The Clone Paradox (The Ark Project, Book I)

by J. W. Elliot

  Kaiden saluted and spun to leave.

  “Captain?”

  Kaiden turned back.

  “Don’t waste any more of my men,” Rio said.

  Chapter Five

  Nano-Bots

  Kaiden touched the button on his wrist terminal as he left Rio’s office. Quill’s face materialized on the tiny screen. He had short, dark hair and a wide Asian face.

  “Whoa, I was expecting you two days ago,” Quill said.

  “Had some trouble,” Kaiden said, holding up his wrist close to his mouth so he could speak in a whisper.

  “I heard rumors to that effect,” Quill said, “but nobody seems to know what happened.”

  Quill paused, waiting for Kaiden to explain. When he didn’t respond, Quill continued. “Looks like someone gave you a knock on the head. Have you been picking at Birch again?”

  “Something like that,” Kaiden said.

  Quill beamed his big, toothy grin. “I’ve got the new MG 5 Super-Pack game console fired up and ready to go, but I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be down,” Kaiden said.

  The idea of spending a few hours relaxing without having to think about his new mission—or the disastrous one he’d just finished—sounded like the best idea he’d had in days. Kaiden skipped the elevator and took the stairs. He needed to burn off some of the anger before trying to relax with Quill. It wasn’t just Rio. He was used to Rio’s arrogance and animosity. It was his lost crew members and the strange hallucinations or daydreams he was experiencing. His brain had been hijacked and filled with freakish dreams and nightmares. Maybe the injuries he’d sustained in the explosion had done more damage than he thought. His world had flipped upside down, and he was swimming in a fog of memory and emotion that unsettled him.

  He could hear Quill’s classical music blaring into the hallway when he was still five rooms down. Kaiden smiled to himself. Quill was crazy. That’s why Kaiden liked him.

  Quill’s door swished open after Kaiden knocked.

  “Took you long enough,” Quill shouted over the music. But he stopped speaking when he saw the expression on Kaiden’s face. “What?” he said.

  Kaiden stepped into the room and fiddled with his wrist terminal as he gazed around him. Quill’s room was like all of the security crew’s living quarters. Unlike the cadets who lived together in one large room filled with rows of beds and a common restroom, security officers were given their own private living quarters.

  Everything was made of white plastic, but Quill had found ways to make the space his own. The game console and the stereo speakers dominated the front room. A huge picture of a white, sandy beach with a backdrop of palm trees and a clear, blue sky covered one wall, while the other was covered in pictures of the great musical composers.

  Quill clicked off Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The silence rang in Kaiden’s ears. His head still throbbed. Quill stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black security pants.

  “Well?” he said.

  “They’re dead,” Kaiden said.

  “Who?” Quill asked.

  “My entire crew.”

  Quill stared. “All of them?”

  Kaiden bowed his head.

  “Man, what happened?”

  “Raven,” Kaiden said, pausing as his throat constricted, and he found the words difficult to say. “She disabled the ship and killed the crew and the clones.”

  Quill dropped into a chair beside the round table. His wide-eyed gaze took in the bandage on Kaiden’s head. “You killed her then?”

  “No, Willow did.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A scientist on board. But listen, there’s something else.” Kaiden hadn’t meant to start talking about it right away, but once he began, he couldn’t stop.

  “The blast knocked me out,” he said, “and then Raven’s bullet grazed my head and knocked me out again, and I’ve…look, something isn’t right.”

  “So, spit it out.” Quill’s brow wrinkled in frustration. He had never been one to mince words.

  “I’m seeing things.”

  “Like?”

  Kaiden jumped up, unable to remain still, and began pacing. “I don’t know. It’s like I’m remembering things that never happened. People I’ve never known.”

  Quill opened his eyes wide in that comic way he had that made him look like a pufferfish.

  “So, now you’re psycho?” he said.

  Kaiden kicked Quill’s boot.

  “I’m serious,” Kaiden insisted. “Rio’s intel was all wrong. Terrorists infiltrated the ship through five levels of security. Then, they murdered my crew and cargo, and now I’m having weird hallucinations. Something is going on here. I mean, it was Raven, Quill. She’s been part of our team for two years. Why would she do this?”

  Quill eyed him for a moment and seemed to reach a decision. He clicked the game console off and tapped the tabletop to initialize the computer. The holographic screen buzzed to life.

  “Sit down,” Quill said, kicking a chair toward Kaiden.

  Kaiden flopped into the chair beside Quill, who clicked off his wrist terminal and motioned for Kaiden to do the same. Kaiden frowned but followed suit. The wrist terminals held tiny computers that kept the team in contact anywhere they were. They were a special type of nano-technology that could be reshaped into different devices on command, and that could project holographic images. They were secure, but Kaiden knew they could be monitored if someone higher up wanted to listen in.

  Quill slipped out a digital wireless jammer, or DWJ, like the ones they used when on operations to jam potentially threatening signals or communications. It was a rectangular black box with two retractable antennae. He tossed a smaller version to Kaiden.

  “Keep that on you and use it when you want to be unobserved,” he said.

  “Why would I want to be unobserved at TAP?” Kaiden asked as he fingered the palm-sized device.

  Quill raised his eyebrows as he adjusted the antennae on the larger DWJ. When he clicked it on, it emitted a quiet buzzing sound to disrupt any signal from the WTs that might transmit or the sounds the mic might pick up.

  “I haven’t shown these to you yet,” Quill said, “because I wasn’t finished with them, but check this out.”

  Quill slapped a new wrist terminal on his arm. It formed to his wrist and lit up with a brilliant blue light. A tiny ant-like creature scrambled down the band and onto the table. Something whirred, and another insect about the size of a mosquito rose up to hover in front of Kaiden’s nose. Quill grinned.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “You’ve been playing with insect-bots again?” This had been Quill’s fantasy since Kaiden could remember. His insect-bots had nearly gotten him expelled from cadet school when one fell into the director’s soup at lunch. Quill was so good with computers and nano-technology, Kaiden had often wondered why he was in security.

  “I’m not playing anymore,” Quill said. “These little babies are fully functional, and I can control them with electrical waves from my brain.”

  “You mean like the one that you exploded on top of Casey’s head that left the bald spot?”

  Quill grinned as the mosquito-bot zoomed away, and the ant-bot disappeared over the table only to reappear by the door. It squeezed under the crack and disappeared into the hallway. Before Kaiden could nod in amazement, they were both back again facing him.

  “Nice,” Kaiden said. “Much better than your other ones. What can they do?”

  “These are spy-bots. Eventually, I’ll have attack-bots too, but, check out what the ant-bot found this morning.” Quill swiped his finger across the hologram and opened a file folder that was labeled The Flood.

  “What is it?” Kaiden asked.

  Quill glanced at the door as if he expected someone to enter.

 
“I sent the ant-bot into the main administrative complex,” Quill whispered, “and I plugged him into the supercomputer.”

  “You’re crazy,” Kaiden said. “You could’ve been caught.”

  Quill grinned. “Nobody can detect it. I developed a new cloaking software. It isn’t powerful yet, but it can cloak my insect-bots. I’m working on a prototype that can cloak a human body and, after that, a whole airship. I just have to get the chips set in the right places and synced and then ramp up the power supply.”

  “You mean nobody can see them at all?”

  “Nope. Each bot has a chip that allows the software to mirror its surroundings so it can’t be seen. The same chip scrambles electrical signals that would allow other software to reveal it.”

  “That’s cool,” Kaiden said. Then he gestured to the file. “So, what is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s encrypted.” Quill pushed his black hair from before his eyes.

  Kaiden smirked at him. “That’s supposed to be your area of expertise, Mr. Cyber Security Specialist.”

  “No,” Quill said, refusing to take the bait. “This is different. It doesn’t use any computer language or encryption code I’ve ever seen.”

  Kaiden opened his mouth, but Quill rushed ahead with a wave of his hand.

  “My ant-bot hacked into the central security system to the highest level, and it found this.”

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” Kaiden said. “You’re gonna get demoted—or worse.”

  Quill grinned. “That’s what makes it fun. Anyway, I was just testing the system, but I couldn’t pass this up.”

  “Are you suggesting something?”

  “The Ark Project and then The Flood?” Quill raised his eyebrows at Kaiden.

  “So?” What was he getting at? Did TAP have some plan for raising seawater even higher? All the old coastal plains were already flooded.

  Quill rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to get out of your hyper-security mode more often, Kaiden,” Quill said. “The ark? You know what that’s about?”

  “Some dude built a boat to save humanity,” Kaiden said. He bent over to peer through the huge microscope Quill had set on the table. “That’s what we’re doing with the seed bank and the clones, right? Giving humans another chance.”

  “Yeah,” Quill said. “But that dude was escaping a flood.”

  “So?” Kaiden glanced up from the microscope.

  “So why is this file named The Flood?” Quill asked. “And what is it doing saved in the most secure location at TAP? And what’s this flood supposed to be?”

  Kaiden watched him. Maybe Quill had stumbled onto something. But Kaiden couldn’t see how this was related to Raven and the terrorists.

  “Sounds like it’s above our pay grade, Quill,” he said. “What I want to know is how Raven passed through our security system. If she did it, others can, too.”

  “That’s my point,” Quill said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Somebody is hiding something,” Quill said. “There’s more to TAP than we’ve been led to believe.”

  The buzzing of the transmitter filled the room. Kaiden blinked and pursed his lips. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that maybe there’s more to The Ark Project than we’ve been told. And somebody has discovered what it is and is attacking us from the inside.”

  “You don’t think the Destroying Angels have something to do with it?” Kaiden asked.

  Quill rubbed his jaw. “Don’t know, but they couldn’t have encrypted that file on our central security supercomputer, could they?”

  “Willow said she thought there was someone on the inside,” Kaiden said.

  “That’s what I mean,” Quill said.

  Kaiden picked up a piece of a nano-bot from the table and fiddled with it. “Rio is sending us on a mission to extract a senator,” he said.

  Quill gawked at him. “We don’t do extractions,” he said.

  “That’s what I told him,” Kaiden said.

  “Something weird is going on here, man,” Quill said. He furrowed his eyebrows. “When do we leave?”

  “One week.”

  Quill considered, then reached a hand out to grab Kaiden’s wrist. “Don’t tell anyone what I just showed you,” he whispered, “or we’re both dead.”

  “Now who’s being the dramatic psycho?” Kaiden asked.

  Chapter Six

  The Extraction

  Kaiden surveyed the plaza through the blue light of the electronic gunsight of his new Model 45 Electromagnetic Assault Rifle. He didn’t like what he saw. He lay flat on the top of a square building, concealed by the air conditioning unit. During the night, TAP had inserted his team into the heart of New York City, the greatest megacity in North America. The old city had been rebuilt on a raised platform as the ocean reclaimed the land. Even the large plazas had been lifted up to avoid the advancing waters caused by the melting glaciers. Tens of millions of people milled about the city from which the stinking haze of humanity rose into the air. The day was going to be hot. Kaiden wasn’t used to city life, and, once he had seen a city, he had never had the desire to return.

  Even if he had liked cities, this was the worst possible place for an extraction. Kaiden peered down on the wide plaza in front of the International Security Agency. The agency’s needle-sharp tower cast a long shadow that stretched to where the International Confederation of States building hunched over like a great blob tossed onto the cityscape. Automated aerial-bots and hovercraft zoomed about, somehow avoiding each other—all of them armed with cameras—cameras that would be able to record every move Kaiden and his team made.

  A crowd was already gathering around the stage erected at the center of the plaza. Artificial trees and shrubs were scattered about in a vain attempt to make the concrete and metal city feel less fake. Kaiden had to carry out the extraction of a high-profile political figure in the middle of this teeming metropolis. It was insane, but those were his orders.

  Kaiden checked his team. He had placed his most experienced team members on the ground. Quill, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, tried to look like a tourist interested in the display in front of the ISA tower. Birch was dressed like a college student with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a blue backpack slung over one shoulder. She had a thin face and wiry frame that made her easy to underestimate, but she was sharp as a tack and willing to take risks.

  She relaxed on the edge of the stage, flipping through the messages on her wrist terminal. Kaiden could just make out the flickering holographic images. Greyson reclined at the little, spindly table in front of the coffee shop. The blue suit looked odd on him, but only because Kaiden had known him since he was ten and had never seen him in anything other than the black TAP security uniform. The holograph of the news report he pretended to read reflected in his sunglasses.

  Kaiden had drawn his three new members from a couple of offensive operations units in an attempt to give his team a fighting chance. Iris, the new sniper, held a commanding position from the top of the Library of Global Studies. She came highly recommended as the most accomplished sniper at TAP with twenty-seven confirmed kills. Her KMH 70 Manslayer Sniper Rifle shot a .408 round and had an effective range of three miles.

  Jade and Flint, the other new members of the team, oversaw the cyber interruption equipment from the get-away truck parked discreetly next to the ISA building. Jade ran communications because they didn’t need her expertise with explosives on this mission. Flint was a computer geek, like Quill.

  Kaiden had worked with all of the new team members before, but this team had never worked together. This only added to his tension. An extraction operation in a public place was not the best way to experiment with a new team. As Kaiden surveyed the site and considered his crew, he tried to ignore the nagging doubt that Rio had sent him here to fa
il and the fear that there might be another Raven in the group.

  The crowd continued to grow in the plaza as political campaign music blared over the noise of the crowd. Kaiden settled in to wait while officers marked off the helipad and stretched yellow tape to keep the crowd away from the path the senator would walk. The peculiar roar of an airship’s engines cut through the air and became louder as it zipped past the ISA tower and halted over the plaza. Its engines rotated, and it descended in a rush of blue flame to settle onto the helipad.

  The crowd applauded as Senator Benton emerged from the airship and waved to the crowd. According to the intelligence report Rio had given him, Senator Benton was careful about security, and this was the only time he would be vulnerable. But with this many people in the plaza, there was bound to be collateral damage—with no way to avoid it.

  Consequently, Kaiden’s team was armed only with tranquilizing darts. These darts delivered a seventy thousand volt charge with a very low amperage, so they were not lethal. They also injected a sedative and paralytic agent to keep the victim immobilized for several hours. Their mission was to capture, not to kill.

  Kaiden and Iris rifles both had self-adjusting sites that could be set for non-lethal or lethal status targets. The sites then analyzed the intended target and automatically adjusted the shot to compensate for any operator error. They were sweet rifles. Still, a lot of things could go wrong with an operation like this.

  Dressed smartly in a gray suit and red tie, Senator Benton began a boisterous speech about corruption at the highest levels.

  “Clones are a curse upon the planet,” he bellowed. “Babies are abandoned on doorsteps while we’re making fake humans.”

  “Down with clones,” the crowd chanted.

  “Positions,” Kaiden spoke into the mic. “Prepare to jam communications.”

  “Down with clones! Down with clones!” The chant echoed around the plaza.