Rogue Clone: The Clone Betrayal Part 44

"We still have tests to run now that you are awake." He sounded young and peppy, excited to run tests on a new patient who should already be dead.

As my head cleared, I became aware of the slings holding my arms and the tubes poking into my flesh. Someone had elevated the back of my bed so that it kept my head raised higher than my feet.

"I was shot," I said.

The doctor corrected me. "You were shot five times."

"I got hit in the arm," I said.

"Two shots pierced your right arm, and three pierced your legs. The darts went right through."

That accounted for why I was in the hospital, but it did not explain why I felt so sick. Maybe if I took one to the kidney. Something was wrong with me. Then I remembered that the flechettes were made of uranium. "Am I hot?" I asked.

"You have a fever, but that's expected after a full blood transfusion. Fortunately, finding blood supplies wasn't a problem. You have the same blood type as every man in your command."

"Am I radioactive?"

"Radioactive? No. The darts weren't radioactive, but they were poisonous. The men you were fighting had a neurotoxin on their darts.

"You were the only one who survived being hit. The poison killed everyone else in a matter of minutes; but you, they hit you five times, and it still didn't kill you. There was so much adrenaline in your blood that the poison didn't spread the way it was supposed to." He sounded excited as he told me this.

"How many men did we lose?" I asked.

As if he did not hear me, the doctor continued raving about my genetic engineering. Then he said, "You are going to have to be more careful next time. We damaged the gland that produced all of that adrenaline when we swapped out your blood. The gland should heal, but I'm not sure how long it will take. Until then, you will need to put up with normal mortality."

With my eyes out of focus, I saw the world as a fuzzy mixture of bright light and dark colors. I could not see the doctor clearly, but it no longer mattered. I wanted to be alone. I felt tired. All I wanted to do was sleep.

"I need to rest," I said.

"But we have tests . . ."

"Later," I said.

"General Harris, you are not out of the woods just yet. We need to . . ."

"I'll take my chances," I said. I shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. The doctor stood mute, not knowing what to do. I felt his gaze and heard him breathing. Finally, he left the room.

What was I? If the gland that produced my combat reflex was out of commission, I was no longer a Liberator. I did not have the gland for the death reflex, so I was not a general-issue military clone. I was not a natural-born.

I turned to my old friends the philosophers for an answer, but Nietzsche, Hobbes, Plato, and Kant had nothing to say.

2.

My Marines did not come to visit me while I was in the hospital, but other people did.

"Maybe I was wrong about you, Harris. It turns out you are not the luckiest man in the Marines, after all," Ava said.

She looked beautiful but not glamorous. She wore next to no makeup.

"I don't feel lucky," I said. I tried to sit up. Blood rushed to my head, leaving me dizzy.

Ava gently placed her hand on my shoulder, giving it a barely perceptible squeeze. "Honey, you and I were meant for each other. We both know what it feels like to be out of luck."

I wrapped my left arm around Ava's tiny waist. She leaned down and kissed my forehead. "We'd better be meant for each other, 'cause we're stuck here now," she whispered. "El says the whole fleet was destroyed." El, of course, was Ellery Doctorow.

That was the first time anybody had even mentioned the war since I woke from my coma. The doctor must have decided I was in no shape for bad news. He always pleaded ignorance. Doctorow visited me once, but said he had to leave for an "urgent appointment" when I asked about my men. I had no idea what had happened to Thomer and Hollingsworth.

"The entire fleet?" I asked.

"That's what El said," Ava told me. She frowned, then reached down and smoothed my hair. This was a new side to Ava. Now that she had a reason to nurture, it came naturally to her.

"There were over a million men up there," I said. One million men wiped away in a single day, the thought of it made me sick. One million clones killed in a training exercise.

"How about my Marines?" I asked, scared of what Ava might tell me. If she said they were killed, that would mean I was alone. If she said they were alive, then I would wonder why they had not come to visit me.

I reached for the little plastic pitcher of water that sat on the table beside my bed. Ava stopped me. She poured the gla.s.s for me. Did I love her? I thought that I might. I also thought she was right. We were stuck with each other.

"They're out at the base."

"Some of them survived?" I asked, feeling both glad and lonely. "Do they know I'm here? None of them have come to see me, not even Thomer."

"I'm not supposed to tell you any of this," Ava said. "If Doctor Feeney knew I was doing this, he'd kick me out of the hospital." She wanted to tell me something, but she was fighting the urge. I could see it in her face. She looked nervous. For a professional actress, she was awfully easy to read.

"I was here when one of your men came to see you," she whispered, looking back toward the door to make sure no one was near.

"Was it Thomer? Did you see him?"

"Hollingsworth," she said. "Doctor Feeney says he was the one who brought you here."

"Hollingsworth," I repeated. At least he was alive.

"He left when he saw me," Ava said, and immediately a thousand fractured pieces fit into one ugly picture. I had a girl. It would not matter whether I had smuggled her to Terraneau on the s.h.i.+p or met her on the job. I had some scrub hidden away while they were confined to the s.h.i.+p. They had a right to hate me. Just like a natural-born officer, I ignored their needs because my needs were met.

That was how Hollingsworth would see it.

3.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm the highest-ranking officer on Terraneau, that makes me king," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

I didn't look fit for command. The doctor would not check me out of the hospital unless I left in a wheelchair, but I abandoned the wheels the moment Doctorow pulled out of the parking lot. Now I was on crutches. My head spinning, my legs weak, sweat forming on my face and running down my back, I tried to pretend like I was healthy. It was a good thing I had the crutches to lean on. I could not stand for more than a few moments at a time.

Hollingsworth shook his head, and said, "Go home. We don't want you here."

The showdown took place just outside the door to the administration building, both Hollingsworth and I glaring at each other in frosty silence. Several gawkers had come to see what would happen.

For a moment I thought it might come down to a fight. That would have been bad. Hollingsworth looked young and strong, and I felt about ready to faint. All I wanted to do at the moment was go into the admin building and sit down; but Hollingsworth was in my way, and he showed no inclination to let me pa.s.s.

Until that moment, I had never realized what life would be like without a combat reflex. I was staring into a fight and the only thing running through my veins was blood. I missed the shock of testosterone and adrenaline pumping through me giving me mingled feelings of comfort and invincibility. I should have felt strength and hate and calm. Instead, I felt weak and scared. If my arm and leg never healed, I would learn to live with it, but I wanted that gland to heal on the spot.

Summoning everything I had, I said, "Step aside, Hollingsworth. That is an order."

And he did.

He looked at the crowd that had gathered around us, then he lowered his head and stepped out of my way. Respect for authority was in his programming. He even held the door open for me as I hobbled up the stairs.

"What the speck do you a.s.sholes want?" Hollingsworth asked the people who had come, expecting a fight. Then he followed me into the building.

I made it to the empty reception desk, then dropped into the empty chair. My head swimming, my eyes watering, I turned to watch Hollingsworth coming in behind me.

"You look like s.h.i.+t, Harris."

"Don't be fooled, I'm running a double marathon this weekend."

Hollingsworth did not laugh. He did not even smile.

"I heard you brought me to the hospital," I said. "Were you the one who hauled me out of the parking garage as well?"

Hollingsworth hesitated. "Yeah."

"Thank you," I said.

"Was that really Ava Gardner in your hospital room?"

I wanted to tell him it was not what he thought, but my relations.h.i.+p with her was exactly what he thought it was. "That's her," I said.

"So the whole time you were telling us to keep it zipped, you were already getting yours. Fahey was right about you. You're worse than any of the natural-borns. You're a traitor to clones."

He waited for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. He was right.

"How long have you had her?"

"I brought her with me," I said. "She's a clone. They dumped her off at Clonetown."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said. I could not tell if he was calling me a son of a b.i.t.c.h or commenting on my luck. In Marine-speak, "son of a b.i.t.c.h" can be both a compliment and an insult.

"What is the situation over here?" I asked.

"We're basically screwed," Hollingsworth said. He sounded sullen and angry. "Most of the men blame you for everything. They think it's your fault the Unifieds attacked. They think it's your fault we're stuck here."

"You were already stuck here when I arrived," I pointed out.

"Stuck on the planet. We're trapped down here. They blame you.

"If you plan on running the base, you better watch your back; there are a lot of Marines who want to put a knife in it."

I didn't bother pointing out that the Navy would have attacked us no matter what happened. He knew. He had to.

"Have you established contact with the fleet?" I asked, hoping to derail the showdown I felt coming my way.

"There is no fleet," Hollingsworth said. He sat there, staring at the floor as he spoke, his body unmoving, his voice devoid of emotion.

"They destroyed every last s.h.i.+p?" I asked.

"Maybe," said Hollingsworth. "We can't account for every last s.h.i.+p. From what we can tell, there are less than a hundred dead s.h.i.+ps out there. Most of them are ours. n.o.body knows what happened to the rest of the fleet."

"What do you mean, 'n.o.body knows'? The rest of the s.h.i.+ps were either destroyed or they weren't."

"They're not up there," he said. "All I know is that we can't reach them. That makes them dead in my book."

The conversation was getting us nowhere. Hollingsworth was too angry to listen. "Where is Thomer?" I asked.

For the first time since I arrived, a flash of sympathy showed on Hollingsworth's face. He sighed, and said, "Outer Bliss."

4.

The video feed was taken one week after the U.A. attack, while I was still in a coma.

The video feed shows the interrogation room in Outer Bliss as seen through the hidden camera in the ceiling. Thomer is sitting at the table when the door opens, and the guards lead Senior Chief Fahey into the room.

If I had not known that Thomer asked for Fahey, I might not have recognized the man. He is not wearing makeup. His hair is long for a sailor but not for a civilian. It hangs over his ears.

Thomer tells the guards to wait outside, but they refuse. They tell him it is against regulations to leave visitors alone with prisoners. He believes them and does not argue the point.