Armageddon (12 page)

“But they can’t just eliminate them. People would be in an uproar over that, and besides, there’s the labor problem. They need laborers.”

Lena stared at the woman, realizing it made a terrible kind of sense and hating the fact that it did. “It was because I noticed Morris and they were afraid I’d start digging?”

“Probably.”

“But--who’s doing it?”

“If we knew that, we’d know how to stop it.”

Lena frowned. “Morris always thought it was the gov. I can’t see it. In the long term, it wouldn’t make a lot of difference to the president. He won’t be in office much longer anyway.” She thought that over for several moments. “You think he’s planning on making himself a … dictator?”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible he doesn’t even know about it.”

Realizing the examination was over, Lena sat up, massaging her temples absently.

When Mel started to move away, she caught her arm. “I know who I am. I know I’m not a clone.”

She could tell from the way Mel was looking at her that Mel didn’t believe she
would
know.

“The thing is,” Mel said finally. “The clones are usually stronger and heal faster than their counterpart and the thing that’s bothering everybody is that you managed to overpower yours. Statistically, the odds are against the real Lena having survived. We all know that. Dax knows that. That’s why he doesn’t believe you are really you even though I think he wants to.”

Lena stared at her in frustration. “I didn’t overpower her. It wasn’t me that killed her. It was the home guard.”

Mel’s brows rose. “What
did
happen?”

Feeling more hopeful when Mel seemed open to at least listening to her side of the situation, she very carefully related every detail about that night that she could remember. She was disappointed by Mel’s reaction. She looked thoughtful, but not completely convinced.

It took an effort to contain her anger and frustration. She could see Mel suspected that she’d made up the entire story to cover her butt, and she supposed she couldn’t really blame her for not taking the word of a complete stranger, but how was she supposed to clear up the misconception if no one would even listen to her?

“Dax didn’t believe me either,” she said dully.

“He’s afraid to. We all are.”

“Why did he even bother to help me escape?” she said irritably.

“To stop Nigel from going in after you.”

Lena glanced at her sharply, horror flooding her at the idea of Nigel trying anything that crazy. It warmed her that her big brother wanted to take care of her, but he was a tech, for god’s sake. He wasn’t a soldier. How could he even have considered

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doing something like that? It wasn’t just hard to imagine. It was impossible. “Oh god!”

She covered her mouth with her hand.

Still shaken by the idea of Nigel risking his life to do the things that Dax had done, Lena climbed off of the table, discarded the towel sized ‘sheet’ she’d covered herself with and picked up the uniform, slipping her feet into it. She’d already pushed her arms into the sleeves before it dawned on her that Dax had no more reason to care about Nigel than he did her.

When she’d first realized that Dax was Morris’ son, she supposed, in the back of her mind, at least, she’d thought the reason he’d rescued her was because of his affection for his father, because he’d realized Morris would have tried if he’d been able to. If that wasn’t the case, though, then it couldn’t be the reason he’d decided to help Nigel either.

“Why? And why Dax?”

Mel sent her a questioning look.

“He doesn’t care anything about Nigel or me. Why would he risk his life to help either one of us? And why do it himself? Why not just send someone?”

Mel glanced away uncomfortably. “Because there’s a chance Nigel can help us track the data,” she said finally. “He wouldn’t agree to try it unless we got you out.”

Lena was too stunned at first to feel anything at all, but fury washed over her when she realized that they’d used her to get her brother to risk his life for their damned cause. Nigel was no rebel. He was an academic. They were going to get him killed!

As much as she wanted to tell Mel there was no way in hell she was going to just stand by and let Nigel do what they wanted without making a hell of a push to talk him out of it, she realized now was not the time to address that--and Mel wasn’t the one she needed to talk to about it anyway. Mel wasn’t charge.

Maybe Dax wasn’t either, but he made a better target.

“Why Dax? Why not send someone else in after me?”

“Because he never sends someone else to do a job he wouldn’t do himself. Maybe because he felt like he owed it to Morris. I don’t know. I’m not sure he knows, either, but I do know no one was expecting to see you on that roof and it’s the first time since I’ve known the captain that he failed to do what he went in to do.”

Lena frowned at her questioningly.

“He went in to terminate you. It’s what we do. It’s all we can do, because we don’t know who’s behind this or how else to try to stop it. We terminate the clones we locate.”

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A coldness washed over Lena even before her mind fully grasped what Mel had just told her. It took many moments more for Lena to really assimilate the information.

She was living a nightmare! How could it be that she’d spent her entire life doing everything she was supposed to, never doing anything she wasn’t supposed to, and then wake up one day to find out that everybody wanted to kill her?

“I guess that explains why nobody wanted to get to know me,” she murmured through lips that felt strangely stiff.

Mel’s face creased in distress. “I shouldn’t have told you. I could go to the brig for it, but I believe you, and you need to know your life’s on the line here. This is a deadly serious game we’re playing, and we play for keeps. If you can think of a way to prove your identity beyond the shadow of a doubt, you need to do it before it’s too late.

“Captain Morris must have seen something that gave him pause, because if he’d been certain you were the clone he would have taken you out.”

Lena just stared at the woman, trying to master the wobble in her chin. “How? I saw the way you looked at me when I told you what happened. You say you’re on my side, but you didn’t believe it. I told Dax about something I remembered from when I was little, and he didn’t believe that--because you all have that all figured out. If she was my clone, then we were identical. How the hell am I supposed to prove I’m Lena?

“What could I say? What could I do? What could possibly be different between me and a duplicate that would prove it, and who would believe it anyway? It seems to me that everyone here has already decided.”

When Mel said nothing more, just stared at her sympathetically, Lena whirled and fled the med lab. She was halfway down the corridor to the tube before she realized she had no idea where she was going, no destination in mind, no where to go even to be alone and think. She couldn’t escape. She was on a ship, in space, and she had no place on board that was
her
space. She found herself in the deserted gym with no memory of even heading for it and simply stared at the huge room for several moments before she skittered into a dim corner, and curled into a tight ball, tucking her chin against her knees and covering her ears with her hands.

She hadn’t done it since she was a child, but when she’d been very young making herself ‘invisible’ had made her feel safer. She didn’t give much thought to the fact that her fear had driven her to such a mindless, useless attempt to protect herself by reverting to her childhood habit of finding a dark corner to hide in. She couldn’t think at all for many moments.

The act itself seemed to bring back a flood of memories she’d tucked away long ago and refused to think of since, but then it had been years since she’d felt so completely vulnerable, so lost, so alone. The last time she’d felt even close to the way she felt now she had been barely four.

She couldn’t remember her mother. She had spent years trying really hard to dredge up even a tiny little flicker of an image of her mother and found she couldn’t. All

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she knew about her mother was what Nigel had told her. She’d gotten sick when Lena was two or maybe three and died because there was no medicine to help her get better.

Even Nigel wasn’t certain of when or anything beyond the fact that she’d been sick because he’d been so young himself.

She’d been four when their father was killed. She remembered that--not how old she’d been--his death. She had tried just as hard
not
to remember that day as she’d worked to remember something about her mother. But she’d never been able to successfully erase that horror from her mind.

Her father had brought them to the city, hoping to find her mother’s sister so that there would be somebody to look after them while he went off to try to find work. They hadn’t found her, but they had found a place to stay, briefly, until the people that claimed it was theirs came. They claimed the food their father had found was theirs, too, and they’d killed him because he’d taken it to feed himself and her and Nigel.

He’d tried to reason with them at first, offered to find food to replace what he’d taken, and then tried to fight them when they’d ignored every attempt to placate them and attacked. She’d been paralyzed by the sight, unable to do anything but watch, wanting to run to her father to try to help. She had tried. She’d finally managed to shake off the paralyzing fear and run toward them, beating at them with her fists until she’d been struck by a flying arm, or leg, or body and knocked flat, trampled by the heaving mass of bodies rather than intentionally struck. Her father had seen, though, and he’d yelled at Nigel to take her and run, to hide.

He’d said he would find them. It was the last thing he’d said to them, that he’d find them.

They had run. She could still remember how hard she’d run, how scared she was.

Even when Nigel had found a place for them to hide that was too small for a grown person to get into, she’d been terrified, too scared even to cry. Her and Nigel had curled up tightly together and stayed that way all night and the next day, because their father hadn’t come for them like he’d promised, they had gone back to look for their father.

They’d found him lying in a pool of blood, battered almost beyond recognition, and naked because they’d taken every thing he had, right down to his shoes.

For a while, they’d tried to make him get up again. When he wouldn’t, they hadn’t known what to do. They’d stayed for a while, waiting, hoping, but after a time they’d been driven by hunger and thirst to try to find something to eat, something to quench their thirst.

Morris had found them after that. It had always seemed to her that it was a very long time after that. That there had only been her and Nigel for weeks, maybe months, but she knew that had to have been only because they were both scared to death, hungry, and lost, and too young to have any real conception of time. It seemed doubtful, now, that it could have been much more than a few days or they’d have starved because Nigel had been barely six and had no more idea of how to find food than she did.

She could remember, almost as if it had only been yesterday, looking up to find the big man squatted down in front of the pipe where she and Nigel had hidden. At first, she’d been afraid of him, too. There’d been something about his eyes, thought, the way he looked at her and Nigel, that had made her feel safer than she could remember feeling since their daddy had died.

Abruptly, she knew why. She’d seen the same pain, the same empathy in eyes

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just like his--her mother’s eyes.

Her chin wobbled at the realization. Tears stung her eyes.

All this time, and she’d never really known why she had trusted Morris enough to go to him when he’d called to her.

She wondered if Nigel had ever realized that, or maybe it hadn’t been that at all for him. Maybe he’d gone simply because he was cold, hungry, and tired, and Morris was the only adult who had even seemed to notice them, certainly the only one who’d told them he was going to take them home and take care of them.

Those thoughts dried Lena’s tears. Nigel would know her! Even if they tried to convince him that she was only a clone, she remembered things that only she and Nigel could possibly know! Morris had never even known the full story, because they hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and he hadn’t pushed once he’d asked about their parents and they had told them that both of them were sleeping.

The spark of hope died almost as quickly as it had ignited. She might not live long enough to see Nigel. What if they decided it would be better if Nigel just thought she’d died in prison?

That thought resurrected the memory of the prison, but also another memory.

Dax had told them to put her in the brig when they’d first boarded the ship. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been locked up, but it suddenly seemed like a better place to be than roaming a ship full of people who wanted her dead.

It couldn’t possibly be any worse than where she’d been and she’d endured that for weeks. Surely, where ever they were going, it wouldn’t be a very long trip? And she would be safer if everyone was locked away from her.

Surging to her feet, she wiped the lingering moisture from her eyes and hurried from the gym.

The brig would be in the bowels of the ship, she knew.

Heading for the tube again, she climbed down the ladder to the lowest level. It was dark, for there were only a few dim lights along the narrow corridor that ran between the clutter of equipment and machinery on that level, but she could see an area that was more brightly lit at the opposite end.

There was only one guard on duty. When he saw her approaching him along the corridor, he virtually leapt from the chair he’d been sitting in. “This area is off limits, ma’am.”

Lena stared at him in dismay. “But … I’m supposed to be here. The captain said I was to be put in the brig after Mel took care of my injuries,” Lena said, feeling stupid for demanding to be locked up, and fearful at the same time that he would refuse now that she’d convinced herself she would be safe, that no one would feel threatened enough to feel like she had to be terminated, even if they still thought she was a clone, as long as she was locked away.

He gaped at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Nobody told me,” he responded suspiciously. “And why would you be down without an escort?”

“Just put me in a cell, and then you can call and ask the captain about it.”

“They’re full, ma’am,” he said with the same mixture of indignation and surprise as a desk clerk would of someone demanding a room when there weren’t any available.

She hadn’t thought of that. “Well, can’t you put some of them together?”

Again she received the, ‘this woman’s crazy’ look. “I’m the only one on duty

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right now. We don’t move prisoners unless there are three men down here.”

“But … I
need
to be here!” she exclaimed in distress, feeling all of the fear she’d managed to fight down crowding back into her like water over a burst dam.