The female voice, still as soft and melodious was back, "The time is now 4:47 pm, February 16th, 2084."
I stood there, confused. More than a day of my life, gone.
"Put some clothes on, eh?" he said and tossed me the bundle.
I unfolded the bundle and found a towel and one of the paper jumpsuits that Genetek gave out to all new clones. I wiped the remaining clone slime off of my body and out of my hair, then tugged on the jumpsuit quickly, careful not to rip it in my haste. When I finished, I looked up at Zenigra.
"I ain't had time to get your backpack when I got you out of there, sorry."
"Forget the backpack, how did you get me out? Lucas was going to give me to Lansing," I asked. The question was simple enough but it asked volumes.
Zenigra motioned for me to sit down next to him, "Go on and sit. We've got the room for another twenty minutes and it's a long story."
I sat down, the paper clothing crinkling against the leather of the couch.
"Lucas had me off doing an errand when you were, well, when you got killed. When I got back, he had to go deal with Jack and told me to watch the body. I couldn'a believe that he had done what he did to you."
"What errand?" I interrupted.
"Getting rid o' the body of that Piner fella. Suppose you already guessed that he got creased?"
I nodded.
"Well, couldn't have him laying around collecting maggots, so he sent me off to bury it in the woods. When I got back, I had the job of watching the body until he could get the chip out and Lansing showed up to get ya. I knew ye ain't had a clone and I couldn't just let you die, not like that, not because of me."
I frowned at Zenigra, "It wasn't your fault that I died, mano."
"Yeh, it was. I got you into the plantation. I told you Lucas was a good guy. I got you to get that chip thing in your arm, that's all he cared about. Bastard. Lucas let slip one night that he wasn't going to let you live, not after he got the chip out of you. That's why I started teaching you how to fight, and I tried warning you not to trust me, in case he asked me to do it. "
"I don't think you would have."
He shrugged his massive shoulders, "Shouldn'a trust anyone but yourself."
I nodded.
"Still, you saved me, how?"
"He didn't tell me until after you were dead that Lansing was going to take your body. I couldn't just sit there and do nothing while you rotted. Lansing, why the hell is he after you? Doesn't matter. I couldn't let him take you. So I slung you over my shoulder and ran out into the woods. Made it to the highway and flagged down a truck. Told 'em you was my kid and that you'd gotten attacked and we needed to get to Genetek. He was skeptical at first, but I said your Mom was Hispanic and he seemed to believe it and drove us right here. I called my brother and he lent me the money to clone you."
"I don't know how to thank you. How much was it?"
Zenigra laughed, "Cloning from a corpse ain't no small trick, they charge premium prices for it. 30,000 bucks."
My jaw dropped and I couldn't manage to bring it back up for a long time. I tried to speak but couldn't find the words.
Zenigra just laughed again, "It ain't no thang. I promised him I would work it off when I got to Boston."
The weight of the debt Zenigra had taken on for me hit me like a bundle of wet blankets. My mind was still reeling from the download into my new body, simple thoughts were taking a lot of effort to form and paying attention was only becoming marginally easier with the release of the Genetek stimulant into my bloodstream.
So this was cloning. I didn't like it. I felt like a guest in what for all intents and purposes was my own skin. Anxiety seemed to be bubbling just beneath the clone fog. I could feel my heart rate amping up a bit higher with each passing minute. This would not be the place to have a panic attack.
I locked down thoughts about what being a clone meant, and if I was really me, as best I could and lifted my eyes to meet Zenigras.
"I wanna go with you to Boston. I wanna help you work off the debt to your brother."
Zenigra shook his head, "I'm going to get you to Boston, away from Skywatch, but you don't want to get involved with my bro. That life ain't for you, Sev. Let me take care of the debt."
Doubt and the clone fog surrounding my mind left me wondering if Zenigra was getting tired of being my friend. I shook it off and stood up.
"You didn't have to do what you did. Damn man, I was dead. You could have just walked away, but you didn't. I can't repay that kind of debt, but I'm going to try. I grew up in Miami, around gangs. I'm not afraid. And Lucas, he was going to pay you for your time working for him. I messed that up too."
Zenigra beamed down at me. It was then that I realized at least half of him had been hoping I'd stick with him. He would never have pressed me into helping him pay off the debt. Hell, the debt probably hadn't even come into play with his wanting me to stick around. Whatever our differences in age or history, the friendship that had grown between us over the past four and a half months wasn't something either of us wanted to see end.
"Lucas wasn't ever going to pay me, Sev. I see that now. He was going to kill me. I'll bet you anything."
I thought about it for a while. Would Lucas really have killed Zenigra? Could he?
"Is Lansing going to be coming after us?" I asked.
"Maybe. Lucas said it could be a few days at least before Lansing came round to get the body. He was gonna get the chip out and then have Doc Tedeschi put you on ice."
"So we've got some time before Lansing is on us."
"Yeah, but not much," Zenigra said, "So we better get going."
Chapter 19
We left the Genetek recombination building's impeccably clean white-walled rooms behind us and stepped out onto the street at the edge of dusk. A group of Christian fundamentalist protesters was shouting obscenities and hefting banners as we walked by. I took in the banners curiously and their content didn't surprise me. It was the same old line. Clones are demons. Genetek is the Devil's corporation. Clones have no souls. God hates clones.
The protesters kept shouting and I wondered what had them all worked up. Certainly, they didn't stand out here shouting like this all day long. Then, I realized I was the one that had gotten them all so riled up. Me, with my paper clothes, fairly stinking of vat juice.
Zenigra seemed to sense me tense as the realization hit and he put one of his massive hands on my shoulder to keep me moving forward.
I turned my head back toward the crowd as we walked away, caught the eye of a snarling faced woman, and smiled.
I turned away as a fresh roar of indignation rolled off the crowd.
"Where the hell are we anyway?" I asked.
"Greensboro."
"Are we still in North Carolina?"
"Yeah, but we need to get out of here quick. Lucas will be looking for us. Wanting his chip back, I think."
"It's mid-February, let's just start plantation hopping our way up to Boston."
Zenigra shook his head, "Nah. Lucas has too many eyes at the plantations. He'd know we were there before they finished processing us."
"He's going to be gunning hard for us, ain't he?" I asked.
"All I know is that whatever is on that chip, it's real important to him. Important enough to kill Piner and to perm you."
I shuddered at the thought of a perma-death. I'd come so close. If Zenigra hadn't been there, or if he'd just not cared, I would really be dead.
"Don't worry about it, I still got some money left over from what my brother sent down. Enough to get you a fresh set of clothes and get both of us on a bus to Boston."
"Will Lucas know to look for us in Boston?"
"Probably. I might have mentioned that's where I was heading come spring."
"Damn."
"It'll be aight. Once we hook up with the Snakes, he won't be able to get to you."
"But he's never going to stop looking, not if what’s on the chip is really that important to him."
"I been do
ing some thinking about that. Maybe we just take you to a ripper doc, have 'em take the chip out, then we send it to 'em. Maybe then he leaves you alone."
"What about you though? He's going to want blood after you betrayed him and ran off with my body."
My body. Talking about my corpse was doing nothing to quell the pit of anxiety that was still bubbling and threatening to erupt from my stomach.
"I can take care of myself," Zenigra stated and I didn't doubt the resolve in his words.
"Maybe we can use the chip as some kinda bargaining tool. If he wants it back, we can make him pay."
Zenigra chuckled, "You really think that would end well?"
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself. Dark had finally settled around us as we walked and the paper clothing was doing little to keep me warm in the rapidly cooling air.
"No, it prolly wouldn't. Still, I don't know what the hell we can do. If Lucas really is connected, we can't run forever."
"When we get to Boston, we'll talk with my bro. He's smart, he'll come up with something."
I nodded, "How long will the bus ride take?"
"Depends, don't have all that much money so we're going to have to get whatever's cheapest. That means they'll prolly be a lot of stops. Eighteen hours maybe, if we can catch one heading out soon, but we might have to wait awhile."
I nodded again, "I think that's good. I need some time to wrap my head around everything that's happened."
Zenigra nodded knowingly, "First time's the hardest, kid."
*
Five hours later, I was death wrapped in synth-leather. Zenigra had insisted.
"You gotta look the part, first impressions are everything with these guys."
We were sitting in the back of a rickety old bus, its ethicol engine straining as it powered down Interstate 95 at almost twice the speed limit.
Everything I wore had the trademark Du-Wear black skull embroidered on it in black thread. Boots, pants, shirt, and duster. Zenigra was similarly attired though his duster seemed an ill fit. Where mine hung down to my ankles, his sat at mid-calf. The bus tickets had been cheaper than Zenigra had thought, so we burned the three hours we had to wait browsing the terminal’s shops and making purchases for the journey.
The synth-hide duster I wore had a variety of pockets and straps, most of which were on the inside. They were all packed with a variety of non-perishable food for the trip and for the time we spent in Boston before we met up with the Snakes. Zenigra's pockets were similarly stuffed, with the addition of a metal baseball bat slung below his left shoulder from one of the synth-leather straps.
"In case we run into another gang before we hook up with the Snakes," he had said.
"Is that likely?"
"More than not," he had replied, and left it at that.
I still had a hard time imagining the kind of damage Zenigra might be able to inflict with just his bare hands, let alone armed with a metal bat.
Zenigra had dozed off almost before the bus had pulled out of the terminal. He hadn't slept since the day before, so I said I'd take first watch. We had agreed that one of us should be awake at all times. Just in case. I had orders to wake him up if we stopped for any reason.
The stimulants they had pumped into me during the cloning process had started to wear off about the same time Zenigra had fallen asleep and now, an hour later, my body was starting to feel tired.
While my body seemed to be quickly wearing itself out as it burned off the last of the stimulants, my mind seemed to be finally waking up. I had spent most of the last hour looking out the window, watching the plantations roll by. Occasionally I caught sight of a lone Switchgrass ace walking steadily down the highway as we zoomed past. It was too early in the season for there to be much foot traffic on the well-worn paths at the edge of the highway’s pavement.
I felt a wave of longing creep over me each time we passed one. That glimpse of a connection, of family. I hadn't realized until now the affinity that had grown in me for the migrant workers that toiled away in the fields all day and the road we had all walked to get there.
Traveling the rest of the way to Boston by bus seemed somehow wrong. As if I was betraying the family I had so recently become a part of.
My thoughts crept back toward the looming question of who exactly I was, now that I was a clone. If Seven Ecks is dead, who the hell am I?
I decided I wasn't ready to ask that question, let alone answer it, and so I pushed it aside and replaced it with a much more pressing question.
Now that I had a new body, did I still have my--
Your what, Sev?
I fished around my brain for a word that would fit. I settled on abilities. Did I still have them? And what the hell had happened just before I died?
I forced myself to replay the memory in my head. The bullets once again streaked toward me and then seemed to slow down. Everything had slowed down. I toyed with the idea of it just being something that happened right before you died but dismissed that when it didn't feel right. Something had definitely happened.
There was no point in ignoring it any longer or attempting to rationalize it in my own head. The nanos the doc had injected me with had changed me. They had awoken something inside me that I couldn't explain. I had the kind of endurance and speed that would have made a marathon runner sick with jealousy. Was this why Skywatch wanted me? Did they do something to me as a child, like planting a seed and decide to come back over a decade later to pick the fruit?
Was that all gone now? Had the only thing that had ever made me feel special been driven out of me by that trail of bullets from Lucas' gun? Where had they come from in the first place?
I stared out the window again, rolling different ideas around in my head. I don't know what it was that made me think about that final day I had in my parents’ apartment back in Miami, but I ran through what I could remember in my head. It had been a terrible experience, having to leave home, and I had never truly acknowledged just how traumatizing it had been.
My last look at Sasha as the boat ripped us apart once and for all. Gunshots. Panic and running. Tear stained cheeks. I could see my parents bodies in my mind’s eye. Imagine what they had looked like fallen on the ground, bloody and dead. It was worse than if I’d truly seen it.
All. My. Fault.
A shiver ran up my spine as I recalled sarcastic words flung at my parents when they had told me about being sick as a kid.
"You have a rare bacteria in your blood."
"They did find a way to suppress it though."
"They had been tracking the bacteria for a few years."
"Other kids from the poor neighborhoods in Miami started showing up with it too."
"No one that was given the vaccination treatments has had a relapse."
"They don't know what will happen if someone does."
The jumbled bits of the conversation with my parents that had changed my life suddenly flooded back to me. They don't know what will happen if someone does.
Had the nano-surgeons reversed whatever treatment my parents had paid so dearly to get me all those years ago? Had this mysterious bacteria in my blood been awakened, even strengthened, by the nano-surgeons? If that was the case, then of course none of the other kids that got the treatments had ever had a relapse. They were all poor kids. None of them were ever even going to dream of affording nano-surgeons. They would have had to settle for more traditional medical procedures.
None of them were likely to have ever cloned either. So what did that mean for me? Even if I was wrong about the bacteria being the source of my abilities, surely any treatment my previous self had gotten wasn't going to transfer over to a new clone. It would have been in my blood. Then again, wouldn't the bacteria have just been in my blood as well? Did that mean I was bacteria free? Or ability free? Or both?
I yearned to stand up and see how many jumping jacks I could do before getting tired, but not only did I think that would cause a terrible scene, I wasn't sure
my recently cloned body was up to the task anyway. If I did get tired, I'd just have to do it all over again tomorrow, after getting some sleep.
"Damn," I sighed and resumed looking out the window. I worked through several potential theories in my head but could come up with nothing more useful than what I already had after my initial burst of realization. A couple of window gazing hours later I found myself nodding off. I sat up straight and reached into the folds of my duster and pulled out some beef jerky we had picked up at who knows which shop we'd wandered through in our time at the terminal. I chewed it slowly, hoping the food would energize me enough to stay awake a while longer. I wanted to let Zenigra get as much rest as possible, after all, unless he was kidding around, we might very well run into another gang before we met the Snakes. It would be best if we were both well rested if it came to a fight.
I had a few more bites of the beef jerky and placed it back within the folds of my duster. I busied myself polishing the chrome tips of my Du-Wear boots and counting the pockets on my duster. The boots were pretty ace, the chrome tips, Zenigra had told me, were not just for show. They were reinforced steel. Kick someone in the face with them and that person wasn't going to be getting up for a long time. The synth-hide of the pants was comfortable enough, but a bit tight for my liking. The shirt was the same. Zenigra had promised me that I'd be glad to have it next time I got into a fight.
"All the gangers wear stuff like this, it's as close to armor as they get. The synth-hide is pretty resilient. Protect you from road rash if you take a hard spill, cushion a punch or kick, and slow down or stop a glancing blow with a knife."
I woke Zenigra up with a nudge when I spotted the sun rising over the horizon.
"We stopping?" he asked, instantly awake.
"Nah, it's getting light out though, and I'm having trouble staying awake."
"Well, ya didn't have to stay up all night. A couple of hours would'a done me just fine."
I shrugged, "This body didn't even exist 14 hours ago. I made it through the night aight, mano."
Zenigra chuckled and reached into his duster and pulled out an Ebola Cola can. He popped it open, took a long sip, then grimaced.
Recombination Page 16