he stepped toward Blaze, delivering a fist to his jaw that sent him straight over and to the ground.
The Scarlet stood by and watched, her mouth upturned.
Blaze didn't get back up.
No. Not like this.
I stepped out from where Terrell and I had been crouched.
"What are you doing?!" Terrell rasped, grasping for my hand to pull me back down.
"Saving him," I said. The Scarlet knew we were here anyway; she'd been taunting me. "7150," I said, deepening my voice to its authoritative pitch, "subdue that Gale."
7150 and 8013 lifted their heads slow and purposeful. Neither of them appeared surprised, and neither stood to attention. "Dr. West," the Scarlet said, "I presume you and Research Assistant Terrell have come to the cryostasis chamber to investigate 8024's escape?"
At this Terrell coughed, stepped out next to me. "You made them too damned perceptive, Darcy."
"I'm not taking questions right now, 7150," I said to the Scarlet. "I gave you an order to subdue that Gale."
"Your orders are invalidated by your current status, Dr. West," the Scarlet said, turning fully toward me. "Which is mutinous."
At this, 8013 approached me in a moment of surreal intensity. There was Blaze on the ground, and there was his exact likeness coming toward me.
And yet I could see their differences written in every aspect of 8013's movements, his expression. Where Blaze sent a thrill through me, 8013 made me want to curl into myself.
Pain. His face spoke of pain.
"When you put people's necks on the line," Blaze had said, "then you get attempted murders and torture and the most ruthless depths humanity is capable of."
I understood. We'd done this to him; I'd done this to 8013. To all of them, even if it wasn't my hand on the prod.
As he came close, I took a half-step back. "Don't touch me."
8013 came to my side, his body brushing mine as he stood alongside me, both of us staring back toward Blaze and the Scarlet. "I don't need to, Dr. West."
He was right: I was completely and totally helpless. I didn't even know his "word" because the Scarlets developed each one individually, and I hadn't bothered to survey the list of safe words on her latest report. It had always been more or less meaningless gibberish to me—irrelevant to my work.
"Now," the Scarlet said, "I'll show our creator what it means to play God."
My gaze flicked between her and 8013, and I understood: at some point they had made a pact, a deal of survival. It wasn't unprecedented; sometimes the hyper-aggressive ones brought the male infiltrators into their fold, and sometimes they lured a female. Only once or twice had it happened with a Scarlet.
And 8013 had always been exceptional.
"I don't play God," I whispered as the Scarlet approached Blaze and her hand went into his hair again. She pulled him upright. "I'm trying to save what's left of us."
"Save us? You're doing a piss-poor job, Doctor," 8013 said, his arm sweeping around the expanse of the room, toward the sleeves upon sleeves of frozen clones. "You kill us almost as fast as you bring us out."
"There are costs," I murmured, my eyes wide on Blaze and the Scarlet. She delivered her knee into the underside of his head, and he jerked back, fell hard on the floor. He didn't fight. He didn't even groan. It was as though he'd been replaced by wood and clay, gone completely inanimate.
"It's for the greater good," I said, losing my composure.
I felt like I was repeating someone else's script, the excuses a villain might use to explain their murdering. Maybe, in the end, we deserved this. I deserved this.
But Blaze didn't.
"Please stop," I said to 8013. "Make her stop."
"Me? I'm not in control of her, Doctor."
"7150!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Stop at once."
The Scarlet's foot stopped a few inches from Blaze's ribs, and she lowered it slow and purposeful to the ground. Her green eyes flashed on me. "8024," she said, "stand."
And he did, rising from the ground as though he hadn't suffered freezing and a beating.
The Scarlet stood next to Blaze, turning him toward 8013 and me. She pointed at my chest. "The doctor and the researcher have turned mutinous. Please execute code 85."
She'd said please. As though he had a choice. Blaze processed her command, and in a fluid motion he started toward me.
Code 85 wasn't one I'd heard of, but I understood immediately. And so did Terrell. "Okay, okay," he said, "that's a bit excessive."
I started backward, but 8013's hand came out like an iron vice around my wrist, so powerful I gasped. Not in pain—no, with the pure potency of that grip. It was terrifying. "8013," I said, "this isn't how the facility works. There's an arbitration process. Humans aren't summarily executed."
But when 8013 didn't respond, and the Scarlet's eyebrows only lifted, I understood how wrong I was.
I'd written off the staff "disappearances" through the past five years to being shipped above ground, back to Beacon. But that didn't make any sense, because in coming down here, we'd more or less forfeited any rights we had as citizens, as autonomous beings.
We were tools of the cause. Working "to save humanity," but tools nonetheless. We knew so many secrets, it would be more dangerous to send us out of this facility than to keep us here.
And as valuable as I might be, the scales didn't tip in my favor when it came to helping a clone escape and taking all my secrets with me.
They could find another doctor. They could train more geneticists. But they couldn’t allow a dangerous liability like me to leave here
alive.
Code 85 had been executed many, many times before.
But I wouldn't let Blaze do this. He'd blame himself—hate himself until he was killed, too.
And I also didn't want to die. Not here. Not like this.
"8024, stop," I said.
He didn't stop, and the Scarlet flanked him, her focus on me.
He came to within a yard of me, staring with those green eyes as though he could see what lay behind me, as though I had become transparent.
"Blaze, please. It's Darcy," I said, my eyes stinging. "Don't let them make you do this. It's just conditioning. You're stronger than this word."
But all the strength had gone out of my own voice, and tears started down my cheeks. He didn't stop that inexorable walk toward me, and he was nearly within arms’ reach.
So I did the only thing left to me to do.
Blaze's docility conditioning had been ingrained so powerfully in him, he would let himself be killed without raising a finger. The mind was an incredible thing, which meant nothing I could say would undo his possession.
I reached inside my jacket with the hand 8013 hadn’t restrained, yanked my father's small pistol from my belt.
I knew how to use guns—every boy and girl in Beacon had been trained to fire one, back when we still had enough bullets to use guns as our primary weapons.
Remove the safety. Slot your finger into the trigger guard. Point the muzzle in the direction you want it to go, and shoot.
So I did. I swung the pistol up before 8013 could react and I fired.
* * *
12:15 a.m.
Blaze
In body, out of body. I couldn't have defined the difference between the two.
But I was still present. I hovered somewhere in the darkness, perched, watched with a strange lethargy as muscle and meat flexed and a body stood, walked with purpose and intent.
That was my body. But I wasn't precisely a part of it.
Not until the shot rang out. It tore through the gelatin of my world, through the soft dispassion.
Down she went. Down went my girl, that white jacket blossoming with new red at the shoulder. Bright red. Impossibly vital.
Darcy West had shot herself.
All at once the pain came into me, or I came into it. My eyes blinked, shifted, and I felt my body like a bruised slab of meat, epicenters of pain echoing from my head and arms and chest and legs.
Everywhere. Everywhere hurt. But I didn't give one fuck.
I shifted in a single motion, and the Scarlet's eyes only half-widened before my arm took her in the breast, an unstoppable lever.
She found the floor just as unforgiving, all breath going out of her as she slammed down. Her hands had just begun their rise toward her throat—air, air, she wanted air—when I pivoted toward 8013.
He'd only just begun to understand what Darcy had done—what all of this meant—and I could see the muscles in him contracting in two different directions. Toward her, and back toward me, the true threat.
But he wouldn't be fast enough. I pitched toward him, crossed the distance between us faster than the scientist could cry, "Shit!" and by the time our two bodies met, my claws had emerged again.
This time I knew what to do with them.
All ten talons sank into the soft muscle connecting his shoulders to his chest, and his mouth—my mouth—opened to register this assault as the two of us sailed toward the floor.
We fell as one, four hundred and fifty pounds hitting the ground together. He grunted with the impact, and then with the sensation of my claws digging deep into him.
"You did this," I said.
Our eyes met for a single moment, and he knew exactly what I meant. Darcy had shot herself because she'd had no other choice. And she'd had no other choice because of him.
His upper lip rose into the barest hint of a snarl and I jerked back, yanked the two of us up together. "Terrell," I said, my voice level, "subdue the Scarlet."
"Shit—right. Shit," Terrell said, dashing over to where the Scarlet still writhed on the ground. I glimpsed him picking up her prod as I dug myself farther into 8013's tender insides.
With that kind of fresh pain, he couldn't fight back. But he wouldn't be in pain much longer.
I let a groan as I pressed the two of us back the way we'd come, every aching ounce of me working to press us toward the open cryostasis capsule.
He backstepped with me, his hands coming up to draw me off, but I tweaked a claw and he was breathless with new pain.
As I drove him into the capsule, I realized that guttural scream was mine. I retracted my claws, leaving ten perfect holes in his Gale's uniform, and my scream faded through the cryostasis room as I yanked the tanto from his belt.
Right now, I'd get a lot more use out of it than he would.
I pressed the capsule lid shut with my elbow. It sealed with a hiss. And inside, 8013 beat against the metal. But I knew from experience how resistant it was.
I slid the tanto into my boot and stepped to the console, which was still set to the quick-freeze settings Darcy had used on me. I hesitated, my eyes flicking back to 8013.
Agony. I saw tortured hate in that face. He mouthed something, his lips moving with more precision than I needed to read what he was saying.
I didn't hesitate. I depressed the activation key, and turned away as the hissing began. He might still have more to say, but I didn't have the time—or the desire—to read his lips.
Darcy West needed me.
Nineteen
Friday, May 8, 2053
12:21 a.m.
Blaze
I couldn't stop seeing her fall. She dropped like she'd been hooked in the shoulder, her body twining around before she hit the ground with a spray of red. Red like paint.
We'd been taught about that old practice, defunct in this age. Great painters spattered canvases to make art, but in Ides, we just painted the floor with our blood.
But not hers. I'd rather my own arm shot, my own heart—this was too painful.
I knelt by Darcy, scooping her head into my hand. She'd dropped the gun like it scalded, and it had slid across the floor to where it now lay, penitently still.
I brushed her hair from her face. Her blood seeped under her like someone had unstoppered a cork, but she was awake. She was awake even as I felt her life warm and wet on my fingers.
Awake I could work with. Awake wasn't dead.
"Holy balls," Terrell said after he delivered a suppressing jolt of electricity to the Scarlet. Her groan resounded off the walls, and I didn't mind. "This is nuts. Blaze, tell me Darcy will be okay."
"I'll be okay," Darcy murmured, and then seemed to regret it; her face shifted to a rictus of pain.
"She'll be okay," I said, more to her than him. I lowered my lips to hers, feathered my mouth across her lips. "Thank you," I whispered.
"You must be the craziest woman alive," Terrell said, crossing back to the two of us with the prod in hand. 54 approached with him, her injured hand cradled against her chest. She knelt, retrieved the gun.
And also the cleverest, I thought. If she hadn't shot herself, nothing would have broken me out of my Scarlet's control. I would have killed Darcy with my hands.
"Tell me what to do," I said.
Her breathing came hitched, more from fear than any mortal wound, I sensed. "It went through the pectoralis minor," she whispered.
In a flash, the visual from human anatomy training appeared in my mind. Pectoralis minor; if she'd aimed correctly, she'd only shot through muscle. But that didn't mean she wouldn't bleed, wouldn't weaken quickly. "My jacket,” she said. “Tourniquet the wound."
I nodded, ripping the opposite sleeve of her jacket away. She cried out with the movement, and once more as I lifted her enough to slide the cloth under her shoulder and tie it tight.
"I think I delivered enough volts to put down an elephant," Terrell said, appearing on my other side. He dropped the prod like it had stung him, kicked it away.
> But not a Scarlet. I glanced over my shoulder to where my Scarlet lay still, but that might be an act. "Restrain her."
"Oh come on, she's not getting back up—"
"Just do it, Terrell," Darcy growled. It made me wince to hear her speak; every word announced her pain.
"Fine," he said, and he disappeared from my periphery once more.
"Do we have painkillers?" I asked.
"Forget those," 54 said, appearing at my side. Her airy voice had gone deep, and sweat had broken out on her forehead; she was feeling the acute pain of those severed fingers, and she had wrapped her hand in cloth, cradled it now in her opposite arm. "We have to go."
First, I had to do something.
"Wait here," I whispered to Darcy, kissing her forehead. I stood, walked past Terrell to the doorway where the unconscious Gale lay. I pulled him out of the doorway and at the console next to it, I input the code I'd seen 7950 enter before I'd been frozen: 2-8-6-4.
It closed and sealed with a definitive hiss. Then I smashed the console with my fist.
I knelt by the unconscious Gale, began stripping him.
"What are you doing?" Terrell asked from behind me.
"Making myself less noticeable," I said. I pulled off his shirt and pants, pulled them over my own arms and legs. Even the boots fit perfectly, as I'd expected.
I did it as fast as I could, but it still wasn't fast enough. When I came back to Darcy, she looked pale. The other two knelt by her, Terrell tightening the tourniquet. "Show us the way," I said to him.
"Darcy can't possibly run—much less walk—like that," Terrell said.
"But I can," I said. Darcy let another agonized cry as I lifted her into my arms, rose to my full height. "Show us."
Terrell looked up at me wide-eyed, like I'd managed an inhuman feat. "Okay, yeah. That should do."
I was realizing that non-engineered humans had a very different concept of strength. One that involved a great deal of sitting, and maybe a little walking, but certainly not lifting other human beings.
Terrell rose and led us once more into the sea of clones and toward whatever came next.