The Clone Paradox (The Ark Project, Book I)

by J. W. Elliot

  Kaiden rose. “I think we have to assume that they’re all dangerous.”

  He grabbed a rifle and a flashlight and climbed down the ladder. He wanted to take a look around so he understood the landscape in case they had to stand and fight or needed to make a rapid exit. A blast of hot, dry air hit him, abrading his face with tiny grains of sand. Kaiden squinted and bent into the wind. His flashlight beam cut through the gathering darkness.

  He slid and scrambled down the hillside to the cavern entrance, trying not to think about everything that had happened. His movements kicked up a fine ash powder that coated his mouth and made him cough.

  How many clones of his mother existed? How many Roses, and maybe Kaidens? Should he try to save them? How could he not? Would killing all the Noahs put an end to the mad plan to murder billions of natural-born humans? He didn’t know if he could pull the trigger again—even though he knew they were clones this time. Kaiden snorted. He had murdered his own mother in cold blood, and he was planning to do it again.

  The valley stretched out before him, long and narrow with tumbled boulders and blackened corpses of trees that stabbed skyward like needles. It was a forlorn place. He found a boulder near the wall and plopped down onto it, laying his head back against the rock. Sweat dribbled down his face. He would have to go in soon. It was too hot to stay there, even in the gathering darkness.

  Kaiden glanced at his wrist terminal. What if his mother would respond to him? What if she would answer his questions? He knew it was a risk. She could just be sending him messages in an attempt to try to locate him. But if she had hacked the WTs, she probably already knew where they were. He clicked it on and punched out a quick reply, “How many are you?” He sent it and waited.

  To his surprise, the response came back almost instantly. “We are three—one for each of the three sons of Noah. Only three at a time possess all the memories. To stop The Flood, you must kill us all.”

  Kaiden’s gut tightened. The message continued.

  “I am watched. I will help you if I can. The others have sent soldiers to kill you. I love you, son. You have the strength to do what must be done, unlike the ones who came before.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he typed in. “How many times have I been cloned?” He wished he had thought to ask Willow to download the memories from his other lives. Maybe he could have learned something useful.

  “Many,” she typed back.

  The sound of boots crunching on gravel startled him. He clicked off the wrist terminal and snapped up his rifle.

  Willow paused in the beam of his flashlight.

  “It’s just me,” she said.

  Kaiden lowered the gun, trying to blink the hot emotion from his eyes. His mother had said she loved him. Even though he knew she was just a clone like he was, reading those words on the screen gripped his heart with a terrible longing he couldn’t describe.

  It was like having a split personality where the two sides warred for his emotional allegiance. He could love and value the lives of his clone friends while hating his own clone existence. He could respect his clone friends while seeing all clones as a type of corrupted humanity. It was maddening. He blinked at the sting of tears, grateful that the darkness hid them from Willow.

  She sat beside him. “Thinking of her?” she asked. “I’m sorry it happened that way.”

  “Yeah, well,” Kaiden said, “I have to go on killing her until they’re all dead, don’t I?”

  Willow laid a cool hand on his. “I know it’s hard. I keep thinking of Oakley as a little boy playing with a tiny hovercraft. I can’t understand how he became such a monster.”

  Kaiden glanced at her. “People who kill their family members are monsters, aren’t they?”

  “Hang on,” Willow said, “that’s not what I meant.”

  Kaiden stood, but Willow grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.

  “You have every right to be angry with me,” she said. “But you must understand I’m just doing the best I can. I’ve made mistakes, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Her voice caught. “I was trying to help you. To keep you safe.”

  Kaiden sighed. How could he get her to understand when he didn’t really understand himself? Everything that had gone wrong with his life began when he let Willow onto his ship at the lunar base. And now he had these horrible, explosive feelings toward her he didn’t understand. Maybe none of it was her fault, but after Oakley and his mother, how could he be sure? “You allied us with terrorists who slaughtered innocent children,” he said, “and worse, you kept information from me that could have jeopardized the life of everyone on our team.”

  “What could I have done to stop you?” Willow said. She grabbed his arm, but he yanked it away. “Stop blaming everybody else and accept some responsibility yourself.”

  Kaiden grunted, but she was right.

  “Please, Kaiden,” she said. Tears blossomed in her eyes. “I know I’ve made mistakes, and I’m sorry. But I warned you, and you wouldn’t listen. Besides, if Jade or anybody else had killed her, you would have attacked them.”

  He shook his head.

  Willow grabbed his arm. “Don’t deny it,” she said. “You’ve been so caught up in finding your family that if anyone else had done it, you would have killed them on sight. I should have tried harder to stop you, but you have to admit I’m right.”

  Shame and rage burned in Kaiden’s chest. He wanted to grab her and shake her. How could she be so rational about it? Couldn’t she see how much it hurt him? If he was going to be honest, this wasn’t about her at all. This was about him.

  Kaiden bowed his head. “I’ve become the monster I hated in more ways than one, and the only way to save humanity is to become even more horrible and kill my mother over and over again.”

  Willow pulled him into an embrace, pressing her body close to his. “I’m so sorry. I would take the pain away if I could, but I can’t do this alone. I need you.”

  Kaiden stiffened, wanting to continue fuming. At least the anger helped to quell his despair and self-disgust. But she was so earnest, and he had made his fair share of mistakes. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, desperate to find some sense of balance, some way to escape the emptiness and self-reproach.

  “I’m so sorry,” Willow whispered into his ear. “I would never hurt you intentionally.”

  She drew away, leaving wet tears to cool on his neck. Her eyes glistened. She had that same look Jade had had, and it scared him. What should he do? He didn’t want to hurt her the way he had Jade. She raised her hands to his face and leaned in. Inviting. Pleading. At the last minute, he shied away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Willow drew back and stared at him. Her bottom lip trembled.

  “I don’t think you’re a monster,” she whispered. Then, she stood and stepped toward the airship on the rise above them.

  “Wait,” Kaiden said. He wasn’t sure what to say. Willow wanted him to know that she cared for him, despite everything that had happened between them. And he cared for her, even though his feelings were so conflicted where she was concerned. Maybe it was that conflict that drew him to her in some weird, psychotic way he didn’t understand.

  Willow paused and looked back. An awkward silence lengthened between them as he searched for the right words. The blue lights of the airship shone eerily in the darkness.

  “When you’re finished here,” she said, “I have something important to show you.”

  When he only nodded, still uncertain what to do or say, she turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  Kaiden lingered. How should he feel? First Jade, and now Willow. He had been so absorbed with his struggle with his memories and their plans to destroy TAP that he hadn’t had time to really consider what he would do after it was all over.

  Jade remained in the shadow cast by the en
gine of the F-205 transport. Bitterness clawed its way up her throat. She had been on her way to speak with Kaiden, to explain that she had never meant to make him uncomfortable. But Willow was already there. Kaiden drew her into a close embrace and held her for a long moment.

  Her first inclination was to stride out there and tell him he couldn’t trust her. That Willow was using him. But if Kaiden had chosen Willow, what would that accomplish? She had suspected there was something between them. She just arrived too late. Willow already found a way into his heart.

  Kaiden stared after Willow, and Jade whirled away, not wanting to be seen. There was no point in trying to force herself into his affections. She would not belittle herself by begging. If Kaiden didn’t come to her of his own will, she would let him go. It was better to be alone than to grovel.

  Willow watched with a sense of satisfaction as the airships carrying clone refugees began arriving the next day. Kaiden and Flint made one of the big T-60 Python gunships their new command center. She listened as Kaiden and Flint debated what to do.

  “We can’t stay here,” Flint said as he scurried around, deleting the TAP tracking software on the ships, uploading Quill’s cloaking software, and waiting while it synced with the ship’s smart chips.

  “They might have tracked them to us already.”

  “We have to wait at least another hour,” Kaiden said. “If we move now, they won’t be able to find us.”

  “If we hang around here, TAP will,” Flint said.

  “I know,” Kaiden said. “I’ve already sent some of the security personnel down to set up a laser cannon battery in case we’re surprised, and I have a T-60 in the air above us to give us cover and a T-40 Stinger circling. We should have warning and be in a position to fight if we have to.”

  “And when they come?” Flint asked.

  “You’ll take this T-60, and I’ll get the other one. The four gunships will cover the transports. I’ve already talked to the pilots. They know what to do.”

  “Let’s hope they’re still in disarray at Ararat,” Flint said.

  Trying to piece together what was happening at Ararat, Kaiden and Birch set about interviewing the new arrivals while sorting them into groups by their expertise and skill sets.

  Willow and Jade treated those who were injured and tried to organize the sleeping arrangements. Colt wandered about getting in the way.

  “If you’re just going to stand there,” Jade said to Colt, “hand me that bandage.”

  Willow smiled to herself as she bandaged a young man who had worked in engineering. She didn’t like Jade much because she knew she had her eye on Kaiden, and Kaiden acted differently around Jade than he did Birch, but Willow had to admit that it was entertaining watching Jade go after Colt. They were like brother and sister.

  She had also looked into Jade’s background and found nothing but an impeccable record. Jade had moved around between teams because she requested transfers, but she had always been highly recommended. In some ways, Jade’s obvious competence irritated her the most.

  One of the few children to survive the slaughter at Ararat sat on a table with wide eyes, following Jade’s every move. She was an adorable African child with curly hair. A bullet had grazed her arm, but she was otherwise unhurt. Willow’s stomach tightened at the thought of Oakley and what he had done. He had dared call clones monsters. This poor child had seen horrors no human being should ever have to witness, let alone a child. How could anyone think she was a monster?

  Colt winked at the little girl and tossed a bandage to Jade. “She’s always grumpy,” he said. “But anybody with beautiful, black hair like hers can get away with it.”

  Jade glared at him. “Colt is one of those people who never manage to grow up.”

  “Why did they hurt us?” the girl whispered. Her face contorted in pain as Jade treated her wound.

  A knot twisted Willow’s stomach. This was her fault. She should never have trusted Oakley. She had been blinded by her desperation to reconnect with her family, to recover something of the love and life that had been stolen from her. And she had been determined to make TAP suffer. But she never expected innocent children to get caught in the crossfire. Tears burned her eyes. What could she have done differently?

  Willow felt the color drain from her face as Jade eyed her. None of them had training for caring for the young. But Colt never missed a beat. He knelt in front of the child and grasped her hand in his.

  “Some people think clones are dangerous, and they’re afraid of us,” he said.

  “But I’m too small to hurt anyone.”

  Colt patted her hand. “That’s why we brought you here. To keep you safe.” He glanced up at Jade. “Come on,” he said, “now that she’s done poking at you, I can show you something really cool.”

  He lifted the child from the table and carried her from the room in his arms, holding her close and whispering in her ear.

  Jade shook her head. “Even an idiot like Colt can be human.”

  Willow felt the irony of Jade’s words along with the bitter guilt that she hadn’t been able to comfort the girl—a girl whose life had been ruined because of her. This was the question all of the clones were now asking. Were they fully human? Perhaps it was nonsense, but it was a real worry for people whose identities had been stripped from them in one quick stroke. A broken identity had to be reconstructed somehow, and that would mean a lot of self-questioning.

  She wanted to say something to Jade to break the wall that had grown between them, but she couldn’t find the words. Kaiden was interested in Jade, and he had refused Willow’s offered kiss the night before. She couldn’t help but feel the prickle of jealousy whenever Jade was around. Kaiden apparently liked women who carried guns and blew things up. Maybe she didn’t have the right to be jealous, but she was.

  Jade broke the silence. “Don’t hurt him,” she said.

  At first, Willow thought she was still speaking of Colt, but the sad resignation in her gaze and her slouching shoulders convinced her she was speaking of Kaiden.

  “I have no intention of hurting him,” Willow said.

  “But you mean to keep using him, don’t you?” Jade said.

  Willow frowned. “I’m not—” she began, but Jade cut her off.

  “Don’t bother denying it. I’m not blind.” Then she shifted and looked away. “He prefers you, but he deserves to be able to trust the woman he loves.”

  Willow shifted uncomfortably. The rebuke stung, and she opened her mouth to shout an angry retort. Then closed it. What could she say? She was pretty sure Kaiden didn’t love her, at least not the way Jade intended. He wouldn’t even kiss her. But why would Jade think Kaiden preferred her?

  He had come to Willow before retiring last night, and she had told him she suspected that his mother had been syncing memory files before he killed her, but he had remained distant all day. She wondered what she might have done differently. She had exposed her true feelings and thought Kaiden had too until she looked into his face and saw the turmoil there. He didn’t know what he wanted, and she would just have to give him time.

  Jade left to care for another injured clone, leaving Willow to wrestle with her conflicting emotions. What if Jade was right? How would she get Kaiden to understand all that she had done?

  It took them much longer than expected to get organized so that they knew what skills each clone had to offer and which airship they were assigned to. Flint had several DWJs in every ship in the hope that they would jam any tracking signals the clones might be giving off. So far, there was no indication that TAP had found them.

  Their little army had grown considerably. Willow gathered all the older clones into the loading bay of the T-60 gunship, which served as their command center. The space was low but large enough to fit the clones who had come to them. Narrow window slits lined the sides of the loading bay, and Flint set up a seri
es of computers from which he could monitor all the complicated security hardware and software he’d spent hours installing on the dozen ships that had joined them.

  Over one hundred clones had gathered, ranging in age from nine or ten to nineteen. They brought stories of a civil war erupting in the corridors of Ararat and of Rio and the security forces resorting to mass discipline to put it down. Those who could escaped. They carried word that news of Ararat’s turmoil had spread to other TAP installations, and the insurgency was expanding.

  This surprised Willow. Once again, she had allowed her naiveté to convince her that she was the only one to remember her previous lives in any detail, but it was becoming obvious that TAP misjudged the success of their programs. The discipline had effectively terrified any who retained memories to keep their mouths shut. Now, they felt liberated.

  Flint elbowed Willow. “From the look of it,” he whispered, “we’ve started a flood of our own.”

  Willow had to agree. But would this flood be big enough to stop the one threatening humanity?

  “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” Kaiden shouted over the murmur of voices. He carried his rifle on a strap over his shoulder.

  The crowd quieted.

  “We need to know,” Kaiden began, “if anyone here knows about a top-secret TAP program code-named The Flood.” People gazed at each other, but no one spoke. Then, a single hand emerged from the back of the crowd.

  “Yes?” Kaiden said.

  All heads turned.

  A tall, thin man with a narrow face and high forehead rose. When he spoke, his voice was unusually high-pitched and nasally.

  “I believe we are The Flood,” he said. “Why else would they be creating us in such numbers?”

  “How many clones do you think there are?” Kaiden asked. Willow had tried to find this out but hadn’t been able to discover any statistics.

  “I don’t think. I know,” the man said. This statement caused a murmur to sweep through the crowd.