The hallowed cure, p.38
The Hallowed Cure, page 38
“There are no more Three Screens, no Hallowed War, and no Mutes, at least not any we need you to kill,” I said firmly. “Doctor Sharpe cloned you, put these memories in you, and tricked you in thinking you were fighting a war. It’s over. You don’t have to fight any longer.”
“Why is there only one of them?” a woman demanded.
I looked past the now stiff and worried clones to see another Hallowed in black armor striding toward me confidently. Yet she carried a Massacre, not a Despair. Why?
I remembered then that Hahna had said Cloud Nine hadn’t been able to replicate her sword during the war. Caitlyn had managed to create Savagery, but she’d had access to Despair and a bunch of other Hallowed weapons as scrap. Even Doctor Sharpe couldn’t build another Despair without those.
“Captain Sato!” Vogel spun and saluted. “We’ve captured a traitor!”
I waved. “Not a traitor, but I am captured. Sort of.”
“Identify yourself,” the clone of Captain Hahna Sato commanded.
“Right now.”
“I’m Grant Riven,” I said. “The original.”
I could convince the others, with enough time ... but could I convince her? Captain Sato’s clone stopped a good meter from me.
She looked just as confident and deadly as she had back in the war.
I doubted I could beat her in a straight up fight.
“If you’ve harmed our commanding officers,” the Sato clone said,
“I will make an end of you.”
I shook my head. “See, that’s not you at all. You always hated the Three Screens. They were constantly getting your soldiers killed by being stupid. You still want them dead yourself.”
The Sato clone remained unmoved. “What is your purpose here?”
I ignored her and shot back with a question of my own. “Where’s Despair?”
“In the lab, being upgraded.”
“So you’ve never actually held it, except in your memories, because the real Hahna Sato has the only Despair in the world. And so far as we both remember, Cloud Nine only made one Massacre.” I pointed at the Frost clone. “So why are there two?”
“Vogel, what is this man talking about?” Sato asked.
“He says we’re all clones, Captain!” Caley shouted. “He says the reason we can’t remember anything before the war is because we just woke up! He’s trying to get in our heads!”
The Sato clone turned to me again. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re not the original Hahna Sato. It’s also why you only remember the last few months in clear detail, and why all the Hallowed soldiers in your command look alike. As their commander, you’d be the one person who’d know everyone in your army is a clone. So what’s the story they told you to explain that?”
The Sato clone said nothing. I considered how I’d explain it, then settled on the only option that made sense.
“They told you we suffered massive casualties during Operation Clean Sweep and Operation Anthill, didn’t they? They told you they
had a backup plan to clone Hallowed in case we lost everyone, including yourself. But you never believed all your soldiers died.
You’ve questioned their story and your lack of memories for as long as you’ve been awake.”
“Enough,” the Sato clone said, and lowered her blade.
“What are you doing?” Vogel asked.
“He’s telling the truth,” the Sato clone said. “Stand down.”
“You’re off your head!” Caley’s clone shouted.
“No, I’m being quite rational.” The Sato clone sheathed Massacre on her back. “There’s no realistic scenario where we’d all die during Operation Anthill and still save Dios. I cannot recall anything from my life before the war, and this Riven is also right about something else.
All of you are clones. I’ve spoken to two other Tony Frosts today alone.”
“The fuck?” Frost’s clone whispered.
“What this man says is the only explanation that truly makes sense to me,” the Sato clone said. “Though most of you don’t know what Cloud Nine Engineering is truly capable of, I, unfortunately, do.
Cloning us and implanting fake memories in order to create a Hallowed army they could control is exactly the sort of thing they would do to retain power.”
Even as a clone, Hahna was still Hahna. I breathed a sigh of relief. We wouldn’t have to kill anyone else on either side if I did this right.
“There’s a group in the data center right now,” I said. “You were told they were hostiles, but they actually came to stop Cloud Nine from making more like you. Those people aren’t your enemies, and there’s actually a Mia Ashford and another Sara Caley up there. The originals.”
“Ash is alive?” Caley whispered.
“She never died,” I agreed. “We’ll call a ceasefire before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Your people cease fire first,” the Sato clone said evenly. “While I believe you’re telling the truth, my soldiers come first. I won’t risk harm coming to any of them.”
That was also the Captain Sato I remembered. “Hey, Vogel. I’m going to get my helmet.”
“You do that,” he said quietly.
I picked up my helmet and flipped back to Saul’s frequency.
“How’s it going?”
“We’re holding our ground,” Saul agreed. “Caley’s wounded.
Mia’s unharmed, Frank’s alive, and Lincoln is holding them off with his shield. Tell me you have good news.”
“I just met Captain Sato’s clone. Oh, and another Caley.”
Saul said nothing for a moment. “And?”
“We’re about to call a ceasefire. Need you to stop firing first.”
“Right,” Saul said, and shouted. “Cease fire!”
I activated my external speaker. “We stopped shooting. Your turn.”
Hahna touched her helmet. I couldn’t hear what she was saying inside it, since she’d turned off her external microphone, so I checked with Saul. “They still firing?”
“They’ve stopped,” Saul said. “Are you certain this isn’t a trick?”
“Not entirely. But I think Hahna’s clone is playing this straight.
She believed me once I told them they were all clones with implanted memories.”
“She did?” Saul asked doubtfully.
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, she might be a clone, but she’s still Hahna. Freakishly rational.”
“A fair point,” Saul agreed. “What now?”
I flipped on my external speaker. “What now?”
“Open the door to the lab,” the Sato clone instructed calmly.
“Bring out the others and our Grant Riven. We’ll all go upstairs together and sort this out.”
That sounded like the best deal I was going to get. “Hold position,” I told Saul. “We’re coming up with the clones. We’ll figure out what to do with everyone else once we get up there.”
“What about Jack?” Saul asked. “This firefight has cost us precious time.”
“He’s crippled and on the run,” I said. “His threat’s over. First step is stop everyone from killing each other, and then we’ll finish him off.”
“Right,” Saul agreed. “Contact me when you’re topside.”
I flipped back to the frequency I’d given Reese. “You there?”
“Kind of surprised you are,” Reese said. “Did they take you hostage?”
“They believe me, actually. Or Captain Sato’s clone does.”
“Are you saying this because they threatened to shoot you?”
“Reese. It’s me.”
“And Caitlyn’s my sister, so I need you to be real sure, Grant.”
I sighed heavily. “No one else is coming after Caitlyn. The clone army is standing down, and you have my word on that. Everybody’s done shooting each other for now, but if you don’t come out, we can’t get to the others. So tell Captain Sato to—”
The rumble of the heavy security doors cut off anything else I might say. Relieved, I stopped my transmission and stepped back.
As the doors rose, they revealed my Captain Sato. She stood tall with Despair glowing blue in one hand and Savagery glowing blue in the other. With her hair buzzed short and her outfit all black, she looked about as badass as I’d ever seen her.
“I cut my hair,” Hahna’s clone said.
Hahna walked out with both swords drawn. “Is that her?”
The Sato clone reached up, snapped her helmet sideways, and pulled it off. That revealed the Captain Sato I remembered from back in the war. She was almost the same age as ours, but with slightly less severe eyes and long white hair in a braid. She looked intrigued.
Behind Sato, I saw Reese walking forward in full Hallowed armor, supporting Caitlyn. I also saw Dean somehow back on his feet, stumbling drunkenly alone.
“Grant!” Caley’s clone shouted. She threw down her Wulver and darted past me. For a moment, I was worried Hahna might cut her in half.
Yet Hahna only watched the Caley clone rush toward Dean. She tossed her helmet off as she did so. Then, the Caley clone dived into Dean’s arms. She pulled him close and then, as I stared in increasingly uncomfortable disbelief, they kissed the hell out of each other.
“Uh...” I glanced uncertainly at Vogel. “Really?”
“Ashford died,” Vogel said softly. “Or ... we were told that.”
They must not have had an Ashford clone in this squad. “Right,” I agreed doubtfully, as I watched Dean and Caley kiss and grope the hell out of each other. “But really?”
I hadn’t even thought about getting involved with Caley in the war. I supposed Cloud Nine’s memory techs might infer a few things from their recordings that weren’t actually there. Caley and I got drunk together, sure, but I’d never even considered asking her out.
“Is Skye alive?” the Frost clone asked quietly. “Or are those memories even real?”
It was going to be awkward for Skye when she learned a bunch of clones of her dead boyfriend were walking around. That made me wonder if there were any Mia clones on this island. Also, I was really glad my Mia wasn’t here to watch Caley suck face with my clone.
“Skye is alive,” I agreed, and glanced at him. “But you’re not actually Tony Frost. The original Tony Frost has been dead over a year, Skye watched him die, and she’s a Class Zero Mute now. So given how awkward that makes things, it might be best to move on.”
“Asshole,” Frost’s clone whispered.
“Sorry.” In retrospect, I actually felt bad about how I’d delivered the news. “Didn’t know how else to say it.” I looked to Captain Sato’s clone. “We going up?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Captain, if you’d walk up here beside me? I have questions.”
“As do I, Captain,” Hahna agreed eagerly.
Hahna sheathed Despair and stopped beside me. She handed me Savagery, but I didn’t fail to notice that Dean still carried Dismay.
For now, I’d let him keep my old partner. He’d proven his loyalty beyond any doubt at this point ... or I had.
Even if the other me was kind of a dick.
[ 33 ]
WANT TO GO MEET YOUR LONE?
With both Captains Sato coordinating our respective armies, we soon had Doctor Sharpe’s (former) facility fully under our (and their) control. With Doctor Sharpe now ashes in her buried lab, the only remaining problem was finding where Jack had stashed his remaining clones. Caitlyn wasn’t in any shape to hack any computers, but she didn’t have to.
With Emilia Sharpe confirmed dead, the Nine AI running the facility required a new primary administrator. Its programmed behavior was to default to the next person in its chain-of-command.
That was Jack Griffyn (tossed off a building), Lindsay Griffyn (blown up in a submarine) and Miguel Perez (actually still alive, but nowhere on the island).
With nowhere else to turn, and after we synced it up with the main AI running Cloud Nine Engineering in Dios, the facility’s Nine settled on Caitlyn Alexander. Once Caitlyn had full control of the facility and all its resources, she had it track down all the cloning tanks in the facility and incinerate any Jack clones that remained. All except one.
Given that Caitlyn now had full control of the facility and I’d convinced the Hallowed army guarding it not to kill us, I almost wished Saul’s team hadn’t wrecked all the data cores. Most of Doctor Sharpe’s research was horrible, of course, but there were a few things we might find useful. Like the cure for my panacea poisoning.
Still, that ship had sailed, caught fire, and sank to the bottom of the sea, all on my orders. So now I stood in front of the last cloning tank with the last clone of Jack Griffyn remaining in the facility. This was the clone he’d hurriedly tried to resurrect, but he’d fucked that up.
Inside that tank was the last copy of the man who pulled me out of the slums of Rocham, paid me more money than I’d known existed, and turned my life into a living hell. I wished I could see his face or kick him in the nuts, but Jack had neither now. This clone was just deformed torso with half a head. Nothing below the waist had actually finishing growing yet.
I glanced at Caitlyn, who stood beside me with a bloody bandage around her head. She’d insisted on coming with me in case this Jack tried to seize mental control. I doubted he could do that in this body, but letting Caitlyn come had been the only way she’d tell me where to find it.
Because after all this, I wanted to kill at least one clone of Jack Griffyn myself.
I glanced at Mia, who stood beside me in full armor (save her helmet) wearing Drive, her Hallowed claws. My fiancée was with me again, not dead or eaten, and she was processing that she’d seen a Caley clone eagerly making out with me—or rather, Dean Riven.
Also, there was at least one Ashford clone on base, though we hadn’t met. I didn’t even know if I wanted to meet her. Did that Mia actually think she was in love with me? Or had Sharpe paired her Ashford up with someone else?
As I’d learned quickly after we were reunited, Mia and Caley (the real ones) found each other almost immediately after landing, but ended up running from zombies. They couldn’t get to high ground to fire their flare guns. They spent a few tense hours playing hide and seek before they picked up the transmission from the school, then found Saul. Of course they’d survived.
For now, the worst was over. After all we’d been through, dealing with this last deformed clone felt like an ending. I needed closure.
This would do it, I hoped.
The half a head had its eyes closed. The torso didn’t move, and I wondered if it could. I wondered if Jack was screaming somewhere in that half formed body, terrified of being destroyed. I hoped he was.
I hoped that old bastard was scared shitless.
Mia glanced at me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” I glanced at Caitlyn. “Can you sense anything?”
“Active panacea cells,” Caitlyn asked. “Yet not as they were in the clone above. This is not so much an active consciousness as a memory of one, like an injured patient who’s lost half their brain. It must take a certain threshold of panacea cells to restore a full consciousness.”
“And this is the last clone. We destroy this one, Jack’s gone for good.”
“To say that with any certainty I’d first need to know exactly how this happened. Doctor Sharpe’s explanation as to how Jack’s clone first woke is vague and specious at best. Knowing her, I doubt she told us anything but the smallest kernel of the truth.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“She might have been ruthless and immoral, but the woman was, without doubt, both quite brilliant and extraordinarily secretive. With her dead and all her research destroyed, I don’t know that we’ll ever know the full truth behind what happened here.”
What happened seemed clear enough to me. “Clone Jack woke up in his tank, seized Eve Alexander’s corpse and activated its dormant organic wireless, then used that to activate the latent panacea cells Sharpe and others had put in everyone in Neo Tao Payoh. He used Eve’s organic wireless to turn all the Hallowed clones into his personal army. And finally, he lured us here to recapture Doctor Sharpe for him.” I shrugged. “Just another day with Cloud Nine, right?”
Mia squeezed my arm in warning. “That was her mother.”
“She knows that,” I said, then glanced worriedly at Caitlyn. “I mean ... sorry.”
Caitlyn’s eyes remained distant. “I still don’t know how the original body survived, nor how the clone controlled my mother’s ability to mentally manipulate panacea cells.”
“Hasn’t this happened before, though?” Mia asked. “Skye’s cells ended up causing a weird mutation too, right, after she burned alive in Mute acid? Maybe panacea cells behave differently when their host body is subjected to extreme stress. Skye eventually came back from death as a Class Zero Mute, so perhaps Jack’s cells mutated in the same way.”
“Any of those theories is possible,” Caitlyn agreed. “If we looked into it further, we might be able to confirm exactly how it happened.”
“Which we’re not doing,” I reminded her firmly.
“Which we’re not doing,” Caitlyn agreed tiredly. “Anything you want to say?”
“Other than get fucked? I said that already.” I looked at the tank.
“Flush him.”
“Nine, evacuate this tank,” Caitlyn ordered. “Full incineration.”
Ahead of us, bubbles frothed as the tank churned, then glowed. I imagined it sounded a bit like a scream, but that was probably my imagination getting carried away. We watched in silence for the few minutes it took the tank to boil, drain, and empty itself.
Nothing remained inside. The last deformed clone of Jack Griffyn was gone. “So long, dickhead,” I said, and looked to Mia. “Want to go meet your clone?”
Mia wrinkled her nose. “What did you think of yours?”
“He bugs the shit out of me,” I said. “But ... I guess he’s a decent guy.”
“Like someone else I know,” Mia said knowingly.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s not me. Not even close. He’s what Cloud Nine’s army of engineers and brain technicians thinks I was after watching a reality show of my life.”
