Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  Xavier knew the answer to his next question, but threw it out there anyway. “Why did you drag us down here?”

  “Oh, you’re here to die,” Wallace answered. “I was just trying to save myself the hassle of hauling around heavy corpses.” He sauntered over to the dimly lit row of incubators. “It’s all just a preventative measure. Your bodies will provide all the tissue necessary to make decent replicas. Of course, they'll have certain built-in destruct mechanisms designed to activate at specific time intervals. Just a little added measure to discourage suspicion about your deaths. No one knows you’re here. It won’t even occur to anyone to suggest murder, let alone, come looking for your killers.”

  Xavier bowed his head, thinking back to barely a week ago...to that missing bullet. He should have ended it when he had the chance. But he didn't. All he had done was eek out a few more days and bring an innocent person down with him. Shit. To have gone through life without being of any use to anyone, to have caused nothing but pain and sorrow to the ones he loved the most. That was the worst, he thought. Those were the real dues of...

  The huge lab doors abruptly slid open and once again, the distinct, clackity-clack of Miles Gabriel’s Italian shoes provided a soundtrack for his entrance. The doors hissed closed as he walked forward, his Armani coat flowing behind him like a cape.

  “Miles, you’re just in time,” Wallace shined. “I was just telling our friends here that they’re about to die.”

  “About to?” Gabriel asked perturbed. He wondered just what in the hell they were all doing down here and the obvious answer was threatening him with a stroke. Wallace was indulging in some fun-and-games B-movie bullshit. He was “feeling” himself as the villain. Idiot! Hawkins and Jameson were nothing! Just small time, insignificant scraps. It wasn’t like prying information out of them would be difficult. They should've have been purged by now and ready for the furnace. Damn him!

  Wallace moved into the area illuminated only by small steady lights and ambient flashes from the incubation monitoring equipment. He pressed his palm against a wall panel and a dozen tanks were flooded with soft unobtrusive blue light. The tanks were filled with gestating clones in various forms of development, starting from the farthest end with youngest to oldest. They were all from the same male subject, of course, and some were already registering defects and would have to be scrapped.

  Wallace looked surprised. “What...” He had expected the incubators in the row to be empty. He certainly didn't recall a recent commissioning of any male replicates. He scanned the lot carefully, starting from the youngest and moving up. The clones' crescendo ended with the figure of an average looking man of about thirty-five lying dormant in his capsule. He looked as if he belonged on a morgue slab. Ironic, he should be encased in a tube constructed to produce life...or something like it. Wallace crept closer.

  That face! he thought. “Dad?”

  The lab's steel doors ceremoniously parted again and a man with slick-back hair and wearing a black leather jacket entered the room. He was holding Glenda's stocky bovine of a guard at bay with the guard's own gun. The guard was bleeding profusely from the nose and the man in the leather jacket was using his stout physique as a human shield.

  “Is this everybody?” the man asked.

  “What is this?” Wallace shouted. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You're right on time, Calvin,” Gabriel said. “Though it was supposed to be just the two of us.”

  Ross shot the guard in the base of his spine and a helping of blood and gore exploded from the front of his shirt. The overpaid lout collapsed in a heap with an audible crack of his skull against the floor. “Now there's one less,” Ross said.

  Wallace stuck a thumb at the gestating clone. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “What’s the matter, Jerome, not a good likeness?” Gabriel blustered. “The maturation process isn’t complete yet. It’s you in about your mid-thirties. So far it’s come up clean for defects. In another forty-eight hours, it should look exactly like you are now—a dried up sack of bones, who’s far outlived his greatness.”

  Wallace threw a look hotter than a solar flare in Gabriel's direction. “You’re making a clone of me?” he asked, as if Gabriel's insult meant zip. “It’s not possible! I know how the process works! There's no way in hell you got a sample of my DNA large enough for this!”

  “You’re absolutely right. You keep a tight lid on your own DNA, to avoid becoming a victim of what you push on others. That’s why it cost me a pretty penny to get Mai Ling to fuck your tired old ass. She wanted extra afterward, for being able to keep her breakfast down.” Gabriel paused with a smirk. “Didn't you wonder why a woman who suddenly couldn't keep her hands off you insisted on protection?”

  Wallace thought back to his recent in-office romps with his assistant, Mai Ling Chow. She had said she liked giving head just after a man...oh, shit, she was the one who removed the condoms! She must have bagged them when he went to the bathroom.

  “Why?” Wallace asked.

  “Business,” Gabriel said. He stepped closer to Wallace and covertly worked his wrist inside the sleeve of his coat, until the tiny two-shot Accelerator pistol—the MAG version of a Derringer—was half-cupped in his palm. “You're going to retire, Jerome. You're going to step down as head of Millenitech and transfer total control of all your holdings to me.”

  Wallace was speechless. Breathless. All he could do was stand there and look deep into Gabriel's eyes for anything that said this was all just a bad joke.

  “You're dreaming,” Wallace finally said. “You don't honestly think...”

  “You have no family, Jerome...no friends, no one close enough to you to question your motives or your sanity. There's only me. We've been joined at the hip for years. I know where all the bodies and, more importantly, your treasures are buried...offshore and otherwise. Your clone will have the memories of your passwords and have no trouble at all getting past those annoying little biometric scans you packed on top of one another for added security.” Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Everything you own, and everything you’ve worked on and pretended to work for your entire life...will belong to me.”

  Wallace lilted backward, lightheaded. Whether ten seconds or a year went by, he didn’t know. “You fucking...No one will believe you!” he declared.

  “I think you meant to say no one will believe you. And yes they will. The Jones prototype had a few glitches, that's true...but your clone won't be burdened with the intricacies of the soldier software; all I need do is program it to sign a few papers and smile wanly.” Gabriel nodded genially. “No, it’ll work. You’ve made sure of that.”

  Calvin Ross let out a rift of laughter. “Well, goddamn! Fucked in the ass by your own technology! I couldn’t have planned it better! Ha, ha, ha, ha...”

  Without warning, Ross’s arm exploded in a burst of blood and his gun spit out a stray blast as it clanged to the floor. Ross's own laughter had provided the perfect gap of attention for Gabriel to get off the shot he was hoping for.

  Ross fell backward, howling in pain. He lolled against the wall, clutching his bloodied limb. “You motherfucker!”

  Gabriel’s eyes flared at the sight like the brightest of stars. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that! You arrogant little shit! You have caused me such a fucking headache!”

  “Damn, man,” Xavier said, skittishly. He was about to exercise his unconscious defense mechanism and say something smart-ass like “Isn’t there anybody in this room you're fond of?”, but he wised up fast and bit his tongue.

  “You have been an exceptional pain,” Gabriel said to Ross. He sauntered over to the wounded terrorist, keeping his Accelerator pistol trained on his center. He picked up the MAG from the floor and then fired the remaining shot from the Accelerator pistol into the outside of Ross's abdomen.

  Ross let out a gurgled scream and squirmed on the floor like a worm trying to escape oncoming footsteps.

  Gabriel was to
rturing him, Xavier noticed. Apparently, he had enough knowledge of the human anatomy to know what would kill a man right out and what would just hurt like hell until he bled to death.

  Gabriel sneered violently at Ross.

  “You just couldn't help yourself, could you?” he asked him. “As if the government threatening to start poking around and seizing the whole fucking thing before I get a chance to take control wasn’t enough, you had to come along looking to blow it all up!” He pointed the gun at Ross, taking erotic delight in his agony.

  “Maguire,” Ross moaned spasmodically.

  “What was that?”

  “Maguire. It was...all...bullshit.”

  “Yes, that. Well, you left me with no choice, Calvin. You kept yourself too well hidden. I was hoping Maguire could convince you to back off. I even threatened him. Told him I would anonymously release all the evidence I was able to keep from the prosecutor during his trial, if he didn’t get rid of you.” Gabriel shook his head like a disapproving parent. “But when you hit MIT, I realized it wouldn't be that easy. BioCore was the only target big enough to keep you occupied while simultaneously drawing you out. So I told him to do whatever it took to make you believe it was within your grasp.” Gabriel was positively glowing now. He understood why Wallace had indulged in talking so much shop to Hawkins and Jameson before killing them. Gabriel was taking great joy in telling Ross what an idiot he’d been.

  Xavier had decided he'd seen enough. He visually signaled Glenda to take notice of the slab of a guard Ross had deposited just a couple steps from her. A set of cuff keys were latched to his belt. Glenda understood right away and began judging the distance between Gabriel and the guard.

  “What Maguire had in mind after that, I don’t know...and I don’t care since I already killed him.” Gabriel said to Ross. “I have to say, I was half expecting you to turn me down when I offered you a piece. I was starting to believe you had no price. But, here you are. And I was very serious about the offer...at first. The truth is, we could've actually worked together. You would've become a very rich man erasing Millenitech's competition.” Gabriel shook his head slowly. “But for some reason when I saw your face in the flesh a minute ago, I just changed my mind. I'm assuming I don't have to tell you the deal's off.”

  “Jesus,” Wallace groaned. He hadn’t had a thought in his head the past minute or so—just a feeling that his suit was the only thing holding him together.

  Gabriel turned to the old man like he was the dessert to his main course of Ross tartar.

  “I knew it, Jerome,” Gabriel said. “I knew impatience would be your downfall. Add a little misdirection and you have a perfect recipe for mutiny.”

  “You...you always were a little too...poised for my taste.”

  “Really? Is that why you enjoyed sending me to do all the shit jobs around here? Of course, that's how I knew it wouldn’t be a problem running off a few copies of you behind your back; you hated being in this place more than I did. I tried to warn you, Jerome. Complacency will always be the enemy of greatness.”

  “You smug assho...”

  A MAG blast silenced Wallace before he could finish his insult.

  Calvin Ross was getting weaker by the second. Blood flowed from his wounds like a river, but it didn’t stop him from reaching his watch, which was perfectly synchronized.

  “Hey, lawyer,” he wheezed.

  Gabriel approached him with a wry smile. “You still here?” he asked passionless.

  “Just wanted to ask you if you knew what time it was.”

  Gabriel snickered. He glanced at his comwatch, deciding to humor Ross and himself. “It's the witching hour for you, Calvin.”

  “Really? Because I’ve got less than nine minutes.” Ross turned up his watch-face so Gabriel could see.

  A black cloud of panic instantly cut off Gabriel's air. He squatted down and nearly pulled Ross's arm from the socket. A countdown. The lunatic had planted a bomb in the building! “Son-of-a-bitch!”

  Chapter 56

  “I'd start running if I were you,” Ross coughed. He knew the Gabriels of the world well. The threat of imminent death didn't scare them half as much as the threat of being broke and powerless for the rest of their natural lives. It was worse than any nightmare imaginable. The lab would be the coffin of not only Wallace and the clones, but of everything Gabriel had worked and waited for. The entire operation would be exposed and over $400 billion would go up in smoke.

  “Nooooooo!” Gabriel shouted.

  Glenda didn't have to be told twice. She moved swiftly, pinching the cuff keys from the guard’s belt. She got to Xavier and worked the key into his cuffs. They clicked open.

  Gabriel pointed Ross’s own MAG at him and leveled it up to full power. “Shut it down,” he commanded.

  “Did you really think I would pass up the chance to blow this fucking gene factory straight to hell?” Ross said.

  “Where is it?”

  Ross put on the smirk of all smirks. His last breath would be a sweet one. He broke into a pop tune melody and sang, “First you kill all the lawyers, and then the sun begins to shine.”

  Gabriel screamed at the top of his lungs as he pumped round after round into Ross at maximum velocity. It seemed as though he was expelling lighting from his hands, so close together were the shots. The result was a mosaic of pureed gore that left no indication that Ross had ever been in one piece.

  Glenda and Xavier wisely used the gunfire to blanket their movements. Glenda, even more wisely, made a point of blinding herself to the sight of that Ross character being turned into hamburger. Xavier may have experience reconciling that sort of thing, but a lifetime of nightmares were assured if she had to. She and Xavier then proceeded through the cloning bay's inner door. The same doors that required everything short of a urine sample to gain entry needed only the press of a panel to exit. They hit the panel to the outer doors and the couple completed their escape from the room just before Gabriel's trigger finger gave out. Laying in a heap on the hallway floor was the first guard that Ross had apparently encountered—the one that had led Xavier down from the interrogation room by the neck. Whether he was dead or just unconscious Xavier didn't know. His gun holster was empty, but a backup stunner was cinched to the guard's belt. The stunner he apparently didn't have opportunity to use while Calvin Ross was cleaning his clock and otherwise disarming him. Xavier snatched up the stunner and the moment the doors slid shut, jammed it into the outside key reader. He fired its charge until it was drained. There was no guarantee it would work, but any head start was worth the try.

  Miles Gabriel ceased fire when he sensed the disturbance of the doors. He promptly pursued the couple only to be stopped by a frozen door. The sheet glass beneath the exit panel was spotted with scorch marks. He punched at the panel repeatedly and the doors parted maybe six inches. “Son-of-a...” Gabriel then stuck his gun-arm through the gap and pushed with what little leverage he had. He kept up the pressure until the entire right half of his body had extended the gap and wiggled through. When he saw the couple running down the end of the corridor that faced him, he smiled.

  Xavier glanced behind them and saw Gabriel taking aim. He looped an arm around Glenda’s back and the couple assiduously picked up speed, breaking into a zigzag. Gabriel had already proven to be a good shot and Xavier wasn't about to give the asshole a chance at first prize. Thankfully, he and Glenda were already approaching an intersection. As they rounded the right-hand corner, a MAG blast chunked a section of wall to their right. A piece of the debris nearly took out Xavier’s eye. He shook it off without losing a step and they angled onto another stretch of hallway that seemed infinitely longer than the last. However, at the very end of this stretch was a stairwell door that Xavier just bet opened up to a magical land of sunshine and rainbows...or the equivalent, which was just about any place where they weren’t being shot at. They paused for no more than a second to gauge the distance and then lit off toward the door. Xavier tried unsuccessfully not
to think about Gabriel catching up to them before they hit it. When he saw a red polished alarm switch on the wall, he thanked the gods for approving his parole and he threw it down. A raucous torrent of alarm bells sounded and a cannonade of cyclical strobe lighting flooded the hall.

  “What’s that?” Glenda screamed.

  “Fire alarm,” Xavier answered.

  No sooner had he said that, when a computer generated voice intoned from every surface around them. “DECONTAMINATION ON SUBLEVEL THREE. LOCKDOWN ENGAGED.”

  “Lockdown?” Xavier said. “Oh, shit!” He pulled harder on Glenda's arm as they made for the door even faster. No, no, no!

  Instead of getting soaked under the shower of sprinklers, Glenda and Xavier saw a series of recessed ceiling panels slide open the entire length of the corridor. Behind each panel was the outgrowth of a narrow nozzle about six inches long. Some of the panels hadn't even completely opened when they began spewing sallies of a foamy white substance directly into the hallways. The foam expanded in seconds and by the time Glenda and Xavier hit the stairwell door they were hip-deep in the generally harmless, but potent antimicrobial, antibacterial, anti-damn-near-anything.

  Xavier thrust down on the door's non-responsive handle. “No!” he shouted.

  “That wasn’t a fire alarm you hit, was it?” Glenda asked. “Because fire alarms want people to leave, right?”

  “There was probably a biohazard symbol nearby and I didn't notice it,” he said. Stupid! “The program thinks this floor has been exposed to a toxic threat! It probably won’t release us until decon can be confirmed!”