Clone Hunter

by Helix Parker

  CLONE HUNTER:

  Book I of the Clone Hunter Chronicles

  By

  Helix Parker

  AVA

  It is my birthday and I can’t help but think how odd it is that I will probably die before nightfall. One giant circle. The ancient Earth writer William Shakespeare died on his birthday as well.

  The sunlight came cascading through the only window in the room and broke into fragments when it hit the clear hemlight-steel bars of my cell. The room was large and spacious with an emptiness that reflected the vast snow plains outside my window. The sheer whiteness of the room was enough to induce insanity. The bed, nightstand, my gowns and exercise clothes, were all white. The floor was dark chrome, the only color that broke the monotony. They did this to “purify” our environments. To rob us of any outside stimulation.

  The People’s Republic of America built Icarus Hospital on Helron 5 nearly a century ago. Though it consisted of over six hundred floors and ten thousand staff, it had a surprisingly mundane function: hold prisoners considered too dangerous to be near population centers. The veneer told one it was a hospital for the mentally ill. Thus it was able to project the image that the dominant emotion felt by the staff for the patients was compassion. This was, of course, the farthest thing from the truth. As last count over seven thousand patients had been executed or committed suicide at Icarus. It accepted patients from every quadrant of the galaxy, but to my surprise I was its first female patient ever slated for execution.

  I stood up and stretched my back, enjoying the sensation of the cold metal floor against my bare feet. A gown lay on the floor in a rumpled heap and I folded it and placed it neatly on the bed. When you’re confined in a room most of every day, neatness can mean the difference between insanity and control.

  I stood in front of the windows. Outside there was nothing but ice and snow and sunlight. It made my retinas ache, and if stared at long enough would cause permanent blindness. A single frozen tree stood near the facility. The tree would tower over anyone standing next to it, but by contrast to the building it appeared small and helpless, encased in a block of solid blue ice. A single sign of life frozen in time.

  A loud buzzing blared from the door and it slid open, revealing a large security officer in black metallic armor. His hair was salt and pepper and he had a cherubic face, folds of fat squeezing out of his collar. He glanced around the room, noticing my gown folded on the bed.

  “Put your hands on the wall and spread your legs,” he said.

  I turned and put my hands against the wall. He walked over and pushed my face into the glass. Holding the back of my head with one hand, he grabbed my thighs and aggressively spread my legs apart.

  A low hum echoed in the room as he initiated the silver restraining ring and slapped it around my ankle. The hum turned to vibration running up and down inside my body and ringing in my ears. As the vibrations settled in my stomach, I thought I would vomit, then the ring locked into place.

  Stripping off my gown, he took longer than he needed to put on my black jumpsuit, glaring at my nude body. He eventually turned me toward the door and stood behind me.

  “Clone, begin walking and stay in front of me,” he bellowed.

  “My name,” I said, “is Ava.”

  He leaned close and took out his ferromagnetic glove. The gloves were made of galvanized therisum and would draw in the static electricity of the environment. The electric charge would cause a quicker spin in the electrons of the therisum atoms, resulting in powerful bursts of electromagnetic force. They were used to tame wild animals and were now standard issue on Icarus.

  The guard breathed on my neck and I could smell his stinking breath.

  “Your name, clone, is what I say it is.” He pulled on the fm glove and touched my shoulder. It felt like a thunderbolt shooting through my system. I saw a white flash and felt the pain of an instantaneous migraine. The smell of charred flesh filled my nostrils. I crumbled to the ground and held my head.

  He picked me up by my neck and made me walk in front of him into the corridor. My jumpsuit was made with a titanium mesh that purposely constricted the movements of its user. It was tight around my muscles and I had to strain to move.

  As my vision stabilized, I could see that the floors and ceiling were a smooth black metal but the walls were all windows and sunlight poured in. The corridor was enormous, far larger than I remembered from the time I was admitted. A permasteel desk was at the end of the corridor and a small man with thin wire glasses sat at it perusing a list or chart of some sort. Glasses were no longer required as all children were modified to exclude unwanted traits. This, then, was a man who could not let go of the past, always dangerous, as they would not tolerate threat of change in their surroundings.

  Next to him were the lifts. Their crimson finish stuck out from the glass walls like a splash of blood.

  As we walked down the corridor, the screams of the insane filled the air and I could feel it on my skin like sweat. Many of those here would never leave. Being held in a perpetual state of semi-consciousness, even the desire for freedom itself might leave them. Their insanity would consume them. Medication would brush it back and cause lucid moments, fleeting glimpses into what their lives were like before, but, like the rolling clouds of night, the insanity would slowly return. Watching it return, all they could do was scream.

  Looking through the glass walls of the corridor, I could see the surface of Helron 5. Nothing but layers of blue ice buried under the heavy snow. Today there were no clouds and the sky was clear. This location had been chosen for the hospital because its surface provided as much stimulation as the décor in my room.

  Helron 5 was in the Rebis system and had long been colonized. Its only natural resource was ice, but on desert planets like Camon and Athelial 3 ice was worth more than human life. Only two major cities were on the entire planet, both settled near the largest ice mines, and the hospital was placed in the middle of nowhere, as far out from the cities as was comfortable. But the largest city, Gamni, was not impossibly far. It was named after Lelis Gamni, the first explorer to map the surface of Helron 5.

  The sparkling black metal floor of the corridor was so cold that my bare feet felt a shock with each step. Every so often the indifferent beauty of the white surface through the glass would be broken with the unmistakable door of a patient’s room, and with each one my stomach would churn and my heart would beat faster as I imagined how close I had been to becoming one of them. I’d been slated for termination, and incurable patients had a tendency to disappear at Icarus.

  The guard gave me a hard push when we neared the desk and the small man with glasses looked up at me with unsympathetic eyes.

  He looked at the burn scar that ran across the base of my throat, the mark that every clone received before the age of one.

  “Ah, the clone,” he said.

  “My name is A—”

  I managed to get the first letter out before I felt the guard’s grip on my shoulder and then I was staring up at the black ceiling and convulsing. My blood felt so hot I thought it might have been set on fire. I felt feverish, and sweat poured from me as the guard stood above me and grinned.

  After a time the pain faded into background like an echo and the guard picked me up by my hair and leaned me against the counter.

  “So, clone, what was your name, did you say?” the small man said.

  I looked up slowly. One or two more shocks could stop my heart. “I don’t have a name,” I said softly. The man smiled.

  “Good.” He looked over to the guard. “Take her to Dr. Keynes right away. He requested her some time ago.”

  The guard walked me to the lifts. We stepped on and the intense G-force of the rising elevator made my stomach jump into my
throat. The guard pulled me up by my hair and his face was close. He pressed his lips to mine and I stood frozen with my eyes closed.

  The gentle voice of the elevator’s computer told us we had reached the five hundredth and tenth floor and the elevator came to an abrupt stop. The guard removed his lips and threw me out. The floor was gleaming and black, just like the one we had been on. But it was warm and I could feel the heat drifting over my hands and down my arms.

  The guard grabbed my hair and dragged me until I managed to stand up and walk on my own. When we approached the red double-doors at the end of a long hallway, he removed his hand and wiped his lips. He touched the doorknob with his bare hand and held it there. A blue light above the door turned on and the doors opened inward. He shoved me through.

  The office was large with glass walls overlooking a small hill below. The floor was gray carpet and appeared recently cleaned. It was a room made for comfort, with imported wood and antique furniture; the scent of apple blossoms misted through the vents.

  At the opposite end of the office was a cherry wood desk. Wood was rare on Earth, much more so on Helron 5. I assumed this had to be the Executive Administrator of Icarus.

  A leather chair swiveled around and a thin man wearing a black synthfiber business suit sat in it smoking a cigar. The synthfiber gave his clothes an eerie glow. It was meant to draw attention to the wearer of the fiber.

  He was bald and extremely pale with a prominent nose. His face was wrinkled and creased but each fingernail on his hands were well groomed and oiled. I had never seen a powerful man this close but this was exactly how I had imagined one looked.

  “Hello, clone,” he said in an even voice with the hint of an accent I couldn’t quite place.

  “My name,” I said as I braced myself and closed my eyes, “is Ava.” My body shook but no strike came.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes of course. How are you, Ava?”

  “There’s been better times.”

  “Same for all of us I would think.” He took a puff of his cigar. “That jumpsuit is quite striking on your slim physique.”

  “So it would seem,” I said, glancing back at the guard.

  “Yes, so it would.” He put his cigar down on a silver ashtray. “Do you know why you’re here, Ava?”

  “No.”

  “You’re here because you are a fluke. A mutation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your entire race was created with the sole purpose of serving humans. And yet, here you are, standing before me as a convicted mass murderer.” He leaned back in his chair and put one leg over the other. “What we want to know is why you exist at all.”

  “I was born. So I exist.”

  “You weren’t born, Ava. You were grown. Like a plant.”

  “I am not a plant.”

  “You are, and in some sense so am I. Our destinies are both shaped by our genes. You can no more deny your brutal, terrorist nature than I can my inquisitive one.” He brushed a piece of loose fiber off his suit. “Your file says you’re a sadist. May I ask why?”

  “I enjoy it.”

  “You enjoy making others suffer?”

  “Not others. Humans.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Any children we have are immediately ripped away from us and … and terminated because they’re not authorized. If we’re unlucky enough to be attractive we’re sold as pleasure clones to whatever monsters have the units to buy us. We’re treated worse than animals because humans think they can just make more of us if our numbers dwindle … and you have the audacity to ask me why I do what I do?”

  “You’re clones damn it!” he yelled as he slammed his fist down on his desk. “You work and you die as we tell you to. You’re a … a damnable creation like a comm-link or a pair of boots. Nothing more.”

  I was silent a moment. “I’m more.”

  “No, you’re a flaw.”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes and I got the impression that this was not a man used to losing control of his emotions. When he reopened them I noticed a slight reddish hue to his cheeks. “I apologize for that outburst. Even clones deserve a modicum of civility. Let me ask you, do you know how cloning came about, Ava?”

  “No.”

  “Are you not interested in the history of your, well, your species?”

  “I’ve looked in the historical archives of earth and found almost nothing. A few early experiments replicating mammals and human organs.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be in there. The Interplanetary Science Federation treats it as a black sheep of the scientific community. Something that everyone knows about and understands, but doesn’t discuss.”

  “So, what is its history?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “It’s a barbaric stay-over of the twenty-first century. That century was one of the most violent in man’s history. The science it produced is a testament to that.

  “You were bred as soldiers first, Ava. Expendable little machines to run up hills and mountains and be mowed down until the opposition ran out of ammunition. With the unification of the planet’s nations into the People’s Republic of America, soldiers became obsolete. You were turned into maids and prostitutes and mine workers. All the jobs that people no longer wanted to do. You were soon forgotten and taken for granted as a piece of machinery. It took three centuries, but it did happen. Time has a way of eroding everything, even views on morality. People forgot you had souls. That’s why you are so dangerous, Ava. You have the ability to remind every person out there that you may in fact have a soul. It would make your species far less … expendable.” He leaned further back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. “The twenty-first century was an incredible time in human evolution; too much knowledge and not enough wisdom to use it. We were savages then.”

  “From where I’m standing,” I said, “things haven’t changed much.”

  He raised his eyebrows as if shrugging, followed by a slight, almost imperceptible nod. “Do you know why we’re so violent? Have you ever asked yourself this?”

  “Every night.”

  “I’ll tell you why.” He picked his cigar up off the ashtray and took a long pull. “We have traveled through half the known galaxy and haven’t found any life besides our own. Not even fossils of life. No bacteria, no protists, no plants. Humanity is starting to believe we are the only sentient life forms we will ever know. The universe, at least for us, is a cold, lonely place with us as its most magnificent creation.”

  “You’re desperate and lonely so you enslave a people?”

  “You are not people, Ava. You’re property. Livestock.” He looked my body over slowly. “Such a shame. Do you know what they call you? What your official records state? They call you ‘Clone X.’ Has a nice ring to it don’t you think? Clone X.” He smiled and turned his head toward the guard. “Take her to the extermination chambers please.”

  “Gladly,” the guard replied.

  “One more question if I may, Dr. Keynes,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  I felt the guard’s presence behind me. “Do you know how I was caught?” I asked.

  “I believe through good, old fashioned, forensics.”

  “That’s what the administrative authorities on Alterra told the newscorps. It’s not the truth.”

  “Oh really? So what is the truth?”

  “The truth is that I turned myself in.”

  “And why would you do that?” he asked.

  “So I could get near you.”

  He looked confused before realization pounded in his mind. His eyes widened. Before he could shout an order, I had turned and thrust my fingers into the guard’s eyes.

  The guard screamed and I grabbed his arm and lifted the ferromagnetic glove to his throat and pressed his hand into his flesh. His vocal cords and throat burst into flames, smoke billowing out of his nose and mouth. He collapsed in a smoking heap
of sweat and writhing flesh.

  I leaned down and carefully removed the glove, placing it on my right hand. I felt the power pulsating through the bones and sinews of my hand and up my arm. It was a glorious feeling.

  I turned back toward the doctor and he was stiff except for a slight trembling of the upper lip. He was furiously pounding a security panel underneath the desk. After centuries without war, most men had turned into cowards.

  Grabbing him by his neck, I threw him against the glass wall of his office and pressed against him, my breasts tightly pushed against his chest, our lips nearly touching. I could smell the sweet aroma of cigar smoke on his breath.

  “We become how we’re treated, Doctor.”

  I placed the glove over his head and heard the sizzle of flesh. He screamed and thrashed and began to shake violently. I held him pinned to the wall with my other hand and had to press my entire weight into him to keep him from flying off in another direction. I felt the waves of electromagnetic energy running through my body but I didn’t move. Sweat began to pour out of me from the pain, but I kept the good doctor pinned.

  He grew limp and I released him. His body sunk to the floor, his eyes open in terror, pupils fully dilated. No breathing.

  I pressed the ferromagnetic glove against the glass wall and felt its warmth spreading. The glass began to bend with just the slightest pressure. With a high-pitched scream the glass shattered, leaving a gaping hole.

  I instantly felt the icy burst of frozen wind blowing over me. I sat down at the doctor’s desk a moment and enjoyed its chill on my skin. With any luck, hospital security would think they’re chasing someone crazy enough to jump out of a five-hundred-and-ten-storey-window.

  Fighting the resistance of the titanium mesh uniform had worn me out. I couldn’t make it to the city if I had to wear it. I placed the glove against my silver restraining ring and it snapped in pieces like a toy.

  Although Icarus Hospital was technically part of the city, it had been built ten kilometers outside of it. If I couldn’t get to the city by nightfall, I would die. The night temperatures on Helron 5 dropped to nearly 150° Kelvin, more than one hundred degrees below the freezing point of water.