The Clone Paradox (The Ark Project, Book I)

by J. W. Elliot

  Using Quill’s favorite login, “BEESymp no 3” for Beethoven’s best symphony, he opened Quill’s computer files. He hurried to download everything in Quill’s folders and delete anything that might suggest Quill had been infiltrating the system. Before Kaiden left, he permitted himself one last look around. The room felt like Quill. They even smelled like Quill with his wild cologne and the sharp spices he used to flavor his food. Kaiden picked up the picture of him and Quill as cadets. So young. So innocent. So hopeful.

  Kaiden blinked against the sting of tears. Quill would never come here again.

  “I’m sorry,” Kaiden said before he dropped the picture into the pillowcase. “I’ll find out who did this, even if it kills me.”

  Willow slipped into a blue engineering lab jacket and strolled into the vast engineering complex as if she belonged. This was the section of TAP that designed weapons and airships. She passed huge hangars where robots buzzed and whirred as they constructed newer, sleeker hovercraft and big gunships. The sharp smell of hot metal and warm oil stung her nose. Soon she was striding past the armory and the testing range. The rattle and pop of guns reached her ears, muffled by the thick walls.

  All around her, blue-clad engineers worked in clusters or rushed between rooms. There was nothing to set this section of TAP apart from other industrial zones in the megacities, save for the fact that most of the engineers were under twenty years of age, like most people at TAP. It was a curious practice that no one outside of TAP would understand, and most inside TAP didn’t comprehend. But they all eventually would, to their cost.

  Willow took a deep breath to calm the nervous flutter in her stomach as she approached the rendezvous point. Her hand drifted to the pocket where she carried a small knife, just in case. She had never trained in security, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight like a wild cat to stay alive this time.

  The crowd of engineers thinned as she worked her way into the darker corridors where the huge ventilation pipes recycled the air. The corridor narrowed to follow the vents into the deeper shadows, lit only by the pale blue lights set at regular intervals in the ceiling high above. Willow cast about to make sure no one was following or watching her and slipped behind the black pipes. She knew TAP could track her, but she hoped with all the activity in this section, her passage would go unnoticed. If it didn’t, she would know soon enough.

  Kaiden hadn’t come to see her after he started having his spells. It wasn’t that they knew each other well, but after experiencing something like that, she felt a bond with him and thought, or hoped, he would feel the same for her.

  She slowed as the shadows deepened and slipped her hand into her pocket to grasp the knife. It had a spring-loaded blade that retracted into the handle. Her thumb found the switch. She tensed and stepped around another big pipe.

  No one was there. Confused, she checked her WT to make sure she wasn’t early. But she was right on time. She took two steps deeper into the shadow when an iron-like grip seized her wrist, and a hand clamped over her mouth, yanking her close to a body that felt as hard as stone.

  “Drop it,” a harsh voice whispered in her ear. Whiskers scratched the back of her neck, and she smelled the awful breath of a man who had been drinking. This was a smell she remembered all too well. Her father had been a drinker and a beater.

  Rage filled her chest, and she drove the elbow of her free arm back. A grunt came from the man who held her. Then she slammed her foot up and back, driving her heel into his groin. His grip loosed, and she twisted free, jerking the knife from her pocket and pressing the switch. The blade snapped out, and she was ready to fight or die.

  But her attacker was on his knees, bent over.

  “Crap, lady,” he groaned. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He wore a blue jacket like hers, but she could see the collar of a white t-shirt and the bulge of a pistol stuffed into his pants at the small of his back.

  “You touch me again, and I’ll slit your throat.”

  She bent to jerk the pistol free and pointed it at him.

  “He told me you were just a lab tech,” he said. “I thought you had a gun in your pocket.”

  The rush of adrenaline made her ears ring, and her knees feel weak. She suddenly wanted to cry. But she held it in.

  “What’s the message,” she said, “that he couldn’t send over the WT?”

  The man squinted up at her, the pale blue light overhead shining in his eyes. He had a red, scruffy beard and a hard look about him.

  “Give me a second,” he said. “You might have ruined my chances of ever having a family.”

  Willow couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. “Serves you right for jumping on me like that.”

  “Well, don’t walk around like you plan on killing someone, and you’ll make friends a lot easier.”

  “I didn’t know if I could trust you or him.”

  The man smirked. “Next time, I’m gonna let him run his own errands.” He crawled to his feet and extended his hand.

  “Name’s Hawk,” he said.

  Willow eyed the hand warily but shook it.

  “Now that we have the niceties over,” Hawk said, “Can I have my pistol back?”

  Willow hesitated and handed it to him. He tucked it into his pants.

  “The director sends his greetings,” Hawk said, “and says if you’re who you say you are, you’ll know what the last words are that he said to you.”

  A horrible wriggly feeling swam around in Willow’s stomach. She had thought about those words over and over again. They had invaded her nightmares. She swallowed.

  “He said, ‘Willow, I am sorry, I tried to save you.”

  Hawk grinned. “Excellent. Now, we’re cool.”

  He slipped a small, black device from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “If you need us, you just push this button, and we’ll contact you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell him I didn’t like what he did on that ship,” Willow said. “That was wrong on every level.”

  Hawk peered at her. “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ll let him know.”

  Kaiden bent over the mug of warm ale in the officer’s pub. The music and chatter around him provided a dull roar that helped him think and deadened the pain of losing Quill. His thoughts roamed and were filled with memories of his childhood at TAP, where he and Quill had been inseparable. It started that first day of tactics training when Quill followed Kaiden in a flanking movement that secured their objective while everyone else on their team was killed or captured in the mock battle. Then his thoughts wandered into vague, shadowy images of things he had never experienced.

  How could he remember things that had never happened? He was less than a year away from a promotion, and his spotless record now held two blemishes that would most likely end his career with TAP. What would he do if they discharged him? He didn’t know anything else. He had no family. All he had known was the orphanage where food and water had been scarce, and friends and affection had been non-existent.

  But now, there were new dreams and hallucinations, almost like memories—memories of people and places he had never seen, filled with longing and love. Emotions Kaiden had never felt.

  The soft glow of lights lit the pub where officers of every kind came to relax after a day’s work. Kaiden glanced around at the officers in their various colored coats—white coats for the physicians and geneticists, dark blue for the engineers, red for the computer programmers, green for logistics, light blue for the nursery, and black for security. All of them had a little red ark stitched into the left shoulder.

  Warm ale was a rare and expensive treat in which Kaiden rarely indulged. But the unsettling images and dreams haunted him, and the anguish of Quill’s death and Kaiden’s failure to protect his friends and crew members tormented
him.

  Kaiden swallowed a mouthful of ale and relished the warmth it spread in his belly. What was he to make of it all? What could the hallucinations mean that crept up on him—flashes of faces and events with no apparent connection—intimate details of a life he had never lived? He remembered playing Beethoven’s fifth symphony on a violin—but he had never even seen a real violin, let alone played one. He remembered throwing baseballs with a man in a park—though he’d never even been to a real park. And he remembered singing a lullaby to a baby girl he cradled in his arms. These hallucinations, or whatever they were, came with a dull ache that gripped his heart as if he missed something he loved and valued.

  It seemed clear that the bomb blast had rattled his brains. He was having PTSD symptoms of events he had never experienced with people he had never known. He had to accept that conclusion because the other was unacceptable. He could not be losing his mind at only nineteen years of age.

  Kaiden had endured the spasmodic flashes of hallucinations and daydreams for two weeks. It was like he was living two lives at once—one in the external world where he could touch, taste, and see—the other in an internal world of emotions filled with pain, doubt, and regret but also of love and belonging. Sometimes he felt that love so powerfully it brought tears to his eyes. Or he struggled against a sense of loss so intense that he would sit and stare at the wall of his living quarters like nothing in the world mattered anymore.

  Something had to change, or he would go crazy. He couldn’t go to the medical ward. They would have him removed from his command. With Quill gone, there wasn’t anyone he could talk to about the haunting images that flashed into his mind. Greyson blamed Kaiden for Quill’s death, and Birch was too close to the whole mess. Besides, he couldn’t let anyone on the team know that his head was messed up. He had to work through this somehow. But who was left? Whom could he trust? Willow? She knew or suspected what was going on inside his head, and apparently, she hadn’t told anyone. Maybe she would have some answers, or at least she’d let him talk through his sense of loss.

  Kaiden drained the rest of the ale and set out to find her. The smooth, white walls of the corridor reminded him of a hospital, and the woman in the white lab coat. He had gone there to visit her as a child. She had smiled at him, kissed him on the cheek, and given him a lollipop. She smelled of hair gel and sweet perfume. He loved that smell because it was her smell. He blinked at the sudden burning in his eyes. These images brought so much pain and longing. Kaiden had never experienced anything like it. Is this what it was like to belong to a family—to be so vulnerable?

  Kaiden paused in the hallway near the lab, where Willow worked. He stuffed his hand into his pockets and shuffled his feet, trying not to look so out of place in his black security uniform. Lab techs brushed past him, giving him a quizzical glance that said, “Why are you here?” If he went in there and admitted to Willow that he had PTSD symptoms, she could turn him in, and it would all be over. But he had to have answers. He couldn’t live like this.

  Willow stepped out of the lab. Her white lab coat flapped out behind her. He experienced a sudden hatred for that coat, but he didn’t know why.

  “Hey,” Kaiden said, trotting to catch up with her.

  Willow glanced around but didn’t stop walking. Her brown hair fell around her shoulders. In his horror and shock after the first disaster, he hadn’t noticed how beautiful she was.

  “Are you talking to me?” she said.

  Kaiden scowled. “We need to talk.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” Willow mocked. “How are you?”

  “What are you mad about?” Kaiden demanded.

  Willow stopped and glared at Kaiden with her hands on her hips. “Oh, I don’t know. Let me think. I saved your miserable life, and you acted like I was the terrorist.”

  “I lost another member of my team,” Kaiden said.

  Willow glowered. “Is that all Quill was, too?” she demanded.

  The rebuke hit Kaiden like a slap in the face. He almost spun and left her there, but he needed her.

  “He was my friend,” Kaiden whispered. “I need to talk.”

  Willow’s glower faded to a sad frown.

  “All right.” She checked the corridor, considering. “Follow me.”

  Kaiden clicked on the DWJ as he followed Willow into a small room with no windows just off the lab. No one else was in the room. Computers and monitors littered the countertops, and other equipment Kaiden didn’t recognize. Kaiden watched curiously as Willow clicked off the wrist terminal on her arm and motioned for him to do the same. When he had, she touched a few buttons on the countertop, so the hologram screens went blank. Kaiden followed her movements. She shut down everything in the lab that might allow them to be recorded or observed. The DWJ in his pocket would already do that, but there was no point in not letting her take these precautions. One never knew.

  “You’ve been expecting me,” Kaiden said.

  Willow smiled. “I thought you might come,” she said. “Life is easier if you know what to expect.”

  What was that supposed to mean?

  “Well?” Willow said. She raised her eyebrows. She was an attractive girl with little dimples in her cheeks and the freckles on her nose.

  “Uh, okay,” Kaiden said. “I lied to you in the elevator.”

  “I figured that out on my own,” Willow said.

  Kaiden stared at her, thinking she might chastise him, but she just watched him with tight-lipped anticipation.

  “And,” he continued, “I’m hallucinating about things that never happened, about people I’ve never met. Weird things––”

  “Like Rose?” Willow said.

  Kaiden shifted. “Yeah. Like I was playing a violin, and I don’t like grapes, and I was––” He almost told her about the rally where he was screaming, Kill the clones. But that didn’t seem like a good idea, given that the clone program was one of the most important programs TAP oversaw. He didn’t know how much he should confide to Willow, but he wanted to trust her with a sudden desperation that surprised him.

  Willow tilted her head to one side, pinched her brows together, and set her face in an expression of the utmost pity. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said with a little shake of the head.

  “Know what?”

  Willow threaded her fingers through her hair in an attitude of nervous excitement. Then, she leaned close to him. Kaiden caught a whiff of her sweet vanilla perfume.

  “We’re clones,” she said.

  Kaiden gaped and jerked away from her. “What? You’re joking.”

  But she wasn’t smiling. She had stopped fidgeting and fixed him with a steely-eyed stare.

  Kaiden knew the clones. He had transported them to and from the lunar station for three years now. He’d seen their sad, disinterested eyes and sallow cheeks. He’d seen their bodies, grotesque in death, where Raven had executed them.

  “No,” he said.

  Willow raised her eyebrows at him. “You and I and almost everyone working in TAP are clones.”

  Kaiden stood up. She was mocking him. This had been a waste of time. He should have known.

  “Sorry, I bothered you,” he said. Maybe Willow was the one who had lost her mind. Kaiden strode to the door of the lab and then turned back. “How would you know, anyway?” he demanded.

  Willow lowered her gaze to stare down at her feet for a moment before raising her head to look Kaiden square in the eyes. Her eyes were a deep rich brown, and her gaze was earnest. “I remember dying,” she said.

  Kaiden found himself temporarily robbed of his voice. It couldn’t be possible. Was she lying? No one could remember dying. And here she was, wasn’t she? Clearly not dead.

  “You don’t have to die to be cloned,” he said.

  “No,” Willow said. She clasped her hands in front of her as if struggling
for patience. “But we did. We all died.”

  Kaiden wanted to leave, to run from this horrible idea. But an undeniable fascination gripped him, and he returned to sit on the stool beside her. “That doesn’t make any sense. How come I don’t remember dying?”

  Willow sighed. “First, you need to understand that what we’re talking about could get us both killed.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Kaiden said. He knew very well what could happen. Quill had been murdered. He was sure of it.

  Willow eyed him like she thought he might be simple before jumping up to pace back and forth.

  “The answer is,” she said, “you aren’t awake yet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kaiden demanded. This conversation had been completely derailed. He came looking for help, and all he got was crazy talk.

  Willow shot him an annoyed glance but kept pacing. “It means your memories of your real life are still suppressed.” She stopped pacing, flopped onto a stool, and dropped her gaze to the tile floor. She clasped her trembling hands in front of her. “I was in a hovercraft accident,” she said. “They told my mother I was dead.” Willow touched her forehead with her fingers. “My mother kissed me on the forehead, and my mind was ripped from my body, where I existed in utter darkness and silence until I awoke inside a thirteen-year-old body.”

  Kaiden shifted uncomfortably. “Wait,” he said, “how old were you when you died?”

  Willow glanced up at him. She bit her lip and blinked back tears. “Nineteen,” she said. “The same age I am now.”

  Kaiden stared incredulously. “I don’t believe it.”

  Anger flashed across Willow’s face. She jumped off the stool and grabbed Kaiden’s arm, dragging him toward the door. “Come with me,” she snapped.

  Kaiden yanked his arm free. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

  Willow ignored him as she strode through the door and into the corridor. Kaiden followed, convinced more than ever that he had made a mistake in trusting her.

  She led him deep into the heart of the TAP complex to places Kaiden hadn’t been in years—not because he couldn’t, but because he had never needed to. His job was transport security. That meant he had the highest-level clearance, but he seldom needed to use it. The dark hallways of the upper levels where the security personnel had their living quarters and training facilities gave way to blue and gray hallways with labs and manufacturing sections.