Sera turns to face the onslaught, and so does the armored security clone she referred to as Dunn. The two of them open fire on the Wong clones, downing half the duplicates that charged headlong out of the elevator. The two surveillance drones swoop through the air, converging on the elevator door and laying down a barrage of projectile rounds that cause the remaining Wongs to retreat and cower inside.
"Didn't know they could do that." Erik stares at the drones.
"Get ready to fly," I tell him. "As soon as this hangar opens, we need to be airborne."
"How exactly are we opening it?" Sera calls over her shoulder.
"We won't have to, once our people show up." Carrying Arienna, the last member of the Twenty. There must be a biometric scanner built into the hangar roof; it opened for Sera and then for Erik, no questions asked. "We just have to hold out until then."
Sera marches forward in her power-suit, and Dunn jogs after her. The drones hovering above rain fire on the elevator door as it slides shut, shielding the Wongs inside. A dozen of them litter the floor on our side, bleeding out. Dead or close to it. The hangar's blue light makes the blood look black, splattered across their starched white coats.
"We need to deactivate that elevator." I approach Sera.
She nods, eyeing the control panel beside the polished plasteel door. To Dunn, she says, "Get the aerocar ready."
"I am not leaving you, Enforcer Chen," it says, both armored feet planted.
Sera punches the panel, and her powered fist smashes straight through, exposing a jumble of wires deep inside. Her fingers curl around them all and pull, disgorging the entire assembly.
"I'll be right behind you," she says to the clone. "Go."
As it stomps toward their vehicle—bursting at the seams with members of the Twenty—I lean toward Sera.
"It seems pretty attached to you."
She drops the tangle of wires to the floor. "Erik reprogrammed it that way. Assigned it a new directive. Something like that." She backs away from the elevator, out of range of the motion detector, and then steps toward it again. The door remains shut. "We'll see if that holds them."
I gaze up at the soaring dome of the hangar ceiling, lit with lines of electric-blue pearls. "Now we wait."
She nods, and we retreat, keeping our weapons trained on the elevator while we head toward our respective aerocars.
"How big is this place?"
"Ten levels, straight down," she says.
"That's a lot of space to freeze twenty people your size."
She glances at me. "Dr. Wong has a grand plan for the future, and every floor holds something special he intends to save. For when his clones figure out how to terraform the planet. He even has animal embryos in cold storage, can you believe it?"
All this time, the Eurasian government has had animals in their possession but refused to bring them to life? Probably worried about the depletion of resources. I can't wait to tell spirit-Rehana. The spirits of the earth have never mentioned the possibility of returning to their original state—as the millions of species that once thrived on this planet. How will they react to this development?
But as long as I'm trapped inside a human-made construction, the spirits won't speak to me. So I'll have to tell Milton—their preferred method of travel into the Domes—as soon as possible.
The elevator door begins to glow in the center: a wide golden ring, as if someone is attempting to burn their way through it with a laser welder. Sera gestures for me to step behind her, and she faces the door. Her power-suit braces itself against the floor and levels its shoulder-mounted Gatling guns on the oblong hole melting out of the door. Large enough now for a single person to climb through.
But instead of another batch of Wong clones spilling out, it's the original Dr. Wong, and he's waving his hands, calling out to us that he's unarmed.
"Exit the elevator," Sera tells him, "and keep your hands where I can see them."
He nods, crouching to squeeze through the opening without touching the edges that glow like molten metal.
"Daiyna, it's so good to see you again!" He smiles at me.
"We've never met."
"Of course we have. But it was a very long time ago. Do you remember all those tests you were required to take before we allowed you to enter the bunker?" He smiles broadly. "I administered them. Out of a hundred candidates that day, I chose you."
I don't feel honored. Disgusted is more like it.
"I see you changed your pants," Sera remarks.
His expression falters. "Please don't shoot me again."
"Next time, it'll be a lethal round," she replies.
I like her.
"Say your piece, then get out of my sight," she says. "We're leaving, and there's nothing you can do about it."
"Dr. Wong! It's Dr. Wong in the flesh!" Sera and Erik's siblings shout excitedly, streaming out of the aerocars.
"Return to the vehicles immediately," Dunn orders, aiming the shocker it carries in their general vicinity.
They halt mid-step, looking confused again—their default expression.
"You trust that rogue clone with your siblings, Sera?" Wong raises one eyebrow.
"As promised," Erik announces from the cockpit of our aerocar. "Dr. Wong himself!"
Wong gives them a gracious nod. "Hello, my children."
They stare, awestruck. A few wave tentatively.
"Everyone in this hangar is alive, thanks to one man," Erik continues. "Take a moment to ponder that. One man gave us life. And there he stands before you!"
Dr. Wong beams, enjoying the attention. But then he notices Sera's power-suit and studies it carefully. "I should add that to my collection..." he muses.
Sera stomps forward, the pistons in her leg apparatus driving the plasteel foot into the floor with a menacing thump. Startled, Wong retreats a step.
"You can't keep making the same mistakes over and over again." She scowls down at him. "There has to come a point when you
