Prototype

by M. D. Waters

  Ignoring his sarcastic remark, I say, “Should we walk through the forest? Maybe there is another residence.”

  He scans the area. Wind blows through the trees and shapes his blond waves, alternating between flattening and lifting the strands. The rising sun casts the shadow of swaying tree branches on his skin. “Look for a well-worn path. If we don’t find one, we’ll have to come back with some equipment. The last thing we need is to disappear for several days because we got lost.”

  I look down, seeking footprints on the soft forest floor. There is nothing that obvious to my layman’s eye. We take opposite directions again until I hear him call back to me almost thirty seconds later.

  The path he discovered is wide and made of loosely packed dirt. “No footprints,” I say.

  “Could mean it hasn’t been used in a while.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  We take the trail in silence. At the first patch of grass Noah comes to, he takes a long, wide blade and positions it between his thumbs. Soon he is blowing through them and making a rough, high-pitched whistle sound.

  I chuckle. “You are like a child.”

  He cups his palms around the sound to change the tone. Then he is smiling too much to continue. He passes the blade over. “Here. Give it a try.”

  I shake my head. “No, thank you.”

  His grin tilts. “Because you can’t do it.” When I raise an eyebrow at his challenge, he scratches his chin and adds, “I even have a scruff disadvantage and can still do it.”

  I stop walking and take the blade from him, determined to prove that I can. “As if beard growth matters.”

  He chuckles.

  We face each other on the trail and he shows me how to make the blade taut between my thumbs. He stands close enough to share his body heat and the sweaty scent of his skin.

  “You have to blow hard,” he tells me once I have the grass placed.

  He watches me intensely as I place my thumbs against my taut lips. My cheeks fill with air and sting slightly from the exertion. It takes me several tries to finally make one excruciating sound.

  His smile widens. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

  My belly flutters. His smile leaves me with little air to breathe. How does he do that? I stand frozen between closing the space between us and widening it.

  His smile falters and his eyes lower to my lips before darting away. He clears his throat.

  I hand the blade back, my cheeks warm from more than just the act of blowing. “Now that I have played your silly game, can we find the end of this trail?”

  “Lighten up, Wade. We’ll get there.”

  I follow him and in seconds he has exchanged his grass for a long stick to swing around. I cannot take the silence with the occasional swatting sound, so I say, “You said last night you have a feeling about Declan you cannot shake? You did not say what it was.”

  Noah sighs and squints down the trail at nothing in particular. “A year or so ago, I might have never considered it, but now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  “You’re right to think he could have spent the last year recovering. Maybe he had a broken back or neck or something. Arthur Travista has proved he is capable of fixing just about anything.”

  I glance askance at him. I can tell from his tone that he does not believe this theory. “You do not think so?”

  He meets my gaze. “I think Travista cloned him.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I can no longer walk. Why . . . why . . . why would they do that? I bend and brace myself on my knees. The world seems to have gone utterly silent save the sound of the wind through the trees and my heartbeat pounding through my ears.

  Declan a clone? To what end? Cloning was supposed to be a means to end infertility, not make a man like Declan Burke immortal.

  “How can you be sure?” I ask, watching loose dirt swirl in the wind at my feet.

  Noah stabs the ground with his stick. “You said he was dead, and I’ve always trusted your instincts.”

  I straighten and meet his eyes. “You have to base this on more than my word.”

  He casts his gaze down the trail. “All right. Clones are really thin after they’re brought to life, and Burke looks thin to me. To reach his current level of fitness, I assume it would take at least a year.”

  “Maybe he lost weight because of his recovery time from a serious injury.”

  “So explain why he’s been in hiding this entire time. Why make the world believe he was kidnapped if he was only injured?”

  “A matter of pride?”

  “If it was that bad, why not use the opportunity to show off more of Travista’s lifesaving skills? Imagine the press they’d get.”

  I have to walk and think. Everything he says makes sense, and I would not put it past Dr. Travista. Declan Burke is the only man who has given him enough funding and freedom to play God.

  Noah strolls up beside me, closer than he was before. He has given up his stick. “There’s more.”

  My stomach rolls. “Do I want to hear this?”

  “Rumor has it Burke was sterile.”

  I trip to a stop and he grabs my arm to steady me. “I do not believe that.”

  He tilts his head. “Last I heard you are as fertile as they come, yet somehow, you managed to escape pregnancy.”

  “I avoided—” I cut off short from telling him how I planned our sex life around my fertile days to prevent pregnancy. I nearly had it down to a science. “You are wrong. I witnessed his disappointment every month. If he were sterile—”

  “Then Travista would have been experimenting on ways to reverse it. Burke may have been forced into the last resort: cloning.”

  I turn and walk away from him, my heart thundering in my chest. If this is true, then no one is safe. Not even men.

  “You think the idea of Burke being a clone is crazy?” he asks, catching up to me.

  “Yes. Crazy because you have to be right. It is the only thing that makes sense.”

  Noah tucks his hands in his pockets and looks out into the forest. Wind flutters through his hair. “Only problem will be proving it at this point.”

  “Why does it matter? It is not as if the world will think less of him.”

  He stops. “Clones have no rights, Emma. He’d lose his company.”

  An icy chill winds up my core. “What do you mean ‘clones have no rights’?”

  “Think about it. The only clones being created are female. Why would the government rush to give basic human rights to the female population when they could have full control over them? They wouldn’t. And there’s no need to clone men.”

  “Well, clearly there is if cloning cures sterility.”

  “We live in a world where men outnumber women. I wouldn’t call that a need.”

  “But if Dr. Travista were to offer this option to men, the government would go directly into talks about establishing their rights, yes?”

  “Probably. Eventually, powerful men will see other benefits. If Burke can circumvent death, so can they. But for now, no one’s even asking questions. It’s so early in the game, all these men and government officials can focus on is getting their hands on their own cloning project.”

  “Including you.” I had not meant to say it, but it is too late to take back.

  Noah steps away. “You can’t compare me to them.”

  “Maybe not. But as an outsider looking in, it seems pretty obvious to me. You brought on a scientist specifically to figure out how cloning works. Do you think he will stop at saving memories? Your girlfriend went as far as to run my gene sequence without my permission. But I guess I have no rights, so it does not matter anyway, does it? She can do what she likes with my blood.”

  I turn and walk the second he opens his mouth to respond. The last thing I want is to argue wit
h him, and I could have avoided it altogether, but the topic has me on edge. I have no rights and I am stuck in another situation where people want to study me. Of all the places I could go, ending up with Noah was supposed to be the safest. I am no longer sure it is.

  Another, smaller path appears, and we take it in silence. No more than a minute later, we come upon a small cabin with a wraparound porch, complete with a swing.

  Noah produces a gun that was tucked in the back of his jeans. His posture stiffens and his gaze darts in all directions. He leads us up the porch and to the front door. He taps the gun against the surface and presses his ear to the exterior to listen.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he whispers.

  Dirt coats the porch swing as well as the front windows. My instincts tell me no one has been here in a very long time. “Is the door unlocked?”

  He tries the handle and the door swings open with a loud, drawn-out creak. He enters the house gun first, taking it slow. “Stay behind me.”

  I stand in a shadowed living room with two deep red armchairs facing a cold fireplace. A small kitchen sits unused in a back corner and the entrance to a perpendicular hallway in the other. The air smells musty.

  Noah exits the hallway a moment later and tucks his gun back in his jeans. “Just one bedroom and bathroom in the back. There are a few personal items, but not much. Nothing to tell me who lived here.”

  I glance around the living room. While Noah approaches the teleporter near the kitchen, I look at the bookshelves. Heavy tomes with gold embossed letters; every subject has to do with one science or another. I even recognize the bookends because I saw their doubles at least once a week for months.

  I pick up a framed photograph of a young woman sitting in a swing. Jodi. The woman Dr. Travista loved and failed to clone once upon a time. “Dr. Travista lived here.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I flash the photograph at Noah and say, “I just am.”

  He may not know much about Jodi, if anything, but he nods, trusting my judgment. “Teleporter’s busted,” he says. “We won’t be able to pull any destination data from the hard drive.”

  The only reason to destroy the data would be to hide the trail. I did that when I sent Foster through a teleporter just before I was shot two years ago. I used codes I retrieved from the resistance before leaving last year to hide my trail, but you cannot always trust that to work.

  I take a deep breath and look around again. A fine layer of dust coats everything. He has definitely not lived here in a long time. “Okay, so Dr. Travista left the labs the night Foster and I went in. He came home, saved Declan from the lake, and took him to some supersecret hideaway?”

  “Where he either healed Burke from a serious injury or cloned him,” Noah adds.

  “You realize cloning implies he had a second facility all along.”

  He shrugs. “And why not? Especially if they planned to do this on a grander scale.”

  “Would you not have heard them talk about this?”

  “Burke doesn’t trust anyone or anything. Hell, neither he nor Travista even used the word ‘clone’ for months; that’s how careful they are. To this day no one knows where the facility is, not even the government. If they do, they’re being very tight-lipped about it.”

  I link my fingers around the back of my neck. “This is insane.”

  He glances around, then takes a deep breath. “Well, at least we know where he disappeared to. We should head back. I have back-to-back meetings all afternoon.”

  I follow him to the front door. “Do you still run Tucker Securities?”

  “Of course I do.”

  We close up the house and head back down the trail. Our boots crunch in sync on the needle-strewn floor. Birds sing to one another in the trees above, each note a temptation to believe a fantasy in which everything is right and harmonious in the world.

  I tuck my hands into my back pockets and focus on the end of the trail ahead. “I thought you would have had someone step in and run the business for you. Is it not a lot to handle? The company and a resistance faction?”

  “It isn’t so bad, and I do have help. I only handle the bigger clients who have trusted me for a long time. I’ve worked too hard on my image to just disappear.”

  I remember the public image. The man’s man. Everyone is drawn to him, including Declan. Noah is a very good actor, which I have to admit scares the hell out of me.

  Noah blocks my path at the entrance to the larger trail and faces me. His gaze is cast down, and it seems to take an eternity for him to say, “I want you to trust me, too, Emma.”

  My muscles lock. I am unsure how he expects me to respond.

  “I have very good reasons for the clone study,” he continues, shifting weight to his other foot. “I can’t share them with you, but you have to trust me.”

  I could easily say, Yes, Noah, of course I will trust you, because how could I say anything to the contrary? A year ago I might have caved. That will not happen today.

  I force my gaze down to our dirt-dusted boots. “I need you to tell me something. Did you agree to let me stay because of my offer to help with Declan? Or did you see potential for your project?”

  “I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t cross my mind, but no, it had no bearing on my decision.” I glance up to find him squinting off to his right. “Sonya knows she overstepped. It won’t happen again.”

  For her sake, I hope not. I walk past him and enter the main trail. “We should get back.”

  “Hold on, Emma.”

  I do not want to hold on, because I want to let this go. He wears on my all-too-thin defenses. But despite this, I face him, steeling myself for what he would add.

  He stands with hands hooked on his hips. Fingers of sunlight highlight every sharp angle of his face and play in his hair. He takes a shallow breath, then closes the distance between us. My heart flutters when he stops in front of me, close enough that the toe of his boot taps mine. I want to back away—to look away—but I cannot. I swallow hard against a dry throat.

  “It won’t happen again,” he repeats. This time, his gaze holds mine without so much as a single blink. He will force his truth on me if it kills him.

  Noah’s chest rises on a shaky breath. He closes his eyelids for the span of yet another breath, then stares into my eyes as if searching for my soul. I even believe he finds it, because I am utterly ensnared by his intensity.

  His voice lowers to a rough whisper. “I told you that you’re safe with me and I meant it.”

  I have to summon my voice from somewhere deep inside. “I believe you.”

  And I do believe him. I only wish I could trust the people around him to make his truth reality. He may not realize it yet, but they will turn him into a liar without having to utter a single word.

  CHAPTER 14

  Leigh leans against the doorframe outside my room, arms folded. Her smile is immediate and genuine, releasing the built-up tension in my shoulders. “Ready to go?”

  I peer out the door both ways. Foster is supposed to help me search files today but is running late. “Go where? I am waiting on someone.”

  “I know. Foster sent me in his stead. Got tied up with Major Reid.”

  “You are helping me?”

  She lets loose a single, hard laugh. “Uh, no. That would be Miles’s department. I’m just along for the ride.” Her right hand lifts to the HK belted at her side and thumbs the safety switch on and off. “I have the afternoon free, and what better way to spend it than with the resident clone?”

  I laugh, but the sound comes out forced. I am too distracted and nervous over how the search will go. “I will enjoy the human interaction as well.”

  We take a wide stone stairwell down a level. Two more right turns in the brightly lit hallways and we reach a corridor lined with doors that say GESTURAL INTER
FACE. We stop at one and Leigh presses a silver-plated button to the right of the entry that reads GI4. The door slides away with an audible shiff, disappearing into the wall, giving us access to a space a quarter the size of the hologram room.

  A young woman nearly collides with us on her way out. Petite, with a thick platinum braid hanging to her midback, she looks too innocent to wear the set of HK pistols on her hip. She gives Leigh a tight smile and cuts me with a shoulder on her way by.

  Leigh raises an eyebrow and glances between me and the girl striding away. “Miles’s partner, Farrah Styles. She’s . . . wound a little tight.”

  Miles yells from inside, snatching our attention. “’Bout damn time. Are women always late?” The room is dark save the bright blue glow from wall-size vid screens. A curved glass table sits in the middle of the room on an elevated circular platform. Miles stands beside it, arms crossed.

  “We’re not late,” Leigh says. “You’re just early for once.”

  Miles hops down and walks toward us with a tilted grin. “What’s up, Wade? Ready to do this?”

  “Are you?”

  He freezes and scoffs. “Please. Have we met?”

  I cock an eyebrow at him. “Barely.”

  Leigh slaps his shoulder. “She’s got you there.”

  Miles pushes her up onto the platform and I follow. He positions us in the center, then faces the table. On the clear surface glows the image of a computer desktop in white and blue.

  He rubs his palms together and grins at the tabletop. “Hey, baby, let’s warm you up.” He strokes a small, illuminated blue square in a tight circle. “Oh, yeah, there’s your sweet spot.”

  Leigh snorts beside me. “Said every disillusioned man in history.”

  He grins and starts typing on an illuminated keyboard. “I’m no man, honey. I’m a beast.”

  “I thought that was hair I saw on your back.”

  He spins around, eyes wide. “Take that back. That’s how rumors get started.”

  She flicks a hand at the table. “Don’t you have something you need to be doing?”