by Nadia Afifi
As the room came back into focus, she realized she had been unconscious for mere seconds. Everyone around her was reacting to the blast. Hadrian lay flat on his stomach, staring at her incredulously, while Barlow, forehead bleeding, watched her with a knowing, almost appraising smile. Lee was struggling to his feet but buckled, and several of the other children rushed forward to carry him.
The Trinity men, or what was left of them, retreated to the back of the house. Reznik and another man grabbed Elder Young by the arms. The Elder babbled incoherently, his face stretched in terror. Reznik was wounded as well, hobbling awkwardly as he attempted to drag the Elder away, shooting a final glance in Amira’s direction not unlike Barlow’s.
We will meet again, it promised.
Sarka lay dead on the floor with a large shard of glass planted in the middle of his forehead. At least fifteen other compound men were dead, either from the earlier battle with Zhang’s fighters or from the impact of the blast. Tiny pieces of glass scattered across the floor like winter’s first snow.
Lee let out a triumphant war cry, joined by the other compound children. Though several appeared badly injured, the lifeless bodies belonged to the Trinity and the robots, who absorbed most of the assault.
Hands gripped Amira’s arms from behind. D’Arcy, her face pale, lifted her off the ground with help from Maxine.
A cold, clammy sensation overcame Amira as she scrambled to her feet. The battle was over but her sense of danger, if anything, heightened.
Barlow knelt over Parrish, trying to slow the bleeding from his abdomen, but he shook his head grimly at Hadrian. Hadrian winced when he touched his injured shoulder. The wound was considerably less severe than Parrish’s.
“Help me move him,” Barlow said softly. “We need to keep him lying down. Try to relax, Alistair.”
Harsh fumes of smoke filled Amira’s nostrils as the men supported Parrish.
“We need to go,” Amira said.
“Let’s be careful to keep him immobile,” Barlow said. He tore the side of his shirt to create a new bandage. Amira approached the door the Trinity men had just retreated through, only to be greeted with a gust of heat. At the far end of the house near the backyard entrance, the first traces of orange flames licked at the carpet.
This had all happened many times before, night after night – the same clammy fear that awoke her, the dream of the burning house she could not escape.
“Fire!” she screamed. “Run!”
The fire was already spreading at alarming speed, forcing them back to the main entrance, or what remained of it. Amira found Rozene behind the same pillar where she’d left her. She pulled her up roughly. Hadrian and Barlow carried Parrish, whose tall body swayed as they sprinted out of the atrium. D’Arcy joined Amira to help her support Rozene.
The fire moved quickly. It brought with it a fierce heat and even harsher smoke, a shadow that hovered in the air above them and blackened the walls as it chased them into the main entrance.
At first, Amira kept pace with Rozene and D’Arcy but soon, her legs grew heavier and weaker with each step. Panic choked her, her chest spasming as the heat drew nearer. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t breathe. Something about Victor Zhang’s weapon had drained her, like it had weakened Parrish. Her energy left her, mentally and physically, whereas the smoke appeared to have lit another fire in Rozene, who hobbled ahead of D’Arcy toward the door, her face set with determination.
“What’s happening?” D’Arcy yelled as Amira slowed down further. She shook her head, struggling to speak. D’Arcy wrapped her arm across her shoulder and continued to run.
They reached the landing stairs that led down to the front entrance. Rozene stumbled at the first step but gripped the rails. Righting herself, she descended the stairs alone, eyes trained ahead. Still on the landing, Hadrian looked darkly at the ailing Parrish before raising his eyebrows at Amira and Barlow.
Barlow, reading his expression as Amira did, shouted above the roaring fire.
“We can’t leave him here to die!”
And so they continued down the stairway, stepping over broken glass and the charred remains of Zhang’s soldiers. Before they reached the front door, a loud crack followed by a rushing sound stopped them. A wooden beam from the upper level fell directly in front of the exit, bringing with it a new rush of heat and flame.
The fog within Amira returned; her legs gave way and she collapsed to her knees. D’Arcy was shouting something and Hadrian was smashing a nearby window, but she could not move another inch in any direction. She curled up on the warm floor and waited, inhaling deeply as the crackling flames reverberated from the hardwood floor into her eardrum.
Maybe I’ll suffocate before I burn, she thought. In either case, it would be over soon.
A pair of hands gripped her roughly under her arms and lifted her. Another set of hands grabbed her ankles and then she was flying, weightless, until a burst of fresh, clean air filled her lungs and she landed roughly in the grass, its earthy scent filling her nostrils.
Behind her, Hadrian, D’Arcy and Barlow were retching. Hadrian’s fits were interlaced with a string of curses. He and D’Arcy must have thrown her through the window along with Parrish, who coughed violently nearby. Relieved, Amira tried to move her legs again. Her left knee bent slowly at her command, followed by her right, and she crawled toward the front gate, distancing herself further from the roaring heat. As she reached the gate, a loud boom! sounded behind her. The second level had caved in, engulfing the entire house in flames. The rain continued to fall but the fire was beyond control and would end of its own accord.
An engine sounded and Amira whipped around to see an all-terrain vehicle speed away from the house and across the desert. Reznik sat at the front, leaning forward in exhaustion, but thankfully the vehicle’s occupants didn’t spot Amira and the others as they retreated. Two surviving Trinity fighters in the back of the vehicle tended to Elder Young, now screaming incoherently. Another all-terrain followed closely behind, carrying the Trinity women. Amira caught Marlee’s curls flying in the wind and her heart fluttered with relief at the girl’s survival.
Barlow and Hadrian were carrying Parrish in her direction, moving him further away from the fire, but the urgency had passed. They were out of danger.
“First aid kit?” Hadrian asked Amira.
She wordlessly pulled it from the interior of her jacket, and Hadrian set about patching his shoulder while Barlow and D’Arcy administered a shot of painkillers to Parrish. Maxine lay on her back, coughing.
“I’ll never smoke again,” she gasped.
The children had apparently escaped before them and taken shelter under a nearby tree. Lee was still alive but alarmingly pale. Maxine grabbed some gauze and wound sealant from Amira’s first aid kit, which she threw at the kids between fits of coughing.
Amira lay on the ground for another minute, feeling her strength return. Her head cleared slowly, the fog lifting as she watched the fire begin to devour the house’s frame. She noticed Lee looking around, his face tight with fear. After a pause, she rose to her feet, knees buckling slightly.
“Where’s Rozene?” she asked.
The men looked around the garden.
“Where is she?” Amira shouted, panic rising. No one answered.
Amira ran through the front gate into the desert and found Rozene sitting under a single parched juniper tree. Her legs were spread wide, her long red hair trailing down her spine as she leaned back and breathed deeply.
Rozene was never in a more vulnerable position than now. The moment had arrived.
Amira knelt by Rozene as she began pushing in earnest, her small features contorted in silent pain. When Amira took her place next to her, she felt a sudden calm, now that they were here, in this long-awaited moment. Rozene kept pushing and breathing, Amira patiently by her side.
Neither w
oman was a stranger to childbirth; in the compounds, new life was welcome, the arrival of a new soul from the Conscious Plane, destined to travel in death across worlds. Amira had witnessed and sometimes assisted as brothers, cousins and neighbors entered the world to screams and tears, an ancient feminine rite as normal as preparing dinner at the end of a long day.
For a birth unlike any other in human history, it was remarkably ordinary.
A small creaking noise escaped between Rozene’s clenched teeth during each push, her fingers digging into the sand. Amira grabbed one of her hands and inched closer to her feet.
“You can do this, Rozene,” she said. “Don’t give up!”
Hadrian ran toward them, Lee hopping and stumbling behind with gauze tight around his calf. They slowed down to a nervous hover as they took in the scene transpiring under the tree.
“Get over here and help,” Amira barked.
Rozene let out an audible groan, her loudest so far, and she rested back onto her elbows. Her face was wet, rain and tears rolling together down her pale cheeks.
Hadrian crouched behind Rozene, holding on to her shoulders while Amira remained in front of her, squeezing her hand and uttering the occasional word of encouragement. In pain but unable to stay back, Lee knelt beside Amira and they exchanged a nervous, excited glance.
“Good to see you again, little Rozene,” Hadrian said quietly.
Then Rozene cried in a single, piercing wail and Amira leaned forward to grab the head that appeared at last, and another scream, smaller but sharp and announcing, joined hers as the first human clone emerged into the world.
The infant girl screamed in Amira’s arms, raising her tiny red fists as the rain fell. Wordlessly, Lee whipped off his jacket and handed it to Amira, who wiped the newborn clean. Hadrian handed Amira a small pocket knife and she cut the umbilical cord. The children watched the scene from a distance, silent and respectful.
“How is she?” Rozene asked in a daze. “Is she normal?”
“Of course.” Amira handed her to Rozene, whose face reflected the gamut of emotions that greet every new mother – joy and awe, a look of powerful, frightening love accompanied by the realization that the frail life in her arms depended on her completely for survival.
Hadrian breathed a sigh of relief behind Rozene’s shoulder and Amira smiled. For that fleeting moment, they were safe.
The sound of heavy footsteps announced Barlow’s approach; he and D’Arcy half carried Parrish, now alarmingly pale. He stumbled and they laid him down on his back, his hair and beard blending in with the soil, in contrast to the thick red blood on his abdomen.
“He shouldn’t be moved out here,” Hadrian began warningly, but Amira understood. Parrish wanted to see the clone, Valerie Singh’s final and greatest endeavor.
Rozene understood this as well. Smiling, she lowered the baby down to Parrish’s eye level. The infant was no longer crying but looking around her intently, as though searching for clues to decipher the strange shapes and sounds that made up her narrow world. She found her mother’s face and rested her gaze there.
Parrish turned to face the baby and touched her cheek lightly with a shaking hand.
“Perfect,” he said in a faint voice. “Just perfect. Valerie was right about this. And about you.” He looked up at Amira.
“They wanted to get rid of you,” Parrish continued weakly. “The Cosmics, when Pandora turned around, thanks to you. But by then it was too late – Valerie was going to get her clone. And so we let the Trinity Compound take care of things, and I told them that would be the end of you. But I was tired of killing or letting others be killed. Victor, then Valerie…lost forever, each in their own way. Great minds. Valerie, following Maya into the world between life and death. You remind me of Valerie when she was younger, Amira Valdez, and I didn’t want another great mind thrown away in the cause of faith.
“And to you, I’m so sorry,” he said, turning back to Rozene. “I’m sorry for what was done to you and what you must face now. Take care of her. She is precious to us all.”
Rozene nodded, her wide eyes welling with tears. Amira glared coldly at Barlow, who smiled calmly back.
Parrish died shortly thereafter. They injected him with aggressive doses of morphine from Amira’s first aid kit to keep his final moments as painless as possible. As the chemicals took effect, he watched the baby with smiling eyes then turned his gaze to the sky. Amira knew that he was searching for the Carthage, where Maya remained. He did this for his final moments, turning from his old child to the new and back again, until both slipped out of his reach forever.
* * *
The rain died down in the afternoon, but the house continued to smolder. One corner of the structure remained standing, albeit heavily damaged. While Rozene rested in the shade with her newborn tightly wrapped to her, Amira combed through the remnants of Zhang’s den, populated by computers in varying states of damage.
Barlow’s shadow emerged behind her while she examined the charred insides of the largest quantum processor. She moved on to the next one, ignoring him.
“Our friend Agent Wolfe found an all-terrain vehicle in the hills out back,” he said. “The Trinity men must have left it behind when they escaped. There were fewer of them going out than came in, it’s safe to say.”
Amira didn’t answer. She opened the second processor and inspected the hard drive, singed around the edges but relatively intact. There was no power, however, and the wires were destroyed. She lifted it up toward the window to test for solar capability.
“Is there any urgency in getting a connection to the outside world?” Barlow asked.
“Parrish is dead, Victor Zhang is in a freezer, and the house is littered with bodies,” Amira answered. “And I have the holomentic readings from the Carthage. If I can get them to my friends in Westport, they can send them to the Westport PD. I was their number one suspect after the Soma attack, and I’d like to get my name cleared.”
“Ah.” Barlow leaned forward and peered at the hard drive Amira was trying to recharge. “Before we invite the police and the rest of Westport over, perhaps we should discuss the plan for M. Hull and her…copy.”
Amira at last turned to face Barlow, her expression hard with anger.
“Good idea. What did you do to her the night you snuck into her ward?”
“Before we get to that,” Barlow began placidly, “and believe me, M. Valdez, we will get to that before long, we need a plan for the girl. When Dr. Singh still headed Pandora, which is now my project to continue, by the way, the plan was to keep M. Hull at the Soma under close monitoring while she and the clone underwent medical tests and observation. She would then be moved to a house in Aldwych, probably in the Rails, to continue our observations.”
“Too risky,” Amira said immediately. “She and the baby are still targets for a lot of people. The Cosmics want them both. And neither one of them will have a normal life the way you described it.”
“I don’t disagree,” Barlow replied. “And I welcome your suggestions for where to house her. But she must be observed closely. It is not just ensuring that the clone develops the way a…naturally produced infant would, without defects or mutations, but to see the impact certain developments have on M. Hull herself.”
“The Tiresia you injected her with,” Amira said. “The drug Hadrian had me steal on your orders. What does it do?”
Barlow laughed.
“On my advice, M. Valdez. I don’t think anyone gives Hadrian Wolfe orders. Yes, what you removed from the Soma was the last of my Tiresia supply. I knew the Cosmics wanted to get their hands on it and I needed it in a safer place.”
“They were afraid you’d do what you ended up doing,” Amira said.
“I’m not sure they knew I was using it secretly in Pandora, but they know what Tiresia does. To answer your question, it was developed years ago by myself a
nd Victor Zhang, among others – and perfected in this very house, in fact. The process for creating Tiresia was…horrific, in many ways. Difficult, and something the Cosmics swore to avoid repeating. But we succeeded. Its original goal was to discover a means of achieving a singular consciousness. You witnessed that with Victor’s robots, but machines are less complex, easier to manipulate. The Cosmics, with endorsement from some ambitious compound Elders, wanted to meld the minds of many into one. Feed the individuals into a hive mind, a higher level of cognition and awareness.”
The ground spun.
“They could control people,” Amira said slowly. “Make them do things they didn’t want to, lose their free will.”
“Concerns I shared as well,” Barlow said. “But my view ended up in the minority. Victor and others were eager to see it in action, and the mellow, Chimyra-addled sheep of the compounds made ideal test subjects. The partnership with the compounds began then.”
“So the Cosmics want this as well?” Amira asked.
“A faction of them do,” Barlow said, his forehead wrinkling in disgust. “I had other ideas and made sure the last of the supplies of my drug remained out of their hands. In the meantime, I ran my own experiments and learned of other side effects. Some opportune, some less than desirable.”
“Such as?”
“In small doses, they are minimal. But the medication can cause severe confusion and a fractured sense of self due to the impact it has on conscious perception, traumatizing an already traumatized individual further.”
“Which is what nearly turned Rozene crazy, along with some random Cosmic tampering with her memory,” Amira said before she remembered another detail. “Nina Leakey and Jessica Alvarado! They were both administered the drug. It was on their records. You did the same thing to them.”
Barlow said nothing. Amira sat down in shock.
“I still don’t understand,” she said. “Why give it to them? They were supposed to carry a clone to term, so why give them something that harms them, makes them lose themselves?”
“That brings me to the other effect of Tiresia,” Barlow said, and he knelt to face her directly with an intensity that was unnerving, even by Barlow’s standards. “Before I explain it, let me ask you a question, Academy student – are you familiar with the concept of ‘roaming consciousness’?”