MY HEAVY COMBAT boots continue to pound rapidly against steel in pursuit of Derek Stills, the labyrinthine network of dim and narrow service corridors a turbulent peripheral torrent.
I hurdle over a set of tangled cables. Low-hanging valves whistle by, and frenzied exhaust pipes whip my hair in all directions, lashing long brown strands against burning cheekbones. A humming power box slams against my shoulder, nearly throwing me off balance. My feet regain their rhythm.
Miles’s voice crackles into my communicator: “Karin, I think you’re nearing the maintenance bay of Super Mall. He’s got nowhere else to run.” Police sirens wail on his end of the channel.
“Be sure and be there, MTU algorithms ready—just in case.” This is Derek’s third life in a cloned body.
The returning beat of footsteps rebound off wall panels. Emerging in another twisted path, my eyes struggle to follow Derek’s silhouette, navigating the course with the finesse of an acrobat. He shifts in response to my arrival.
A loud crack and burst of blue light sends a searing bolt of plasma over my head. I press against the wall for cover. Two more bolts streak past, showering sparks and twisting metal. I release my .45 from its holster and flip the safety off, but I lose sight of Derek as he turns at the end of the corridor.
I approach the corner, handgun raised. Derek’s footsteps fade into the thrumming of nearby fuel cells. My shoulder’s throbbing.
It’s the end of the road, and Derek Stills knows it. But he determines how this one ends, and how the next one begins. Death has become an inconvenience.
* * *
BRAIN MATTER STAINS the wall of Super Mall’s maintenance bay. It belonged to Subject One, also known as Derek Stills, now a bloodied and faceless heap in the shadows. Decomposing waste from an overturned trash bin fouls the sterilized air with an acidic flavor. Opposite the wall, barren-class planet Yamashita IV peeks through a tall window from space, surrounded by dead stars and unblinking save for the mining colonies that dot its brown and cratered landscape.
I replace the safety on my handgun, a remake of the centuries-old Colt M1911. One bullet to start the next chain of events in this gods damned clone chase. I wonder if it was less complicated back then.
Civilians are beginning to emerge from their routines to witness the apparent end of a stranger’s life. News reporters clamor for position to sensationalize and wrap up “The Pursuit on Yamashita Station IV.” And I can already imagine the conspiracy theorists in the audience, attempting to reconstruct Derek’s face to support the rumors of his existence as “The First Cloned Human.” They’d be right, if more people believed them.
Miles enters the scene pale and bewildered. He glances at me as he leans over Subject One’s husk, scanning it with his PDA. “What the hell, Karin? Another inch and you would’ve damaged the Memory Transfer Unit.”
I pull out my PDA from my leather jacket pocket. “Ten minutes till the transfer completes. Get to it.”
Nodding, Miles activates his device with rapid finger gestures and loads the tracking algorithms, synchronizing his screen and mine with an amalgamation of words and numbers and star charts of the solar system.
I enable “holographic manipulation” on my device and swipe through the swirling mass of data, the overflowing orbits of possibility, attempting to arrange the elements in a comprehensible way. Eyes straining, I massage my forehead.
“Three of a thousand possible clone vat locations: Alien Protection Agency, Baby Space Care, Sheena’s Pleasure Den.”
Miles swears under his breath. “He’s playing with us. Again.”
The chiming of the space station’s announcement service interrupts us through invisible and omnipresent speakers. A female AI voice follows: “The Market District is currently locked down for the duration of the Yamashita System Police investigation. Please remain calm and cooperate with authorities. “
At least that’s a break for Miles and I. If the public were to find out we were government agents, we’d be more than just a spectacle on the InterNet. Bio-modification activists would have a reason to pitch their tents around the sector. Derek Stills deserves no more time in the spotlight, his reconstructed pearl blue eyes becoming the symbol for a volatile age of innovation after each death.
It’s the same scene, different time and place. Miles is hunched over Subject One—first life: government agent for a top-secret clone task force; second: rogue status, murder, and interplanetary narcotics and weapons smuggling; and third: murder, unmarked AI and human slave trading, and illegal chemicals and explosives trafficking.
I draw my attention to the crowd gathering at the entrance. The same crowd, different faces: men, women, young and old, a child on a father’s shoulder, police officers keeping them at bay before back up arrives—the inevitable infection of human curiosity, grinding productivity in its proximity to a halt. I catch a glimpse of humanoid aliens walking past the spectators; they only spare an appraising glance.
The holographic projections from my PDA flicker menacingly.
* * *
THE DIRECTOR OF the Interstellar Bureau of Investigation, Klacks Stone, points at me from across the briefing room table, releasing me from my musing. “Somewhere in that stubborn head of yours, I better be giving you hell in all its burning glory, because we’re running out of gods damned time.” He slams his fist on the table, jarring digital notepads and spilling a cup of coffee—my cup of coffee.
Stone lets out a long and exasperated breath, his finger dropping and fist loosening. “I know we’re all tired and frustrated, strung along like puppets in this clone tracking shit for weeks, receiving hate mail from the Council and postcards from Derek’s sunny vacations,” he looks over the dozens of agents in the briefing room: shoulders are slouched, dry lips pressed into grim lines, dark rims around bloodshot eyes, “and we don’t have demands to fill because he hasn’t demanded anything, no idea what he wants because he does whatever he wants—making lives miserable or rich or both—and he can’t rest in peace so long as those clone vats keep him from going into fucking heaven.”
A deep and heavy silence pervades the room, breaths held in anticipation of the speech’s silver lining—or had long gone since it began. Stone wipes sweat off his brows. He points at the screens behind him.
“So when such a creature, having received the gift of immortality, deliberately leaves one discernible lead for mortals to follow, you better damn well know it’s the new gospel, or we’re all part of the stage performance of the century. And I despise acting.”
The screens display the classified files of Derek Stills, smirking with pearl blue eyes, his personal biography a decaying litany. On one screen, his “Interests” are magnified and highlighted. Security logs show that Derek himself redacted the information an hour ago from a public terminal: “Cleaning up the surface of planet Yamashita IV with Karin Hallimere.”
Stone’s finger returns to me. “He’s calling for you. And I want to know what the hell he wants from humanity.”
“I found him!” The voice came out loud and clear from Miles, seated next to me with a tentative grin on his face.
A screen flickers and simmers with the façade of Sheena’s Pleasure Den in the Recreation District, luminous under the artificial night sky. The briefing room stirs from its stupor, eyes searching for the source of improbability.
“He’s got nowhere to run this time.” Miles continues.
No one is smiling.
* * *
A SPECTER LOOMS in the pleasure den, abandoned except for a smiling AI bartender and Derek Stills.
Red velvet hangs from the high ceiling, embracing crystal windows, brushing against polished marble flooring. Atmospheric string quartet melodies caress the pews of long leather couches arranged before a raised platform, its white synthetic wood machine-carved with laser-precise floral patterns. A whiff of alcohol and tobacco punctuates the Subject’s presence at the bar, surrounded by vacant tables—“Reserved” signs granting us the privilege of the private encounter.
As I approach the bar, Miles has his blaster trained on Derek—sharply dressed in a black suit, blowing smoke rings as he extinguishes the cigarette in an overbooked graveyard of charred stumps.
Derek swivels on his bar stool as we approach. He exaggerates a look of surprise, the pearl blue eyes at play. “Ah, once more, the long-awaited confrontation!” He gestures theatrically to an absent audience, relishing in the tungsten spotlight.
Deftly producing two glasses of red wine, he extends one to me, glancing at Miles. “None for the boy, I’m afraid. Too young, too eager.” I take the glass, playing my role in the production. Derek slowly raises his, and it catches the light, casting a shadow of blood. “To the government agents—my agents.”
I replace my glass on the bar top, against the director’s notes. An improvised expression of disappointment forms across Derek’s face.
“I have lived thrice, and yet you know nothing about me.” He launches into a dance of despair, accompanied by the string quartet: he gulps down the wine and lights another cigarette, pouring himself another glass, exhaling smoke screens, draining the wine, and tossing the glass haphazardly over his shoulder. It shatters in splendor, and Derek bounds for the white wood stage. Miles tracks him with the blaster, the camera of a civilized age.
Derek continues: “But my identity does not matter in the end—or the future. I chose you because you can listen, Karin. You will understand my actions.”
I sink into a leather couch in the front row. Before me is the fourth revision of Subject One. Bemused, I watch as he reaches into his pockets, a magician on stage.
Derek unveils a small and battered notebook. He lifts it up to the light, scratched leather glistening, and smiles. “My partner, Subject Two, used to keep a diary. Do you remember, Karin? You were there to assist us on our last assignment.”
He turns the diary’s yellowed pages as if he were reading through them. “Before your superiors deactivated my partner’s clone vat, he wrote about his wife and kids. He also wrote about whom we killed for the Human Government, and why we did. Your superiors never approved of such records. They thought we were expendable, never to exist on paper so long as they held the switch.”
A slender black device with a red cap falls from one of the pages, glinting in the air as it lands on Derek’s palm.
“Speaking of records, did your partner ever track down my shipments? Or was he too busy to look at the bigger picture?”
Miles raises an eyebrow at me, lowering then raising his weapon. I can see sweat running down his face.
Derek twirls the device between his fingers. “This detonator has already damned hundreds of souls for the government. Millions more will be needed before the diary is filled.” He depresses the red cap, pointing the device beyond the pleasure den’s windows, at the scarred face of Yamashita IV. Lights dance upon the planet’s surface in synchronized steps.
“Distant explosions in the vacuum of space, sparking the desire for true equality and stability in the galaxy. True democracy.”
Derek pockets the diary.
And pulls out a plasma blaster.
“You and I are the Human Government, Karin. We see to it that we uphold her values. Don’t you see what she has given us through the wonders of human cloning?”
A sound escapes Miles’s lips. He takes a step forward, onto the white wood stage. “Do something, Karin!”
Derek lifts the weapon and aims at Miles.
The crack of blue light.
I sink deeper into the leather couch. My vision grows dim as a knot forms in the pit of my stomach. Derek bows deeply from his pedestal, shadow curtains ending the act.
“When everyone clamors for their right to immortal souls, heaven and hell can seal their gates.”
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