Archetype (22 page)

A
nti-explosive sensors scream their warning the second we step out of the teleporter. Foster and I exchange a glance and he absently adjusts the bag strapped across his chest. We had an idea this would happen and had prepared ahead of time. The red-coated security would not know where to look first, thanks to the multiple locations sounding at the same time.

Foster and I step into the hallway, tucking away our weapons. I walk as if I belong, though I have never been on this floor before. It looks nothing like the hospital floor where I have lived most of my cloned life. Here the floor is carpeted, the color of walls and decorations darker. Photographs of lead team members and their specialties hang opposite plaques of achievement. This floor is where the private offices are. Where Declan’s office is.

“He is not here,” I say. “You are sure?” I know I will have to confront Declan, but I do not think I am quite ready yet. I need time. I need forever.

Foster nods. “Burke is in his Richmond office, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be here soon. Especially when he hears about the alert. He’s usually quick to react.”

“We only need a couple minutes’ head start.” A couple hundred years. A couple hundred centuries.

The piercing wail of sirens covers our conversation, so everyone we pass on their way to the transportation bay ignores us except to look at us like we are crazy for staying. So far, we have not run into anyone who recognizes me. Just a bunch of suits. No doctors. More important, no security.

Foster takes me by the elbow to lead me down another hallway. “This way.”

Declan’s office is at the back of a glass-encased reception area that is nearly identical to the one in Burke Enterprises. Walls with intercrossing black lines on silver to represent a computer chip. Mahogany wood. Comfortable furniture.

I walk by a low coffee table with computer tablets arranged in a fan shape, the faces of various magazines on the front. I have time to read only the top one.
THE BATTLE AGAINST MOTHER NATURE COMING TO A CLOSE. FERTILITY ON THE RISE. THE STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO ENSURE IT ISN’T TOO LATE FOR YOU AND YOURS.
There is even a picture of a perfect, happy family, openmouthed as if laughing. Husband, wife, son, and daughter.

“Is that true?” I ask Foster.

He glances down and skims the cover. “What?”

I follow him down another hallway with a giant glass door on the front. “Fertility is on the rise?”

He contemplates his answer before saying, “Yes, it appears that way. But there are several theories as to how.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some say Mother Nature is done screwing with us, while others credit men like Declan Burke.”

This makes me pause. “What have men like Declan done to gain this regard?”

Foster pushes through a set of glass doors. “Roughly a hundred years ago, a civil war broke out and split the United States right down the middle. Women in the west live free, while the east forces women at a young age into society as they see fit. It’s slavery masked as a training center.”

“How many centers does Burke Enterprises run?” I ask, my throat tightening. I never imagined Declan was a man involved in the slavery of women. It makes me sick to my stomach.

“More than half. They’ve been in the family for three generations. But your husband—shit, sorry—
Burke
has taken the business a step further.”

“How so?”

“He’s kidnapping women and children from the west, only neither government can pin the crime on him. It’s likely the east isn’t trying very hard.”

I stop short just inside Declan’s office. “Kidnapping? So he is probably sending covert teams into the west to do the job?”

Foster nods. “Yeah. Guess he didn’t think the few girls captured with the few-and-far-between resistance hubs were enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re everywhere, Wade, but we aren’t perfect. The government finds pockets of resistance all over the place. What do you think they do with the children? They’re innocent, right? The boys are adopted out, but the girls . . .”

“Go into the nearest WTC,” I say.

He nods. “How do you think you ended up there?”

My heart gallops in my chest and I feel short of breath. “My parents were resistance?”

“Stephen and Lily Wade, imprisoned twenty-four years ago. Escaped twenty years ago and haven’t been heard from since.”

I could not believe it. My parents had names. And they could still be alive somewhere.

Foster touches my arm. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

While Foster slides behind Declan’s desk and opens his bag, my mind whirls. Declan has a team in trouble over in the west as we speak, and if they are caught, the east’s government will not have any other choice but to fine him or throw him in prison or whatever the punishment is for such an act. From the stress it has caused Declan, it is bad enough that he risks losing the family’s business at the very least.

Foster finds the computer hard drive—a wireless dark gray box lit up with five red lights—in a desk drawer and lays it on the desktop. He digs a slim card out of his bag and places it on the hard drive. A tiny red light lights up in the center and pulses on contact. He then pulls out his cell phone and autodials a number. Someone picks up after only two seconds.

“Uploading now,” Foster says. “How long until you can get us in?”

I scan Declan’s office for the first time. Only one plain wall, with the computer in sleep mode to his fish tank. A huge set of shelves fills another wall, part of it a glassed-in liquor cabinet. My paintings—another set of winter-themed mountains I did not like—decorate the other two walls. This office is half the size of his other one, so I guess he does not spend as much time here.

Foster hangs up and stands. “We’re in. You ready?”

I nod and swallow the lump in my throat. This is it.

The bare wall lifts into the ceiling, revealing another set of glass doors. They slide aside with a quick
shiff,
and Foster darts for the opening. He is pulling his gun out as he goes, and I follow his lead.

We find ourselves in a bare white hallway that winds around in a curve. The wall opens to our left just ahead. Foster stops at the edge and peers around and over the railing quickly to scope out the area for security. The second time he looks, he stares intently, mouth ajar.

“Shit,” he whispers. “This is it. This is where—”

I do not wait for him to finish and move around his other side to look for myself. The room is massive—at least three stories high, hexagonal in shape, and blindingly white. Most of the walls are screens running a constant flow of data. In the center of the floor is a pool.

With bodies in it.

Foster digs into his bag again. “I have to set up video. Hold on.”

“Why? We are destroying the place.”

“Visual proof of what’s going down in flames.” Foster looks up at me. “Even if we make it out of here alive, our word will never be enough.”

He pulls out a small, flat disc. The silver surface seems to disappear in his hand, yet he continues to clutch at it. He must catch my confusion because he presses the object in my hand. I feel the metal, flat and cold, but it is completely invisible.

“It camouflages itself,” he tells me. “Once placed, no one will ever find it. The technology has been around for ages, but Tucker Securities gave it a massive upgrade.”

I nod and hand the disc back, thinking of the camera I never found in my old hospital room and the 360-degree version Declan now has installed everywhere. “Yeah, I noticed.”

Foster reaches over the railing and slaps it to the surface below. “Okay, let’s go.”

I reach a set of stairs and take them as quickly as possible. The echoing tap of shoes behind me tells me Foster is on my heels. I run straight for the pool, and my momentum nearly sends me over the wide ledge into the water. Directly in front of me is a clear oval sack with a body that has no discernible features.

I run to the next body and find the previous body’s identical twin: pale skinned to the point of being see-through, hairless, and soft. The pale magenta of the eyelids and blue system of veins give the only color. It is curled in on itself like a fetus in a womb.

The sacks
are
wombs.

A large piece of machinery hovers over the water like a giant claw that can swivel all around the pool. I do not have to see it in action. It can pick up the sack and lay it down on one of two steel tables to my left. Hospital equipment sits against a wall near them. Lamps on swinging arms jut out from the head of each table.

I recall my first memory. The white light in my eyes. Travista shoving the light aside to look down at me.
I think we have finally done it,
he’d said.

“Oh my God,” I say on a slip of breath. This
thing
in the pool, this featureless body, used to be me. I came from this place. My stomach lurches and I cover my mouth.

Foster lays a hand on my shoulder and peers over me. “Ready-made bodies. That’s how he made Lydia Farris so fast.”

I turn around and see a screen lit up with medical data for each clone, ten in all. Another screen lists them as numbers one through ten. Next to each one is a list: full neuron transfer, DNA absorption, cellular and skeletal growth, and skin formation. All say zero percent complete.

“Let’s get started,” Foster says and hands me an explosive. “We don’t have much time.”

He jumps into the pool and attaches a charge to the large white pole protruding from the center. I look around until I find what looks like the computer’s main server. It is much larger than the hard drive in Declan’s office—by at least five times. Hundreds of red lights blink sporadically at me as I attach the charge.

We place the last two and are heading for the stairs when the two doors in the room slide open. Red coats. Guns raised. Nobody is firing, though, and I know it has nothing to do with the fact that Foster and I are spinning back to back with our own guns trained on them. We are completely outnumbered.

“Put down the weapon,” a deep-voiced man calls.

I hold up the detonator to the bombs but never let my gun leave the man I have it pointed at. Boy, actually. He could not have been older than twenty and would probably die here with the rest of us today.

A few of the men recognize the detonator and exchange glances, but their guns never waver. Foster and I move toward the stairs, and the men edge closer. I glance behind me and find the stairs filling up with men there, too. I follow the line of security up to the railing and find the guest of honor, gripping the edge, knuckles white, expression tight.

“Don’t shoot,” Declan tells his men. “I’d like a word with my wife.”

I
am not your wife,” I say.

“Yes, you are. The day you turned eighteen—”

“The record of your so-called marriage to Emma Wade was deleted a long time ago.” I feel a little smug being able to tell him this. I cannot believe he did not already know. “You and
I
were never married.”

Declan pushes off the railing with an audible gust of breath and disappears in the crowd. He reappears near the bottom of the stairs. He has removed his tie and jacket and is unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt with sharp twists and jerks. His gaze burns into mine and I swallow hard over a lump in my throat.

I back away automatically and run into Foster’s back. We glance at each other for a quick moment. His gaze is steady, ready for anything despite the fact that we are about to die. He puts too much faith in me.

“How much do you know?” Declan asks.

“Enough.”

“Doubtful.”

“How much do
you
know?” I ask, my throat tightening. “Do you know she is still alive? That she was pregnant when you left her to die?”

Declan jerks to a stop. “That’s impossible.”

“I met her today. Saw her with my own two cloned eyes.”

“Then you saw an empty shell,” Dr. Travista says. He steps around a group of security to my right. “Because one soul can’t inhabit two places at once.”

Foster stiffens behind me. “Did he just use the word we threw around as a joke?”

“Yes,” I say, a little breathless. “He did.”

Travista shakes his head and frowns at me. “You, Emma, are Emma Wade, new body or old.”

I recall the words on the medical screen: “full neuron transfer.” Scientific jargon I will never understand, but I know neurons pass information between cells. If Travista passed all of Emma’s neurons to me, what did that mean? Emma is brain-dead, and I have Her memories. Is it possible . . . ?

I shake my head to clear it. “Talk to me like a two-year-old, Travista, because it sounds like you are saying I am still me.”

He chuckles and exchanges a look with Declan, who is frowning.

“You are,” he says. “I say ‘soul’ because that’s the only word anyone seems to understand, but really, I created a synaptic connection between the host’s brain and the clone’s, transferring the neuron data. What gave Emma Wade her identity is all in you. A layman might say I cut out her soul and pasted it in you.” He looks distant as he says, “It’s taken me more than twenty years to perfect it.”

I have seen this look in his eye before, and have ever since Jodi died. “You tried cloning Jodi. But why?”

Declan looks surprised I know the name, but Dr. Travista does not. He has been on to me for a lot longer than I give him credit for.

“Jodi and I could not marry while she remained barren,” he tells me. “She was my first attempt, and we both felt it an acceptable risk.”

The heat of anger curls in my chest. Jodi was given a choice. “Maybe I was not okay with the risk; did that ever occur to you?” I shoot my gaze to Declan. “Or you?”

Declan squares his shoulders. “It worked. That’s all that matters now. You have a chance at a fresh, new life.”

Do I? My situation suddenly glares me right in the face. I am about to die, because there is no way Foster and I are getting out of this alive. I just martyred myself thinking I was a fake, a copy, that if I could not have the life I remembered with the man I love, I did not want a life at all.

But I came here to punish Declan and I mean to do it. He cannot get away with what he has done.

“Why did you have to do this at all?” I ask Declan. “Why go through the motions of cloning and leaving her for dead the way you did?”

Declan takes a moment to scan the room. “Let’s go somewhere private and I’ll explain everything.”

“No! You have gotten all the private moments you are going to get out of me, you son of a bitch.” Tears threaten my eyes and I blink them back. I feel sick to my stomach thinking of his hands on me, making me warm inside. How I loved him more with each and every private moment we shared. “You have screwed with my head enough, and now I want answers.”

He holds up his hands as if to calm me. “Your people never would have stopped looking for you had I kept you. And I wanted you. I never lied about that. I wanted to prove to you that you couldn’t run from me forever; I always get what I pay for. And taking away one of the best resistance fighters they’ve got in the process? I couldn’t pass that up.”

Declan takes a step closer and lowers his voice. “I gave you a new body without scars, a life without war. I gave you love and a future you never could have dreamed of.” He looks so earnest when he adds, “And I truly love you, Emma. That isn’t a lie. We can still have that future. All you have to do is put the weapons down.”

But I do not care about this scar-free body. Noah still longs for the woman who has the scars. I fear he always will, no matter what Travista says.

I take my trained gun off the security officer and swing it forward. It centers on Declan’s forehead and it takes everything I have to ignore the widening of his eyes. The hurt on his face.

I shove aside every kind, loving, reasonable emotion I have and say, “There was a time when I let your lies go because I loved you. I warned you I would not make that mistake again, and I will not.”

Declan shoots a glare at Travista that is hot enough to melt gold. “You son of a bitch. I thought you knew what the hell you were doing.”

Travista seems unconcerned by Declan’s anger, his focus solely on me. “You say the host is still alive?”

“You will never find her,” I say quickly. “She is safe from all of you.”

He holds up his hands. “I don’t need her any more than I need any of the other hosts. What I’m asking is if she’s truly being kept alive.”

Foster chimes in here. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

Travista nods as if this answers his question and looks at Declan. “I believe Emma may still be connected to the host body. That’s why she’s proven difficult to erase. I discovered a connection between Ruby and her host initially, but it ended the moment I terminated the original.”

All I hear is that he murdered Ruby and I wish I had a second gun.

“I assumed Emma’s host was already dead,” Travista says. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘the tie that binds’?”

Declan shakes his head. “What the hell are you saying?”

“The phrase comes from an old Christian hymn written by a man named John Fawcett. ‘Blessed Be the Tie That Binds.’ One verse says: ‘When we asunder part, It gives us inward pain; But we shall still be joined in heart, And hope to meet again.’

“So I’m saying,” Travista continues, “the host and the clone are connected. In this case, using the word ‘soul’ would be more accurate. It’s still tied to the original body. We can’t actually fix Emma until the host dies. Only then will it be permanent.”

Declan looks more confused than ever, but it all makes perfect sense to me. But Travista is missing one important element. I am not only connected but have been returning for eight months. And the second She dies, the tie will be severed and Travista will have full control of my mind.
If
he can get his hands on me again.

I waggle the bomb’s detonator in my hand. “You will never get the chance to ‘fix’ me. This is over.”

“You’re outnumbered, Emma,” Declan says calmly. “You’ll lose that arm before you have the chance to push the trigger.” Several security officers take that as a command and aim their weapons at my arm.

I laugh, though I swear I can feel the phantom burn of plasma fire in my arm. “And you will cart me around proudly when I am short an arm?”

He nods to the pool of water behind me. “I’ll just remake you. The transfer is quick. We’ll start over, and by the time I have you back, your host and this body will be dead. No more complications.”

Blood drains from my face. He would do it. He would maim me six ways from Sunday, let these men fire on me, and he will win. I would rather be dead.

Sonya’s voice suddenly fills my mind.
All I know is that Travista knows the human brain better than any scientist I’ve ever come across. . . . He managed to access Emma’s entire archetype, her past,
everything,
then pick and choose which parts to bring to life.

I shift the focus of my weapon from Declan’s head to mine, determined to end this the only way I know how. No brain. No Emma. “Clone this.”