“Would you have listened?” asked Kelly.
Becks looked away.
Kelly sighed. “I thought not. Look: I had no way of knowing things would get that bad, that fast. The world doesn’t work like that in the lab. Things go slower there.” She took a shaky breath, calming herself. “Our research team was down to three when we realized none of us were safe. We had to get someone out alive if we wanted to preserve our results. Dr. O’Shea wasn’t willing to take the risk, and Dr. Li had a family. It had to be me. So I went to Dr. Wynne.”
“And he had you cloned,” I deadpanned. “Naturally. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I had to seem to die—it was the only way that I’d have a chance at getting away with our results. Dr. O’Shea was working on a nerve study that required full-body subjects. She set up the clone. It was supposed to be her DNA.”
“Swap-off happened at the techie level?” asked Alaric, suddenly paying attention. He always paid attention when something started smelling like a story.
“Yes,” said Kelly. “One intern handed the sample to another intern, who handed it to a lab tech when Dr. Wynne asked him to run an errand instead, and by that point, it was easy enough to get the sample from the incubator and swap in one of my own samples instead.”
“Right,” I muttered, before saying, in a more conversationalone, “Why does the source DNA matter? I thought the CDC was exempt from the prohibition against cloning.”
“Clones are illegal for moral reasons. The CDC’s dispensation allows researchers to do full-body cloning for research purposes, and the moral questions are skirted by permitting only self-cloning,” said Kelly. “That way the question of the clone having a soul can be politely ignored, and the religious community doesn’t feel the need to shut us down.”
“Because presumably there’s just one soul per genetic pattern, and the original donor holds the copyright?” I asked. Kelly nodded. I snorted. “That’s a fun piece of bureaucratic jump rope if I’ve ever seen one. So fine, they think they cloned this other lady, and they actually cloned you. What’s going to keep somebody from doing the math when they crack the factory seal on her and there’s nothing there?”
“Dr. O’Shea died two weeks ago. There was an error in her car’s electrical system and she lost control on the freeway.” Kelly looked at me, lips drawing back in a smile that looked more like a rictus. “It was very sad. Our superiors were quick to offer their regrets and let us know that if we wanted to shut down the program, they’d support our moving on to other research projects. An immediate destruction notice was issued on her clone, since the original was deceased. It was officially destroyed four days before my ‘death.’ ” She hesitated before adding, much more softly, “Dr. Li was killed in a lab accident the day after that.”
“How come no one noticed they were short a clone?” asked Becks.
Kelly shrugged, shaking off her brief malaise. “Clones are considered lab waste. Anyone can dispose of them.”
“So you disposed of the clone that didn’t exist.”
“Exactly.”
“What did I miss?” asked Maggie, coming in with a basket full of tomatoes over one arm. “Hey, Shaun, you’re up. Can I get you anything? Toast? Omelet?”
“An omelet would be great, and you got here just in time to hear the Doc explain how they broke her clone out of storage and slaughtered it like a chicken so she’d be free to come and make herself our problem.” I took another drink of coffee and stopped, grimacing. “Also, you got any Coke?”
Alaric and Becks exchanged a look. Maggie simply nodded, saying, “I’ll get you one in a minute,” as she continued across the kitchen to begin fussing with her harvest. “Keep talking, everybody. I’m sure I’ll catch right up.”
“Great.” I looked back to Kelly. “Carry on, Doc. We’re burning daylight here, and you’ve just made that a rare commodity around these parts.”
“My clone wasn’t slaughtered like a chicken,” she protested. “Dr. Wynne knows some people. Professional people. He hired them to break in and shoot the clone after we’d decanted it. They guaranteed a kill on the first shot. It didn’t have time to suffer.”
“And then you ran for us.”
“And then I ran for youKelly glanced away. Her gaze fell on the open door and she grimaced, looking down at her lap instead. “Your… There were a lot of records detailing the progression of Georgia Mason’s retinal Kellis- Amberlee. The particular nature of your mutual upbringing provided an invaluable source of data.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” asked Maggie, putting a skillet on the stove.
“She means there were cameras on us all the time when we were kids, and we got a lot of med tests so we could follow the ’rents into proscribed areas.” I watched Kelly. Kelly kept watching her lap. “It made George a great case study, without any of those pesky release forms getting in the way.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Kelly, looking up. “That also makes you a great case study.”
“Me?”
“—makes your immunological reactions uniquely fascinating,” said Kelly, her words overlaying Georgia’s until she drowned out the voice in my head. I managed not to jump. My hand still shook hard enough to slosh the remainder of my coffee dangerously close to the edge. I put the cup down on the table. Kelly didn’t seem to notice. “We would have been asking you to come in for some tests later this year if our study had been allowed to develop normally. Just to see if there were any deep abnormalities that might explain why she developed retinal Kellis- Amberlee and you didn’t. Of course, with Georgia dead, there’s always the possibility whoever’s killing the people with reservoir conditions could come after you, instead. We don’t know what the motive is there.”
“So combine Shaun’s possibly fucked-up immune system with all the footage we’ve got, and our known connections to the research team, and we’re a target, is that it?” asked Becks. “Note for the future? This is the sort of shit you should maybe lead off with. ‘Hi, nice to see you, just faked my own death, and PS, the people who want me dead are probably after you, too.’ ”
“Yes,” said Maggie pleasantly, as she started cracking eggs into the pan. “It might’ve saved Dave’s life.”
“That’s not fair,” interjected Kelly.
Maggie ignored her. “Two eggs or three, Shaun?”
“Three, please. I doubt we’re going to be stopping for a big lunch.”
“Good. Will you need to bury her body in the forest behind my house tonight, or will you be keeping her around a little longer for informational purposes?” This question was asked just as pleasantly as the last. Maggie’s tone didn’t hold anything to indicate that killing Kelly was of any more or less importance than my omelet.
Maggie can be like that sometimes. She’s grown beyond her upbringing, for the most part, but sometimes she’s still a spoiled little rich girl whose response to things she doesn’t like begins and ends with getting rid of them.
It’s better not to argue with her when she gets that way. “Informational purposes, but I promise to let you know when that changes,” I said. Kelly paled. I decided that the polite thing would be to ignore it. “Any news out of Oakland?”
“The announcement of Dave’s death went up about an hour ago,” said Alaric, quietly.
“Okay.” I looked at my coffee, and sighed. “What do our site stats look like?”
“Up five percent globally, Dave’s reports are up thirty-five percent, and we have three syndication requests for his Alaska material from last year.” Alaric sounded a lot more confident in this answer. That wasn’t surprising. Next to Mahir, there’s nobody who tracks our standings as carefully as Alaric does.
“Did Maggie fill you in on the cover story?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Has anyone posted?” Everyone shook their heads. “Not so good. I need you all online. We were camping in Santa Cruz, our apartment got blown up, we’re shaken, we’re going to stay in the field for a few days while we recover. Maggie, I want you to make it clear that you’re here alone. Tack on a poem I don’t understand, with lots of creepy-ass death imagery—the usual—and then if you can double security, that would probably be a bonus. Nobody say anything about the Doc. She’s not here.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Maggie said, walking over and slapping a can of Coke into my hand before putting the
