Decoherence (18 page)

 

CHAPTER 30

“For too long we have defined a human as someone with a certain set of correct features or genes. In humanity's long and painful history, we have at times labeled ­people as subhuman because of their language, the color of their skin, or the illnesses that affect them. We have a dark past wherein we have savagely murdered each other over inconsequential differences. And while the age of mass murders may be over, we are still guilty of trying to define a human with terms of bigotry and hatred. Today, that ends. We will no longer let hate define humanity. Today, we accept a brighter future and a broader definition of brotherhood.”

~ Senator Adam Sharp speaking at the signing of the Caye Law I2—­2070

Tuesday January 14, 2070

Florida District 8

Commonwealth of North America

Iteration 2

I
vy shifted uncomfortably on her bare, tiled floor as she tried to make sense of the files. She'd called up Dr. Runiker to ask him about the Jane Doe she'd seen in October. He told her that the CBI had concluded the investigation, and the matter was closed.

But it wasn't.

Dr. Runiker had been willing to send over the autopsy reports. It was a silly thing. Senseless to look into it, really, because she wasn't sure she wanted the answer. But the two girls were so similar, Ivy couldn't let it go.

Ivy looked up at the poster on her wall of CBI Agent Samantha Lynn Rose, hero of the clone rights movement. The camera had caught her imperious glare and fierce determination, but the words she'd spoken meant more to Ivy than anything else. I AM NOT YOUR POSSESSION.

Maybe that's why she liked Miss MacKenzie so much. She'd said nearly the same thing. It didn't matter if the victims were clones, they were ­people first, and they ought to be treated as ­people.

She stretched before picking up the datpad, hoping against all rational hope that she'd find something she'd missed before.

But the facts were staring at her in black and white. The fingerprints matched. Jane Doe was Lexie Muñoz. That could only mean that the woman Dr. Troom was accused of killing had been a clone.

Ivy closed her eyes. Feeling like a traitor, she dialed the number Miss MacKenzie had given her.

“Tickseed Meadows,” a cheerful, elderly voice answered after the first ring. “How can I help you reach enlightenment today?”

“Do you have a Rose there?”

“Lots of roses, honey. Do you want to buy a floral arrangement or a wedding set?”

“A Rose MacKenzie. Blond hair, contacts, puts on bronzer even though she's Latina? Short?” She couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Oh! The one with the dog. Of course. She's in the kitchen.”

Ivy frowned but waited.

“Hello?” Miss Mackenzie sounded strange on the phone. “Who's this?”

“Ivy. Officer Clemens.”

“Ivy!” She sounded like someone greeting an old friend, and part of Ivy wished she were. “What's up?”

“I was just going over some files, and I found something that raised some questions.” She let the hint dangle, not sure how to ask how the other woman had gotten her hands on a classified case file.

“What'd ya find?”

“A fingerprint,” Ivy said. “It's . . . maybe it's not enough.”

“Anything helps.”

Ivy sighed. “I'm going to be up for a few more hours looking this over. Do you think you can help me write up the report? I know I need to turn this evidence in. I just don't know what to say.”

“I can do that,” Miss MacKenzie said. “I'm just putting the finishing touches on some spaghetti sauce for my hosts. Want me to bring you something?” she asked in the same breath as, “Are you allergic to anything?”

Ivy shook her head. “No, I'm not. And you don't need to worry about me.”

“Please, I bet your fridge has a ­couple of full-­nutrition smoothies, granola bars, oatmeal, and maybe some skim milk. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.”

She wasn't. “That's a good guess.”

“Good ol' Shadow House food,” she said. “I know the diet.”

Ivy pulled the phone away from her ear and blinked at it in confusion. Had Rose MacKenzie just admitted to being a clone? Or was she saying she'd worked with Shadows before? Reflex made her curl up on herself. “Um . . .”

“It's not what you think,” the other woman said as if she was reading Ivy's thoughts. “One of my best friends was raised as a Shadow. Her gene donor was killed in a car wreck, and poof! That was it. She was a free woman. Crazy stuff.”

“That's what happened to me!” Ivy blurted out.

“It's not that uncommon, really,” Miss MacKenzie said casually. “So, spaghetti or no spaghetti?”

Ivy smiled and relaxed. “I'm fine, thank you. You don't need to worry about me. I'll see you soon.”

“Later, gator.” The phone clicked off with nothing more.

It was nearly an hour before Ivy realized that she hadn't given Miss MacKenzie directions to her apartment, and by then, the doorbell was ringing.

S
am shifted from foot to foot and cursed the existence of fire ants. Blah, blah, blah, all God's creations were beautiful! The world was excellent! The Psalmist had never met fire ants, or there would be a Bible verse that read, “Ye, and the ants of fire, they are abominations before God and ought to be burned.”

Maribel insisted that poisoning them was not a natural, harmonic way to coexist. But neither was waking up with seventeen welts on her feet because the ants liked the taste of her lotion.

Sam rang the doorbell again and debated whether investing in boots would be a good idea. Probably, because when she got Henry out, they'd be building the machine in the swamp.

I miss Australia.

The door swung open to a surprised Ivy. “Miss Mackenzie, I didn't realize I'd given you directions.”

Dang it!
She'd slipped. Time to fake it. “I took a wild guess on what government Shadow housing might look like, then came to the only door with a light on in the window. Nine o'clock is the usual bedtime at the Shadow Houses, right? It can be a tough habit to break.”

She held out the organic, hand-­woven hemp bag full of goodies from Tickseed Meadow and hoped Ivy wouldn't question her logic.

Ivy took the bag and held the door open. “It's not hard to change your body clock when you work the graveyard shift for two years straight.”

“That would do it,” Sam agreed.

Ivy was looking in the bag with a face of resigned horror.

“I know what you said, but when I told Maribel I was going to visit a friend, she insisted. I cook when I'm stressed, and I guess they're running out of cupboard space. Yesterday, the local soup kitchen took a donation of two hundred homemade cookies because Tickseed Meadow needed their fridge back.”

“Oh,” Ivy said in a tiny, defeated voice.

“It all freezes,” Sam offered. “Or you could throw it out. I promise not to be offended. It's your body, and you get to choose what goes into it.”

Ivy smirked. “You really have spent time around clones.”

“A few,” Sam said with a nod. “Actually, probably more than I ever realized. The difference between you and me is negligible.”

“I have a clone marker.”

“That doesn't make you any less human.” She smiled and tried not to bite her lips in anticipation. “Where's this mystery fingerprint?”

Ivy took the bag of food and stuffed it into the mostly empty fridge before coming back to the living room floor covered in papers. “It's not a mystery print. It's Lexie's. On the Jane Doe's body from District 18 in October.” She held out the file. “It's clone-­on-­donor violence.”

“You don't know that,” Sam said as she sat down to read through the autopsy. “Do you know if . . . oh. There it is.” She sucked air in through her teeth. “I was hoping they hadn't found that.”

“Found what?” Ivy asked, sitting down beside her.

Sam pointed out the tiny circular patterns on Lexie's bones. “This.”

“The little Zen circles you hate.”

“Yes they are.” Sam put the file down and stared into space. “That complicates things.”

“How?”

“It means I made a mistake.” Henry had already built the time machine. History was wrong, and ­people were dying. She could feel the first push of tears behind her eyes. The bitterness and frustration of the past month threatened to crush her.

Sam choked it down, letting anger burn through the other emotions until there was nothing but fury.

Ivy scooted a little closer. “Are you okay?”

“I'm not, but I will be. Thank you for asking.”

“Your voice sounds very . . . flat,” Ivy said.

“Only because screaming won't help.” Sam sighed. She patted Ivy's knee. “Your report?”

“It's going to get someone in trouble.” Ivy looked at the ground. “I hate doing this. We've fought so hard for rights, for the chance to be human, and I'm going to betray one of us. It doesn't matter that she's a killer. All I can see is clone.”

Sam shook her head. “Lexie didn't have a Shadow. I checked. I double-­checked two hours ago when they found her body. The MO is the same. So, even if something had happened with a clone, the Shadow couldn't have been the killer. Lexie wasn't much larger than me.”

It was Ivy's turn to shake her head in confusion. “But, I saw her body. I saw her.”

“You saw
someone
.”

“With the same fingerprints? That's impossible.”

“Obviously not.” Sam flipped through the rest of the files, then frowned. “There was a fingerprint found on one of the bodies?”

“Oh, yeah, the investigator didn't say anything about it, but it belongs to an Agent MacKenzie. He's a . . .” Her sentence trailed off. “Miss MacKenzie?”

“Hmm?”

“You have a funny look on your face.”

Sam shook her head. “Just a strange thought. Don't think anything of it.” Mac wouldn't have hurt anyone. The fingerprint had been dismissed as a protocol error—­Mac forgot to put on his gloves. But what if things had gone differently? What if Mac in another iteration had fallen not into depression but into rages?

She looked at the victims again. A pattern started to form. “The killer had training.”

Ivy peeked over her shoulder. “How do you know?”

“Look.” Sam pointed at the left shoulders. “There's a rhythm here. The same set of moves every time. A punch to stun the victim, a kick to the left shoulder to keep them down, two more well-­placed kicks.”

“Is it enough to find the killer?”

Sam shut her eyes tight. “That's going to be a problem. Ivy, I know this is going to sound like a very bad idea, but you weren't officially on these cases, right?”

“Right.” Her voice was soft, almost beaten.

“I'm going to strongly recommend you not write a report.” Sam looked at her, hoping and praying she could sway Ivy to her point of view.

Ivy looked appalled at the thought. “This is new evidence!”

“This”—­Sam tapped the files—­“is a death warrant. You haven't seen this before, but I have. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I wound up in a very bad situation. The ­people responsible for letting the killer loose are way over your pay grade and mine. The CBI has specialists for this.”

“So we contact them,” Ivy said. “We give them this information.”

Sam shook her head. “You can't explain it.”

“You can.”

“I signed a nondisclosure agreement. If anyone in that organization thinks I talked, I will lose all freedoms. They will lock me in the deepest, darkest hole they can find in the penal system, and I won't even have a trial. I don't know what they'd do to you.”

Ivy frowned. “What if I hinted at the right ­people that I might know something.”

“No. Don't. If it ever comes up. If anything similar crosses your desk, and the CBI loops you in, act shocked. Act surprised. Protest. It'll keep you alive.”

“But . . .” She looked at the lineup of the victims' faces. “How do we stop this from happening if we can't get the CBI involved?”

Sam pressed her lips together. “I do something really stupid that I hope I won't regret, and I go after them.”

“I'll go with you,” Ivy offered.

Sam smiled. “I wish I could let you, but it would mean uprooting you and dragging you across the country. Possibly out of the country. You've got a future here.”

With a resigned sigh Ivy looked at the floor. “No, I don't.”

“Call it a hunch,” Sam said. “Better times are coming. Bigger cases.”

Ivy looked at her. “This is a really bad idea.”

“Sometimes those are the only ones that work.” Sam gave her a sideways hug. “Do you want to do breakfast tomorrow before I take off?”

“I can't,” Ivy said sadly. “I have to get to work early. Will you call, when it's over, and everything is okay?” Ivy asked.

“Yeah,” Sam lied. “I can do that.”

 

CHAPTER 31

“A lie becomes truth if it is spoken enough.”

~ from
The Handbook of Modern Politics
by Feror Delgado I3—­2067

Day 201/365

Year 5 of Progress

(July 20, 2069)

Central Command

Third Continent

Prime Reality

“H
ow could this happen?” Donovan asked, as Emir handed him the black band to wrap around his arm. “Commander Rose was always so cautious. For her to miss a jump is unthinkable.”

Emir's face was set in a permanent scowl. “You are certain you gave her the proper coordinates?”

“Yes, sir,” Donovan lied. He secured the band in place. “I gave Senturi the new jump location, and he was in contact with Commander Rose the whole time.”

“Senturi didn't come back either.”

Donovan tilted his head to the side, pretending to think. “I can't think of a less likely pair of coconspirators, sir.”

The scowl turned to a sneer. “You aren't kept around for your brains, Captain. Rose didn't agree with Senturi's politics, but they were a team. I'm not sure if the concept has ever crossed your mind.”

Donovan's hands fisted at his sides.

Emir opened his office door without noticing. “Prepare your team for another jump in three days. This whole day was a fiasco.”

“But the iteration is gone,” Donovan said. “We've regained prominence.”

Emir looked at the ceiling. “Captain, if I ever come to you for advice, please do me the courtesy of taking me directly to the medic for a full mental evaluation. No. The iteration didn't collapse. No. We are not in the Prime position. We're rapidly slipping away from dominance. We are missing a node!” he shouted. “Do you know what that means? No, of course you don't. You're an infantile man whose only focus is on his own base need for approval from underlings.”

“You should learn respect, Doctor,” Donovan said. “Before anyone else realizes that the iteration that is the Prime is the iteration where you are dead.

The old man looked at him, and Donovan saw death in the man's eyes. “Don't test me, Captain. I don't need you to survive, but you still need me.”

Donovan walked out, fear running down his spine like icy water. He'd seen Emir play vicious little games. He knew all the rumors about dead rivals and ­people who existed and were then erased from history. But he'd always thought that Emir had someone else do the dirty work. Now, he wasn't so sure.

He looked over his shoulder, wondering if he ought to have left Emir behind and let Rose return.