The Rule of Luck, page 27
I set the clone on the floor at my feet. Holding it, knowing we were all part of some grand experiment, made me feel dirty. Monique watched me, the half-smile never leaving her face.
“You’re not here for the reasons you claimed, are you? The clones don’t hold the interest for him I’d hoped. He doesn’t want to exploit the luck gene. He wants to stop it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but your expression shows nothing but disgust.” She sighed and shook her head. “You won’t prevent the Mars contract from being awarded to TransWorld. It’s too late. The contract’s all but signed. It’s unfortunate it’s come to this. I truly believed my knowledge, added to the Consortium’s research pool, would yield results beyond their wildest dreams.”
I glanced at the canisters again and couldn’t contain my shiver. “Was there ever a moment when I was more than an experiment to you? When you thought, ‘I’m going to be a mother. I’ve just created life’?”
She laughed. “Felicia, I’m not going to participate in this silly discussion. I know what you’re going to say even before you say it. It’s predictable and I’ve heard it a thousand times over.” A gesture to the canisters. “You want me to feel guilty for abandoning you and being a terrible mother. Or admit to feelings of love and regret. Alright, yes. The first time I felt you move in me was one of my life’s greatest moments. Did I feel affection? Perhaps, but what I recall most was the sense of satisfaction. I knew I’d completed the first step in a lifelong project. Soon, I would have you and from that, I would have this.”
“Which you said you’d abandon to work for the Consortium.”
She blinked as if I’d thrown her an unexpected curve. “Well yes, I have no issue with starting over. I told you of Alexei Petriv’s genetic potential. Crossbred with your luck, I truly believe the end result would be a significant evolutionary leap. However, it doesn’t mean the sample must come from you. After all, I have so much here to choose from.”
I couldn’t breathe. Not that there was anything wrong with the air, but my head spun with the horror of what lay around me paired with the filth coming out of her mouth. “I’m not sure he’d be into that,” I said. It was the best I could manage.
“Perhaps not yet, but I can be very persuasive,” she insisted. “You’re redundant. He obviously knows you’re here. You said yourself it’s just business between you, so should you fail to appear with a clone, he’ll come looking but he’ll hardly be overwrought with grief. And when he’s aware of what I’ve created…” She shrugged and smiled again. “I think the evidence speaks for itself.”
“Are you implying you’d actually kill me to get me out of the way?” I don’t think my tone could have been any more incredulous.
“It’s not my first choice on how this will end, but I’ve considered it.”
I laughed, but it sounded hysterical and unnatural. “I have the luck gene, you know.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make you immortal.”
She pulled out a laser stun pencil from her desk drawer and pointed it at my heart. The tiny weapon could sever me in half before I could blink. So much for tech restrictions. I think I may have laughed again because Monique looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“You really are like your father.” Her lip curled in distaste. “Cocky and delusional all at once. Would you like to share what you find so hilarious?”
I shook my head, feeling like the universe had played the most colossal joke at my expense. “Just that in all the readings I’ve done, I assumed the Death card referred to him, not me. Kind of sucks knowing how wrong I was.”
“What gibberish are you going on about?”
I didn’t have a chance to say more. High-pitched alarms sounded, so loud and shrill we both covered our ears.
“What is that?” I screamed at Monique.
“AI security! There’s unauthorized tech in the building!”
A second later, the entire building shook as if with the force of an explosion. I lost my footing and tumbled against the lab stairs, catching the railing at the last minute and hauling myself upright. I scrambled to the platform and back down the hallway, covering my ears. The building shook again. My shoulder hit the wall with a solid thud. This time, I was certain it was an explosion. I had to get out of there! My gut agreed with a hearty “get the fuck out” kick that had me scrambling.
I stumbled by the closed doors. The clones! I hesitated. There was no way I could get them out of the building with the collars they wore. Hell, I couldn’t even get myself out. Still, I couldn’t leave them. I opened a door and out they came, screaming, running everywhere, arms flailing over their heads as they ran into each other and the wall. I opened another. Out flew more clones.
“You idiot! You’ve ruined everything!” Monique shrieked as she barreled from the lab.
She shoved me aside with a brutal push and began firing indiscriminately on the clones, killing two if their lack of movement was any indication, and missing the rest who continued running and screaming. I watched in paralyzed horror as blood spattered the walls and the floor. Monster wasn’t even the right word to describe this woman as she mowed down her creations with cold precision.
“What are you doing?” I cried, chasing her into the schoolroom.
“Use your brain, you stupid cow! The alarms mean a breech. Do you think I’m going to let anyone take what I’ve worked so hard to create? These are mine and I will do what I see fit with them. No one is taking them from me! Not you. Not the Consortium.”
In the open space, chaos reigned. Clones screaming. Monique firing. Alarms sounding. The building swaying. All of it illuminated by the fireworks overhead. For some reason, that made me look up at the glass ceiling. Suddenly I saw a figure up there. Several figures, in fact.
Glass shattered next, raining down in a million crystal sparkles. I stepped back out of range. Monique wasn’t so lucky and took the brunt of it, screaming as glass cut her. Blessedly, the shooting stopped. It didn’t deter the clones, however, as they continued screaming and running. It also didn’t stop the deafening alarm.
I looked up again. The figures on the roof used heavy corded ropes to lower themselves through the hole they’d smashed. I counted three, each dressed in black. I couldn’t identify them. Then my brain recognized the stealth-suits and I realized what I saw. The cavalry had arrived.
In fact, not just the cavalry. The first to touch down and unhook from the harness with brisk, precise movements, as if having done it a thousand times before, was broad-shouldered and tall, the stealth-suit emphasizing his powerful physique. The figure turned, strode a handful of steps toward me, then grabbed me with both hands and hauled me up against him. Alexei.
I sank into his arms, my relief so intense it took my breath away and left me limp. He held me in a death grip, crushing me to his chest and lifting me clear off the ground.
“Did she hurt you?” His mouth was at my ear.
“Not yet. You need to stop her.”
“I will. First, I have to get you out of here. I need you safe or I’ll lose my mind.”
He carried me to the harnesses and secured straps around my waist and under my arms. Then he leaned in close so the alarm wouldn’t carry away his words. “The rope is attached to a helicon. It’ll lift you out.”
“What about the clones?”
“Once we had your visual confirmation, we realized taking a clone wouldn’t be enough. We had to catalog all your mother’s research. Unfortunately, it’s in a closed block of One Gov’s queenmind. I’m the only one who can access it, but I need to be on-site to do it.”
“That was you with the explosions?”
He nodded, buckling another harness around my legs and hips, and snapping it in place. “You may be able to get around the building’s tech restrictions, but I can’t. We tried to take out the AI auto-defense, but missed the backup systems.”
“The lab. You saw it?”
“I did. TransWorld is finished.”
I looked around. With the immediate danger over, I saw the two other black-clad figures subdue the remaining clones and carry them back to the lab.
“What are they going to do with the girls?”
“If they can, they’ll try to remove the collars. Monique must have something in the lab to deactivate them.”
“What if they can’t?”
“Then we salvage what we can from this situation and move on.”
A feeling of dread washed over me as I tracked their progress back to the lab. “Why do you make it sound like they’re going to kill them?”
“Because if that’s what needs to happen, they will.” With a hand on my chin, Alexei dragged my gaze back to his. The look on his face was intense and serious.
“I need you to understand this. I’m not a butcher or a tyrant. This is necessary. We can’t stop her without proof. If killing the clones so we can remove them from the building is the only way to do it, then so be it.”
“But you can’t! They’re just little girls!” I protested.
“No, that’s not what she intended. They’re not real to her. None of them are. They’re disposable waste she’d cast aside should something better come her way. Not even you—her own daughter—are a real person to her. You’re another creation to discard once you’re no longer useful. That’s how twisted her world is. Research without conscience and creating a thing just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
“So what are you saying? That the Consortium shouldn’t have made you?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Or maybe none of us should be here. Me. The clones. You. Maybe qualifying as human is more difficult than you think.”
I started at him, stunned, taking in the full measure of what he implied. Both of us were experiments, forged in different ways and walking separate paths, but essentially the same at our core. Each of us had been made because someone wanted to “see what would happen,” and we’d lived our lives accordingly as best we could. I just hadn’t seen it until now.
I wanted to say something then, to let him know that even though he’d hurt me, I still cared—that I would probably always care about him. I just couldn’t come up with the words. I, who always knew the right thing to say when I held the Tarot cards in my hand, couldn’t figure out how to string together a sentence when it mattered most. I didn’t think he was some genetic anomaly the world could do without. If anything, I was the freak. Humanity had moved on and I was the one who was different and would be left behind, not him. The fact he thought I might feel otherwise, and had tried to hide who he was because of it, made me feel sick inside.
He must have seen something in my face because his gloved fingers gently brushed my cheek and he offered a brief smile. “We’ll discuss it later when there’s time. Right now, I have to deal with Monique.” Then he tugged my straps, checking their tension one last time before turning away.
The slack left the rope and I felt myself lifted, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Grabbing the straps, I fought to both steady myself and keep from vomiting as vertigo overcame me. By the time I’d sorted myself, I was out in the cool night air. Above, a whirling helicon blade whipped my hair in every direction.
I looked back down at the mess and the bodies strewn across the floor. The other two figures with Alexei were back from the lab and securing themselves in their harnesses, preparing to leave. Why? Where were the clones? Couldn’t they remove the collars? Something was wrong. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name.
Alexei’s cable dangled limply, pooling on the ground. Where was he? Was he still trying to crack One Gov’s queenmind? I scanned the scene, searching. At first, I couldn’t see him. Then, I did. He was with Monique. It looked like they were arguing. Suddenly, she turned on her heel and darted back to the lab. Alexei followed with determined steps.
The helicon banked sharply left. The engine seemed to stutter before catching again and we swung out wide over the city. I clutched at my harnesses and bit back a scream. Then I felt myself rocketing upward. My shoulder hit the door’s edge hard enough to make me shriek, and I was hauled inside with rough hands. Just as briskly, those hands ripped me from my rigging and hurled me into an empty seat.
“What’s going on?” I shouted at the winch operator.
“Put on belt,” he said in heavily accented English. “Going to be bumpy ride.”
“Tell me what’s happening!”
“AI backup’s firing on us. The deterrent drones will attack next. We move now. Buckle up.”
A body landed in the seat beside me, then another in the one facing—the two others with Alexei. Both struggled into their safety harnesses, cursing in Russian as they fought with the straps. At the still open door of the helicon, the winch operator leaned out, eyes glued to the TransWorld tower. The tower was no longer below us. We hovered higher in the air, a tower away.
I fought my way to the door, tripping over legs and equipment as I went. I caught myself on the winch and looked down. All I could see was Alexei’s escape cable listing in the wind, empty.
“We have to go back for him!” I screamed.
“Too much deterrent fire!” came the pilot’s snarled reply.
Someone shouted in Russian and I was not imagining it when the tension rose higher.
“What? What did he say?”
“He’s activated detonators. The building is set to vaporize.”
It felt like I spent an eternity just looking at the pilot before the words actually sank in. “What the fuck are you saying? You’re going to vaporize the building?”
“It was precautionary in case things went bad and he couldn’t take the queenmind or thought he might be caught. Tsarist Consortium can’t be involved.”
“But…No, that can’t be right. Vaporizing the building? That’s insane. He’s still down there! We need to go back!”
“We go now or risk pull of vapor-seal when tower goes.”
“We can’t leave him!”
“Detonation in one minute. We stay, we die.”
The helicon banked swiftly, racing from the tower. I tumbled to the other side of the helicon, grabbing what I could to keep steady. The hatch slammed shut and hands hurled me into my seat again. My eyes were glued to the tower. Everything in me stopped. My breathing. My thoughts. My heart. I waited as if in suspended animation, hoping, praying some miracle would happen.
Except, it didn’t. One moment the tower stood. The next, the air sizzled and it seemed like any potential energy in the area was sucked inward, toward the tower. The lights of the buildings around us either dimmed or went out before coming on again seconds later. Then, in one horrendous blast of white light, the tower vanished.
The helicon dipped perilously as the blast wave rocked us. The pilot cursed and wrestled the machine back into position, hitting the instrument panel with each word. The engine sputtered, stalled, restarted again. In those tense moments, no one spoke. Even when we leveled and the pilot’s cursing eased, we stayed silent. We banked again, getting one last unobstructed view of what remained of TransWorld.
I gasped. There was nothing but drifting smoke. We were too high up to see the chaos on the ground or how those below had fared. All I could register was how completely it had been vaporized. Everything was gone. Everything.
I sat back in my seat, eyes unseeing, numb and feeling coldness spread through me. I wanted to throw up, but couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything, not even cry. My body could do nothing but sit there. No, that wasn’t true. I could think, but the thoughts kept looping back on themselves, threatening to drown me in a flood of despair: If I had the luck gene, how could it all have gone so wrong? How could I lose everything all at once?
I didn’t feel lucky at all, and suspected I wouldn’t feel much of anything for a long time.
Chapter Nineteen
The helicon was abandoned outside Curitiba, and I found myself back with Oksana and Vadim in the flight-limo. The rest of the people involved presumably had their own means to leave the country and lay low. A terse, silent ride brought the three of us to a private airstrip where a Consortium jet waited. Though I’m sure it was luxurious inside with room enough to fit several people, I was blind to my surroundings.
After I buckled in, Oksana handed me a glass of water and two blue pills. I looked up in question.
“It will make you sleep for the duration of the trip.” She sounded tired and drawn. Her lovely face looked pinched. When she took her seat, she knocked back her own handful of pills. “I suggest you take them. You won’t have to think for the next several hours.”
“I don’t understand. There had to be another way. Why did he go back after my mother? Why did he destroy it all?” My voice cracked and I had to clear my throat to get the words out.
“I don’t know,” she said before turning to gaze out the window. “Just take the pills.”
I followed her lead, swallowing, then chasing them with water. Right now, not thinking was a blessing. Soon we were in the air. By the time One Gov closed borders to all traffic, we’d already left Brazil and were en route back to Kenya.
It seemed like only a blink of time passed before we landed in Nairobi. I looked out my window as we began our descent to another private airstrip. The sky was a dark, cloudy gray. The ground looked rain-soaked with evidence of a recent downpour. The roof of the lone shack at the edge of the runway glistened darkly, and stray droplets hit my window. A glance at my bracelet indicated it was midafternoon. The whole trip had taken a little over eight hours.
Without a word, we gathered our gear and exited to the waiting flight-limos. Oksana walked toward one, head down and shoulders hunched. I had moved to follow when Vadim caught my arm and led me to the other. We hurried to avoid the scattering of raindrops.
“This will take you home,” he said as the chain-breaker opened the door for me. “Someone will be in touch with the final details regarding the completion of your contract with the Consortium and ensure you are paid in full.”
