by J. W. Elliot
“I was appointed head of The Ark Project just before Rose died,” she began. “Your father oversaw the International Department of Environmental Cooperation that had been tasked with collecting the genome of every species of every ecosystem in the world. He employed thousands of scientists and originally developed The Ark Project as a top-secret, international effort to transfer earth’s genomes to a massive data bank on the lunar surface where it could be later transferred to other habitable planets when we discovered them.”
His mother motioned for him to sit again, but Kaiden ignored her. He raised his rifle and then lowered it again. He had come to kill Noah only to find that Noah was his own mother—the person he had longed to see. He tried to swallow the horrible lump in his throat, and he blinked at the stinging in his eyes. This couldn’t be happening.
“The Ecosystems Recovery Institute,” his mother continued, “began designing planetariums on the moon to reconstruct lost or dying ecosystems. Meanwhile, I continued my clandestine work on human cloning for the International Security Agency. My colleagues had been developing the ability to download the human mind as a binary code that could be stored and uploaded into another human brain. We had a brilliant young technician in Cognitive Redesign, Willow, who developed the software for us.”
A knot coiled in Kaiden’s gut. Willow had created the software TAP used to harvest their memories? The one TAP had used on her? She had told him as much, but to hear it from his mother’s lips sent a cold horror coursing through him.
His mother stared off at a picture on the wall. “I was too late to save Rose, but I could save you.” She paused. “I knew you would hate me. You already blamed me for not saving Rose.”
“Why didn’t you save her?” Kaiden demanded, feeling the old rage surge up inside him.
“You don’t think I tried?” his mother yelled, lunging to her feet. “I tried everything. There was no cure!”
“You let me die, too!” Kaiden shouted.
“No, I saved you. I resurrected you.”
“For what?”
His mother stopped and bowed her head. “I couldn’t use medical science to save my children,” she said, “so I used the science of cloning. Before you died, I downloaded your memories, and I harvested your DNA and cloned you. I tried to upload your memories into an eight-year-old cloned body. But it failed, and the brain died. When I was finally successful, I kept you away from the labs because I feared what you would do. But I had to keep you close.”
“Why didn’t you just let me die?” Kaiden said. “Now, I have to live knowing I’m a freak, all while I remember the family I should have had. The family you stole from me.”
His mother snorted. “I gave you immortality.”
“Wait,” Kaiden said. “You tried to kill me that day in New York. The day you killed Quill.”
His mother considered him. “You left me no choice,” she said. “You and Quill were meddling in things that did not concern you.”
“But, why didn’t you kill me after you caught me searching the security system? You let me go.”
His mother bowed her head. “I was weak. After I discovered that you remembered me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was too much like killing my own child.”
Now, Kaiden stared. “I am your child!” he shouted again.
His mother gave him a sad smile. “Yes,” she said. “I made you immortal, or rather, I extended your mortality. I keep you on a schedule, so when you have to be composted, I have a new son to replace you. You will go on living as long as I do.”
Kaiden stared in horror. What did she mean? “Schedule?” he said, but she ignored him.
“And then,” she continued, “I found plenty of people who were willing to pay big money for immortality. And, while I had them hooked up to my machine, I inserted new memories of loyalty to me and a secret belief that cloning was good. I used these people to gain access to political power at the highest levels, and then, I developed The Flood to save humanity.”
“Your clone army?” Kaiden said, though he was pretty sure The Flood was something else.
His mother laughed. “What do I need a clone army for? I’m creating a new species to replace the one that is so intent upon self-destruction.”
“Species?”
“I have designed clones to be more altruistic than natural humans,” she said. “More intelligent, less belligerent, less greedy. I also designed clones that could live in low oxygen, high radiation, and low gravity environments, just in case. I have prepared humanity to start anew and to colonize the stars. Because of me, humanity will survive.”
“Start anew?” Kaiden could hardly speak. The idea that his mother intended to wipe out every living natural human—even that little child he had seen in the city—repulsed him.
“That’s your Flood?” he asked. “You’re going to kill them all?”
His mother smirked. “Don’t paint me as the villain,” she said. “I’ve spent my life trying to save humanity, and what have you done? Before I gave you a second chance, you moped around and protested against the only future humanity had. I’m going to save them the way I saved you.”
A second, though smaller, detonation stuttered through the compound. Kaiden glanced toward the door. What was going on out there? A female voice came from the computer. “Sync complete,” it said.
Kaiden snapped his head around to stare at the computers. “What are you doing?” Kaiden demanded. She had distracted him to give herself time to complete a computer sync of some kind.
“I’m ensuring that my son doesn’t doom humanity to extinction,” she said.
Kaiden knew what he had to do. She hadn’t left him any choice. He raised his rifle. Tears spilled down his cheeks. His heart pounded against his rib cage. She had made him a monster, stolen his identity, corrupted his mind, kidnapped and murdered innocent children. And now, she was going to slaughter billions of innocent people.
“Please,” he said, “you can’t do this.”
She watched him. His own mother. He had longed to see her, to have her wrap her arms around him, and make all the pain and hatred go away. Kaiden swallowed. He couldn’t do it.
“You can’t kill your own mother,” she said.
“Please, don’t make me,” he said. “Please stop.”
He experienced a sudden clarity. Maybe without intending to, his mother had created him to stop her. That was why he was still alive. He steeled himself.
“I’m going to ensure that my mother doesn’t become the greatest mass murderer in history,” he said.
“I love you, Mom,” he whispered as he squeezed the trigger.
Gunshots rang in the corridor outside.
A second blast rolled through the compound, making the stairs shiver under Willow’s feet.
“What did your reset do?” Birch yelled as Willow caught up to her and Jade. They slowed to descend the stairs, bounding down them as fast as they could. Fighting had erupted everywhere. Clones were killing clones in a horrible blood bath.
“Looks like you screwed up,” Jade said.
“Shut up,” Willow choked. “I didn’t do this.”
“I can’t figure out why Kaiden trusts you,” Jade said. “Seems to me that you’re behind all of it.”
Willow resisted the urge to kick Jade in the back as they descended the stairs. But Jade was right. Kaiden shouldn’t trust her. She was using him the same way Oakley had used her. But she wouldn’t betray Kaiden—not really. Everything she was doing was for the good of humanity—for Kaiden’s own good.
“Hello,” Birch said as she paused in bounding down the stairs. Commander Rio had crawled to his hands and knees. He blinked up at them. Blood dripped from a cut on the back of his head.
“Have you seen Kaiden?” Birch snapped.
Rio reached for a knife at his hip, and Birch slammed the butt of h
er rifle into Rio’s head. He slumped to the ground.
“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” Birch said as she leaped over him and continued down the stairs.
Birch paused at the door to the Level Nine corridor, panting as she waited for the other two to catch up. She signaled for Jade to cover her and edged the door open. Beyond, Willow could make out a piece of equipment that might have been a floor cleaner. Birch jumped through the door and dropped behind it. Gunshots rang out, and Jade knelt, slipping her gun through the crack in the door. Her rifle jerked and spent shells jumped to burn against Willow’s face. She leaped back as the slap of bullets echoed in the stairwell. They were trapped.
Kaiden’s rifle bucked, and his mother jerked with the impact of two explosives rounds. She fell back on the couch as a red stain blossomed on her chest and spread to her white lab coat. The gun slipped from Kaiden’s grasp, and he leaped to his mother’s side. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. She still smelled of hair gel and perfume the way he remembered. She blinked at him and raised a hand to his cheek. More gunshots echoed in the corridor, but he ignored them.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said as a sob escaped his throat. He buried his face in her neck. How could he have done it? His own mother? The horror burned his chest. He was a monster. Only a monster could so callously murder his own mother.
The pulse in her soft brown neck continued to beat for a few moments before it ceased, and she lay limp in his arms. Kaiden started, half-expecting the INCR to kick in and save her. But, just like Quill, Burl, and Iris, the nano-organisms hadn’t had time to do their work.
Through the blur of tears, he saw the blue-black cuneiform tattoo on the back of her neck. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. The blue wedged-shaped tattoo read, For God So Loved the World. He jerked away from her body and came to his feet.
He stared at the computer. What had she done? Why hadn’t it occurred to him that she had not aged at all? Kaiden fell to his knees, burying his head in his hands. It had all been for nothing. He had murdered his mother for nothing. He sank to the floor, vaguely aware of the sound of gunfire and booted feet pounding in the hallway. Then, someone smelling of sweet sage was lifting him into an embrace. He clung to her in desperate agony.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Carbon Copy
“Who’s this?” Birch asked as Jade lifted Kaiden into a hug. The sound of running feet made Birch swing back to the doorway. She fired off three bursts, and the hallway went quiet. The smell of gunpowder drifted in the air.
Willow stared down at Kaiden’s mother’s body. A cold horror swept through her. Kaiden should have listened to her. When she began planning to attack TAP all those years ago, she had no idea who Kaiden really was, just that he was important to TAP for some reason. And she had remembered seeing him at the lab where she designed the synaptic transfer system.
She had only discovered clues to Kaiden’s true identity a few hours before they left the terrorists’ stronghold. Still, she had hoped she was wrong. If she had known, maybe she wouldn’t have selected him to help her destroy TAP. But now, she understood why Kaiden had been so violent when she had restored his memories. His own mother had cloned him when she knew how much he opposed the idea. His sense of betrayal must have been overpowering.
The feeling of triumph she had expected when Noah was finally destroyed didn’t come. Only sadness. Kaiden had been forced to kill his own mother. Willow should have insisted that it be someone else. She shouldn’t have let him come. But he wouldn’t have believed her. He would have thought she was trying to hide things from him again.
“I recognize her,” Jade said as she peered over Kaiden’s shoulder. “She was the one I shot in the Genesis Room.”
“So she was ordering Kaiden’s death?” Birch said.
“She’s Noah,” Willow said.
Birch glanced back from where she guarded the entrance. She smirked at her. “Um, maybe in your lab, male and female names don’t matter, but Noah is definitely a male name, and I think it has been ever since that dude in the big boat saved all those animals and insects.”
“She’s Kaiden’s mother,” Willow said.
Birch gaped. “No.” She glanced over to where Kaiden was pulling away from Jade’s embrace.
Willow strode to the computer console. “Better keep an eye on the corridor,” she said to Birch. Then she clicked on the computer. The words “Sync Complete” flashed on the screen.
“Hallway’s still clear,” Birch said, “but you better hurry.”
“What was she syncing?” Willow asked.
Kaiden stepped over to study the screen with her. His eyes were red and puffy.
“I don’t know,” Kaiden said. The defeated, gruffness of his voice made her cringe. Would he ever be able to recover from this?
“She’s deleting files,” Willow said as her fingers clicked the keys. “We have to stop this.”
Willow heard shuffling behind her but ignored it as she hurried to cancel the delete command. Noah had been trying to hide something. Willow managed to interrupt the delete command and discovered that it was a folder entitled The Flood. She clicked on it. These files weren’t in cuneiform, but they were also corrupted. The image of a huge tree with great spreading branches filled the screen. In the center, the words Tree of Life flashed.
“She likes to mix her cultural references,” Jade said.
“What?” Willow asked as she stared at the tree.
“Cuneiform from Mesopotamia, The Ark from Israel, and now, the Tree of Life from Mexico—at least this one looks like the one from Mexico.”
“What’s it supposed to mean?” Birch asked.
“I think for the Aztecs,” Jade said, “the tree represented the world. But for some eastern religions, it represented immortality. In the west, the Tree of Life has its roots in hell and is able to destroy the earth.”
“How do you know that?” Kaiden asked.
Jade shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s leftover from whatever I did before they harvested me.”
“Whatever it means, I think we should go,” Birch said. “Oh, hello.”
Willow didn’t turn to see who Birch was talking to. But Kaiden and Jade spun away. She heard the snap of rifles being raised. She was already downloading the file, transferring everything she could grab to Flint’s computer that was still hooked into the system back in Rio’s office.
Once the download was running, she turned to find Jade, Birch, and Kaiden all facing a narrow stairwell to an upper level of the room with their rifles up. Rio stood on the bottom step with his handgun leveled at Kaiden’s chest. Blood dribbled from the wounds on his head. His nostrils flared, and his lip curled in a sneer. He must have known a back way into Noah’s chambers. That was unexpected.
“Careful,” Birch said, settling her rifle against her shoulder.
“What have you done?” Rio demanded as his gaze took in Noah’s body draped over the sofa. Streaks of blood stained his face, which was wet with sweat. He was panting hard.
“We’re stopping you all from murdering billions of innocent people,” Kaiden said.
A third blast somewhere above rattled the dishes on the table.
Rio glanced at the ceiling. “You let the terrorists in here?”
“Only a few, and they’re secure,” Kaiden said.
“They’re killing us all,” Rio said.
Kaiden glanced at the others in confusion. “What’s he talking about?”
“Oakley lied to us all,” Willow said. “He had ships waiting outside to come in when we uploaded the memories.”
Kaiden cursed as a fourth explosion shook them, toppling pictures from the walls.
“Okay,” Birch said. “We can stand here pointing guns at each other all day, or we can get the heck out of here and maybe save a few of our friends.”
Kaiden lowered his gun. “It’s your call Rio,” he said.
Rio strode the three steps between them and tried to slam the butt of his pistol into Kaiden’s temple. But Kaiden caught his arm and drove his elbow into Rio’s face. Rio twisted, catching Kaiden’s leg, sweeping it out from under him. Kaiden slammed onto the floor.
“Hey,” Birch yelled. “Drop your pistol, or I’ll fill you full of lead.”
Rio paused and glowered at her. Jade fired a round past his ear. He ducked and raised his pistol. Jade’s second bullet slammed into his shoulder. Rio stumbled back, clutching at the sudden burst of red on his black uniform.
“You people play around too much,” Jade said.
“Don’t kill him,” Kaiden shouted. “We may need him to get out of here.”
Birch sniffed and stepped up to Rio. She leveled her gun at him. “Unless you want to die,” Birch said, “I suggest you drop your gun.”
Rio cursed, letting the pistol slipped from his fingers, and then he spat on the ground beside Kaiden, who had crawled to his hands and knees.
“Someday,” Rio said, “I’m going to get my hands on all of you and beat some sense into your thick heads.”
“That’s nice,” Jade said. “Now, move.”
“What about my shoulder?” he said.
Jade cast him a disdainful glance. “That’s not my problem, and I don’t really care if you bleed to death.”
“Nice of you to drop by,” Flint said as they raced into Rio’s office twenty minutes later.
“Come on,” Kaiden said, anxious to get out of there.
“What are you doing?” Rio demanded.
Flint held up his hand. “It’s almost finished.” Then he took a second glance at Rio, taking in his bloody shoulder and the muzzle of Jade’s rifle fixed on his back. “Tried to arrest them, did you?”
Kaiden glanced to the door. “Come on, Flint. We’ve got to go.” He had to get them out before they became trapped.