Counterpart

Counterpart
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Hydra Ebook Original

Copyright © 2016 by Hayley Stone

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

H
YDRA
is a registered trademark and the
H
YDRA
colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ebook ISBN 9780399594380

Cover design and illustration: David G. Stevenson, based on images © Shutterstock

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v4.1

ep

U
NKNOWN LOCATION, SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

An hour after the water has cooled, the odor of torched skin continues to drift up from my ankles, captive in a small janitor's bucket. With my arms bound by rope to the back of the chair, I can't reach down to massage feeling back into my feet. Instead, I wiggle my toes, making sure they still function. Each toe seems to glow blue beneath the strange overhead lights—disks sometimes projecting the image of a swimming pool, and sometimes a female swimmer—while from the other room, world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis introduces himself for the millionth time.

When I first woke here, I tried calling to him for help, but quickly realized it was useless. I'm pretty sure he's some kind of old recording—little more than a ghost, trapped here like me. Every now and then I hear him talking about releasing from the coil or stepping in, but I've since stopped yelling myself hoarse to get his attention.

He's not the Lewis I wish was here, anyway.

I drag my eyes away from the door—so close, and yet impossibly far—back to the metal janitor's bucket devouring my feet. Bronze fangs and jumper cables attach the bucket to a squat Powermax battery lurking nearby, currently switched off. Thank God. It's true: what the machines lack in creativity, they more than make up for in practicality.

I consider shifting enough to relieve the knot in my back and the tension in my ankles, but even the slightest movement sends pain streaking across the tops of my fingers—some of which have been robbed entirely of their nails.

Six out of ten,
would not recommend.
The joke should make me smile.

It doesn't.

Cold sweat drips into my eyes, and the poor lighting of the room makes it hard to track the machines as they enter and exit. After the hard bang of a door closing, I spot one machine nearing the battery again.

Wait. That's not right.

No. No, no, no. That's not
fair.

They haven't even asked me a question yet!

“You—”

The thought is cut off as electricity screams through my body, and I nearly devour my tongue as my teeth clamp down. It feels like I have lightning rods installed beneath my skin—and for all I know, maybe I do. I jerk against the chair restraints, like a manic ape in a cage, until the world simply cuts out. Blissful darkness at last.

A sharp, metallic smell brings me back around.
Ammonia.
I cough and gag and flinch, flinch, flinch, my muscles still jerking from the shock. I think I may have also wet myself. It'd hurt my dignity, if I had any dignity left.

A new machine squats in front of me, and a tiny spark of recognition fires through my brain. My gut tenses, the same way it used to at the sight of restaurant animatronics, or President Lincoln at Disneyland. The movement almost seems human. It's becoming harder every day to tell the difference between me and them.

This is how it starts.

The machine doesn't move, but the front of its smooth, featureless head brightens like a flashlight covered by a palm. A grid flashes back and forth, layering in contours and shadows. Skin tone. Freckles. A nose, lips, and chin. The eyes are always last. Windows to the soul, they used to say
.
I never look the thing in the eyes. I don't want whatever passes for a soul in that metal skull to slither into me. Call me superstitious. It's better than my name, which doesn't even belong to me…

“Rhona,” the machine croons to me in my own voice, also treating me to a mirror image of myself. My face, digitally re-created on its LED skin, is flawless, a perfect reproduction that makes me want to shake my head, shut my eyes, and scream. Some of my red hair floats in and out of the sides of the picture, but the machine itself is bald. Its head is perfectly smooth, and more spherical than any real human's skull. That helps. I prefer seeing my face to some of the others it's worn lately to try and persuade me.

“Rhona, won't you please help us?”

I know it's not real. From the shoulders down, the machine's a jagged conglomeration of exposed metal parts and hydraulics. Still unfinished, only a prototype.
Like me.
Wires dangle freely, and if I had the use of my hands, I'd be tempted to yank at them. Pull and pull and
pull.
Like in those dreams where you're chewing a wad of gum, but when you try to remove it, the gum keeps coming—one long, gnarled string of pink, unraveling like a small intestine. Or maybe like the dreams where your teeth keep falling out of your mouth for no reason. I don't dream much anymore—probably because of whatever sedatives the machines give me—but when I do, I'm always losing my teeth.

“It will be better if you cooperate,” machine-Rhona says.

“Oh, yeah?” I reply, still tasting blood on my lips. “Better for who?”

“All parties involved. Yourself included. Any more unpleasantness should be avoided.” The machine tilts its head. “Don't you agree?”

I clench my hands into fists, trying to rein in my thoughts. This model of machine is more a person than anything else I've encountered over the past…eight months? Nine? I kept track in the beginning, clawing little tally marks into my mind—
one day, two day, bloody day, blue day
—but I've since lost count. I'm only guessing now.

“Call it what it is. Torture. You'll go back to torturing me if I don't cooperate.”

The machine's face presents an exaggerated expression of remorse. “That is correct.”

Take a flying leap into a smelter,
I want to tell it.
Reset yourself.

I've had a lot of time to think of robot insults. Unfortunately, the machines have had that same time to devise unique and effective ways of punishing me for them. I'm not hurting their feelings; they don't have them. But I'm not giving them what they want either: My loyalty. My obedience. So far, I've refused to be complicit in their schemes. Whatever I was created for, I know it wasn't
this.

“You need incentive,” says machine-Rhona, trying for an understanding voice. Instead, it sounds glib. They haven't quite gotten that whole tone thing down yet. “Would you be interested to know the fates of your allies?”

“Like you know any—”

“Doctor Samuel Lewis, formerly of New Mexico: deceased.”

The words carry all the violence of a gunshot, and knock the breath out of me. “What?”

“Doctor Samuel Lewis, formerly of—”

“Stop. I heard you the first time. But it's not true. Samuel's not—” My throat tightens, and I barely get the next words out.
“You're lying.”

“After the revelation of Doctor Lewis's illegal experimentation with cloning, he was executed by the McKinley hierarchy,” the machine recites emotionlessly, as if reading from an official report located somewhere in the network it shares with the higher echelon. “The council ruled eight to three. Dissenters included Doctor Matsuki Shigeru, Dahlia Cameron, and Carl Gratham.”

“That's not possible. They would never vote to execute anyone, let alone Samuel. And what about…?” I almost say his name—
Camus, Camus, Camus
—but if the machines don't know about him yet, I'm sure as hell not going to volunteer that information.

“McKinley base has fallen under the martial law of foreigners. Its leadership is corrupt. To manipulate other resistance cells, the council has installed Doctor Lewis's only surviving clone as its figurehead.”

“You mean, besides me.” From the moment I woke in the dark of the capsule, wet and slimy as a newborn, I've known what I am. I remember my death, and before that, a secret plan for resurrection. I know I'm not the only clone Samuel created in his lab, but I haven't seen any others. If the machines have them, they're no better off than me. And if they don't have them, if they all died, snuffed out by genetic disease, electrical failure of their capsules, or because they wouldn't cooperate with the machines, then it's just the two of us left, I guess. Me, and the coward who allowed the council to murder Samuel.

“She is a puppet.” The machine is careful to not give away any more information than it has to. Sometimes it feels like I never truly left that capsule. They're still keeping me in the dark. “Nothing more. A mouthpiece for the council.”

“Why would they trust a clone even that far?”
Why would Camus?

“This is merely one of many such instances of humanity's poor judgment.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Your belief is not required, Rhona Long. Only your cooperation.” The machine stands back upright, its hydraulic systems releasing a sigh of pressure.
If only I had a gun,
I think, my hands shaking within the leather restraints around my wrists. Or some other kind of weapon. Crowbar, maybe. I'd knock its damn kneecaps out. I'd crush its chest like a soda can. I'd—

Samuel.
I take a shuddering breath, letting my head slump and the tears come.
Oh God. Samuel.

The machine waits, saying nothing. Merely observing.

“They really killed him?” I croak.

“That is correct.”

I shut my eyes, hot and stinging, but can't help letting out a small, breathy cry. All this time I thought I was protecting Samuel, Camus, and the rest of McKinley with my silence, but Samuel's been dead all along, and Camus…What terrible things has Camus done, compromised by his grief? If he didn't dissent, then it means he agreed to Samuel's murder. My stomach heaves like a ship on a tall ocean swell. The back of my throat burns. I'm going to be sick.

“Why did you wait until now to tell me this?” I ask.

“We only just learned of it. We would have prevented the death of Doctor Lewis. His mind was valuable.”

The machine tries to lower itself onto its haunches again, but fails. As a result of the spasms, the projection mapping fails as well, and half of my features slide onto the right side of the machine's head: an eye where an ear should be, a nose in place of a cheekbone. The mistake lasts only a few seconds, then my features slide back into place. If the machine registers the error, it makes no mention of it. That's another advantage the machines have on me. They don't feel shame.

“What do you want from me?” I finally ask, my teeth chattering even though it's not cold. Maybe it's the news of my best friend's death, or maybe the months of torture have worn me down, but a quiet apathy creeps over me. I rest in that emptiness, relaxed by the knowledge that there's literally nothing I can do. I've failed the resistance, everyone I love, in all the ways that matter. “I'm a dead woman. I'm useless to you.”

“That is incorrect,” machine-Rhona says. “You look like Rhona Long.”

“No kidding.”

“Rhona Long has value to us.”

I let my head fall back against the top of the chair. I've heard it all before.

“Help us,” it continues, “and we will put an end to all the suffering.”

I snort. “By killing everyone? Great solution.”

“
Homo sapiens sapiens
are not the only ones capable of evolving,” answers the machine, and it sounds surprisingly sincere. If that's possible. “We will spare you, and those you love.” We, of course, referring to the higher echelon, the artificial intelligence in charge of the machines. It was the higher echelon that converted the machines from our allies into our conquerors, riling them up like a hive of bees. “Including Camus Forsyth.”

I snap upright, fear clutching my heart. “How do you know that name?”

“Help us, Rhona Long. Help us help you. And Camus.”

Dump yourself on a scrap heap,
I think, the words on the tip of my tongue.
Take advantage of the nearest trash compactor.
And, because you can't go wrong with a classic,
Go to hell.

But I don't say any of these things.

“How?” I ask.

And this is how it ends.